He looked so disappointed I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. He’d lied and tried to use me, so I couldn’t work up any real sympathy.
“What about the guy who admitted to being a vampire? His fangs were real.”
“Well, not so much. But they were pretty good fakes …” I said, trying to be kind.
Alan leaped off the couch and danced across the room with his index fingers jammed up under his upper lip. “I’m a vampire, I’m a vampire. Look at my long pointy fangs.”
I had to cover my mouth to keep from laughing.
Michael slammed the lid down on his laptop and rose. “Oh yeah, asshole. You and me. Right now.” He strode toward Alan, who was holding his hands out in front of him now, making “come on” gestures.
Shit.
Michael leaped on Alan and they hit the floor, flailing and pounding on each other. They smashed into the entertainment center, sending all the hotel materials flying and a water pitcher sailing through the air.
“Fucking asshole!” Alan yelled as they tumbled into the desk.
“Cocksucker!” Michael said with a bloody lip.
“You wish—”
The pitcher gave me an idea, so I scooped it off the floor, bolted across the nearest bed, and headed for the bathroom. I knew it would piss them off, but a faceful of water might slow down the mayhem. I’d just crossed the bed again with my liquid weapon, preparing to take aim, when a young voice said, “Doctor Knight?”
I stopped, and turned toward the speaker, my heart in my throat. “Esther?”
“Esther?” Alan said, raising his head.
Michael punched him in the jaw. “Pus-head.”
“Ow!” Alan said, sitting up. He pushed Michael off him and wiped away a trickle of blood that was flowing into his eye.
“What?” Michael also sat up and looked at the visitor.
Esther was barely recognizable, and she smelled horrible. Her fruit-scented hair gel had hardened into a foul, nauseating paste that was flaking off in chunks. The glittery white body paint had cracked, exposing several areas of her naked body. Dried blood covered her lips and chin, and dribbled down her chest.
“Esther! What happened to your sparkle?” I set the water pitcher on the bedside table and moved toward her, my pulse hammering. “Did somebody hurt you?”
She thrust out her lower lip in a trembling pout. “No—I found out the sparkle paint comes off with water, so I bought some shimmer body lotion to cover up the cracked places in the paint, and it just made everything worse. It really made me stink. But I didn’t want to take a shower, ’cause I’ve waited so long to sparkle. I didn’t want to ruin it. I want to be a real vampire.”
Holy crap.
“How did she get in here?” Michael asked as he slowly, and apparently painfully, rose from the floor. Blood trailed down his face from a cut on his cheek.
Damn! So much for there being no such things as vampires.
Alan moved to stand beside me.
“What should I do, Doctor Knight?” Esther sniffed at the two men. “Blood—oh, wow. I’ve been on a feeding frenzy ’cause of being so upset.” She cocked her head. “They’re human.” She took a step toward Michael. “They smell so good, and I’m hungry.”
My stomach clenched, and I shot Alan a frightened look. What the hell were we supposed to do now? Neither of us could fight off a vampire.
“Esther!” I stepped in front of her. “Look at me! These are my guests. You can’t drink from them.”
Her irises had morphed to glassy black, showing little of their usual brown. She was lost in bloodlust, a very dangerous situation for humans.
“Esther! Come back!” I wanted to shake her, but if I did she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from attacking me.
Attacking me? Wait!
I remembered the pentagram necklace and reached into the neckline of my blouse to tug it free.
Esther kept inching toward Michael, who clearly had no idea what was going on.
I jumped in front of her and bared my neck.
“Kismet! What the hell are you doing?” Alan made an attempt to grab my arm.
“Wait, Alan.” I jerked out of his reach. “Esther!” I yelled as loudly as I could.
She shifted her gaze from Michael to me and leaned in, her fangs elongating.
I forced myself to hold still, to ignore all the primal voices in my head urging me to run, and clutched the pentagram in my hand.
As I hoped, when she bent to pierce my skin with her teeth, she raised a hand to steady my jaw. Just as her hand closed in, I pressed the pentagram against her palm, and the protective talisman flared as she touched it, causing an almost electrical burst.
