"Miranda!" He shouted as his arms tightened around her waist, his warmth flooding her insides. His body spasmed while she drank his life.
Yes. This time, she planned on keeping him.
Josie's eyes opened as the pain diminished. The image, however, was burned into her mind's eye with the many other's she experienced as the headaches increased.
She knew one thing. She had to paint these visions. Her artist's heart desired to record the images in the only way she knew. Josie felt these images were coming to her for a reason. She didn't know why, but until she did, she had to put them onto canvas. Record them for others to see, and she didn't have much time left.
Chapter 2
The Christmas lights sparkled like stars among the streets of New Orleans as Antonio strolled through the French Quarter. The echo of holiday music blaring from speakers poised in the shops filled the city with the spirit of the season.
Artificial trees decorated with shiny baubles lined the sidewalks. The crowds of tourists had grown thin over the last hour as the sun descended. Although carriages still conveyed tourists through the streets, and people still meandered, Antonio knew he’d need to wait a little longer before finding the ones he sought.
It had been decades since he’d been to Louisiana. He’d traveled across Europe for a time before relocating to New Orleans. After spending some years here, he’d continued to travel through the states, never satisfied with the cities and towns he’d visited.
So, he’d come back to New Orleans, enchanted by the city’s Old-World charm. There was a feeling in this city that was unlike any other he visited. A sense of history that appealed to him. Although the holidays were meaningless to him now, he did enjoy the festive decorations and the joviality of the people living and visiting here.
The lights illuminating Jackson Square gave life to the artists still lined along the cast-iron fence. Biding his time, he decided to follow the few people in front of him as they gazed at the many paintings hung for display.
Until one painting caught his attention, stopping him in his tracks.
The image of a gray-skinned man with soulless eyes wearing 14th century monk’s robes and holding a cross in his hand caught Antonio’s eye. His breath escaped him as he took in the tower room behind the monk seated with a table teeming with manuscripts beside a sharpened quill and spilled ink. The black ink spread across the table, creating a dark splotch that dripped to floor appearing eerily reminiscent of blood.
It could have been blood. In fact, Antonio remembered the odor of blood spilled that night as he worked tirelessly over those manuscripts.
The night he met Miranda.
That was over 600 years ago. How could this scene exist on a painting today? No one had witnessed this event. No one other than he and Miranda had seen what occurred to that monk so many centuries ago.
A sparkle of shimmering water caught his eye next, and he turned to the painting beside it.
In this one, the man in monk’s robes knelt beside a river, a blood-covered dagger resting in his outstretched hands. Brilliant red streaks dripped from the man’s wrists, draining into swift flowing water along the riverbank. The dark swirls of the man’s life mixing with the clear water, muddying it with his sins and transgressions.
A chill shivered along Antonio’s skin, which had nothing to do with unusually cool weather in this southern city. It rarely snowed here, but Antonio felt the temperature drop suddenly. Or perhaps it was the sense of foreboding that made his skin tingle.
A man dressed in a Santa suit staggered past him, nearly knocking into him as Antonio stood frozen and transfixed, his gaze never straying from the painting of the monk’s suicide.
Antonio unbuttoned the cuff of his sleeve to pull back his white shirt, revealing the ragged edges of the scars along his inner arms. He ran a thick finger over the healed ridges. He’d sliced his skin from wrist to elbow that day to extinguish the evil that had consumed him.
He’d broken his vows, tempted by the flesh of the woman who seduced him with her wanton ways. Her beauty and seduction had overpowered him, her will was stronger than his own. He’d given her his body on the eve of Christmas all those centuries ago. And in return, she’d taken his blood.
In the morning, when he’d realized what he done, that he’d consorted with a creature of evil and sin, he’d done what any man of the cloth might do. Any man filled with desperation and guilt.
Taking his own life hadn’t worked.
