by Nina Pierce
“Then this isn’t a problem?”
Ronan sent the vial crashing to the floor. She lunged, but was too late. Her life’s salvation lay puddled at his booted feet.
“You lie, you sad, pathetic woman.” He hauled her to her feet. “The good professor didn’t happen to mention that his cure has never worked … did he?” Angry spittle sprayed her face. “I didn’t know until recently that he’d continued his research. But I’ve destroyed it all.” Ronan shoved her away from him. “This briefcase which Glenn so graciously located, holds the last remnants of the professor’s formulas for both the serum and the gruel. And it shelters one other document.” Ronan pulled a piece of paper from the satchel. “It seems you were helping the good professor with his research. Tell me, Alexandra, how many vampires did you turn back when his cure didn’t work?”
She stared mutely at him, unwilling to play his game.
“Oh, please, don’t insult me with your doe-eyed-innocent act. It’s all right here. How he brought them to the brink of death trying to make them human and how you offered your vampire talents saving them from the human frailty of death and restoring their immortality.” He snapped his finger on the paper. The noise echoed like a clanging cymbal in the stillness. “And it seems you were busy helping him burn those who didn’t survive.”
“I didn’t know about the fires.” Her defeated words came out in a whisper. “He confessed to me later that he’d only wanted to give them a proper funeral pyre. I thought he’d stopped …” The words winded her and Alex inhaled deeply, trying to catch her breath.
Ronan picked up the thread of conversation, “but he continued experimenting, changing and adapting the formula. How lovely that he found an assistant.”
“I have copies of all the formulas.” Another lie.
Ronan simply shook his head. “No you don’t, Alexandra. Your body begs for both the serum and his gruel. If you could’ve manufactured it, you wouldn’t be laying in a heap of quivering muscle.”
There was no use fighting the truth. “He didn’t want me to be liable if someone discovered his work.”
“Yes, my father was an honorable man. It’s such a shame it had to be me who guaranteed an end to his heinous research.”
“Your father?” Alex’s question came out trembling and weak.
“Professor Morgan.”
“But Paul had no children.”
With a feral cry of frustration, Ronan picked up the wooden desk chair and shattered it on the floor. When his angry eyes locked on hers, they were filled with unshed tears. “I was his dark secret. An abomination! Neither human nor vampire. I got dealt the shittiest of hands.”
“I don’t understand.”
The heels of Ronan’s boots clicked along the cement as he paced wall to wall like a caged animal. She heard another muted explosion and wondered why the smoke detectors hadn’t engaged. Ronan had probably disabled them. She wondered if he would have lured her into his staged drama if she hadn’t stumbled upon it herself. Because if one thing that had become perfectly clear—he’d done everything at the tavern to guarantee she died in this final conflagration.
“Of course you don’t understand. No one understands. How could a human sire a child with a vampire?”
“I didn’t know it was possible.” Her statement stopped him cold.
“Obviously, neither did he.” Ronan thumped a fist on his chest. “But here I am. Despite everything, I live!” Long fingers pushed the blond hair from his face. “And thanks to him I walked between the worlds. Too weak to be considered a vampire. Too aberrant to be considered human. I couldn’t eat food, but I had worthless fangs. Barely formed, they weren’t strong enough to tear flesh. I had to live off my mother’s kills. She brought woodland creatures home for us to feed on together. Woodchucks, rabbits and deer.” He laughed derisively. “I gotta tell you, it was a helluva a childhood.”
Alex felt her strength seeping from her. She hadn’t expected to be so dependent on the serum— or the gruel supplement. She knew of the side effects. Had seen them on several occasions before convincing the professor to try the cure on her. He’d believed he’d made a breakthrough with his last formula modification. She’d had her last injection and batch of gruel the night of the fire. Of course, the man hadn’t expected to be murdered by his own son. Another bout of nausea filled her throat. Under the guise of retching, she shifted closer to the wood scattered on the floor. She couldn’t let Ronan get away with all the killing. She had to keep him talking until she could figure out how to stop him. “Your parents loved you.”
