by Susan Hayes
Fear washed over her and the darkness pressed in close, strangling her with icy fingers as she felt her awareness shift. Now she was lying down on something soft, the darkness still all around her, leaving her blind. She felt a feathery touch on her ankle, a chilled caress that lingered on her skin. Her body reacted by drawing her foot back beneath the blanket that she could now feel covering her body. The touch came again, a silken shimmer of cold that brushed over her calf, pushing away the blanket as it rose up her leg, stopping at the back of her knee just below the hem of her skirt.
“You’re dreaming,” a voice whispered, and a puff of air ruffled her hair, something in its scent making her gorge rise and she turned away from it with a groan. Again, the cool touch came, this time brushing over her throat, exposed when she’d turned her head. “So tempting.” She felt something cold and wet slither over her neck and then retreat. “But not yet.”
Am I dreaming? Kyra struggled to think through the fog that clouded her mind. This was not at all like the first dream. She could feel her office couch beneath her and the ragged afghan she loved was still tugged up over her arms. She tried to open her eyes, but they wouldn’t budge, her concern spiking to panic as she tried to sit up and nothing happened. She’d felt her muscles tense, but it was like something had her tied down tight.
“So lovely,” the voice whispered again, and then she felt her breast being cupped by a hand with no warmth in it. Her nipple hardened beneath cold fingers, and she tried again to move, needing to escape that strange contact. Her stomach cramped with fear as she lay there, unable to twitch so much as a finger. The hand moved lower, and Kyra tried to scream, but nothing came out of her mouth but a faint moan.
Wake up! Move! She ordered herself, panic flooding her body with adrenaline. Nothing. The hand slid lower, down over her hip to her thigh. When it left the hem of her skirt and brushed over the thin fabric of her stocking, she shivered at the chill that sent a wave of goose bumps over her skin. Again, the hand moved as she fought to wake up, to move, to scream, anything to make this nightmare end. Cold fingers brushed against her inner thigh, sliding under her skirt to the apex of her thighs.
“You are so warm, so soft.” The whispers were back again, the scent of something unclean wafting by her nose. “Don’t you like your dream, Kyra? Are you wet for me? Or are you not finished fighting me yet?”
Hands brushed higher, caressing the bare skin of her stomach with a tenderness that somehow felt obscene. The chill of that touch flowed into her, making her shiver. The hands moved again, out from under her skirt to cup her breasts through the silk of her dress, and inside her mind she screamed and fought, but her body refused to react at all.
“Still fighting me, I see. I’m glad. I don’t want this to be over quickly. I’m going to make you wet for me, Kyra. Wet and hot. Soon you are going to want me to touch you. You’ll even beg me for it.” She felt the cold slither of a tongue against her throat again, his breath cool against her wet skin. “You’re going to beg me to do things to you, you cannot imagine yet. I promise.”
Erotic images filled her head suddenly, memories of old lovers and fragments of private fantasies. Hands and tongues touching her, teasing her. Kyra’s body reacted on its own, sending a gush of hot honey between her thighs. She heard a satisfied sigh and then the hands on her breasts moved, drifted lower. The fog thickened and she couldn’t think anymore, the images in her head and the touch on her body conspiring to end her resistance.
“Just a dream Kyra, let it happen.” The words sounded inside her mind and Kyra gave up the fight at last, succumbing to the fantasies that filled her head. Her body ached for contact as the images grew more lurid, more enticing. As her thighs parted she felt her arm lifted from where it lay on the sofa, a distant sensation almost apart from the dark lusts flooding her mind.
Something chill and wet wrapped itself around her injured finger, sharp teeth and a cold tongue playing over her skin, tasting and teasing. She felt the teeth close on her fingertip, and there was a white-hot flare of pain that faded away quickly, only to be replaced by a sucking sensation that made her clit pulse and throb in time to the delicate drawing on her flesh. The hands moved back beneath her skirt again, insinuating themselves between her thighs, and she felt fingers cupping her pussy, chilling her overheated flesh, sliding deeper to where she was slick and needy. All she could muster in protest was a low moan, her thighs opening in invitation to those questing fingers as her will gave way completely.
