Deep IsThe Night: Haunted Souls

by Denise Agnew

  “I don’t know.” Ronan turned away from his friends to stare into the tall mirror above the mantle. Guilt ate at him, despite the reassurance Clarissa had given him. “It’s possible.”

  “Aye, though I don’t remember hearing anything in vampire lore that talks about women getting sick after coupling with a vampire,” Lachlan said as he stood next to a window and looked into the backyard.

  And never in a million years did Ronan expect to standing in a living room discussing his sex life. In this case, though, he didn’t have much choice. “After she had the nausea and pain I detected an imbalance in her system.”

  After a pause, Erin said, “She’ll be all right. I’m sure of it.”

  Lachlan turned away from the window and settled on the couch next to Erin.

  The phone rang and Erin went to the table near the front door. When she answered she put her finger in other ear, as if she couldn’t quite hear the person on the other end. “Of course. Yes, he’s here.”

  She took the cordless phone toward Ronan. “The connection is bad but I think he said his name is Yusuf.”

  Ronan took the phone. Keeping his tone light he said, “Feckin’ time I heard from you.”

  The energetic laugh on the other end assured Ronan the older man appreciated the joke. “A bright good morning to you. Now this is costing me money, vampire. So be quiet and listen. Oh, and by the way, my daughter Selima sends her salutations. Vampire, I think you made her fall in love with you.”

  Ronan snorted and noticed the gazes in the room locked on him. “Right.”

  “It’s true. She moons around the house all day and she’s very lazy.”

  “She wasn’t lazy before?”

  “Never.”

  Before he could ask Yusuf more about his daughter, Yusuf asked, “Have you found the woman you needed to couple with?”

  Ronan suddenly hated that word. What he felt and experienced when he made love to Clarissa far surpassed mere coupling. “Yes. But nothing is happening. At least I don’t think so.”

  “Explain.” The man’s voice snapped like a whip.

  Ronan explained what had happened since Clarissa returned to Pine Forest and the subsequent experiences with criminals, fires and the corpses turning up as the ancient one killed without compunction.

  “Sounds like a mess,” Yusuf said. “Hmmm.”

  “What?”

  “You say this woman, this Clarissa is ill?”

  “Yes.”

  “Humph.”

  Ronan didn’t know what to say, but part of him found the Moroccan’s statement very interesting. “Wait a minute. Selima didn’t get sick in any way after she and I coupled?”

  Ronan caught Erin’s raised eyebrows, but ignored her look.

  “No, why?” Yusuf asked.

  Ronan explained and Yusuf huffed and made noises that said he found the situation odd. “Very strange. You say she’s nauseated and dizzy?”

  “Yes. And she had pain in her side.” Ronan paced again, his heart drumming a little quickly. “Damn it, Yusuf, if you know something just spit it out.”

  “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

  Ronan rolled his gaze to the ceiling, his antagonism coming to a slow bubble. “You said if I had sex with this woman then I would receive the power I needed to defeat the ancient one. Time is running out here.”

  Ronan heard the depersonalization in calling Clarissa this woman and winced at his own callousness.

  Yusuf opened up. “It is written in an ancient text that only when a great vampire finds a woman who he can impregnate, can the ancient one be destroyed.”

  “Impregnate?” The word shot out of Ronan’s mouth like a bullet. “Are you saying I can get Clarissa pregnant?”

  Ronan glanced at his friends and they all stared at him like people who’d just been jabbed by a stun gun.

  Ronan’s mouth came open as he stood there in stunned silence. Anger grew inside him. “You didn’t tell me this earlier. Why?”

  “Don’t yell at me, Ronan Kieran.” The line crackled with static. “I didn’t know until the seer called me. Obviously she was too afraid of you to relay the answer she found in the book.”

  “What book are you talking about?”

  “An old tome at Trinity University that’s being held in secret by a professor. Apparently this guy is a bit of a vampire hunter himself.”

  Shocked and colder inside then he’d ever been, Ronan said, “I can’t have children. No vampire can have children.”

