by Nancy Morse
He sighed with disinterest. “The voodoo priestess.”
“She was married to a wealthy Creole landowner who died under mysterious circumstance.”
“One of my victims, perhaps?”
“It was not his blood that was drained. It was his life. Slowly and surely. Just like Papa’s was all those years ago. And we know who was responsible for that.”
A spark of interest ignited in his eyes, turning them from a dark forest green to the color of raw jewels. His lips mouthed the name Lienore as he slowly worked the information over in his mind.
“I’ve seen her,” Pru said. “In the bayou. She’s beautiful.”
He edged forward in his seat. “Lienore chooses only the most beautiful bodies to inhabit.” His gaze moved over hers with sly relish, pausing to appreciate the generous breasts pressing against the thin fabric.
“She ripped the heart out of a man.”
“She’s a nasty thing.”
“Nasty? You call ripping a man’s heart out nasty? I call it evil.”
“Don’t forget there are some who would call us evil,” he pointed out.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I forget,” she replied bitterly. “But even you do not kill out of evil.”
“How charitable of you.”
“Creatures like us cannot help what we are. You told me that once. I didn’t understand it then the way I do now. Do you relish the kill? Do you derive joy from it?”
He sank back against the chair. “No,” he admitted. “I do not.”
“Nor do I. Even when I drain a criminal or a murderer I tell myself I am ridding the world of human garbage, but deep down inside a part of me cries for the loss, not just of another life, but of something within myself that was once human. But that thing I saw in the bayou took pleasure in the kill. I tell you, Nicholas, she held the beating heart in her hand as if it were a trophy.”
He glanced up at her, suspicion darkening his eyes. “How did you find out about her?”
“I followed one of my victims to the bayou and watched the terrible ceremony.”
“No, I mean how did you find out about the Creole landowner?”
“A friend told me,” she said evasively.
He nodded with terse understanding. “Your pirate.”
“Yes. But what difference does it make?”
“Does he know what she is?”
“He knows only that she’s the mother of a girl he loved.”
“Love.” The word spilled from his lips like poison.
“Never mind that,” Pru said. “It’s Lienore. I just know it is.”
He got up and walked across the room to the widow. For a long time he stood looking out at the lights that twinkled like stars from the tall French windows of the Spanish colonial houses along Rue Bourbon. He breathed in deeply, filling his being with the scent of oleanders and jasmine, and said without emotion, “What does it matter if it is her?”
Pru rushed up to him in disbelief. “Nicholas, you remember what the alchemist in Clapham said. Only a witch as strong as Lienore can chant the words that will restore our souls.”
“Ah, yes, the alchemist. He did so want to unlock the mystery of eternal life. I wonder what became of him.”
“As I recall,” she said sourly, “you turned him into the undead.”
He turned toward her with a devilish smile. “It was the least I could do. But don’t feel too sorry for him, Prudence. Don’t forget that he wanted to capture me and perform ungodly experiments on me.”
Pru’s mind raced back to the day she had gone to see the alchemist in the hope of finding a means of reclaiming Nicholas’ lost soul. The wizened little man had given her an elixir for her ailing papa and read something from an ancient tome about how a spell chanted by a powerful witch might reclaim what was lost. She’d been appalled by the rat’s head she’d seen suspended in a vinegar solution in his laboratory and had gotten herself out of there with all due haste. It had been only Nicholas’ lost soul she’d been worried about at the time. Now, of course, it was her own and her papa’s. To be human again, to bask in the glorious light of day, to feel her own blood racing through her veins, to love a man like Stede Bonham and be loved back.
“The chant, Nicholas. We must go back to London and find the book that holds the Reclamation Chant. And then we must find a way to make her speak it.”
His breath fell against the glass. “It is written in a combination of Gypsy-Romani Romanian and must be spoken as such.”
She looked askance at him. “How do you kow that? You didn’t see the book.”
“I did more than see it, dear Prudence. I took it.”
“You mean you stole the Book of Chants from him?”
“Oh, don’t pretend to be so shocked. I’m sure your pirate has done his share of stealing. Besides, when I went back to the house in Clapham, our undead alchemist had departed for parts unknown, leaving everything behind. I remembered what you told me about the book from which he read. I found it and thought it might come in handy one day.”
“And it looks like that day has arrived. What?” she questioned when she saw the skeptical look on his face. “We need only find a way to trick Sabine into speaking it.”
“If the voodoo priestess really is Lienore. We don’t know that for certain.”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
He flashed her a warning look. “Stay away from her, Prudence. If it is Lienore, she’ll know you for what you are.”
“Of course, she will. I remember how Aunt Vivienne detested you because she, or rather Lienore, knew you for what you are.” She pulled in a ragged sigh as a thought suddenly occurred to her. “If Lienore is inhabiting Sabine’s body, then Aunt Vivienne must be…”
“Dead,” he put in.
“I wonder when. How.”
“It happened that night.” Her eyes turned upon him as he spoke. “You had been through so much I didn’t have the heart to tell you then, but I suppose enough time has passed for you to know the truth.”
“You choose which truths to tell me and which ones to conceal?” Her temper rose with each word.
