His mother alit beside him.
Ignoring her, he peered over the lake. Not a single boat disturbed the puddles of moonlight bathing in the gently rippling water. From a hundred foot wide beach, a well-manicured lawn sloped up to a three-story colonial mansion. The full moon consorted with a warm breeze which tossed aside the leaves and slender branches barring its way as it swept through the surrounding trees. A multitude of shadows danced across the white clapboard house and along the balconies wrapping around each floor.
Like many of the mini-estates nestled on the banks of Lake George, this one’s borders were lined with towering hemlocks that ensured privacy. Tilting his head, he mentally scanned the interior of the house. As far as he could sense, two of the three inhabitants slept while the third, an adolescent male, masturbated in his bed.
Not far from the shore, a rusty swing creaked as it swayed beneath the lowest branch of an old weeping cherry tree. A canopy of tear-drop leaves rustled from a sudden gust of wind.
Unbidden, the realization that his stepbrother, Marek, would have loved this place released the grief he’d fought so hard to control. He took to the air and hovered for a moment above the yard that now shimmered beneath a crimson veil from the bloody tears filling his eyes. Soon, Frank Nostrum would share his pain. Soon, the vampire hunter would lose a piece of his heart.
Sebastian soared across the yard and over the other hemlock barrier, then cursed when he found his mother already waiting for him. “Don’t you have something better to do than follow me around?”
“You want to know about Diana? There’s no need to waste a week of perfectly good nights. I know more about her than anyone.”
His mother’s penchant for torturing him with tidbits of information irked him as much now as it had when he was a child. Years of experience, though, had taught him the benefits of hiding his impatience. He shrugged as if he could care less that once again she had piqued his curiosity. “I hate to admit it, but you’re right,” he said, absently caressing the tiny silken ears of the kitten. “Watching Nostrum’s daughter for a week will be nothing but a waste of time.”
“Of course I’m right!”
She spat on the ground, then groaned and slumped back against the trunk of a pine. A frown marred her flawless brow. She pushed away from the tree and, gripping his chin in her cold, slender fingers, stared intently into his eyes. “Listen, Sebastian. Don’t talk to Diana. If you insist on following her this week, keep your distance. Then give her your blood and leave. I’d bet my fangs Diana’s the lure.”
Her eyes shimmered. Don’t touch her, Sebastian. And, no matter what happens, don’t drink a drop of her blood. It’s cursed. It will infect your mind. Do you hear me? Do not drink her blood.
At first, the fear and concern filling his mother’s eyes revived the child who once foolishly embraced any sign of affection she cast his way, but then he felt the tingling that signaled her attempt to control his mind. He yanked his head and heart from her grasp. Baring his fangs, he roared into her mind with enough force to knock down most vampires. Get the hell out of my head!
Olympia barely flinched. “Diana’s a whore, Sebastian. I’ve watched her spread her legs to get her way since she was a teen. She’ll seduce you and before you know it, you’ll be facing the dawn in her father’s pen.”
The distant sound of car doors slamming caught his attention. Gazing toward the yard they’d just left, he asked, “How will I know which one is her?”
“You’ve never seen her?” His mother stumbled back a step as if he had slapped her. She raked the fingers of one hand through her hair and shook her head. “But I thought…all these years…you’ve never once felt you should see what the daughter of Lake George’s vampire hunter looks like? My God, Sebastian, you’re our Champion. It’s your job to protect us from the likes of Nostrum and his daughter.”
“I protect the helpless. You, dear Mother, are far from helpless.”
She gaped at him. “You must have bumped into her.”
“This new generation keeps me busy all night and leaves no time for checking out some little chit who may or may not have a hand in her father’s crimes.” He almost added that the elders had forbade him to go near the Nostrums the day Diana was born, but he’d learned at a young age that it was safer not to give his mother more information than necessary.
