Double Image

by Jaye Roycraft

  His fingers finally still, St. James bore his gaze into Dallas with an unwavering precision that normally only the very old Undead were able to achieve. When he continued speaking, his voice echoed the stillness of his eyes.

  “I wasn’t allowed in the drawing room, but I had my listening posts, and I never forgot you. My father knew you, but he talked about how peculiar you looked. Of course, he had no idea you were the miscreant you are. You and he were born the same year, but while he was nearing fifty, he wondered how it was you looked no older than three and thirty. I remember your reply, word for word, for it was the most extraordinary thing the lad I was had ever heard. ‘The Fountain of Youth,’ you said. ‘The Fountain of Youth isn’t in Florida, it’s in Australia.’ He was an old man, Aldgate. Why didn’t you just kill him and be done with it?”

  “Oh, killing Christian would have been too easy. I wanted him to suffer the rest of his life. I wanted him to know what I’d known. Losing everything.”

  St. James was quiet for a moment and sat twirling the glass of water in front of him in its puddle of condensation. He looked up. “Conner.”

  “Yes, James?”

  “What do you suppose Aldgate did to ruin my father?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No, I guess you wouldn’t. You weren’t born until . . . when? Nineteen sixty?”

  Flynne’s voice lowered, and he spoke very slowly. “Nineteen forty-five.”

  “Same difference.”

  Conner stared at St. James. The older vampire smiled. “Aldgate, Conner grows bored with my voice. Why don’t you tell the story of how you ruined my father . . . and me?”

  THE THREE MEN sat on the patio long after the restaurant closed for the evening. Finally, at two o’clock in the morning, Tia watched as the slim, dark-haired man and his blond companion left through the front gate and walked toward the river. They glided past her, and while the blond man swiveled his head in the direction of her car, she couldn’t tell if he saw her or if his vision passed beyond her. At least four inches shorter than his partner, he still commanded her attention. He wore dark-colored dress trousers and a long-sleeved shirt with a standing collar that hung open to his waist. A white scarf banding his neck looked stark even against the pale skin and hair that burned with an ashen heat under the spotlight of the street lamps. She had never seen anyone in Milwaukee dressed like that. But even more riveting than his outfit was his face. A bored expression hung as easily on his countenance as an additional garment, and almost spoiled the finely chiseled aristocratic features. Another interesting subject for her lens.

  She shivered. Dallas had strange friends.

  Tia waited until the men were out of sight, then eased out of her car, leaving the door slightly ajar. She crept back to her spy post by the broken fence. Dallas sat alone with his elbows resting on the tabletop, his hands clasped in front of him. Slowly he leaned forward until his chin balanced on the back of one hand. A funny feeling washed through her—part rush, part guilt, as though she were a voyeur witnessing something very private. She slipped back to her car.

  She remembered the endless nights of working until three in the morning all too well, but she wasn’t used to keeping those hours anymore. Even with the nap, her eyes pleaded with her to close for just a minute.

  She was in a squad car, all by herself, in the central city neighborhood she had once worked in, but nothing was recognizable. The houses were as dark and quiet as sleeping animals, and the tall lamp poles were like bars on a huge cage. The muggy heat of the day still loitered, but the coffin of night had snuffed out all other signs of life. Yet everything around her was alive. And waiting for her. She drove faster and faster, but none of the buildings looked familiar. Shots rang out, proof of life. Proof of death. She stopped the car and raced through the darkness, but the shots sang a knell all around her, fencing her in with fear, until her legs would move no more.

  She woke with a start and eyed, with lingering fear, the street around her. Everything was as it should be for a slow southern town that prided itself on the grace and gentility of the past. Her silk shirt clung to her in sweaty folds. She was used to the dreams, and they were always the same. The shadows of the night were forever after her, seeking to steal her life. The nightmares had inhabited her sleep for years, and quitting her job as a cop hadn’t been enough to evict them.

