The Vampire's Seduction (9 page)

I swung the door open.

An extraordinarily beautiful woman with cropped silver-white hair and wide gray eyes stood facing me. Dressed in supple black leather pants and wearing a matching designer jacket, she looked like a female pop diva without her entourage. Only a large leather duffel bag sat at her feet for company.

The most amazing thing, however, was that she wasn’t just a beautiful tourist lost in the historic district.

She was a vampire.

Jack let out a low whistle. Before I could speak, the woman dropped to one knee and bowed her head.

“I can’t believe I’m standing before you,” she said, her voice low and intense. She looked up at me with those mesmerizing eyes. “William Cuyler, the legend.” Her voice contained such awe that it held me silent for a second. A second is a long time to be speechless in my world.

“Get up,” I ordered. “And here you should add Thorne to my name.”

She straightened then and waited for my invitation inside. She still seemed a little starstruck. “Yes,” she managed, “I’m sorry. William Thorne, not Cuy.”

“You are Algernon’s kin, then?” It had to be so since she knew the name of my human heart. But how in hades had she managed to get to my door so quickly?

“Yes, I’m Olivia. Alger is my sire.”

“Aren’t you gonna ask her in?” Jack prodded with the same besotted tone he’d used when he first set eyes on that beast of a car he loved.

Slightly bewitched myself, I’d almost forgotten he was there. But he made a point. I rarely conducted business out in the open for the world to see. And Miss Olivia would not cross the threshold unless she was invited.

I found my manners. “Come in, please.”

Jack

Great googly-moogly, a female vampire. I felt my face go slack. There was no doubt about it. Vampires can always recognize one another. Somehow we can just
sense
another blood drinker. I had never, ever sensed a female vampire before now. William had always told me the females of our species of undead were rare, but he never said why. And here one was, a real, live—sort of—lumpy-in-all-the-right-places female bloodsucker.

As she stepped through the door, the Rin Tin Twins, as I called them, were on the alert, their noses up in the air to pick up any scent of trouble, ready to react to any threatening motion. Reyha edged closer to the woman, trying to catch a better scent. She bared her perfect white teeth, and William gave his favorite pet a warning look.

Big as life, Olivia reached out and gently cupped Reyha under her chin. “Aren’t you a beauty, then,” she said. The sound of her voice made parts of me want to stand up and howl, if you know what I mean. Then William ruined it all.

“Jack, see to the lady’s bag.”

I couldn’t help but scowl at him. Probably the only female vamp in this hemisphere shows up on his doorstep and without saying a word, he’s already got her on her knees. A blond bombshell in black leather—just exactly my type—lookin’ at William like he was Frank Sinatra, Prince William, and all four Beatles rolled into one. And what does he do? He treats me like a servant. Whatever kind of “legend” William turned out to be, how could his lackey—meaning me—compete with that?

But I could try. “Deylaud? How ’bout you get the lady’s bag? I’ll pour Miss Olivia a drink.” I crossed my arms, daring William to order me away.

Instead he opened the library door and gestured to the beautiful stranger. “Miss Olivia, won’t you please make yourself at home?”

She proceeded into the room, and William shut the door behind her like she was a precious jewel that needed watching, but not by me. The front door stood open, and since Deylaud wouldn’t cross the threshold without permission, William nodded in his direction. “Get the bag.” Then he came close to me. “I have to tell this young lady that her beloved sire is dead.” He kept his voice low. “She’s going to be very upset . . .”

“So you want me to clear out.”

“Would you be so kind? I know you have other things to do.” It was true I didn’t spend much of my time hanging around William’s mausoleum of a house. I took pride in having my own life and my own friends. But in this instance he was humoring me. That was suspicious right off the bat.

“You can leave me outside with the dogs for now, but I’m not going anywhere. I’ll wait until you’re through talking to her. Then I’d like some answers, like what does this chick Olivia know about you that I don’t, Mr. Legend.”

William gave me one of his looks. The one intended to scare me, all fangy and intense. I stood my ground.

“We’ll see” was all he said before he turned his back on me to open the parlor door. “Oh, and Jack?” he said, pausing. “Don’t forget that drink.”

