by J. D. Robb
“Caught me,” Eve said. “I’m lying about any pretense I find you attractive or compelling on a personal level. About the rest, that’s a wrap. You not only ran your mouth where it could be heard on Allesseria’s ’link, EDD’s working on cleaning and enhancing a few seconds on screen during the trans. You moved partially into view.
“Added to that,” she continued, “we’re about to link you to one Pensky, Gregor. Shouldn’t have used a former known associate as a fall guy. Even a dead fall guy, Dorian. Little slips, they’ll kill you every time.”
She glanced idly around the room. “I bet you saved some of Tiara Kent’s blood for a souvenir. I get that warrant in the morning, I’m going to find it, and the jewelry you took off her dead or dying body. You scum. That’ll put you down for three counts of murder. Anything else you want to add to the menu?”
“Do you think you can threaten me?” His eyes were black pools. “Play with me?”
“If you’re trying for thrall, you’re missing. I’ll have you locked on Allesseria in a matter of hours. The rest will tumble right into the pile. You’re done. I just wanted the satisfaction of telling you personally before—Don’t,” she warned. She laid her hand on her stunner when she saw the move in his eyes. “Unless you want to add assaulting an officer to the mix. In which case, I can haul you out of here. Sun’s down, Dorian.”
“Yes, it is.” He smiled, and to Eve’s absolute shock, showed fangs.
He leaped, almost seemed to fly at her. She drew her weapon, pivoted, but she wasn’t quick enough. Nothing could have been. She got off two shots as he hurled her across the room. He took both hits, and just kept coming. She felt it in every bone as she hit the stone wall, and though the stunner spurted out of her hand on impact, she managed to roll, then kick up hard with both feet. The force knocked him back far enough to give her room to flip up.
She braced for the next attack, but instead he hissed like a snake, cringed back. She flicked her gaze down, saw he was staring at the cross that had come out from under her shirt.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” He snarled as he circled her. “You actually believe your own hype.”
Whatever he’d drunk had juiced him up good, she determined. So good, she’d never be able to take him in hand-to-hand. She held up the cross as she tried to gauge the distance to her stunner, and her chances of reaching it.
“I’ll drink you dry.” His tongue ran over his long incisors. “Almost dry. And make you drink me. I’ll change you into what I am.”
“What? A babbling lunatic? Why didn’t Tiara change?”
“She wasn’t strong enough. I drank too much of her. But she died in bliss under me. As you will. But you’re strong, strong enough to be reborn. I knew it when I saw you. Knew you’d be the first who’d walk as I walk.”
“Uh-huh. You have the right to remain silent.”
He sprang, leaping like a great cat. She blocked the first blow, though she felt the force of it sing down her arm, explode into her shoulder. But the second sent her sprawling. She thudded hard against one of his metal tables, and tasted her own blood in her mouth as she rolled painfully onto her back.
He was standing over her now, fangs gleaming, eyes mad. “I give you the gift, the ultimate kiss.”
Eve swiped the blood off her mouth. “Bite me.”
Grinning, he fell on her.
Outside the door, Feeney pulled out his master and a bag of electronic tricks to bypass the locks.
“I’ve got it.” Blood seeped through the ragged tear in Roarke’s jacket where a knife point had slipped through. He flipped out a recorder, closed his eyes to focus first on the tones of the beeps.
Quickly, he played his fingers over the keypad in the same order, then held the recorder to the voice command.
“Enter Dorian,” the recorder replayed.
“Hey, Dallas said nothing was to be recorded.”
Roarke spared one glance over at Feeney’s wide grin. “I’m a poor team player.”
They pushed in the door, Roarke going low as he knew Feeney preferred high.
She was flat on her back, blood soaking her shirt. Even as Roarke rushed toward her, she pushed herself up on her elbows. “I’m okay. I’m okay. Call the MTs before that asshole bleeds to death.”
Roarke barely spared a glance at the man lying on the floor with a wooden stake in his belly. His own stomach muscles were knotted in slippery fists. “How much of this is yours?”
