Holiday with a Vampire

by Maureen Child

  By rights he should have been gone by now. Far away from her and what she made him feel. But damned if he’d walk away wondering if he’d left her in the middle of a vampire war. Swinging one arm back, he tossed his duffel toward the house and listened for the muffled thump when it landed. He’d pick it up later. When he came back.

  For now, he’d had enough of close proximity to Tessa. He needed to be in the night. Where he belonged. Where he didn’t have to think about a human woman who was spending far too much time in his thoughts.

  A snap of sound caught his attention and Grayson instinctively dropped into a crouch. Swiveling his head, he focused his mind, his senses…and waited.

  From the house came the soft sounds of smooth jazz playing on the stereo. Further away, the rushing water in the river chuckled as it rushed past rocks. A dog howled in the distance and a car’s engine gave a muffled roar. He heard it all. Felt it all. He was connected to everything that moved in the night, every small heartbeat of rabbits and squirrels resonated in his mind and became part of the symphony of sounds he sifted through with deliberate calm.

  And finally, he felt what he searched for. A faint brush of something that didn’t belong here tickled at his mind and Grayson smiled. He dipped beneath a low-hanging pine branch and didn’t even react when a dollop of snow dropped down the collar of his jacket and shirt, sliding along his spine.

  He’d spent most of the first decades of his eternal life hunting in wilderness much like this. He knew all too well that silence and stillness were his best weapons. Even as a human he’d been a woodsman. And since his change, he was able to move even more soundlessly.

  A twig snapped again to his right and he had to wonder if his quarry were truly that clumsy or simply trying to trap him.

  Then a scream ripped through the night.

  “Fire! Grayson, fire!”

  He bolted, forgetting about quiet, not caring who heard him moving through the trees. An unfamiliar surge of protective fury raced in his blood and brought Grayson hurtling from the woods into the clearing just beyond the house.

  Light flickered over the snow. Lamplight. Christmas lights. And the dancing, shifting light of the fire already eating away at the barn door.

  It sounded like a hungry dog, all growls and snaps.

  Tessa was sprinting toward the barn and Grayson charged after her, slamming into her body and carrying them both into the nearest snowbank. He broke their fall, then rolled her over and stared down into her eyes.

  “Stay away from the fire,” he warned in a growl that sounded as fierce as the flames themselves.

  “Screw you,” she said and gave him a shove, pushing herself up out of the snow. “It’s my barn, I can help.”

  Rather than argue with her, Grayson ran for the barn doors. The flames were quick but they hadn’t been burning long. They licked at the dry wood and leaped upward in the soft night wind. But those ravaging flames were still small enough to be beaten back with some of the snow that lay so handily around them.

  Grayson kicked at the thick white stuff, spreading it in wide arcs over the flames. Hisses and thick black smoke were his reward as those wicked orange and yellow lights died. Again and again, he sent snow toward the fire and when Tessa ran up and joined the fight, the two of them had the danger smothered and steaming in just a few minutes.

  The stench of blackened wood was raw in the air, yet beneath that heavy scent, there was something more. The faintest trace of gasoline. Grayson’s gaze narrowed thoughtfully on the woods before shifting to look at Tessa.

  Her face was as white as the snow drifting down onto her dark hair. She wasn’t wearing her jacket and when she shivered, she seemed almost surprised.

  Grumbling, he pulled her into his arms and scrubbed his hands up and down her back. “Adrenaline’s wearing off. You’re freezing now.”

  “Wasn’t. Before.” Her teeth chattered, which was hardly surprising, since she was wearing only jeans, a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of furry, pink, soaking wet slippers on her feet.

  “First a fire, next pneumonia,” he muttered, wondering how in the hell this human woman had become his responsibility.

  “Fine.” She said it again. “I’m fine. Fire out?”

