by Syrie James
Nicole slogged on, not daring to look back. There was the voice again, closer now, urgent and admonishing:
“Nicole! For God’s sake, stop! Come back!”
Her pulse raced in terror. Her head spun. She wouldn’t stop. Couldn’t. So exhausted. Pull. Slide. Slide. Lift. Lift. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Suddenly two strong hands were grabbing her by both arms and Michael was standing on top of her skis, looking at her with frantic blue eyes.
“What the hell are you doing? Where are you going?”
“Away.” Her voice was hollow, as if it came from a deep void.
“Why? What’s wrong?” He sounded completely baffled.
“Let me . . . go.” She struggled to free herself from his grasp, but it was no use. She didn’t have the strength.
“You’ll freeze to death out here. You’re blue already.”
“Better than . . . dying at . . . your hands.”
He started, completely taken aback. “What did you say?”
“I know what you are!” she hissed at him, exhausted, shivering.
His hands gripped her more tightly. “What are you talking about?”
“I saw them,” she said, gasping. “Red eyes. Fangs. Journals. In your study. Your handwriting. Pictures. In the hall.” Her teeth chattered so hard she thought they might break. “A hundred and fifty years. They’re all you.”
“Nicole, you’re delirious. You—”
“The other building. You moved so fast. Don’t deny it. I saw. You’re a vampire.”
Michael stared at her for a long moment, silent fury building in his gaze. Then, as if in resignation, he shook his head
All at once a great, freezing wind rushed past her body. Snow was in her eyes. Nicole’s senses reeled. The world was a blurred kaleidoscope of white, green, gray, and black. They were moving so fast, they seemed to be flying.
Flying.
Back across the snowy highway. Up the road. And into the house.
THE MINUTE HE SET HER DOWN on the living room floor before the fire, she crumbled in his arms, still raving about vampires.
He whirled off her snow-encrusted backpack, hat, gloves, and scarf, and gently lowered her to the carpet, where he unzipped and took off her parka.
“No,” she said, her teeth chattering, her hands flailing at him weakly. “Don’t—”
“Nicole, I’m trying to help you,” he cried, catching hold of her wrists to restrain her. Acutely aware of the powerful emotion he’d invested in those few words, he paused and took a breath, struggling to rein in the wealth of feeling that burned within him.
He was a fool. He should never have let himself get so carried away earlier. Now Nicole had guessed the truth and was scared senseless—so scared that she’d run off into the snow to escape him, even though it had meant certain death.
“I have to get you out of these wet clothes,” Michael insisted firmly. “Your sweat froze. You’re suffering from hypothermia. If I don’t warm you up, you could die.”
As he untied and yanked the boots off her feet, she tried to kick him—incredible, he thought, considering how worn out she was. “Lie still. Calm down.”
The woman was resourceful; he had to give her that. Michael issued a silent thank-you to the powers that be for making him check the garage when he’d found her missing. To take off like that on his cross-country skis, it was either brave or stupid, perhaps both. He tossed the shoes aside and removed her socks. As he suspected, her feet were as blue as her hands and felt like ice.
In the blink of eye, he retrieved a bath towel and the huge down comforter from his bed, and was back at her side slipping the blanket beneath her. Despite her exhaustion, Nicole tried to fight him as he pulled off the rest of her clothes—pants, sweater, thermals, bra, underwear—but he was too fast, and they were all gone before she could take a breath. For the briefest of seconds he paused, struck by her breathtaking beauty as she lay before him in perfect nudity, her long, red-gold hair swirling around her like a flaming net. She was a vision. A goddess. Venus on the half shell. She was also half frozen, quaking like an aspen in the wind, and her jewel-like green eyes were wide with fright.
“Please,” she said, attempting to cover her bare breasts with her arms, her long legs curling up and trembling.
He knew the best thing would be to warm her with his body heat. His body temperature might not be quite as high as desired, but it was far warmer than hers was at the moment. He instantly nixed the notion. Any contact between their naked bodies would only excite him to a level he dared not cross—and it would no doubt only terrify her even further.
Working fast, he dried her with the towel to slow further heat loss, then wrapped her twice around in the soft down comforter, folding it under her feet like a sleeping bag. Kneeling beside her, he drew her swaddled body into his arms. She trembled against him beneath the blanket. Whether it was from cold or terror or physical fatigue or all three, he couldn’t be certain.
“Please,” she whispered again. “Please don’t—”
“Whatever you’re afraid I’m going to do—don’t be,” he vowed solemnly, his mouth against her ear. He massaged her arms and back vigorously through the blanket, trying to get her blood flowing. “I won’t hurt you. I just want to help you.”
“Promise?” she whispered.
“I promise.” A wealth of tender emotions rose within him. If only she weren’t so afraid. At last, he felt the tension leave her limbs as she gave up the fight. He laid her down gently on the carpet and gazed earnestly into her eyes.
“Now promise me something: that you won’t move. We have to get your core body temperature up. I’m going to build up the fire and get you something hot to drink.”
