Double Image

by Jaye Roycraft

  “Sir?”

  Damn Gillie. He gave Tia another few seconds to adjust her clothes and smooth her hair before he told the man to enter.

  Gillie swung open the door and stepped inside. If the old man wondered just what he and Tia had been doing in the library with the door closed, Gillie gave no indication, not even his customary eyebrow quirk.

  “Sorry to bother you, sir. I suppose it could have waited, but Miss Angie’s on the phone and wants to know if you’ll be coming to the inn tonight. She says the paperwork is starting to pile up.”

  Dallas laughed. Even for the Undead, the dictates of daily living never ceased. “I’ll take it in the kitchen, Gillie. Tia, I’ll be right back.”

  But as soon as he was out of the library, all mirth slid from his face. Did Tia have any idea how close he had just come to killing her? No, of course not. The mirror, now more than ever, would show her only what she wanted to see. And what did he want? He didn’t have the excuse of a false image to explain his own behavior. The monster that he was had demanded her death, but even as his lust had called for it, something in him was glad that Angie and Gillie had intervened. He wanted her with him, alive, not cold in the ground or wandering the earth like the damned creature he was. The preservation of life. It was a strange concept for him to grasp.

  TIA EXHALED A long sigh after Dallas left the library. One thing she couldn’t debate in her mind was the undeniable attraction his body held for hers, and that attraction hadn’t lessened one little bit with the knowledge he wasn’t human. Perhaps if he had displayed the cold skin, red eyes, and fangs she had seen on the movie screen she wouldn’t want him so much, but aside from the centuries that played in his eyes and the grace of one who didn’t have to worry about tired muscles or arthritis, he looked human. In spite of her body’s disappointment, though, she had been glad for Gillie’s interruption. Her emotions were too unstable to risk getting too close to Dallas again.

  Her eyes were caught by the “Trail of Tears” print. Evil. Now that had been evil. Soldiers dragging women and children from their homes and driving them halfway across the country in the dead of winter. Thousands had died, Dallas had told her. And that had been human against human. Was one being who wanted nothing more than to survive truly evil, when this was the kind of thing that man did to man, and continued to do all around the world, even today?

  She thought about St. James. Had even he been evil? He had wanted nothing but revenge. How many shootings had she been dispatched to that had been perpetrated for that reason or something even less? St. James had killed innocent people. So did humans every day in the city. Innocent people shot in drive-bys or in armed robberies happened all the time. Were those suspects evil? Not according to the defense attorneys and social workers. People were just “misunderstood” or had been exposed to “bad influences.”

  It was all so confusing. But Dallas and St. James weren’t “people.” Society would dictate she should think of them as evil, regardless of their actions, but could she? Were their motives any different from human motives?

  Tia looked again at the “Trail of Tears.” It seemed a strange picture for a vampire to have hanging in his house. She would have expected some dark and gloomy landscape, or an animal print depicting a pack of wolves at a kill, or even some lurid portrait of a nude, but soldiers herding Indians? It was strange indeed.

  When Tia turned, Dallas was standing in the doorway, his arms crossed and his head tilted to one side, as if he were studying her as closely as she was studying the painting on the wall. As usual, she hadn’t heard him approach.

  “I have some work to do at the inn. I think it best you come along.”

  Something in that didn’t sound quite right to her. “Umm, you want me to come, or it’s a good idea if I come?”

  The hooded eyes blinked but once. “St. James isn’t dead.”

  “What?”

  “Drago was kind enough to inform me that St. James was able to pull himself from the fire before it consumed him.”

  Dallas’ low voice had a dry edge Tia couldn’t miss. Dislike for Drago or self-directed irritation? “I don’t understand. I thought you said . . . ”

  He cut her off. “I underestimated the bastard. It won’t happen again. If the cur has any brains he’ll heed Drago’s warning and slink back to wherever he came from with his tail between his legs. But just in case . . . I’m not taking any chances.”

