Seducing the Vampire

by Michele Hauf

  Steve hadn’t seen the man move, yet he held him by the collar now, his toes barely touching the ground.

  “I need you,” Rhys said. “You are the only person she’s had contact with since coming aboveground. You may have some influence with her.”

  “Oh, I doubt it.”

  “I was following her scent, but it’s grown weak. You said you washed her?”

  Steve nodded. “I used grape shampoo. You could sniff that out, right? Store where I got the stuff is behind us.”

  The man sniffed Steve’s head. “I can smell it on you. Sweet and artificial. You are positive this is the scent she wears?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why do you smell the same?”

  Steve gulped down a swallow. “Dude, I didn’t touch her.”

  “You’ll come with me.” Shoved roughly, Steve crossed the street to where the Mercedes was parked. Not much of a chance to break free unless he wanted broken bones. But seriously? Get in a car with a vampire?

  “We have to hurry. The moon will be full and high in less than two hours.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  AS HE TRACKED THE SIDEWALK edging the Seine, Rhys was hyperaware that the clock ticked faster than his tracking efforts. The moon was nearly at its apex.

  He could not sense her at all. He should be able to scent her by the disgusting sweet fragrance that filled the backseat. It was all over the kid, which would make finding Viviane impossible unless he split away from Steve.

  He couldn’t imagine what she must be like now. Steve had said he’d discovered her naked, with strips of decaying fabric hanging from her limbs.

  And according to the boy she’d taken blood. That had to mean something. But it also meant she was a menace. Add in her unfamiliarity with the times and the city, and— No time to waste.

  Quickening his footsteps along the boulevard du Seine, Rhys gestured to Steve, who walked the opposite side of the bridge with Simon pacing him in the car, to keep his eyes peeled. The boy was being helpful because Rhys had intimated he’d wrench his neck from the spinal column and leave him in an alleyway.

  He would not, but it was a good scare and it had put a healthy fear in the kid who wore a turtleneck sweater like armor.

  Ahead the bridge that crossed before Notre Dame hummed with night traffic. An ambulance peeled by, its siren silent, yet the lights flashed red at the periphery of Rhys’s ever-scanning gaze.

  Steve rushed across the bridge and met Rhys as he gained the parvis before the cathedral. “Dude, it’s almost midnight.”

  “Soon.”

  “Yeah? Well, your driver said you have to be out of town before then. Otherwise you, like…rampage.”

  “I do nothing of the sort. I merely…”

  Shift to man-beast form. Scare the shit out of common mortals. And his werewolf answered to his vampire’s hunger for blood. And yes, he did rampage.

  His estate sat east of the city, the safe room already prepared for tonight. “I need but twenty minutes to broach the city’s walls.”

  Ready to grip the boy’s shirt and admonish, Rhys paused. “Listen.”

  The doors before the cathedral opened and a slim man staggered outside. No one paid him mind; there were perhaps a dozen tourists still lingering though the church had closed for services hours earlier.

  “What?” Steve took a step but Rhys stopped him with a palm to his chest. “Do you see her? Smell her? She’s inside. That man is bleeding from his neck.”

  The squeal of tires pulled up left of where Rhys stood and parked on the parvis. Simon stepped out and waved to him.

  Struck by a breeze curling about his head, Rhys turned to spy a vision striding across the street. Clad in white, and tall and slender, her white hair flowed out from her head as if blown by the sudden wind.

  He couldn’t remember her name but recognized her species—faery.

  There, approaching with the confidence of a preying lioness, the faery held out her arms as if he should rush forward and kiss her.

  Recognition thumped his gut, teasing his dual nature. The werewolf growled. His vampire wanted to tear out her throat. He had not seen her for centuries.

  Steve shoved him, and Rhys growled. His hackles stretched and the werewolf pined for release.

  He glanced to the west facade of Notre Dame. Guarded by gargoyles, saints and centuries of ancient ritual—including pagan—the cathedral was no place for a vampire. Yet Viviane, as he, was not baptized. Holy objects would serve her no harm, so she could safely seek shelter within.