  “Yeah.” He looked over her head at the blackened bottom of the barn door and thought about just how quickly the whole damn thing could have gone up if she hadn’t noticed the flames in time. Anger roared to life inside him as he held her trembling body against him. Feeding the rage nearly strangling him, Grayson let his gaze swing around the empty yard and the woods beyond.

  He felt it again.

  That brush of something dark against his mind. Whoever their watcher was, he was back.

  He wanted to race after the arsonist. Track him. Find him. Drain him dry for putting that glassy look in Tessa’s eyes. For bringing fear to a house and a woman who’d seen too much of it already. But he couldn’t leave her to make her way inside alone.

  “Come on. Inside.” He turned for the house and felt the sharp stare of hatred boring into his back like a knife. The watcher in the woods didn’t like him much.

  Which suited Grayson just fine. He didn’t like hunting a friend.

  Tessa couldn’t stop shaking. From her toes to the ends of her hair, she’d never been so cold. She felt as if her bones might shatter.

  Grayson laid her down on the couch near the fireplace and she curled into herself, wrapping her trembling arms around her knees. He covered her with a colorful afghan and brusquely rubbed his hands up and down her back, her arms.

  She felt sensation come crashing back as her skin seemed to prickle with the stabs of a thousand needles. “God,” she whispered, dipping her mouth beneath the edge of the blanket. “I’m frozen.”

  “Hardly surprising.” Grayson stood, lifted her wet, bedraggled bunny slippers and let the melting ice drip from the toes onto the rug. “Why the hell would you go into the snow wearing these ridiculous things?”

  She scowled at him. Well, her eyebrows drew down and she narrowed her eyes at him. She was too cold to pull her face out of the blanket to snarl. “I wasn’t thinking about the cold. I saw the fire and—”

  “Panicked?”

  “Reacted.”

  He tossed the slippers to the stone hearth, where the beady bunny eyes stared at her in reproach. The heat pouring from the fireplace was so comforting—and yet, only moments ago, another kind of fire had been the enemy.

  “The whole barn could have gone up,” she said, watching the flames instead of staring up into dark eyes that made her tremble even harder than the cold.

  “I think that was the idea.”

  She looked at him. “What?”

  “I smelled gasoline.”

  “I didn’t,” she argued.

  He nodded his head. “I can pick up scents others might miss.”

  “Handy talent,” she murmured. As her limbs began to warm, she struggled to sit up. “But who would burn down my barn?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” He folded his arms over his chest and looked down at her. “What about your stalker? Could he have found you?”

  Another wave of cold swept over her as Tessa considered that possibility. She’d been so careful. So diligent about keeping a low profile. It had been five years. Surely, Justin wasn’t still fixated on her. And even if he were, he wouldn’t be able to find her. Not here.

  But even as she thought it, she had to admit, even to herself, that she couldn’t be sure. “I don’t know. God, I hope not.”

  Grayson went to a corner cabinet, picked up a bottle of brandy and poured some of the honey-colored liquid into a snifter. Walking back to her, he handed it over and said, “Drink it.”

  “I hate brandy.”

  “Drink it anyway.”

  She took a sip, and though she disliked the taste, had to admit that the resultant heat zipping through her bloodstream was more than welcome.

  Still, she made a face when he said, “Finish it.”
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  While she stoically sipped at the brandy, he dropped into a crouch in front of her, bringing their eyes to the same level. Staring at her, he said, “There’s another possibility.”

  She nodded, hardly able to believe what she was about to say. “A vampire.”

  “Strictly speaking, we tend to steer a wide berth around flames….” One corner of his mouth lifted briefly, though that tiny half smile didn’t go anywhere near his eyes. “We’re more combustible than humans. But it’s still possible that whoever set that fire is my enemy—not yours.”

  She didn’t want to think about another vampire being in the woods, watching her, her house. But the only other option was to consider that Justin had found her again. And she didn’t think she could bear to live through another onslaught of Justin’s “devotion.”

  She was alone out here. The only help she had, the only man she trusted…was a vampire.