  “But what about Gillie and your other men? Aren’t they in danger if St. James comes back?”

  Dallas lifted his brows. “I think I’ll suggest to Mac he go on an impromptu all-expenses paid vacation, but Gillie won’t leave. He’s a stubborn old man.” He jerked his head. “Come on, you can have a drink and a late supper while I get some work done.”

  Ten minutes later she sat at the small bar at the rear of Bishop’s Inn nursing a drink while Angie brought Dallas up to date on news.

  “How’s The Lady been?” asked Dallas.

  “She’s bad off over something. All week she’s been cryin’ and throwin’ tantrums. Ever since that accident happened outside and that poor man was killed. Rachel up and quit last night. Said she could take the windows rattlin’ but not the cryin’ from upstairs. Can’t say I blame her. I’ve never seen The Lady so worked up.”

  Dallas nodded. “That accident bothered all of us. All right, put an ad in the paper for a new waitress. I’ll be upstairs with Miss Martell.”

  He extended a hand toward Tia, and she took it, following him up the narrow stairs to the third floor. Tia could feel the eyes of Angie and Jaz glued to her back. Tia supposed she couldn’t blame the women for wondering just who she was to be trailing after Dallas like she owned him. She wondered if they were jealous, then had to stifle a laugh. If they only knew. Once on the third floor, however, a thump from behind a wall shifted her thoughts from the living and breathing women to the one who wasn’t.

  “Then it’s true? Veilina is real?” Real didn’t seem the right word. “I mean, her ghost really exists?”

  “Of course. You doubted it?”

  “Silly me. I didn’t think that ghosts were any more real than . . . well, you know. Is Veilina upset because of me?”

  Dallas sank into the chair behind the desk with an ease and familiarity Tia wished she felt. “No, I don’t think so. I think it’s more likely she’s bothered by Flynne and St. James having been here.”

  “Oh.” Tia pulled up one of the empty chairs and settled in, squirming to get comfortable on the hard seat. “So, do your superhuman abilities extend to talking and working at the same time?”

  He smiled, a rare beam of pleasure, not sadness, and the deep smile line that ran almost the entire length of his face popped into view. “Naturally. What would you like to hear?”

  “You didn’t finish telling me about Sabra.”

  The smile line vanished as if it had never been there at all, and Dallas’ eyes studied the papers in front of him. “Sabra was my woman. I was very much in love with her.” He shuffled a few papers. “She made those years of being a convict bearable. But in 1801 I lost her.”

  “Lost her? She died?”

  She saw a muscle twitch in his face, but he didn’t look up. “She went into the bush. I’m not sure why. Apparently she came across some sort of death ceremony. I was never able to find out what she stumbled on. Secrets in the bush are guarded more closely than those anywhere else on earth. She died, yes, and was reborn into the realm of Midexistence.”

  “She became a vampire?” Tia whispered the question, immediately feeling silly. Who did she think was going to overhear?

  Dallas nodded. “I was her first conquest and creation. I’m not sure why she did it. Maybe she thought we could remain together in eternity, but it doesn’t work that way. More likely it was just vampiric aggressiveness or envy that she was no longer among the li
ving and I still was.” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “How does it work? Vampirism, I mean.”

  He finally looked up at her. “I couldn’t explain it any more than you could explain to me what it is that gives you life. All I can tell you is that the human body dies, and a kind of anti-life, a negative energy, reanimates the body.”

  “I thought it was the blood.”

  “The blood is the catalyst,” he said softly.

  “What you did to me . . . ”

  “Was not enough for you to become one of the Undead, don’t worry. For that to happen, you’d have to take a substantial amount of my blood.”

  Tia fidgeted with the hem of her shirt, her eyes glued to the errant button thread that needed trimming. “Did you ever mean to do that to me?” She raised her eyes only when she heard him answer.

  “No. I didn’t want you to become like Sabra.”

