“I thought it was called a nest.”
“Vampires who nest in mated pairs and small groups are closer to their feral nature. Uncivilized. One thing you may as well realize now is that not all vampires are the same. Some of us value mortals. Others don’t. Civilized vampires live in a clan, like the one we have here.”
“But how—”
“We were here when Seattle burned in the late 1880s, living among the settlers like anyone else. And when more than twenty-five city blocks burned to the ground and people wanted to rebuild, we helped them—and ourselves.”
“So you have, like, a whole city to yourself down here?”
“Our very own version of Seattle.” He tipped back the remaining red dregs in his glass and drained it.
“Wait until Hollander hears about this!”
He grasped her hand as she was about to take a sip of her drink. His touch sent sparks shooting up her arm, making her warm all over. “How about you wait to file that story until I can show you around a bit more? That way you’ll have all the facts.”
Kristin nodded. “Okay. I can wait a few hours. Where are you going?”
“I need to confer with our leaders on what to do with the vampire we encountered.”
“What’d you do to him anyway?”
“Just transported him here, as I did you. He hasn’t been harmed. The poison should be wearing off in an hour or three.”
“Can I come wi—”
Dmitri held up a hand, cutting her off. “Just stay here. And don’t do anything stupid. I’ll be back in a half hour. Find something to entertain yourself. The remote to the television is on the coffee table and I’m sure there’s a movie or two you could watch.”
Kristin damn well knew that nothing, not even a speck of dust, let alone the remote, had been on the coffee table when she’d last looked at it. But when she glanced over her shoulder there it was. And as she watched, a bowl of popcorn materialized as well. She glanced back over her shoulder, but Dmitri had already disappeared.
The hot buttery smell of it made her stomach rumble. One chocolate doughnut and a cream-cheese bagel didn’t hold a girl over. What time was it anyway? She looked for a clock to check the time and found there wasn’t one. Anywhere. Kristin flipped open her phone. There wasn’t any reception, but the clock read five after midnight. Perfect timing for a midnight snack.
She walked over and plunked herself down on the couch. For as solid as it looked, it was surprisingly comfortable. She snuggled in and picked up the remote. The television flickered to life. Kristin reached forward and grabbed a handful of popcorn, popping it into her mouth.
One minute she was looking at the TV, and the next at a golden mountain of a man. With fangs.
The popcorn stuck uncomfortably in her throat. She scooted back into the depths of the couch. “Who are you?”
He sniffed the air appreciatively, his green eyes glittering in a way that made her stomach drop to her shoes. “And, who, my delicious little morsel, are you?”
Chapter 6
“Not yours.” The distinct Italian lilt of Dmitri’s voice flooded her system with relief.
He phased in beside the strange vampire, his form at first a swirl of dark smoke, which suddenly transformed into solid muscle and bone and that dark gaze that stole her breath away. Dmitri’s dark hair and olive complexion created a direct contrast to the blond locks and bronzed skin of the intruder beside him.
He shot the other vampire a cool glance. “I’ll thank you not to frighten my guest, Achilles.”
“Guest? You’re certain she’s not takeout?”
He snapped his teeth and Kristin flinched. He chuckled.
“Stop that. Can’t you see she’s been through enough tonight?”
Achilles gave her a wicked grin. “She doesn’t look too scared. You don’t find me scary in the least, do you?” he purred like a giant cat, powerful, beautiful and radiating a deadly grace that Kristin could feel saturating the air. “You find me fascinating.”
It was as though he was trying to hypnotize her. Distinctly uncomfortable, she glanced away. “Has anyone ever told you that you look a lot like Brad Pitt in the movie Troy?” Kristin said.
He moved closer. “Who do you think he copied, sweetling?” Dmitri shoved him aside and sat down beside her, putting his arm over the back of the couch, his fingers brushing her nape before he lay his arm on the cushion behind her. A silent signal from one male to another. Territory staked. Back off.
