In the Blood (3 page)

She leaned against the sink and splashed cold water on her face, her eyes fixed miserably on her own reflection. What was she doing, letting a client get to her this way? Monsters didn’t exist. She was sick, and it had nothing to do with the man she’d met the night before. She needed to take her pills and go back to bed for a long, long time. She could make a new plan tomorrow.

With a full glass of water from the sink in the bathroom, Cassandra returned to her bed. She climbed in, popped the top off her pill bottle, took out two and gulped them down.

A growing sense of unease dogged Viktor until nightfall. Two hours past sunset, he caught himself pacing in front of the windows.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Novotny, but there was no answer.” Anthony descended the stairs, sliding a cell phone into his jacket pocket.

Viktor frowned at the cars gliding soundlessly below. He did not know where Cassandra was, but he knew she was in the city. He felt it in the lingering bond between them. That it had lasted this long was uncommon enough. That he could sense she was in danger was unthinkable.

“Have you tried the club?” It was a grasp at straws, he knew.

Anthony raised an eyebrow. “Is there a reason it has to be this particular girl?”

“Just try them, please,” Viktor implored. He turned back to the city beyond the windows, not bothering to listen to the conversation. His hand slipped into the collar of his shirt for the steadying weight of the ring.

“All they can tell me is that Cassandra is not working tonight,” Anthony said after he’d hung up. “If that’s even her real name.”

“Thank you, Anthony.” Perhaps Viktor had imagined it all. Was this the beginning of the madness that would transform him from vampire to Minion? He swallowed a lump of sorrow and closed his eyes.

“You know you get like this if you don’t finish your feeding.” Anthony unfastened and refastened the cuffs of his jacket. “All paranoid and shaky. If you need me to bring you another girl—”

Viktor waved his hand. “It does not work that way.”

“I could send the car for Elliot,” Anthony suggested. Viktor shook his head. He didn’t want to feed. That wasn’t what drove him to seek out Cassandra. He wanted to be sure she was safe, and at the moment he couldn’t convince himself that she was.

“You’re tired,” he said quietly to his jailer/assistant. “Go home.”

The human wasn’t a fool. He didn’t move from his spot.

“I swear to you, I do not wish to harm anyone tonight. Myself included. Your services will not be required before sunup, at least.” Without waiting for a reply, Viktor headed to his office. Sleek and black as the rest of the apartment, the office was dominated by a large desk with a top-of-the-line computer. Technology never ceased to amaze Viktor as he’d watched it change over the years. He typed up an email to his company’s most successful skip-tracer and, within an hour, had Cassandra’s home address in his inbox. The man would be rewarded handsomely.

He’d dismissed Anthony. Damn! Conclave spy though he was, Anthony was his driver. Viktor had never bothered to learn. He squared his shoulders. It couldn’t be that difficult if so many people had mastered it. He went to the closet-sized office Anthony kept on the second floor near the elevator, took the keys to his least-extravagant car and rode down to the garage. After some minor difficulty shifting gears with the two paddles attached to the steering wheel, the Aston-Martin Vantage—and its clumsy driver—lurched from the garage.

The GPS and a healthy dose of luck helped him arrive safely in Queens, where he pulled to a stop in front of a storefront deli that had closed for the night. Above that, Viktor realized, was Cassie’s apartment.

She didn’t answer the buzzer and her windows were dark. Though common sense told him that she simply wasn’t home, his uncanny sense argued otherwise. Checking the street to be certain he would not be seen, he leapt to the second story, perching on the ledge outside her window. His heart jumped into his throat at what he saw inside. Cassandra, lying face down on the floor, her legs tangled in bedclothes that had tripped her when she’d risen from her bed. A cordless phone lay in pieces beside her, broken in the fall, and a bottle of pills sat open on the nightstand.

Without thinking, he punched his fist through the glass and unlocked the window. He opened it and crawled inside and over the bed to kneel beside her on the floor. He called her name and shook her shoulder, but she did not rouse. Vomit caked her hair and pooled on the floor beneath her. Pressing his fingers to her neck, he felt for a pulse. It was there, weak, but she lived.