She looked down at her shirt in some disgust. “Hardly any. Missed the heart. Bastard was on top of me. Gut wounds are messy. Feeney?”
“Contacting the MTs,” he told her. “Situation below is nearly contained. Hell of a show. But looks like you’re the headliner here. Jesus, what a freaking mess.”
“I can’t believe I’m going to have to thank Baxter for being a smart-ass. Lost my weapon. He’d’ve done some damage before you got through if I hadn’t had the pointy stick.”
She started to stand, and with Roarke’s help made it to her feet. Once there, she swayed and she staggered. “Just a little shaken up. Hit my head on various hard objects. No, no, don’t carry me.”
He simply scooped her into his arms. “You’re doomed to have me disobey.” Then he pressed his lips to the side of her throat where he saw the faint wounds. “Got a taste of you, did he?”
She heard the rage, and tried to tamp it down. “Told him to bite me. It’s the first time anyone’s ever taken that suggestion literally. Except you.” She turned Roarke’s face with her hand so that he looked at her rather than Dorian. “Put me down, will you, pal? This seriously undermines my authority.”
“Hey, hey!” Crouched over Dorian, Feeney stopped even his half-hearted attempt to stanch the blood flow. “Is this guy sporting fangs?”
“He must’ve had them filed down that way,” Eve said. “Then had them capped. Easy on, easy off. We’ll sort it out.”
Peabody ran in. There was a darkening bruise on her cheekbone and a nasty scrape along her jaw. “Unit’s heading out to escort the MTs in. Holy crap!” she added when she saw Dorian. “You staked him. You actually staked him.”
“It was handy. Let’s get those medics in here. I don’t want this guy skipping out on multiple murder charges by dying on me. I want to know the minute he’s able to talk. I think we’re going to get an interesting confession.”
“It’s supposed to be the heart,” she heard Peabody mutter. “It’s really supposed to be the heart.”
Eve blew out a long breath. “Keep it up, Peabody, and I may have Mira shrink your head after she’s done with this second-rate Dracula. I want some damn air. I’m going up to the real world.”
Once she had, she took the bottle of water Roarke passed her and drank like a camel. She lifted her chin at the blood on his sleeve. “Is that bad?”
“It damn well is. I liked this jacket. Here, take a blocker. If you don’t have the mother of all headaches yet, it’s only due to adrenaline. Take the blocker, and I won’t haul your stubborn ass into a health center for an exam.”
She popped the blocker without a quibble. Then since it was there, she sat on the edge of the floor through the open door of the police van.
“He believed it,” she said after a moment. “He actually believed he was a vampire. Drugs probably pushed the act into his reality. Mira nailed the profile from the get. It was the pretending to be the Prince of Darkness that was the pretense, for him.”
“More likely he was just pushing the con as far as it would take him—and gambling to use it to plead insanity.”
“No. You didn’t see his face when he looked at this.” She held up the cross. “And thanks, by the way. It bought me a few minutes when it counted.”
Roarke sat beside her, rubbed a hand over her thigh. “Illogical superstition. Sometimes it works.”
“Apparently. He’s got himself some kind of super-Zeus recipe, is my guess. Not just the whacked brain it causes, or the temporary strength. Speed, too. The bastard was f
ast. Magician training, grift experience, drugs. I wonder when it turned on him, stopped being a way to case marks.”
Gently, Roarke traced a fingertip over her neck wounds. “There are all kinds of vampires, aren’t there? Darling Eve.”
“Yeah.” Very briefly, since all of the cops running around were too busy to notice, she leaned her head against Roarke’s shoulder. “Under it, he wasn’t really like my father. Not the way I thought. My father wasn’t crazy. Dorian, he’s bug-shit.”
“Evil doesn’t have to be sane.”
“No, you’re right about that.” And she’d faced it—and she’d beaten it. One more time. “Well, the bad news is he’s going to end up in a facility for violent mental defectives, not a concrete cage. But you take what you can get.”
