Dark Nights (36 page)

“I am called Falcon.”

Her eyes flew open at his revelation. She recognized his name.
I am Falcon and I will never know you, but I have left this gift behind for you, a gift of the heart.
She shook her head in agitation. “That can’t be.” Her eyes searched his face, tears glittering in them again. “That can’t be,” she repeated. “Am I losing my mind?” It was possible, perhaps even inevitable. She hadn’t considered such a possibility.

His hands framed her face. “You believe me to be the undead. The vampire. You have seen such a creature.” He made it a statement, a raw fact. Of course she had. She would never have attacked him otherwise. He felt the sudden thud of his heart, fear rising to terror. In all his centuries of existence, he had never known such an emotion before. She had been alone, unprotected, and she had met the most evil of all creatures,
nosferatu.

She nodded slowly, watching him carefully. “I have escaped him many times. I nearly managed to kill him once.”

Sara felt his great body tremble at her words. “You tried such a thing? The vampire is one of the most dangerous creatures on the face of this earth.” There was a wealth of reprimand in his voice. “Perhaps you should tell me the entire story.”

Sara blinked at him. “I want to get up.” She felt very vulnerable lying pinned to the floor beneath him, at a great disadvantage looking up into his beloved face.

He sighed softly. “Sara.” Just the way he said her name curled her toes. He breathed the syllables. Whispered it between exasperated indulgence and purring warning. Made it sound silky and scented and sexy. Everything that she was not. “I do not want to have to restrain you again. It frightens you, and I do not wish to continue to see such fear in your beautiful eyes when you look upon me.” He wanted to see that loving, tender look, that helpless wonder spilling from her bright gaze as it had when she first recognized his face.

“Please, I want to know what’s going on. I’m not going to do anything.” Sara wished she didn’t sound so apologetic. She was lying on the floor of her home with a perfect stranger pinning her down, a stranger she had seen drinking the blood of a human being. A rotten human being, but still . . .
drinking blood.
She had seen the evidence with her own eyes. How could he explain that away?

Falcon stood up, his body poetry in motion. Sara had to admire the smooth, easy way he moved, a casual rippling of muscles. Once again she was standing, her body in the shadow of his, close, so that she could feel his body heat. The air vibrated with his power. His fingers were wrapped loosely, like a bracelet, around her wrist, giving her no opportunity to escape.

Sara moved delicately away from him, needing a small space to herself. To think. To breathe. To be Sara and not part of a Dark Dream. Her Dark Dream.

“Tell me how you met the vampire.” He said the words calmly, but the menace in his voice sent a shiver down her spine.

Sara did not want to face those memories. “I don’t know if I can tell you,” she said truthfully and tilted her head to look into his eyes.

At once his gaze locked with hers, and she felt that curious falling sensation again. Comfort. Security. Protection from the howling ghosts of her past.

His fingers tightened around her wrist, gently, almost a caress, his thumb sliding tenderly over her sensitive skin. He tugged her back to him with the same gentleness that often seemed to accompany his movements. He moved slowly, as if afraid to frighten her. As if he knew her reluctance, and what he was asking of her. “I do not wish to intrude, but if it will be easier, I can read the memories in your mind without your having to speak of them aloud.”

There was only the sound of the rain on the roof. The tears in her mind. The screams of her mother and father and brother echoing in her ears. Sara stood rigid, in shock, her face white and still. Her eyes were larger than ever, two shimmering violet jewels, wide and frightened. She swallowed twice and resolutely pulled her gaze from his to look at his broad chest. “My parents were professors at the university. In the summer, they would always go to some exotic, fantastically named place, to a dig. I was fifteen; it sounded very romantic.” Her voice was low, a complete monotone. “I begged to go, and they took my brother Robert and me with them.” Guilt. Grief. It swamped her.

She was silent a long time, so long he thought she might not be able to continue. Sara didn’t take her gaze from his chest. She recited the words as if she’d memorized them from a textbook, a classic horror story. “I loved it, of course. It was everything I expected it to be and more. My brother and I could explore to our hearts’ content and we went everywhere. Even down into the tunnels our parents had forbidden to us. We were determined to find our own treasure.” Robert had dreamed of golden chalices. But something else had called to Sara. Called and beckoned, thudded in her heart until she was obsessed.

