Midnight Kiss

by Nancy Gideon

  “It’s all right, Takeo,” Arabella soothed. “Let him look.”

  The boy offered up his marked wrist with a prideful disdain. Stuart examined the wounds and let the boy’s arm drop.

  “Louis’s,” he drawled out with a mild contempt. “As you are Louis’s.”

  Arabella’s chin rose a notch, her pose an echo of Takeo’s. “Yes. Louis’s. And that will never change, as long as he is what he is. Unless you can change him.”

  Howland said nothing as he studied his daughter’s defiant features. Then he sighed. “I must change to go to the hospital. I won’t be long. Would you wait here until I return, Bella? I would like to talk some more on this.”

  “I won’t change my mind,” she warned, with a tenacious smile that he couldn’t help but respond to.

  “That would be too much of a miracle to hope for. And how is Radman today?”

  “I need some more of the powders.”

  “More? I gave him enough to last over a week.”

  When she explained that he’d taken them all at once, he appeared thoughtful and demanded to know the effects.

  “He can tolerate diffuse daylight for a time, and in other ways, he is quite... human.” She looked down, her cheeks staining, a modest crimson.

  “You are lying with him.”

  He sounded so astonished, Arabella was moved to retort, “He is my husband!”

  “He is unnatural! Have you thought—but no.”

  “Thought what?”

  He was looking at her with that keen, probing interest, the way he observed something that puzzled him. “Of the possibility of a child.”

  She blushed hotter and muttered, “Louis doesn’t think that likely.”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  She gasped at his cruelty.

  “Bella, we don’t know what causes his condition. If it’s some element in his blood, it could well be passed along to any child you make between you.”

  That settled like cold panic within her heart. “Or it could be human,” she protested forcefully.

  “Or both,” he amended. “I don’t know, Bella. Much of what Radman is is a mystery and an impossibility. If a child is seeded, there are ways to terminate the problem that would not endanger you. You must promise to advise me right away if you conceive.”

  “Yes, of course,” she mumbled. But her eyes canted downward and her expression felt numb.

  “I must go now. You will wait here for me. I have more of his powders ready to mix. I’ll bring them home with me. Until then, stay so that I know you are safe.”

  “All right.”

  And she turned a cool cheek up for his kiss and sat in silence long after he’d gone. Finally, she felt the light touch of Takeo’s hand upon her shoulder and glanced up at him. His features were unreadable. His eyes were alive with torment. Gently, she pressed her fingers over his.

  “Takeo, I would never do anything to harm a child of Louis’s. I would love it as I love him, regardless of the consequences. As we both love you.”

  That satisfied him, for he bowed slightly and his face was suspiciously pinked with a flush of embarrassed pleasure. And he was content to stand sentinel behind her chair as the day progressed from morning to afternoon.

  But Arabella was far from the serene picture she presented. Her thoughts were careening. A vampire husband... a vampire child.

  Strange, how simple and soothing it was to fall back into the pattern of years. Arabella found herself drawn to her father’s cluttered desk and the papers strewn across it. He wasn’t keeping up with his work, she thought with a fond smile. She started sorting through the sheaf and soon was seated transcribing his nearly illegible scrawl into the journal he kept. It calmed, that busy work, that plunge into the familiar, almost like settling back into those pleasant and uneventful days, sitting in his study, waiting for his return. A comforting illusion in her agitated state. Only Takeo reminded her of the difference. Takeo, and his link to the being laid out in a basement box, deep in unnatural slumber.

  Arabella touched the black obelisk with all its foreign writings. She’d left it anchoring a stack of her father’s loose papers. Would Louis go out in search of sustenance tonight? She wondered and it upset her. How many days had it been? She assumed if he’d killed Wesley, he’d also fed upon him. She closed her mind to further thoughts of that. If he went out in search of victims, what, then, made him different from his past companions? Was he any less damned, any less the predator? She had to come to terms with these things within her own mind before Louis rose at sunset. He would sense her confusion and it would wound him. She’d spoken so boldly to him about devotion and loyalty. How frail her promise was becoming. Would her courage fail her and in doing so, cause her to fail him? The first splotch of dampness on the papers below her startled her, but other tears were quick to follow. She was wiping them away when Takeo knelt beside her, his youthful features all matured concern and sympathy.

