Authors: Heather Graham
“Are they cooking their meat?” Jonas murmured.
“I don't know what they're cooking,” Mark muttered in reply and stared at Jonas. “Are you ready?”
Jonas lifted the flashlight, heavy hammer and the shoulder bag of stakes he was carrying, taken from the trunk of Mark's car. Mark was similarly armed.
“I take it you always travel with these?” Jonas asked.
“Always.”
“What happens if you get pulled over for a traffic stop?”
“So far, it hasn't happened,” Mark told him. “Let's go.”
He looked up at the sky, glad that it was one of those days when the sun was brilliantly shining. The house was close to the water; the ground underfoot was soft. When they reached the porch, he lifted his foot and checked his shoe.
The sole was covered with marshy mud and strands of grass.
Just as Leticia's white nurse's shoes had been.
“Go on,” Mark said.
Jonas stared at him, shaking his head ruefully. “Sure, I'll go first. Though if I
were
a traitor, that would just make it easier for me to warn the others.”
“Maybe. But you alsowouldn't be behind me, ready to trap me,” Mark replied. “Go.”
Jonas preceded him up the stairs, ablyâand silentlyâleaping over the missing step. He landed on the porch. When he tried the door, it was locked.
He looked back at Mark, who came up beside him and nodded.
“Count of three?” Jonas asked.
“Why not?” Mark said quietly.
Jonas mouthed the count, and then they rammed the door together. It opened, and they were in the house.
An eerie darkness rose to meet them, along with the fetid stench of death.
H
eidi was asleep, and yetâ¦
She felt as if she were awake.
Awake andâ¦
Being seduced. By someoneâsome
thing
âdeliciously wicked. Something unknown, that couldn'tâ
shouldn't
âbe. Something tainted with an irresistible touch of sin. It was as if the covers had been drawn back and a stranger had joined her. A knownâ¦stranger. She felt the air, warm and arousing, against her flesh as the covers were stripped away. She fire against her flesh as his hands teased along her thighs, fingers dancing delicately across her flesh. He spread her legs, and she couldn't believe the things he did to her then, the intimacies that were being taken. But, oh, God, the excitement that was growing in her, the heat rising in her center, hot, wetâ¦
All while she was sleeping.
“Let me,” came a voice.
And she knew she couldn't bear it if she didn't.
It was a dream, she told herself, only an erotic dream.
More and more intimate as that husky whisper repeated the words. “Let meâ¦Let meâ¦in. Let me into you.”
She burned. Ached. Writhed.
“Let me,” came the whisper against her flesh.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”
Although Maggie accompanied her, Lauren could tell that the other woman wasn't pleased about going to the library. She didn't seem easy with Lauren's research, either. But she sat there at a neighboring computer and uncomplainingly looked up various dates or pieces of information at Lauren's request.
Lauren found the process frustratingly slow. It seemed that every reference led her to another reference, and another, then finally to a dead end.
“Heyâ¦I think I found one of Mark's ancestors,” she said at last, skimming a newspaper article that had been written before the Civil War. “'Randolph Davidson and son supply regular cavalry.'” She looked at Maggie with excitement, then went on. “Davidson was the owner of Innisfarm, and he financed a militia group. He was apparently quite wealthyâ¦look! His son's name was Mark!”
“You know families, they're always reusing names,” Maggie said.
Lauren kept scrolling through the now-defunct local paper. So much of what she read was so sad. Lists of the dead and pleas for information on missing sons. Then the man called “Beast” Butler came to New Orleans in 1862, and the city remained under Northern control from that point on.
She was about to give up on finding any more information on Mark's ancestors when she was startled to come upon a social page dating from 1870. The city was still struggling; the war had ended, but not the loss and the bitterness. Even so, engagements and weddings were still being listed. She read aloud. “âMark Davidson arrives in town with future bride.' His bride-to-be was named Katya Bresniskaya, from Russia. The wedding was planned for the bride's homeland.”
She turned and stared at Maggie. “How ridiculous! This is more or less the story Mark told me about
his
past,” she said, infutiated.
