by Lori Foster
He’d had fake fangs in his mouth.
“What’s the matter with you?” Shawn asked. “You look like you’re going to hurl.”
“I am.” Glancing frantically around the lobby, Jordan spotted the restroom and set off at a fast walk.
After she tossed the contents of her stomach into the toilet, Jordan broke all her personal rules about touching any surfaces in a public restroom and slumped down onto the floor, her back to the door. Wiping her mouth and her clammy forehead, she tried to get a grip on herself and her emotions.
Her cell phone buzzed. Pulling it out with shaky fingers, she saw it was a text from Shawn.
Hope you’re ok. Had to leave. Sorry about the case … talk later.
Nice. Not only had they thrown her off the case, Shawn hadn’t even bothered to wait around to see if she was okay. Of course, six months ago, she would never have thought twice about either reaction. It was appropriate for her to be removed from the case, she recognized that intellectually. And she had never needed nor courted sympathy and compassion.
Something had shifted in her the last few weeks with Nick. She had enjoyed and appreciated having someone thinking about her, expressing concern for her, displaying such obvious pleasure at her presence.
This sucked. To be given something she hadn’t even really realized she had been missing, and then to have it yanked away, to have their brief relationship revealed as a mockery, was shocking and severe.
Dragging herself off the floor, Jordan splashed water on her face at the sink, avoiding looking at herself in the mirror. She didn’t want to see the pain in her own eyes. After washing her hands, she left the restroom, wondering what she should do. She could go to the office and do what? Stare at pictures of dead women on a case she wasn’t allowed to investigate anymore?
Or she could go home and pace.
Neither option sounded like fun and she was in no hurry to get to her car, so she lingered in the lobby by the side door that led to the parking lot.
A cool hand touching her arm startled her, and she whirled to see who it was. Peter was smiling up at her.
“Hi,” she said to him warily. Glancing around to see who he was with, she willed herself to stay calm if she had to see Nick. It looked like Peter was alone, though.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m sorry about before. I said mean things and I shouldn’t have.”
“Okay, thanks.” Jordan studied his face. He looked a little pale, dark circles under his eyes, probably from his odd sleeping patterns, but he looked sincere enough to her. Then again, Peter was a hard person to read. His eyes were deep and emotionless. “Where’s Kelsey?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.” Then he just turned and walked out the doors and toward the parking lot.
Jordan watched him for a second, stunned, before she followed. “Hey! Where are you going?” she demanded, catching up to him. She might think Nick was nuts, but that didn’t mean she didn’t feel a responsibility for the safety of his child.
“I saw something out here from my window. I’m going to look at it.”
Debating whether to call Nick or not, Jordan frowned and stayed in pace with him. Peter couldn’t possibly have seen anything from his window on the tenth floor, but she wasn’t about to point that out. Peter seemed more child-like again tonight, less the snide kid who had gone for shock value and more the vague, simplistic boy she had first met.
Peter bent over where the sidewalk met a row of hedges that hid the air-conditioning units. “Look,” he said.
Impatient, Jordan knew she was going to have to do the inevitable, and she pulled out her cell phone. Hoping to avoid actually speaking to Nick and make Peter do the talking, Jordan found Nick on her contacts list.
“Look!” Peter said again, more urgently.
“What is it?” Jordan asked, glancing down at the sidewalk, convinced she wasn’t going to see anything. What she saw made her squeeze her phone, pressing the send button instinctively, her knees buckling. “What the …”
There was a wooden stake on the ground, just like the ones that had been found in the victims. Glancing around, she didn’t see anyone in the area, and she told Peter, “Don’t touch it, please.”
But suddenly not only was the stake in Peter’s hand, he had her down on the ground and the stake up against her chest. The shift from standing to lying on her back on the concrete was so sudden and unexpected, Jordan couldn’t focus her eyes or catch her breath. But she knew he was leaning over her, felt the press of the wood on her chest, smelled the sickening sweetness of his breath as he laughed.
