Before I knew he had even moved, he'd wrapped his arms around me and was kissing me. Softly at first, then harder and more demanding. I wanted to push him away, but it would blow my cover. So I relaxed and kissed him back, realizing halfway through that it was no longer an act. I liked having him kiss me. I liked the way he held me, I liked the way he smelled, the way his solid body seemed to melt into mine.
He broke off the kiss and looked down into my eyes. I couldn't even begin to understand what lay behind his glance. I blushed and tried to look away. "Ah," he said, "I see it now."
"What do you see, Victor?"
"I see the girl you are."
Victor had changed and I was afraid. But caught in his gaze, I couldn't escape; all I could do was continue the bluff. "Deirdre?" he asked, his voice almost a whisper.
"Yeah?"
He didn't answer, but I felt his body tense. He picked me up and carried me a few steps, dumping me unceremoniously onto the bed. I reached my arms up to pull him down to me. "I've missed you so, Victor."
He smiled down at me, the tips of his canines obvious. "Have you really, Deirdre?" Then he caught me by the wrists, pulled me to my feet and put his hands on the sides of my face. I could smell the wine on his breath, caught the scent of blood.
"Who the hell are you?" His eyes were wild with rage. "Because you sure as hell are not Deirdre Griffin. You can't even know her, or you would know that she's no friend of mine, having been responsible for the deaths of those I loved."
I gave a little whimper and tried to pull away from him. "Oh, no, you are not leaving. I will give you five minutes to explain what sort of game you are playing and why. And no lies. It has been a while since I've killed, but I assure you I still know how."
* * *
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
« ^ »
"I'm her daughter." My voice sounded very small and very scared.
"Deirdre's daughter?"
I nodded, biting my lower lip. "Yeah. I came to the city to find her."
"Why?"
I looked away, and he tightened his grip on me. "No lies, girl. Why are you looking for your mother? And why should I care?"
I looked him in the eye. "She left me for dead. Abandoned me at birth, buried me and walked away. Over one hundred and fifty years ago and I still remember the moment I woke, fully aware, in my coffin; I still remember the fear and the stench of death; I can still taste the dirt of the grave in my mouth."
"Ah." He dropped his hands and stepped away from the door. "That seems reason enough, I suppose. And your name really is Lily Williams?"
I shrugged. "Close enough." And since it looked like he would not kill me, I laughed. "At least it's probably as close as Victor Lange is to your real name. Can I have another glass of wine, please?" I turned my back on him and walked over to the table, refilling both glasses, then curling back up into the chair.
I held out his glass to him. "Victor, I have a proposition for you."
He looked at me, unbelieving at first. Then his mouth twisted into a smile and he started to laugh, long and hard. When he could speak again, he shook his head.
"Oh, you really are her daughter, I'll grant you that. Other than the obvious resemblance, you have her courage. Her strength of purpose. I admire your spirit as I always admired hers." He took the glass from my hand.
"Sounds patronizing to me."
"Of course it does. You are talking to a creature, my dear, who would be quite content to rip you apart limb from limb and lick up the remains. Allow him to patronize you. Besides, I meant it as a compliment. You could do worse than to take after Deirdre Griffin. She is a formidable woman."
"I thought you didn't like her."
He sat in his chair and set his glass down. "I can dislike her and yet still admire her finer qualities. You may have been born one hundred and fifty years ago, but you are so very young. What sort of upbringing did you have?"
"A sheltered one."
"No doubt. You are an interesting creature, Lily Williams. Not a full vampire and not a full human. But we have little time for physiological discussions." He looked at his watch. "In a little over two hours my keepers will be here to check on me, to secure me for the day. And you must be gone before they arrive. What sort of proposition did you have in mind?"
I took a deep breath and started in. "Victor, you said earlier that Deirdre has caused you a lot of grief, and you just now said she is not your friend. And I certainly have no reason in the world to love her. Will you help me get revenge?"
