by Connie Hall
Takala should have felt more empowered than she did. Was he truly jealous, or was he only worried about the mission as he had said? He seemed annoyed with her, that was certain, but was it because he felt a need to control her and her private life? Maybe his agents let him get away with that, but he’d learn soon enough that she didn’t appreciate being bullied.
Chapter 16
They had been driving for what seemed like hours but had only been twenty minutes. They were heading away from the hotel, and she broke the mutual barrier of silence. “Hey, where are we going?”
“To a restaurant.”
“I don’t think that’s wise, do you?” She was hungry. He could probably hear her stomach grinding away on empty bile acids. But she really didn’t want to share a meal with him.
“You have to eat.”
She couldn’t argue that point. She was tired of his high-handed orders, so she added, “Okay, make it fast food.”
He didn’t respond, just kept his gaze on the road, tearing through the traffic like a bullet. Then the car slowed, threading into a street with lanes and lanes of traffic.
“It’s twelve o’clock at night. Where are all the folks going?”
“Paris never sleeps.”
Takala caught a glimpse of a lit street sign as they passed it: Champs-Elysées. Gaslights sparkled on the sidewalks and turned them to silver. Rows of chestnut trees towered over landscaped lawns and fountains. The gardens were in winter hibernation, but she could imagine what the flowers might look like in spring.
“Roll down your window, Takala. The Arc de Triomphe is coming up.”
Takala touched the button. The cold air hit her in the face, but she didn’t mind it for a famous glimpse of Paris. She could see a hulking stone monument spotlighted in front of them, getting larger and larger.
He said, “Napoleon began the stone arch in 1806, and it wasn’t finished until 1836.”
“How do you know?”
“I knew Napoleon.”
“Was he a vamp—?
He nodded.
“Well, that explains a lot.”
He pointed at the archway and said, “Look now.”
Takala stuck her head out. All the pictures she’d seen of the famous stone arch did little justice to it. It was much larger, the car dwarfed as it sped underneath. It reminded her of the Natural Bridge in Virginia. She’d seen pictures of the Bridge her whole life, but when she had actually gone camping there with her sisters and grandmother, she’d been awed by its size.
“Awesome.” Takala realized she was seeing her first tourist sight of Paris. When she pulled her head inside, she pushed the hair back from her face and said, “Thank you for taking me here.”
“It’s not that far out of our way,” he said in an effortless dry tone.
Was she imagining things, or had a “moment” passed between them? Was he being nice, or just calculating? She told herself not to read too much into it, and she rolled up her window and kept her nose tight to the glass.
They had reached a place called the Tuileries Garden, or so the English sign proclaimed. It looked formal and beautiful. Moonlight glinted off the surface of the pond there, throwing thousands of blue diamonds over the surface.
“We will go to the Eiffel Tower, too.”
“Not the Tower, thanks.” The nightmare she’d had was bobbing on the surface of her memory, still clear. A warning rumbled through her as she realized that she’d almost fallen under Striker’s spell, came a hair’s width from taking his hand and letting him lead her down a path of danger. Maybe even death. What was wrong with her? She just wanted to believe there was more to him than the empty detachment that he portrayed to the world.
As if he could read her mind, their eyes met for a moment and held.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“No.” Takala gave the window her undivided attention.
They rode in silence for a while, until he said, “Look up ahead. You’ll see the Louvre.”
Takala spotted the hulking Romanesque building. It filled two and half city blocks. One day she’d like to go inside. At least see the work of a few famous painters. Maybe get a gander at Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa or see the Impressionists, Renoir, Degas and Monet. But at the moment, that seemed like an impossible daydream. The way things were going, she might not survive keeping Lilly alive.
Before long, they reached the Place de la Concorde. She asked about it and Striker supplied her with the details from his storehouse of knowledge. “This is the Square of Peace. Built in the seventeen hundreds. It holds eight huge statues, two fountains and the Obelisk of Luxor, a stone pillar from Egypt.”