  The false heat of the brandy swam through her system, but her body trembled anyway.

  Not with cold.

  With fear.

  Chapter 7

  F or the next two days, Tessa walked around in a sort of fog. She baked and cleaned and decorated in a determined frenzy designed to keep her fear at bay.

  But it was always there. Just under the surface. She stepped out onto her porch and wondered if someone—Justin—was out there looking back at her. When her phone rang, she jumped. When a car backfired on the road, her heart jolted. When the college student who’d arrived the night before surprised her in the kitchen, she had shrieked and dropped a pan of cinnamon rolls. Her nerves were strained to the breaking point and there was no way to ease the tension.

  She’d lived with fear for so long that feeling it wrap itself around her now was like meeting up with an old enemy.

  Chilling, yet somehow familiar.

  And her vampire bodyguard—who would have ever thought she could say those words?—scarcely left her alone. Well, except for those hours when he was trapped within the secret room. But even then, she felt his presence. His power, reaching for her. As if even in his absence he was letting her know she wasn’t alone. And she wondered what exactly she would do when he left. How would she live without being aware of him? Without feeling him in some corner of her mind? Her soul?

  There was a deep, undeniable connection between them, though Tessa couldn’t understand how it had started. And she knew it couldn’t end well. She was human. He wasn’t. She would eventually grow old and die and he would still look as he did today.

  As he had for more than a hundred years.

  So why then, she demanded of herself, did she spend so damned much time thinking about him? Because, she thought, it was much more agreeable than considering the possibility that Justin had finally found her.

  But it was more than that, too. Knowing Grayson was here gave her a sense of safety that she hadn’t known in far too long. Which was weird in itself, when she thought about it. Having a vampire around shouldn’t make her feel safe. And yet…

  It was still the middle of the day, but the snow was falling in a steady sheet of white beyond the kitchen windows. According to the weather report, this new storm would be dumping up to two feet of snow by morning, and would effectively close the roads. Which meant the guests she had been expecting tomorrow afternoon wouldn’t be arriving. So as soon as the college student upstairs checked out, her B and B would be empty, but for her and Grayson.

  A chill swept along her spine and it had nothing to do with fear.

  Little by little, she was losing her grip on the nice, normal world she’d built for herself. And at the moment, the only stable point in her little universe was a vampire.

  How insane was that?

  She’d begun counting down the daylight hours…waiting for sundown. Waiting for the moment when Grayson would step out from the secret room. He was probably sleeping now. And she imagined him stretched out on the narrow cot, the blankets lying low across his abdomen, his chest bare…

  “It’s a great place.”

  “Whoa!” Tessa jolted out of her daydream, convinced her heart to slip back down her throat into her chest and sucked in a gulp of air.

  Standing in the open doorway to the living room was her one and only guest. Michael Chevron, college student, on a driving trip home to his family in Montana for the Christmas holiday. He stood about six-two, had blond hair and guileless blue eyes, and the smile he gave her was sheepish.

  “Sorry,” he said, holding up both hands. “Didn’t mean to startle you. Again. Broke my heart when you dropped those cinnamon rolls last night.”

  Already moving toward the coffeepot, Tessa poured him a cup, waved him to the table beside the bay window and set the cup in front of him. “It’s the weather, I guess. Makes me a little jumpy.”

  He grinned and swung a hank of pale blond hair out of his eyes. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said, with a glance out the window. “I like the snow. Keeps everything sort of dark and cozy. Quiet.”

  “Yeah. I guess so.” She shot a look at the swirling snow beyond the window. “But you can only take so much dark.”

  Although, with the sun safely behind a thick bank of storm clouds, Grayson would be able to join her as soon as he woke up. That thought made her smile and worry at the same time.

  Funny how much she’d come to depend on his company in just a few days.

  And it wasn’t only his company she wanted.