  “I’m going after her,” he said to Steve. “Tell Simon to keep one foot on the accelerator.”

  The faery paralleled his path toward the cathedral, emitting a spring breeze around him. “Why now?” he asked.

  “You’ve found her, haven’t you? Your tragic lover.”

  “Cressida.” He remembered her name. “Now is not a good time.”

  “Now is the time I have waited for over two centuries. Rather, I’ve been imprisoned along with your wicked vampire bitch. I’ve only just been freed.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t need to. You must hurry if you wish to beat la lune.”

  Rhys felt her gaze tickle his neck and move across his mouth. He dashed out his tongue but only tasted air.

  He slipped into the cool darkness and turned to inspect the narthex. The faery appeared beside him. It was as if he’d stepped through time. If only that were true and it was the eve before he had lost Viviane. He would not have left her. “Never.”

  The faery touched one long, graceful finger to his lower lip. A scurry of sensation moved across his mouth and fizzled deep into his being.

  “Are you going to rescue your mad lover, then?”

  “Cressida!”

  “I do hope you will.”

  “Why? Why are you here?”

  “You’ll discover soon enough. But the moon calls to you. Best snatch her quickly.”

  “I intend to.” He slapped a palm over his aching heart. “Where could she be?”

  “Outside.”

  “What? Why didn’t you say something?”

  The faery shoved open the door. A woman, long black hair flowing in her wake, ran toward Steve, who stood at the car. Simon and Steve grabbed her.

  Rhys lunged into the Mercedes’s backseat. The woman struggling with Simon screamed. Her fingernails slashed Simon’s face. One of her bare heels clocked Rhys aside the jaw.

  He clamped a hand about her ankle, but didn’t want to push her beyond what precipice of fear she balanced—he released her right away.

  “Can you secure her?” Simon said.

  “Don’t hold her,” Rhys instructed. “Let her go.” He moved aside to allow Simon to slink out of the backseat beside him. “You okay?”

  Simon touched the blood on his jaw. “I’ll be fine. Who’s the blonde chick?”

  “Faery.”

  “What the— She coming with us?”

  “No. Give the kid some cash and let’s get out of here.”

  Simon closed the backseat door behind Rhys. He would handle Steve, and the faery would follow one way or another, Rhys felt sure.

  Right now, he struggled with elation and caution.

  It was her.

  “Viviane.”

  She blindly kicked at him, and with her hands beat against the car door, apparently unaware how to use the handle to open it. The kid had clothed her in baggy gray sweatpants and a T-shirt that boasted a monstrous face demarcated by a normal face. Jekyll and Hyde? What kind of sick joke was that on him?

  She smelled like the boy, a pitiful replacement for the Italian wine she’d once bathed in.

  He wanted to pull her against him and crush her into his body. To know her once again. To somehow apologize with an embrace, because where to even begin with words? But how dare he when he had been the one who could have prevented her cruel imprisonment?

  God, he wanted to touch her. He wanted to shout. He wanted to punch some
one—Constantine. He wanted…

  …what he did not deserve.

  “It’s me, Viviane,” he said softly. She stopped kicking, and impressed her shoulders against the door. Simon drove swiftly, and the car swerved once in a while. “Rhys Hawkes.”

  No longer did he wear his hair past his shoulders, but instead military short. It was still black as coal, with the gray patch over his left temple. A few wrinkles had settled around his eyes and mouth, but he was the same. Would she recognize him? Could she?

  She looked as if she had just stepped from the eighteenth century. And been attacked by a mad mob.

  “Regarde moi.”

  He reached forward, hand held up and fingers loose, but waited for her to make the next move.

  Her eyes flashed from his face to the front seat, to the back window where the night lights of Paris flickered in a dizzy rush. Did she recognize him?

  “Hungry,” she said quietly.

  Yes, surely she must be starved for blood. She’d fed three times according to Steve. He could give her his blood. If she bit him, yes, he would develop a vicious hunger that would strangle his werewolf, but he owed her for the two centuries he had stolen from her.

