by Linda Howard
Her mouth fell open, then after a minute she began to laugh. “Bloodsuckers in Congress! What a surprise—not!”
He was almost insulted—almost. Instead, he grinned back at her, because he’d had the same thought a time or two. For a moment they shared a look of complete agreement.
Then she sobered, and heaved a sigh of fatigue. “I want to go home,” she said, her voice so low she might have been talking to herself. “I want to not be afraid all the time. I want my family safe, and more than anything else I want not to know what I know.”
“About yourself or about us?”
She didn’t answer. Didn’t have to.
“I can give you many things, Nevada, but I can’t return your ignorance.” Not without completely wiping her mind, anyway. Her witch blood had ingrained the knowledge too deep, until it was so much a part of her that a simple glamour wouldn’t return her to what she’d been before.
Moodily, he surveyed her. Everything he wanted hinged, in large part, on this small human who smelled so hauntingly familiar. Victory was close; Sorin could almost touch it, it was so close. The life he desired stretched before him, a life without secrecy, without being forced to hide from those who were beneath him. The fighting might continue for years, in pockets of resistance across the country—and then across the world, as the war moved beyond the United States. But in the end, he and those like him would win. Once they had access to every home, once there was no place for the fragile humans to hide, the war would effectively be done.
Against his will, he’d become fond of the little witch. Without doubt Regina would want to kill her, so he had to decide what he wanted to do. Turn the witch, or not?
How vicious would Nevada be, when—if—he turned her? How strong? Turning a human was always unpredictable. Some spent years unable to do more than feed; their new hunger eclipsed everything else. Those usually didn’t last long, because their hunger was more important to them than the codes they were required to live by—including the all-important secrecy, which was strictly enforced by the Council.
Then again, other new vampires were more balanced, more powerful from the day of their new birth. Part of it depended on the strength of the vampire who did the turning; vampires were not created equal. He suspected Nevada might be one of the stronger … if she were allowed to survive.
CHAPTER
NINE
Luca’s cell phone vibrated gently in his pocket. He had been sleeping—again in the bathtub with all light banished, in another motel—rebuilding his energy after the long vigil before following Enoch. He’d also fed beforehand, choosing a big guy who had just left a gym; not only did the adrenaline make his blood pump faster, but a large human could give more than a small one, and not feel the effect as much. Luca preferred feeding from women, simply because they tasted sweeter, but he wasn’t after a sweet taste now; he needed volume. He had planned to feed a second time if the first one wasn’t enough, but the big weight lifter had come through with flying colors. Luca hoped the guy didn’t have a competition coming up within the next week; he wouldn’t fare very well if he did.
The message was from Theodore, and was unusual in its brevity: Don’t come in.
Luca’s eyebrows rose. That was interesting. Doubly so, if he had to consider the possibility that someone had stolen Theodore’s cell phone and texted him pretending to be Theodore.
He and Theodore had never been best pals. In fact, he’d have said that Theodore would have voted to give him the boot at any time if he’d thought he could convince the rest of the Council to back him. So this text telling him to stay away was … what? A warning? Or was Theodore the traitor, and using this method to make sure Luca didn’t interfere?
There were so many variables to this latest development that Luca needed to think about them for a while. He was a hunter and a fighter, not a damn politician; figuring out what anyone on the Council was thinking at any given time was enough to make him wish he could get drunk. His own gut, however, told him to stay away from headquarters, and his gut he would definitely listen to. But he was interested, to say the least.
He shifted in the tub, stretched out his legs by propping his feet on the wall. Now that he was awake, he realized how uncomfortable he was. He needed to find a place with blackout curtains, so he could sleep in a bed. Yawning, he rubbed his hand over his face and heard the rasp of beard. He hadn’t shaved in—what?—four days now? If he hadn’t glamoured Chloe, she probably would have run shrieking from the sight of him.
