Everlasting Embrace

by Amanda Ashley

  “You mean like those…those…whatever they were?”

  “Exactly. She’s an old and powerful vampire. And she’s mad as hell.”

  Rylee shivered. She had felt that power. It had crawled over her skin like some alien infection. “Is Alex going to be all right?”

  “I don’t know. Tomorrow night will tell the tale. But he’s still in the land of the living, so to speak. If you’re smart, you’ll forget everything that happened tonight. And you’ll forget about Alex. I don’t think he’ll be fit company for you or anyone else for quite a while.”

  Rylee swallowed hard. She knew everything he said was true, but putting Alex out of her mind was going to be impossible. Just as she was never going to forget this man or the female vampire who had kidnapped her.

  Alex opened his eyes slowly, surprised to find himself in bed. He didn’t recall driving back to Costain’s lair…

  He bolted upright, his heart hammering in his chest as he glanced around. What was he doing here? The last thing he remembered was hanging in a basement like a side of beef, with Magdalena chowing down on the side of his neck. And Rylee! Oh, Lord, where was she?

  “Relax, kid.”

  “Rhys?” Alex turned toward the sound of the vampire’s voice. “What happened? How did I get here? Where’s Rylee?” He swallowed, then grimaced. His mouth felt desert-dry, his tongue thick.

  “All in good time. How do you feel?”

  “Like hell.” Suddenly overcome by gut-wrenching pain, he sat up and wrapped his arms around his stomach. Magdalena had sliced his cheek open. Maybe it was infected. He lifted a hand to his cheek, wondering if he’d be horribly scarred. His skin was caked with dried blood but there was no wound. So why did he hurt so bad? “Did she poison me or something?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Alex took a deep breath, confused by the abrupt onslaught on his senses. It was pitch black in the room, yet he saw everything clearly—Costain standing at the foot of the bed, arms crossed over his chest, each figure in the curio cabinet, the paintings on the wall.

  He frowned when he heard the sound of a truck backfiring, the barking of a dog, footsteps from the street below. How was that even possible? They were eleven floors up in an apartment that was virtually soundproof.

  An indrawn breath carried myriad scents—from the outside.

  “What’s happening to me?” he asked as another wave of pain knifed through him. He stared at Costain, who stood there watching him like he was a rare bug in a science experiment. It was the look in the vampire’s eyes that answered his question. An expression that bordered on pity.

  “I think you know,” Rhys answered quietly.

  “She turned me, didn’t she?” he asked, his voice flat, as the events of the night before flashed before him.

  “No.”

  “No? I don’t believe you.” His hands clenched into tight fists. “I can see everything clearly, even though it’s pitch black in here. I can hear things I shouldn’t be able to hear.”

  “She didn’t bring you across,” Rhys said, then paused before, adding, “I did.”

  Alex stared at him. “Why?” he asked, his voice little more than a hoarse whisper. “Why would you do that?”

  “It seemed like the right thing to do, at the time.”

  “Shouldn’t it have been my decision?”

  “If you’d been conscious, I might have asked first, but there wasn’t time. She didn’t give you enough of her blood to turn you. I suspect she’s never made another vampire. But she took enough to kill you. So I made the decision on my own.”

  “You had no right!”

  In the blink of an eye, Rhys was beside the bed, one hand clamped around Alex’s throat. “Fledglings are a lot of trouble,” he growled, his eyes blazing red. “You want to be dead? Just say the word.”

  Alex stared up into the vampire’s face and knew Costain wasn’t bluffing.

  “So, what’ll it be?” Rhys asked, his hand tightening around Alex’s throat. “Life or death?”

  Scarcely able to draw a breath, he croaked, “Life, dammit!”

  “Are you sure?” Rhys asked, displaying his fangs. “I haven’t eaten tonight.”

  “Dammit,” Alex gasped. “Let go of me, you bloody monster.”

  Rhys grinned as he released his hold on Alex’s throat. “Welcome to the wonderful world of the Undead.”

