The Merzetti Effect (A Vampire Romance) (18 page)

Delano found his gaze straying more and more frequently to Ainsley as he listened to Eli. They’d been cleared to go back into the building, but Eli had insisted a tactical team go in first to search and secure every floor, just in case Janecek wasn’t the only vampire who’d gotten past their checkpoints. Delano had hoped the long wait might give Ainsley an opportunity to cool down, but she hadn’t shown much sign of it.

He stole another glance at her. Nope, no cooling off happening there. If anything, she looked to have whipped herself up, imagining God knows what nefarious plots.

Too bad the truth was going to be so much worse than anything she might have conjured.

Eli’s radio squawked and he answered it.

“Looks like we’re cleared to go back in,” he said.

Ainsley smiled, a cool, frightening thing any vampress would have been proud of. “Splendid.”

Delano sighed. The hour of reckoning was upon him.

B
ACK AT THE
penthouse, Eli insisted they stick with him while he did his own thorough check, notwithstanding that the whole building had already been searched and cleared. Delano should have been grateful for the reprieve, but now he just wanted it over.

“It’s clear.”

“Thanks, Eli. Now if you’ll excuse us?”

He grimaced. “Not quite yet, I’m afraid. I need to clear the lab, as well, since it has direct access to the penthouse.”

This time Delano and Ainsley stayed put while Eli descended the stairs alone to search the 28th floor. As soon as his footsteps faded, Ainsley broke away.

“I need to make some tea.”

“Fine. I’ll join you in the kitchen when Eli’s through.”

She marched toward the kitchen with her head held high, giving no sign that she heard him. He sighed. This waiting hadn’t done her nerves any more favors than it had done his, it would seem.

Eli emerged from the stairwell, immediately plugging a code into the alarm panel on the wall to prevent it from sounding. “Clean as a new penny,” he declared. “And now, while there’s a few hours of darkness left, I’d better go out, see if I can’t recruit some vampire eyes to help staff security checkpoints tomorrow night.”

“Good plan. And while you’re at it, you’d better outfit them with uniforms so they can blend in better with the other guards. They’ll have to drop their own glamours for optimal performance, but that will make them stand out like neon in the dark. The uniform will help camouflage them.”

“You got it, boss.”

At last, Eli left. Delano headed for the kitchen, where he found Ainsley seated at the small cherry wood pedestal table. His heart squeezed as he took in the line of her back as she sat bent over her cup. She’d pulled all that blond hair to one side, exposing her nape. Was there anything in the world more beautiful? More achingly vulnerable?

She sat up sharply. “Finally.”

There was nothing vulnerable or soft about her tone.

“Is that tea hot?”

She blinked. “You drink tea?”

He brushed past her and helped himself to a china mug. “Once in a while I like to remind myself what a steaming beverage feels like sliding down my throat, what the tannins feel like in my mouth.”

Her face softened momentarily, then the line of her jaw hardened again. “Don’t try to play me. Just sit down and start talking.”

“I think what I promised was that I’d answer all your questions.” He filled his mug, sat down and inhaled the steam from the pale brew. Peppermint leaves, ginger root, chamomile flowers and something more. Definitely an herbal concoction designed to calm the nerves. Too bad there’d be no uptake of those soothing ingredients as the fragrant liquid made its way through his system. He glanced up at her. “I promise to answer them truthfully.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Does this mean if I don’t ask the right questions, you’ll withhold information?”

“I’m confident you’ll have a comprehensive picture of the situation when we’re done.”

She sat up straighter in her chair. “Okay, we’ll do it your way. Why do you want my blood? He said you were using it for experiments.”

“I believe your blood holds the key for the vaccine I’ve been trying to develop.”

“Why? Because I was bitten? Because I’m in transition? Or maybe because I’m not? Did I resist infection, and that’s why you want my blood?”

“No. It has nothing to do with the fact that you were bitten.”