“What good would it have done to tell you that your aunt died the night Lienore hurled you through the window? Or that I found her body beside the bed and buried it in the bog? Would knowing have made you feel any better?”
“You didn’t hide the truth from me for my sake,” she said accusingly. “You did it for yourself so that I wouldn’t hate you more than I already did. You always were a selfish beast.”
“Ah, well, such is the nature of the undead. In any event, nothing I can say will sway you, so think of me what you will.”
“Thank you, Nicholas. I’m so glad I have your permission to choose my own thoughts.”
He had that petulant look on his face, like that of a child who has been scolded for stealing pennies. “I have another confession to make,” he said.
Pru rolled her eyes. “I can hardly wait to hear it.”
“I’ve been following Lienore’s trail for decades. All clues led here.”
“So, you’re not in New Orleans because of me?” she inquired suspiciously.
“Not everything I do is about you, Prudence. Not that seeing you again after all these years isn’t delightful, even when you’re hating me. I suspected she was here. I just didn’t know who she was inhabiting.”
His skin jumped when he felt her hand on his sleeve. Even now, after all this time, she had the ability to affect him in ways physical and emotional.
“We must act.” Her fingers tightened over his arm for emphasis.
“We will do nothing,” he told her. “I’ll look into this.” He saw the familiar tilt of her chin, a sign of defiance.
“Sabine may recognize me for what I am,” Pru said, “but she won’t know that I know who she really is. And besides, I was mortal back then. If she remembers me at all, it is as a mortal, not as this.”
He wrenched free and spun her around to face h
im. “If Sabine is Lienore, she’ll know exactly how to destroy you. I almost lost you once. I won’t take the chance of losing you for good.”
Pru recognized the human vulnerability behind the sulferous glare of the vampire’s eyes. “Why do you persist when you know it can never be?”
“Because of everything I have lost—my humanity, my soul—the one thing that remains is my hope that one day you will love me.”
Sometimes it was impossible to hate him. Despite his amoral character and selfish nature, he hungered for the love that had been denied him for centuries. She forced herself to remember the tale he told her back in London of the terrible night of his making, more than three hundred years ago, when a creature called Vlad Tepes had slaughtered his family and left him neither dead nor alive, but somewhere in between. He’d been in love with a girl from the village in his native Carpathians, but the wedding and their future were never to be, brutally stolen on a snowy Romanian night that changed his life forever.
Oh, how she wanted to hate him, but when he was looking at her with that lost and lonely look on his face, those green eyes beseeching hers, she was filled with an emotion that was neither love nor hate, but something that had no name.
She lifted her hand and cupped his cheek and felt a lean muscle jump beneath her touch. His flesh used to be so cold to the touch, but that was when she was human and had the warmth of human blood coursing through her veins. But she was like him now, and the feel of his skin against her palm was neither cold nor warm, alive nor dead. It was just the tactile translation of need pulsating beneath her fingertips.
His hand closed over hers, the fingers long and slender and familiar. For a moment she was reminded of the magical music those fingers produced, the aching vulnerability of the man in each note he played. And the dizzying heights of pleasure those fingers had taken her to, the inhumanly spectacular sex of the vampire.
She felt a familiar pulsing in her loins, not the throb of anticipation for a human lover, but the frenetic beating of expectation for the pandemonium she knew awaited in the vampire’s arms.
Her eyes gazed at him steadily, giving no hint of her thoughts, yet he knew that look. For many long moments neither of them spoke nor moved. And then there came from the floor below the strains of the violoncello, wafting like a sultry breeze through the tall windows and into the room, a haunting emotion-filled rhapsody that wrapped itself around them and drew them toward one another.
His arms came around her to pull her up against the silk of his waistcoat. A single sound, a strangled groan, split the music in two as his mouth came down over hers. He drew one hand through her hair, weaving his fingers through the ale-colored tresses, then pausing at the small of her back, spreading his palm against the sheer muslin fabric and holding her like that with the peaks of her breasts pressed against his chest.
He reached into the thin bodice of her dressing gown to cup her breasts, the alabaster skin surrendering to his touch. The lush promise that awaited, the desperate yielding, the gutteral moan that spilled from her throat when he pinched her nipple, drove him past reason. It made no difference if she hated him as long as he could have her like this.
It was too late for either of them to turn back. He swept her up into his arms and carried her to the bed. Dropping her onto the feather mattress, he hung above her on braced arms, a triumphant little smile curving his lips as he gazed down at her.
“Do you want me?” he asked hoarsely.
“Yes,” came her breathless reply. “Do to me what you used to do.” Her head fell back, exposing the beautiful white throat from which he had drank all those years ago, and the mouth into which he had spilled his own immortal blood opened, the little pink tongue darting out from between lips that were reddened by his kiss.