The pillar was the best-lit sculpture, and Takala caught a good view of it as Striker slowed the car to a crawl, much to the chagrin of the honking drivers behind them. He rolled down his window and waved them past.
Well, it wasn’t like seeing the city on foot, but at least she’d been given a riding tour. “Thank you,” she muttered.
“My pleasure.”
They turned down a side street and paused before a restaurant, De la Vincennes Cuisine. It was shaped like a miniature castle, complete with turrets and crenellated walls. Flags of all nations spanned a portico. A red carpet led from the street to the door, where a doorman in red livery waited to invite guests inside. The second story rose above the wall. Dim candlelight flickered through narrow window slits. It looked like a restaurant you’d see in Disney World.
Striker pulled over and stopped at the awning.
“Hey, this isn’t fast food.”
“Did you really believe I’d let you eat in a fast-food restaurant?”
“This looks pricey,” she said.
“But well worth it. You cannot leave France without sampling the food.”
Takala wondered what Uncle Sam paid him to be the director of B.O.S.P. Had to be more than her meager income from her detective agency.
The doorman ran to open her door and said, “Bon soir, mademoiselle.”
Striker hopped out of the car and instructed the valet to park it.
“I’m not dressed.” Takala fussed with her hair. “I can’t go in there looking like this.”
“You will outshine all the women inside no matter what you are wearing.” He held out his arm, looking so handsome in his suit, his dimpled chin, those wicked violet eyes gleaming like a satyr’s.
Despite not wanting to, Takala felt herself warming to his compliment. She didn’t think there was a woman alive who wouldn’t. But he kept giving off mixed signals. Seducer one minute. Arrogant and domineering the next. On the way there a kind tour guide. Now an amiable dinner partner. Was this what he meant by professional distance? Maybe this was how he treated all women. Turn on the charm when necessary, lure them in, then, once hooked, use them like puppets. Well, he’d soon learn that she was made of stronger stuff than that.
She hesitated a moment longer, then took his arm. He stiffened, strain pulling at his arm muscles, moving up his neck and lips. An oppressive tension built between them. She could feel his body strung so tight his arm felt like granite. Her heart refused to stop thumping. Her awareness of him crashed like huge waves against her.
His forearm brushed her side, and her insides tightened into knots. Memories swarmed and she was back in his arms, kissing him, feeling his hands caressing her. She dreaded that he might read her vital signs and know that her libido was working overtime. When they reached the door, she was relieved. She quickly stepped away from him while the doorman opened the door. This was going to be one long night.
Striker saw Takala to a table. Then he said, “Excuse me for a moment.”
She looked at him warily, as if she had done something to cause his desertion, so he added, “I’ll be right back.”
He walked to the restrooms, aware of the customers’ eyes on him, mostly the females. He recognized a wolf shifter among them. He could spot them a mile off. They had wiry black, sometimes gray, hair. Their eyes were ligh
t blue, colorless, and they always had long noses. Their eyes met. Shifter to vampire. Striker nodded and kept moving.
Vampires did not metabolize human food, so they had no use for bathrooms. But he needed some distance from Takala. The restrooms were along a narrow hallway, and he stood near an ashtray, watching her across the restaurant. She was twining her hair around her finger while she read the wine list. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Her long legs crossed under the table, the way her jeans hugged her thighs, that beautiful face and expressive eyes. He remembered her hot body next to his own, the alluring smell of her, almost biting her. It made his soul quake. He had almost lost it. If Lion had not come when he did…
He felt himself growing antsy, and he stepped into the restroom. A waiter was just finishing up at a urinal. Striker headed to a back stall, the smell of urine and disinfectant assailing him. How could humans regularly use bathrooms? He only entered them in an emergency. And this was one.