“You didn’t see that coming, did you?”
Blinking hard, her head ringing from the blow when she had hit the ground, Jordan tried to process what was happening, refocus, understand how a child could have knocked her off her feet.
“They never do,” he added. “I can look very innocent and helpless when I want to.” A grin crossed his pale youthful face. “Of course, I didn’t try very hard to do that with you, did I?”
Despite not really understanding what the hell was going on, Jordan’s training and instinct kicked in. She rolled, anticipating freeing herself of Peter’s weight and being able to spring up.
Instead, his arm shot out and her maneuver was halted so quickly it felt like she’d run straight into a brick wall. Trying to move, sweat breaking out all over her body, Jordan let out a cry of frustration. My God, it was like he had dropped a car on her instead of his hand and arm. Panicking, she struggled harder, looking up to see if it was really him, Peter, a child.
It was. But what she also saw made her freeze.
He was leaning over, and he had fangs. Like the ones Nick had shown her that she’d thought were fake.
It wasn’t possible.
But then the sharp sting on her shoulder set her to action and she started screaming. A hand clamped over her mouth, and Jordan fought against the tugging force dominating her with all her strength and will.
KELSEY glanced around the parking lot frantically. She’d seen Peter leave the hotel with the police-woman, the one that Nick liked. That wasn’t good.
She smelled the scent of fresh blood to her right, and she ran toward it. He must have taken her behind the hedge, so despite sinking into the grass in her expensive heels that Ringo didn’t know she’d bought, Kelsey squeezed through a hole in the bushes and found the little vampire down on the ground, feeding from the woman.
“Stop it!” This wasn’t the way to live-feed from mortals, without their permission, without giving them pleasure in exchange. The cop was convulsing, her arms flailing around as she tried to pry at the source of her torment. “Peter, no!”
Peter glanced up at her, his eyes disdainful, but he didn’t lift his fangs from the woman’s flesh.
“I know what you did,” Kelsey told him. “You killed those women. You told me that woman came willingly with you, that you were just feeding, nothing more, and you lied to me.” She was hurt by that. Here she had been babysitting him for months and he couldn’t even tell her the truth?
Though she guessed that a vampire who was actually murdering women wasn’t all that honest.
Peter pulled his mouth back, his lips smeared with blood. “I told you the truth. She did come willingly with me. They all did. Then I killed them … so what?” His hand pressed harder on the cop’s mouth when she started to moan and cry out. “It feels amazing, taking their blood over and over again, until they’re begging and crying, then dizzy and disoriented, their eyes losing focus. In the end, they look so confused when the stake goes in that it makes me laugh.”
Kelsey hated confrontation. She did not want to do this. But she was going to have to. The little vampire was sick and twisted, and she could not let him keep doing this to helpless women.
Poop. Kelsey closed her eyes briefly, giving a nice big mental call to Ringo for help, before she kicked off her four-hundred-dollar heels and moved forward.
NICK dove for the phone when he saw it was Jordan
, despite knowing he shouldn’t really answer his cell when he was working. Ringo shot him a curious glance but didn’t say anything as they stood behind Donatelli in the private poker room.
“Hello?” There was no response on the other end. “Hello? Jordan?”
He heard what sounded like her saying “What the?” but she wasn’t talking into the phone. Then the very obvious sound of the phone dropping came, and Nick just knew that something was wrong. He wasn’t sure how he knew that, but every cell in his body was vibrating. “Jordan? Are you okay? Answer me!”
Donatelli turned around, cards in hand, and frowned at him. “Who the hell are you talking to?”
“My girlfriend …” he said, pulling the phone away from his head and glancing at it to make sure there was still a connection. “Something’s wrong, I think she’s been hurt.”
“Well, go outside and deal with it. You’re distracting me.”