Falcon felt the fine tremor that ran through her body and instinctively drew her closer to him, so that the heat of his body seeped into the cold of hers. His hand went to the nape of her neck, his fingers soothing the tension in her muscles. “You do not have to continue, Sara. This is too distressing for you.”

She shook her head. “I found the box, you see. I knew it was there. A beautiful, hand-carved box wrapped in carefully cured skins. Inside was a diary.” She lifted her face then, to lock her eyes with his. To judge his reaction.

His black eyes drifted possessively over her face. Devoured her.
Lifemate.
The word swirled in the air between them. From his mind to hers. It was burned into their minds for all eternity.

“It was yours, wasn’t it?” She made it a soft accusation. She continued to stare at him until faint color crept up her neck and flushed her cheeks. “But it can’t be. That box, that diary, is at least fifteen hundred years old. More. It was checked out and authenticated. If that was yours, if you wrote the diary, than you would have to be . . .” She trailed off, shaking her head. “It can’t be.” She rubbed at her throbbing temples. “It can’t be,” she whispered again.

“Listen to my heartbeat, Sara. Listen to the breath going in and out of my lungs. Your body recognizes mine. You are my true lifemate.”

For my beloved lifemate, my heart and my soul. This is my gift to you.
She closed her eyes for a moment. How many times had she read those words?

She wouldn’t faint. She stood swaying in front of him, his fingers, a bracelet around her wrist, holding them together. “You are telling me you wrote the diary.”

He drew her even closer until her body rested against his. She didn’t seem to notice he was holding her up. “Tell me about the vampire.”

She shook her head, yet she obeyed. “He was there one night after I found the box. I was translating the diary, the scrolls and scrolls of letters, and I felt him there. I couldn’t see anything, but it was there, a presence. Wholly evil. I thought it was the curse. The workmen had been muttering about curses and how so many men died digging up what was best left alone. They had found a man dead in the tunnel the night before, drained of blood. I heard the workers tell my father it had been so for many years. When things were taken from the digs, it would come. In the night. And that night, I knew it was there. I ran into my father’s room, but the room was empty, so I went to the tunnels to find him, to warn him. I saw it then. It was killing another worker. And it looked up and saw me.”

Sara choked back a sob and pressed her fingertips harder into her temples. “I felt him in my head, telling me to come to him. His voice was terrible, gravelly, and I knew he would hunt me. I didn’t know why, but I knew it wasn’t over. I ran. I was lucky; workmen began pouring into the tunnels, and I escaped in all the confusion. My father took us into the city. We stayed there for two days before it found us. It came at night. I was in the laundry closet, still trying to translate the diary with a flashlight. I felt him. I felt him and knew he had come for me. I hid. Instead of warning my father, I hid there in a pile of blankets. Then I heard my parents and brother screaming, and I hid with my hands pressed over my ears. He was whispering to me to come to him. I thought if I went he might not kill them. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move, not even when blood ran under the door. It was black in the night, not red.”

Falcon’s arms folded her close, held her tightly. He could feel the grief radiating from her, a guilt too terrible to be borne. Tears locked forever in her heart and mind. A child witnessing the brutal killing of her family by a monster unsurpassed in evil. His lips brushed a single caress onto her thick cap of sable hair. “I am not vampire, Sara. I am a hunter, a destroyer of the undead. I have spent several lifetimes far from my homeland and my people, seeking just such creatures. I am not the vampire who destroyed your family.”

“How do I know what you are or aren’t? I saw you take that man’s blood.” She pulled away from him in a quick, restless movement, wholly feminine.

“I did not kill him,” he answered simply. “The vampire kills his prey. I do not.”

Sara raked a trembling hand through the short spikes of her silky hair. She felt completely drained. She paced restlessly across the room to her small kitchen and poured herself another cup of tea. Falcon filled her home with his presence. It was difficult to keep from staring at him. She watched him move through her home, touching her things with reverent fingers. He glided silently, almost as if he floated inches above the floor. She knew the moment he discovered it. She padded into the bedroom to lean her hip against the doorway, just watching him as she sipped her tea. It warmed her insides and helped to stop her shivering.