  She started the car’s engine, turned on the air conditioning, and looked at the clock. A little past three. Had Dallas left? She immediately chided herself for her stupid question. Of course he was gone. There were no lights coming from the upper floors of the inn. Unless he slept overnight in the third-floor suite, she had missed him.

  She leaned to the side over the passenger seat to pull down her skirt, which had hiked up during her doze. As she started to straighten, a movement caught her eye, and she froze. It was Dallas, and he was descending the outside staircase that joined the patio to the upper floors of the inn. A moment later he exited the patio gate and walked east, away from her. Unlike his friend, Dallas never glanced in her direction. Two buildings down he halted beside a large luxury car and vanished from sight. The car, black with tinted windows, started up and pulled away, still headed east. She quickly started her car and followed at a shy distance, afraid of being too conspicuous on the deserted streets. A dozen blocks and three turns later she stopped her car when Dallas pulled into a driveway at the opposite end of the block.

  She killed her engine and waited for about five minutes, then got out and walked up the block. On the far corner a stately townhouse sat perched atop a hill. A lofty red brick wall shouldered the base of the hill, and a terraced slope of flowering shrubs she didn’t recognize collared the wall with bursts of white, pink, and purple. White columns fronted the building, and pastel stuccoed walls rose above all. A broad staircase traversed the hill, but a wrought iron gate at the base of the steps gave the estate an air of aloofness. She tried the gate. Locked. No surprise there.

  She looked at the black sign on the wall next to the gate. Rose Hill, est. 1828. An appropriate enough name, she thought. She turned her attention to the driveway. There was no gate. Tia glanced around. Nothing moved. She hiked up the drive as best as her tight skirt and heeled shoes would allow, but didn’t have far to go. The drive rounded the base of the hill to the back of the estate, where a large carriage house appeared to function as a garage. Another wall separated the driveway from the gardens and grounds to the rear of the dwelling. A walkway extended from the house, and gentle whitewashed steps, like a docile waterfall, wended down to the drive. A gate blocked the entrance to the walkway. It, too, was locked. Of course.

  A motion detector triggered, and the drive was illuminated by a pool of light.

  Tia swore, and with a backward glance at the walk, carefully picked her way back down the drive. No dogs barked, no one yelled, and no one came running after her. She reached the sidewalk, straightened her skirt, and headed back to her car, taking a deep breath.

  The night hadn’t been a total loss. She now knew where Dallas Allgate lived.

  Tia wasted no time in driving back to the Magnolia House. It would be dawn soon. She wanted to make sure she got at least a few hours of sleep. Today would be a busy day.

  AN ALARM BUZZER chirred its warning.

  Dallas looked at his servant. “St. James?”

  Gillie checked a small monitor. “No, sir. A woman. A very beautiful woman, if I might add. In an orange dress.”

  Dallas swore. And swore again. He wasn’t sure what upset him more, that the female had ignored his advice and warning, or that she had made him lose control again. Control. He could ill afford to lose it now. Not with St. James stalking him like the beast of prey he was.

  “Might I hazard a guess that this woman is the persistent Miss Martell who was calling for you earlier?”

  “Yes, Gillie, you might.”
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  “I take it that she’s involved with St. James as well?”

  Dallas squeezed his eyes shut. The thought of Tia being “involved” with St. James bothered him more than it should have. She was just a human, and a troublesome one at that, but the fire in his blood red-zoned at the thought of St. James seducing her. What would Tia see reflected in Jermyn’s eyes? What hope, what hunger would be revealed? Would her strength be undermined by the fatal desire to be with St. James, or would her extraordinary awareness allow her to see him as he was? Would she care? The thought of Tia seeing past the reflection and still craving St. James kept Dallas’ pulse amping. Either way, St. James would bed her. And feast on her. Her pain would be his appetizer, the destruction of her beauty his main course, and her blood . . . his dessert.