He wanted to take her slowly, to prolong the bruising pleasure and make her remember how it used to be between them. Once, a long time ago, he had mesmerized her into dropping to her knees and using her mouth to bring him to the very peak of erotic fulfillment. When she had abandoned her prudish nature in favor of pure, unadulterated carnal bliss, she had come to enjoy bestowing that gift upon him as much as he enjoyed receiving it. He asked it of her now by sliding smoothy and insinuatingy up the length of her body until his hips were level with her face. His erection pounded at his breeches, begging for release, but he needed to cast no hypnotic spell over her this time. She greedily obliged. Hastily she undid the buttons and shoved her hand into the velvet opening to grasp his phallus and draw it out. Like the hungry little creature she was, she brought it to her lips and took it into her mouth, stimulating him orally until he thought he would explode. His sanity was rapidly deserting him. His body was on a short fuse about to discharge at any moment.
The slow and steady rhythm brought him to the brink. “Enough,” he mumbled in a harsh breath.
It took all of his willpower to withdraw before filling her mouth with his demon seed. Sliding back down her body, he bent his head and kissed her throat as he pushed her deeper into the feather mattress. He pulled her dressing gown upward, tugging at the delicate muslin with frantic hands. When she was bared to him from the waist down, he spead his palm over her belly, caressing the roundness before plunging downward to delve between her legs. A sound of excitement spilled from her lips as her legs fell open.
He kissed her breast through the muslin, his tongue wetting the fabric, finding her nipple and drawing it between his teeth, nipping until she arched and whimpered beneath him, while his fingers slid into the silky crevice and she closed her legs tightly on his probing hand.
His tongue slid to her belly, swirling around her naval before moving lower, licking and tasting the cool, smooth flesh. Her fingers were in his hair, grasping the silken locks with heated pressure, urging him lower still. When his mouth came to that place that burned with fierce desire, she thrust her hips upwards to meet his searching tongue. The first time he had done this to her she had burned with shame, but that was before she knew the exquisite pleasure of being kissed so intimately, and now she demanded it, holding his head hard against her moist, pink lips.
She was panting when he lifted himself and brought his head back up to hers. He kissed her, and she tasted herself upon his mouth. “Does your pirate do it like that?” he teased.
Looking into his desire-narrowed eyes, she smiled and said, “I’ll find out tomorrow night.”
Her callous response drew the effect she was seeking. She wanted to feel the raw animal potency of him, to be taken by the vampire with the strength of a hundred mortal men, to revel in his powerful invasion. She ached for her body to be full of him, to feel his molten energy consuming her until she was incapable of thought and all that remained was the sensation.
With a gutteral groan, he pushed himself between her legs and thrust harshly into her.
“Yes,” she cried, “Yes, like that. Oh, Nicholas.”
Her moist heat swallowed him up, and he lost himself inside of her. With strength unmatched by mortal men he pumped his hips, slamming himself against the nub of her wanton desire.
She clawed at his back, her own immortal strength shredding the delicate threads of his waistcoat. Wrapping her legs around him, she matched each frenetic thrust. Lost in sexual frenzy, she heard the music that streamed like moonlight through the window. The chords reached deep down into her being, filling up the place where her soul had once resided, just like the creature filled her body with his potent lust, lifting her higher and higher until her whole body shuddered and shook.
In that moment of mindless passion his muffled groan forced her eyes open. Tilting her head back, she looked up at him. His face was slanted downward, dark hair spilling over his forehead. The eyes that were the most beautiful shade of green she had ever seen were now a deep yellow-gold as the moment of release came upon him. She had seen him like this once before when, in the throes of passion, he had taken on the appearance of a wolf. It had frightened her then. It excited her now. She clutched him tighter
as he thrust with animalistic potency, losing all control as he spilled himself into her.
Afterwards, she lay in his arms spiraling back to earth. When the sheen of perspiration had evaported from her flesh, she got up.
“I don’t want Papa to know you were here,” she said, her voice husky with sated desire. “You can leave by the window. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding your way down to the street.”
“Am I leaving so soon?” he asked lazily from the bed, his head against the rumpled pillow.
“I got what I wanted from you. There’s no need to prolong this visit.” She stole a peek at him. His phallus was still very much erect, proof of his sustainable prowess.
“So much for sentimentality,” he muttered. Rising, he pulled up the breeches he had not bothered to remove and buttoned the fall front. “The window. Yes, it should be no trouble at all.” He moved across the room with the grace and stealth of a jungle cat. “By the way, Prudence,” he said as he reached for his frock coat and shrugged into it, “when you’re fornicating with your pirate tomorrow night, how will he react, I wonder, when he looks into the eyes of the wolf?”
Pru sat down at the vanity and ran a brush through her tangled hair. “That won’t happen,” she said confidently.
A look of infinite cunning crossed his face. “You think not? Your eyes turn a lovely shade of gold when you come. Didn’t you know?”
She slammed the hairbrush down and swiveled on the vanity seat to face him. “That’s not true.”
“How would you know?” he chided. “Can you see yourself?” He grasped the edges of the window and turned back to look at her. The impact of what he’d just said settled over her like a shroud, tugging her mouth downward into a frown. “That blue dress you were wearing earlier is very lovely. I always said colors suit you. I’m so glad you gave up those somber hues you used to wear. White may be fashionable, but it does nothing for your complexion.”
“Thank you,” she said rigidly. “It was a gift.”
“From him?”
She answered without hesitation. “Yes.”