Pursued (6 page)

“I have to get ready for when you bring her back,” Sylvan said. “There are further symptoms but I don’t have time to tell you now. And I’m afraid if she’s gone past the stages of physical hunger and erratic emotions …well…”

“Well, what?” Merrick demanded, his heart beating in his throat. He could hear the reluctance in Sylvan’s voice—the reluctance of any good medic to give bad news.

“If she’s gone past those stages she may be too far gone for you to save,” Sylvan said, sounding regretful. “I’m sorry, Merrick, but that’s the truth.”

“Goddess damn it!” Merrick swore. “There’s no time now but you’re going to explain this whole fucked up
hunger
thing in detail as soon as I bring her back.”

Sylvan’s response was immediate. “Absolutely,” he promised. “Just remember to touch her, Merrick. Give her plenty of skin to skin contact—that should help ease her symptoms.”

“I don’t understand that part—why?” Merrick asked as he killed the engines.

“Because,” Sylvan’s voice was fainter now, as though the connection was fading. “It isn’t food she’s hungry for, Merrick. It’s
you.”

* * * * *

To her immense relief, the giant breakfast she had ordered was on the table when Elise got back from her mini break-down in the bathroom. James had pushed it all to her side while his own held only a chipped white ceramic mug filled with untouched black coffee.

“Well?” He raised an eyebrow at her, indicating the plates and platters all filled with a ridiculous array of artery clogging breakfast food at its finest. There were scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, a stack of pancakes with a pat of butter melting on top, toast with jelly, hash browns and last but not least, that timeless Southern favorite—fluffy buttermilk biscuits drowning in a lake of sausage gravy.

“Wow.” Elise’s stomach made another audible gurgle but this time she didn’t care. She sat down to the table and pulled the stack of pancakes forward. There was no time for syrup—no time to do anything but grab a fork and dig in.

Despite James’ dubious looks, the food was really good. The pancakes were light and fluffy and the eggs were scrambled to perfection. The bacon was crisp, the coffee hot and the sausage gravy was salty and creamy at the same time. All in all, Elise thought it was the best meal she’d ever eaten. She’d gone to some extremely posh and expensive restaurants with James but none of them could touch the humble IHOP spread in front of her.

But despite her pleasure in the food, she began to feel that something was still wrong…very wrong indeed. The feeling started in her pelvis or, to be more accurate, in her crotch. It began as a tingling sensation and then became a warmth that seemed to enflame her from the waist down.

What is this?
she thought, shifting uncomfortably.
If I didn’t know better I’d think I was aroused somehow.
But that didn’t happen to her—it was one of the things she’d managed to put in the vault and forget about. So what the hell was this weird new feeling?

“Darling? Are you quite all right?” James leaned across the table, looking at her anxiously and Elise realized she’d stopped in mid-bite with a forkful of pancakes halfway to her mouth.

“I…I think so,” she said slowly, putting down the fork. “I just feel…feel so
funny
all of a sudden.”

He snorted. “I should think
so.
After eating all that junk! Anyway, I thought you were a vegetarian—you never have anything but coffee and grapefruit when we have breakfast together.”

“That’s because that’s all
you
ever have,” Elise said distractedly. “If you’d asked me, I would have told you I like breakfast food. You just never…never asked.” She could barely finish her sentence because the heat which had pooled in her pelvis seemed to have intensified, radiating outward like a ball of molten lead between her thighs.
My God, what’s wrong with me? What’s
happening
to me?
Suddenly she felt like she was going to be sick.

“Darling?” James asked, frowning. “Look, if you’re finished eating I
really
have to be going. I can’t miss my flight and we’ve already spent enough time—”

“Excuse me!” She bolted up for the second time that day, sending platters of half-eaten food across the table toward her hapless fiancé. James shot out his hands, attempting to fend off the flying pancakes and ended up with a lapful of scrambled eggs and sausage gravy instead. Elise ignored his cry of irritation and rushed back to the ladies room yet again.

She barely made it to the handicapped stall and bent over the toilet before everything came up.
Never,
she thought miserably as wave after wave of nausea hit her.
I’ll never eat breakfast again. I swear, I promise. Just let this be over, please God, let it be over.

