Born Into Love (16 page)

“Powdery.”

“Color?”

“Brownish red. I just had a glimpse.”

“Texture?”

“Like pollen!” She trembled; afraid he would strike her for the outburst. “I’m a victim too.”

He
could argue the same thing. “Did it have a scent?”

She swallowed and her throat squeaked. “I don’t know.”

“Look into my eyes.” A meek child under his control, she obeyed. He waved his hand over her tear-tracked face. “Who handled the poison?”

“Teodoro.”

“Picture him. What does he do?”

“Some fell on his wrist. He said, `
it has to be ingested to kill.’”

“Did he mention the antidote?”

“He mumbled something about blending life and death.”

Diego
loathed riddles and now he would be taunted by Teodoro’s cryptic answer. “How did he carry the poison?”

“In a piece of paper, folded. He intends to kill you both.” She paused. “There’s something else.”

“What?”

“He said it would be a good joke on you.”

“What did he mean buy ‘it’?”

“I don’t know. He laughed like a maniac. Terrifying.”

Diego waved his hand. “Remember that you enjoyed a beverage with Mercedes. Forget my visit.”

“Yes, Master.”

Despite the hour, he phoned his beloved. Her voice came to him filled with dreams. He would not shatter them tonight.

Tomorrow he
would explain everything.

Chapter 10

Diego fed in his vault then rested for the hardest moment of his undead life: confessing to the woman he loved that he was a vampire. At sunrise he called Mercedes to him as he paced in front of her deck-a violation of one of his own rules. She stepped onto the weathered cedar boards. The wind teased her delicate nightgown and her hair. The morning mist so reminiscent of the English moors licked at his feet.

Mercedes glanced around, shocked to find herself outside. “What am I doing here?”

“I need to speak with you.”

She rubbed the chill from her arms. “This can’t be a dream. I’m too cold. Come inside while I change.”

Mercedes dashed to her bedroom. He retrieved the yellow cotton sweater she kept on a brass hook in the kitchen by the pantry. He held it to his nose and inhaled. His gaze shifted to the fickle ocean presently building waves.

She chewed a protein bar and wore the sweater. The extra layer would protect her from the dampness, but not from the shock about to come her way. At the ocean’s edge
they linked hands.

“I don’t want to walk. Tell me now.”

He indicated several granite boulders, extra slabs from a truckload used to build the jetty that marked the channel. “Please sit.”

“You’ve got a strange expression on your face. My stomach’s tying in knots.”

“I am not who you think.”

“Not a rich collector? Not my
amante
? Not my love?”

She would not make
his revelation easy. “I am rich, your lover, your love and a collector, but I am different from the men you have known. I am not just a man.”

She smiled. “What are you, an alien?”

“I am a vampire.”

“And I’m a witch. Now tell me how you outsmarted Teodoro.”

Had they been alone on a cloudless night with wolves howling, his admission would have held more weight. “I am a vampire. That is why I cannot go to the police. Feel me.” She willingly wrapped her arms around him because she did not believe what he had told her. “What do you feel?”

“You. Strong, manly.”

“What else?”

“You’re on the cool side.
That’s old news.” She rolled her eyes. “What’s the big deal? I’m cold too and your joke’s wearing thin.”

He
wanted to deny his body. Instead, he rested his forehead against hers. “And now?”

“Cool.”

Perhaps for the last time, he kissed her. “And my lips?”

“You know the answer. It’s not the first time I’ve noticed.” Her eyes filled with compassion. “Are you ill?”

“No. I want you to look at me.” He filled her mind with silent words. “We will have to fight Teodoro and Remy in the jungle. They have outsmarted me. I cannot hide my secret or my shame from you any longer.”

She pulled away. “How’d you do that?”

“I am a vampire. There are many things I can do.”

She placed her hand on
his chest, slightly to the left where she felt life. “You’re alive. You’re a man. This is a very bad joke.” Annoyed, she snatched her hand away.

“Feel it now.”

For the first time fear surfaced in her eyes. She rested her hand over his heart. “It’s not beating.” She jumped up. “You’re scaring me.”

“I am a vampire.”

“No. They don’t exist and I saw you eat beef.”

“Afterwards my stomach rebelled.”

She looked into his eyes. “But, we made love.”

“I do not know the rules for living undead, only the instincts that accompany my state of being. I am the only vampire I know, alone in the world. Vampire is what the people I have used called me, what I became when Ku’lanc finished with me.”

“Ku’lanc?”

“The cult’s vampire
deity.”

“Ridiculous.”

“They called the sorcerer Ma’ta. He did not view it as ridiculous neither did I. It is heartbreak. I would not wish another to have my existence. I have brought none into my fold. All I know is I love you. Every day I fight to become more human. If regret were an anchor, mine would be so heavy that it could never be raised.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks and she retched.

“I have been alive for centuries. Until I found you, life had been torture.” His beloved backed away.

“Why
choose me?”

“You startled me into happiness.”
He restrained the caress he wanted to give her. Each terrible moment signaled she no longer saw him as a man.

She spoke in anger. “So what do you call yourself?”

He kept his voice low and calm for her reaction could only intensify as the truth settled. “Just a vampire.”

“Where are your fangs?”

“They are hidden until needed.”

“How many people have you killed?”

“Hundreds.”

She slapped me, a sword piercing my flesh. “How could you?”

“I grew ravenous, angry, and bitter. Until I learned to control my appetites, I am sorry to say I caused much heartache.”