“Sure, of course. I’m sorry, Mr. Donatelli.” He was moving toward the door when Ringo slammed into him. “What the hell … ?”
Ringo had a look of both terror and rage on his face as he bolted around Nick. “Kelsey. She just called me mentally. Something is very wrong … she’s in trouble.”
“Is everyone leaving?” Nick heard Donatelli complain, but he didn’t bother to answer.
“Something is wrong with Jordan, too. She called me then clearly dropped the phone, and something tells me they might be together. Can you tell where Kelsey is?” Nick felt his suit jacket for his knife. He was strong enough to take any mortal, but sometimes a little extra encouragement was needed to persuade a criminal to leave. Usually between Nick’s brawn and a flash of a weapon, they ran before he had to take any real action. He glanced around the lobby, wishing he hadn’t let Jordan leave earlier like that, upset and confused.
Nick didn’t know what he would do if something had happened to her, but it wouldn’t be pretty.
“She’s in the parking lot,” Ringo said.
They both ran, Nick following Ringo, who seemed to sense where his wife was. When they burst through a row of bushes, what Nick saw stopped him flat in his tracks. Jordan was on the ground, waxy and pale, lying completely still. He ran over to her but drew up short when he saw what else was going on a few feet away from Jordan.
Peter.
What he was doing absolutely stunned Nick as he dropped to the ground to check if Jordan was alive. Even as he frantically rushed his hands over Jordan, checking for damage, listening for the sound of her breathing and the pumping of her heart, Nick couldn’t believe Peter capable of such a heinous thing.
But he obviously was. Peter was struggling with Kelsey, pressed on top of her, and he had clearly been on the verge of raping her until Ringo had attacked him at the same time Nick had dropped to check on Jordan.
With a primal growl of rage, Ringo lit into him, dragging him off his wife.
Knowing that was being taken care of, Nick focused all his attention on Jordan.
She was still alive, though barely. A rush of relief shot through him.
“Jordan, honey, it’s okay, I’m here. Everything is going to be fine,” Nick said, cradling her head in his hands, smoothing her hair back as he whispered in her ear. “You’re going to be okay.”
But even as he said it, he could hear her heart rate slowing, could feel in the coolness of her skin and see in her waxy pallor that she was struggling. Peter had taken a lot of blood, more blood than Jordan could survive the loss of, and the angry and raw bite marks on her shoulder made Nick furious at the same time he felt sick and helpless and overcome with grief. Jordan’s eyes opened, dazed and glassy from pain.
He wanted to turn her more than anything he had ever wanted in his entire long life. The thought of Jordan dying, eternally still, her life cut short while she was in her prime, while he lived on and on to no purpose, horrified him. But he couldn’t make that choice for her. He had made it for Katie and Peter, and he never wanted that kind of power over another human being again. Immortality was a burden to some, a gift to others, and he felt strongly that it was each person’s choice to accept or reject it.
The last time he had seen her she had been shaking her head at him, upset and disgusted with what she had thought was a made-up story on his part about vampirism. He didn’t know if she could understand now how true it had all been, or if she was too hazy from the loss of blood to comprehend what was happening, but he had to try.
She surprised him by saying, “Nick … I’m dying, aren’t I?”
His heart squeezed. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, honey. I can try to rush you to the hospital for a transfusion.”
But he knew it would be too late. She had been almost entirely drained of blood. He couldn’t even believe she was conscious, but her eyes were already fluttering shut again, her arm slackening against his leg.
“Or I can make you a vampire like me,” he whispered into her ear. “So you won’t die. But only if you want to … Eternity is a long time, Jordan.”
Searching her face for any sign that she had heard him, Nick knew he was running out of time. He wasn’t sure if he could let her die. Yet he wasn’t sure if he could turn her without knowing she had consented in some way. As the vital seconds ticked away, Nick shook her a little, getting frantic.
“Jordan, do you want me to turn you … yes or no?”