Maggie stared back at her, then sighed. “There's more.”
She reached over and scrolled down the screen.
“'Tragedy strikes again. Noble house falls to madness,'” Lauren read aloud. She looked over at Maggie, who wasn't even looking at the screen as she began to tell the story.
“Father and son, and all the family who were still alive after the war, traveled to Kiev. On the day of the wedding, Randolph Davidson shot his daughter-in-law in the back with a silver-tipped wooden arrow. Katya's family's revenge was instantaneous. The wedding turned into a boodbath. Davidson was killed first. It was assumed his son was killed, as well, although his body wasn't returned for burial, as the father's was. It was a terrible day when Davidson was buried. He was put to rest on family land, and while the service was going on, the house burned to the ground. The land still lies vacant.”
Lauren shook her head, staring wide-eyed at Maggie. “I don't understand. Is Mark suffering from some kind of delusion? Does he think he's this Mark Davidson? And if the father killed Katya why does he claim Stephan did it?”
“I think you should talk to Mark,” Maggie said. “But he doesn't just think he's that Mark Davidson, he
is
that Mark Davidson.”
“I'm not so sure I should be talking to anyone here,” Lauren said and glanced quickly away, then back at Maggie. “I'm sorry.”
“I can tell you one more thing, because I've known creatures like Stephan before. If you don't end this now, you will live in fear all your life. Either that, or you can just accept the life he wants for you.” Maggie shook her head. “I wish the others were here. Lucian would be especially helpful.”
“Lucian,” Lauren said, frowning. “Jonas talked about Lucian. About coming to see Lucian so he could work hereâ¦find a home here.”
Maggie went on as if she hadn't heard Lauren, as if her thoughts were elsewhere.” It would be great to have Brent here, too.” She turned to Lauren then and said, sounding quite sane, “Brent is a werewolf.”
Lauren blinked. They were all crazy, including this woman.
“Mechanically enhanced,” Maggie added. “The war, you know.”
“The Civil War?”
“No, no. World War II.”
Lauren stared at Maggie. “If I'm following what you're telling meâ¦No, it's just insane. That would mean that Mark was a Confederate soldier in the Civil War. And that he survived the battles and Reconstruction, and in eighteen-seventy he married a girl named Katya who he'd met in New Orleans, a girl from Russia. Butâ¦his father, not Stephan, went mad and killed her, and somehow Mark is over a century old.”
Maggie looked uncomfortable. “You really need to talk to him.”
“Were you alive during the Civil War?” Lauren demanded.
Maggie lowered her head, wincing.
“You're telling me that you were.”
“Please, Lauren, talk to Mark.”
Lauren suddenly felt as if she had to escape. Sitting in the library, surrounded students and retirees busy at the computers, patronssearching for books, and mothers with their children, she felt as if she alone had entered a world of insanity. Vampires were bad enough, but all thisâ¦
The dream that had haunted her now seemed far too real. Had Stephan somehow entered her mind? She wouldn't have come here, to the library, if it hadn't been for the dream.
Could it be possible? Had Mark been chasing Stephan for over a hundred years? Since just after the Civil War?
No, it was impossible.
But what if it
were
real? Then she could understand the build-up of hatred, of his desperate longing to find justice. But that still didn't explain why he blamed Stephan, not his father, for Katya's death.
She shook her head, as if to clear her mind. She really couldn't take any more of any of this right now.
Maggie was blithely talking about a friend who was a werewolf and had apparently been “ernhanced” in some way during during World War II, but she couldn't bring herself to listen. She was too busy obsessing over the possibility that Mark had been around for over a hundred years.
She stood up, feeling ill. Had Mark been lying to her all along? Evading the truth all along? Had he mistrusted Jonas when he was really no better than the other man?
At least Jonas admitted what he wasâ¦.
She stood up, angry, confused, and thinking there was really only one person she could trust.
Herself.
“Let's go,” she said, hoping her agitation wasn't evident in her voice.
“Lauren, please, I wish I knew how to convince you that Stephan has to be stopped.”
“I do believe he has to be stopped.”
I just don't know what else I believe,
she thought.