He checked his internal sense of the sun’s position: almost sunset. By the time he showered and shaved, twilight would have deepened to the verge of complete darkness. Chloe Fallon should be safely at work, surrounded by people. He’d check out of the motel and arrive at Katica in plenty of time to see if any vampires arrived to lie in wait for her outside the restaurant.
He’d also find out for certain that his power had worked, that for whatever reason it had simply taken a few seconds longer for her to forget him. She might have some little quirk that kept her from forgetting as fast as everyone else did, but the end result would be the same: He would be as anonymous as ever.
* * *
Chloe glanced at her wristwatch: little more than an hour until closing time. There were a handful of customers still sitting at their tables, but they had finished their meals and were just chatting and sipping wine or coffee. It had been another good night, with a steady stream of customers. She was proud of the restaurant. Proud of the decor—which was warm and intimate, with a lot of brick and leather, a real wood fire burning in a huge central fireplace in the winter. Proud of the cuisine—which tended toward Pacific Rim but sometimes the chef went off on French tangents, sometimes on a southern tangent, which tended to keep the clientele guessing about what they might get. Everyone seemed to like it, because they kept coming back.
She had wanted to show off her restaurant. Well, not hers literally, but hers in that, for her shift five days a week, she had total responsibility for it. Chloe hated to admit it, but she was more than a little disappointed that Luca hadn’t shown up to claim the free meal she’d offered him.
At the same time, she was terrified that he would show, because something strange was going on. Every time she thought about him she caught a glimpse of that strange shimmer behind her eyes, which should make her very nervous, only she wasn’t. Thinking about him made her feel very peaceful. Shimmery, but peaceful. Okay, if something was wrong with her—and seeing a golden, transparent shimmer definitely fell into the “something wrong” category—then she should be seeing the shimmer all the time, and not just when she thought of Luca. Something didn’t add up, and Chloe wanted to know what it was.
On the other hand, maybe she should count her blessings. She didn’t know him, didn’t know anything about him, not even his last name. He could be an ax murderer, or a lobbyist, for crying out loud.
Well, a very nice-looking ax murderer. She refused to think he might be a lobbyist; that would just be so wrong. Regardless of what he was or did for a living, with his pale eyes and that sculpted face, he would stand out anywhere. Add in the long dark hair, falling around those broad shoulders like some … the word “model” came to mind, but she instantly rejected it. What he sort of reminded her of was the movie Braveheart, the way the actors had looked in their roles with their long hair and kilts. Yum. Now, if he’d just had on a kilt—hmm. She tried to bring to mind what he had been wearing, but the memory just wouldn’t form. Something dark, she thought. Maybe. But his face … yes, she remembered every detail of that face.
Valerie Spencer walked by and lightly bumped Chloe with her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Chloe gathered her thoughts. “Sure, why?”
“You’ve seemed kind of distracted tonight.”
That was the understatement of the year, Chloe thought, but before she could answer a late group spilled through the door, laughing and talking.
“Oh, shit,” Valerie murmured. “The kitche
n is going to be so pissed.” The kitchen staff was winding things down, or trying to; a large group like that, if they ordered full meals, made for late hours for everyone.
“I’ll warn them,” Chloe said, watching as Valerie went to greet the late arrivals, her tall, slender form swaying in a way that pulled men’s gazes. She had an exotic flare, from her boyishly cut dark hair to her slanted dark eyes, but regardless of how many men watched her, Valerie was cautious about who she dated. She’d been burned a time or two, so she wasn’t in any hurry to jump out of the frying pan again.
Valerie was, well, she was just kind of on the same wavelength as Chloe. She worked at Katica five nights a week, usually as hostess, though she had been known to fill in on the floor when the waitstaff was shorthanded. She was five years older than Chloe, divorced, a D.C. native, and over the past few years had become one of Chloe’s closest friends. They commiserated about men, went to the movies, had dinner together at least once a week, and basically kept each other sane. Chloe’s other friends were either younger and more interested in a party lifestyle than she was, or married and always on the go with husbands and kids. Valerie had done the party scene and wasn’t interested in it now, so they jibed in a lot of ways.