Despite the fact that normally she found such male posing annoying, at the moment she took a certain comfort in Dmitri’s possessive posturing. In fact, small sparks started firing all over Kristin’s skin, just having Dmitri close.
“Achilles was just leaving.” Dmitri’s tone matched the warning look in his eyes.
“I could stay—”
“Say goodbye, amico.”
Achilles ignored him to give her a good-natured wink. “If he is too pious for you, come find me. Ciao, sweetling.”
He disappeared like a hologram image, there one moment, gone the next.
“Who was that?”
“My tutore. Mentor, teacher.”
“That’s a mentor?” He looked ten years younger than the man beside her.
Dmitri shrugged. “He’s about a thousand years older than I am. Not that he ever acts his age. He was assigned to guide me through the change and instruct me in the ways of our kind. He likes to follow current trends, no matter how things change. But be warned, tesoro, Achilles plays at seducing women the same way old men in the park play chess. It’s all about out maneuvering your opponent and reaching checkmate first.”
“So you’re warning him off—” Dmitri removed his arm from the back of the couch, irritation rolling off him. “Probably not the smartest move. He’ll take it as a challenge and try harder.”
“Great.”
His eyes bored into hers and suddenly the room smelled like the inside of a dark-chocolate bar and something even more seductive, sucking her in, setting off all her senses at once.
“You don’t have anything to fear. I’ll make certain of it.”
She swallowed. She should be frightened of him. The strength of her reaction to him made no logical sense. It was as though he exhaled sex appeal. She leaned in closer to him, against every logical impulse that stammered in her brain.
“So, your mentor showed up here because …”
She was close enough now that she could feel the heat of her breath bouncing off him. Her body squirmed. Tightened. Her heart beat against the confines of her chest.
“He wanted to meet the mortal who’s revealing our existence to the world. Not every day you get to scrutinize a legend.”
“Legend?” she breathed.
Dmitri brushed a strand of hair away from her cheek, his thumb caressing her skin. Jolts shot down her spine, to the tips of her breasts, turning her nipples hard. His eyes turned impossibly dark. If desire had been smoke, the alarms in the whole damn building would have been going off by now.
He cracked a smile, his sexy mouth all but daring her to kiss him. “You’ll be a legend. The woman who discovered real vampires.”
That sounded good. Better than Pulitzer good. But the buzzing sensation under her skin wasn’t about being a legend. It was all about the mojo he was throwing off like an intense light from a million-watt bulb. Just being this close to Dmitri amped her up, all circuits firing. She licked her lips with the tip of her tongue.
God knew whatever eddied in the air between them—whether pure unadulterated lust or just some wacky chemical pheromone thingy between human and vampire—hit home. And hit deep. She ached to feel every inch of him against every inch of her. She intentionally leaned in further, her sensitized breasts pressing against his rock-hard chest.
He flinched. “Don’t.” The darkness in his eyes swirled with secrets.
“Is this the part where you’re going to tell me you’re dangerous? Because I kind of already figured that out.”
“
But you don’t know—” He looked away.
Kristin cupped his hard jaw in her hand, forcing him to face her. “I’m a big girl. I know what I want. And right now I want you to touch me.”
His resolve crumbled right before her eyes. His seductive mouth locked down on hers. Hungry. Decisive. He seemed to saturate the air, that blend of dark chocolate, citrus and something utterly masculine seeping through her skin and into her bones, melting them.
For a second she couldn’t breathe. She cursed the turtleneck, her bare skin screaming to feel him. He kissed along her jaw, growling in her ear, his hands threading into her hair. Kristin arched, letting her head fall back.
He inhaled the heady cinnamon-vanilla scent of her blood now spiked with the lush combination of honey and jasmine. Innocence and female desire. The pressure inside him was cresting, begging for release. But if there was one thing Dmitri excelled at, it was the art of denial.
