Immortal Sins (6 page)

“I’ve got to go to work tomorrow.”

“I know, but we can go out to dinner tomorrow night. We haven’t had a night out together for a while. We can go to that new Italian place. My treat.”

Kari tapped her fingernails on the arm of the sofa. Maybe Tricia was right. Maybe she needed to get out of the house. “All right. Just let me get my things together.”

Kari was pulling clean underwear out of a dresser drawer when she realized she was no longer alone. She looked over her shoulder, expecting to see Tricia. Instead, she saw him.

The vampire.

Jason Rourke.

Rourke glanced at the suitcase lying open at the foot of Karinna’s bed. “Going somewhere?”

“You’re here,” she murmured.

“So it would seem. Where are you going?”

“To spend the night with a friend.”

“The woman downstairs?”

Kari nodded, her hands tightening nervously on the undergarments in her hand.

“Why are you spending the night away from home?”

“Because I need to get away….”

“From what?”

“You, of course.” Moving toward the bed, Kari dropped her undergarments into the suitcase, then went to the closet and pulled out a pink two-piece pantsuit and matching shell to wear to work. She folded them neatly into the suitcase, added a pair of low-heeled sandals, her nightgown and robe, and closed the lid. “Well, good-bye.”

Rourke shook his head. “Spending the night away from home will not change anything. I will still be here when you return.”

“Fine. Wait right there. Don’t move.”

“What are you going to do?”

“You’ll see.” Kari stepped out into the hallway. “Tricia?” she called, leaning over the banister. “Could you come up here for a minute?”

“Need some help?” Tricia asked.

“In a way.”

Kari returned to the bedroom, her arms folded under her breasts.

“Why have you called her?” Rourke asked, frowning. “Are you still afraid of me? Do you think she can protect you?”

“No, just wait.” She turned toward the door at the sound of Tricia’s footsteps.

“What do you wa…?” Tricia’s voice trailed off when she stepped into the room and saw Rourke standing beside the bed. “Who’s this?”

“It’s him, the man in the painting, who do you think?”

Tricia shook her head. “Come on, Kari, who is he, really?”

“I knew you didn’t believe me!”

“Kari…”

“Just take a good look at him. Doesn’t he look familiar?”

Moving warily, Tricia took a few steps toward Rourke, her eyes narrowing.

“Well?” Kari prompted.

“I didn’t really look at him that closely the other night.”

“For goodness’ sake, Trish, look at what he’s wearing! Who do you know that goes around wearing clothes like that nowadays?”

“I remember you,” Rourke said, studying Tricia. “You were wearing a pair of blue trousers and a red shirt with little white hearts on it.”

Tricia’s eyes widened as he described what she had been wearing the night Kari had asked her to come over and look at the painting.

“Now do you believe me?” Kari asked.

“It’s not possible,” Tricia said, her voice little more than a whisper. Grabbing Kari by the hand, she backed toward the door. “Let’s get out of here.”

Tricia let out a shriek when she turned toward the door and saw Rourke barring the way. “How did you do that?”

“Tricia.” He caught her gaze with his. “Listen to me, Tricia. I want you to go home. None of this ever happened. You were never here tonight. You have never seen me or the painting before. Nod your head if you understand.”

Tricia nodded.

“Now go home.”

Moving like a robot, Tricia left the room. Moments later, Kari heard the front door open and close.

Kari stared up at him. “How did you do that?”

“A form of hypnotism.”

“You’re real, aren’t you? I didn’t imagine you, did I?”

“No, I am as real as you are.”

“Are you going to make me into a vampire?”

“If you wish.”

“I don’t!” She lifted a hand to her neck. “But you already did, didn’t you? You bit me.” She glanced toward the window. “And the moon is almost full.”

He laughed softly. “You are confusing vampires with werewolves.”

“But you took my blood. Isn’t that how vampires are made?”

“I tasted you,” he said, smiling. “I would have had to take much more to bring you across. Just a taste,” he murmured. “And you were sweet, indeed.”

“Sweet!” She made a gagging sound. “Blood isn’t sweet.”

“Ah, my dear, that is where you are wrong. It is the sweetest nectar you can imagine.”