“My mother loved me. My father loved my mother.” Ronan lost himself in his reminiscences. “My mother was loathe to let him experiment on me, but she continued the treatments, dreaming of making us both human one day. My father worked tirelessly to discover what made vampire blood different. He took samples upon samples, injecting her with serums he hoped would work.” Tears ran unchecked down Ronan’s face. “He took everything from her and never got any closer to finding anything. Still, she let him experiment. Over and over, he stuck her. Until she became incapacitated and could no longer get out of bed. I was a teenager by then. I was forced to learn how to hunt and feed. I fashioned false canines and honed my skills so I could feed us both. I was so angry at what he was doing to her. My father and I argued. I wanted him to stop, but he insisted it was what she wanted.”
Alex moved again, the splintered chair leg now resting beneath her thigh. “She wanted to save you from the hell of immortality.”
“Immortality?” He laughed at the ceiling. “I wasn’t given that power. I couldn’t heal. I had no superior senses. I was weak like my father. I hated him for creating me. I hated him for killing my mother.”
“She died?”
“She was murdered!” Ronan’s frustration echoed off the stone walls.
Alex could barely breathe. “Your father was a kind and gentle man. He offered vampires salvation.”
“Look at you. You call the life you have right now salvation?”
“I didn’t want to be a vampire. I was pulled into this world without my consent. Glenn saved me from the monster who left me for dead. I will never blame him for completing the transformation. But I never wanted this life.”
Ronan squatted in front of her and stared into her eyes. “Look at me, Alexandra. Really look at me.” With a vicious growl, the vampire within him was unleashed.
This close, with his fangs hanging in her face and the fires of hell burning in his eyes, she recognized the vampire who had possessed her dreams for thirty years. “You? But that can’t be. The creature who attacked me was no more than fifteen. You wouldn’t have aged.”
Ronan squeezed her chin. The unexpected spike of pain burned hot behind her eyes as he dragged his tongue up her cheek. With a sharp hiss of air, he filled his lungs with her scent. “The night my mother died, I ran from the house.” His voice was hot in her ear. “I was angry and alone. I wanted to kill. To feel the power of the vampire. You were a student of my father’s. So young and weak. I recognized you in town and I followed you to the tavern. I waited patiently until you left and I took you. Dragged you into the woods. Pierced your neck with the canines that had become my life’s salvation. I drank greedily. You were my first. A vampire never forgets his first.” His fangs grazed her neck just above the scarf. “I figured I’d killed you. Imagine my pleasant surprise when I returned to South Kenton and found you alive. My sweet Alexandra.”
He’d turned her. She no longer thought about the professor or Glenn. Ronan needed to burn for bringing her into a world she abhorred and an existence she hadn’t chosen. Alex let the hatred fill her. With all the years of rage behind it, she swung the splintered leg of the chair up toward Ronan’s chest. With explosive reflexes, Ronan wrenched it from her fingers and threw it across the room.
“Stupid woman. You have no idea who you fight.” Ronan stared down at her, his features easing back into a mask of human contempt.
“No. I do
n’t know.” Alex closed her eyes in apparent defeat. She would not let Ronan get away with what he had done to her—to the others. Keeping him in the cellar while the tavern blazed above them and leaving him without an escape route was her only chance to make him pay. She didn’t fear death. She welcomed it. Anything would be better than the agony coursing through her body. She inhaled slowly. “Tell me how.”
“How? How did I age? Why didn’t you recognize me? Why didn’t my own father recognize me when we worked together at the university?”
Alex nodded and forced herself to meet his evil gaze.