He walked to the stall, already taking off his jacket. He closed the door, laid his coat on the top, and fished out the prepackaged dose of Meals Away, as the lab techs jokingly called it. He opened the package. The syringe was half the size of a normal syringe. And no needle necessary. It worked on air compression. He held the syringe between his teeth, took out his cufflink and rolled up his left sleeve. He set the vacuole over the middle of his inner arm and pressed the plunger. A burst of air penetrated his skin, carrying with it the serum that allowed him not to feed.
He’d already fed once today. He hoped that this injection would help curb his insatiable desire to taste Takala. He leaned back against the stall door, closed his eyes, felt the liquid enter his bloodstream. That strange euphoric feeling of satiety, of fullness, filled him. It came very close to the sensation of having fed, but it lacked the act and excitement of it, which he hadn’t needed—until meeting Takala. He tasted spearmint in his mouth, and he knew he’d received the full dose.
His phone rang, and he put himself back to rights as he answered.
“Dark, that you?”
Striker smiled at the sound of his friend’s voice. He spoke with a Scottish brogue, toned down by twenty years of living in the States. In the background, Striker heard people talking loudly, music playing, pool balls clacking. His friend must be in a bar.
“Yes, O’Malley, it is me.”
“How the hell are yah doing? I was sitting here and knew I should be calling yah.”
Striker didn’t know how or why, but he and Father O’Malley had some kind of psychic connection. Perhaps it was divine providence, or the fact they had once tried to kill each other. Whatever caused it was beyond his knowledge. He’d stopped questioning it long ago.
“I’m glad you called.” Striker meant that. “How have you been?”
“Forget about me. I want to be hearing about yah, laddie.”
“Could not be better.”
“You’re forgetting who you’re talking to. I know something’s wrong. Been feeling it all day. Give it to me straight. You lose some men again?”
“Worse, it is a woman.”
“Hmm, now yah really are in trouble. I thought yah were done with women, like me. Hasn’t it been eons?”
“Yes, but I cannot get a handle on my desire for this one.”
A long, flat pause, filled only by the bar noise. He heard O’Malley take a long swig on his beer.
“Have you nothing to say?” Striker asked. “No encouragement, no biblical platitudes?”
“You know what’s right and wrong. You know you can’t get near the water, so it’s better not to dip your oar in. I’m thinking God tests us, and this is your test. But God doesn’t make it easy. If it was easy, all our paths to heaven would be paved in gold. It’s his way to make things complicated. Yah could have feelings for this woman, and you’re not knowing how to direct them.”
Feelings? He couldn’t remember ever caring about anyone other than his sister and parents. Surely this was just years of blood hunger resurfacing. True, she looked like Calliope and had opened up the painful wounds of her death. But care for Takala? “That is stretching it,” he said, adding more than his normal uninterested tone to his words.
“Well, if yah don’t care, then yah can conquer it. Yah’ve done it for a long time. Yah know the way. Keep to the yellow brick road, laddie.”
“Thank you, Great Oz.” He heard O’Malley chuckle, a deep belly-rolling sound. Then he said, “Take care of yourself.”
“Yep, yah, too. And listen to what your heart is saying.”
Striker closed the phone, sure his heart had been mute so long it had lost the ability to speak. He stopped to make sure his lapel and tie were in order and the vial was hanging where it should be, then walked back to the table.
Takala glanced up at him. He no longer saw the two different-colored eyes, only their expressiveness. They had a way of cutting into him, laying him wide open. Staying away from her was almost impossible. It was just like his desire to find Raithe: an insatiable need.
Chapter 17
Takala sat across from Striker, uncomfortable because his glances had grown infinitely patient and assessing, like a predator trying to decide his next move. He sat so immobile, a granite statue, looking deep into her eyes, as if he were reading her soul.
His eyes picked up the overhead lights and glistened like shards of cavernous quartz, reflections bouncing off them like endless mirrors.