  His eyes were steady on hers, and he displayed none of the obvious signs of a liar, but how could she know for sure? She couldn’t. It hit her that she was trusting an inhuman creature with her life. For the first time it really hit her, and she was scared. After Rodney, on the drive back to Natchez and on the veranda, there hadn’t been time to think. Later, when she had thought about it, she had tried to hold her emotions at bay by logically addressing the issue, putting him and her and everything that had happened into neat, color-coded little boxes. In the library, her body’s messages had drowned out anything her mind could try to voice.

  But now, at the inn, she felt trapped. With St. James still out there, she knew Dallas wouldn’t let her leave even if she wanted to. There was a chain around her, and the being that held the other end was a thing she didn’t think she’d ever be able to truly understand. No matter how many questions she asked, how would she know he’d answer them with the truth?

  “Last night you said there’d be consequences to . . . what I did. What did you mean?”

  Dallas didn’t answer right away, and his attention, for all appearances, was on his work, but Tia knew he had heard her.

  “It’s a blood tie.”

  That wasn’t much of an answer. “Meaning?”

  He sighed. “Meaning I can sense your presence and feelings even more than I could before. As for you, it should inspire a measure of the same kind of trust in me that Gillie feels. And it should provide a kind of protection against other vampires. My scent is on you now. That should make you . . . unattractive to others.”

  She nodded, but suspected at the very best he was embellishing the truth, and at the worse, lying. She strongly doubted that a vampire mark was beneficial to the human half in any shape or form, but she kept her skepticism to herself.

  He coaxed her into ordering a prime rib and salad from the kitchen, but she could only finish half of it, still full from her early evening “breakfast.” Still, the food made her drowsy, and she curled on the couch for a nap while Dallas worked. She couldn’t get comfortable, though, no matter how she twisted and squirmed. She felt cold in the evening summer heat, and every time she opened her eyes, shadows teased her peripheral vision. Finally, though, her uneasiness sank into a restless sleep.

  A long hallway stretched before her, not a narrow corridor, but the wide hall of the grandest mansion she had ever been in. She journeyed down the hallway, passing elaborately carved tables, monstrously large chairs, and cabinets that nearly reached to the high ceiling. She pressed on, coming upon no doors or entranceways, until the hall ended in a dead-end wall. Mounted upon the end wall was the largest oval mirror she had ever seen, the gilt frame wider than her hand. She saw her reflection in the mirror, but where there should have been one face staring back, there were two. Not quite superimposed, it was a double image, the nose of one face about six inches from that of the other. One face was healthy and tanned from the exposure of the Mississippi sun, but the other was pale and faded, an imitation of life.

  An abrupt noise awakened Tia, and sealed the dream fresh in her memory. She blinked her eyes, and saw Dallas staring at her. The room was quiet. “What was that?”

  Dallas’ eyes flicked to the ceiling. “My Lady, I suppose, reminding me that it’s time I got back home.”

  Tia sat up and ran her hands through her hair. “Your Lady?” Her gaze lapped the room and came to rest again on Dallas. “My God. ‘The Vampar of Natchez.’ When you said it on the way back from Rodney it didn’t hit me. You’re Veilina’s Devon, the rich planter. The jilted fiancé who conspired to kill her lover.”

  “Devon Alexander. One of my aliases over the years.”

  “I don’t care what your name was! How could you do that to her? She once loved you, and you destroyed her!”

  His vampire eyes were cool and glassy in the dim light. “I have no explanation you’d either understand or find satisfaction in,” he replied, his voice as low as the lamplight. “Come. It’s time to go.”

  Tia remained seated, gripping the leather cushion. “No. I want to hear it.”

  “Without your judgmental interruptions?”

  This was one story she badly wanted to hear. She exhaled a sigh that was more a huff, but nodded.