  Alex scowled at him. “You’ve got a lousy sense of humor, you know that?”

  Rhys shrugged. “Vampire or human, life is what you make it. You can accept what you’ve become, or you can spend the rest of your existence fighting against it. It’s up to you.”

  “How did Megan react?”

  “She was upset at first, angry with me for what I’d done, a little afraid of what she’d become. But she took to it readily enough once she accepted it.”

  “What about you? Was this something you chose?”

  “Hell no. But I knew there was no going back, so I decided to embrace it.”

  “Would you be human again, if you could?”

  “No.” Rhys grabbed a pair of pants from the foot of the bed and tossed them to Alex. “Get dressed. You need to feed.”

  Alex caught the jeans in one hand, only then noticing he was naked beneath the sheet.

  “You might want to shower first,” Rhys suggested.

  “Wait. Where’s Rylee? Is she all right? Magdalena didn’t…didn’t…?”

  “The girl’s fine. I took her home.”

  “She knows? About you? About me?”

  “Yeah. If you’re smart, you’ll stay away from her for your own good. And hers. It isn’t wise to be around people you care for until you have all your hungers under control.”

  Costain was right, Alex thought. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her.

  Turning on his heel, Costain left the room and closed the door behind him.

  Just as the vampire had closed the door on his old life, Alex thought bitterly.

  He sat there for several minutes, trying to comprehend what had happened to him, even as he tried to decide how he felt about this unexpected life-style change. He snorted. Life-style. More like Undead-style.

  Rising, he paced the floor, his mind reeling. He felt like himself and yet he felt different. All of his senses were heightened. His vision was remarkable. He could see each individual fiber in the carpet, each grain of wood in the bedside table, details that he had never seen with his mortal eyes.

  His body felt lighter, as if he was no longer subject to gravity. He was able to process a dozen things at the same time—he could hear a fly crawling across the ceiling, knew a man was jogging on the sidewalk below, knew it was a tall man in a hurry by the length of his stride. A diesel truck fired up three blocks away. Somewhere in the distance, a man and a woman were quarreling over what to watch on TV.

  Cursing softly, Alex padded into the bathroom and stepped into the shower. What would Daisy think? What would his parents think? What did he think?

  Vampire.

  He raked his fingers though his hair. He had to be having a nightmare, he thought as he washed the dried blood from his face and neck. That’s all it was. A bad dream.

  He clung to that hope while he dressed, then followed Costain into the elevator and down to the street below. It wasn’t until Alex looked in a store window and didn’t see his reflection staring back at him that the truth hit home.

  The hunter had become the hunted.

  He was a vampire.

  Nosferatu.

  Undead.

  And nothing would ever be the same again.

  CHAPTER 13

  Rhys slid a glance at his companion as they strolled down a nearly deserted side street. “Didn’t it ever occur to you that one day you might piss off a vampire who would turn you out of spite?”

  “Not really,” Alex said with a shrug. “Maybe. I can’t say I spent a lot of time worrying about it.”

  “And now it’s happened.”

  “Yeah.�
�

  “Well, look on the bright side,” Rhys remarked. “Being a vampire should come easy to you.”

  “Easy!” Alex exclaimed bitterly. “What are you? Nuts?”

  “You know pretty much everything there is to know about us,” Rhys said with a shrug. “What we can do, what we can’t. How to destroy us. You used to be a hunter. You’re still a hunter. Only your prey has changed.”

  “Dammit, Costain, I can’t hunt people!”

  “Sure you can. It’s a hell of a lot easier than hunting vampires.”

  Alex snorted. He had no doubt of that.

  “Okay,” Rhys said. “We’re not here to discuss the pros and cons of being Nosferatu. What are you in the mood for?”

  Alex glared at him. “You need to work on your sense of humor, you know that?”

  “Pay attention. Up ahead, there’s a young couple. Do you want the male or the female?”

  “Is there a difference?”

