A Girls Guide to Vampires (32 page)

"No," I whispered, clutching the statue and slowly working my way around it, wanting only to put distance between Christian and me. "Not you. It can't be you."

Roxy called out something from beyond the statues, but her words did not reach me. There was only Christian's beautiful voice and desperate eyes. He moved slowly toward me, using his voice to calm me.
"Beloved, do not run from me.
I will not harm you."

"No," I said, unable to take my eyes from him, unwilling to believe the evidence before me. I backed up another couple of steps. "How could you do this to me? I thought you were my friend—how could you do this?"

He took a step toward me, his hands held out with the palms up, as if to show he meant me no harm. "I did not intend that you should suffer, Beloved. I was not aware you had found
me,
I could not know you were able to read my thoughts so easily. Once I saw you, once I realized you were in distress, I blocked my mind from yours."

"Not entirely," I said, rubbing my arms and shivering with the chill that seemed to permeate me with the memory of his intimate visits. Something cold pressed into my backside as I continued to back away from him. I scooted around the statue. "You…
touched
me."

He took another step forward. "It is my right. You are my Beloved."

"It is
not
your right," I corrected him, clinging to the statue for support as I moved past it. "I am not your Beloved. I love Raphael, not you. Nothing you say is going to change that fact."

He waved away my objections as he glided forward another step. I let go of the statue and reached behind me to feel where the next one was. "The love you think you feel for him is an illusion," he said. "Your mind does not wish to accept your fate, and so it creates a means of escape for you. Once we have taken the fifth step of the Joining, you will realize the truth of your emotions."

"Joy? Christian? What are you guys doing over there?"

"You betrayed me. I looked to you for help, I thought you were my friend, and you betrayed me." The cold, sightless eyes of a long-dead saint peered down on me in sorrow as I moved past him.

"Hey, guys? What's going on?" Roxy's voice grew louder as she approached.

Christian suddenly lunged at me, catching me off guard, wrapping me in an embrace of inflexible intent.

"GUYS?"

"Don't do this," I pleaded with Christian. "You're
wrong,
I know you're wrong, I feel it in my bones. We were not meant to be together. Somehow, somewhere, something got screwed up. I'm not the woman you need."

"Joy?" Roxy appeared at my side, but Christian never spared her a glance. I was afraid to take my eyes from him, sure that if I did so, his control would snap.

"I have lived almost nine hundred years," he said quietly, his arms like steel around me. I heard Roxy gasp, but she said nothing. "I have seen countless Dark Ones give themselves over to the monster that lives within because they could no longer wait to find their Beloved. There has never been a case where a Dark One has chosen the wrong woman. It is impossible."

"Nothing is impossible," I whispered, allowing my weight to rest against his arms. "'There are more things in heaven and Earth'—Shakespeare knew that, and I know it as well. I wish I could ease your pain, but the simple truth is that I cannot be your Beloved. I love Raphael. I
need
Raphael. I want him, and only him. He is my other half. If you try to make me into something I'm not, you will only destroy us both. Do you want that, Christian? Do you want to destroy me?"

His eyes closed for a moment, but, held so close to him, I could feel the wave of pain wash over him even though he kept his mind blocked from mine. I realized at that moment that he wasn't fooling himself; he truly believed I was his Beloved, the woman who would redeem him and give his life meaning.

And with that knowledge I became very, very afraid.

"I'm not quite sure what's going on here," Roxy said, her eyes huge as she looked between the two of us. "But whatever it is, it's starting to give me the creeps, and Joy doesn't look any too happy either, so maybe we'd better give the rest of the tour a skip, huh?"

"I will not hurt you," Christian said, his voice slipping around me to whisper velvet-soft against my skin. "I will never hurt you, of that I swear."

"Thank you," I said, meaning it. I had a nasty suspicion that unless I could convince him that I was not his soul mate, I'd be called on to hold that promise up as my own salvation.

His eyes searched mine for another second before he released me from his iron hold. I started to breathe again, surprised to realize that I'd been holding my breath. Christian took a step back,
then
made a slight bow in Roxy's direction. "You are in possession of a truth that very few people have known over the centuries. I hope you will not abuse my trust in your discretion."

"Oh, no," Roxy assured him. Her face was pale, her eyes wary as he took her chin in his hand and stared into her eyes. "Honest, Christian. I would never tell anyone your secret."

He looked at her a bit longer, then released her chin and swept his hand toward the stairs in an elegant gesture. "As neither of you wish to see any more of the dungeon, we can return to the upper floors and continue the tour."

I wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of there and throw myself into Raphael's arms, but the memory of Christian's anguish was strong. I gave Roxy a feeble smile in answer to her questioning look as I shook off the clinging sense of nightmare, heading up the stairs toward the bright glow of reality.

Chapter Thirteen

"So, what does it feel like when you're drinking someone's blood?" Roxy asked.

Christian glanced in the rearview mirror and gave me such a woebegone look I couldn't help laughing. It was the first time I'd laughed all evening, and it felt a bit stiff and unsure in his presence, but I gave myself full marks for being able to laugh with a man who I'd just discovered had a lifespan that could be ticked off in centuries rather than decades.

"Do blood clots get stuck in your teeth? What if someone's anemic; are you hungry again an hour later? Has anyone ever bitten you? If you run out of blood, do you shrivel up like a really old orange?"

"Roxy!"

"OK, here's an easy one. How come you can eat and drink when other Dark Ones can't?"

