Seduced by the Night

by Robin T. Popp

  “He seems like a very capable young man,” she finally said.

  Bethany couldn’t help but smile at the understatement. “That he is.”

  “He and Mac are rather intimidating,” Julia admitted. “I’m not sure they want me here.”

  The statement caught Bethany by surprise. “No, I’m sure you’re mistaken. Everyone is very fond of you.”

  “Perhaps. However, I can’t help feeling as if someone is purposely trying to make things difficult for me. For instance, I’ve asked repeatedly to have that statue moved from my desk, yet every morning, there it is.” Julia looked away, shaking her head. “It’s silly, I know. I should stop complaining and simply move the darn thing. It’s not that it weighs all that much, but it’s the principle, you know?”

  “I’m sorry, Julia. I can’t tell you why the statue is always there. I wish I could, but I do know that everyone here likes you and I don’t think anyone’s trying to be malicious.”

  Julia smiled. “I hope you’re right.”

  Bethany took another sip of her coffee. “I need to go into the lab early today.”

  Julia looked around. “Oh, are the others up? Perhaps I should make breakfast.”

  “No, don’t bother. They’re still asleep and I’ll get something on the way.”

  She gave Bethany a concerned look. “You’re going by yourself?”

  “I’ll be okay,” Bethany assured her, taking a last drink of her coffee before setting the empty cup in the sink. There was no way to explain to the woman why daytime was possibly the only time it was safe for her to be alone, so she walked out of the kitchen before Julia could say another word.

  Forty-five minutes later, Bethany’s taxi pulled up in front of the Van Horne Technologies building. She paid the driver, climbed out of the car, and strode purposefully through the front doors. She nodded to the new security guard, unable to block the image of his predecessor from her mind, and hurried to the elevators. It felt good to be doing something routine again.

  She spent the morning working on the plant extract and the more tests she ran, the more concerned she became. Too many aspects of the substance resembled illegal street narcotics and Miles’s continued secrecy bothered her.

  The one thing she refused to be was a party to something illegal.

  Afraid that Miles might try to put her off if he knew why she wanted to see him, she didn’t bother to call. Instead, she took the elevator to the second floor where his office was located. His secretary was not at her desk and when Bethany glanced at the clock, she saw it was after six. Having been so hard at work, she hadn’t realized what time it was. For most, the workday was over. She wondered if Miles would still be around.

  Hurrying to his office, she raised her hand to knock, but then stopped short when she found the door standing slightly ajar. Voices could be heard coming from inside and she realized that Miles was not alone.

  About to walk away, curiosity got the better of her. She glanced around to make sure no one was watching and then edged closer to the door.

  “. . . my best researcher on it and if anyone can analyze it, she can,” Miles was saying to a man Bethany didn’t recognize. She couldn’t see his face, but he was wearing an expensive olive-green suit. The conservative look of his short-cut hair was ruined only by its bright orange-red color.

  “We have a schedule to meet,” the man said, speaking with an accent that sounded rough. When he waved his hand in the air for emphasis, Bethany caught sight of several gold rings on his fingers. “I have buyers lined up, but if I can’t deliver the product, they’re going to turn ugly.”

  “Don’t threaten me, Santi,” Miles said in a harsh, cold tone that Bethany had never heard him use before. “I’ll deliver the product, just as I said I would, but I don’t need you or your boss harassing me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

  The two men rose and Bethany, afraid of getting caught eavesdropping, scurried down the hall, not stopping until she was safely on the elevator, headed back to her lab. As she rode the car up, she played the conversation over in her head. Most of Van Horne’s clients fell into one of two groups—drug companies and the Department of Justice. Miles’s visitor didn’t look like he belonged to either group. In fact, Bethany thought he looked like a drug dealer and she struggled to convince herself otherwise, but couldn’t.

  The last thing she wanted to believe was that Miles was involved with drug dealers.

  Harris woke from his dreamless slumber as he usually did. One moment, he was dead; unaware. The next he was fully conscious. He did not immediately rise, but waited patiently.

  It came finally, a gentle probing along the link, the barest whisper in his mind. It was the adult chupacabra and that she sought him out this time was no small victory.

  He opened his mind to her and her hunger hit him with an unexpected force that ripped through his body. If there’d been room in his safe hole, he would have doubled over from the pain. She was starving but her fear of humans—of being caught—kept her from seeking food.

  Harris knew he had to help her and he formed a mental image of a ranch he’d found not far from the city. He’d seen both cattle and goats there, running unattended in large numbers in the pastures. He sent the image to the chupacabra as clearly as he could, envisioning the creature feeding off the livestock.

  He knew the minute she received the image because the link grew faint as the creature turned her thoughts to finding the farm. Briefly, Harris considered going there himself in order to capture her, but dismissed the idea almost as quickly as it formed. Not this time, he thought. He wanted the creature to trust him and that had to be built slowly, over time. He just hoped he had that kind of time.

  Bethany’s breathing had almost returned to normal by the time she reached her lab, but her thoughts were still in turmoil. She was so upset that she didn’t see Dirk until she ran into him.

  “Don’t you ever go off on your own again,” he said, gripping her by the arms and shaking her. “Do you hear me?”