  He leaned back in his chair, and his eyes seemed focused on a point somewhere above and beyond her. “I was still a very young vampire then. I hadn’t yet found a way to control my thirst for revenge or my aggression against humans. Veilina was the first human female I played at being in love with. It was a difficult relationship for a novice like myself to master.”

  She conceded him that. If her situation was any indication, the vampire-human relationship seemed no easier to manage even now.

  She let him continue. “At first I thought Veilina was playing games with me, trying to make me jealous by feigning love for the stable boy. One night we had a terrible fight, and she told me she had never really loved me—that it was only my wealth she was interested in. The betrayal was something the vampire wasn’t prepared to deal with. I conspired with Veilina’s father to kill Rowan. I thought . . . I thought with the stable boy out of the way that I could make Veilina mine.”

  Tia curled on the sofa and wrapped her arms around her, suddenly chilled. She forced herself to wait for the rest.

  “After Veilina died I found a letter she had left for me. In the letter she said she had really loved me once—that her denial of that love during our fight was made in anger. She said she felt partially responsible for Rowan’s death. She felt I might never have carried out my plan to kill him had she not infuriated me so much with her lie.”

  Tia glanced around the room. “So how does The Lady feel about you now? I would think she would hate you, but . . . ”

  “Deciphering The Lady’s motives isn’t always easy, not even for me after all this time. Sometimes it’s hate. She seems to relish torturing me with her very presence, reminding me of what I did. On the other hand, she’s very protective of me, almost as though she still loved me. As though I am hers alone to torment. Come. It’s late.”

  This time she obediently went with him, having no choice, but was glad for the silence of the ride back to the townhouse. She tried to digest what he had told her. They were just excuses for violence, just like all the excuses she had heard so many times on the job. Youth . . . misunderstanding . . . anger. None of them justified killing. She hadn’t bought into the excuses as a cop, and she couldn’t now.

  This time not even the nearness of his body a foot from hers distracted her from her feelings of disgust. She had done her best to convince herself that the creature next to her wasn’t evil, but the fact remained that destruction and revenge were a part of his life he neither turned away from nor lamented. When they arrived at the townhouse, Tia was equally glad that he didn’t suggest she sleep with him. Instead, he pointed out the intercom button in her bedroom that connected directly to the cellar, and gave her back the Colt, fully re
loaded with silver bullets.

  “I don’t think St. James will try anything in my own backyard, and he’s probably not yet recuperated from his injuries, but I won’t assume anything this time around. If you need me, call. I can function well enough inside the house during daylight hours.”

  She nodded, having no intention of calling him. Gillie knocked on her door soon after Dallas took his leave, and she invited him in.

  “Gillie, have you ever had a dream that was more like a vision?”

  His expression was as solemn as ever. “A presentment? I have. Why? Did you have one?”

  “Earlier this evening.” She described the strange dream of the double vision to him. “It was so strong, I can’t help thinking it means something. I’m just not sure what. That I’m going to die? Or that I’m going to live a second life as one of the Undead? What else could it mean, do you think? Did you ever have a dream like that?”

  Gillie’s brows knitted together in thought. “I don’t recall a vision exactly like that one. It might mean those things, of course, but not necessarily. It could mean simply that your life has arrived at a fork, and that two futures stand before you. You must decide which to make reality.” He turned sad eyes to her and took her hand. “I can’t help you make your decision, Tia.”

  “No. I understand. But thanks, Gillie.” Somehow, looking at the old man’s face, she knew he’d support her in whatever decision she made.

  Blood wasn’t the only bond there was.

  Fourteen

  TIA WOKE BEFORE noon, her sleep broken as much from her unsettled mind as from her nap at the inn. She tugged the bedroom drapes open, and the late morning sun filled her with a kind of energy and urgency.

  She thought again about everything she had learned the night before, and the fear and anger that had blossomed in the darkness hadn’t been dispelled one bit by the daylight. And Sabra and Veilina were just as real to her now as they had been in the dim light of the inn.