Embrace the Twilight (10 page)

 

Sarafina sat in the back, at her usual place, her pen moving slowly and deliberately over the parchment-like pages of the large, velvet-covered book. She was writing about Dante now. About his betrayal and their resulting estrangement. He had been her only surviving family member, her grandnephew. But they'd been more than that to each other. She'd become his mother when she'd found him near death on the ground and fed him from her veins, making him immortal, as she was. She'd become his sister when he had grown in power and wisdom until he was nearly her equal. And then he'd become her betrayer when he'd chosen his precious lover over her.

Dante and Morgan lived in bliss like a pair of happily wed mortals in Maine. Dante had been neutered, she wrote. His fangs filed off, his claws clipped. He no longer lived the life of a lone predator. The life of a vampire.

She did. She relished it. And she always would.

An odd chill brushed over the nape of her neck, and Sarafina's pen stilled. She lifted her head slowly,
feeling
the room around her. There was someone there. Someone familiar.

Turning, she searched the bar, her gaze guided by instinct. There was a whisper tickling her mind, one she couldn't quite hear, but the sensation was so like one from long ago. It had been a century since she'd felt this particular presence. But the last time, he had told her his name. Willem. And that he lived in New York. And while she hated to acknowledge it, that was part of the reason she had come here after her break with Dante. She'd vowed never again to become dependent upon another living being for her happiness. They only let her down; it never failed. But perhaps her friend from the spirit realm would contact her here. And, she had to admit, she would welcome that. It had been so long….

“Sarafina?”

The voice came from behind her. It was the voice of her familiar spirit. It was a voice she would never mistake. And yet it came not in a mental whisper but as an actual sound. How could that be?

She turned her head slowly, not getting up.

A man stood there. A mortal man. She'd seen her spirit once, in her crystal. This man looked harder. Less mystical, more physical.

He extended a hand in greeting. “My name is Willem Stone. Do you remember me?”

She glanced down at the hand he offered. “You're just a man.” He couldn't be the one. He couldn't be. He only sounded the same—and looked similar, too. But her spirit could not be flesh. She didn't trust people on this plane the way she'd trusted him. He couldn't be the one. Please, God, she thought, don't let him be the one. Not an ordinary man.

He withdrew his hand slowly, nodding once. “Yeah. Do you mind if I talk to you? Just for a few minutes?”

Blinking slowly, she let her gaze explore him. He was, perhaps, not so ordinary. His build, his physique, spoke of power. He must be strong, for a mortal. He used a cane to help him walk, which she supposed was a flaw, but a recent one, she sensed. He was in pain. She knew that immediately. He kept it pushed to one side of his awareness, as if he were the one in control of it, rather than the other way around. He wore suede hiking shoes, khaki trousers that fit loose in the crotch, making her wonder what they hid. His sweater was a pullover in olive drab, with leather patches sewn onto the shoulders and elbows, and a patch on the front that bore foreign letters.

Perhaps he was not so ordinary at all.

“Sit with me…for a moment.”

Nodding, he came around the table, limping, and slid into the booth opposite her. There was a candle burning inside an amber glass jar in the table's center. Its light played on his face, which was not handsome, but hard. Sharp lines at the jaw and nose. An iron brow. Arctic-blue eyes in stark contrast to the dark, closely cut hair and deeply tanned skin.

“What did you want to speak to me about?” she asked, leaning back in her seat, enjoying her exploration of him. Enjoying even more that it didn't seem to bother him or unsettle him in the least.

“Excuse me? I'm sorry to interrupt,” a waitress said, standing beside the table.

Sarafina lifted her brows, sending daggers with her eyes, but the twit was too focused on the man to notice.

“Are you Colonel Stone?” she asked. “'Cause I saved the issue of
TIME
that had you on the cover, and I'd just love to get your autograph to go with it. I think you're just—”

He held up a hand, which stopped the woman's mindless chatter, thank the stars. His eyes met Sarafina's, then shifted to the little redhead. “Sorry,” he said. “I get this a lot, but I'm not him.”

The girl frowned, as if confused. “Oh. I'm…sorry, then.” She walked away, puzzling things over in her very tiny mind.

Sarafina looked at her mortal companion. “So it's
Colonel
Willem Stone.”

“Retired.”

“And you're some kind of…war hero?”

“I was captured and tortured and lived to tell the tale. To some that makes me a hero. Given the choice, I'd have foregone the pleasure.”

She felt her lips pull at the corners. And she remembered a vision of her spirit lover—bound and being tortured by red-hot irons. It drove a deep chill up her spine, and she had to shake the image away. This wasn't him, though he used the same name and appeared in the same place her spirit had told her he would.

“I know you,” he said. He dropped the words and just left them lying there.

She was unsure what he expected her to do with them. “I doubt that, Willem. No man truly knows me.”

“I do. I know all about you. I know about the camp. I know about your sister, Katerina, and how she and Andre betrayed you. I know about Bartrone and the way he died. And I know what you are.”

She sat very still, watching him, listening to him, a sense of unholy dread spreading in her chest. When he stopped speaking, she leaned across the table, curling her hand around his nape and drawing him closer to her to whisper against his ear. “And you think that I can allow you to live, now that you've confessed all you know about me?”

His own whisper, just as soft, and spoken so close that his lips moved against her ear with the words, startled her. “I'm not an easy man to kill, Sarafina. But if you want to try, I'd be more than happy to play.”

