Wait a second, wait a second.
She’d either had too much to drink or not enough, because there was no way she’d just seen…that he actually had…that he was actually a…. No.
Denial rushed through her, followed by a wave of panic when she opened her eyes to see Dillon, fangs still bared, eyes flashing. He took one step toward the Buick and collapsed.
Her gaze shifted to the small dart that protruded between his shoulder blades. Her heart hit the brakes and skidded to a stop. Fear rushed through her, cold and biting, dousing the anxiety and disbelief, and galvanizing her into action.
Not fear for herself that told her to get the hell out of there while she still could. No, she felt fear for him, spurring her to drop to her knees and reach out to him.
Because vampire or not, Dillon Cash was still her friend.
And he’d just been shot.
MEG CALLED JAKE MCCANN instead of the paramedics.
While she wanted to believe that her mind had been playing tricks on her, deep in her heart, she knew that what she’d seen had been all too real.
Something had happened to Dillon two months ago. Something that went beyond a little Internet research on sex appeal. He’d really and truly changed. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally.
A vampire.
As much as she wanted to dismiss the insane notion, she couldn’t.
Because it didn’t just stir a rush of seemingly impossible questions. Instead it answered the biggest one of all—namely, how Dillon Cash had gone from geek to god virtually overnight.
One day he’d been the most clueless computer nerd in town and the next he’d morphed into Mr. Sex Appeal. He’d turned his back on Meg, pulled away from his family and embraced a new set of friends—the owners of the town’s one and only custom motorcycle shop.
Jake McCann and Garret Sawyer had moved to Skull Creek around the time Dillon had changed. The men hadn’t been friends of a friend or cousins of a cousin. They’d simply shown up one day, leased and renovated a local gas station, and Skull Creek Choppers had been born. While they kept up the pretense of being run-of-the-mill entrepreneurs—they sponsored a local little league team and paid their monthly dues to the local chamber of commerce—they didn’t blend in with the other townspeople. No Sunday picnics at the park, no frequenting the one and only grocery store in town, no occasional lunches at the local diner. Rather, they kept to themselves and burned the midnight oil at their shop.
They were strangers for the most part. Tall, dark, hunky strangers who shared the same telltale tattoos on their biceps.
If Meg had had any doubts that Jake McCann had something to do with Dillon’s transformation, they disappeared when he arrived in record time, picked up Dillon as if he weighed little to nothing, loaded him in the back seat of a black SUV, motioned Meg in after him and headed in the opposite direction of the nearest hospital.
She lifted her gaze from the man whose head she cradled in her lap and caught Jake’s stare in the rearview mirror. His eyes gleamed bright and knowing and the words were out before she could stop them. “You’re a vampire, too, aren’t you?”
He didn’t answer her.
He didn’t have to.
For a split second, reality struck and the incredulity of what she’d just said hit her.
A bona fide, Bella Lugosi, Dark Shadows, Anne Rice, bloodsucking vampire.
Her brain railed against the notion, but then her memory stirred and she saw Dillon looming over her, his mouth hinting at the sexiest grin she’d ever seen, his eyes a bright, vivid blue. She remembered his pissed off look in the parking lot and the deep purple hue of his gaze.
A dozen other images rushed at her, pounding out the truth and fortifying it until it stared her in the face like a brick wall. Dillon showing up after sunset. Dillon appearing on her balcony. Dillon standing in front of her on the ledge at Cooter’s Ridge. Dillon teasing and taunting and stirring her more than any other man in her past.
He’d done all of those things because he was more than a man.
“I know it’s a little hard to believe,” Jake said as if reading her thoughts. “I can’t read them if you don’t want me to,” he added, sending a jolt of realization through Meg. “It’s like closing the blind on a window. Nikki does it all the time.”
Because Nikki knew the truth. And accepted it.
“She didn’t at first. She didn’t want to believe any more than you do. At the same time, she couldn’t deny what was right in front of her.” His gaze caught and held hers in the mirror. His eyes blazed as bright as the sun on a hot Texas day before cooling to a deep, fathomless blue. “Any more than you can.”
