Kiss Across Time (Kiss Across Time Series) (10 page)

Graham snorted.
 
“Sez you.”

Andy scowled and stood up.
 
“I always figured you was smart.
 
Guess I was wrong.”
 
He touched Taylor’s arm.
 
“Let’s get you out of here.”

Graham slapped the table.
 
“No one is going nowhere,” he repeated stoically.

The door to the apartment busted open and at the same time, the big sliding glass door/window that gave access to the tiny strip balcony imploded inwards.
 
The noise of the plate glass giving way was shockingly loud, and punctuated by Amber’s screams.

As bodies clambered into the room from the window and pushed through the doorway, Jesus ducked under the table with a pithy Spanish oath, showing a better sense of self-preservation than anyone else in the room.

Graham stood up to face the invaders with a smile on his face.

They looked like ordinary men.
 
Tall, short, young, middle-aged, balding, fit and unfit.
 
They wore no uniforms and carried no weapons, and that told Taylor immediately who they were.
 

Vampires.
 
The queen’s people.
 
Only they would attempt a home invasion without weapons.

She had been found.

Amber was still screaming, and when the first of the invaders reached her, he calmly reached out and grabbed the girl’s neck and squeezed.
 
There was a horrible sound of flesh and bone grinding together.
 
Amber’s screamed cut off abruptly.
 
He let her go and she dropped to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Graham’s eyes widened almost comically.
 
“Hey…!” he began.

The man, the vampire, whose eyes seemed almost tawny in the last of the sunset light coming through the window, turned to Graham.
 
His top lip pulled back and he snarled.
 
It was an inhuman sound.
 
His two teeth, his canines, were extended.

Graham gave out a helpless, choked, shocked sound.
 
It was the last one he made, before the teeth clamped into the side of his neck and tore out his throat.

Taylor caught Andy’s hand in hers.
 
“Don’t resist.
 
Don’t fight back,” she murmured.
 
“Just stand here with me.”

He was hyperventilating, but she saw him nod from the corner of her eye.

“They’re here for me.
 
Once they have me, they’ll leave and you will be safe, I think.”

“Taylor…” Andy whispered.
 
“I want to help.”

“Tell who comes to find me what happened,” she whispered back.

The tawny-eyed man’s hands gripped her shoulders and she was ripped from Andy’s grasp and pulled across the room.
 
There was so much strength in the man she was barely able to touch her feet to the ground.
 
There was no way to resist.
 
She was borne across the room and out the door in seconds, and she felt a trickle of relief as the others who had been behind the tawny-eyed man turned and followed him out of the apartment.

Andy was safe.

The Menzies Horowitz Theatre had been built in Victorian times, to match a grand vision of theatre at its finest, refined audiences, culture that would fill the auditorium and the coffers for a generation or more.
 
Then came two world wars and a depression that diminished audiences beyond the point of return.

The Menzies Horowitz Theatre shut down in the thirties and was a lemon; every buyer who had attempted to get the building constructively operating in some fashion closed up a few months later, their money spent and their spirit conquered.

The sad, defeated air seemed to wreath the inside of the theatre with shadows and damp dust, sucking it of color.
 
Everything looked like a monotone shade of brown, to Taylor. But she was having trouble adjusting her vision after being blindfolded for so long.
 
Even stationary objects were jumping around, her focus not quite keeping still long enough to anchor them in her mind.

She tripped and would have fallen flat on her face if Tawny Eyes hadn’t been gripping her arm.
 
He hauled her back onto her feet and pushed her forward, which put more pressure on the socks tied around her wrists, making the tendons and bones in her wrists ache just a little bit more.

There was a set of rough wooden steps pushed up against the old fashioned stage and Tawny Eyes steered her toward them.
 
As they reached the foot of the stairs, Taylor heard voices from backstage, coming closer.
 
One of them sounded familiar.
 
Male.
 
But the ancient panels and stage flats were muffling the sound, making her uncertain.

Then the owners of the voices stepped onto the stage.
 

Tira.
 
And Jeoffery.

Taylor
did
trip, her whole foot and shin sliding down the front edge of the roughhewn step.
 
Sharp pain speared her shin and she hissed.
 
Because she couldn’t prop herself up, she fell forward.