  She recalled with perfect clarity the look in his eyes, the punch of sexual tension when he’d carried her inside after the fire. She could still feel the swirl of heat through her body, pooling thick at her center. How he’d looked at her while she lay shivering on the couch. She’d felt that hot, steamy stare of his right down to her bones. And if truth be told, she’d thought then that he was about to kiss her.

  And she remembered all too well the disappointment she’d felt when he hadn’t.

  Strange how much she wanted him. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d ever experienced such overwhelming need for a man. The fact that it had all happened so quickly was a stunner, too.

  As if, somehow, it was meant to be.

  “You okay?”

  “Huh? What?” She shook her head and looked at the smiling, handsome face across from her. “Sorry. Guess my mind was wandering.”

  “Not surprising,” he said, toying with the handle of the coffee mug. “When you spend so much time alone, your thoughts are bound to drift.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You are alone here, right?” He gave her another smile. “I mean, I thought I heard you talking to someone late last night.”

  “Must have been the TV.” She could hardly admit to having a man stashed away in a hidden room, could she? “I’m sorry if it disturbed you.”

  “Oh, it didn’t.” He shifted a glance around the brightly lit room, then looked back to her. “I just thought there might be someone else staying here after all.”

  “Nope. Just me.” Suddenly Tessa had a bad feeling. The young man’s smiling face hadn’t changed any, but there was something else. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Something that made her uneasy enough to stand up and move away from him.

  She busied herself at the kitchen counter, wrapping up the fresh bread, all the while watching him from the corner of her eye. The ticking from the clock on the wall seemed overly loud. The snow slapped at the windowpanes and her own heartbeat sounded to her like a roar.

  When he stood up lazily and stretched, she felt everything inside her tighten in expectation.

  He carried his coffee cup across the room, set it down on the counter. Tessa tensed as he stood too close, and at the last moment she realized she couldn’t feel any sort of body heat emanating from him. He was there. But it was as if he weren’t real. As if he—

  “Okay, enough already.” He grabbed her, spun her around and backed her into the counter. Slapping his hands onto the counter edge on either side of her, he effectively trapped her in place. That
affable smile disappeared and his eyes went from innocent to deadly in a blink. “I know he’s here. Where?”

  “He?” She choked out the single word and fought for breath. Something, she saw now, he wasn’t doing at all. Breathing, that is. His blue eyes swirled with shadows, darkened, narrowed. He parted his lips and fangs appeared.

  God.

  “No more games.” He leaned into her, pressing his body along hers, driving the small of her back into the counter’s edge until pain screamed through her mind. “I know he’s here. I sensed him this morning. He’s sleeping. That’s the only explanation for why he’s not blocking his presence from me. So I’m going to ask you one more time…”

  He dipped his head, scraped the tips of his fangs along her throat until she shuddered. Pain there, too. A burning sensation. Above and beyond the pain though, she felt the slow, steady dribble of blood down her neck that told her he’d broken the skin.

  To prove it, he licked her throat, while she groaned and closed her eyes briefly against the horror of this moment.

  Then he lifted his head and sighed. “Sweet. You taste so sweet. And your fear gives your blood that little kick I enjoy so much. Makes me thirsty for more.” Taking one hand from the counter’s edge, he reached for her hair, stroking his fingertips through it. “Now, this is your last chance. Where is he? Tell me and I’ll go. Don’t tell me and I’ll turn you. Here. Now.”

  Turn her? Make her into a vampire? She still felt the daggerlike points of his fangs against her skin. And she knew that he wouldn’t hesitate to bite her again, more thoroughly this time. But how could she tell him about Grayson? He was asleep. Defenseless. She couldn’t.

  Wouldn’t.

  Just as she wouldn’t stand still and do nothing while she was threatened. Fear rattled her bones, but desperation had a stronger hold on her. Blindly, while he watched her, waiting for her answer, Tessa reached behind her on the counter. There was a knife close. She’d used it only moments ago to slice bread. Now her hand found it, her fingers curled around the smooth, wooden grip.