“Maybe I’m hallucinating,” she blurted, grasping for some plausible explanation.
“Does he feel like a hallucination?”
Her gaze dropped to the man stretched out on the seat next to her. She reached out, touching the tattoo that encircled one massive bicep. Warm skin met her fingertips as she traced the intricate pattern. Slowly. Carefully. Before easing to his chest. His heart beat a steady rhythm against her palm, answering one question but stirring a dozen more.
“We’re susceptible to sunlight and garlic, a stake through the heart—the usual. We can’t eat anything, but we can drink as much as we like. Though I don’t usually advise it because we’re very sensitive. We feel everything more strongly, more deeply than most, which makes us really cheap drunks. We have a reflection just like anyone else. We—”
“Could you just stop?” she blurted, her mind going into overload. Her temples throbbed and her forehead ached. It was all too much to grasp. “Please.”
This was not happening. Not the bloodred eyes or the fangs or Dillon so limp and lifeless in her arms.
None of it.
Nada.
Zip.
It was all a bad dream brought on by too much stress and way too many Twinkies. Soon she would open her eyes, the sun would be shining and Dillon would be awake, his green eyes twinkling, his mouth crooked into a sexy grin.
“Don’t worry,” Jake’s voice pushed past the frantic thoughts and she glanced up again. Her gaze locked with his and she saw the same flickering light she’d seen in Dillon’s gaze so many times. “He isn’t dead. Despite what most people believe, vampires are living and breathing creatures just like humans. We are humans.” His gaze clouded. “Or we once were. Dillon is as alive as the next guy. More so now thanks to the blood flowing through his veins. My blood.” An anguished light touched his gaze, dispelling yet another myth—that vampires were cold, ruthless creatures. “I had no choice. It was either turn him or let him die and I couldn’t do that. He helped Nikki. He saved her. I had to return the favor.”
As far out as it all seemed, her gut kept insisting otherwise and the words seemed to come despite her better judgment. “What exactly happened?”
“I…” He shook his head. “It’s not my place to tell you.” He shifted his attention back to the road. His hands tightened on the steering wheel as if he’d already said more than he meant to.
The rest would have to come from Dillon once he woke up.
If he woke up.
She forced aside the thought and the dozens of unanswered questions that raced through her mind. Resting her palm over the steady thud of his heart, she did the only thing she could think of at that moment—she prayed.
15
“DRINK.”
The deep, familiar voice pushed into Dillon’s head and peeled back the layers of darkness that smothered him.
He forced his eyes open. His head throbbed and the light hurt, seeming as if the drummer for Linkin’ Park was playing a fast, furious solo in his skull. Pain gripped him like a vise, clamping tighter, building the pressure and urging him back toward oblivion.
The peace.
“Don’t pass out on me now, buddy.” A hand slid under Dillon’s aching head and the hard edge of a glass pressed against his bone-dry lips.
The first few drops of intoxicating blood t
ouched his tongue and his gut twisted. Then hunger took control. Where he hadn’t been able to move a muscle just a moment ago, an instinct as primal as it was dangerous took over and he reached out. His mouth opened. His hands grasped the glass and he held on, gulping at the contents, eager for the life sliding down his throat.
“Easy, buddy. You’ll make yourself sick drinking the bottled stuff so fast.”
“More,” Dillon groaned when he finished the last of the sweet, fortifying liquid.
His head dropped back to the pillow as he waited for Garret to refill the glass. He closed his eyes and relished the energy that pulsed from his stomach and spread through his limbs, firing his nerves and dispelling the last paralyzing shreds.
His heart sped, beating a fast, furious rhythm as he started to think.
To remember.
The images started at the club. He heard the music and smelled the cigarette smoke and he saw the woman standing across the room—
“Shit.” The word burst past his lips as he bolted upright. His gaze skittered around the familiar room where he’d spent each day for the past few months. The recliner in the corner. The big-screen TV. The infamous bed with it’s carved notches in the headboard.