  “Rhys?”

  His name, gasped from her lips, touched his chest and beamed into his heart. Rhys nodded, unable to speak for he feared he’d begin to blather and frighten her.

  “Rhys Hawkes?” She opened her hand, and on her palm sat a small object. The wooden hummingbird, of which the beak still rested in Rhys’s breast pocket. “My Rhys?”

  “Yes, your Rhys.” The words spilled like tears from his mouth. “I’m sorry, Viviane. I thought you were dead.”

  “Not dead!”

  She put up a palm before her face. Tucking her knees to her chest, she was so tiny on the huge leather seat. So frail. Indeed, her arms were thinner than usual, and her face gaunt. She really did need blood.

  “How much longer, Simon?”

  “Ten minutes. I just crossed the peripherique.”

  “Viviane, it’s the night of the full moon. I…I know you may not understand, and this is cruel, having only just found you, but…I must lock myself away. My werewolf. I can feel it straining for release right now.”

  “Your vampire,” she whispered. “It is cruel.”

  He bowed his head. “You remember.”

  How to touch her heart? A bruised and tormented heart that beat a pace to match no creature’s life. Mad surely, and perhaps wicked with grief, vengeance and spite.

  The Mercedes spun on loose gravel. They took the curving drive to Rhys’s estate. Rhys directed Simon not to turn on the garage light, and when they stopped he scooped up Viviane. So frail in his grasp. So insignificant.

  She could become whole again. They could have a good life.

  Would she still feel that way? Could she remember him?

  “Sorry,” he said as he strode the dark hallway toward the entertainment room. It was closest to the safe room. “I know you must hate me. I have no right to beg forgiveness. Simon, prepare the room!”

  His assistant had already rushed ahead.

  “I will take care of you,” he said, and kicked the door inside. “I beg your forgiveness.”

  “Not dead.” Her plea was a battle cry against him abandoning her. Rhys’s heart dropped. He deserved her disdain.

  Only the flashing LED bulbs from a multitude of electronic devices lighted the room. A small red-and-green glow sheened across two large theater chairs.

  He set Viviane on a chair, and she slid back on the slick leather. He knelt there, feeling the tingle in his fingertips and fighting the change.

  Grasping his wrist, she worked the wooden hummingbird into his hand. It killed him she had kept this. She must have clutched it before the spell had been put on her. Had she been aware it was in her hand all through the centuries? Did she love him for that or hate him?

  A small blessing was that she did not appear insane.

  “Rhys!”

  Simon waited at the door.

  Rhys leaned in and kissed Viviane on the forehead. Her soft skin begged him to remain, to embrace her, to earn forgiveness. But his arms tingled now. His werewolf was coming.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said, and stroked her cheek. “Do not harm Simon. But you can use him to slake your hunger. And whatever you do, you must not leave. You are safe here.”

  “Safe?”

  “I promise.” He choked down a hard swallow. Much as he had promised then, she had not been safe in the eighteenth century.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  THE MORTAL MAN SLIPPED from Viviane’s embrace. She wiped blood from her mouth. She had dreamed about blood for centuries, though she’d lost her grasp on time. Good thing that, or she would truly be lunatic now. She was not. She was completely sound.

  Mostly, a little voice inside her head whispered.

  The man groaned and stretched out along the carpeted floor, a satisfied smile on his face. The men today—had it been over two centuries?—wore their clothing to conform to their bodies. The soft white shirt hugged his thin torso and the trousers were nicely tailored. He wore a small diamond earring in the left ear only.

  No lace. No frockcoats. Not a single horse and carriage out on the streets. The moving machine they had put her into to get her here baffled. Yet she’d found Notre Dame. It had looked the same, had been a refuge.

  Now here she sat in a dark room with chairs in a row and a large white wall on one end. How had she gotten in here? Had this man put her here? It was difficult to recall things that had happened before she’d taken his blood. Only bits and pieces, like Notre Dame and the noisy machines.