“Do you like it?” There was a sudden shyness in her voice.

Falcon stared at the small table beside the bed where a beautifully sculpted bust of his own face stared at him. Every detail. Every line. His dark, hooded eyes, the long fall of his hair. His strong jaw and patrician nose. It was more than the fact that she had gotten every single detail perfect, it was
how
she saw him. Noble. Old World. Through the eyes of love. “You did this?” He could barely manage to get the words past the strange lump blocking his throat.
My Dark Angel, lifemate to Sara.
The inscription was in fine calligraphy, each letter a stroke of art, a caress of love, every bit as beautiful as the bust.

“Yes.” She continued to watch him closely, pleased with his reaction. “I did it from memory. When I touch things, old things in particular, I can sometimes connect with events or things from the past that linger in the object. It sounds weird.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I can’t explain how it happens, it just does. When I touched the diary, I knew it was meant for me. Not just anyone, not any other woman. It was written for me. When I translated the words from an ancient language, I could see a face. There was a desk, a small wooden one, and a man sat there and wrote. He turned and looked at me with such loneliness in his eyes, I knew I had to find him. His pain could hardly be borne, that terrible black emptiness. I see that same loneliness in your eyes. It is your face I saw. Your eyes. I understand emptiness.”

“Then you know you are my other half.” The words were spoken in a low voice, made husky by Falcon’s attempt to keep unfamiliar emotions under control. His eyes met hers across the room. One of his hands rested on the top of the bust, his fingers finding the exact groove in a wave of the hair that she had caressed thousands of times.

Once again, Sara had the curious sensation of falling into the depths of his eyes. There was such an intimacy about his touching her familiar things. It had been nearly fifteen years since she had really been close to another person. She was hunted, and she never forgot it for a single moment. Anyone close to her would be in danger. She lived alone, changed her address often, traveled frequently, and continually changed her patterns of behavior. But the monster had followed her. Twice, when she had read of a serial killer stalking a city she was in, she had actively hunted the beast, determined to rid herself of her enemy, but she had never managed to find his lair.

She could talk to no one of her encounter; no one would believe her. It was widely believed that a madman had murdered her family. And the local workers had been convinced it was the curse. Sara had inherited her parents’ estate, a considerable fortune, so she had been lucky enough to travel extensively, always staying one step ahead of her pursuer.

“Sara.” Falcon said her name softly, bringing her back to him.

The rain pounded on the roof now. The wind slammed into the windows, whistling loudly as if in warning. Sara raised the teacup to her lips and drank, her eyes still locked with his. Carefully she placed the cup in the saucer and set it on a table. “How is it you can exist for so long a time?”

Falcon noticed she was keeping a certain distance from him, noticed her pale skin and trembling mouth. She had a beautiful mouth, but she was at the breaking point and he didn’t dare think about her mouth, or the lush curves of her body. She needed him desperately, and he was determined to push aside the clawing, roaring beast and provide her with solace and peace. With protection.

“Our species have existed since the beginning of time, although we grow close to extinction. We have great gifts. We are able to control storms, to shape-shift, to soar as great winged owls and run with our brethren, the wolves. Our longevity is both gift and curse. It is not easy to watch the passing of mortals, of ages. It is a terrible thing to live without hope, in a black endless void.”

Sara heard the words and did her best to comprehend what he was saying. Soar as great winged owls. She would love to fly high above the earth and be free of the weight of her guilt. She rubbed her temple again, frowning in concentration. “Why do you take blood if you are not a vampire?”

“You have a headache.” He said it as if it were his most important concern. “Allow me to help you.”

Sara blinked and he was standing close to her, his body heat immediately sweeping over her cold skin. She could feel the arc of electricity jumping from his body to hers. The chemistry between them was so strong it terrified her. She thought of moving away, but he was already reaching for her. His hands framed her face, his fingers caressing, gentle. Her heart turned over, a funny somersault that left her breathless. His fingertips moved to her temples.