“I am no longer your king.”
“In the people’s mind, you will always be our king.”
I frown with confusion. “Thank you?”
I take off after her into the night, and with my speed, I catch up quickly. “Where are you going?” I ask, jogging beside her.
She glances over at me. “Away from you.”
“Running from your unrelenting desire for me. I understand.” It is not easy being reminded of what she’s been missing out on.
“No! I refuse to be your prisoner. I’ll fight you every step of the way, Michael. Until my dying breath. Until I choke out my last sputtering gurgle of life!”
Dear God. How has she gotten so dark? “No need for that. As I said, if you can convince me—” Never going to happen. “—before the trial that Mr. Nice, the man who sometimes wears nothing but black frosting on his nether region and claims it is genuine underwear, is your soul mate, then I will personally request to have all charges dropped.”
Miriam continues running. “In the van, you said you’d let me go, and you refused.”
“Because you did not convince me, Miriam. But I swear on my grave that if you do so before Nice’s trial, I will let you go and make sure he is freed.” When pigs fly. Or I fly. Either way, impossible.
Miriam stops running, and so do I.
“Okay, and how exactly do you propose I convince you?” she asks, panting hard.
You cannot. I am the love of your life and you know it. I grip her waist and pull her in close, our noses only inches apart. “Just resist me. If your heart truly belongs to him, then you will not kiss me, look at me, and you certainly will not be tempted by the abundant size of my manhood.”
Miriam’s big brown eyes flicker for a moment. Rage, irritation, longing. I sense all three emotions. “Fine. Deal.”
“Great. Deal.” I continue holding her, and she doesn’t resist. My body starts to hum with need. I want to kiss her, but more importantly, I know she wants it, too.
We stare into each other’s eyes, and I see the conflict masked by torment. I have come across many mysteries throughout my existence, but solving this puzzle—her resistance—is by far the greatest. Nice has done something to her. Perhaps he has subjected her to a mind-control power we are not aware of, or he has brainwashed her through traditional means. But never once, in all my years, have I seen a person so reluctant to be rescued.
I release her, knowing that if I am to break her, it will not be through force. She is a strong-minded woman and cannot be manipulated. In fact, the entire time I was with her, she hid her true self away—such as the fact that her parents were Keepers, humans trained and committed to killing rogue vampires. I never suspected she knew what I was or that she wasn’t as helpless as she let on. Imagine my surprise when she appeared with a crossbow slung over her shoulder, locked me in her basement, and went off to do recognizance on Clive. All along, I believed her bookworm façade.
No, Miriam is not one to be duped. She is the duper. The super duper. The only way to catch her is by evoking her true emotions.
CHAPTER SIX
“So, no banana?” Lula asks over the phone as I stand on the back porch, relieved to finally hear from her. Miriam is showering, and Bubba Magic is off getting supplies—bagged blood, coffee, food for our librarian, and a change of clothes for us both.
“No. No banana. No tree or monkey either.”
“Keep at it, Michael. We both know that a love like yours and Miriam’s doesn’t die. Especially not because of a man like Nice. She’s hiding something.”
Obviously. Because I am Michael Vanderhorst. My name is the definition of desirable. Still, I cannot help doubting. Am I missing something? It has been five damned years, and I know she’s had opportunities to run.
“I keep telling myself that,” I say, “but do you think there’s the slightest chance I’m wrong?” What if she is truly in love with him? I mean, it is possible to love two people. She could be in love with us both! I shudder at the thought.
“Look. I’m a firm believer that every nut has a shell, but Nice and Miriam? As a couple? It wouldn’t make sense even if they were the last man and woman on earth. He wears fur pasties and has a very disturbing obsession with anything made from poufy lace. She is a no-frills, down-to-earth librarian with a warrior’s heart. You can’t get a more genuine, fact-loving, anti-poufy woman. You just can’t.”
“Agreed. Nevertheless, I gave her my word; I promised to let her go if she can prove she loves him.”