Chloe felt relaxed with Valerie; she could bitch when she was in a bitchy mood, let loose on the sarcasm instead of having to be nice all the time the way she did at work, and Valerie understood whenever the pressure built up and Chloe had to unload all her frustration and fear. For her parents, Chloe put on a brave face and pretended that the aneurysm didn’t worry her; with Val, she could blow off steam about not being able to plan for the future when she didn’t know if she even had a future.
The fact was, no one knew what might happen. Her aneurysm was fairly small and stable, and no surgeon she’d found wanted to touch it. The surgery to repair an aortic aneurysm was so dicey that evidently they did it only when it was a necessity, and Chloe hadn’t reached that point. They couldn’t, however, assure her that the aneurysm wouldn’t suddenly blow, no matter how small and stable it was at the moment. Still, she was lucky in that hers had been found early, so they could keep an eye on it, blah blah blah. It was enough to drive her nuts.
Wait—maybe she was already nuts.
If Chloe had been inclined to tell anyone about the dreams and voices, it would have been Valerie, but she wasn’t ready yet to tell anyone. It sounded too strange, even to her. Braid, voices, the dream about Grandma Annie and all those warriors … oh, and don’t forget about being attacked last night and almost killed, before being saved by a hunk with long dark hair. But she did keep forgetting about it, at least the attacked-and-almost-killed part, which was really weird. She should be a nervous wreck, having flashbacks or something, but she wasn’t. Instead, she felt very mellow about the whole experience, and if that wasn’t weird, she didn’t know what was.
When she got to the kitchen she warned the staff about the late arrivals, earning some groans and weary sighs. “Maybe they’ll just order appetizers,” she said. “But regardless of what they order, even if it’s the most complicated item on the menu, we don’t cut any corners.” She knew they wouldn’t; the chef was proud of her work, proud that Katica had a reputation for good food.
She left the kitchen and the first thing she saw was Luca, standing just inside the entrance. She stopped so abruptly it was as if her feet were suddenly glued to the floor. Her heartbeat speeded up, excitement raced through her veins at the sight of him. There was something about him … he simply wasn’t like anyone else she knew. All he was doing was standing there, and she had the sudden impression that he was the most dangerous thing she’d ever seen, as if a hungry panther had suddenly strolled into the restaurant. Whether it was the way he moved, so fluid and graceful, or the almost arrogant tilt of his head, the expression in his eyes that said nothing surprised him and he could handle just about anything that came his way—she didn’t know what it was about him that made him so noticeable, couldn’t pin it down. Maybe it was the sum total of all those things.
Valerie was still getting the group seated, the menus distributed; Chloe signaled to her that she would handle this one, and threaded her way through the tables to the hostess station. She was tempted to do deep-breathing exercises to settle her pulse down, but she was afraid he’d notice. Good lord, if anything, he looked even better than she remembered, she thought as she approached. His long dark hair fell freely around those muscular shoulders, his pale gray eyes glittered in contrast to his olive-toned skin. Tonight he was wearing black pants and a charcoal-colored shirt, and he looked like walking sex. She could feel her heartbeat speeding up, her skin heating in automatic response. His mouth … warm, mobile … the flick of his tongue on her skin—
Good lord, where had that come from? Both horrified and amused at herself, she shoved the thoughts away. Thank goodness he couldn’t read her mind!
“Luca, I thought you weren’t going to make it,” she said, holding out her hand to him, and because she had embarrassed herself with her own thoughts she tried to dampen the warmth in her voice, but she was afraid it came through anyway.
She got the impression that he’d been about to say something but at her words his face went blank and still. She stopped, her smile fading to uncertainty, her hand dropping to her side. “Is something wrong?”