Back then, he hadn’t questioned the elder’s edict. Frank Nostrum had been nothing more than an annoyance, a harmless human mocked by vampires and humans for traipsing through the mountainside and along the banks of the lake each night in search of the ever-elusive vampire he claimed to have seen as a child. Sebastian had no interest in Nostrum or his baby girl.
Back then.
But for the past several years, Nostrum had managed to kill some of their strongest vampires in his pen. No amount of surveillance had revealed what weapon he used to lure and restrain them. In the last few months he’d taken down four.
The only preacher in Mina’s Cove, Marek had protected Nostrum from retribution for years with sermons on forgiveness. Sebastian’s indifference and the hunter’s safety net vanished the moment dawn’s fiery rays touched Marek’s skin.
“This changes everything. Everything!” His mother brushed past him and paced along the hemlocks, stopping occasionally to peek into the yard. “Okay, just let me think a minute.”
His mother suddenly stopped pacing and nodded. “I’ll watch her this week. Then you could give me your blood and I—”
“I will follow her. I will prove she knows about her father’s crimes.” Sebastian’s voice shook. “And I will avenge Marek’s death.”
“Of course she knows about his crimes! Any fool can see that she’s the weapon.”
“I swear on Marek’s soul and all those before him, if she lured him into that pen, I’ll pour so much of my blood down her throat she’ll drown in it.”
“No!” His mother clutched his upper arms. “One drop, Sebastian. No more! And wait the damn week. If you don’t, they’ll think I had a hand in it and banish us both.”
One week. An eternity for a vampire intent on revenge. He despised Frank and Diana Nostrum, hated putting off their punishment and prayed the week would pass swiftly. Diana’s innocence meant nothing.
A soft mewl brought his attention down to the kitten struggling within the tight grasp of his hand. Cold fingers skipped down his spine when he realized how close he’d come to crushing the fragile body. He immediately relaxed his grip and compelled the kitten to sleep while he sped up its natural ability to replenish its blood. “One week. Not a day more. Whether I find out how Nostrum captured Marek or not, Diana pays for his death a week from tonight.”
“Remember, not a drop of her blood.”
“Just the thought of her blood makes me sick.” Sebastian watched his mother vanish. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d just joined forces with the devil.
Striding a short distance into the woods, he carefully placed the kitten near the base of a towering pine. “I’ll be back, little one,” he whispered.
When he returned to the hemlocks, he was surprised to find Damien waiting for him. Sebastian lowered his head in deference to his elder and stepfather.
“What’s happened to you, son,” Damien asked, raking his fingers through his hair and mussing the bittersweet chocolate spikes falling over his furrowed brow. “How could you even consider punishing an innocent woman for her father’s crimes?”
“Her innocence means nothing,” Sebastian muttered, wishing he felt as convinced as he sounded.
“That’s Olympia speaking, not you.” Damien’s voice was calm but, Sebastian heard the steely edge of his rising anger.
“Mother’s right, Damien. We’re fools if we think the man hasn’t brought Diana up to follow in his footsteps.”
Damien continued to stare intently into his eyes.
Sebastian mentally swatted away the doubt and guilt Damien’s mere presence inspired. “Marek wasn’t just my stepbrother, Da
mien. He was my best friend, my confidant, my only light in this damned eternal darkness.”
His stepfather’s rage slammed into him, knocked him down and sent him skidding back into a tree. The impact of his head hitting the trunk was nothing compared to the searing pain from his stepfather’s anger battering his mind. He raised his eyes and flinched. Crimson tears streamed down Damien’s cheeks, a heartbreaking contradiction to the rage twisting his usually calm face.
Damien towered above him, his fangs longer than Sebastian had ever seen, his fists clenched at his side. Your light? He roared into Sebastian’s mind. He was my son! My light! But I’m not blindly striking out at anyone who might be involved, am I? I’m not considering casting some poor, innocent woman into the pits of hell!
Clutching his head, Sebastian stood up, fell down to one knee, then, with a growl, forced himself back to his feet. “Jesus, Damien! You nearly fried me.”