  “What am I to do, Takeo? How can I love him so completely, yet loathe that which he is? He will despise me for my weakness.”

  No. You are most admirable. He does not expect you to love what cannot be loved, that which he loathes about himself. He has been in pain for centuries, and you are the first relief he’s known. The truth cannot hurt him. It’s not weakness to cry for the loss of innocence. It’s that touch of humanity he loves about you.

  “You are very wise for one so young.” And she smiled through her dull misery.

  I have seen much. I have known evil in men that makes my master a saint in comparison. Sometimes it isn’t action, but intention that separates the two. He doesn’t kill for pleasure. In fact, he rarely kills at all. He takes only enough to sustain himself, and he leaves those he uses with no memory of pain or fright. Do not judge him too harshly—or yourself. Don’t push yourself into making hasty promises. The fact that you are there when he awakes is all he needs from you.

  “Then I will always be there when he awakes.”

  They were sharing a look of mutual conviction when the sound of a knock upon the front door and Mrs. Kampford’s voice reached them.

  “I’m sorry. The doctor is not at home. Here, now! You can’t just push your way in! Wait just a—” There was a low groan and a soft thump.

  Takeo jerked Arabella from the chair and thrust her behind him. But there was little he could do when the doors to Stuart Howland’s study burst open and several burly brutes confronted them with pistols drawn.

  “So we meets again, Missy,” growled one of the men. Arabella recognized him as Mac Reeves’s accomplice, Ollie. “Only this time, your pretty feller ain’t gonna be tossing me around.” He chuckled, low and gritty. “Gettin’ late, and we gots some anxious friends jus’ dyin’ to see you.”

  Stay behind me, Miss Arabella. Don’t move. I won’t let them take you.

  “You be comin’ along real quiet-like. I’d hate to do any shooting.”

  While he stood guard at the door, the other two flanked the desk as Takeo urged Arabella around it. He struck out so quickly, the one on the right side never saw the blur of his foot as it numbed his arm and sent the gun spinning. Arabella dropped the villain to the floor with the crack of Louis’s black stone against the side of the fellow’s temple. Takeo was across the polished surface in a roll, scattering papers and journals, and Arabella scrambled beneath it, dodging out the other side as Takeo engaged the second graverobber with a series of skull-rattling kicks. Before she could get halfway across the room, Reeves’s companion caught her by the hair and yanked her up, as she screamed with fright and pain and fury. She delivered a few good slaps of her own before his settled in solidly against her cheek and the room went whirling.

  “Hold up there, boy, lest you want me to go breakin’ up her pretty little face.”

  Takeo came to an immediate stan
dstill. His eyes were quick to assess the impossibility of an attack with Arabella so vulnerable.

  I’m sorry, Missus.

  It’s all right, Takeo. Her thoughts came with a calm she was far from feeling because the danger was not hers. It was Louis they were after. There was no mistaking that when Ollie turned his head and she saw the irrefutable marks upon his throat. These men were Bianca’s henchmen. And if they took her to Bianca and Gerardo, Louis was sure to follow—to his doom. And that she could not allow.

  When Louis arrives, don’t let him come after me. They’re using me to get to him. Don’t let him follow. Tell him... I’m dead. Tell him they killed me, and get him as far away as you can. Don’t let him come after me. They’ll destroy him. Takeo, promise me!

  The boy stood stiff and silent. Before he could give her a reply, the first man he’d struck dealt him a leveling blow with the barrel of his pistol.

  “No!” Arabella shrieked and writhed in Ollie’s grip. “He’s just a boy! Let him alone!”

  “He don’t fight like no boy,” the second man growled, delivering a punishing kick at the immobile figure.