Her chest rose slowly as she sucked in a labored breath, then with eyes still closed, she said, “Yes.”
Relief flooded him, but Nick wanted to be sure she had actually spoken, and that he hadn’t just heard what he wanted to. “You want to be a vampire so you don’t die?”
“Yes.”
It was even quieter than the first, but he had still heard it, and Nick didn’t waste another second of precious time. Shifting her head into his lap, he raised his wrist and sliced it wide open with his fangs. Once he dribbled a bit of blood onto Jordan’s lips and into her mouth, she started to drink on her own, and Nick closed his eyes and tried to quiet the fear that was still coursing through his veins from the thought of this woman dying, being gone from him and this life forever. He wouldn’t have been able to handle that, he was certain, and while he had no idea if she would forgive him, if she would want to be with him in this new life, he was selfishly grateful that she had consented.
As she sucked more aggressively, strength gaining, the tug and pull of his blood out of his body sharp and satisfying, Nick glanced over at Ringo and Kelsey, wanting confirmation that Peter was contained in some manner.
Ringo had the other vampire on the ground and he was standing up, breathing hard, a knife in his hand. It was then Nick realized Peter had been decapitated, his dark eyes wide and empty, blood spilling over the gravel. Ringo met Nick’s stare.
“He was raping my wife. He tortured and murdered four helpless mortal women,” Ringo said, his hard tone brooking no argument. “He had to die before he hurt anyone else.”
Nick just nodded. He had spent a century wishing the best for Peter, never thinking he could be capable of such evil. If he had gone that far astray, then Ringo had every right to take justice into his hands and execute Peter.
“Is she okay?” Ringo asked, gesturing to Jordan as he wiped his bloody knife on the bushes behind them to clean it off.
“She will be,” Nick said, already hearing Jordan’s heartbeat growing stronger, her fingers starting to grip his arm as she sucked.
He spotted Kelsey huddled in the corner, leaning against the air-conditioning unit and hugging herself. “Kelsey, how about you? Are you okay? I’m so sorry Peter hurt you … I had no idea he was capable of any of this.”
Kelsey nodded, her hair falling in her eyes. “I know. I didn’t know either. And I’m okay.” She shrugged. “These things just seem to happen to me, but I’m always okay.”
And Jordan would be okay, too. She had to be.
NINE
JORDAN moved her hand in front of her face again in Nick’s bathroom, amazed at how sharp the movem
ent could be, at how pale and perfect her skin was. The scar she’d gotten on her forearm from falling out of a tree house at age ten was gone. Even in the dark, with no light on, she could look down and see the water spots from her shower on her naked skin.
She was a vampire.
The inconceivable, preposterous story Nick had told her had been the truth.
And Peter had been the killer she’d been searching for.
She didn’t know how to think, to feel, to process all of it, so she focused instead on the purity of her milky white skin, the intensity of her vision, and the force of her new strength.
With one quick movement, she snapped Nick’s toothbrush into two pieces.
Jordan was staring at the broken plastic in awe, and a little bit of satisfaction, when a soft knock came on the door and Nick slipped inside.
“Are you okay?” he asked, those big hands sweeping her bangs off her forehead.
He was gentle, always so gentle with her, and now that she knew his secret, knew his strength, she was even more amazed, touched by the softness of his touch. Not trusting her voice just yet, she nodded.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?” she managed, stepping closer to him, wanting the warmth of his body, the shield of his bulk next to her naked skin.
“For what Peter did to those women, for what he did to you … I had no idea, Jordan. Absolutely no idea.”
“I know,” Jordan reassured him, moving her hands to his shoulders. She could see the torment in his eyes, knew as surely as she would have died had Nick not intervened, that he’d only been trying to do the right thing. He’d had no knowledge of Peter’s true depravity. “I’m just glad to know the case is essentially closed. We’ll never officially find our killer on paper, but I’m glad no other woman is going to be hurt by him.”