After draining his life’s blood into the river, he’d simply fallen asleep. He awoke the next night, ravenous for a life to replace the one he had taken. Miranda had eagerly obliged. She came to him, offering him a maiden that night, a local woman from the village named Margaret.
Antonio remembered the blinding pain he’d experienced when his newly formed fangs pierced his gums as he salivated over the delectable Margaret.
His fanged teeth still tingled in memory of her supple white skin and the woman’s pulse pounding with terror. The taste of her had been sweet. A delicacy offered to a starving man. He pushed the unbidden memory away, taking a deep breath to suppress the urge to release his fangs.
With quick, jerky movements he lowered the sleeves to hide the scars he fought for centuries to forget. If only he could ignore the evidence of those visual reminders.
The last painting in the row lining the decorated fence was that of a woman. A portrait of a pale-skinned beauty with mahogany hair curling in voluptuous waves to her waist. Her exotic green eyes flashed with an inner light, and the small smile curving those pouty blood-red lips filled him with a yearning he thought long since dead.
She was the dream of every man. A beauty that surpassed others of her generation.
But in physical form only. Her heart, if she ever truly had one, had been a block of ice.
Miranda de Neville.
Memories of their moments together rushed through his mind, filling his soul with yearning and regret. It pooled in his chest until it became difficult to breathe. His cock hardened at the mere thought of her, the memory of her smooth hands on his body, tutoring him in the pleasures of the flesh. Her seductive whispers followed by little gasps of excitement and then screams of ecstasy.
She had shown him the many ways of living, of surviving, and of dying.
Miranda was dead.
Several centuries dead.
How did her image, and that of what she had done to him come to be painted on a twenty-first century canvas featured at an artist’s table in the center of Jackson Square in New Orleans during the Christmas season?
“Oh, hello! I didn’t see you there.” A woman’s cheery voice snapped the spell that had woven around him as he gazed at the paintings.
Antonio’s attention turned to the woman. She had shoulder length short-styled blonde hair tipped with dyed streaks of electric blue that nearly matched her eyes, topped with a cherry red Santa hat. The smooth, creamy skin of her face appeared freshly washed with only a hint of bluish-gray eyeshadow to emphasize the intense color of her eyes. She flashed a charming smile, her even white teeth matching the cleanness and innocence about her.
“Did you find something that interests you?” Her melodious voice reminded him of the sun. Brilliant, shining white light flooding warmth into the darkness encasing his ice-cold heart.
“Yes.” No use in denying his avid interest in the paintings. He returned his gaze to the portrait of Miranda.
The woman followed his gaze.
“Oh, she’s a beauty, isn’t she?” The woman’s breath caught with awe. “There’s so much character reflected in her eyes. Intelligence. Power. Strength.”
“The ability to possess a man’s soul,” Antonio added in a flat, dead voice.
The woman’s gaze flashed to his. “Yes,” she whispered. She stared, searching his face perhaps to find his soul.
She’d be disappointed to find him lacking in that area.
“Do you know her name?”
“No, I….
” She shook her head, blinking. With a brief shrug of her shoulders, she said, “It’s just a face I saw in my imagination. I never gave her a name.”
“You painted this?”
“Yes.” She nodded, then waved a hand toward the paintings propped against the cast-iron fence, illuminated by the hanging string of white lights. “These, too.”
Antonio stepped back, taking in the extent of her work. Some canvases were hidden behind others where she had doubled up some to give others more room to view. Some hung on hooks along the fence. One had festive red and green garland wrapped around it.
Not all were of Miranda. Nor were they all scenes of his immortal life, he was grateful to see. There were other scenes, some more cheerful such as a meadow with a sparkling castle in the distance. Others were dark and emotionally compelling, but of a sight he’d never witnessed with his own eyes.
So, it was not just images of his life she’d portrayed.
Yet how did she know? How had she come to paint these moments in time? Glimpses of his life that no one in this century could possibly have witnessed. He knew of no others like him. Not any longer.