  “Let ’im be. Don’t matter none. He’ll be taken care of when the welcomin’ party gets here to wait for the doc.”

  That brought a renewed sense of panic and struggle to Arabella. Her father!

  “C’mon, Missy. Walk nice, lest you want me to scatter the lad’s brains now.”

  And still dazed, Arabella did as she was told, casting a last look back at the fallen boy, praying Louis would come in time to save him, Mrs. Kampford, and her father from whatever horror his two long-dead friends had in mind, and that Takeo would do as she told him.

  DANGER AND DEATH. Those things scented the air like a strong stale perfume.

  Louis blended with the shadows outside the Howland house. He stood with an uncanny stillness, listening, letting his acute senses probe the house. He could feel the presence of two mortals, but there were more, just outside the reach of his newly limited abilities. For the first time, he cursed that thread of humanity running through him like a thin vein of precious ore through rock because it made him weaker than those he had to face.

  Having concluded his study of the exterior of the house, Louis chose the best route in. With a subtle movement, he lifted his arms and simply rose up to Arabella’s second-story window as if making a gentle leap up a single stair step. Finding the latch undone, he muttered a soft oath at Howland’s stupidity as he slipped in through the open casement. For a man of wisdom and science, Howland had damn little common sense.

  Arabella’s room was dark and deserted, but for a brief overpowering instant, Louis was lost to the aura of her within it. His eyes closed as he drank in the essence of her: The fragrance of her powders and perfumes, the lingering warmth of her upon the sheets and within the clothing yet lining her closets. He could feel her in the bath soaps, in the reflecting glass, in the brush still twined with strands of her long dark hair. A wave of desperate despair rose up in him. If they had harmed her...

  Then his eyes opened, filled with a deadly purpose that knew no fear. He would not allow her to come to any harm. And he went to the stairs to confront whatever veiled evil waited below.

  He made no sound in passing. The carpet remained uncrushed as he slid over it without touching the fibers. He was getting strong impressions now, evidence of struggle and terror. And blood. His nostrils flared and hunger had him moistening his lips. The kill was fresh and close by. The heart had only recently surrendered its fight. Louis’s breath was coming faster, excited by the rich scent that distracted and lured him. He crossed the foyer cautiously, wondering if the corpse had been left to draw him into a skillful trap. But his suspecting that still couldn’t overcome his compelling need to continue toward the source of temptation.

  He saw the soles of the victim’s feet protruding from the dining room arch. He approached more slowly, working harder to control the roar of appetite burning within him. He breathed in short little hisses between clenched teeth as his stare followed a thin trail of blood splotching the hall runner, thickening as it neared the still body.

  Howland.

  One glimpse told all. He laid face up, eyes sightlessly fixed at some unseen horror on the ceiling. His throat had been savagely torn out. Louis observed the scene dispassionately. He’d long since lost his squeamishness around such things. He could imagine Howland coming home from the hospital. He still had on his doctoring smock and carried the perfumed handkerchief he’d held over his nose while visiting the fetid wards. He’d entered his own home unaware that death awaited and had walked foolishly right into its cold and merciless embrace. There was no sign of resistance. The initial attack had completely drained him.

  Louis knelt down at the dead man’s shoulder. He felt a disassociated pain of loss because this mortal had been Arabella’s father, but no real sorrow touched his heart. That disturbed him. It was the callousness of his breed. He reached out to ease the lids down over the glazed eyes. Had Arabella been here to witness this murder? Had she seen through her own eyes what those of his kind did to serve their hunger? If so, how could she ever look at him in the same way or forgive him for having brought this disaster into her life?

  Now she had no one to care for her. No one except him.

  “I will care for her, Doctor. I will keep my word to you, I promise.”