Tawny Eyes, as silent as he had been throughout the hour long journey to this theatre, yanked her up by her arm once more, saving her from smacking her face right into the edge of the stage.
 
Only this time, he kept on lifting, his other hand boosting under her knees.
 
She was tossed onto the stage, where she rolled a couple of times over the dusty old planking, to come to a sprawled stop on her back, her arms held awkwardly underneath her because of the sock-ties.

“Who is…
Taylor
?” Jeoffery said.
 
“What on earth are you wearing?”

The urge to giggle was insanely strong.
 
She lifted her head to look up at him.
 
“You always had a problem with priorities, Jeoff.
 
I’m lying tossed on the floor with my arms tied, barefoot, because you betrayed me to these monsters, and all you can worry about is what I’m fucking wearing?”

“I
betrayed
you?”
 
He crouched down next to her.
 
“I’m doing you a favor.
 
You have no idea what I have done, the strings I have pulled to get you here.”

Tira stepped up to Jeoff and put her hand on his shoulder.
 
She was inordinately pleased with herself.

Taylor looked at Jeoff again.
 
He was clueless.
 
Pity trickled through her.
 
“Yeah, I do know exactly what you’ve done,” she told him.
 
“It’s you who has lost the plot.”

He blinked.
 
Then he cleared his throat and stood up and faced Tira.
 
He towered over her, even though he wasn’t a tall man.
 
“Are the bindings really necessary?
 
Treating her this way is not what I had in mind.”

“You wanted to speak to her,” Tira told him, her voice melodious and full bodied in comparison to his light tenor.
 
“It was necessary to bring her here one way or another.”

“This sort of violence is completely superfluous,” Jeoff protested.
 
“We’re all civilized people.
 
I just want to talk to her, to make her see reason.”

“Too late, Jeoff,” Taylor told him.
 

Tira reached up and tucked a stray lock of Jeoff’s baby fine hair behind his ear.
 
“Far, far too late, my handsome one.
 
Taylor understands far more than you do.
 
But please go ahead.”

“Untie her first,” Jeoff insisted.

Tira smiled and kissed his cheek.
 
“Very well.”
 
She turned and crouched down next to Taylor.
 
“Taylor knows very well how strong everyone in this theatre really is, and how weak she is in comparison.
  
She values her life and won’t try anything silly.
 
Will she?” Tira removed the ties and looked Taylor in the eye.

Taylor sat up and rubbed her wrists.
 
The top layer of skin had been burned away by the chaffing of the socks.
 
“I’m not an idiot,” she told Tira.

“No, I don’t believe you are,” Tira agreed.
 
She stood up and stepped back.
 
Then she waved Jeoffery forward.
 
“Now it is your turn, Dr. Danforth.”

“What, here?” he asked, astonished, looking around the dim interior of the theatre.

“We won’t interrupted here,” Tira assured him.

“She means, there won’t be any inconvenient witnesses,” Taylor interpreted.

Jeoff shot her a look that was pure annoyance, but there was an expression in his eyes.
 
He was troubled.
 
Taylor knew he was listening to her and deep in the back of his mind, he was processing what she was saying.

He cleared his throat.
 
“Taylor…”
 
He shook his head.
 
“God, look at you.
 
I can’t believe I’m offering a tenured position to someone who looks like they just walked out of an east side mall.”

Taylor climbed slowly and painfully to her feet, giving herself time to hide her first reaction.
 
“You’re offering me my job back?” she asked.

“Your job and tenure,” he said.

“
If
I drop my thesis,” she clarified.

“Well, yes.
 
But there were other promising lines in your research – I’ll help you find another one.
 
You won’t lose all your work.”

She couldn’t help herself.
 
She glanced at Tira.
 
“Validation, as long as I don’t mention Domhnall, right?”

Tira smiled, showing perfect, white and very human-looking teeth.

There was a steady buzzing in her mind, and a heavy thudding in her chest.
 
Taylor looked at Jeoffery, trying to think past the noise in her mind.
 
“You really think the history board will go for that?
 
Taking me back?”

“They’ve already agreed,” Jeoffery told her.
 
“Once I explained that this silly Domhnall business would disappear, they were actually very pleased with the idea.”

“And that’s the only condition?” she insisted, playing desperately for time.

“Well…”
 
Jeoffery gave her a smile.
 
“I want you back, too, Taylor.
 
But I won’t make that a condition.”