  The old man grunted his dissent. “Most vampires cannot have children. Ninety-nine percent, actually. You, sir, may be the one percent that can.”

  A panic started to well inside Ronan as something occurred to him in scary black and white. “Feck me.”

  Yusuf chuckled. “So you see, great vampire, unless you can get your woman pregnant, there isn’t much chance you can conquer the ancient one.”

  Furious, Ronan responded. “How the hell did I get through seven hundred years without knowing some vampires can impregnate mortals?”

  “Or if there is a female vampire that is fertile, she can become pregnant by a mortal male or that rare male vampire in the one percentile.”

  “Interesting, but I don’t care about that right now. How did I miss hearing about it?”

  “You sound suspicious, vampire.”

  “Well, maybe I am. Emotions are running a bit high now. In case you’ve forgotten, we’re fecked up beyond all reason here.”

  “All right, all right.” The Moroccan sounded exasperated by the reprimand in Ronan’s voice. “It makes sense you wouldn’t hear about the one percent factor. You’ve been roaming the world hunting the ancient one forever. Also, if only one percent of all vampires can impregnate or get pregnant, how often do you think these births would be noted? There have only been three recorded vampire-caused impregnations in the seven hundred years since you’ve been immortal.”

  “What happened to those children?”

  “The seer said the first was killed in Huntingdon, England. The second was long-lived before being killed in a fight with another vampire in Russia. The third lived until twenty years ago in Germany. He committed suicide.”

  “Suicide?”

  “He arranged to fall on a silver stake.”

  “Shit.”

  Ronan walked to the fireplace mantle and looked down at a fire that Lachlan had started earlier.

  “Perhaps, if nothing extraordinary has happened by now,” Yusuf said, “Your virility is in question.”

  “You mean fertility,” Ronan almost growled.

  “That is what I meant.” Yusuf cleared his throat. “If you impregnate her, it will be accelerated. She could be pregnant right now.”

  Clarissa, pregnant. Right this minute.

  Ronan felt like someone had just hit him over the head with a sledgehammer. He sagged against the mantle.

  Yusuf continued as if he hadn’t dropped a bomb. “It appears to be another chemical reaction, an alteration in thinking between the vampire and his or her mate that makes the difference in whether an impregnation occurs.”

  “Chemical?”

  “As in feeling between you. There has to be sufficient feeling between you and this Clarissa before she can conceive. You have to want a child with her. Is she in love with you?”

  The question echoed in Ronan’s head. Is she in love with you? “I…I doubt it.”

  “Unfortunate. You must make her love you, you must bed her and impregnate her. And the very last step…”

  “Yes, go on.”

  “You must be in love with her. No step must be left out.”

  Ronan wanted to reach through the phone and strangle Yusuf. Instead he took cleansing breaths while he ruminated. He couldn’t believe what he’d heard; the implication disrupted his sense of reality.

  “You said the love must be in appearance only,” Ronan said.

  “Apparently I was wrong.” A slow, soft laugh came over the phone. “Nothing is sane about vampir
es, so why does this surprise you?”

  Closing his eyes, Ronan tried to clear his mind and think rationally. Objectivity and the cool detachment slipped between his fingers. “This is insane.”

  Clarissa wasn’t any woman he’d slept with. She wasn’t Selima, a virgin vampire who must be fucked or die. Clarissa had taken him into her body with his promise.

  I can’t have children.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Ronan said.

  He dared glance at his friends. Erin and Lachlan retreated into the kitchen and he thought he heard them say something about coffee and breakfast. Micky and Jared stayed on the loveseat, but their expressions said they felt a little uncomfortable, as if they’d intruded on Ronan’s privacy. Oh, what the feck? They would have to know the information anyway so what difference did it make? Ronan felt like he needed another pint of blood.

  Yusuf’s voice came back over the line. “As I said, in order for her to become pregnant you must want a child with her and must be in love with her.”