"What do you want to do? I am reluctant to agree to her death."
"I don't want her dead." The lie dropped convincingly from my mouth. "I just want to strip her of everything she has. And leave her with nothing, the way the bitch left me."
"And how do you hope to accomplish that?"
I sighed. "I don't know."
"You don't have a plan?"
"Well, no, not really."
Victor smiled, picked up his wineglass again and clinked it against mine. "I think we can do better than that, Lily. Children these days have no idea how to do anything at all. So let us make some plans."
Before I left he handed me another key. "This one will let you ride the elevator. You can't get back through the stairway door."
"Yeah, I know."
"And still you came? Not knowing what you would find here? You are amazing."
"No, Victor, I'm a realist. Once the door shut, what other choice did I have?"
"True enough. Now, when you are going back on the elevator, do not stop on any of the other floors. Do not. I cannot guarantee your safety. And there are others who might recognize you as your mother, and these have even less reason to wish her well. Plus, the warmth of your body calls to us. You are only alive now because I find the attraction of your person greater than your blood."
I shivered slightly.
"You do well to be afraid. But come back to me tomorrow during the daylight hours; we will have more of a chance to talk uninterrupted and you will have less of a chance to be discovered."
That night I called Angelo. "Miss Lily, I so pleased to hear your voice again. You been okay in that city?"
"Been doing great, Angelo. More than great, actually."
"You find your mother?"
"I'm going to fly to Maine soon, 'Lo. That's where she is. Now, listen. In a day or two, you'll get an envelope in the mail. It's filled with a list of things I need you to get for me before I return. Along with plans for something you'll have to have built for me. Can you handle it?"
"Depends, Lily child, on who got the money."
"Don't worry about the money, 'Lo. By the time you get the plans, there'll be an account for you to use for all of this. All the information you need will be with the rest of the stuff. It should be more than enough to take care of what I need and repay you for your trouble."
There was silence on the other end of the line.
"Angelo? Are you still there?"
"I hear you. Just it been so long since I hear the words 'don't worry about the money.' And I never expected to have them fall out of your mouth."
I laughed. "Yeah, me neither. It's nice, isn't it? It turns out my mother is very wealthy and has some very helpful acquaintances. But that's not important right now. I'll call you again later on in the week to make sure you can get everything ready."
"You be careful now, Miss Lily. No money in the world can replace you."
"Thanks, 'Lo. I'll be okay."
I spent the next two weeks under the rather erratic tutelage of Victor Lange. He taught roe many things about my mother and her lover, many things about the nature of vampires. "We are most susceptible during daytime sleep," he explained early on, "and there are ways in which our minds may be manipulated then. Dreams, especially, are powerful weapons. I have paved the way for you already, by invading Greer's dreams, an easy enough trick if you know how to do it. Especially easy for me, since I've done it to him before. Come, I will teach you."
; He took my hands and pressed them up against his temples, then put his hands on mine. "Here." he said, "relax a bit. Open your mind and I will show you his."
It was like the experience I'd had with the woman on the bus, but much more intense. And Victor knew exactly where to go. He had indeed already planted the dream, my dream, the one of my grave and death and the hatred of one woman. "Pour yourself into him, Lily," Victor whispered. "Take all your hate and all your anger and make him feel it."
We both felt his panic, his fear. When he woke the contact was broken, but Victor smiled. "Well done, Lily. You are a natural."
I'd brought my entire stock of Angelo's medicines with me one day and we tested them on Victor. Some turned out to be totally useless, but others worked well enough to be added to my arsenal. We already knew that the disguise potion worked fairly well, and the scent-killing one was determined a success when a blindfolded Victor couldn't detect me. And I'd done some of my own testing, sneaking a few drops of the control liquid into his wine. He'd sipped and smiled. "But I have already agreed to help you, Lily. Surely this kind of coercion is unnecessary."