“I went high into the Rockies. They live there, you know. Small clusters of them feeding. Living as pure vampires are meant to live. I trained with them. Nearly six years I learned their ways, aged and grew strong. The night of my twenty-first birthday, when the moon was full, she came to me. The leader of the clan. A female vampire so ancient and powerful, no man challenged her position.” Ronan squatted beside her and brushed his fingers across her cheek. “Her skin was white as ivory, glowing in the moonlight.” His hand slid down her chest, squeezing her breast with such force, she gasped. “With tits so ripe and full, I greedily filled my hands.”
Disgust rolled the acid in her belly.
“I took what she gave me. With the lust of youth and the passion of a grown man, I loved her. And as my pleasure filled her, she took me. With great fangs of power, she sucked my blood. Then offered me hers and made me a full vampire. Have you ever loved a man that way, Alexandra?” His thumb dragged across her lip, slicing it with his nail. “Your teeth buried in his flesh, giving him power while his cock is buried in you?”
Alex’s eyes narrowed and she frowned, cold revulsion shivering through her body.
“Oh, don’t look so disgusted.” Ronan grabbed her hair and wrenched her neck to the side, ripping the scarf away with the other hand. “Reese has done it to you. I smelled him on you the minute I entered the room. And the scarf was just a little too obvious.” He pulled her to her feet as he stood. “Does he know what you are?”
“What I am?”
“A two-bit tramp who is neither human nor vampire?” He shoved her away and she landed hard on the floor. “Won’t he be surprised when he finds your charred remains here in the cellar?” Something exploded above them. “The final stage is set. The professor. Glenn. That bitch of a reporter. Now the winery. Months of work are finally finished.”
“Hope? What the hell did you do with Hope?”
“Ah yes, your dear human friend.” His demonic laugh bounced eerily around the stone walls. “A pathetic excuse for a human. Having Chris ditch her car in the lake the night of the fire was absolutely my pièce de résistance. Burkett will never find that body. And isn’t that so sad for him?”
Ronan lifted his nose, his hand churning the air as if enjoying a pleasant aroma and not the stench of charred wood. “Fires are such wonderful things. They bury so much evidence.” He began pulling papers from the briefcase. “This is the last of my father’s research. Glenn found it when I could not. My father ruined my mother’s purity by convincing her to become something less than the powerful vampire she was. You and Glenn did the same with your blood wine. After tonight, these blights will be eliminated and balance will be restored to the vampire population.” He held the paper up with the evidence of her involvement. “I thought about giving this to Colton. But it really does absolve you of any culpability. We can’t have that if we want him to believe you to be the murdering bitch who killed poor defenseless humans.”
Alex had no intention of telling him that Reese already believed her to be innocent.
Glass shattered above them. Surely, the fire department had been alerted. Reese would come, run into the flames and rescue her, like he’d done with Glenn. But once again, it would be too late. At the thought of him, sadness poured into Alex’s hollow chest. She wasn’t sure when Reese had stolen her heart, but it belonged to him as surely as the Grim Reaper was whispering her name. Alex refused to cower at his beckoning. “You won’t get away with this. Reese will hunt you down and destroy you.”
“Colton and his team from RISEN?” Ronan snorted in disgust. “They will never suspect the one they seek is hidden right beneath their stuck up noses. I came to South Kenton to finally avenge my mother’s death. Imagine my astonishment when I discovered vampires who didn’t feed. Having them around to minister their rhetoric to others was unacceptable, so I killed them.” He knelt beside her, running his hands over her body. She was too weak to fight the intimate touch. “But your winery is a closely guarded secret, Alexandra. Many were loyal to Glenn … and you.” He palmed her crotch and lifted his fingers to his nose. “I couldn’t infiltrate their ranks until I joined RISEN. It was such a pleasant surprise when I found it was you fermenting the blood wine. The fact that you’d been working with my father—bonus!”
“What makes you think I won’t tell Reese all of this?”
Ronan pressed his mouth to hers, crushing her lips against her teeth before pulling back with a sigh. “Because, my sweet love, you won’t be alive when he arrives. Anymore than the puny humans I fed upon. Fires are wonderful creatures. And since there is no one else to save you …”
Ronan was right, of course. Both the professor and Glenn had each tried to save her.