  Jealousy? No, jealousy was a human emotion. Dallas opened his eyes and shook his head, more to banish the disturbing image than to answer Gillie’s question. “I don’t know. If she is, she’s in more danger than she knows. As soon as you can, send Raemon and some of the boys to the Magnolia House to keep an eye on her. If she changes hotels tomorrow, have them stay with her.”

  Gillie didn’t often question his orders, but he stood now with both brows pressing wrinkles into his forehead. For Dallas to express such a level of concern for a human female was rare, and Gillie knew it. However, Dallas didn’t feel like explaining something he wasn’t sure he understood himself.

  “Gillie, just do it.”

  While Gillie went to make phone calls, Dallas retired to the library. The men Gillie would be waking up were a select few that Dallas kept on retainer to do occasional odd jobs requiring discretion above all else. The men were young, but they had proven their trustworthiness over time. Along with Gillie, they were his daytime eyes.

  Eyes. A vision of Tia’s brilliant topaz eyes rose in his mind. The ice-cold eyes had melted and burned with a blue-hot fire when he had held her head and tried to compel her. It hadn’t worked. Any other female would have “accepted” the suggestion of safety gladly, swiftly, and without question. But not Tia. The mirror had obviously shown Tia something else. She had seen something reflected in his eyes that was more important to her than the protection of life and limb. That she saw what others didn’t vexed him no end.

  And that lack of control bothered him. If not for Jermyn St. James, Tia might have proven an interesting sport. The danger would have been all hers, and he could have given her line or reeled her in as his interest and craving dictated. But with the arrival of St. James, Tia’s danger was his danger. His inability to control and understand his reaction to Tia underlined a weakness that Dallas would have to eliminate if he was to prevent St. James from destroying him.

  He would have to maintain total control. He would need an absolute mastery of all his vampiric senses and powers, but more than that, he would need a tight rein on his thoughts, his impulses, and most of all, his desires.

  His hours spent with Conner and St. James had not been for the purpose of reliving old times, educating Flynne, or even for letting Dallas know the reason behind St. James’ lust for revenge. It had been the age-old testing of opponents prior to battle. He, St. James, and to a lesser extent, Conner, had all prodded each other with their eyes and their minds, looking for any kind of weakness that could be exploited. They probed for a softness, the slightest recoil in the eyes, any pinhole or crack in the mask they donned to shield their intentions from the world.

  Dallas knew he had been strong in life. As a lad of twenty, he had met the stare, the accusations, and the victory of Christian St. James without a flinch, but that had been human to human.

  During his first winter in New South Wales he had thrived when most of his fellow convicts had fallen prey to depression, drink, disease, and dwindling rations. Neither those nor the strain of hard manual labor had weakened Dalys’ mind or body in the least. Dalys hadn’t minded the hard work. Taller and stronger than most, and with the skills of his trade, he had quickly found a niche in which he could easily survive. But again, impressive as his survival had been, it had been as a human among humans.

  His strength as one of the Undead was another matter. It wasn’t as though he lacked confidence or was unaware of the skills he possessed. On the contrary, endurance was just as important to him now as it had been two hundred years ago in his fight for freedom. It was just that the daily play he now directed was cast with beings far inferior. Humans recited their lines and played their parts so well, so predictably, that sometimes he took his powers for granted. His augmented senses, the power of his eyes, his immunity from human disease and debilitation, all these things were simply a natural part of him, and he thought no more about them than an animal would. Does a hawk meditate upon the extraordinary eyesight that allows it to spot its quarry?

  Only when a scene was acted out badly did he question his mastery. Like tonight with Tia. She hadn’t followed the script he had laid out for her.

  Would a similar weakness manifest itself with St. James? Dallas had experienced limited contact with others of his kind. He had wanted it that way, declining even to apprentice to an older vampire such as Conner Flynne was now doing. Dallas had preferred discovering and honing his abilities on his own. It wasn’t because he was weak or afraid. It was just his nature to be independent. Even as a convict, he had kept his distance from his mates. While the other lads had subsisted in a constant state of drunkenness, he had kept his consumption of rum to a minimum. And when the others complained, Dalys had kept his mouth shut. Life. He would embrace it like a lover. The daily mantra of the man he had been once upon a time used to curve his mouth to a smile. Now he shuddered at the memory. And the irony.