Roarke’s hand rested on her knee. She laid hers over it, squeezed. “And right now, I’ll take a hot shower and a fresh shirt. I’ve got to go in and clean myself up, and clean this up, too.”
“I’ll drive.”
“You should go home,” she told him, but her hand stayed over his. “Get some sleep. It’s going to take hours to close this up.”
“I have this image I can’t shake.” He got up, drew her to her feet. “Of the sun rising, all red and gold smears over the sky. And you and I walking toward home in that lovely soft light. So taking what I can get, I’ll take sunrise with you.”
“Sunrise it is.”
She kept her hand in his as she pulled out her communicator to contact Feeney, Peabody, the team leaders to check on the status below.
With her hand linked with Roarke’s, the demons that plagued her were silent. And would stay silent, she thought, through the night. And well past sunrise.
Amy and the Earl’s Amazing Adventure
MARY BLAYNEY
For Mikey and Dawn
For Steve and Laura
And 2006, the year of the diamond
One
THE MUSEUM WITH THE BRIGHT BLUE DOOR
LONDON, APRIL 2006
“What do you do when you’re just days from leaving a place that calls to your soul?” the girl asked.
The tour guide nodded encouragement and was delighted when she continued.
“I can’t imagine leaving England. The thought of Topeka makes me shudder and not just because spring is slow in coming this year.”
What had prompted Amy Stevens to ask him that question? He was a tour guide, a docent, in a small house, on a quiet street in Mayfair. She could not possibly be confusing him with an Embassy official. God bless her. He knew no more than her name, and that from her passport. And what did it say about modern London that picture identification was necessary for a house tour?
Even without her name he had known that she was a crucial element in the puzzle he had been trying to solve for so long. He had thought he would lose her and wished with desperation that she would ask a question, any question. Praise the Lord, she had asked him the perfect question, had given him the opening he needed.
“Why can’t you stay?”
“I have to go to a wedding in June. I want to be there and I have to be there. Jim says I can come back here but—”
“Who’s Jim?” the docent interrupted. A boyfriend could complicate the whole situation.
“A friend. We’ve both spent the year here in grad school. See, he’s the one getting married back home and his fiancée is one of my best friends. Once I’m home there’s my family and my other pals. They won’t want me to leave. Not one of them would understand. They think Topeka is perfect.”
“For them it may be.” Not for her though. Wasn’t she the first person who had listened to the story of the magic coin? She had even asked him if it was true, had not brushed the magic away as a fanciful tale. With complete confidence he took the dented coin from the display case and handed it to her. “Take this with you as a memento and believe that anything is possible.”
“You can’t give that away,” she said, putting her hands behind her back.
“I can give it to anyone I choose.” The docent shrugged. That was the truth even if the next would be a lie. “I can get another one easily.”
In her heart, Amy Stevens wanted that coin, a fairy-tale memento of this fabulous year. So in the end she let the docent talk her into keeping it, knowing she would buy a chain and wear it around her neck forever.
She hurried through Mayfair to Earl’s Place, the pub just off Piccadilly that she and Jim had claimed as their own. Along with a hundred other soccer fans. The pub was crowded and she could not get Jim’s attention. She could wait. He wouldn’t be interested in anything until the match was over anyway.
Amy sank onto a stool at the bar, took out the coin, and stared at it. The docent’s story graced it with magic. In his tale this coin had changed the lives of the three people who had wished on it. All for the better.
What were the chances that it really could grant a wish?
Zero.
Who would it hurt to pretend?
No one.
Placing the coin on the bar in front of her, she tried out a few wishes, then picked up the coin and held it tight. She whispered, “I wish there was a way for me to stay here.”
The coin felt warm and she frowned at it. The whole place was filled with people, the room overheated, the crowd cheering their favorite team.