“Maybe to you.” Kari took another step backward, sat down hard when the backs of her knees collided with the chair in the corner. “Were you really trapped inside that painting for three hundred years?”

He nodded curtly.

“It must have been awful.”

“Awful?” He swore softly. “That hardly describes it. A bad harvest is awful. Bad wine is awful. Being imprisoned behind a wall of glass for three centuries was torture.”

In more ways than one, he thought bleakly. It had been more than the loss of his freedom, more than the agony of being unable to slake his hellish thirst, more than his desire for a woman. It had been the blow to his pride that still rankled, even after all these years. The wizard had overpowered him, humbled him as no other ever had. Even now, the shame of it was hard to endure.

“Those notes you stuck on the glass,” Kari remarked. “What did you write them with?”

“Blood.”

Even though she had suspected as much, the thought made her shudder. “What was it like, being trapped like that?”

He looked thoughtful a moment. “I am not sure I can describe it. In the beginning, I had no sense of myself. There was no depth or color to my world, no sound. I could only stand there, unable to move or see or feel.” He took a deep breath. He hadn’t known fear often in his life, but he had felt it then in every fiber of his being. “All that changed, in time. Gradually, my strength returned. Once I could move, the painting came to life. With the return of my strength, I became increasingly aware of my surroundings. I began to hear what was going on outside my prison. I paid attention to everything I saw and heard, though much of it remained a mystery.”

“You don’t talk like I’d expect someone from the past to talk.”

He grunted softly. “The influence of radio and television, I expect.” He glanced at her TV. “The people imprisoned there, do you know the name of the wizard who enchanted them?”

“What?”

He gestured at the TV. “The name of the wizard who imprisoned them, do you know it?”

Kari stared at him for a moment and then she laughed. “There aren’t any people trapped inside.”

“But I see many of them over and over again, doing the same things, wearing the same clothes, speaking the same words, every time. Ricky and Lucy. Rob and Laura. Hawkeye and Colonel Potter. Niles and Frasier. It must be a powerful enchantment.”

Kari couldn’t help it, she had to laugh. “Those are reruns. Old television shows,” she explained. “They replay every week, some for years. The people in the shows are actors playing a part. Some of the sitcoms, like
I Love Lucy,
are over fifty years old. The people have aged, but the images you see on the screen haven’t.”

He frowned. “I am not sure I understand. How is that possible?”

“Hang on a sec.” Kari went to the hall closet. She returned a few minutes later with her video camera. “Okay, walk around the room, then stop and say something to me.”

He looked puzzled but did as she asked.

“All right, that’s enough,” Kari said. “Come here.” She held the camera so he could see the screen, and then hit
PLAY
. “Television is like this. Moving pictures. I can play this over and over again, and it won’t change. Programs like the news are current events. The things that you watch on the news happened the day you see them, or are happening while you watch. Movies and TV are just entertainment, like stage plays back in your time, only our plays are recorded so that they can be viewed as often as you wish.”

Rourke watched the short video a second time, amazed to see his image on the screen. And then he frowned.

“Truly a kind of magic,” he murmured, “to be able to forever capture a moment in time.”

Kari grinned at him. If you didn’t understand how video worked, then it really was like magic, she thought. And as one who didn’t have a clue, she viewed movies and her computer and practically every kind of modern technology as a kind of modern hocus-pocus. She had often looked at her music CDs and wondered how such a thing could record music that could be played in her portable CD player, on her computer, or in her car.

She looked at the camera in her hand, then frowned thoughtfully. Strange, that he didn’t cast a reflection in a mirror, yet she could capture his image on video. It must have something to do with digital technology, she mused.

“I’ll be right back.” After setting the camera on her nightstand, she went in search of her cell phone.

“What are you doing?” Rourke asked when she flipped open the phone.

“Testing a theory. Smile.” She took his picture, then looked at the screen, and he was there. “Amazing.”

Taking a step forward, Rourke looked over her shoulder. He had not seen his own countenance in over seven hundred years, had, in fact, almost forgotten what he looked like. His brothers had all resembled their mother, but Rourke looked remarkably like his father. He had the same dark blond hair, the same striking blue eyes, the same hawklike nose and stubborn jaw.

Kari closed the phone, then sat down on the foot of the bed. “Your painting must have changed hands a lot in three hundred years.”