“Mikeypoo, you didn’t. That’s a subjective litmus test. I mean, short of pulling a Romeo and Juliet and ending one’s own life in the name of love, there aren’t many ways to prove it.”
“So what are you saying, Lula? It is impossible to prove you love someone?”
“Not in a few days. Proof takes time. It has to be shown every day in big and small ways, through thick and thin, to a point where anyone with hidden agendas would bolt because it’s just that damned hard to stay.”
“You are correct. Love is not as simple as performing one act. It is putting someone else’s well-being and happiness above your own. That is the key. Thank you!”
“Errr…did I miss something?”
“I’m going to test her.”
“Sounds exhilarating. But we need proof that she was held and forced to marry Mr. Nice against her will. He’s already crying foul and rallying allies to have him released. He also said we used unnecessary force when we caught him.”
“Did you?”
“Well,” she huffs defensively, “he almost tore my head off when you drove away in the van with Miriam. If it weren’t for the guards jumping on him and injecting seven or eight tranquilizers into his ass, I’d be toast.”
“Seven or eight? That’s enough to put down a herd of rhinos,” I say.
“Ah, he’s fine. But boy, was he pissed when he woke up with a shaved head.” She snickers. “But I swear, that’s all I did when he was passed out.” She pauses. “Okay, and I may have shoved his finger up his nose and taken pictures, but it was super funny—that big bad vampire picking like a winner.” She chuckles.
“I would have done far worse,” I say.
“Exactly! I think I went easy on him, but still, my phone’s been ringing off the hook since we got back to Cincinnati. Granted, half the calls were my lovers hoping for a little sweet Lula lovin’ tonight, but the other half have been people advocating on Nice’s behalf. Who knew he was so popular?”
I hear the shower shut off. “I should go.”
“All right. Good luck, Michael.”
“I don’t need luck. I need facts and logic to prove what my gut is telling me.” This is the tried-and-true way to solve any mystery. “In the meantime, try to get information out of Nice. Offer him a dirty bedtime story or some chipmunk pudding or something.”
“I’ve already got another enticement on the way. I heard that Mimi Jean author was working on another Fanged Love book. I got her assistant, LD, to score me a copy of the manuscript.”
LD. What sort of name is that? Lord of Darkness. Love Dumpling perhaps? “Good thinking. If anything can tempt Mr. Nice, it is that book.”
We end the call, and I put on my game face. It will take some very skilled conniving to outwit Miriam and prove she is lying, but I must succeed. My happiness is on the line. In over four hundred years, I have never loved a woman until she came along. Miriam is my soul mate. I would do anything for her, including letting her go if she truly wishes to be with another.
Stop. That will never happen. She can’t possibly choose that moron over me. Can she?
Shortly after Miriam is done showering, Bubba arrives with supplies. When she emerges from the bathroom, wearing black sweats and a red T-shirt, her blonde hair in that messy topknot, my heart glows and my body tenses with the desire to finally get that kiss. Then there is a moment, just a fraction of a second when our eyes meet, and I feel a spark inside her, too. She wants me as much as I want her. The q
uestion is, how do I get her back?
“How do you feel?” I ask, sitting on the plain brown sofa in the living room. The home is a vacation/weekend sort, with one great room that extends into the kitchen. The three bedrooms are to the back.
“Tired. What’s that noise?” she asks.
“The pounding sound is Bubba boarding up the window in your room so you cannot escape.”
“What if there’s a fire?”
“Then you have a very fast, very strong four-hundred-year-old vampire to extract you.” A shame I did not bring a tank top to put the guns on display for her. Perhaps I should remove my shirt. No, too obvious. A more subtle approach is required to seduce Miriam.
She scoffs, but doesn’t look me in the eyes. She’s upset with me and wants me to know it.
“I thought you’d like to hear,” I say, “that I just spoke with Lula, and your Mr. Nice is safe and sound in our Cincinnati jail. Oh, and he has a new haircut.”
“That’s supposed to make me happy? He shouldn’t be there at all. Just like I shouldn’t be here.”
Interesting. She doesn’t seem to care if he was physically unharmed. Nor did she ask about him the entire drive. She merely complained about being taken.