  Ronan swallowed hard. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe me or not, it is true. It was never just the coupling alone that would bring down the eventual downfall of the ancient one. It is the love and then the impregnation. So it would be advice, vampire, to own up to what has happened to you and learn from it.”

  Stunned, Ronan walked back to the kitchen and saw Lachlan and Erin had started scrambled eggs and toast. “If I impregnate her. There’s no guarantee.”

  “No, but if you love her, the fertilization will be more certain.”

  He gritted the next words through his teeth. “I don’t love her.”

  Lachlan and Erin both looked up from their work at the kitchen counter, deep frowns impressed on their faces.

  Damn it all to hell and back.

  “Think of it this way,” Yusuf said. “If you do not get her pregnant, then you cannot defeat the ancient one.”

  The finality of his statement made reality seep in around Ronan’s anger and surprise and the regret he felt after saying he didn’t love Clarissa. “We only have a day until Halloween. You think I can get her pregnant in that amount of time and we’ll be able to learn how to kill the ancient one?”

  “Yes. It is written.”

  “It is written,” Ronan said, grumbling. “Where is all this crap written all the time?”

  Obviously Yusuf knew Ronan didn’t expect an answer to that particular question. “The seer explained that vampire pregnancies come on fast and hard.”

  Incredulous, Ronan walked out of the kitchen again and wandered to the center of the living room. “So?”

  “You will know, Ronan. You will know.”

  Closing his eyes, Ronan willed himself not to yell. Instead he moved onto the next important subject. “Maybe you can help me with something else.”

  He explained to Yusuf what had happened to Sorley and his fears that Sorley now had the same evil eroding him as the ancient one did.

  “So you’re saying that brazen little Irish vampire is now possessed by evil?”

  “When we entered the mind of the ancient one to get his name something happened to Sorley. And the ancient one kept saying something about the darkest. The evil in the tunnels must be what he meant. The same evil that attacked Micky and took her to another dimension.”

  “You think the ancient one has absorbed this evil?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Silence came over the line for so long Ronan thought the connection had dropped. Finally Yusuf spoke. “When the seer and I talked earlier she mentioned that the darkest you speak of has been growing and feeding on the evil in the town for a century. Do you believe that?”

  “It’s what Clarissa believes. She found a book in the library on local history that references things happening in this town a century ago that pretty much bear out the suspicion.”

  “You must be very careful, Ronan. The ancient one may be a formidable foe, but this darkest, this ultimate evil is perhaps far worse. You must impregnate Clarissa immediately so the power will be released to you. Without it against the ancient one you are doomed. With this more powerful evil backing the ancient one, you are even more likely to fail.”

  Ignoring the man’s reference to impregnate Clarissa, he went with his second concern. “What about Sorley? Is there anything I can do to help him?” He explained how Sorley wanted to drain the criminals they’d caught. “I’ve got to stop him.”

  A long sigh came over the phone. “If you want to stop him permanently, you know what you must do.”

  “No.” The word came without hesitation. “No, I can’t do that.”

  “You must consider it and keep a silver stake or bullet on hand just in case. It will not destroy the ancient one, but it will kill Sorley if the time comes.”

  Ronan closed his eyes and passed one hand over his face. “I can’t.”

  “It doesn’t come any clearer than that. Good luck, vampire.” The line went dead.

  Ronan clicked off the phone and walked to the phone table where he replaced the receiver.

  Jared appeared shell-shocked. “Did I hear you say impregnate?”

  Ronan leaned back against one wall. As Lachlan and Erin came out of the kitchen, Ronan explained without leaving out details, what the man had said. The others didn’t stop him to ask questions, just listened while he poured the information like a faucet. When he reached the part about Sorley, they all went grave and silent. They knew, as he did, that he would give serious thought to the possibility Sorley had turned rogue forever.

  He would have to hunt his friend. His crazy, funny, yet good-hearted vampire friend. An ache started in his heart and spread outward. He wanted to scream to the heavens for everything that happened the last few days. Sorley didn’t deserve this, no matter how irreverent or pesky he could be.