“Yes.” His prison had been owned by many people in the course of his captivity. It had hung in castles, in mansions, and once in a convent in the room where visitors waited to be announced. Though the painting had been kept in the convent only a short time, it had been a most interesting experience. Nuns both old and young had found reasons to pass through the room where his painting had been displayed. One young nun in particular had seemed particularly smitten with his image. For a time, he had hoped that she would call him forth, but the mother superior had discovered her postulant’s fascination and sold the painting.

His last owner, a rather eccentric elderly woman, had tired of the Vilnius after fourteen years and consigned him to the attic. He had spent the last fifteen years there, gathering dust, until the old woman died and the painting had been sold to the gallery where Karinna had found him.

“And now you’re free,” she remarked.

“Yes.” He looked past her, staring out her bedroom window. Mortal eyes would have seen little but the darkness beyond, but with his preternatural vision, he could see for several miles. “I have seen much and learned much of your world, but I want to see more, and I want you to be my guide.”

“Why me?”

“Why not you?”

“Because I…because…”

Closing the distance between them, he stroked her cheek with his fingertips. “You have no need to be afraid of me, Karinna Adams. I will not hurt you.”

She looked into his eyes, those deep blue eyes, and for some inexplicable reason, she believed him. She only hoped she wasn’t making the biggest mistake of her life.

Kari’s nerves were on edge by the time she got home from work the following night. She couldn’t keep her hand from shaking as she unlocked the front door. Taking a deep breath, she stepped inside. Was he here?

In the living room, she dropped her handbag and keys on the sofa table. She hesitated a moment, then went upstairs to her bedroom. She kicked off her shoes and changed into a pair of comfy jeans and a warm sweater. After stepping into a pair of fur-lined boots, she turned toward the door, only to come to an abrupt halt when she saw him standing in the doorway. He was so tall, his shoulders so broad, he almost filled the opening. He was a beautiful man, though there was nothing feminine about him.

He smiled at her as if his being there was the most normal thing in the world. “Good evening.”

“Hi.” She forced the word past the lump of fear in her throat. She had forgotten how big he was, how breathtakingly handsome. How scary.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

She lifted a protective hand to her throat. “Ready for what?”

He arched a brow in wry amusement. “I’ve not come to dine on you, if that is what you are thinking. You were going to show me around, remember?”

“Oh, right.” She was about to tell him that she hadn’t had dinner when she realized her appetite was gone. She hoped his was, too. “I need my handbag and my keys,” she said, edging toward the bedroom door.

He took a step backward and she swept past him, acutely aware of him as she headed for the stairs. In the living room, she grabbed her purse and her keys and headed for the front door.

He followed her outside.

With her nerves humming with awareness of the very male male standing behind her, Kari unlocked the passenger-side door. She expected him to get into the car. Instead, he walked around it, pausing to run his hands over the trunk, the roof, the hood, the tires, the windshield.

He looked at her over the roof of the car. “How does it work?”

Kari shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m a graphic designer, not a mechanic.”

“It has a motor, yes?”

Nodding, she unlocked the driver’s-side door, leaned inside, and popped the hood, then stood back while he peered at the engine. Kari stood beside him, thinking that she didn’t know any more about how the motor worked than he did.

“Seen enough?” she asked after a few minutes.

He ran his fingers over the engine block. “It looks complicated.”

“You think?” She closed the hood, then slid behind the wheel.

After a moment, he got in beside her, his gaze intent as he watched her put the key in the ignition and start the engine.

His hands clenched when the motor purred to life.

“Don’t be afraid,” Kari said as she backed out of the driveway, then wondered if vampires were capable of fear. “In case you’re worried, I’ve never had an accident.”

“Good news, indeed,” he muttered.

“So, where do you want to go?”

“The mall.”

Kari glanced at him. “The mall?” She wasn’t sure what she had expected. A trip to the blood bank, maybe, but the mall?

“It is the place to shop, is it not?”

“Well, yeah, but how do you know that?”

“Television,” he reminded her.

She grunted softly. And people said TV wasn’t educational. “So, what do you want to buy?”

“Ah, yes, buy,” he murmured.

“I guess you don’t have any money,” she remarked.

“No.”