The bartender worked his way to her spot at the end of the bar. Not the usual guy. An extra hired to help handle the crowd? He wore the Earl’s uniform of jeans and button-down shirt with sleeves turned up. His white shirt was spotless despite his busy routine. What kind of magic was that? she wondered. She followed his progress down the bar, mesmerized by the rhythm with which he took orders, handed out drinks, and made change.
He was nice enough looking and then he smiled. It changed his pleasant face to fabulous. It was a smile that made her want more from him than his practiced chatter.
“What’ll you have?”
His accent was different, not at all suited to a pub. His voice belonged at Eton or Oxford. Or somewhere with Prince William.
She pointed to the wine bottle he held, for some stupid reason not wanting to open her mouth and betray the fact she was an American. She forgot about the magic coin and it fell from her hand, rolled along the bar toward him, and onto the floor.
She gasped and leaned over the bar trying to spot it.
“Under the cooler,” he said. “Is it important to you?”
“Oh, yes. It’s very special.”
“Right then.” He squatted down, reaching under the cooler. He looked up at her with a grimace. “Time to do some cleaning down here.” He stretched a little farther and with a triumphant, “Have it,” stood up, glanced at the coin. He seemed taken aback by it, but handed it back to her with a smile.
“Thanks,” she said, “thanks a lot.”
He nodded, held up the wine bottle and when she said, “Please,” poured her a glass.
She dug in to her jeans pocket for some money, but he waved off payment.
“Give me a good look at the coin, would you? That’s all the pay I want.”
She was about to hand it back to him when the room erupted into shouts and cheers. The match was over and any number of thirsty sports fiends surged toward the bar.
“If you like, I can wait until the crowd’s gone.”
He leaned across the bar, resting on his arms, his smile as warm as an embrace. “Great, that’s exactly what I wished you’d say. There’s a table in the back corner. It’s a little quieter there.”
Amy nodded. She’d hoped for more from him than chatter. And it looked like she was going to get it. She wound her way through the crowd and sat down at the table the bartender had pointed out.
Jim came over to her a minute later. “Did you see that last goal, Amy? World Cup here we come!”
“Jim, you’ve been saying that for years,” she answered, trying to match his enthusiasm.
“Yeah, but the matches begin in June. Admit it,” he challen
ged in that patronizing way he had, “you don’t even know what two teams were playing.”
“Nope. No idea. You can call it football, or soccer the way we do at home, and it still has no appeal to me. I’d rather play tennis or volleyball than watch someone else work out.”
Jim nodded. Yeah, Amy thought, he’d heard that a hundred times before. Fair trade. She had to listen to soccer stats ad nauseum.
“I’m off with the rest of the guys to the pub with the free food. Are you with us?”
“No, thanks. I’m waiting to talk to someone.”
“Oh?” Jim looked over his shoulder. “I saw you chatting up the bartender.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Remember, we’re leaving soon and somehow I don’t think Topeka would appeal to him.”
“I want to hear what he has to say about a coin I found, that’s all.”
“Sure,” Jim said, smiling as though he were part of a romantic scheme. “It’s your choice. I’m outta here. I’ve got my phone. Text me if you need help escaping.” He headed for the door along with most everyone else in the place. The noise level dropped considerably.
She raised a hand in farewell, then gave all her attention to the coin warming her hand. Well, not all of it. Half her mind was on the bartender. Could he be the owner? Was he Earl? Hopefully not. Or, she thought with a spurt of excitement, was he the Earl of Someplace? And the chances of that were a million to one.
So why did he want to see the coin? It was old, maybe even valuable. Or maybe not. It looked like it was minted from some worthless metal. Did that make a difference?
“What I want to know is where you bought that coin.”
The bartender stood beside her, a mug of something hot in his hand, watching the disappearing Jim as he spoke. The noise might have left with him, the testosterone had not. The bartender’s once-friendly expression was now more suspicious than curious. Not any less handsome, though, even if his looks—the full Kiefer Sutherland lips and the blond hair that fell onto his forehead—were less appealing than they had been an hour ago when he had been smiling.