Had she done this intentionally? The thought was like a physical blow. Though he did not know her well, he knew the terror lurking inside of her and the desperation it brought. The thought of another suffering as he had for so many years…

The moment he lifted her in his arms, his despair fled. As quickly and easily as if he held Melina in his arms again, he felt human. He slid Cassandra onto the bed and went to the small washroom to find something to clean her up. A small hand towel hung beside the sink, and he wetted it before returning to bathe her face and neck. The T-shirt she wore was sodden with vomit. He tore it down the front and slid her arms from it, mentally scolding himself for the reaction the sight of her naked body caused in him.

Even in her unconscious and seriously ill state, she was beautiful. Her eyelashes, uncoated in mascara, lay soft and red as her hair against her freckled cheeks. Though her head lolled unsupported, the angle only accentuated her graceful neck. He could have admired her all night, until he noticed that her full, natural breasts and firm, toned stomach were covered in gooseflesh, her nipples puckered against the cold. He covered her with the thin quilt folded over the end of the bed, then picked up the prescription bottle. He didn’t recognize the name of the drug.

“Anthony,” he barked into his cell phone the moment the man answered. “Find out what you can about a drug called—” He sounded the word out, then spelled it, hoping that would be sufficient for his assistant.

“Do you need me?” Anthony asked. “If the girl is in some kind of trouble, you need to call 911.”

“I don’t know if she’s in trouble. Please, just get me the information.” He would do whatever it took to see that she survived. Something about her was linked to him, and he could not see her die before he found out what it was.

In her dreams, Cassandra was no longer fighting monsters. Instead, she fought the temptation to let her heart stop beating, her lungs to cease filling with breath. It was as if she were drowning, over and over, and each time she began to pull herself above water, she would slip.

His voice was there, most disturbing of all. Telling her to calm herself, that she was safe. She did not doubt that she was safe from the moment she heard his voice, but even on the edge of death she had enough sense to know that something about him was strange, too strange to be trusted. All through the night, she fought her body’s wish to die and her brain’s insistence to wake, suspended in an in-between world with a man she did not know and who couldn’t be there.

With a strangled cry, she sat up, suddenly loosed from the medicated grasp of sleep. She felt her face, her hair, then felt for the phone. She’d had it in her hand just a moment ago, to call for help. She patted the bed, her hand coming to rest on another hand, a cold hand, lying atop the bedclothes. With a scream, she lurched away from the figure who straightened himself, casting bleary eyes around the room.

“Cassandra,” Viktor breathed. “Thank God.”

He sat beside the bed on the stool that usually stood before her vanity. His shirt, blindingly white in the dark, was rumpled and the sleeves rolled back. His pale forearms had pillowed his head on the edge of the bed. He looked as though he’d been there all night.

“What are you doing here?” she shrieked, reaching for something, anything, to throw at him. It was a gross invasion of privacy for him to walk into her home and sit beside her as she slept and—

Her hand closed on the bottle of pills, and she remembered.

“I almost didn’t get here in time,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I’m glad you called me.”

“I didn’t call you,” she snapped, but she couldn’t remember. She’d had the phone in her hand, hadn’t she? Where was it now?

“You must have broken it when you fell, because the line went dead,” he explained patiently, scooping up broken plastic pieces off her vanity. “I don’t think you’ll be able to fix it.”

“But why would I have called you?” she asked, not that he would know the answer. Her mortification grew by the second. She’d called him, despite barely knowing him, which showed she was, like, obsessed with him or something. And he was a client. Unprofessional on so many levels. “I’m so sorry, I would never—”

He waved a hand. “Nonsense. I could tell from your voice that something was wrong and came straight over. What on earth were you doing, Cassandra?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t know. It was an accident.”

It
had
been an accident, hadn’t it? She scrolled through the events of the night in her mind. She’d taken too many pills, she knew that well enough. When she’d realized her mistake, she’d tried to call for help…but had it really been a mistake? Why hadn’t she called 911? Why hadn’t she gotten real help, instead of calling a client who might not have bothered to come to her aid at all? Had she really wanted to die?