“Hey!” Roused by the shock and moving vampire-quick, she dropped her hand and backed up. “That hurts!” Immediately her eyes returned to their usual brown, and she woke from her blood-trance, transforming back into her familiar self.
Alan and Michael closed ranks around me. Michael’s eyes couldn’t have been any bigger.
Esther slumped. Her shoulders caved in, she dropped her head, and she began to cry. “I didn’t mean to bite you, Doctor Knight. Now Devereux’s going to kill me.”
Shaking off Alan’s new grip on my wrist, I took a step toward my client. “Esther, look at me.”
Sobbing louder, she wiped her eyes with the sides of her fingers, making herself look even more like a decomposing zombie. “No. I’m bad.”
“You’re not bad, Esther. And you didn’t bite me. See?” I bared my neck again, this time hopefully just to make my point.
She blinked and studied my neck. “I didn’t bite you? But I really wanted to.”
“I know, but you touched the necklace Devereux gave me to protect myself, and it kept you from harming me. So everything is okay.”
Everything is okay? In what universe?
“She’s a vampire,” Michael whispered. Then his lips curled in a wide grin. “I knew they existed.”
Alan gave me a look. “Fuck it.”
I needed to get Esther out of the room, so dealing with Michael had to wait.
“Esther, I’ll be back home soon and we can make an appointment to talk about the sparkling vampires again. But in the meantime, I think it would be a good idea for you to take a shower, wash your hair, let your feeding frenzy calm down, and be the non-sparkling kind of vampire for a while. Are you willing to do that?”
“But Doctor Knight, I want to be a real vampire like Alice Cullen.”
“I know, and I promise we’ll look at the options. But right now I’d like you to go home and do as I asked.”
She stuck out her bottom lip again, then whispered. “Okay.”
With a tiny pop, she was gone.
I threw myself back onto the bed, not sure if I wanted to scream or cry.
Alan and Michael stood looking down at me. Michael’s grin still stretched across his face. An equally big frown filled Alan’s.
Michael crossed his arms. “You tried to convince me there are no vampires. I don’t think you can give me grief about my little pretense after you lied so blatantly! In fact, I think you owe me an apology!” He pursed his lips.
“Yeah, jerk-ass. Why don’t you go ahead and hold your breath until one of us apologizes to you?” Alan stroked his puffy lower lip. “I wouldn’t mind picking up exactly where we left off.”
Michael spun toward him, lifting his fists. “I’m ready, butt-wipe.”
“Jesus!” I sat upright. “Stop it—I mean it. Stop. It. Now.” Too much insanity! I grabbed my head to keep it from exploding. “Michael, if you want to hear anything about vampires, you’re going to have to talk to Alan. I’m done. Finished. Wiped out. So go away, both of you. Kill each other if you must. Just give me some peace!”
“No fucking way! I don’t want to talk to this FBI idiot. You owe me an explanation, and I’m staying here until you give me one.” Michael plopped down on the edge of the bed and re-crossed his arms. “And if you don’t, I’ll just have to chat with the media and tel
l them what I’ve seen tonight.” He smirked.
Alan leaned his face close to Michael’s. “I knew there was something off about you and your cover story, Parker. I’m not nearly as nice as Doctor Knight. I’m not sure I’m willing to spend one more moment with you, so you’d better shut up and stop being a dick, or you’ll find yourself neck-deep in vampires. I have a lot of friends of that persuasion.”
“Are you threatening me?” Michael jutted his chin into the air.
“Fuckin-A I am!” Alan straightened. “So what’s it gonna be? You can politely talk to me, or you can be dinner for my undead pals. I’ll tell them exactly where to find you, and since some vampire is already draining psychologists, another dead one would be no mystery.”
“It’s a vampire who’s killing psychologists?” Michael went pale.
“Yeah, how about that?” Alan moved over to me, leaned down, and kissed my forehead. “Are you sure you want to be alone? It’s been a crazy day.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Thanks for handling Michael.”