A knock on her door saved her. Kyra was awake in an instant, her body jerking upright with a barely suppressed scream. There was no one in the office. She was alone. Her hands shook as she ran them over her body, touching everywhere she’d dreamed of the cold hands touching her. She teetered on the jagged edge of reality, caught between her nightmare and the waking world as she tried to separate the two, her heart pounding in her throat and fear making her stomach twist.
The knock came again. “Club is about to open. Rise and shine, boss.”
Travis. Kyra scrambled off the sofa, nearly tripping over the afghan that fell to the floor as she rose. “Yeah, I’m up. Thanks, Trav. I’ll be out in a minute, just putting myself together here.” She drew in a ragged breath. Yeah, more like picking up the pieces of my shattered wits.
Fingers splayed out in front of her, Kyra checked to see if they had stopped shaking and felt her heart lurch in her chest. The cut on her finger was weeping blood, and where the hell was the bandage she’d put on it? She ran her thumb over the tender area, and a wave of horror rippled down her spine. Her finger was wet. “What the hell is going on?” she muttered to herself, fighting back panic. She must have done it herself in her sleep, torn the bandage off while thrashing from that weird damn dream and stuck her finger in her mouth out of instinct when it had stung. That had to be it. It was all just a freaky, disturbing nightmare.
She grabbed her bag and hauled out a hairbrush and makeup kit, groaning as she popped open a compact to assess the damage. “Great, you look even worse than you feel.” She swore as she grabbed the concealer. Despite her nap, there were dark circles under her eyes and her normally pale skin tone was now closer to “walking dead” than “land of the living.” With speed borne of experience, she hid the worst of the damage, redid her hair, and closed the compact with a snap. “I declare thee officially resurrected. Arise and face your workday.” She laughed a little at herself and went to make herself a triple-shot Americano, trying to ignore the sense of lingering unease that her nightmares had left with her.
She’d made it through the shift on a combination of willpower and caffeine, her head pounding and the cut on her finger throbbing from time to time as she drove herself on to closing time. Coming out of her office at the end of the night, she found Travis waiting for her, his face marked with concern.
“Boss? Can I talk to you a minute?” He straightened from where he’d been leaning up against the wall and lifted up a hand, showing her a foil pill packet with two little white pills. “I know you don’t drink and you hate taking anything medicinal, but I want you to take one of these when you get home. It’s just an over-the-counter sleep aid, I use it sometimes when I need to sleep and can’t. It won’t hurt you, I promise, but you have got to get some sleep.”
“I’m fine.” She’d started the lie without even thinking about it, and then stopped when she saw the look of disbelief in his eyes.
“Sure you are, it’s totally normal for you to take a nap before work, mainline espresso all night and still look like a poleaxed zombie.” He snorted with laughter and shook his shaved head at her. “Don’t try denying it. Just do what I say for once. Take the pills. Get some rest. I’ll see you Wednesday.” Travis laid a friendly hand on her shoulder, his massive paw covering her entire shoulder and part of her arm. “And drive slowly for once, as a personal favor to me.”
“When did you get this pushy?” Kyra asked, but she took the pills and slipped them into the pocket of her leather jacket.
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br /> “I’m a bouncer, Kyra, I’m paid to be pushy! Now go on home.”
She drove home at half her usual speed, not trusting her reflexes in her exhausted state. The rain had stopped, but the city was still shrouded in clouds and a heavy fog that distorted distance and made strange shapes dance and twist on the road ahead of her. By the time she got to her apartment, she felt ready to collapse.
