Between a Vamp and a Hard Place (10 page)

Ah. Okay, so Dragon was just a clever name for someone. I breathed a little easier. Only the Dragon could give Rand death's release. That made sense and went along with the vampire lore that Gemma had found.

Rand gazed around us, distant. “I do not feel Guy in this city. I feel William and Frederic, though they are both faint.” He closed his eyes and became utterly still, as if searching inwardly for some sort of sign. After a long moment, he opened his eyes again. “Two brothers here in the city. But my connection to them is extremely slight. I do not know if it is because time has passed or if it is due to something else.”

“Which begs another question,” I pointed out. “If you can feel them, and they can feel you . . .”

“Why did no one come to save me? Why did they let me molder in a coffin for six hundred years?” He nodded, gazing out the window again. “I have asked the same question, over and over again, and I can come to no pleasing solution.”

“You must have had enemies,” I protested. “Someone you pissed off?”

His jaw clamped. “Enough to murder?”

I shrugged. “You tell me.”

He shook his head, as if unwilling to believe it. I had no suggestions either, so we fell into silence.

The train stopped, and I put my fingers on Rand's arm to keep him in place as people surged to their feet around us. If someone brushed up against his cold skin, they might react badly. Best to keep our distance. When the train was nearly emptied of passengers, we got to our feet and exited. I slung my purse over my shoulder and looked around the station, still busy despite the late hour. “Which way does your spidey sense tell you we should go?”

“My what?”

Gah. Every conversation with the guy was a dead end. “Never mind. Your blood sense or whatever. The thing that lets you tell where the other vampires are. What is it telling you?”

He closed his eyes and turned slowly, then pointed off in one direction. “There. They're both coming from there.”

“Okay, great,” I told him, pulling out my phone. “I'll look up a nearby hotel and we can get set up, and then we can head off . . .” I trailed off. I'd looked up, and Rand was gone. “Um, Rand?”

People milled around me, happily chatting. No one was a weird medieval guy dressed in a skirted tunic and leggings.

“Rand?” Oh crap, had I lost a medieval vampire at a train station?

A hand grabbed my arm.

I shrieked, only to turn and slap at Rand's arm when I realized it was him. “Don't freaking grab me!” God, I was going to have a heart attack before this was over.

He gave me a dismissive look. “Come, Lindsey. We must waste no time.” His expression was serious. Gone was the laughing flirt from before, or even the awed man filled with wonder at a popcorn machine. This was the hunter, the warlord. “Follow me.”

I wanted to protest. To take my time to get to know the city. To prep myself and my vampire kit. Instead, I followed him wordlessly, letting him drag me through the train station.

It was as if I was with a different person. Rand tore through the streets like a man possessed. It was all I could do to keep up with him, my feet racing as we sped down one street after another, leaping over medians and bushes, darting through alleyways and around parked bikes. “Wait,” I called after him. “Let's take a taxi, all right?” When he ignored me, I tried again. “We'll get there even faster with a taxi.”

That made him pause and he nodded, a wild look in his eyes as he scanned the streets. “Get this ‘taxi,' then, and let us be on our way.”

I watched Rand warily as I flagged down a taxi, then tried to explain to the driver in my limited Italian that we needed to go where Rand pointed.

“You race, yes?” the taxi cab driver asked me. “TV race?”

Were we on a game show? “Sure, whatever,” I said. Whatever got the man moving. I handed him a wad of euros and gestured for Rand to get in next to me. I shut his door and buckled him in, and for the next ten minutes, we pointed at streets and tried to follow Rand's directions . . .

 . . . Which led us to a graveyard. The Protestant Cemetery of Rome.

“No, no, no,” I whispered under my breath. I did not want to go into a damn graveyard looking for vampires. I gazed at the thick stone wall, the decorative crenellations at least ten feet above my head. There was a massive door, and guards patrolled the way in front.

“Is closed,” our cab driver pointed out. “You wait until morning?”

I looked over at Rand, but he was already pushing at the door of the cab, trying to figure a way out. I reached over and popped the handle on his door. “We'll get out here.” I paid the driver a few more euros, thanked him, and hopped out after Rand.