He tossed more wood onto the fire, then dashed to the kitchen, where he heated up a mug of water. When he returned, she was lying just where he’d left her, shivering inside the comforter. He winced inwardly when he saw that her eyes were still filled with apprehension.
Sitting down cross-legged beside her, he lifted her into a sitting position, supporting her back firmly against his right arm. With his free hand, he held the mug to her lips.
“It’s hot water. Drink it. It will help warm you from the inside.”
She obediently took a sip. He slowly fed her the rest of it, pausing only when she was overcome by a wave of chills. As the mug emptied, her shivering decreased significantly. Finally it stopped. Her eyelids began to droop, and she sagged against him as if on the verge of sleep. With apparent difficulty, she opened her eyes again and whispered groggily:
“Say it.”
“Say what?” he asked gently.
“Say that you’re a vampire.”
He hesitated. He’d spent five lifetimes denying it. He had a dozen ready explanations that had always been accepted without question on those rare occasions when it had been required in the past. It wasn’t something people wanted to believe. He’d usually been able to retreat as fast as his canines retracted and had never encountered those individuals again.
There was no chance of retreating from her, however. If he chose to, despite the mind-blurring speed with which he’d brought her home and the things she claimed to have seen, he might be able convince her that she’d been delirious and had been imagining things. But he didn’t want to. Didn’t want to lie anymore. Not to this woman, regardless of the consequences.
He met her level gaze. “Yes. I am a vampire.”
CHAPTER 11
NICOLE AWOKE IN A WARM, cocooned haze. She was lying on the living room carpet by a crackling fire, wrapped in a down comforter, her head resting in Michael’s lap. His fingers were gently stroking her shoulder. The clock on the mantel ticked. It was after seven. Through the windows, she saw that it was dark outside.
All at once everything that had happened, from the moment he’d kissed her at the piano, to the moment just before she’d fallen asleep, when he’d uttered those four incredible words—I am a vampire—came back to her in a flash. Her p
ulse began to pound. She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t imagining things. Michael was a vampire. And she was back in the vampire’s lair.
Sitting up abruptly, Nicole scooted her body quickly away from his, at the same time freeing her arms from the restraint of the comforter and hugging its sumptuous folds more tightly
Michael studied her with a flicker of disappointment. “Did you really think I’d bite you?”
“What else should I think? You’re a vampire. You drink blood, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
Nicole told herself to remain calm, not to show her fear. She was sitting here, naked except for a blanket, trapped like bait in this house with a blood-thirsty, lightning-fast monster and nowhere to run.
Except, confusingly, he didn’t look like a monster at all.
He looked as handsome as ever, and she read both compassion and kindness on his face. Was the look deliberate, just a clever trick?
“Why did you drag me back here?” she asked. “Are live victims that hard to find in this neck of the woods?”
He bristled at that as if offended, the compassion leaving his eyes. “Would you truly prefer that I had left you out there? Is being with me not a better alternative to dying?”
“That remains to be seen. If you really mean me no harm, then take me to the next town right now. Since you can zip along at the speed of light, that should be no problem for you, even with this storm.”
“I wish that were true, but traveling that fast is very depleting. I can only do it in short bursts, a minute or two at a time.”
“Oh.” Nicole frowned. “So let me guess: the blood in your fridge—it’s backup in case you can’t find enough people to feed on?”
“No. That blood is my only nourishment. I gave up feeding on people and animals a long time ago.”
A shiver ran through her, even though she was warm. “Then why, when we were sitting on that piano bench, did you look at me like I was about to be lunch?”
“I didn’t say I’d lost the desire to feed from the living, Nicole,” he said, angry now. “I said I gave it up.”
“Why did you give it up?”
“Because I was tired of hurting people. Because it’s too hard to stop. I could have bitten you at any time. I could have drained your blood in minutes or killed you instantly with the mere twitch of my hand.”
A gasp escaped her throat and Nicole swallowed hard, hot tears threatening behind her eyes. “Thanks for the warning. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Michael frowned, looked like he wanted to kick himself for his last remarks. “I said could, not would.” He strained for patience. “I’m not going to kill you, Nicole, anymore than I intend to bite you. If I had been determined to drink your blood, don’t you think I would have done so long before this?”
She hesitated. He’d certainly had plenty of opportunities to bite her ever since the moment she first arrived, unconscious and bleeding—not to mention the times they’d been in intimate contact. And she’d just slept in his arms without apparent harm.
Nicole’s mind raced in confusion, recalling all that he’d done for her just now. She knew how dangerous hypothermia was and how close she’d come to losing her life. Once again, he’d saved her. How was she supposed to reconcile his tender care of her with the threat of what he was and what he could do?
“I suppose you would have,” she admitted begrudgingly, “and I suppose I should . . . thank you. For rescuing me. And taking such good care of me. Again.”
“You’re welcome. I’m sorry you felt it necessary to run.” Still sitting on the floor across from her, Michael settled back against the base of an easy chair and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “How do you feel?”
“How do you think I feel? Scared. Confused. Anxious. Astonished.”
“Don’t be.”