“I am glad to hear that,” he said, his soft accent making the words sound more intimate than they really were. He ran his fingers through his mussed white hair, a gesture he must have performed countless times while she’d slept. The top buttons of his shirt were open, revealing the pale flesh beneath, and the sight held Cassie’s gaze for longer than she meant it to.

“Why did you come?” She squeezed her eyes shut in embarrassment. “I meant, why would you bother? I called you, so I obviously wanted you to come here. But you don’t know me. Why would you take the time?”

He shifted on the stool, stretching one long leg out, then the other. “I don’t know. I think if I were in need of help, I would want someone to come to my aid.”

A rich, powerful man like Viktor Novotny coming down from his ivory tower to help her? She hated herself for being so jaded, but she couldn’t help but feel there would be some kind of ulterior motive woven in to this act of kindness. With his type, there always was. “Well, thank you. I think I’ll be okay now.”

“You wish for me to go?” he asked uncertainly, as though he wanted to stay here in her apartment that smelled like puke and was probably smaller than his guest bathroom at home. There definitely was something weird about this guy.

She smiled weakly and nodded. “Don’t worry, I won’t call you again.”

“If you need anything,” he said, reaching to put one hand on her arm. The shrieks of the monsters filled her ears, and she flinched from him. His eyes clouded with hurt.

“I’m sorry, I’m just…jumpy. Probably the drugs wearing off.” She shrugged, knowing she was a good liar who had just had a rare slip up.

He swallowed, the sound audible, the way his throat moved looking almost painful. “I know that you are troubled—”

“It was an accident,” she snapped.

“And I believe you.” He hesitated. “I know you have…nightmares. Episodes, perhaps? During your waking hours, as you did at my apartment?”

Her cheeks burned, and she knew he could see the embarrassment written on her face. “No. That never happened before. I was kind of thinking you had something to do with it.”

“Me?”

God, how could she do this when the guy had just saved her life?
Self-preservation, that’s how.
“Yeah. How do I know that wine you gave me wasn’t drugged?”

He leaned forward. “You think I would have to drug you?”

His entire being, from the looming expanse of his broad shoulders to the dark promise of seduction in his deep voice, caused sparks of awareness to race through her, but she wouldn’t show it. She flipped her hair over her shoulder and shot back, “What, because I’m a prostitute? You don’t need to drug me, you can just throw a wad of cash at me and my panties will fall off?”

“No.” He leaned closer. Their noses almost touched. If she had wanted to, she could have brushed her lips against his. He continued, in a voice every bit as deep and dark as her most erotic daydreams. “I would not have to drug you because if I wished to seduce you, I would. I could do things to you that would make you beg for it, Cassandra. I could give you pleasure like you’ve never felt in your life, and by the time I was finished, you would be screaming my name.”

She cleared her throat to hide the huge gulp of air she took. She’d had a taste of him already, and knew with aching certainty that he could make good on his threat. As much as she hated herself for admitting it, a part of her wanted him to. “Well, I’m glad you think so. But I’m not interested. Don’t call me, don’t contact me through the club, don’t ever come here again. Do you understand?”

He straightened, looking as though he’d suddenly remembered his surroundings. He fastened the top two buttons of his shirt, his face so devoid of emotion that he appeared almost alien. “Yes, of course. I understand perfectly. Good night, then.”

Only after he’d collected his jacket and left did Cassie notice the broken window pane.

Chapter Three

For three nights, Cassandra didn’t sleep. She didn’t take her pills. She sat up in bed, staring at the cardboard she’d taped over the hole in the window. Rationally, she knew that if a window hadn’t kept him out in the first place, a broken window wouldn’t make much difference in him getting in, but cold logic wouldn’t set her at ease. Constant surveillance at least gave her some charade of control.

How had he found her? She was certain she hadn’t called him, after she saw the broken window. Had he intended to, what, attack her? Kill her? But then he’d stayed and nursed her through an overdose. Those didn’t seem like the actions of a cold-hearted murderer. Every time she tried to convince herself otherwise, she remembered the way he’d fallen asleep at her bedside, waiting for a sign that she was all right. Of course, she would have been better off in a hospital, but they might have locked her up for attempting suicide. A rich, smart guy like Viktor would have known that. Maybe he hadn’t called for help because he wanted to protect her.