Damien lowered his head. His chest heaved as he drew in one long draft of air after another. Sebastian waited, wondering why his stepfather, a vampire who rarely showed any extreme emotion, had so easily slipped over the edge.
When Damien finally raised his head, desperation filled his eyes. He pressed his palm against Sebastian’s chest. “Look into your heart, son. You don’t want to do this.”
Sebastian shoved Damien’s hand away and pounded the spot where it had been. “I have no heart! It incinerated with Marek in Frank Nostrum’s pen. I’m dead inside, Damien, just like Frank believes we all are.”
“I hope, for your sake, you’re wrong, son. Mina help you if you aren’t.” Damien sighed and looked up at the moon. He frowned as if he were searching, questioning, then nodded and spoke, his voice barely above a whisper. “They’re here. She’s a virgin, Sebastian. Once again, your mother has set you upon a virgin. Remember that tonight. And remember what you were. What you are, now. A Champion.”
Before he could reply, his stepfather vanished.
He knew what he was. A Champion des Angelique. But he was off duty for this mission. Massaging his temples, Sebastian peered through a slight breach in the hemlocks. A virgin. The red strip of cloth in his pocket felt as if it would burn through the denim separating it from his skin.
Three women in their mid-twenties slipped through an opening in the hemlock wall on the other side of the yard. Sebastian focused his senses. Their voices, breathing, heart rate and scent met with his scrutiny.
He recognized two of the women as his mother’s puppets, identical twins with tall, model-thin bodies and stunning faces that graced each equally. Their hair marked the only difference between them. Although both had soft brown curls, one had cut hers to rest at her jawline while the other had streaked her waist-length hair with blonde. Hushed giggles mingled with whispers as they scanned the property before stepping free of the shadows.
Another beauty with piercing blue eyes and hair the color of wheat that streamed over her shoulders without a single ripple stood with the confidence of a woman who knew men found her irresistible and would do anything for a chance at her body. She sent a sultry gaze up at the house.
Sebastian pegged her as Diana, the whore his mother had described. But then she blew a kiss up at the young masturbator’s window and spoke.
“Okay, so what’s the big deal, Diana? Your grandmother was wrong.” She pulled aside some branches and peered into the gap she’d just come through. “Diana?”
A fourth woman stumbled as she broke free of the hemlocks and landed facedown on the dew-covered grass. Sebastian grinned when a string of muffled curses silenced her friends’ laughter.
She ignored their outstretched hands and, scowling at the ground behind her, scrambled to her feet.
Sebastian drew in a hissing breath.
Petite compared to the others, not more than five foot three with breasts that would barely fill his hand, she brought out an instinctive need in him to protect. He watched as she drew up her shoulders and glared at the blonde.
“Dammit, Terry, she’s never wrong and you know it.” The woman he now realized was Diana shot a glance at the house, then shimmied out of her skirt. “If Nana Lina said I’d meet my soul mate tonight, then one of the guys I met tonight was him!”
Leaning forward, Sebastian smirked. If her voice was any indication, Diana needed no protecting. He felt the strength of her conviction and her willingness to fight to defend it in each word. As she moved, muscles smoothly rippling beneath her skin revealed that her strength was not confined to her soul. He wondered if, like the female vampires, she would feel like steel encased in satin.
Terry rolled her eyes at the twins shedding their clothes beside her. “Did you guys see Diana’s Mr. Right at Cabana’s tonight?” They both giggled and shook their heads as she unclasped her bra. “Unless that nerd, the one you never would have glanced at if Nana Lina hadn’t called—”
“He was not a nerd,” Diana said with a soft laugh.
“Well unless he’s the love of your life,” Terry continued, “or Mr. Right is some perv lurking in the bushes, face it, Di, you ain’t meeting him tonight.”