She finished puking at last and wiped her mouth on a swatch of scratchy toilet paper she fumbled off the roll. Stumbling to the sink, she rinsed out her mouth and tried to swallow a little water. Outside the door, she heard someone knocking.

“Elise? Elise are you all right in there? Listen, darling, we really have to go
now.
I have to run to the office for a change—I can’t go to Japan wearing your breakfast on my trousers. Elise?”

“A minute,” she managed to gasp. “Please, James, I just need one more minute.”

“We don’t
have
another minute. What if a reporter from one of the news vids shows up? I’m telling you, Elise, I
can’t
be seen like this!”

“I know. I’m sorry…sorry…” She tried to make her voice stronger but the words came out in a whisper. Now that her stomach was empty, the wrong feeling was growing again. The feeling of heat, of need…a different kind of hunger between her thighs. What was it? What was causing it?

“Elise!” James was practically pounding on the door now. “If you don’t come out, I’m coming in. I—” Suddenly his voice changed and it became apparent he was talking to someone else. “Hello. What are
you
doing here?”

“She’s in there?” A deep familiar voice, like stones rubbing together in a riverbed made Elise’s heart jump. Could it be…?

“Yes, but she’s indisposed at the moment.” James sounded suddenly haughty—his posh British accent becoming much more pronounced.

“I don’t give a fuck about indisposed,” the other voice growled. “Elise? You okay in there?”

“Merrick…” His name was nothing but a whisper on her lips. The fire inside her was eating her now, burning her from the inside out. Elise reached for the door but didn’t make it. Her legs refused to work and she sank down on the grimy floor instead.

“That’s it—I’m coming in. If you aren’t decent, cover up.” The wooden door banged open and Merrick barged in, ducking his head to avoid hitting his forehead on the lintel. James was right behind him.

“You can’t go in there—it’s the
ladies
room! Don’t you Kindred understand the concept of privacy?”

Merrick ignored him. He knelt on the dirty floor beside Elise and looked at her anxiously. “Hey baby, you okay?”

The use of his pet endearment for her nearly brought tears to her eyes. “No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “No, I don’t know what it is but something…Merrick, something is wrong with me. Really, really
wrong
.”

“I know it, baby. But don’t worry—I’m going to fix it.” He scooped her up off the floor as easily as if she was a doll. “Put your face against my neck,” he ordered, his deep voice growling through her entire body. “Press against me as much as you can.”

Elise did as he said, pressing her hot cheek to the side of his throat and inhaling deeply. The warm, animalistic scent of fur and smoke and musk filled her nose and immediately she began to feel better. Or at least, slightly less
wrong.

“Wait!” James sounded almost panicked as Merrick carried her out of the ladies room. “Excuse me but you can’t do that! You can’t just
take
her!”

“The hell I can’t,” Merrick snarled. “Get out of my way or you’ll be eating my fist for first meal.”

“Is there a problem here?”

Elise opened her eyes to see the huge biker she’d mentally dubbed Blackbeard was blocking Merrick’s way down the aisle between the rows of booths.

“Yes, absolutely there’s a problem.” James’ voice had gone shrill with outrage. “This…this
Kindred
is attempting to abduct my fiancé!”

“Well we can’t have that, can we boys?” Blackbeard, grinned at bikers who were watching the confrontation with interest. He looked at Merrick. “James here is a pal of mine. I can’t just let you go off with his girl.”

“She’s sick,” Merrick said shortly. “I’m taking her for treatment.”

“I
can take her,” James said angrily. “Tampa General is just down the road and I’m on their board of directors. A word from me and she’ll be seen at once.”

Merrick shook his head. “Sorry, buddy but what she needs, you can’t give her. She’s got to go back to the Mother Ship.”

“I don’t believe you,” James said belligerently. “I think you’ve just formed some kind of irrational attachment to her. You have some type of Beauty and the Beast complex and you think because you found Elise after her ordeal she’s yours for the taking. Well, she’s
not.
Now put her down
right now.”

Merrick glared at him. “Beauty and the Beast, huh? You’re fucking lucky I have my hands full, you know that?”