  Ronan decided he would do whatever it took to help his friend.

  “Sorley will be all right,” Micky said, her words doubtful.

  Suddenly a smile came over Erin’s face and she stood up quickly. Erin’s smile broadened as she looked at Ronan. “Excuse me a minute, everyone. I believe breakfast is going to have to wait.”

  “Why?” Lachlan asked.

  She pursed her lips and a mischievous look twinkled in her eyes. “I have something in the medicine cabinet I think we’re going to need.”

  “What?” Ronan asked in apprehension.

  “Why, a pregnancy test, silly,” she said as she headed for the hallway.

  “Holy shit,” Jared said.

  Lachlan’s mouth popped open and he swallowed hard. “Aye.”

  Ronan’s eyes widened as the implication hit him between the eyeballs like a grenade. “Oh, my God.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ronan ascended the attic stairs, his heart at turns heavy and elated. He had to tell Clarissa what he knew and face the consequences if she became angry. But he’d faced the anger of the ancient one. Surely he could face the wrath of a thoroughly pissed-off mortal woman.

  Huh. Maybe. He’d insisted on taking the pregnancy kit up with him in a plastic bag, unwilling to show it to her right away. This would take finesse. And maybe it would give him time to stop reeling from the very real possibility that he’d made her pregnant. He didn’t know where this tale would lead, but in the meantime he could protect Clarissa and—dare he think it?—their baby.

  Whether he liked it or not, whether any of them liked it, Clarissa Gaines might be pregnant with his child. Not in a week, not in a month or a year. Now.

  At the attic door he paused. Time to face the music. The very loud, most likely inharmonious music.

  When he opened the door Clarissa turned away from the dark wood mirror over the Queen Anne dresser to look at him.

  “Hey,” she said softly, her smile tender.

  God, he loved her smile.

  For what couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, but felt like much more, he took in her beauty. She wore a plain coral-colored sweater over jeans. Sh
e didn’t have shoes on yet. Tumbling like a thick, lustrous curtain, her hair shimmered and her smooth skin had the flush of a woman who’d been loved well.

  He walked toward her with intent, his desire surging and flowing as vampire lust came to the forefront. She must have seen it in his eyes, a warning. Her gaze widened, her nostrils flaring as she stepped back. A turbulent sea raged in her eyes, then for a flicker golden sparks danced inside that ocean.

  He came to a dead stop right in front of her. Her eyebrows rose, then her eyes cleared. Whatever he’d seen in her gaze disappeared as if he’d imagined it.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Maybe nothing,” he said. “Maybe everything.”

  Amusement curved her lips. “What is it about you vampires always being mysterious and obtuse?”

  Pulled in by her lighthearted statement, he smiled. “I can’t hide the fact I’d like to toss you on the bed and make love to you again.”

  “Is that all you vampires think about?”

  “I don’t know. How many other vampires are you acquainted with?”

  “Sorley and you. That’s it.”

  He’d give her a piece of truth before he had to reveal that he’d deceived her earlier, albeit unintentionally. “The wanting to fuck you part is normal for a vampire. When a vampire finds a match it becomes difficult to keep from wanting to fuck daily. Many times daily.”

  She moved away from him slowly and sat on the bed. She reached for her socks and pulled them on. “Other than wanting me again, I sense there’s something else you need to tell me. Several somethings.”

  He walked from one corner of the bedroom to the next, aware it made him appear nervous as hell. The news he must impart had never come from his lips before. He stopped pacing and sat on the bed near her.

  “I’ve got only one piece of bad news,” he said. “At least I think there’s only one piece.”

  She smiled. “Oh, goodie. Then give it to me first.”

  He told her about Sorley, and her expression turned to pure concern. “Oh no. What are we going to do?”

  “I’m not sure there’s anything we can do now. If it comes to it…if it comes to it we’d have to…” He couldn’t say it. His throat tightened.