  He forced his mind back to the present. The shadow of life. The other side. His kind. The other simple truth as to why he avoided his kind was the smell. Dallas just couldn’t stand the suffocating effect of being near another vampire. The reek of decay was most unpleasant.

  His opponent was obviously used to being in the company of his like. No doubt he was also used to the power plays for dominance that consumed so many of the Undead. Jermyn would have a distinct advantage over him. Dallas had sensed something else in their meeting as well, a kind of strength in St. James that had nothing to do with confidence, bravado, or experience. It was just there, a part of St. James, something he had been born with. Something that Dallas felt no answering chord for. Something Dallas lacked.

  He sensed Gillie in the doorway behind him. “Yes, Gillie?”

  “It’s done, sir.”

  Dallas gave no reply.

  Gillie spoke again after a moment’s silence. “You don’t think it’ll be enough.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Dallas presented a wan smile to the windowpane. The mental connection between John Giltspur and himself never ceased to astound him. “No, it won’t be enough.”

  It was Gillie’s turn to goad for more with silence.

  Dallas responded. “What am I to do with her, Gillie? She won’t listen to me, and St. James . . . ”

  Gillie cleared his throat, one of his subtle signals to his boss that Dallas wasn’t making any sense. “What do you mean, ‘she won’t listen’? Can’t you just, ah, use your ‘influence’ on her?”

  Dallas sighed. It was no easier admitting his weakness to Gillie than to himself.

  “No. She saw something else, something hers alone. God knows what.” He paused. “St. James will have her.” The flatness in his voice didn’t fool Gillie.

  “Ah, no, sir, I don’t think so. Not yet. If I understand your conflict with St. James correctly, he’ll use her to get to you. If he thinks you have any interest in her . . . ”

  Damn the man. Gillie knew damn well he had an interest in the woman.

  “What about the Brotherhood, sir? Do you want me to contact them? Isn’t this the kind of thing they get involved in?”

 
“The Brotherhood doesn’t give a rat’s ass what happens to humans. Any human.”

  A louder clearing of the throat rumbled from behind Dallas’ chair. “I was thinking about you, not the girl. Doesn’t the Brotherhood frown upon violence among your own?”

  “You are not to contact them. Understand, Gillie? This is none of their damned business. They’d probably think I’m responsible for all this, not St. James. The last thing I need is sanctions imposed by a bunch of relics who have no notion anymore of what it is to live in the world.”

  Gillie sighed, his dissension thus voiced. “Very well. Is there anything else you wish me to do right now?”

  “No. Just make sure the men stay vigilant and the alarms are all set.”

  “Not to worry, sir.”

  Dallas stared out the window. He was worried. For the first time in two centuries, his survival was in jeopardy.

  Six

  “YOU’RE WHAT?”

  Sera’s shocked response was something of a triumph. Over the years, Tia had relayed so many incredible stories to Sera, all stranger than fiction, that it took a lot now to make an impact on her friend. Tia, however, took no delight in the small victory.

  “I’m not coming home. At least not yet.”

  “Oh, God, now what drama did you get involved in?”

  Tia hesitated, chewing on her lower lip. How was she ever going to explain this to Sera? She took a deep breath. She decided on the four classic words certain to abolish Sera’s censure. “I met a man.”

  “Really? In the past two days? Isn’t that kind of sudden? Who is this guy?”

  Great. Tia wasn’t sure she liked this type of reproach any better. Worse, she didn’t have an answer to reassure Sera that she hadn’t lost her mind. Dallas Allgate was not exactly the kind of guy you brought home to show off to Daddy. What would Sera understand?