Victor thought, and I agreed, that the best route to my mother was through Mitchell Greer. He laughed about this. "Love is one of the most dangerous emotions a vampire can permit herself. It gives your enemies power over you. And no matter what you may say of her, your mother loves. Not wisely, perhaps, but with her whole being. It is, to be honest, an emotion that has mostly evaded me. With one or two exceptions." Victor's eyes clouded over, as they often did when he would allow himself to think of the past.
His pain in this became my pain. I had lost so many people I had loved, and somehow the blame for them all ended up transferred to my mother.
At the end of the two weeks, I knew much of her life and hated her more than I ever had. Victor admitted that I was probably as well prepared as I would ever be. He'd managed to work a little financial magic as well, by arranging to have all of my mother's accounts transferred to accounts that I could access. "In some cases," he said, "this would have been impossible. But your mother has never been cautious with her money; it was never an obsession with her. Max had been involved in so many of her financial deals, and therefore the Cadre had full access as well. And I am not without friends outside these hallowed halls; I was able to call in a few old debts. As a result, you are now an extremely rich young lady and your mother is totally destitute. For some, this would be revenge enough." He cocked an eyebrow at me. It was my final test.
"For some, yeah. But if money doesn't matter to her, I haven't accomplished anything, have I?"
He smiled. "I think you are ready, Lily. I am, in a way, rather disappointed that you proved such a good student. I will miss our meetings. You have brought renewed life to this old man."
I looked at him. "Old?" As ever, he was impeccably dressed and exuded a power that was almost palpable. I crossed the room and stood in front of him. "You aren't old, Victor. You're just temporally challenged, like me."
He laughed at this. "Oh, such a politically correct answer from my young rebel.'' He kissed my forehead and on impulse, I threw my arms around him and kissed him on the mouth.
I was unprepared for his reaction. And mine. During the time we'd gotten to know each other, he had been teacher and I had been student and there was no crossing that line. We'd had no physical contact past that first time when I was pretending to be my mother.
But now, there was no pretending, no mistaking the complicated emotions of the two people caught in this kiss. Now, no obstacles stood between us, for he had been inside my mind as I had been inside his. I pressed myself closer to him and deepened the kiss, uncaring of the fact that his canines had grown, caring only that I was here and with him. A rush of hunger emanated from him. And something else, something more important, something I didn't understand.
Then he slammed a wall over his mind and the kiss ended. I staggered back from him, breathing heavily, wiping my bloody lips with my hand.
"Damn it, Lily, why did you do that?"
"I wanted to, Victor. Besides, you wanted it too. You can't deny it; I felt it."
"Forget about it, Lily. It didn't happen. I can't allow it. What we have is nothing more than a business deal. I've helped you and you've helped me. Don't expect anything else."
"But…"
"No. Listen to me. Go and do what you have to do. Just don't get yourself killed, little one. For that death would be on my shoulders and I couldn't bear it."
"I won't die, Victor. I promise. Besides, I'm not sure I can."
He pushed me away gruffly. "Don't get too self-assured, Miss. Everyone can die."
I began to walk away. "Wait, Lily," he called after me. "I almost forgot to give you these."
He held out his hand, showing me two small capsules.
"What is it?"
"Amitriptyline. It'll stop any vampire cold. But don't use it unless you need to, emergencies only. I'd rather no one knew that I knew about its effects." He smiled as I took the pills and stashed them in my pocket. "Remember, it doesn't pay to reveal all your secrets. Ever."
"Good-bye, Victor." I kissed him on the cheek. "And thanks."
* * *
CHAPTER NINETEEN
« ^ »
I didn't bother to pack any of my new clothes; instead I had the hotel box and ship them to New Orleans. If all went as Victor and I had planned, I wouldn't need them. All I needed was what I'd brought with me. And two sets of plane tickets. One to get from here to Maine. And two seats on the privately chartered jet from Maine to New Orleans.