“So what are we doing?” I asked as he strolled toward the wall. One of the guards was standing a few feet away, but he hadn't noticed us yet. When he did, I suspected things would get ugly.

Rand touched the door. “I sense both of them in there.” He pushed on the door, and it made a creaking, groaning noise.

“Stop,” I said, swatting his hands. “We can't go in there right now.” A plaque on the wall said visiting hours were 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. At this rate, we'd never get inside, considering that vampires couldn't come out in sunlight.

He ignored me. Instead, he took a few steps back and studied the wall. It was shorter the farther away one got from the door, and he began to pace down the length of it. “We're getting in.”

“What about the guard?”

As if attuned to my voice, the guard began jogging toward us.
“Scuzi,”
he called out.

Faster than I could blink, Rand had the man by his neck. He sank his fangs deep, and as I stared in shock, he began to drink. The guard's eyes went wide and then he shuddered, his body stiffening in an expression of what could only be pure ecstasy.

“Rand!” I hissed. “You can't do that!” Oh my God. I glanced around the empty street to see if anyone had noticed. We were totally going to jail now. What was I going to do if I ended up in an Italian jail? What would Rand do once daylight hit?

But the vampire ignored me. He continued to drink from the twitching guard, who wasn't fighting him in the slightest. A moment later, the guard's eyes rolled back and he fell limply to the ground.

Rand released him, setting him down gently. Then he licked red-tinged lips and looked up at me. “Shall we go?”

I just stared at him. “I cannot believe you did that! Did you just kill that man?”

He gave a small shake of his head. “Only drank enough to make him lose consciousness. Come. We haven't much time before he awakens and wonders what happened.” He strode toward the doors again and gave them another shake.

“Oh jeez,” I murmured to myself. I stepped over the guard, then, as Rand tugged at the door again, I leaned down and unclipped the key ring from the guard's belt. “Here, let me do it. If I'm going to be an accomplice, I suppose I'd better go all in.” I pushed past Rand and began to try keys. A moment later, I had the door unlocked and I swung it open, gesturing Rand should lead.

His hand clasped mine and he tugged me forward. As he did, I noticed his fingers weren't ice-cold underneath mine. “How come your skin is warm?”

“Borrowed heat,” he said softly, scanning the crowded-looking cemetery. “The guard's blood will warm me for a short time.”

“Oh.” I should have found that disturbing, but instead, I couldn't help but cling to his hand. There was something comforting about the feel of his warm skin under mine. It made him a little less distant, a little more real.

“Come,” Rand said. “This way.” He led me forward into the night.

The cemetery wasn't wired for lighting. Actually, I was surprised the cemetery was still open for business . . . or whatever it was that cemeteries did. Trees and foliage seemed to cover almost every inch of ground, and gravestones were dotted and clustered in claustrophobic fashion. As graveyards went, this one was creepier than most, simply because of the sheer amount of people squeezed into the small space.

Rand unerringly headed toward the back of the place, tugging on my hand. There was no point in asking where we were going—it was obvious the moment my eyes adjusted to the moonlight. A large marble mausoleum sat at the far end of the property, looming over the tumble of graves. Once we made it there, Rand stopped.

He looked at me. “I can go no further. You must go on from here.”

“Me?” My voice squeaked. “What?”

“They are beyond this door,” Rand said. He placed a hand on the iron door of the mausoleum, and immediately I heard the soft sizzle of something burning. He pulled away and showed me his palm, dark and blistered from a burn. “Hallowed ground.”

I groaned. “You're kidding, right? Please tell me you're kidding.”

“I do not lie.” His face was unusually pale, his expression somber. “Please, Lindsey. Do this for me.”

I think that was the first time I'd ever heard Rand say “please.” It threw me off. I stared at the doorway. Bad enough that I was in a graveyard with a vampire after dark. Now he wanted me to go raid a mausoleum by myself? “Can I ask a stupid question? If you can't get through that door because it's hallowed, how can they possibly—”

“I know,” he said, and his voice was rough with emotion. “But I must know for certain. All I can tell you is that with the bond I share with the Dragon's Claws, I can sense their blood. And I sense the blood of both William and Frederic behind that door. I cannot leave this place until I find out their fate for certain.”