There was no one sitting at the table or perched in the recliner or pacing a hole in the rug near his bed.
No one except Garret who sat on the edge of the mattress, an expectant look on his face, as he waited for Dillon to say something.
He couldn’t. He couldn’t think past the kiss and the pain and Meg staring at him as if he’d grown two heads. Or a very lethal looking pair of fangs.
Shit.
His gut twisted, a feeling that had nothing to do with the hunger and everything to do with the fact that she knew.
She knew.
Panic crashed over him, followed by a douse of anxiety and the desperate need to talk to her. Now. He started to move and a white-hot pain knifed between his shoulders blades. A groan ripped from his throat as he fell back to the bed.
“Take it easy. It’s only been a few hours. You haven’t had a chance to heal.”
“What happened?” he finally managed to ask once the fire had died enough for him to think again. He took the refill Garret handed him and downed a huge gulp. “I was shot, wasn’t I?”
Garret nodded. “But not with a bullet. Someone took you out with this.” He held up a small dart. “It’s a tranquilizer dart. The kind they use on animals. One shot and you can’t move a lick. You’ve been sedated for the past three hours, your muscles paralyzed. It’s starting to wear off, but it’s going to take more time. More sleep. And more blood.” Garret held up the glass. “You can rely on this stuff, but it’ll take longer to recover. If you want to heal quickly, you need the real thing.”
He needed her.
The thought struck. A crazy, insane thought because Meg Sweeney was probably barricading her door at that very moment, hanging strands of garlic around the house and crossing herself sixty ways to Sunday.
She’d seen the truth for herself. He hadn’t gone from the town geek to one of the hottest guys around. No, he’d gone from a town geek to a hot vampire, a round-trip ticket that would eventually bring him right back to where he’d started.
To being clueless and geeky and completely in love.
Love?
He wasn’t in love with Meg. He liked her, of course. A helluva lot. She was his buddy. His pal. His friend.
The words were meant to reassure, but damned if they didn’t make him that much more miserable.
“How did I get here?” he blurted, eager to ignore the rush of feelings that pushed and pulled inside of him.
“Meg called Jake and he picked you up. He called me on my cell—I was out—and I met you guys here. He went to pick up Nikki and the two of them waited around awhile before I finally convinced them that you were going to be okay. Actually, Jake knew it from the get-go, but Nikki wasn’t buying it. She really cares about you.” He shook his head as if the very thought puzzled the hell out of him.
As if Garret had seen far too much fear and revulsion in his two-hundred-plus years and couldn’t grasp the concept of love and acceptance.
He couldn’t and Dillon didn’t blame him. Nikki was obviously the exception to the rule.
“Who shot me?” Dillon asked, his throat suddenly tight.
“You tell me.” Garret leveled a stare at him. “Didn’t you see someone? Sense them?”
“I…” The kiss rushed at him, the warm, sensuous lips eating at his, the lush body pressed to his, the sweet scent of strawberries and warm woman filling his nostrils, the soft, familiar gasps echoing in his head.
He’d sensed someone, all right.
“You went back for seconds, didn’t you?” Garret asked.
“No.” Not yet.
Not ever.
Because Meg was surely too scared to want him now. Unless Jake had mesmerized her. Vampires could look into a human’s eyes and entrance them. It was a survival skill that helped them keep such a low profile. If someone saw too much, a vampire could easily erase their short-term memory. Like turning back the hands of a clock, Jake could have made Meg forget all that had happened in the past few days—Dillon’s transformation in the parking lot, the kiss right before it, the sex the night before that.
That notion bothered him almost as much as the possibility that she feared him.
His body tensed and suddenly he needed to move. He forced himself upright, pushing his back up against the headboard. The movement brought with it a sharp pain between his shoulder blades and he winced.
Garret didn’t say a word. He simply stared at Dillon, as if he could see the turmoil coiling inside of him.