I decide to test her again. “I merely thought you would want to know he is well. No harm came to him.”
“He’s eight hundred something years old,” she says. “He can handle himself.”
She has a point, but it is still fishy. “Well, Bubba purchased some supplies. May I make you a sandwich?”
She shrugs. “Sure. Thanks.”
“And as a token of goodwill, we got you some stationery.”
“For?”
“To write a letter to your husband—let him know you are okay. I am sure he is worried about you and, unfortunately, he is not allowed to have a phone. Sending him a letter is the best I could do.”
“That was thoughtful. Thank you. I’ll write him after I’ve eaten.”
Ha! She put her stomach ahead of communicating with her husband. Not the actions of a truly enamored person. For example, I have barely eaten in five years, since Miriam was taken. I couldn’t even bring myself to cut my hair, something I will rectify tonight. I want Miriam seeing the old me, the one she fell for. Luckily, I am quite the skilled barber. Profession #6.
“Very good.” I get up and go into the kitchen area, which has powder blue everything, including the sink and counters. Little black coyotes are painted along the edges of the walls. It’s very country, not my taste at all, but I have become accustomed to living in the funkiest of places. My youthful appearance limits which cover stories I am able to use. For example, when I first moved to Phoenix and posed as a college student earning eight thousand a year, I had to live in a roach-infested shoebox. The carpet looked alive. Yuck. Since then, I’ve learned not to complain.
I search the cupboards, find a plate, and wash my hands—a tidy vampire is a sexy vampire. Then I pull out the sandwich ingredients from the refrigerator. “So, how long have you been married?”
“Almost five years.” She pulls up a seat at the breakfast bar, opposite me.
“So soon after he took you?”
“Went willingly,” she corrects. “And it’s like I said; I wanted to be with him, so we married right away.”
Suspicious. Miriam met Mr. Nice a few times before the night he took her, and she was terrified of him.
I spread mayo on one side of the bread. “I hope you don’t mind me being nosy, but what did he do, specifically, to change your mind about him?”
“I guess…he showed me who he really was.”
I lay down a slice of ham and then the cheese. “Who is he?”
“Well, he’s, ummm…he enjoys reading and shopping.”
“Those are activities. And might I point out, they are applicable to billions of people. I’m asking who this man is. Does he have a kind heart? Does he make you feel safe even during the worst of times? What kind of sacrifices has he made in the name of your happiness?”
“Well, he’s strong. He fears nothing. He knows what he wants. He’s a take-charge alpha male. Which I’m a sucker for.”
Liar. She’s miss bossy britches. Totally hot. “So, Nice orders you around, and you enjoy that.”
“I love it.” Her tone couldn’t sound more fake. Miriam and I both know she demands respect and equality. She has her own mind. She’s fiercely independent. For example, she once locked me in her vault because I was letting my own protective feelings get in the way of stopping Clive’s coup. I should have been out looking for a way to stop him, but instead I kept worrying about her safety. She ended up running off on her own to get the information we needed to form an offensive and smother Clive’s plans.
“Does he tell you what to eat and wear, too?” Because nothin’ says lovin’ like being treated like a child, I think sarcastically.
“No. Of course not. I mean, sometimes I had to make do. A lot of people were looking for us. What does this have to do with him loving me or vice versa?”
“It’s only natural that I wonder what sort of life you traded for the one you had.” An exciting life that included my supreme lovemaking.
“You wanna know what I got instead of people trying to kill me every other week and constantly living in fear of everything I loved being taken?”
Oh. That. She’s referring to the fact that Clive and his cohorts tried every trick in the book to get their hands on her library. Not for the building or its contents, but for the land. Beneath it all lie miles of catacombs that Clive used to build and hide an army. He needed her building to access another finger of caves.
“I shut all that down, Miriam. I made sure you were safe. And, if you recall, the last major threat you faced was an insane violent vampire named Mr. Nice, who wanted to make you the centerpiece of his fantasy from a romance novel. I am attempting to understand what persuaded you to go all in with him.” Why marry nacho cheese when you could have a fine aged cheddar?