  Without any real awareness of it, he lifted bloodstained fingers to his lips to sample the taste upon them, shuddering slightly with an anticipated pleasure. It was then Louis noticed a fine powdery substance scattered about the body and the ripped pouch the doctor had clenched in one stiff hand. And the significance sank deep and desolate. His future lay scattered upon that floor, tiny granules of hope carelessly dispersed in one wantonly violent act. A terrible fury got hold of him, shaking through him in a great dark surge. They had crushed his dreams of mortality. Now Howland would never bring him back to the world of the living. They’d sentenced him to an eternity of the damned.

  With a low snarl, he rose up. Vengeance beat hot and fierce and senseless. He would kill them both. He would rip them apart and scatter their unnatural pieces to the night. How dare they steal his one chance at salvation! They would pay, and pay dearly. The fools had no idea what they had awakened with their petty revenge.

  He stalked through the house like an ill wind toward the doctor’s office where he felt the two mortal beings—Takeo and a woman. Bella? He wasn’t sure. He reached out with his mind, but couldn’t touch either of them. Something else was in there with them.

  It was dark in the big room, with only a dim light burning. His eyes were quick to adjust. He saw Bessie Kampford huddled near it with a limp Takeo clutched up to her bosom. They both looked mussed and worse for wear. Victims of foul play? The housekeeper’s eyes were huge and nearly black with fear as they fixed upon him. Her lips moved soundlessly, as if trying to convey some message that terror had frozen up in her throat.

  “Where is Bella?” he demanded.

  “Look out, my lord!” The warning rasped from the housekeeper.

  But not in time to save him from a sudden slashing agony.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  THE UNEXPECTED brutality of the attack stunned Louis. Pain lanced through his shoulder, spearing to the bone as the horrid odor of decay overwhelmed him. He staggered and the demon latching onto him bore him down to his knees. The fetid breath, the piercing burn of the fangs into his flesh. Louis reeled from it all. His hand flailed and caught upon a wet and moldering coat. The fabric gave way. He grappled again and caught a handful of matted hair. It came out in a great tuft. With blackness swelling up over his consciousness, he tried once more, his palm levering beneath what was left of the revenant’s nose to strike upward, the blow allowing him to loosen himself from the creature’s bite. He rolled free to one side and came up on wobbly legs. And the
beast was on him at once.

  Reeves, or what was left of him, had no intelligence to drive him, only a basic hunger. And Louis would serve it as well as any mortal. With his unnatural quickness, he snatched out, his long, dirty nails hooking on the side of Louis’s face, tearing downward from cheek to neck to chest in jagged furrows, finally clasping his shirt front to keep his prey from lunging away. And he bared his great bloodied fangs to strike like a deadly snake for the vulnerable arteries.

  Louis drove up with his forearm. There was a satisfactory clack as Reeves’s jaw snapped together from the impact beneath his chin. But still, he came on, snarling and spraying a loathsome spittle. His free hand grabbed for Louis’s hair, wrenching his head at a taut angle. Louis gave with the pull, dropping fast to offset Reeves’s balance. The ghoul was clumsy and unable to right himself as the sleek vampire slid out of his grasp, ducked beneath his arms, and pivoted to safety.

  Louis was panting heavily as Reeves lumbered upright to regard him through dead, thirsty eyes. Roaring, the mindless thing charged him. Louis’s kick struck the shaggy head, his foot flashing back and forth two, three, four times, but the force barely stunned the slobbering creature. Reeves grabbed his foot and twisted hard. Using that momentum, Louis swung his other foot up and over, his heel catching the dead thing in the eye. With a howl of distress, Reeves let him go and clutched at his putrefied face as Louis dropped, then bounded back up at a wavering en garde.

  It took only a second for the hulking thing to rejoin the attack. It hadn’t the capacity for pain or fear or caution, only that relentless urge to kill and feed. Thinking wildly of how he might stop this unstoppable fiend, Louis dealt out several more chopping blows to the monstrous head, then his wrist was circled in an ironlike grip. And when he swung with the other, it, too, was nabbed. With a strength that nearly tore his arms from their sockets, Reeves jerked Louis up to the stench of his coat, wrapping him in a crushing hug to exert a spine-snapping pressure.