I went to the wet bar in the den, Reyha at my heels, Deylaud pacing behind me with the duffel. Good thing the highball glass I picked up was made of heavy lead crystal. I was so hot that if it wasn’t, I figure it would have shattered in my hand.

“Do you like her? I don’t like her,” Reyha declared.

“Too soon to tell, pet.” I filled the glass with blood. Then, for the hell of it, I splashed some liquor into the mix and added some ice. I sure as hell liked the
look
of her. I wondered how it would feel to have those long, cool legs wrapped around me.

Deylaud appeared at my other elbow. “I think it’s about time we had some excitement around here. By the way, she’s from the island. Won’t like the ice.”

I glanced at him. The island? He must mean England. “Are you a guardian or a bartender?” I frowned at the drink and realized he was probably right about the ice. After all, he spent most of his time with his nose in a book. What the hell. I downed the drink myself in a couple of gulps and started fresh with a new glass.

“She smells funny,” Reyha said.

“It’s the leather,” said Deylaud. “It’s Italian. I don’t know why that makes a difference, but—”

I walked down the foyer to the library door and knocked. William opened the door, thanked me (ever the gentleman, that one), took the drink, and closed the door, but not before I got a glimpse of Olivia sitting in a high-backed wing chair in front of the fireplace. She looked devastated. What if something happened to my sire—to William? I didn’t want to think about it. I had my problems with the guy, but damn. Could I survive without him if it ever came to that? I honestly didn’t know. Did I want to be the only vamp in town? Not really.

I went back to the den and poured another drink, which I sipped while pacing back and forth in front of the bay windows. Autumn leaves were drifting down into the park in the square. The streetlights had come on and the fountain gracing the center of the green looked like a nightwalker’s postcard.
Alger, old boy, wish you were here.

The twins were giving me some space, but they were still on alert. I could feel their gaze on my back as I looked out the windows, as if they expected me to turn around and throw them a stick to fetch or something. What was William telling her in there? I was pretty certain he’d already told her that her sire was dead. What else was there to say?

I turned around and my gaze fell on the duffel bag on the sofa. With a glance toward the still-closed library door, I set the half-empty glass on the bar and walked to the bag. What if this woman wasn’t who she said she was? Maybe she’d been in Savannah all along. She might even be the one who’d been watching me. “Deylaud, stand over there near the wall, look down the foyer, and cough or something when the library door opens.”

He moved in that direction. “What are you going to do?”

“What does it look like?” I unfastened the flap on the duffel.

Reyha moved back to my side and put her slender hand to her mouth. “Ooh, naughty.”

Right on top was a big zip baggie of ordinary-looking dirt. That figured. All those imported vamps had it. The soil of their native land. But Olivia didn’t bring her own coffin, and I happened to know that William didn’t keep a spare. So where would she sleep? I felt my jaw tighten just thinking about the possibility of her bunking with William. Two in a coffin was mighty cozy.

Deylaud looked over his shoulder from his watching post. “The obligatory soil, I see. What else?” He didn’t comment on the rightness or wrongness of what I was doing. It wasn’t his place. But his curiosity came just as naturally as his sense of servitude.

The bag had obviously been packed in a hurry. The clothing was balled up and stuffed in willy-nilly along with some scents and powders. “Here’s something,” I said. Deylaud slowly crept toward me and Reyha, caught between interest and his job of watching the foyer. “It’s a book. An old one.” So fragile I was almost afraid to open it, but I had to see what was there. The pages had oxidized to a dark brown, but the names were in bold indigo ink. Just names. Many, many names, with indentations and lines drawn from some to others, like somebody was trying to show some kind of hierarchy or relationship. Something about it gave me a sizzle of the creeps. There was a lot of that creeps stuff going around.

I was putting the book back when I realized that Reyha’s curiosity had gotten the best of her and she’d reached into the bag. I grabbed her wrist just as she brought out a wisp of red silk.

“This is all that goes between the legs?” Reyha gasped.

Deylaud was at my other elbow, having forgotten his lookout duties. “It’s a thong. I saw one on television.”

“You’ve been watching that naughty channel again.”

I grabbed the thing out of her hand. “You guys calm down.”

“Aren’t you going to sniff it?” Reyha asked innocently. “You need to memorize her scent in case you ever have to track her.”