As if Garret knew what haunted him—the fear of the past, of the future—because he dealt with similar demons.
The older vampire opened his mouth to say something, but then he seemed to think better of it. “You haven’t been feeding properly,” he finally murmured, killing the notion and shifting the subject away from Meg. “You’re weak. It’s no wonder whoever it was got the jump on you. You’re lucky they didn’t kill you.”
“Why didn’t they?”
“I haven’t figured that one out. Obviously, we’re not looking at a groupie. I’ve had women come after me before—” he winked“—but they’re usually tossing panties my way, not darts. A groupie wants to nail you, sure enough, but not like that.”
“A vampire hunter?”
“I suppose it’s possible.” Garret shrugged. “But if it was, why didn’t they stake you when they had the chance.”
Because of Meg.
That’s what he wanted to believe.
But Dillon knew enough about hunters to know that they were thorough. They saw vampires as the enemy and didn’t mind killing a few innocents to further their cause. Meg’s presence wouldn’t have swayed them. They would have simply killed her, too.
“It’s the Ancient One.” Dillon voiced the one thought that niggled at him. “He knows we’re out to get him, so he came to get us first.”
“That still brings us back to the same question—why didn’t he destroy you when he had the chance?”
“Maybe it was a warning. To let us know that he’s on to us, that we’d better back off.”
“Why not cut your head off and be done with it?”
“Because…” Dillon’s mind raced. “I don’t know. Maybe he likes playing games. Maybe that’s what this is.”
“Maybe.” Garret seemed to think before shaking his head. “Go back to the blog tomorrow. Post again and then follow up on those leads. Get addresses to go with the names and then we’ll take a little trip.”
But they wouldn’t have to. Dillon knew it, even if Garret wasn’t half as convinced.
“If he was trying to warn us,” Garret continued, “and we keep pushing, he’ll be back. In the meantime—” he set the dart on the nightstand and pushed to his feet “—you need to sleep. I’ll switch on the alarm system on my way out.”
<
br /> “So we just sit and wait for him to come after us? Shouldn’t we do something?”
“You are doing something. You’re healing.”
Dillon rested a hand over his eyes to block out the faint glare. The movement sliced through him and he gasped.
“You’re not in any shape to go searching for an ancient vampire who’ll surely kick your ass before you can blink. Pain is a distraction.”
One he desperately needed. He forced his legs over the edge of the bed and pushed to his feet. The pressure cut through him, ripping as he staggered to his feet. He focused on the sensation, letting the pain clear his head and force aside the worry and regret eating away at him.
“You really should stay in bed.”
“I want to go to the shop.” He paced toward the TV, his steps picking up the more he moved. He turned and walked back toward Garret. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’re hungry and unless you’re going to go out and find a nice young redhead to sink your teeth into, then you might as well settle your ass back down and wait for the bottled stuff to kick in.” When Dillon didn’t immediately head for the door, Garret gave him a knowing look. “I’ll bring your files back here.” He motioned to the laptop sitting on a desk in the far corner. “You can work tomorrow.”
“I can’t just sit here and wait.” Dillon turned and limped toward the TV again. And think.
“There are other options to pass the time.”
“Yeah,” he muttered, casting a sullen glance at the computer. “There’s always solitaire.”
“I actually prefer poker myself.” The soft voice slid into his ears and Dillon’s heart lurched.
It couldn’t be.
That’s what he told himself, but there was no denying the sweet scent of strawberries that filled his head and the frantic heartbeat that echoed in his ears.
His chest hitched and every nerve in his body tensed. He turned. And sure enough, there stood Meg.
16
“SO THIS IS WHERE YOU’VE been hiding out for the past few months.” Meg swept a glance around the large, sprawling room, from a small sitting area complete with black leather recliner, chrome-and-glass coffee table and a big-screen TV, to a small oak table and chairs. An antique four-poster bed covered with lots of pillows and a down comforter dominated half the space. Soft rugs accented the hardwood floor and softened the otherwise masculine room. It looked like the typical man’s apartment.
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