by Julie Kenner
The Egyptian room had always been Rue’s favorite. She loved the sarcophagi and the mummiform cases, even the mummies themselves. She’d often wondered about the ethics of exposing bodies—surely once people were buried, they deserved to stay that way—but she enjoyed looking on the long-dead features and imagining what the individual had been like in life—what she’d worn, eaten…who she’d loved.
Now Sean carried her to the huge sarcophagus in the middle of the floor. Made to contain the inner coffin of a pharaoh, the highly carved and decorated limestone sarcophagus was penned in by hard sheets of clear plastic, preventing people from touching the sides. Fortunately, this pen was open at the top. A vampire could clear the barrier easily.
Sean leaped over lightly, followed by Karl, while Haskell held Rue. Though the lid must have weighed hundreds of pounds, Karl and Sean easily shifted it to one side, leaving a narrow opening. Then Haskell carefully handed Rue to Karl, while Sean climbed in the deep stone box, which came to his lower chest. Karl handed Rue in, and Sean laid her on the bottom. She was able to lie flat on her back, with her legs fully extended. She felt as if she was looking up at Sean floating hundreds of feet above her. He lay down beside her, and she felt the numbness wearing away.
Oh, God, no. Please. She knew the onset of the pain. As she began to scream, Karl moved the lid back in place, and then there was almost perfect darkness.
“RUE,” SAID SEAN URGENTLY.
She heard his voice, but the pain rendered it meaningless.
“Rue, do you want me to end the pain?”
She could only make a small sound, a kind of whine. Her fingers dug into him. There was hardly enough room side by side for them, and she had the feeling Sean couldn’t straighten out, but that was the least of her concerns at the moment.
“You can be like me,” he said, and she finally understood.
“Dying?” she said through clenched teeth.
“Yes. I wasn’t quick enough. I didn’t plan enough. And then you made sure he got you instead of me. Why, Rue? Why?”
Rue could not explain that she operated on instinct. She could not have borne to see the knife enter him, even though a moment’s thought would have told her that he could survive what she could not. She hadn’t had that moment. Her understanding was a tiny flicker in the bottom of a well that was full of agony.
“If I make you like me, you will live,” he said.
This was hardly the best time to be making a huge decision, but she remembered the story Sean had told her about his master’s sudden attack on him, the callous way the man had left Sean to cope with the sudden change. If Sean could survive such a metamorphosis, she could, because Sean was here to help her.
“Won’t leave?” she asked. Her voice trembled and was almost inaudible, but he understood.
“Never.” His voice was very firm. “If you love me as I love you, we’ll weather the change.”
“Okay.” Love, she thought. He loved her.
“Now?”
“Now. Love you,” she said, with great effort.
With no more hesitation, Sean bit her. She was already hurting so badly that it was just one more pain, and then she felt his mouth drawing on her, sucking her dry. She was frightened, but she didn’t have the strength to struggle. Then, after a minute, the heavy grayness in her head rose up and took her with it.
“Here,” said a voice, a commanding voice. “You have to drink, Rue. Layla. You have to drink, now.” A hand was pressing her face to bare skin, and she felt something run over her lips. Water? She was very thirsty. She licked her lips, and found it wasn’t water, wasn’t cold. It was tepid, and salty. But she was very dry, so she put her mouth to the skin and began to swallow.
SHE WOKE AGAIN SOMETIME LATER.
She felt…funny. She felt weak, yes, but she wasn’t sore. She remembered vividly waking up in the hospital after the last time she’d been attacked, feeling the IV lines, the smell of the sheets, the little sounds of the hospital wing. But it was much darker here.
She tried to move her hand and found that she could. She patted herself, and realized she was a terrible mess. And there was someone in this dark place with her. Someone else who wasn’t breathing.
Someone else…who wasn’t breathing.
She opened her mouth to scream.
“Don’t, darling.”
Sean.
“We’re…I’m…”
“It was the only way to save your life.”
“I remember now.” She began shivering all over, and Sean’s arms surrounded her. He kissed her on the forehead, then on the mouth. She could feel his touch as she’d never felt anyone’s touch before. She could feel the texture of his skin, hear the minute sound of the cloth moving over his body. The smell of him was a sharp arousal. When his mouth fell on hers, she was ready.
“Turn on your side, angel,” Sean said raggedly, and she maneuvered to face him. Together, they worked down her panty hose, and then he was in her, and she made a noise of sheer pleasure. Nothing had ever felt so good. He was rougher with her, and she knew it was because she was as he was, now, and his strength would not hurt her. Her climax was shattering in its intensity. When it was over, she felt curiously exhausted. She was, she discovered, very hungry.
She said, “When can we get out?”
“They’ll come lift the lid soon,” he said. “I could do it myself, but I’m afraid I’d push it off too hard and break it. We don’t want anyone to know we were here.”
In a few minutes, she heard the scrape of the heavy lid being moved to one side, and a dim light showed her Rick and Phil standing above them, holding the heavy stone lid at each end.
Other hands reached down, and Julie and Thompson helped them out of the sarcophagus.
“How is it?” Julie asked shyly, when she and Rue were alone in the women’s bathroom. The men were cleaning up all traces of their occupancy of the sarcophagus, and Rue had decided she just had to wash her face and rinse out her mouth. She might as well have spared the effort, she decided, evaluating her image in the mirror—delighted she could see herself, despite the old myth. Her clothes were torn, bloody and crumpled. At least Julie had kindly loaned her a brush.
“Being this way?”
Julie nodded. “Is it really that different?”
“Oh, yes,” Rue said. In fact, it was a little hard to concentrate, with Julie’s heart beating so near her. This was going to take some coping; she needed a bottle of TrueBlood, and she needed it badly.
“The police want to talk to you,” Julie said. “A detective named Wallingford.”
“Lead me to him,” Rue said. “But I’d better have a drink first.”
It wasn’t often a murder victim got to accuse her attacker in person. Rue’s arrival at the police station in her bloodstained dress was a sensation. Despite his broken arm, Carver Hutton IV was paraded in the next room in a lineup, with stand-ins bandaged to match him, and she enjoyed picking him from the group.
Then Sean did the same.
Then Mustafa.
Then Abilene.
Three vampires and a human sex performer were not the kind of witnesses the police relished, but several museum patrons had seen the attack clearly, among them Rue’s old dance partner, John Jaslow.
“There’ll be a trial, of course,” Detective Wallingford told her. He was a dour man in his forties, who looked as though he’d never laughed. “But with his past history with you, and his fingerprints on the knife, and all the eyewitness testimony, we shouldn’t have too much trouble getting a conviction. We’re not in his daddy’s backyard this time.”
“I had to die to get justice,” she said. There was a moment of silence in the room.
Julie said. “We’ll go over to my place so you two can shower, and then we can go dancing. It’s a new life, Rue!”
She took Sean’s hand. “Layla,” she said gently. “My name is Layla.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-2480-7
Copyright © 2008 Harlequin Books S
.A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:
Wild Thing
Copyright © 2004 Julia Beck Kenner
Touch Me
Copyright © 2004 Susan Hope Kearney
Surrender
Copyright © 2004 Julie Leto Klapka
Kiss of the Wolf
Copyright © 2003 Susan Krinard
Shadow Kissing
Copyright © 2003 Tanith Lee
The Devil She Knew
Copyright © 2003 Yvonne Jocks
Soul of the Wolf
Copyright © 2005 Karen Whiddon
Forever Mine
Copyright © 2005 Linda Winstead Jones
Her Best Enemy
Copyright © 2004 Margaret Benson
Dancers in the Dark
Copyright © 2004 Charlaine Harris Schulze
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