"What makes you think I can?" Christian
asked,
his eyes on the dark road ahead.

"We saw you!"

He glanced at her.

"At the hotel," Roxy added. "You had dinner with us, remember? And you were in the bar earlier. We saw you drinking then… didn't we?"

His eyes met mine in the mirror.

"With your sleight-of-hand abilities, you ought to be the one giving the magic show, not Dominic," I said.

He smiled.

Roxy finally figured it out. "Well, that's just not fair! If I'd realized you were only putting on a show, I'd have known right away who you were. OK, on to the next question—"

"I have no idea if you can do any of those handy mind-control things that the heroes in your books do, Christian, but if you can, I'd appreciate it if you gave Roxy the mental command to shut up."

He laughed.

"Can I help it if I have a bunch of questions?" Roxy asked with an infuriated look back at me. "This is
a
once-in-a-lifetime situation here and I'm not going to waste it! Besides, you got to ask all the questions when we were seeing the castle; now it's my turn."

"Questions about the origin of the Conspirators' Gallery are not
quite
as offensive as asking someone what they pick out of their teeth.
Stop being so rude."

"You don't mind me asking you personal questions, do you?" she asked him.

Christian gave her a look that said yes, he did mind, but she ignored it. "See? He doesn't mind. Now, about this eternal damnation you suffer—"

"Oh, for God's sake—
Roxy,
lay off him!" She turned around in the seat to level me another glare before turning back to pout out the window, but both glare and pout left me unfazed. I watched the back of Christian's head as we drove the few miles back to the hotel. It was difficult reconciling the friendly, amusing Christian I'd grown to like with the tormented immortal who viewed me as his only means to salvation.

And it left me feeling guiltier than ever.

I leaned back against the soft leather seat and closed my eyes, thinking back over all the times his mind had touched mine, trying to adjust my mental picture of him with the emotional one his mind had left me. It was
him
I felt approaching the bar the first night. It was
his
hunger that filled me when he bent to kiss my hand, not Raphael's as he stood watching us. It was
his
desperate need that scared me the night Raphael came to my room. And it was
his
wordless scream of anguish that ripped through the night when I gave myself to Raphael. Christian was wrong about me, I knew he was. But how was I supposed to make him understand that?

I let my body relax into the seat, trying to clear my mind of everything but what I wanted to do, following Miranda's rules regarding meditation. I stretched and reached with my mind.

Christian ?

Immediately he was there, his thoughts warm and reassuring. Or they would have been except that I felt anything but reassured with the ease he invaded my head.
Beloved?
You call to me
?

Oh, no! What had I done? What if only his Beloved was supposed to be able to communicate with him mentally? My mind scurried around trying to remember what I had read from Christian's books about mental communication between a Beloved and her Dark One. What if only a Beloved was supposed to be able to communicate mentally with him? I thought I remembered reading he could talk to others that way, but what if I was wrong? My hash was really fried if that was so. I resisted the temptation to see if he was looking at me in the mirror, deciding that as of that moment, all mental communication with Christian was verboten.

"I'm
sorry,
I didn't mean to disturb you just then. I wanted you to know how bad I feel about how things have turned out. I know you don't believe me yet, but I'm going to prove to you somehow that I'm not the one who can save you. Better than that, I promise to help you find her. I don't want you to suffer anymore, Christian, I truly don't."

His eyes glittered blackly in the mirror. "It is, perhaps, a subject we can discuss more fully at another time."

I shook my head. "No, it isn't. You don't have to worry about Roxy, she won't repeat anything. I told her what happened in your dungeon. She understands."

He glanced at Roxy. She just smiled at him.

"Not that I have a lot left to say. I think I've pretty much said it all."

"I, however, have not said all," he replied mildly, and turned his eyes back to the road.

Glaring at his head helped a bit; so did a stringent round of mentally calling him every variation of the terms
pigheaded
and
obstinate
.
For a while.
By the time he dropped us off at the hotel, I was resigned to the fact that I would have to redouble my efforts to make him understand that I was not what he wanted me to be.

"Are we going to brave the crowds?" Roxy asked as we stood in the parking area of the hotel, looking at the meadow below.

"Do you have to ask?" I turned to smile at Christian. "You're welcome to join us if you've got nothing else to do. That is, if you don't mind being around a bunch of people. If we don't bother you, I mean. Having all the people… around… you…" My words trailed off under the knowing look he gave me, my cheeks heating up with embarrassment over what I couldn't put into words.

"She means if you've fed," Roxy chirped. "I don't suppose you'd let me watch—" He transferred his look to her. "No. You're right. It's a bad idea."

"If you will allow me, I believe I will join you later at the fair."

"Sure thing," I said brightly, trying not to acknowledge that he was off to prey on some unsuspecting victim. "Later. We'll be there.
Somewhere."

"
Bon appétit
," Roxy said.

I grabbed her by the arm and hustled her down the grassy hill toward the fair. "For God's sake, Roxy, you don't tell a Dark One
bon appétit
!.
That's utterly tactless!"

"Why?" she asked, stumbling over a clod of dirt. "I want him to have a good meal. What if he picked someone who was born in an off year?
Or someone with a blood disease?
You may not have any plans for him later, but I do, so I'd like him to be in a good mood. I want to hear all about the stuff he hasn't written yet, all the dirt on the Dark Ones. And he promised me it was my turn next with the thumbscrews in the dungeon room."