The feel of those lips, that warm breath against her ear, set a fire in her loins. Images of the night her spirit had come to her in her dreams—made love to her in a way no man, mortal or vampire, had ever done—made her shiver with desire. She drew away sharply, flicking her eyes to his. “Perhaps we'll play first. And you can die later.”

“However you want to do it.”

She nodded slowly, reminding herself that he wasn't the one. It was safe to love a spirit. Not so a man. “How do you know all the things you know about me, Willem Stone?”

He held her gaze as a vampire might do, probing, trying to read her thoughts with his eyes. “My God, Sarafina, you have to remember. I was there. I was with you. I was the voice that spoke to you inside your mind. You called me your beloved spirit. I told you I was just a man.”

She nodded slowly, searching her mind for an explanation besides that one. He was going to put out the one remaining sliver of light in her life—the hope that one day her spirit would return to her, love her again as he had so long ago.

“That's impossible,” she whispered. “You weren't yet born when I was experiencing those things.”

“I know it's impossible. I also know it happened. I used to doubt it, thinking maybe it was because of the torture or some kind of mental illness, but now that I've seen you…” He shook his head. “I know it was real, Sarafina. Do you?”

She studied his face. “The things you describe…happened. There
was
a voice that spoke to me at those times. He said the very things you claim to have said to me. I've never told these things to anyone, nor even written of them in my journals.”

“Then there's no way I could know them—unless I was there.”

She nodded slowly, realizing it was true, and trying to keep the fact that his words had shattered what remained of her heart hidden from him. He was real. Physical. Physical beings lied and betrayed and died, and left their beloved alone and in pain. She couldn't love her spirit lover if he were a physical being. She
wouldn't.

She kept her eyes averted. “What do you want from me now?”

He seemed stunned, maybe a bit hurt. “I…I don't know. I guess I just wanted to see you. To convince myself I wasn't losing my mind.”

“You needed your experiences validated.” It was difficult to keep her voice from trembling with the pain. “That's done. What else?”

He blinked, perhaps taken aback at her directness. “I had to know that you were all right. When last I saw you, you were…”

The pain overwhelmed her restraint. “When last you
saw
me, you promised to try to come again as soon as you could. But I never heard from you again until now. It's been a hundred years, Willem.”

“It was the night before last,” he told her.

That brought her head up, her eyes to his. She held his gaze only a moment, then looked away from the power of it. “I'm fine.”

He nodded. “I can see that.” He drew a breath. “You've changed.”

“People do. It's irrelevant. What else do you want from me, mortal?”

He took his time about answering, leaning back in his seat, studying her as freely and openly as she had studied him. Perhaps hiding some pain of his own behind those eyes. If he was, it didn't show. He had a good deal more self-control that she did.

“I want to know how it happened. I want to understand how I was able to tap into your memories and your past the way I did.”

She smiled just a little at that.

“What? That's amusing somehow?”

“It's only typical. You mortals and your curious minds, wanting answers, always answers. Over the centuries, one learns that things simply are. There's no rhyme or reason. Young ones of my kind, fledglings, go through an inevitable period of demanding to know why. Why do we exist? What is our purpose? It usually takes at least a mortal lifetime of living as an immortal before they stop questioning and simply accept.”

He tilted his head to one side. “You don't believe there's a purpose to it all? A grand design?”

“That you and I were soul mates, connecting through time and destined to meet at last in this time and place?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

She rolled her eyes and fought to keep a sob from ripping free of her chest and giving her away. “It's rubbish.”

“All right. Maybe it's rubbish.”

“Then we've nothing left to talk about. And your time is up.”

He reached across the table, clasped her hands in his. “I want to know you, Sarafina. I want to know what's happened to you since Bartrone's death.”

She studied his hands on hers and felt flushed with warmth, and a longing almost too intense to ignore. He had some foolish romantic attachment to her, just as she had to him. But his was all based on the woman she had once been. She wasn't that woman anymore. And yet she wanted him. God, how she wanted him. And that was dangerous. It gave him the power to hurt her, to destroy her, perhaps. She'd long ago determined it was best to associate only with those she disliked, or those who left her utterly unmoved and uninterested. Or the slaves, for whom she really did come to feel affection—safe in the knowledge they would never betray her.

Willem Stone was none of those things, and because of that, he was dangerous. And she had a feeling he wouldn't stop coming to her, especially not if he had felt as strongly for her as she had for him. She'd had a century to get used to being without him. He'd had—what had he told her? Two days?

Maybe she should just show him that she wasn't the innocent girl he thought he had loved once. “Would you like to know what I want from you, Willem Stone?”

“I really would,” he told her.

She gripped the front of his shirt and drew him across the table toward her. She knew he was a strong man. She wanted him to resist, so she could demonstrate that she was far stronger, but he didn't oblige. “I want to ride you until you're too exhausted to stand anymore. And then I want to sink my teeth into your throat and drain you dry. I want to pleasure myself with your body and gorge myself with your blood. And that's
all
I want.”

“You really think so?”

“I know so.”

He slid his hand around her neck, tangled his fist in her hair and pulled her head forward, mashing her mouth to his. She didn't fight him. She let him kiss her, let him drive his tongue into her and taste her. Let him feel the razor edges of her incisors.

Then he broke the kiss. “I think you want more, and I think you're fighting it, but I'm damned if I know why.”

“You delude yourself. And risk your life by doing it.”