Nicole rearranged the down comforter around her, hugging her arms across her chest. A tear spilled down her cheek. She wiped it away. “You say that so matter-of-factly. As if it’s every day I find out the man I’m snowbound with is a vampire.”
“I realize this isn’t easy for you.”
“No. It’s not.” In the space of a few hours, a long-held truth had just been turned upside down; a frightening myth had become reality.
“Whatever you’ve read in the past,” he said kindly, “whatever stories you’ve heard or what you think that term means . . . I implore you to keep an open mind.”
“Okay.” She willed herself to be calm, to believe that she was in no danger, despite those frightening statements he’d just uttered: I could have drained your blood in minutes . . . Because it’s too hard to stop. “My mind is open. Help me to understand who and what you are.”
“You know who I am.”
“No, I don’t. You said you’re Michael Tyler, the man behind Patrick Spencer, but—by the way, is that really true?”
“Of course it’s true.”
“How can I know? You’ve lied about so many things.”
“I had to lie. You must know that.”
“You can tell the truth now. It wasn’t some distant ancestor who homesteaded this place; it was you—right?”
He nodded.
“My God.” Her voice was a whisper. “This is so hard to believe . . . How old are you?”
“Old.”
“How old?”
“Does it matter?”
“I’d like to know.”
He twisted his fingers in his lap, reluctant to answer. “I was born in the early eighteenth century.”
Nicole went quiet for a moment, struggling to digest that incredible fact. “Is Michael Tyler your real name?”
“It is now.”
“And before that, it was William?”
“Among other names.”
“What was your name at birth?”
“Adam Robinson.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Like the doctor in your Civil War novels.”
He shrugged. “It’s a good name.”
“Those books in your study, signed by Charles Dickens—he signed them for you, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“You knew Charles Dickens?”
“I was his physician at one time.”
“His physician? You’re a doctor?”
“I was.”
She gazed at him in wonder. So many things about him made sense now. “Why did you move here?”
“To avoid people. To avoid temptation.”
“And you raised and trained horses?”
“For years.”
“And what else? Built furniture? Played the piano?”
“Yes. It’s only recently that I started to write novels. To my surprise, I turned out to be good at it. People kept buying my books. So I kept writing.”
“How do you get away with it?”
“Get away with what?”
“If you’ve lived here all these years and you don’t age, why hasn’t anyone noticed?”
“For a long time, there weren’t enough people around to notice. I live off the beaten path. I didn’t go into town very often. As the population in the region grew, I started dying my hair gray every thirty years or so, and always kept a low profile. When I felt I couldn’t fake it any longer, I’d travel for a few years, spread word that my ‘father’ had died, and return as the brown-haired, long-lost son of the previous owner. For the few old-timers who recognized me, I chalked it up to a remarkable family resemblance.”
“Clever,” she conceded. “So what other . . . powers do you have, exactly? Can you read my mind?”
“No.”
“Can you vanish through a crack in a wall? Appear and disappear out of mist or dust?”
“Nothing quite as impressive as that.”
“Can you turn into a bat or a wolf?”
A brief laugh rumbled up from his chest. “No. I have only one earthly form, and you see it before you. As far as I can tell, biologically I’m not that different from you. I’m still a human being, just . .
. changed. Some of my senses, like sight, hearing, and strength, have been altered or heightened. But I still drink, breathe, sleep, sweat, and bleed, just as you do.”
“You sweat? You bleed?”
“I do.”
“And you’re immortal?”
“I don’t think so—not in the literal sense. I don’t age and I don’t seem to succumb to illness, but if I’m like the other, similar beings I’ve met, then I can be injured, and I can die.”
“You mean like a stake to the heart and . . . ?”
“That’s a myth. No stakes or beheadings are required. A vampire—at least all the ones I’ve known—can bleed to death from any untended wound just like anyone else.”
“Have you met many others like yourself?”
“Perhaps a dozen. None since I moved here.”
“None?”
“None.”
“What about sunlight? Does it harm you?”
“I can tolerate it for a few minutes at a time, but too much exposure to solar radiation weakens me and could eventually kill me.”
“Do you sleep in a coffin?”
“No.”
“Can you put people under a spell?”
“What?” He was taken aback.
Was there a delicate way to put it into words? “You know.
“No,” he replied forcefully, obviously perturbed. He quickly got to his feet. “That’s enough questions for now. I’m sure you’d like to get dressed, and maybe have something to eat.”
He crossed to her and held out his hand. She took it and allowed him to help her stand up. “One last question.”
He looked at her, patiently waiting.
“Have you ever killed anyone?”
“Yes. Far more people than I’d like to admit. And I assure you I’m not proud of it.”
FAR MORE PEOPLE THAN I’D LIKE TO ADMIT. The words rang in Nicole’s ears, making her stomach seize as she shut the bedroom door and got dressed, pulling on jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers.
Michael had also admitted that he could kill her instantly with a twitch of his hand.
I didn’t say I’d lost the desire to feed from the living. I said I gave it up. Because it’s too hard to stop.