“The daily blood samples? Are you still testing them for antibodies?”

“No.”

“No? Why not? Has the risk passed?” The furrow in her brow deepened. “And if you’re not testing my blood for the virus, then why bother draw‌—”

He held up a hand to stop her. “Listen to me, Ainsley. There never was any risk of infection.”

Her face paled. “What did you say?”

“There was never any risk of infection. None whatever.”

Her mouth opened and closed, opened again, but nothing came out.

He dropped his gaze to his mug once again.

“Yes, I lied to you. There it is. I led you to believe you might have been exposed to the virus, when in fact, it was out of the question.” His grip on the mug tightened until he realized he was in danger of crushing it. Carefully, he unclenched his hand.

“You lied?”

He heard the scrape of her chair as she pushed it back from the table, but still he didn’t lift his gaze from the steaming amber liquid in the mug before him.

“Yes, I lied. You see, it’s impossible to contract the virus if a vampire merely feeds from you. The pressure of your arterial blood far outstrips the pressure in his venous system. In order for Edward Webber to have infected you, he would have had to abandon your carotid artery and staunch the bleed with a self-secreted coagulant. He would then have bitten your jugular vein, exerting enough positive pressure to infuse a very small amount of his vampiric blood into yours, after which he would have closed that second wound. You’d have been left with no visible evidence of the attack, but the transition would have started within four to six hours, culminating within twenty-four to thirty hours.”

“It’s all been a lie?”

At her shaky tone, he looked up, meeting her wide, shocked eyes.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The simple question raked at his conscience with vicious talons. He shrugged. “Because I needed your blood.”

“You needed my blood?”

He made no reply.

“Well, it looks like I made it easy for you, didn’t I, getting attacked like that right outside your‌—”

She leapt up. Delano shot a hand out to catch her chair, saving it from crashing to the tiled floor.

“Omigod! You
engineered
that, didn’t you? So I would fall into your hands, giving you a plausible reason to draw my blood twice a day for all these weeks.”

“Yes.”

Her chest was heaving now, as though she’d run up every one of the twenty-nine flights to this penthouse instead of having ridden the elevator.

“I can’t believe this. You put me in the path of that monster? You had no right!”

“You’re quite right. And I’m sorry for your pain and worry, but I had no option.” Much as he wanted to let his gaze slide away, he held her furious glare. “Don’t you see? I had to take a broader view.”

“A broader view? Delano, this is my life. My health, my livelihood‌—” She broke off, but her eyes no longer seemed to see him. “The hospital… Did you have anything to do with that? Did you engineer my dismissal? Answer me, dammit!”

“No!”

But she wasn’t listening.

“Omigod, of course you did!”

Her gaze had come back into focus once more, and he felt the full weight of it. “Dammit, Ainsley, I had nothing to do with any of that business at the hospital. I swear. Didn’t I promise to answer all your questions truthfully?”

“It makes so much sense now.”

Delano pushed his own chair back and surged to his feet. “On my wife’s grave, I had nothing to do with your dismissal.”

“You got me fired, then dangled this so-called job in front of me when I was at my most desperate‌—”

Her gaze still looked inward, and he knew he hadn’t reached her. Dammit, she had to listen to him.

“I did no such thing! You think I arranged for you to notice the anesthetist was siphoning off the product? And for you to blow the whistle on him?”

“Why not? You seem capable of orchestrating anything.”

“That’s ludicrous. Next you’ll accuse me of somehow engineering your friend’s flight from her abusive husband, thereby putting you in the financial bind that placed you at my mercy. I am not
God
, Ainsley. I am not responsible for every aspect of your predicament. I may have taken advantage of it, but I didn’t create it.”

She drew her next breath in on an agonized hiss and he realized his error.

“Goddamn you, Delano.”

A
INSLEY SAW BY
his expression that he realized his mistake. He hadn’t meant to give that away.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Sorry?” She heard her voice rising, but there was nothing she could do about it. “
Sorry?
You think that makes me feel better?”