As I settled into the seat in the first-class cabin, I sighed and smiled. This flight was a far cry from the bus trip to New York. I owed Victor a great debt of thanks for all of this. That he insisted his motives were not out of care for me, but out of hate for my mother, didn't bother me. He'd been useful and I was thankful.
I wrapped myself up in the airline blanket, leaned back against my pillows, closed my eyes and attempted to touch Victor's mind, as he had taught me to touch Mitch's. Contact was made almost immediately. He was sleeping and I smiled. Our two weeks together had been incredibly intense, and I realized now that he had come to mean a great deal to me. I was more than just a little bit infatuated with him, and still rather annoyed at his brusque dismissal of me our last night together. I wanted to prove that I could move him, that I'd been worthy of his attentions. So I entered his mind. It was easy. I knew him.
I wake him with soft kisses on his face and mouth. His eyes open and fasten on me, first in shock and then in understanding. "Yeah," I whisper, "it's only me." I put my hand to his mouth. "No talking," I say. I feel his smile under my fingers and I crawl under the covers with him. He's totally naked, his skin flawless and smooth. I don't mind the coldness too much; I'm warm enough for both of us. I cover him with my body and give him my warmth, with my mouth and my hands and my soul, until he cries out my name and rolls me over onto my back. He straddles me then, staring at me with those deep fathomless eyes. Quickly shifting the lower half of his body, he enters me without hesitation and I gasp. Victor smiles and shakes his head, working his way deep inside me, filling me completely. He is so cold and I am so hot and we fit together perfectly, just as I'd imagined we would.
And when he bends his head down to pierce my flesh with his teeth and drink at my breast, I shudder as the orgasm shakes my body. Victor laughs, blood dripping out of his mouth as wave after wave of ecstacy washes over me.
And I woke.
"Damn it, Victor, don't do that." I said it out loud, getting a few curious glances from the other passengers. "Who the hell cares," I said to the closest passenger. "It's none of your damned business anyway." I threw off the blankets in a huff and went into the rest room. Bending over the sink, I splashed cold water on my face, then stood up and looked in the mirror. I was flushed and looked dazed, I'd been sweating profusely and the hair was matted around my neck. My hands shook, and I lifted up my shirt to see where Victor had fed dur
ing the dream; there was nothing there, of course. It had only been a dream. But it felt so real.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard his laughter, blushed and then smiled. On impulse, I kissed my reflection in the mirror. "For you, Victor," I whispered. "Thank you."
By all accounts, my mother and her husband were living in relative seclusion in a fairly small town northwest of Portland. I'd arranged for a rental car to be waiting at the airport; thanks to Victor's financial arrangements, there was no problem with credit or cash. I simply signed the forms and they handed me the keys.
I showed the young man behind the counter the paper Betsy had given me with my mother's address. "Can you tell me how to get to here?"
"Yeah, that's right easy," he said. "It's about sixty-five miles or so. Maybe take you an hour and a half. Nice drive, too. Scenic. Just take 495 to 95—there's signs when you leave the airport for these—and follow that until you get to 202. From 202 you go, oh, I dunno, maybe about twenty miles or so, and then you turn on to…" He stopped a minute. "No, wait, I think it's more like thirty miles. And then you…"
"Right easy?" I smiled as I interrupted him. "Do you have any maps?"
He did and I thanked him. The car was waiting at the curb, and I put my bags in the back and got in behind the wheel. It had been a while since I'd been able to drive, but I had countless years of high school and driver's education training. "Nice to know," I said with a laugh as I pulled into traffic and turned on the radio, "that some of that uselessness is finally paying off."
It was a pleasant ride, and I only got lost twice. The town itself wasn't quite as small as I'd imagined it would be. There were even a couple of different motels to choose from. I checked into the one closest to the road I'd need to take to my mother's cabin. Once again there was no problem with credit, and in no time at all I had my room. I stayed long enough to use the bathroom, and then went back into the car and got back onto the road.
Vampire Legacy 04 - Blood of My Blood Page 12