He didn’t reply; instead his gaze moved slowly over her features. The intensity in his eyes made her blush pink, all the more because she felt as if she must have an ink smudge or something on her face. She cleared her throat, summoned up every ounce of professionalism she had, and said, “I believe I promised you a meal you wouldn’t forget. Let me get you settled at a table—” She looked around, saw that a very good table was now empty and clean, and plucked a leather-bound menu from behind the hostess station. “Is there anything you want from the bar? I’ll put in the order so you won’t have to wait.”
He finally spoke, his voice as smooth and deep as a summer night. “I can’t stay for a meal.”
Chloe stopped in her tracks, unaccountably disappointed. “I know it’s late—Never mind. If you can’t stay, you can’t stay. The offer is good for any night I’m on duty. A glass of wine, then, if you have time?”
He hesitated, that unnerving gaze never leaving her, then he said, “Wine sounds good, but I really don’t have time. I just wanted to stop by and see if you were all right.”
A little frown knit her brows. “Why wouldn’t I be? Oh! You mean last night. I’m fine.” Why wouldn’t she be fine? She’d been scared, but it all seemed very vague now, like something that had happened years ago.
“No bad dreams?”
Startled that he’d mentioned dreams, she jerked back a little. For a moment she was unnerved. What did he know about her dreams?
Then she realized he didn’t know anything, that the question was rhetorical. She gave a short laugh. “Dreams, yes. Bad ones, no.” Dreaming about a braid was a far cry from having a nightmare. She’d been annoyed, not scared.
“Good.” His pale gaze went over her again. “I have to leave now, but I’ll see you again, Chloe Fallon.” Then he turned and walked out the door, quickly fading into the darkness beyond the mellow lights at the entrance.
Huh. Well, that was a letdown. Irritated, Chloe returned the menu to the stack at the hostess station. Why had he bothered to come in if he wasn’t going to stay? And why be so brusque about it? Yeah, he’d thrown in that “I’ll see you again” bit, but she distinctly felt as if she’d just been brushed off.
* * *
Luca barely paid attention to where he was going as he jaywalked across the street. He reached the other side, instinctively blending into the shadow of a tree, then common sense kicked in and he stopped, carefully looking about, reaching out with all his senses to see what was around him. Unless a vampire had arrived during the few minutes he’d been inside the restaurant, he was clear, but sometimes timing was a bitch.
He felt as if he were reeling out of control
, a sensation so completely foreign to him that he could barely form a coherent thought. There was no doubt about it, no plausible explanation that there had simply been a slightly longer delay before the inevitable happened; the inevitable hadn’t happened.
She remembered him. His face, his name—she remembered. Her expression had lit with recognition the moment she saw him. He’d had his senses dampened, because hearing so many human heartbeats confined in one small space tended to make him hungry, but still he’d heard the hard, solid thump her heart gave, then a radiant smile had lit her pretty face and she’d come straight toward him, her hand held out in welcome as she called him by name.
His throat tightened, and abruptly he found it hard to swallow. In all his long life, that had very rarely happened with the kindred, and certainly not with a human. Most vampires were wary of him, for good reason; whether or not they were able to recognize and remember him made no difference in that. They knew about him, knew he was out there, and knew that if he came for them their long lives were at an end. As for humans, none of them had ever remembered him before, so the possibility of being recognized and welcomed had never been on the table.
What was different about Chloe Fallon that the magic didn’t work on her? It wasn’t something he consciously did; it was something that had developed as he matured, as much a part of him as his pale eyes. By the time he’d matured enough that he could endure even the slightest bit of light, and learned how to dampen his painfully acute senses so he could hunt by himself, the magic or power or whatever the hell it was had kicked in. Except for a very brief time, as a percentage of his lifetime, when his parents had formed a somewhat reluctant partnership in order to care for him and see him to adulthood, he hadn’t normally experienced the common state of being that was enjoyed by everyone else in the world, vampire and human alike: that of being known.