“Are you saying you’ve changed?”

“In two hundred years I have not fed on any human.”

She shook her head. “Disgusting. No matter how you word it, that’s never going to be okay.” She stood. “I know what films show about the undead. I just can’t. . . grasp the reality. I don’t want to. I’m going inside. Away from you. Away from this nightmare.”

“You must see the real horror.”

“No.”

“Yes.” He could not reveal the worst of himself on a public beach. “Take my hand.” She hesitated as if his fingers had turned to worms. He carried her with him outside the rules of gravity to his vault. He waved his hand and the bronze sconces burst into life.

She reeled around the room, panic filling her eyes. “It’s a tomb. Musty. I’m stepping on dirt.”

“From the place of my death. As for my pallet, it draws away the harm done by sunlight.”

“What’re you going to do?”

“Reveal my other self.”

Her eyes searched for a door. But
he could not let her leave. His fangs descended. She sank to the floor. The sight of him transformed drained her color faster than his taking blood. She screamed, high-pitched, a keening wail. He returned to his human form and raised her. Sobs racked her body.

“Mercedes, I am sorry.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Those words make me die again.”

“Please. Let me go.”

She shrank from
his touch, crawled away, her fingers scraped against the slabs. He waved his hand. The wall slid back to reveal the stairs to the first floor. Her gaze stayed on his face measuring him and the distance she had established between them. His beloved reached the stairs and ran for her life.

* * *

Sobs racked Mercedes body, almost doubling her over, but she ran until she reached home and the deck staircase. Her breath came in sharp painful gasps. She shoved her hair away from her eyes and mouth. Only then did she notice several men fishing from shore. They were staring. Hastily, she wiped her face with shaking hands and sank onto a step. She folded into herself and rested her head on her knees.

“Hey lady, you all right?”

She faced them. “Yes,” she responded, and forced her hand to wave. She dropped her head again. “What am I going to do?”

No one could know. That was how she would have to live. Diego’s secret had become her burden. Who would believe the truth? Annie? A newspaper? She rocked from side to side. “I don’t know what to do.”

After several minutes her breath normalized. Her lungs ceased burning. She calmed enough to review what she had seen. In his vampire state Diego’s eyes lost their humanity. Yet he hadn’t killed her. Had he really given up human blood or had he attacked others in her place? She gripped the banister for support. Somehow her legs carried her to the back door. Annie stood in the vestibule waiting.

“What happened? Where’d you go so early? I looked around for a note.”

“Diego called me.”

“On your cell?”

“Yes.” Mercedes nodded and thought in a way she’d told the truth
if you considered brain cells.

“You look terrible. What happened to your manicure? You’ve got dirt on your khakis. Are you hurt?”

She slipped into her sister’s embrace, careful not to pressure her soon-to-be-born nephew. Tears poured from her eyes but the sight of fanged Diego did not wash away. Annie patted her shoulder and that made Mercedes cry more.

“Come into the kitchen.” Annie took her hand. “You’re shaking.” Annie tugged her more firmly and kept tugging until they entered the room. “Sit.”

“Diego’s not who I thought he was.” Mercedes grabbed a tissue from the box in the middle of the table and blew her nose.

“He’s married, isn’t he?”

Nausea threatened to block Mercedes’ thoughts. “I found out he’s. . . he’s . . .had hundreds of women.”

Her sister drew up a chair. “I knew there was something going on with him. Why did he tell you?” Annie grabbed her arm. “Does he have. . . ?”

“No, no diseases.”

“That’s a relief.” Annie tucked a rack of curls behind Mercedes’ ear. “Maybe in his ritzy circle having that many women isn’t so unusual.”

“He’s a beast.”

Annie nodded. “You know how many women could say that this morning?”

Holding on to Diego’s secret weighed on her soul. She rolled her shoulders, but tension still gnawed at her. Her heart shredded. She stopped thinking about herself long enough to realize her sister cried in sympathy. “I shouldn’t dump my ugly love life on you.”

“Sure that’s all?”

“Why?”

“You look like you struggled to get away.” Annie fingered a hole in the elbow of the sweater. “What did he do?”

“Nothing. I fell scrambling up the dunes. Diego didn’t hurt me. He broke my heart. That’s supposed to mend, right?”

“Mine did.”

How many nights, she wondered, would it take to forget what she’d seen? Mercedes headed for the stairs.

“Remember,
I can’t climb. If you want something let me get it for you now.”

“I don’t want anything.”

Upstairs, she threw herself on the bed and pounded the pillows. Now that she was away from Diego’s tomb, fear had been displaced by a deluge of other primitive feelings. Anger. Revulsion. Her stomach soured. She ran into the bathroom and stayed long enough to be sick and long enough to scrub every part of her body until red streaks appeared. Moisturized by scented body lotion, that on this occasion did nothing to sweeten her situation she slipped into thick flannel pajamas and slid under a newly washed cotton sheet.

Sighing, she rested her head on the low pillow and closed her eyes. Tears coursed down her temples, the beginning of a river, her personal Amazon. Where could she go to forget what had existed between her and Diego? Not the beach, pier, or museum. Not even Manhattan.

She bolted upright. “What am I going to do? I made love to a dead man.”

* * *

Luz raced to Diego’s side. To keep him alive was in her interest, but that did not motivate her. Over the centuries they had learned from each other and had shared life and death experiences. That is a part of what bound them. He doubled up as stricken as if he had been skewered with a wooden stake.