A wave of heat washed over Sebastian. Watching the women went against every moral he possessed, every vow he’d made to the angels, yet each discarded piece of Diana’s clothing incited his body and, like a great mystery, insisted he remain and discover what had yet to be revealed.
He forced himself to close his eyes and reminded himself that this woman may have lured Marek to his death. The lump in his throat threatened to suffocate him. Why should she have another week of life? She already had one more day than Marek. Marek’s wife and little girl didn’t get another week with him.
Frank Nostrum didn’t deserve another week with his daughter.
Compelling her to swim until she drowned would be kind compared to what Sebastian had planned, but the idea of watching her slip under while her friends struggled against his mental hold was definitely tempting. Too tempting to ignore.
Diana shuddered. One second the crisp night air caressed her skin, the next the air felt charged with electricity. A strange tingling that lifted her hair by the roots flowed over her head. She nodded in agreement with the sudden idea that she could swim across the lake. She took a step toward the shore. The tingling returned and she promptly forgot what she had been considering a moment before. She raised her hand to scratch her head, then froze. “Oh my God, Ter, I think there’s a bug in my hair.”
Terry immediately started sifting through her hair. “Okay, Di, don’t freak out. It’s probably just some moth.”
Diana squeezed her eyes closed and forced herself to stand still while every muscle screamed that she run into the lake and drown whatever had crawled across her scalp. “Just get it out!”
“There’s nothing in your hair. Wait a minute. Did you do that just so I’d stop making fun of Angelina’s prediction?”
Diana glowered at her best friend. “The last time you convinced me to ignore one of Nana’s predictions, I ended up losing my state title.”
“Was that the year you puked all over my parent’s carpet, then passed out in our tub,” Cindy asked.
Unconvinced that nothing lurked in her hair, Diana bent over, flung her hair over her head and answered as she combed her fingers through the knots and curls she could never seem to tame, “And woke up so sick and sore I could barely raise my legs high enough to get out of the tub, much less kick some hotshot in the jaw.”
Fingers parted her hair. Terry scowled through the opening. “Get over it, Di! That was in high school! And how was I supposed to know the champion kick boxer from California had moved here?”
“Nana Lina did.” Diana flung her hair back over her head as she straightened. She yanked at the buttons of her shirt, then shrugged out of it. Emphatically shaking her head, she added, “I love you, Terry, but you’re not screwing this up for me. Not this time.”
Terry draped her arm over Diana’s bare shoulders, led her away from Mary and Cindy, then whispered, “Girlfri
end, you need to see a therapist. You masturbate nearly every night and yet you wait for Nana’s permission to do the deed just because she predicted your virginity would hold some power over your soul mate.”
“Don’t forget the warning that if I failed in winning his heart, I’d spend eternity in a living hell while you and the rest of humanity faced ravenous beasts unleashed by—
“The wrath of the angels,” Terry cut in with an ominous voice. “Hello!” She held up a finger. “One. All old ladies believe men only marry virgins. And they all believe that women who give out before marriage will go to hell.” She raised another finger. “Two. Soul mate? Ravenous beasts? Need I say more?” Not waiting for a response, she shot up a third. “And three. No offense, Di, but your dad’s whacked and she’s his mother!”
Diana’s stomach clenched. “And I’m his daughter. Does that make me nuts too, Terry?”
“No, but—”
Diana sighed. “Look, you come home every night to a mother and father who miss you. It doesn’t matter if you were gone a few days or just a few hours. They missed you. You know they missed you.” She glanced up at the stars and clutched the silver locket bearing her mother’s picture. “I want that so much, it hurts. Someone who misses me, someone who’s not too obsessed with—” She bit back her words and searched the dark windows overlooking the third floor balcony of the house for any sign of the boy who’d moved into town over the winter.
She could swear someone was watching, listening. She didn’t feel it in her bones; she felt it on every inch of exposed skin. Heat washed over her body, lingering on her breasts, sweeping down her ribs, her stomach. She gasped and covered her mound even though she still wore her thong.
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