“You asked what I traded for my old life. Well, it was fun, Michael. Fun!” She throws her hands in the air. “No more worrying about anyone hurting me, because Nice isn’t nice at all. He’s ruthless and deadly. No more fighting for material things that, at the end of the day, don’t matter because they won’t ever love me back. I was free for the first time in my life, and Nice is the reason why. He’s outrageous and crazy and a very weird dresser, but after eight centuries, he’s figured it all out. Life isn’t supposed to be about suffering. It’s supposed to be lived. Ergo, the reason it’s called life! We dance. We drink. We do whatever the hell we want when we want. I’ve seen the world, and I’ve never, not once, worried about bills or taxes or how I’m going to keep my family’s legacy alive because I don’t have enough money to eat, but I live in a huge mansion I inherited and own millions of dollars of rare books and historical items. Things I can’t sell without feeling like I’ve betrayed my dead mother and father. So yeah, Michael, it was sooo irrational for me to walk away from all that.” Her chest heaves with heated breaths.
“You felt that way the entire time?” I frown with confusion.
“Yes!”
“Then why didn’t you say something? Why not ask me for help?”
“How, Michael? How would you help? By giving me money? By making me feel obligated to you?”
There she is. The fiercely independent woman I know. Hot! “You married Mr. Nice. Aren’t you obligated to him now?” I throw back.
“No. He’s never asked for anything in return. He had zero expectations of me—okay, other than wearing some red poufy lace outfits and reenacting the wedding scene from Fanged Love since we couldn’t do an actual ceremony without drawing attention to ourselves. But every day for the last five years, he’s expected me to walk out the door. And every day that I stayed, he was grateful for it. Then we had fun. Just lots and lots of fun.”
I am speechless. Completely and utterly speechless. Could she possibly be telling the truth?
&n
bsp; I cannot lie; a part of me believes her, because I was there when things were bad. I saw what she went through. She was beaten, nearly murdered, manipulated, kidnapped by her then boyfriend, and drugged. I saved her, but it doesn’t remove the trauma.
Nevertheless, it does not add up, unless… “So your feelings for me were never real.”
“Of course they were. At the time you were everything to me, Michael. It’s why I finally told you the truth about my parents being Keepers. It’s why I slept with you. But…”
“What?”
“In hindsight, I think you were a lifeline—a thing I was grabbing onto. But once I was removed from that whole situation, I saw how my world had become about survival. Nice cured me. He gave me back my life.”
Wow. It sounds like she is telling the truth, but my heart refuses to accept it. Right now, it is kicking and screaming and blowing the personal foul whistle.
I release a slow breath, trying to figure out my next move, because she’s digging in hard. I place the top slice of bread on her sandwich and slide the plate across the counter toward her. Our fingertips graze and a jolt courses through me.
I know she feels it, too, because she pulls her hand away and avoids my gaze.
There! That’s my move. She spends her days lying to Nice’s face. Maybe she is even lying to herself. But I know what’s in her heart. It is a connection I felt from the very first moment we met, and is unlike anything I have ever heard of—between man and woman, vampire and vampire, or vampire and human. At first I thought it was because I gave her my blood on several occasions to heal her injuries. But then I learned that those types of connections wear off after a few days. This thing between Miriam and me has never gone away. I can sense her emotions, almost as though we share the same heart. There is no way she loves Nice. I would feel it, and I have nothing but hate for the man.
“You make a convincing argument, Miriam.” I reach for her chin and gently tilt her head up to meet my gaze. “But I know when you are lying.”
She raises a golden brown brow. “You sure about that? Because you never suspected the truth about me when we met.” She is referring to the fact that she had me convinced for months that she knew nothing about vampires. She pretended to be this meek, helpless bookworm, when all along she had the skills to hunt and kill rogue vampires, just as her parents taught her. Miriam chose to be a librarian instead, but that does not make her any less of a badass.
The Librarian's Vampire Assistant, Book 4 Page 5