“Of course not. But if you’d‌—”

“You said you didn’t know why I needed the money. You said you didn’t care. But I guess you lied about that, too, didn’t you?”

“No. I didn’t lie about that. Not at first. But circumstances have‌—”

“I can’t believe this. You’ve invaded my life like a choking, noxious fucking …
weed!
” She could hear her own breathing, ragged breaths as though she’d been running. “You investigated me within an inch of my life, and decided I was the perfect patsy. Then you dangled me in front of that creature‌—‌a serial goddamn killing monster!‌—‌so you could ‘rescue’ me, then harvest my blood under the pretense of helping me.”

“Yes, I did those things, but‌—”

“Then you jeopardized my life again by keeping me under your roof in St. Cloud. Good Lord, I could have been killed when Janecek attacked that night! Then you dragged me here, where I’ve been living virtually under lock and key for these past weeks, unable to go anywhere without a bodyguard breathing down my neck.” Her fists clenched and unclenched with impotent rage. “And still I was naively rolling up my sleeve for you twice a day. Do you have any idea‌—”

Her voice broke and she had to swallow a few times before she could continue.

“Can you for one goddamn minute imagine how terrified‌—‌I mean, how scared-to-the-bone I was, thinking I might turn into a beast like the one who attacked me?”

If she hadn’t been watching closely, she might have said his flat expression remained unchanged, but she saw the flash of agony deep in his eyes. Good. He deserved to suffer. He’d hijacked her life!

“Now, your friend Janecek knows who I am. Shit, he knows
where
I am. And he seems to want me.”

“We can protect you.”

Ainsley plunged on, ignoring his assurance. “Could you explain that for me? What is it that suddenly makes me the prize in your deadly little father/son war?”

Delano brought his hand down on the table with a resounding thump. “Once and for all, he is not my son! I wish to God I’d left him to die, a nine-year-old monster.”

“I wish you had, too! Because now he’s an adult monster and he wants me. What I want to know is why?”

“Your blood.”

Delano rubbed his forehead as though trying to erase a headache. She hoped, rather viciously, that it was a migraine.

“Oh, yes, my blood. We’re back to that. Okay, let’s have it. What’s so special about my blood that every vampire wants it? For God’s sake, I’m
A positive
, the same as a quarter of the population.”

His face darkened. “I’m the one who wants your blood, Ainsley. Janecek just wants you dead.”

Despite herself, she put a hand to her mouth. “Dead? Why?”

“Remember I told you about those rare people with the anti-vampire agent in their blood, dating back to the earliest history of vampires?”

Oh Jesus oh God oh no.
“I’m one of them.”

“I’m afraid it’s worse than that,” he said softly. “I believe you’re the last of them.”

“No!” She shook her head. “No way. That can’t be.”

“The gene was confined to the Merzetti family, a small clan with its roots in Sicily. The family was reputed to have been hunted down and eradicated by vampires centuries ago, but isolated tales persisted throughout time of the Merzetti Effect.”

“The Merzetti Effect?”

“If a rogue fed on a member of the Merzetti clan, he died.”

“But I’m no Merzetti. Hell, I’m not even Sicilian! Look at me.” She lifted a fistful of white-blond hair and thrust it toward him. “I can’t be Sicilian.”

Delano smiled sadly. “All the Merzetti’s of this strain were fair-haired and fair-skinned. I’m afraid it made your ancestors very easy to hunt in your homeland.”

“No.”

“Yes. There can be no doubt. You carry the Merzetti gene.”

Ainsley’s mind whirled. “But you said they were all hunted down and killed. If that’s the case, how do you explain me?”

“For thirty years, I studied the Merzetti family. I pored over ancient records, studied the local lore. From every angle I examined it, it appeared that one Merzetti female‌—‌the teenaged Gabriella‌—‌was unaccounted for. I theorized that she’d escaped.”