Not even bothering to wipe off her makeup, Kyra peeled off her clothes and left them on the floor, promising herself she’d tidy up in the morning. She’d hit the bed with a long groan as she tucked herself under her duvet, the pills in her hand. She dry swallowed one before she could talk herself out of it. She had to sleep, or she was going to lose her mind. “When I open my eyes again, please let it be morning.”
It was still dark outside when she woke again, a scream trapped behind her teeth and her heart slamming against her ribs so hard it hurt. Kyra had taken one look at her clock radio and nearly sobbed with frustration. The pills had only bought her three short hours before the dreams had come back with a vengeance.
Shivering and panting for breath, she fled to the bathroom, cranking up the hot water and climbing in the tub. She wrapped her arms around her knees and bowed her head against the torrent of hot water that streamed over her. So cold. How can I still feel so cold? She kept shivering despite the heated water and steam that filled the bathroom, the cold of her nightmares still lingering in her mind.
When her heart had finally slowed down enough that she couldn’t hear each beat like a hammer on an anvil, she’d lifted her hands just in front of her face. She could see they were pink and clean, and her mind told her that was real, but at the same time she could also see them covered in blood. So much blood that it had dripped off her fingers in rivulets and made obscene patterns on the floor around her feet. Only the feet in her vision hadn’t been hers, the shoes had been wrong.
Kyra shook her head to clear the cobwebs and tried to make sense of the horrifying images that danced around her brain. There’d been blood, an impossible amount of it that seemed to cover everything she could see. She had barely been able to breathe for the stench in the air, an obscene perfume of roses and death that made her stomach roil in protest at the memory of it. Unable to put the images together, she scrambled to her feet and made her way carefully out of the shower on shaky legs. She dried herself off slowly and tried to ignore the continuing sense of cold that seemed to radiate from deep inside her.
There wasn’t any point in going back to bed. She’d rather suffer from exhaustion than face another one of her hellish nightmares. They were getting worse every time, the details more vivid. She padded back out to her bedroom, and another memory flashed through her mind, a man’s face, twisted in fear and pain. She froze as fresh horror twisted her stomach into tighter knots. This time her sick imagination had added the face of someone she’d actually met, just what she needed. Not that the big bastard didn’t have a bit of karma coming for him after what he’d done to Jasmine, but not what she’d imagined happening to him. No one deserved that.
“And I don’t deserve this,” she muttered to herself as she went in search of something to wear. Her eyes moved to the clock radio again and she groaned. It was just past seven in the morning and she was operating on three hours of sleep. It was going to be a very long day.
5
Gareth sat at the small desk in his hotel room, drinking coffee as he watched the grainy, black-and-white security footage from Silken’s cameras. The disks, loaded with a week’s worth of video, had been acquired by the Brotherhood and forwarded to him early that morning. He’d been at it for hours now, going over every inch of the club. He was looking for something the authorities wouldn’t even know to look for. Someone who wasn’t there. He had noted the confrontation between the second murder victim and the club’s pretty manager, a tiny slip of a woman who wore her confidence like a badge as she had put the troublemaker in his place and then left him to security to handle. That had been interesting, but what happened a few minutes later had his eyes locked on the screen as he replayed it over and over.
The scene played out again. The vivacious little firecracker who ran the club stepped away from the drunk as her security team moved in, and she turned to go, only to stop. Gareth froze the footage and stared at it a moment. The woman’s head was tipped up, her lips turned up in a polite smile as though she was greeting someone, but there was no one in front of her. He let the footage go forward again and watched as for the next eight minutes the manager stood next to an empty table, interacting with what appeared to be thin air.
He took in every detail, from the untouched drink that sat across from her to the way her curvy little body leaned closer to the empty chair as though drawn into a conversation with an attractive conversant. Her hand touched the table, and she stopped to stare at it, and then she had gone utterly still. Given the way he’d seen her move around the club, stillness was not a regular occurrence for this woman. Even on video, she seemed to crackle with energy. When she did move again, it had been to withdraw her hand and take her leave of her invisible companion as though nothing odd had happened.