  The man beside her moaned and tucked his hands under his chin. He tasted rich. She would keep him until he died.

  An animal howl echoed through the building, clattering the walls. Viviane searched in the darkness and found the door, threw it open and dashed into the bare hallway.

  Again the howl skittered up her spine. It sounded wild, feral. Familiar. Viviane hated wolves. Yes?

  Oh, yes, wolf slayer.

  So long she had been trapped underground. Frozen, yet ever knowing. Seeing all. Which hadn’t been much. Though occasionally rats would swarm over the glass coffin.

  She cried out in disgust and wrapped her arms about herself. So many of them, crawling, stirring, swarming over her. Their long horrid tails flicking across the glass. And she, so fearful the glass would crack and they would spill over her like a hideous flood.

  She crouched, eyeing the floor. They crawled along the walls, silent, until they were not silent. Their chattering squeaks still rang loudly in memory.

  Again the howl rippled through the atmosphere. The wolf summoned the rats, hordes of them, surely. Unwilling to remain and discover the source of the sound, Viviane dashed down the hallway.

  “Must get out of here. Need to be safe. I am free!”

  And yet, what would she do? Where would she go? The world had changed. She was not dead!

  “I will survive.” Yes, she was strong. “I always survive.” She would take the man with the rich blood with her.

  Pushing open a door, she entered an open port that housed two of the noisy machines. They had wheels but no horses. Both were shiny black, like the sheen on Constantine’s eyes.

  “I will kill him,” Viviane ground through clenched teeth.

  She touched the slick surface of one machine, yet at that moment the howl again tapped against her brain. “Rhys?”

  The name came to her, unattached to memory or image, yet it weighed so heavily in her mind that she turned to the door and stepped back inside the hall.

  He’d sat in the back of one of the machines next to her. Pleading her forgiveness. So big and strong. Not familiar. But—yes, something about him.

  “Rhys Hawkes,” she said on a gasp. Images of her running her fingers through his hair, gasping as his kisses traveled her skin…

  “My lover, you are here? Where are you?�
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  Following the insistent howl, Viviane tracked past the open door where the mortal lay enthralled from her bite, and onward down a long passage that turned sharply right. There were no lights, but she saw well. Ahead, a small green light blinked beside a door handle.

  The howl came from behind the door. Viviane slapped her palms to the cold metal door. “Rhys!”

  She remembered now. She had thought of nothing but Rhys Hawkes the moment Salignac and Grim had abandoned her in the dark depths beneath Paris. Her fingers had frozen about the hummingbird she still grasped, yet she had thought to feel the warmth of her lover’s skin imbued within the polished wood. He had been there with her.

  Why was he not here for her now?

  He put you in the machine.

  Had he? Her thoughts were scattered. Not dead. Why did he abandon me? So alone. The rats…

  She pounded the door, but howls answered.

  One thing she did know; her lover only howled during the full moon. There were no windows in the hall. She did not know if it was night or day, but she guessed the moon must be high and full. Which meant Rhys must be werewolf.

  A form she had once run from. A form she had defiantly stood up to. A form she recalled had been ruled by his vampire.

  Viviane had contemplated Rhys’s double nature for ages while underground. Could it have been centuries before her mind had finally gone blank and her eyes void?

  She had decided one truth. One pertinent detail they both had overlooked. It was…

  She clutched her gut. “Hungry.”

  The mortal donor lay close. She could feel his heartbeats. Many times she had felt a heartbeat near. In the darkness. Others had come close but had never found her. She wanted blood. She needed blood. Blood would—

  “He needs my blood!” She beat the door. “I can tame your vampire! Let me in!”

  Down the hall, the mortal stumbled out from the room. Viviane dashed to him. “Rhys is trapped. You must help me.”

  Drunk from the swoon, the mortal eyed her cautiously as she grabbed his hand and dragged him down the hall.

  “He’s in there for his own safety,” he said. “And to protect you.”