She wondered if Paul Morgan had known his son was the cause of her tortured life. His questions at her initial interview for his drug experiment would have corroborated when and where she was turned. After all Ronan had shared, Alex suspected the professor had specifically chosen her. Perhaps Paul believed saving Alex would atone for his son’s brutality. Glenn had simply pulled her out of death’s arms, believing a vampire’s life was better than none at all. Tears welled in her eyes and slipped down her cheek.
Ronan stood and walked to the doorway leading into the cask room. Blue light flashed from his fingertips. “I understand you don’t actually burn to death in a fire. The smoke and heat will kill you long before the flames reach you.” A loud rush of wind came from the adjoining room. “My father’s education actually came in handy. The chemical combination I developed ignites in air and burns wherever it lands. There will be no evidence of an accelerant when the fire marshal investigates both deaths.” He looked at Chris on the floor and then at her. “Of course, I will tell them you died in your own fire.” He snatched up the broken chair leg. “Now, now, there is no reason to cry, Alexandra. It will all be over shortly.”
Ronan misunderstood her tears. She didn’t weep for her own life, but for those whom she’d loved and had been stolen from her. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Alex was too weak to move. In reality, it was her desire to become human that had killed her. Whether she died at the demand of the tribunal in a few months, at Ronan’s hands now or in six decades, her mortality had been her choice.
Ronan arched the wooden stake high over his head. She refused to flinch from this final blow to her heart. Without those she loved, there was no greater pain he could inflict upon her. She would not beg Ronan for her life. Alexandra Flanagan intended to die with her dignity intact.
In disbelief, she watched him shatter the bulb above her. Without a word, Ronan strode out of the room. He slammed the cellar door. The thunderous snick of the lock was the last thing she heard before the fires of hell erupted from the cask room.
Chapter Nine
The engine’s lights pulsed through the streets of South Kenton, barreling into the night toward another structure fire. And not just any structure— O’Malley’s Tavern. There was no way this wasn’t somehow connected with the professor, Glenn, and the rogue vampire. Unusually wired, Reese’s knee jumped.
When the alarm rang a little after 2 a.m., he’d been lying on his bunk trying to work through the puzzle. Pieces were clicking in to place, but some key element was missing. Reese believed Alex hadn’t committed the murders, but his gut screamed whatever she was hiding would be the key to solving everything. Their afternoon of mind-blowing sex had ende
d with her walking away. There had been something final in the way she’d kissed him, turned her back and gotten into her car. He’d been too pissed at Josh and his outburst to analyze it at the time.
When he’d arrived at work, Josh had gone out of his way to avoid Reese. Until they found Hope—and he had to believe they would—Reese was going to be hard pressed convincing Josh of Alex’s innocence.
Alex had been working with Glenn and the professor to perfect the blood wine. All the vamps killed, it turned out, were regular clients of the winery. The humans who had died, save for the professor, had been sucked dry. Glenn was dead. His house burned. And now the tavern blazed. There was no doubt the fires of the last three nights were related and the missing connection lay in adding up the common denominator.
Who hated vampires living off blood wine enough to systematically purge them and its creators from the population of South Kenton?
The engine pulled into the dirt lot of the tavern, the tanker close behind. Fire had already destroyed the right side of the building. Flames and smoke rolled out of the broken windows, sparks dancing in the freedom of the night. Liquid fire dripped down the side of the building and lay unfed in the dirt lot.
Reese jumped from the engine, gloves, mask, and helmet donned before he turned to grab the loops of the hose from the side of the truck. One car stood alone in the lot, but he didn’t recognize it. It was well past closing time. The place should be empty. The dispatcher hadn’t given them any information about possible victims.
“Colton, Burkett,” Deputy Chief Sykes called to them, “rescue. Water will be right behind. With a car in the lot we need to see if anyone’s in there. A quick sweep.”