Gareth’s fingers tightened around the coffee mug he held. He’d found his target. There was no other way to explain what he had just seen. Gareth knew without a doubt that the woman had been speaking to someone, someone able to draw her in and make her lose all track of time. There were very few creatures on the planet that could do that without casting a reflection or leaving an image to be captured on film. She had to have been speaking to a vampire.
He played back the scene again, freezing the image so that he could stare at the woman’s face, memorizing her delicate features. He’d need to find her, quickly. The vampire had killed just behind her club and then had killed the poor drunken fool who’d touched her, and that meant the creature had likely developed an attachment. He glanced down at the copy of the police file, brushing aside several crime scene photos so brutal they would have made an angel weep to see them. He scanned through the written report until he found what he was looking for. Her name. He glanced up at the screen again, her eyes staring back at him. “Kyra Robinson, you’re in a world of trouble.”
He typed out the e-mail quickly, outlining his findings and making a priority request for all available information on one Kyra Robinson. He was going to need everything there was to know about her if he was going to have any chance of preventing her death, or worse. He ran the e-mail through an encryption program and sent it, confident that in a matter of hours a wealth of detail on Kyra Robinson’s life, habits, and quirks would be sitting in his inbox.
He felt himself drawn again to the image of her face that was frozen on the monitor, his chest tightening at the idea of anything hurting her. His eyes traced the delicate lines of her mouth, and he realized he was staring. “Get a grip,” he told himself with a sharp crack of laughter. “She’s just another potential vampire snack in need of saving.”
Gareth downed the rest of his coffee and pushed himself away from the small desk, suddenly feeling the need to do something more physical than research and reading. Leaving the laptop open, he dropped to the floor and drove himself through a fast-paced set of a hundred pushups, relishing the burn in his muscles as he tried to let everything else go.
It was always like this at the beginning of a hunt. The darkness in his DNA showed strongest when he was doing what he’d been born to do. Hunt down his prey and kill them. It had taken years to fully control the dark side of his nature, and even now it was a struggle at times like these. He didn’t let anyone see him like this, when the darkness was close to the surface. It was why he hunted alone.
He got to his feet and dragged his T-shirt over his head, using it to dry the sweat from his face as he headed to the bathroom to shower. As he crossed the room, his eyes went back to the open monitor and the image of Kyra’s face frozen there. Unbidden, the thought rose up and he found himself wondering what colour her eyes would be.
Not even the luxury of a steam shower could drive thoughts of Kyra Robinson or the coming hunt out of his head, and Gareth found himself leaving the shower in the same agitated state as when he’d stepped under the water. Frustrated with himself, he tossed the damp towel on the unused bed and flicked on the television to catch the morning news.
His attention was immediately caught as the leading story splashed across the screen. There’d been another murder. Gareth turned up the volume and grabbed a pen and paper from the desk, making quick notes as the news anchor doled out the gory details. Again the victim’s cash had been left undisturbed, but his driver’s license had been left out in plain sight. One witness babbled on camera about writing left in blood on the walls, but an officer had appeared and ended the interview before more details came out. “Great,” he muttered and hoped that his sources would be able to get him the new information quickly.
Almost as if he’d summoned them with his thoughts, the laptop chimed, announcing he had incoming e-mail. As Gareth scanned the contents, he swore and started dressing before he’d even gotten to the last line. “Locate target Kyra Robinson at once and secure. Can confirm most recent murder also connected to her. Will send you more information soon.”
“Locate target and secure.” He repeated his orders to himself as he slipped a pair of silver-bladed daggers into the secret pockets artfully stitched into his leather jacket. “It always sounds so much easier than it’s really going to be.” He finished dressing in record time and headed for the door, still unhappy with the situation. “Waking her up after a night shift isn’t going to endear me to her one bit,” he muttered and took one last look at her image staring up at him from the monitor. Still, she’s a little thing. What’s the worst she’ll do, yell at me?