“Hey! What do you mean, ‘handling Michael’? I’m not something to be handled!”
“Come on, fuck-wad. Let’s go and set some ground rules.” Alan strode toward the door, opened it, and waited.
Michael straightened his hair and rose to his feet. “Okay. But we need to talk tomorrow, Kismet.”
The silence after they left was wonderful.
Feeling numb and wanting nothing more complicated than a shower, I went to the bathroom and turned on the hot spray. It had been that kind of day. Incredibly thirsty, I pulled a bottle of water from the refrigerator and chugged it. Peeling off my clothes as I went, I left them where they fell, entered the steamy bathroom, closed the door, and stepped into the shower.
I washed my body and hair, standing under the water so long my skin pruned. The steam was thick enough to ski on.
“Kismet?”
My knees went soft. Oh my God! What now? I held onto the side of the shower to keep myself upright.
“Do not be afraid. It is I—Devereux.”
I squinted through the moisture on the glass, wiped my hand across it, and saw a vague form. “Devereux? Is it really you?”
“Yes.”
Suddenly elated, I started to open the door, then hesitated, and steeled myself. He’d been pretty angry the last time we saw each other—the whole Alan thing. Why would he come here after that? “Why are you in my bathroom?”
There was silence for a few seconds.
“Devereux?”
“Yes. I am still here. I simply could not think of an easy answer to your question. But if you will come out, I will try to explain.”
His voice sounded strange. Subdued. Sad, even. That made me nervous.
I opened the shower door and stepped out. He handed me a towel.
“Thank you.” I dried myself, then wrapped my hair in the towel, and selected another to cover my body.
He opened the door, and the steam escaped, mimicking the output of the fog machine at the Crypt.
Stalling for time, and because I was sure it was necessary, I squeezed toothpaste on my brush and cleaned my teeth. Then I swished mouthwash, shifting my eyes every few seconds to where he stood, watching me. If I hadn’t known he was in the room, I’d never have been able to sense him. There’s no stillness like vampire stillness.
Devereux shows up, and suddenly I want good breath? What does that mean?
And after thinking that, I remembered that I hadn’t practiced the hum since right before my aborted presentation earlier that evening, so I went through the steps and gave myself some small sense of being in control of my brain.
“It is odd not to be able to read you,” Devereux said in that sad voice, moving to look at me in a clear spot in the mirror. “I feel separated—abandoned.”
“You feel abandoned?” That surprised me. I’d never heard him make such a deeply personal remark. I felt my eyes tearing as I stared at his beautiful reflection and blinked to clear the moisture. Why did that touch me so?
“Yes. I had not admitted, even to myself, how important my connection to you had been. How it made me feel alive and gave my existence meaning.”
He was speaking in the past tense, and my heart was breaking.
We stared at each other in the glass for several seconds before I broke eye contact.
“I see you are wearing the pentagram necklace.” He looked at me. “Where is the cross? Why did you remove it?”
I looked down between my breasts where the cross used to be. “I always take it off when I shower. But you’ve reminded me.” I moved my hand over the counter, retrieved the cross, and held it out to him. “I have been meaning to give it back to you.”
“Why? Do you not want any part of me close to you?”
“What?” What is up with him? “Why would you say that? No. I just don’t feel comfortable wearing a fortune around my neck. Plus it didn’t seem to work very well—I’ve been upset lots of times, and you never came.”
“I am sorry for that. Whatever Anne did to your brain and your energy field appears to have affected the cross as well. Even magic fails occasionally. But please keep it for now.” He looped it around my neck.
I tightened the towel over my breasts, then walked through the door. I sat on the edge of the bed, and he joined me.
“Has something bad happened?” I turned to him, watching the soft light play over his platinum hair. “Is that why you’re here? Is there some news about Colin?”
“No.” He brought his blue-green gaze to mine. “I did not come for any reason but my own. There is no word on Colin yet, and I have not captured Lucifer.” He said the last five words with less energy, as if even speaking them was exhausting. He studied the wall in front of him.