  “Other than the obvious?” Rhys asked with a grin, then turned serious. “As a rule, male vampires are attracted to mortal females and female vampires tend to hunt males. There’s not much difference in the taste of male or female, but there are subtle differences in blood types. You’ll have to taste a few to decide which you prefer.”

  Alex stared at him. “You’re putting me on, right? Blood is blood.”

  “Not really, but you’ll find that out sooner or later. You don’t have to worry about tainted blood. If you drink from someone who’s high on booze or drugs or has a fatal disease, it won’t affect you.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “So? The male or the female?”

  “The female. I can’t imagine nibbling on some guy’s neck.”

  Laughing, Rhys quickened his stride. He caught up with the couple as they reached their car, hypnotized them both with a look, then waited for Alex to catch up.

  “Okay, the first step is usually calling your prey to you. Once that’s done, you can mesmerize them so they don’t struggle, unless you’re in the mood for a fight.”

  Alex stared at the woman. She was young, in her mid-twenties, with short, curly, black hair and dark-brown eyes. She stared at him blankly. Muttering, “I can’t do this.,” he backed away.

  “Yes, you can.” Leaning forward, Rhys bit the woman’s neck, just enough to draw blood.

  The coppery scent of it quickly filled the air. Alex felt an ache in his gums, the brush of his fangs against his tongue.

  “Forget your human ideas of right and wrong,” Rhys said, “and just do what comes naturally.”

  Alex started to refuse, but the scent of the woman’s blood sang to him, making him forget everything but the sudden, overwhelming desire to sink his fangs into her throat, to taste the rich red nectar that flowed just beneath her skin, to hear her heart beating in time with his own.

  Hardly aware that he was moving, he wrapped his arms around her and bent his head to her throat.

  “Careful,” Rhys admonished. “Mortals are fragile creatures. If you don’t want to kill her, you need to listen to the sound of her heartbeat. It will tell you when it’s time to stop.”

  Alex’s head jerked up. “Kill her? Dammit! Of course I don’t want to kill her.” But even as he said the words, his newborn instincts were urging him to drink again, to drink until he was intoxicated with it. Nothing had ever tasted so good or so sweet.

  Or so right.

  Horrified, he let her go and backed away.

  With a word, Costain released the couple from his thrall. Before they were fully aware of their surroundings, he grabbed Alex by the arm and transported the two of them back to his lair.

  “So,” Rhys drawled, “was it as bad as you expected?”

  Alex stared at him. “You know darn well that it wasn’t.” Feeling guilty, he dragged a hand across his jaw. “I wanted to take all of it.”

  “That’s normal, for fledglings. You can control that urge, if you want to. It helps that the desperation to feed wears off after a while. Just remember, I don’t allow any killing in my territory.”

  “Have you told Megan about me?” Alex asked.

  Rhys nodded.

  “What did she say?”

  Rhys grinned. “She said welcome to the family.”

  Alex snorted. “I wonder what Daisy will think.”

  “I reckon you’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Yeah.” Alex frowned. “I was attacked outside the club. Where the hell were you? You’ve known every move I’ve made since I got here and when I need you, you’re nowhere.”

  “I was fighting a battle of my own at the time,” Costain said.

  “Yeah?”

  “A pair of hunters ganged up on me, to their regret. I got to you as soon as I could. Now, I need to meet with the Council and let them know about Magdalena. And about you. Come on.”

  “You go ahead.”

  “Sorry, sonny boy, but I’m not leaving you alone. And I’ll be spending my nights in the penthouse for a while.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter,” Alex snapped.

  Rhys arched one brow. “I’m responsible for you now, fledgling, and I intend to be here to see you through these first difficult days of transition.”

  They stopped by La Mort Rouge to pick up the Jag, since Costain felt like driving. Alex sat back, staring out the window as he tried to come to terms with what he’d become. For once, Rhys had nothing to say, no sardonic remarks, for which he was grateful. His senses were so overloaded, he wasn’t sure he could concentrate on anything. It was disconcerting, being bombarded with myriad sights and scents—the purr of the car’s engine, the odors of oil and gasoline, the music drifting from the radio, the smell of trees and grass, smoke from a barbeque.