“No, I’m not going to sniff it!” Whoever thought of creating half-dog/half-humans ought to have had his spell-casting head examined.

“I’ll sniff it,” Deylaud offered.

“No, you won’t. I—”

I looked up just in time to see Olivia and William standing in the opening to the foyer. Olivia’s face, dewey with tears, started to pucker a little around the cheeks and finally broke out into a grin, complete with the cutest little dimples I ever saw.

William, on the other hand, looked like he wanted to sic the dogs on me. Once, during Prohibition, a stupid jerk had beaten one of William’s workers to the point of death over a quart of moonshine. William, the twins, and I found the jerk drunk on the waterfront right before daybreak one morning. William and I left. The twins stayed. I heard that after sunrise they’d had to hose what was left of the guy off the docks. I stuffed the thong back into the duffel and closed the flap.

“Olivia, I apologize for Jack’s behavior. He can sometimes be a bit . . . uncouth.”

“He’s only trying to protect you,” she said simply. “I can tell.”

I found myself wondering if I could fit the tip of my tongue into that dimple. A couple of seconds later, my tongue finally said, “I’m sorry. And I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you. And since you’re wondering, I don’t have anything to hide.”

William seemed to relax. “Please sit down, Olivia.”

Deylaud moved the duffel to the floor so Olivia could sit in the middle of the sofa. William sat on her right side, and I sat down on her left. The twins took the matching leather chairs. Olivia shook her head when William asked her if we could get her anything. “Now, tell us, how did you manage to get here so quickly?”

“When you called, Alger’s human staff came to wake me. It was day there, of course. Some quick inquiries at the nearest airport led us to a pilot of a private jet who was willing to fly a body out of the country. So our workers brought my coffin, which was locked from the inside, and loaded it onto the jet—and off I went.”

“Any trouble with the pilot?” William asked.

“We gave him enough money so that ‘no questions asked’ was strongly implied. I doubt if he ever really thought there was a body in the coffin. He probably just assumed it was filled with some kind of contraband.” She waved her hand as if mortal questions weren’t important. “Anyway, we refueled at Greenland, hung a left, and here I am. When we got to Savannah, the private airstrip was dark. I let myself out right after we landed. I was waiting when the pilot came into the cargo area.” She smiled at me. “I was wearing that red thong and little else. After we
came
to a mutual . . . satisfaction, I fed off him to the point where he most likely doesn’t remember the flight. Then I strongly suggested that he take the coffin back to an address in Greenland. He won’t even know what he did or why he did it.”

I had plenty of questions, but I could see William was getting mad, so I decided to keep quiet. One of the things William wouldn’t tolerate from itinerant vamps was carelessness about the secret of our existence. And this vamp had not only broken a few thousand rules, she’d made a beeline for William. We’d see how she and her dimples would stand up to one of William’s conniption fits. He got to his feet, his eyes glittering like hell’s own demon. His voice, however, was calm, almost quiet.

“Any number of things could have gone wrong along the way. What were you thinking?”

His quiet tone made all the hair on the back of my head tingle. I’d seen William shout an order, but I’d never heard him sound so deadly. He was beginning to levitate.
Oh, lawsy.

I gave Olivia a sympathetic look. Might as well take advantage of a chance to play good cop. After the duffel bag fiasco, I needed all the Brownie points I could get if I ever wanted to see that red thong again. Even the twins looked uncomfortable. If they’d had tails on the night shift, they’d have been firmly between their legs.

Olivia lost her smile but didn’t fall apart under William’s gaze. She calmly said, “My sire was missing. I decided the risk was worth it. I’m sorry you don’t agree.”

William, a good foot off the carpet now, stared at her, eyes flashing.”How do you know you weren’t followed?”

“How could I possibly have been followed?”

“You—you . . .
child.
You haven’t been undead long enough to understand the power of some of the old sires. Now you’ve endangered the whole operation and every lost soul in hiding.”

Old sires? Lost souls in hiding? What the hell? I’d opened my mouth to ask what the Sam Hill he was talking about when my cell phone rang. Reyha yelped in surprise and William transferred his angry stare to me. I snatched the phone off its belt clip and flipped it open. It was Rennie.