The priests had beaten the lessons into him so well as a lad he’d never forgotten it. Just because you thought you needed something like your next breath didn’t mean you truly needed it to survive. But one taste was all he wanted. Just one.
“Kristin …” He breathed her name like a fervent prayer. Her artery throbbed at the base of her jaw. But this was a hunger that could well drive him insane. It clawed and tore at him, a wild thing in his breast, demanding every shred of his attention.
He had to be careful, so very careful not to let the taste turn into death. His hand slipped beneath the soft cashmere as he kissed her, indulging in the delicious fullness of her soft lips. His fingers spread over her skin, which was far softer still. And hot, like sunlight on silk.
“Touch me.”
He phased away the fabric, leaving her clothed from the waist up in nothing but the night air. He kissed the delicate shell of her ear and lower. Her throaty moan was like flipping on a switch. With a flick, his fangs extended.
Instantly her body tensed. “What was that? Was that your fangs?”
Dmitri pulled back and locked gazes with her. Her fear tinged the air with the musty odor of decay. “You don’t have to be scared. I’m not going to feed from you.”
She scooted back, pulling out of their tight embrace, covering herself with crossed arms. “Then what’s with the fangs?”
Her sudden coolness was mercilessly cold to him. He phased the black turtleneck back over her bare skin and retreated from her. “It happens sometimes. Vampires can’t always control when their fangs extend. Most often when we are angered or aroused.”
Kristin reached forward, tentatively sliding a finger down the length of his right fang. Dmitri closed his eyes, a shudder rippling through him. It was by far the most intimate place she could have touched him, even more so than her hand running down the length of his shaft. But the mixed messages of hot to cold and standoffish versus intimate were too cluttered for him to sort through at the moment. He blew out a frustrated breath and turned away from her. He had no right to claim her. He was supposed to be protecting her, acting as her guide, not her lover.
“Does that hurt?”
He glanced at her. “No. Just the opposite.” The ragged edge to his voice betrayed him.
“Oh.” She blushed and the pretty pink in her cheeks pierced him with desire and need. Dmitri swallowed hard against it, determined to deny the call.
“What did Achilles mean when he said you were pious?”
Dmitri’s gaze flicked to the photograph of the abbey ruins shrouded in mist on the wall. He hesitated. “In my mortal life I was a priest.”
“A priest?” she murmured, stunned. “Becoming a vampire must have been an enormously hard decision for you, then.”
He moved so quickly she barely had time to take a breath before he pinned her against the couch. His unyielding, rock-hard chest pressed against hers, his mouth a mere inch from hers, the tips of his fangs gleaming in the light.
The anger and fire erupting behind his eyes told her more than words ever could. “I never chose this life,” he spat out.
She blinked and he was across the room, facing her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to bring up a bad memory for you.”
His laugh had the brittle, crumbling edge of a piece of termite-rotted wood. Suddenly he seemed far more a shell of a man than a real man, or a blood-eating monster, for that matter. His fangs had receded, leaving his teeth looking perfectly normal, even and white.
It had been a shock to discover that Dmitri was a vampire. Her father—good grief, everybody she’d ever known—would see them as an anathema, an evil, an embodiment of the devil. The living dead. Bloodsuckers. Dracula and things that go bump and murder people in the night.
And now they’d somehow randomly selected her to introduce them to society? A light throb started behind her left eye. This was a way bigger story than she’d ever anticipated. Deep down in her stomach swished a bad cocktail of uncertainty and ambition. Did she have the chops to cover something this huge and not muck it up?
But looking at Dmitri, at this moment, she could see that, like people, not all vampires were the same. Good and bad fell somewhere in between the cracks, in the gray. There were likely a million different stories. The challenge would be putting a face to this story, making humans care about vampires. And give vampires a chance to prove that they could peaceably coexist with humans.
Her reporter instincts kicked in. She stood up and started walking toward him. “Do you mind if I record our conversation?”
He gestured with a pale, elegant hand. “Please, be my guest.”