  Long before they reached their destination, he caught the scent of sand and sea, heard the roar of the waves endlessly rushing to the shore.

  He caught the distinctive scent of vampires when Costain pulled up in front of a weathered, gray house surrounded by a white picket fence. Even though he was now one of the Undead, Alex knew a moment of disquiet as he followed Rhys through the front door. Save for two brown leather sofas, a coffee table and a couple of chairs, the room was empty of furniture.

  Four male vampires waited inside.

  “This is Alex,” Rhys said. “He’s my fledgling and as such, under my protection, the same as the rest of you.”

  The men nodded their understanding, though Alex could see they were all curious about the details. None were forthcoming.

  “Alex, the dark-haired Valentino look-alike is Rupert Moss,” Costain said. “The old man is Nicholas. Randolph Morris is the red-head. And the dude with the snake tattoo is Julius Romano.”

  The vampires each acknowledged Alex in turn.

  “So, what are we doing here?” Nicholas asked.

  “Alex is being hunted by a vampire named Magdalena. I don’t know anything about her except that she’s old and vindictive. I don’t want any of you to do anything, I just wanted you to be aware of her presence.”

  “She can’t be worse than Villagrande,” Romano remarked.

  “That’s for sure,” Nicholas muttered. Alex had to agree.

  Rhys glanced around the room. “Any questions?”

  “Where’s your pretty bride?” Romano asked with a leer.

  “None of your business,” Rhys snapped, eyes flashing fire. “We’re done here.” Pivoting on his heels, he stalked out of the house.

  “A little touchy there, aren’t you?” Alex said, following Rhys outside.

  “Yeah. I get that way when Megan’s been away too long.”

  “When’s she coming home?”

  “I’m not sure. I paid for the trip, told her parents to stay as long as they wanted.” He swore under his breath. “I’m beginning to think that was a mistake.”

  Alex chuckled softly. It was still hard to believe that the notorious Rhys Costain had lost his heart to a woman.

  During the next few nights, Rhys was constantly at
Alex’s side. When he protested yet again that he didn’t need a babysitter, Rhys snickered.

  “You know a lot about vampires,” the Master of the City remarked as they strolled down Sunset Boulevard, “but you don’t know how to be one.”

  “So, what do I need to know?”

  “How to turn into mist, for one thing. It comes in handy, now and then.”

  “Okay, Master, how is it done?”

  “Mostly, it’s mind over matter. If you concentrate hard enough, it will happen.”

  Alex remembered watching Costain shimmer and disappear and wishing he could do the same. Be careful what you wish for he thought, with a wry grin. “Okay, Teach, what do I do first?”

  “You need to think of yourself as weightless, without form or substance. Don’t try to force it. And when it happens, whatever the hell you do, don’t panic.” He looked around. “It’s too crowded here.”

  Costain chose a football field in a school yard in another city for Alex’s first attempt.

  Alex shifted from one foot to the other, suddenly uncertain. What if he turned into mist and couldn’t turn back? Or if he floated over the fence and never found his way home? Had it been anyone but Costain standing beside him on the fifty yard line, he would have chickened out. Shit!

  Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and imagined he was a ghost, no longer subject to gravity, no longer with a physical body. Feeling suddenly weightless, he opened his eyes and realized he was floating six feet above the ground. His physical body was gone, yet he could see Rhys, hear the distant sounds of traffic, but he couldn’t speak.

  It was scary as hell and yet, exhilarating at the same time.

  He floated through the air, then panicked when a gust of wind carried him further than he wanted to go.

  “Remember what I said,” Rhys called. “Stay calm and concentrate.”

  Body, body, body, Alex thought desperately, and sighed with relief when he felt solid ground beneath his feet.

  Rhys chuckled. “It gets easier and less scary after a time or two. Other things come without conscious thought—increased strength and speed, enhanced senses, the ability to heal almost instantly, to read minds, to bend mortal wills to yours.”