“James, please,” Elise said, trying to raise her voice above a whisper. “Can’t you see I’m sick?
I need to go.”

“There’s nothing they can do for you up in that floating freak-show of a ship that can’t be done right here on Earth,” James said firmly. “You’d see that if you were in your right mind, darling.”

Merrick raised his eyebrows. “Did you say
freak show?”

“Er, yes…” James stepped back a little but his tone remained belligerent. “I did.”

“Hey, James, you want me to bust ’im up? Teach him a little lesson about trying to take someone else’s girl?” Blackbeard cracked his knuckles menacingly.

Elise thought James looked vastly relieved. He always preferred to avoid physical violence himself, though he wasn’t above having it done for him. “As a matter of fact, yes. I think he
could
use a lesson,” he said, nodding decisively.

Mentally, Elise groaned. Now they would
never
get out of here. Her earlier estimation that Blackbeard was almost as tall as Merrick had been right and he had plenty of friends to back him up. What were they going to do? But Merrick seemed utterly calm.

“Elise, baby, can you stand for just a minute?” he asked, looking down at her.

She nodded. “I…I think so.”

“Good. I’m going to put you down and you stand behind me. This will only take a minute, I promise.”

“All right.” She nodded again and he set her gently on her feet. James tried to reach for her but she evaded his hands and held onto the back of Merrick’s thin black shirt.

“No, James, I’m sick. Leave me alone!”

“But darling—”

“There’s just gonna be two hits.” Blackbeard’s loud voice interrupted whatever he’d been about to say. Elise peeked around Merrick’s side to see the biker was swaggering forward, still talking. “Two hits, buddy,” he repeated. “Me hitting you and you hitting the fl—”

Merrick swung. It was a swift, deadly punch that landed dead center in the biker’s face and plowed through his teeth like a bowling ball knocking down pins. There was a sickening crunching sound and then Blackbeard fell first to his knees and then to his face on the sticky IHOP floor. He twitched once and then didn’t move again. A puddle of dark crimson blood began to spread outward like a growing stain.

“All right.” Merrick wiped his bloody knuckles on his black leather flight pants and stared hard at the other bikers. “Any other takers?”

The sight of their fallen giant seemed to shake the bikers to the core. They sat frozen in their booth, none of them saying a word.

“Get him!” James urged shrilly. “I’ll pay a handsome reward to the man who puts him down.”

The bikers shifted uneasily, but there were no takers. Like the Philistines after Goliath was dead, they seemed to lack direction and courage.

“Looks like your money isn’t worth as much as you thought.” Merrick gave him a hard stare and then turned to Elise and held out his arms.” Come on, baby.” She came to him at once and he lifted her and held her close to his chest. “This female is sick,” he announced. “I’m taking her to the Mother Ship for treatment. Anybody else got a problem with that?”

“
I
have a problem with it,” James declared angrily. “Elise is my fiancé! You can’t just waltz in here and take her.”

“Watch me.” Merrick shifted Elise so that she was cradled more securely in his arms. “Gonna get you out of here, baby.”

Elise buried her face in his neck again and breathed in his scent. “Yes,” she whispered. “All right.”

She opened her eyes just long enough to see the outraged look on James’ face and then closed them to block out everything but the feel of Merrick’s big body close to hers and his strong arms surrounding her.
Safe. I’m safe now,
she thought.

But was she? Inside her, the strange, wrong feeling was still there. The heat between her legs, the all consuming hunger she couldn’t deny or explain, was still growing and she didn’t know how to stop or even contain it.

All she could do was cling to Merrick and trust him to make her well, as he had promised.

By the time he got Elise back to his star-duster, which was parked behind the HKR building, she was jittering in his arms like a broken toy. Uncontrollable tremors ran through her, wracking her delicate body until Merrick was afraid she would shake herself apart.

“Elise? Baby?” Despite his mixed feelings about her, he couldn’t help the rush of fear and concern for her that washed over him as he held her shaking body.

“S-s-sorry,” she gasped, her teeth chattering so hard she could barely speak. “D-don’t known wh-what’s wrong w-with me.”