She took out her digital microrecorder and clicked it on. “Just how old are you?”
His inscrutable brown gaze locked on hers. “I was born in 1370 and died in 1400.”
“Died?” Just hearing the word from this strong, vital man made her wonder exactly what she was getting into. She reminded herself that she was a reporter. A reporter with the most amazing, incredible story to tell. This had Pulitzer written all over it. She could smell it.
“But you’re standing right here, breathing, talking to me.”
“We are the undead.” Dmitri leaned back in his chair. “My appearance at breathing is merely that, an affectation that took me years to perfect so I could appear normal to mortals. Vampires do not need to breathe. We do not need oxygen. Blood alone, the life energy within it, sustains us.”
“Do all of you drink blood?” “Yes.”
“Human blood?”
“When it is available.”
“And when it’s not?”
“We make do with other sources.”
“Like …”
He simply stared at her. Time to change tactics.
“Look, I’m just trying to understand. People are going to freak out. They are going to feel threatened by your existence. Don’t you think it might be a good idea to assure them there are other sources than little Emma and Jacob sleeping snug in their beds?”
He sighed and glanced again at the abbey. “Nothing is going to assuage them all. Fear is a given.”
“But if you could give me a straight answer, it might help.”
He matched gazes with hers. His was deep chocolate-colored brown and sucked her in, making her forget exactly what they’d been talking about.
“We can survive on warm-blooded animals and packaged blood.”
She shook her head to clear it, then noticed the grimace bending his brow into a distinct V. “But it doesn’t taste good,” she prompted.
“It’s not so much the taste. It’s the feel. Fresh human blood makes you feel alive, invincible, like a drug-induced euphoria. Animal blood is like drinking a virgin cocktail. It may look the same, it may taste similar, it’ll even satisfy your thirst somewhat, but it doesn’t have any kick to it. It leaves you wanting.”
“Interesting.” And disgusting. But she tried not to show her feelings. He was doing his best to answer her questions honestly. She figured one man’s tonic was another man’s poison.
/>
“Let me show you something else that might interest you.” He offered her his hand and Kristin took it. Her hand tingled.
“Your skin is cold.”
He quirked a brow. “Vampires are often several degrees cooler than mortals.”
She looked him in the eye. “Do you still see yourself as human? I mean, you were human once, weren’t you?”
The room around her swirled out of focus and a strange sucking pull started in her middle, making her feel as if she were a sweater being pulled inside out as it was taken off.
“We all were,” Dmitri replied. “It’s rather like asking someone who’s had the chicken pox or HIV if they feel any different than they did before the disease entered their body. They’ve been chemically altered at a cellular level, but they appear to be the same. They function in society the same.”
“Yeah, but they aren’t dead,” she pointed out, glancing around at the new location. They were standing in a brightly lit spa with a waterfall splashing and flowing over a rough rock wall to one side and a very Zenlike rock garden to the other. The well-groomed receptionist at the wooden podium smiled warmly at Dmitri, dipping for a moment in a curtsy, her chestnut-colored bob swinging slightly at her cheeks.
Kristin surreptitiously touched her arm to make sure she had transported in one piece.
“Undead. Clinically speaking,” he said. “But more than our humanity or lack thereof, what’s important to remember is that vampires have every bit as much intellect, desire and drive as mortals do. We are survivors, and oftentimes innovators.”
“What exactly are you getting at?”
“Some of the brightest minds over the centuries, some of our most popular Hollywood and music stars, are vampires.”
That stunned Kristin silent as she let it sink in.
Dmitri smiled at the receptionist. “We have an appointment to see Dr. Al Kashir.”
She nodded, her nose slightly wrinkling, her gaze flitting briefly to meet Kristin’s before darting back to Dmitri. “Is this for a conversion, my lord?” Dmitri’s hand tightened slightly, forming a rocklike grip around Kristin’s. “No.
A tour.”
The Truth about Vampires Page 7