“You are an artist.”
The shock of her radiant laugh startled him as the sound caressed his skin like sun-warmed silk.
“Yes, I am,” she said, smiling. “My name is Josephine Drummond. You can call me Josie.” She waved at the table and chair set up under a small canopy a few feet away. An easel stood beside the chair, along with an assortment of paints and brushes. “Sometimes I paint here in the square. It’s easier to get the tourists to take notice. Would you like to see more? My paintings are sold in an art studio on Decatur Street. I store the rest in my apartment.”
“More than this?” His eyes took in the amount of paintings with an incredulous sweep.
She laughed again, a light tinkling sound. “I’m very prolific.”
Something flashed in her eyes and she crossed her arms. She tilted her head, studying him, her Santa hat tipped to the side. “Hey, do I know you?”
“I think not,” he muttered. But he turned from her scrutiny to step closer to the portrait of Miranda. “How much do you want for this one?”
He could barely believe his ears. After living through so many centuries struggling to dismiss the memory of this creature and what she had done to him, he was about to purchase Miranda’s likeness to hang on his wall. A constant reminder of his pain and torment.
And his loss.
Even in death she wasn’t finished torturing him.
“You really like this one, don’t you?” Josie spoke softly as she matched his steps near the portrait. She continued to look upon him instead of Miranda’s wicked beauty.
I detest her. I despise her. I ache for her.
Words Antonio yearned to utter, but he bit back his response.
“She intrigues me,” he said, instead simply.
“Hmm…”
He cast a side-long glance at the woman who refused to take her gaze from his face. The intensity of the artist’s blue eyes disturbed him. Josie searched for something within him. Something he wished to keep hidden. But she was perceptive. He could tell from the detail of her work.
“She reminds me of someone,” he admitted, wishing to distract her by turning her attention back to the portrait.
It didn’t work.
“What’s her name?” Josie inquired, still following him with her astute gaze. “The woman she reminds you of?”
“Miranda.” Antonio spoke the name of his vampire lover for the first time in centuries. The sound of her name rolled off his tongue causing a shiver of foreboding to race across his skin. He faced Josie, forcing himself to repeat the vampire’s name as if to cast off the power she held over him. “Her name was Miranda.”
Josie gasped, taking a step back. Her hand reached for her throat where her fingers absently kneaded the skin there as if someone choked her.
He couldn’t stop the hunger that slammed into him at the innocent gesture. It had been weeks since he fed. With the full moon rising in another night or two, the craving for blood was too great to ignore. Hunting the drunkards on Bourbon Street proved easy prey and a quick meal. He’d be there now, seeking a delectable morsel if he hadn’t walked by Jackson Square. If he hadn’t seen Miranda staring at him from this portrait. Calling to him. A whisper from the grave.
His teeth ached at the thought of sinking fangs into flesh, letting the blood ooze into his mouth and down his throat. He caught Josie’s scent on a sudden breeze. Fresh, clean soap mixed with lilacs. It wasn’t perfume she wore. The flowery smell clung to her clothes as if she’d been in physical contact with the aromatic flowers.
He could take her now. He stared into her electric blue eyes, wanting to reach for her, pull her into his embrace, hold her tight against his body. He wanted to kiss those smiling lips, taste the freshness of her pure, untainted blood.
He wanted to devour her as Miranda had devoured him. Turn her into the creature he’d become so he wouldn’t be alone.
Antonio tore his gaze from the pulse pounding in her neck. He needed to distract himself with the paintings for a few precious moments while he regained his composure. He took a deep breath, but her scent swirled around him.
His teeth burned.
His cock ached.
“Take it,” Josie whispered, breathlessly, drawing his attention swiftly back to her.
“What?”