  “The whole building can hear you.” She glared at him. “Do you mind?” She tried to pull herself free, furious with the way he manhandled her, yet inexplicably glad to see him.

  “I’m not kidding, Beth. Just because it’s daylight doesn’t mean you’re safe. These Primes we’re dealing with aren’t stupid—and they’ve been known to hire daytime help; humans who’ll do anything for money.” The light in his eyes started to glow softly. “You have to be smarter than this, Beth. And you have to do what I say.”

  Defiance burned inside her and she longed to defend her actions but the truth was that it hadn’t occurred to her that the vampires might hire humans. Staring up at Dirk, she realized how serious he was; how concerned for her. She became all too aware of him looming so close she felt the heat from his body. The clean, woodsy scent of his soap or aftershave surrounded her until every breath she took was filled with his scent. Her arms burned where he held her. Not from pain, but from the hundreds of thousands of nerves suddenly awakened by his touch. Dirk—and everything about him—was an assault on her senses.

  Her tongue darted out to moisten lips suddenly gone dry. Dirk’s sharp intake of breath caused her to look up into his eyes and then her own breath caught. Twin pools of molten lava gazed down at her, searing her, causing her pulse to race.

  Dirk slid one hand up her arm, to the back of her head where he buried his fingers in her hair. With excruciating slowness, he leaned toward her until his breath fanned her lips. Something deep inside her coiled with hunger and anticipation.

  It seemed an eternity that they stood so close, yet without really touching. Then his lips broke the thin barrier of air separating them.

  It wasn’t the chaste, closed-mouthed kisses that Miles usually gave her. This one was both possessive and demanding. It breached all her defenses and took no prisoners. She leaned into him and forgot everything except the feel of his warm hard body as he held her to him.

  She’d never e
xperienced anything like it before and though a part of her argued that she shouldn’t be doing this, the voice was too faint to be heard over the rushing of her pulse.

  A buzzing noise finally permeated her dazed state, an unwelcome intrusion. At first, she tried to ignore it but when it wouldn’t go away, enough of her conscious mind surfaced and she recognized the sound of the lab timer, sitting on the table where she’d placed it earlier.

  “Oh, no.” Bethany tore her lips from Dirk’s and in a flash, reality came crashing down about her. She stared at him in horror and this time, when she tried to pull away, he let her go.

  “Beth—”

  “No.” She held up a hand to silence him as she backed away and tried to think. What had she done? She’d cheated on Miles. It was only a kiss, and yet, had the timer not gone off, what might she have done?

  She felt Dirk watching her, his concern obvious, but she couldn’t look at him. When her back came up against the lab table, she turned around and fumbled with the flasks and beakers, trying to focus on the newly finished test even though her thoughts were far too jumbled and confused for coherent thought.

  “Look, Beth—” Dirk tried again, but she interrupted him.

  “Let’s not read more into this than there is, okay? It was a kiss. It didn’t mean anything.”

  She couldn’t look at him for fear he’d see her eyes and know she lied. It had meant something to her. Keeping her back to him, she went back to work. Only long after he walked away did she begin to relax.

  Dirk watched Beth struggle to work, fighting the urge to gather her back into his arms and kiss her again. Kiss her until she forgot about work, forgot about vampires—and forgot about Miles. Walking away from her was one of the hardest things he’d ever done, but he did it.

  He hadn’t meant to kiss her, but had known it would happen eventually. The temptation had been eating at him since the moment he’d first seen her and it had finally worn him down. But if he’d thought that one taste of her would assuage his appetite, he’d been gravely mistaken. What he should do now—the right thing to do—would be to ask Mac to replace him as Beth’s bodyguard.

  Like hell he would. Not that he expected a repeat of what had just happened. In fact, he’d be lucky if she ever spoke to him again. There was a decided frost in the atmosphere of the lab. Wondering if he should try to talk to her or let the silence continue, a faint popping noise suddenly caught his attention.

  “What was that?”

  Beth looked at him, her brows furrowed. “What? I didn’t hear anything.”

  He crossed the room so he could stand by the door. When Beth opened her mouth to say something, he held up his hand to silence her. He waited to see if he heard the popping noises again, but the sounds weren’t repeated. Still, he knew what they’d been. Gunshots. Had he still been human, he couldn’t have heard them from four floors below.

  If he was to go downstairs, he knew what he’d find—the guard lying dead, most likely with two puncture wounds on the side of his neck. The difference between tonight and the first night the vampires had broken into the Van Horne building was that this time, the guard had managed to squeeze off a few rounds of his gun before he met his end.

  There would be another difference, too. They’d know that Dirk was here with Beth, protecting her, and they would have brought plenty of reinforcements.

  “Turn off anything that might burn or explode,” he ordered Beth, briefly tearing his attention from the door to look at her.

  She hesitated only a moment while she studied his face and then hurried about the lab, doing as he’d instructed. When she finished, she came to stand beside him.

  “Quietly,” he whispered as he led her to the doorway. Peering out, he scanned the hallway. So far, all was quiet. He hesitated only a second and then stepped out, motioning her to follow. They hadn’t taken but a couple of steps when Dirk heard the sound of footsteps coming from the stairwell.