Maggie's turned her phone on as they left the library, and seconds later it rang. She answered, and Lauren watched her face grow pale.
“What is it?”
“We have to get back to the house.”
“What's happened?”
“Heidi is gone.”
From the moment he and Jonas entered the house, Mark knew that something wasn't right.
There were vampires here, that was for certain. As the door closed behind them, Mark felt the flutter of wings. He turned his flashlight toward the sound. The creature veered slightly, shrieking with pure fury. He swung the heavy hammer he carried, stunning the creature. It fell to the floor, stunned. His stakes were honed to razor sharpness, and his aim was excellent; he speared it instantly. A smell rose as it let out a dying gasp and disappeared in a puff of dust and grime, a flash of fire. It didn't totally disintegrate; it's skull rolled and crashed into an arm bone. As he watched, there came another fluttering; this time one of the hideous beings was heading for Jonas.
Jonas cried out and ducked, but he swung as well, replicating Mark's earlier move. They had to catch the things in air, knock them down, then impale them instantly. That seemed to be the method.
Mark aimed his light across the room. The flooring was gone in places, an d he could see down into the basement below them.
“Most of them will be down there,” he told Jonas. “Hopefully asleep.”
Jonas swallowed hard. “Let's go.”
They found the stairs. Jonas almost crashed through a rotten step on the way down, but Mark caught him. The basement turned out to be filled with coffins, some relatively modern, some ancient and decaying. “Go for the old ones first,” Mark told Jonas.
“Shouldn't we do them together?” Jonas asked thickly.
“Do you see how many there are?” Mark asked him.
“Umâ¦yeah.”
“No time to partner up.” Mark went for what looked to be the oldest coffin and opened it quickly. The woman sleeping inside was young and beautiful, dressed in an elegant gown that spoke of a long-ago time in a distant place. She had become as she was in the late seventeen hundreds, he guessed.
“My God,” Jonas breathed from just behind Mark. “Thatâ¦angel can't be a creature of evil.”
Mark stared at him.
The woman's eyes suddenly popped open, and she stared at them in shock and fury. Her lips curled back as she hissed out a terrible sound of hatred.
“Shit!” Jonas said.
“You should know,” Mark told him harshly.
He lifted his stake over her heart just as she started to move. Not fast enough. He hammered the point into her. Her mouth opened again, but this time no sound came. Instead, blood spilled out. She had feasted quite recently. She began to change, her beautiful face turning skeletal, and then she was soot.
Mark heard a rustling in the next coffin and turned on Jonas. “Damn you,
move
!”
Jonas swallowed and came to life.
“The old ones. Go for the older ones first,” Mark reminded him, then headed for the coffin where he'd heard the rustling. When he swung it open, the dignified and elderly Edwardian vampire was ready.
But so was he.
The creature never growled, never let out so much as a shriek. He simply exploded in silence, with nothing but a puff of black.
Mark began to move more quickly. After a moment he heard Jonas let out a moan. He turned instantly, worried. But Jonas was all right. He was stranding over an open coffin, his features twisted into a grimace of disgust.
“Ugh,” he murmured. “I hit a juicy one.”
Mark grated his teeth with impatience. “Move, and quickly. They're waking up.”
While he was speaking, he was hastilyflipping open lids, mindless of the noise he was making. By the time they reached the last two coffins, the vampires were out and ready for battle. Jonas let out a cry of surprise when one caught hold of his shoulders and prepared to cannibalize him.
Mark drew out his water pistol of holy water.
The creature, struck, let out a cry like the Wicked Witch of the East. Mark shot again, but by then Jonas had gathered both his wits and his strength. He turned, his stake dripping blood from previous kills, and slammed it into the writhing creature.
Mark dealt with the last vampire the same way; a stream of water, followed by a fierce impaling.
“All right,” he told Jonas. “Go back now. Wherever the head is still attached, well, you know what to do.”
As they continued to work, Jonas asked, “How the hell is anyone ever going to explain this?”
“That's Sean Canady's department,” Mark said. “Apparently, he's handled situations like this before.”