“Take the painting. It’s yours, I think.” She broke away from him to grab the portrait. Holding it in two arms, she studied it for a long moment, as if memorizing every detail of Miranda’s face, every brushstroke that created the life-like image portrayed on the canvas. At last, she handed it to him. “I lied to you. I did name her. But I never mentioned it to anyone. Never even wrote it down. Yet somehow you know her name.”
As she passed the portrait to him, she grasped his hand. The shock of her touch coursed through him like tiny bolts of electricity flowing from her skin into his.
“The woman,” Josie said, her melodious voice turning to steel. “Her name is Miranda de Neville.”
Antonio’s grip on the portrait tightened. He tilted his head, staring at Josie in a new light.
“Come with me,” Josie said, her voice thick with anticipation. “I have something else to show you.”
Chapter 3
This was unreal.
Josie turned the key opening the door to the studio apartment on the third floor that she rented on Toulouse Street, leading the man inside. He set the painting of Miranda de Neville on the floor next to the door, leaning it carefully against the wall.
“Do you trust that man in Jackson Square with your paintings?”
“Who? Henry?” Josie shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah. He sets up his table next to mine all the time. He watches my stuff, I watch his. And he doesn’t mind helping me pack up. I was ready to shut down for the day anyway.”
Josie set her keys on the table near the door.
“Don’t mind the mess. The maid has the day off,” Josie said with joking laughter, shoving a stack of unopened medical bills and magazines into a basket by the door. In the kitchen area directly to the left, she hurriedly picked up the empty coffee cup and the plate with breadcrumbs from the counter and shoved them into the sink hoping he didn’t notice. She hadn’t tidied before leaving to go to the square this morning. She also hadn’t suspected she’d be bringing a man home with her this evening either.
Josie turned to watch the man step farther into the apartment. The intensity of his gaze surprised her. He’d found more paintings of interest hanging on the wall.
The particular canvas he currently scrutinized was of Miranda, dining at a long dinner table seated with elegant guests of some distinction. Their dress was medieval. Upper class. Gowns of expensive cloth and elaborate headdresses. Not the type of scene Josie typically painted. She was more about landscapes and earthy scenery. Flowers and waterfalls. Mountains and trees. But, when she began having th
ose dreams five years ago, she felt compelled to record them in the only way she knew. And then the headaches came bringing more images with countless doctor’s appointments following.
“These are some of the paintings I have available for purchase.” Josie gestured to the multiple paintings decorating the room, either hanging on walls or displayed on easels. “But, I… I want to show you something else.”
She hesitated. What was she doing? This was crazy. Yet how could he know Miranda’s name? And how could he look so much like the man in her dreams?
It had taken her only a few moments upon meeting to recognize him. She’d have to be insane not to. His face in her dreams had often been concealed within a heavy shroud of long, black tangled hair. That hair had now been sheared short, revealing a handsome face with a strong jaw, straight nose, and high cheekbones that she recognized from the glimpses she’d seen.
And he no longer wore monk’s robes. Not that he always had. In her visions, he hadn’t always worn the clothing of a monk. He’d also been attired in other medieval style clothing for a man in that time. But that was after he met Miranda.
Now, he wore jeans and a navy-blue shirt with a long, black jacket the fell to midthigh. The combination of his modern clothing and short hair, it was difficult to compare him with the man she’d seen in her visions. But when she looked deep within his eyes, she caught a glimpse of the man he once was… if she could believe such a thing was possible.
She must be out of her mind. Yes, that had to be it. The doctors would never believe her story about her visions and this man who simply stepped out of them. But she had to know… she had to show him…
She needed to witness his reaction the moment he saw these other paintings she kept hidden from the public. Her secret stash.
With determined steps, Josie led him to a door in the far corner of the room beside the artificial tree she’d decorated for Christmas. Old habits of a childhood long forgotten. She didn’t know why she kept up with the festivities. She didn’t have anyone to share the holidays with. Being an orphan, she had no family. And the few friends that she’d made after she’d moved to New Orleans were all with their families for Christmas. She had no one.
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