Oh. I stared at him.

This wasn't a “meet up with buddies” mission any longer. This was a search for answers. Rand suspected they were dead, and he needed to know the truth. And I was the only one who could give him that truth. My stomach knotted unhappily, but I nodded and turned to the door. “All right. I'll check it out.”

I closed my eyes and put my hand on the door-knob, hoping vainly for a brief moment that it would be locked. Unfortunately, it swung open, and I had no choice but to step inside.

The interior of the mausoleum was small in comparison to the exterior. The interior was a small room with a bench along one wall, facing an alcove of decorative urns that had name plaques under each one. Oh no. I turned to look at Rand through the open door, hating that this was happening. “Do you still feel them here?”

“Tell me what you see.” His pale face was expressionless. “Is it them?”

I bent and read each plaque, my fingers brushing over the engraved lettering. The two oldest names were the ones I sought. Frederic Arnault, died January 8, 1763. William de Beauchamp, died January 8, 1763. There were no other Frederics or Williams. I swallowed hard. “I'm sorry, Rand. It looks like they died two hundred fifty years ago. Same day.” I looked at the small urns. “These must be their ashes.”

“That . . .” His voice cracked, and then he cleared his throat. “That must be why they felt so faint. It doesn't feel the same as when they were alive. More like an echo or a memory.” His fists clenched and he turned away, his head bent.

I bit my lip, hurting for him. I'd started tonight hoping we'd find a vampire, and now we had two dead ones. There was no happy friend to drop Rand off with. No pleasant reunion for him. His friends were gone. Long gone. And he was the only one that remained. Tears pricked my eyes. “Maybe . . . maybe there's a secret door or something, like where I found you. Maybe they're just hiding.”

“They're dead,” he said harshly. “I knew it, but did not want to believe.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Come. We shall leave this place.”

“But what about your other friend?” I struggled to think of the name. “Guy? Do you feel him? You said you could feel all three of them, right?”

“I feel Guy,” he said as I stepped out of the mausoleum and shut the door quietly behind me. “I feel him, and I do not know what to think. He is faint, but his echo moves back and forth, unlike the others. They were static. So he is alive. I get pulses of emotion from him.”

“That's good, right? We can find him and you can go visit him?”

Rand's hollow gaze turned to me. “And if he was the one that staked me? The one that destroyed William and Frederic? What then?”

My eyes widened. “Do you think he did that? I thought you were like brothers.”

“I thought so, too, but yet here I am.” He spread his arms. “Betrayed. And William and Frederic were destroyed together. The same year. The same date. If it was Guy that did it, should I run to him and embrace him like a brother?”

“What are you going to do?”

“I am going to find out who did this,” Rand said, voice even. He took my hand in his and escorted me down the steps of the mausoleum. “We are going to find Guy, and we are going to get answers. And if it was Guy that betrayed Frederic and William and trapped me, then I will pull his heart from his chest and feed it to him.” His hand fell to my shoulder, possessive. “And I will need your help to do so, Lindsey. You must remain my blood vassal and my guide in this quest.”

Yep. Somehow, I'd known he was going to say that. “Rand, I don't know,” I stammered. “I need to get back and help Gemma with the apartment. There's so much work to be done, and all of our finances are riding on things—”

“But you must help me, Lindsey.” Rand brought my hand to his lips—still warm from his stolen blood—and kissed the back of it. “For you are the only person I have left.”

Aw, jeez. How could I say no to that?

O
kay,” I said, trying to keep calm. “We'll get this figured out. First things first. We'll get a hotel, call Gemma, regroup, and decide what our next steps are to get you settled.” I pulled out my cell phone. “This is just a setback. We—”

I swallowed the rest of my words because he grabbed my hand and began to drag me through the graveyard. “Um, Rand?” I stumbled behind him, narrowly missing tripping over a headstone. “Where are we going?”