  Grabbing Beth’s arm, he propelled them down the hall in the opposite direction, his mind racing. The last thing he wanted to do was go back to the lab. It would be the first place the vampires would look. He scanned the hallway for options and his gaze fell on the utility closet.

  Running for it, he hurried them inside and had just enough time to pull the door closed when the stairwell door opened and five vampires stepped into view. Dirk watched them from the cracked opening, praying that none of the creatures was astute or observant enough to notice the door standing slightly ajar.

  The closet was small with barely enough room to accommodate them. Under other circumstances, Dirk might have taken advantage of the cozy confines. Beth’s breathing sounded ragged behind him and he longed to turn around, take her in his arms and comfort her, but he dared not take his attention off the hallway.

  The vampires came toward them, moving soundlessly. When they reached the first door to Beth’s lab, they went inside. It wouldn’t take them long to realize it was empty and then they’d start searching the building. If they opened the closet . . . he didn’t want to think about that. They had to make a run for it while the vampires were busy.

  With no time to second-guess himself, Dirk grabbed Beth’s hand and pulled her from the closet and down the hallway toward the elevator. They were almost to it when a “dinging” noise announced its arrival. Dirk, not willing to leave a hapless employee in the wrong place at the wrong time to their fate, waited for the doors to open. As they did, he found himself staring into the faces of two more vampires.

  Dirk shoved Bethany toward the stairwell and through the door. With the two vampires right behind them, there was no way to outrun them. Glancing over the side rail and looking to the landing three flights down, Dirk made his decision.

  “Hang on.” He pulled Beth to him and held her in an ironlike embrace with one arm as he propelled them over the railing with the other.

  Chapter 10

  Beth’s scream reverberated off the walls as they fell to the ground level, the air whooshing past them. Dirk absorbed the impact of their landing with his legs, quickly setting her down and pulling her toward the exit door. The sound of the two vampires landing behind him stopped him in his tracks.

  Pushing Bethany to the side, he grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall and turned just as the first vampire charged. Dirk smashed the canister into the creature’s face, denting the canister and causing white foam to spew forth. The vampire’s eyes rolled up and as the body started to crumple, Dirk was reaching for his dagger with his free hand. A quick flick of his wrist sent it flying into the chest of the second creature. His aim was true and the second vampire hung suspended in the air for a moment before it, too, fell to the ground.

  Tossing the extinguisher aside, Dirk grabbed Bethany by the arm, pushed open the exit door, and together they dashed outside.

  He never saw the fist that hit him. One second they were running, the next he was sailing into the side of the building with such force that when he hit, the bricks cracked.

  He fell to the ground, stunned and out of breath. His vision faded to black—except for the bright white light flashing beneath the lids of his closed eyes. Almost as if it came from a great distance away, he heard Beth’s scream and though he wasn’t sure he could stand, he placed both hands flat on the ground and pushed himself up.

  A short distance off, Bethany, carried by two vampires, was struggling and fighting like the very demons of hell were after her—which they were.

  He raced after them, catching up to them not far from the parking garage. Grabbing the first vampire by the shoulder, he yanked him around and slammed his fist into the creature’s face with enough force that the vampire staggered back, stumbled, and fell. Before the body even hit the ground, Dirk grabbed Beth’s arm and pulled her from the other vampire’s clutches, at the same time smashing his fist into the creature’s face just as hard as he could. The vampire went down like a rock.

  “Are you all right?” He could tell she was frightened and wanted to rea
ssure her, but at that moment, he heard the sound of the fire exit opening. “Let’s go,” he shouted to Beth, pulling her along behind him as he hurried toward the parking garage where his Expedition was parked. If they could get to it before the others caught up to them, they might just survive the night.

  Inside the garage, Dirk steered them toward the elevator. With no sign yet of their pursuers, they stepped inside. As he searched for his keys, he felt Beth shudder beside him.

  “My car is just off to the right,” he tried to reassure her. “As soon as the doors open, make a run for it.”

  “They’re still out there, aren’t they?” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

  “Yeah, they are.” He wasn’t going to lie to her. “But we have a small advantage. They don’t know exactly what floor we’re on.”

  She looked up, her eyes wide with fear. “There’re so many—you can’t fight them all.”

  He wanted to tell her that everything would be fine, but since he couldn’t guarantee it, he made the only promise he could. “If they want you, they’ll have to go through me first.”

  Just then, the elevator slowed to a stop and the doors whooshed open. Dirk stepped out to scan the area. So far, there was no sign of the vampires, but he knew they were close. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled with the anticipation of their arrival. “Run for the car.”

  He paced her, deactivating the locks just as she reached the passenger side and climbed in. He’d just opened his door when he heard the sound of racing feet in the stairwell.

  Climbing into the driver’s seat, he slammed his door shut and activated the locks. Then he started the engine, put the SUV in reverse, and backed up. Through the rearview window, he saw the vampires emerge from the stairwell. They were closing fast and Dirk hurriedly shifted into drive and slammed his foot down on the accelerator. The SUV shot forward.