She could only stare at him.

“Why did you think I did this?” he asked.

Tira’s smile broadened even more.

“For power,” Taylor said helplessly.
 
“For the influence Tira could give you.
 
What bargain did you set with her, anyway?”

Jeoffery’s warm expression fled and he looked at Tira. “You were right,” he said.
 
“She guessed straight away.”

“I told you she would not come back to you.”

“How did you know?”

“Let’s call it a woman’s intuition.”
 
Tira rested her hand on Jeoffery’s arm and looked at Taylor.
 
“Of course, there is a condition of my own, if you accept Jeoffery’s very generous offer.”

Understanding dawned.
 
Taylor looked from the queen to Jeoffery.
 
“That was the bargain between you.
 
He stalks me and finds me for you, so you can get me here and dangle his stupid offer, with your condition tacked on to it.”
 
She pointed at Tira.
 
“You’re not interested in Jeoffery at all.
 
You want me.”

Tira’s smile grew even more.
 
“And you know the condition, too.”

To be made a vampire.
 
The queen’s vampire.
 
A virtual slave at her command.
 
Taylor shivered.
 
“What if I refuse?”

“Why would you refuse?” Jeoff asked.
 
“You’ve worked for tenure all your life.”

Taylor laughed.
 
It wasn’t a healthy laugh.
 
“Jeoffery, you’re out of your league.
 
You need to shut up now.”

“Taylor!”
 
He sounded both affronted and shocked.

Tira hissed at him.

“Don’t hurt him,” Taylor told her quickly as Jeoffery recoiled, astonished.

“He’s at the end of his usefulness,” Tira told her.
 
“He’s in the way.”

“He’s just a human,” Taylor replied.
 
“He has no idea what is happening.
 
You’ve used him.
 
Let him go.
 
There’s no need to harm him.”

Tira studied her.
 
“He betrayed you, quite willingly, and now you defend him.
 
Yet you patently do not like him.
 
Why do you do this?”

“I value life.
 
All life.
 
You seem to have lost that focus.”

Jeoffery swallowed, his throat working.
 
Sweat dotted his upper lip, showing that he was following the conversation just fine, now.
 
“What
are
you?” he whispered, staring at Tira.

“You don’t want to know what it is you were dealing with. Just be glad it wasn’t the devil.”

He shivered.

“Leave,” Tira spat at him.
 
“Now, before I change my mind.”

He nodded and hurried backstage, almost running.

It left Taylor and Tira alone on the stage, but Taylor knew that Tawny Eyes and the others would not be far away.
 
Besides, Tira could probably tear Taylor’s head from her body without too much effort.

Taylor took a deep breath.
 
“You can speak plainly now.
 
You want me turned.
 
Why?”

“There is something about you, Maggie Taylor Yates.
 
You captured the hearts and minds of two of the most powerful vampires in the city, inside twenty-four hours.
 
You are the first among humans and vampires that can travel through time with their mind the way I can.
 
And you stand defiant before me, bargaining for the life of a mere human who has betrayed you.”
 
Tira crossed her arms.
 
“I want you by me, where I can watch you.
 
I want you
mine
.”

“And how is that any different from slavery?”

Tira smiled again.
 
“Slavery can be very comfortable.”

“Taylor just walked away from love because she didn’t like the bonds that came with it.
 
I don’t think she’s going to accept yours, Tira.”

Brody’s voice
.
 
From somewhere above them and echoing around the theatre in a way that made it impossible to locate where he was.

“Ah, the cavalry.
 
Right on time,” Tira exclaimed.
 
She looked around the auditorium, searching for a glimpse of them.
 
“Shall I explain what happens if she doesn’t accept?”

Silence.

“What happens?” Taylor asked, feeling a deep sense of foreboding.
 
Why was she even asking the question?
 
Did she really want to know?

“I can make your life such a misery, Taylor.
 
I can destroy everything you hold dear.”

“I’m alone in the world,” Taylor assured her.

“First, I’ll make sure Jeoffery and his children are utterly destroyed in soul and spirit, one step after another.”

Taylor drew in a shaky breath.
 
Jeoff’s youngest was barely three and sweet and fresh as a daisy.

“I’ll turn them all,” Tira assured her.
 
“Then I’ll dismantle the life of your friend Andy, and
his
friends.”