I didn’t want to rush him, so I remained quiet. Apparently something important was going on. I used the time to appreciate his perfect profile and practice the hum.
“I have existed for more than eight hundred years. For most of that time, I have explored outer knowledge. I studied all the great philosophies, learned the wisdom of the world, became a Master in every sense of the word … except one.”
“And what sense would that be?”
He turned to me, his expression serious. “Until I met you, it never occurred to me that the inner world—the emotional realm—might be an untapped universe. Like many men throughout history, I valued logic over feelings. Rationality over empathy. I devoted no time to learning about the depths of myself, my patterns, my fears. In fact, I repressed them. Denied them. I had been taught that a Master never showed or acknowledged his fears.” He paused.
“And now?” Whoa. Where’s he going with this?
“Now I realize I was incomplete. I had disregarded the most fascinating and worthwhile arena of all. And thanks to you, I have been forced to leap into that void. To face myself.” He laughed.
“What’s funny?” Yikes. This is even stranger than usual—is he really having a meltdown?
The corners of his lips curved up gently. “I was merely thinking how grateful I am to you for holding my feet to the fire, so to speak.”
“Devereux, are you okay? You don’t sound like yourself today. Or maybe I don’t really know your true self well enough even to compare.”
“Yes. I am okay. Maybe a new version of okay that will take me a while to get used to, but definitely okay.” He laughed again. “Even using the word okay is different for me. It is so American. So … you.” He rose and held his hands out to me.
As he stood, my eyes trailed down his body and went wide. He was wearing blue jeans. European-cut, designer jeans, to be sure, but jeans nonetheless. And a black Crypt T-shirt. My brain boggled. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him dress so casually.
Smiling, he tugged me to my feet. “Do you approve? I thought it was time for me to see why my jeans company is so successful.” He looked down at himself. “I have to admit they are very comfortable, but they do not repel blood half as well as lea
ther.”
Surprised by his sudden playfulness, I opened my mouth and let it hang open.
He pushed my chin up with a finger, closing my lips. Then he loosened the towel around my hair and pulled it away, tumbling my damp hair down my back. He looked into my eyes. “I am so sorry I did not understand the importance of what you were trying to tell me about the harm I was doing to your brain. I have since investigated—and have spoken with Anne—and it appears you are correct. Without protection, your brain would have been altered even further, and you would eventually have lost yourself. I also understand that you have taken steps, which I completely support, to rectify the situation.”
“I’m glad you understand. It was upsetting to me that you didn’t seem to care.”
“I always cared, but it has been impossible for me ever to admit I did not have all the answers, that I could not fix everything. That felt like failure. So it was easier to stick my head in the sand, as the saying goes. Especially in the midst of all the other problems I am currently dealing with.”
“Problems?” Is he finally going to tell me about Lucifer?
He pulled me close and pressed my head against his chest. “Despite my futile attempts to keep you from hearing about my difficulties, I am aware that you have been informed. Repeatedly.”
It was odd hearing his words echo through his chest, so I raised my head to look at him. “I wish you would’ve felt you could tell me yourself. Maybe I could’ve helped.”
He still isn’t saying the maniac’s name.
“Perhaps. I was under the impression that it was my job to protect you from such things, that I had to resolve the issue myself in order to keep the respect of my coven and all the other vampires in the world.”
“All the other vampires? Really? You’re responsible to all the vampires in the world? How can anyone deal with such an outrageous burden? Did you actually volunteer for that? Are you some kind of Vampire Master of the Universe?”
“No. That has never been one of my titles,” he answered with his usual seriousness, totally missing the reference to the old comic book and movie franchise. His eyes locked onto mine. His energy was so intense, my stomach fluttered and my mouth went dry. “What’s going on, Devereux? What aren’t you saying?” I stepped back so I could study his face.
Blood Therapy (Kismet Knight, Ph.D., Vampire Psychologist) Page 27