She finished the last of her beef and potato gratin, looking everywhere except at his face. She was determined to forget their last encounter. But he was a sensual feast for her eyes. Handsomeness dripped off him like a waterfall that oozed all over the table and her. Her stomach turned over like she was on a roller-coaster ride. His scent of butter rum didn’t help, nor did the fact that his black silk suit shined like a second skin and made his shoulders appear square and broad and utterly perfect male. And that golden hair, so soft, the ponytail trailing over his collar, those deep-set purple eyes hypnotizing the very air around them. Keep a professional distance from Agent Gorgeous here? Was that even possible?
She gulped her Merlot and fished around for a safe topic. “Tell me what started this hatred between you and Raithe,” she said.
He ran a steady, unhurried finger around the rim of his glass. He hadn’t touched his champagne. “I do not speak of it.”
“But you’ll tell me, right?” she asked, her tone softening to a question. “I told you all about my family, my miserable luck with men. All I know about you is that I look like your sister and you were probably a better gladiator than a physician.” She tilted her head in a demure pose, a stiff smile on her face.
“How true.” He grinned, and it lit up his face, softening sharp edges, mellowing the severity in his eyes. It made him more handsome—if that was possible. “I suppose you want the whole lurid story.”
“Don’t leave out a thing.”
He fought with his hesitation for a moment, then said, “It goes back eons, actually.” He paused and steepled his fingers.
Takala remembered the feathery softness of them on her neck, and a flush of excitement stirred again in her belly. She didn’t want him to detect her attraction, so she forced her mind on something else. She picked up her glass, gulped her wine, and buttered a roll, waiting for him to open up.
After a while he said, “Raithe has always been power hungry. He demands that his followers give him complete and utter loyalty.”
“And you were one of them?”
He nodded, his brow furrowing. “I was taken in like the rest. Raithe is very charismatic when he wants to be.”
“Another Jim Jones, uh?”
“Yes, but worse. He has some of the same pathology—the maniacal, obsessive, God Complex. But Raithe is more cunning and clever. He would never have allowed himself to die.” Striker touched his fingertips together; then he tapped them as he frowned down at them, lost in a memory.
“So, what happened?” Takala slathered her bread with more butt
er, making sure all the surface was covered.
“There was an uprising among his followers. And he blamed me for it.”
“Why you?”
“It all began with Morgan. She wanted me to make her a vampire.”
“A human?”
“A banshee.”
“Wow, never came across one.”
“Be glad you have not. They are beautiful, but deadly if you cross them.”
“I’ve seen a Wendigo, though. Let me tell you, they are nasty creatures.” Wendigos were evil spirits who swept humans away and ate them. Patomani lore was full of stories of Guardians fighting Wendigos and bad children being abducted and eaten by them at night.
“Never encountered a Wendigo,” he said. “We shall have to compare notes sometime.” He gave her a casual stare, with the usual little bit of menace thrown in. His gaze slipped down to her neck, her breasts.
Takala felt him push her down another fast hill, her stomach weightless, somersaulting. She forced her thoughts back on his story and studied her bread. “I’m sorry I got offtrack. Where were we— Oh, yeah, the whole uprising thing. Where did this take place?”
“England, sixteenth century. Raithe was landed gentry, the Duke of Langolian. He lorded over most of the United Kingdom’s vampire population at the time.”
“What did humans think of having a vampire for an overlord?”
“The serfs, who worked in the castle, were not allowed to leave. They were completely under Raithe’s control. Countess Bathory was one among his court.”
“Isn’t that the Hungarian countess who killed virgins for fun and bathed in their blood in an attempt to stay young?”
“That’s what the historians would have you believe. But she was a vampire. Raithe turned her.”
“Explains a lot. Guess you had a few countesses under your own spell, too?”
“A few.” A self-satisfied expression broke over his face as he rubbed the stubble on his chin.
Did vampires grow whiskers? Did they have to shave? The same two days of golden growth had covered his face since she’d first seen him. It was just enough of a virile masculine appearance to make women drool. He probably didn’t have to do anything to look sexy, part of his vampire allure.