Seducing the Vampire (30 page)

T
HE MORTAL MAN SLIPPED
from Viviane's embrace. She wiped blood from her mouth. She had dreamed about blood for centuries, though she'd lost her grasp on time. Good thing that, or she would truly be lunatic now. She was not. She was completely sound.

Mostly,
a little voice inside her head whispered.

The man groaned and stretched out along the carpeted floor, a satisfied smile on his face. The men today—had it been over two centuries?—wore their clothing to conform to their bodies. The soft white shirt hugged his thin torso and the trousers were nicely tailored. He wore a small diamond earring in the left ear only.

No lace. No frockcoats. Not a single horse and carriage out on the streets. The moving machine they had put her into to get her here baffled. Yet she'd found Notre Dame. It had looked the same, had been a refuge.

Now here she sat in a dark room with chairs in a row and a large white wall on one end. How had she gotten in here? Had this man put her here? It was difficult to recall things that had happened before she'd taken his blood. Only bits and pieces, like Notre Dame and the noisy machines.

The man beside her moaned and tucked his hands under his chin. He tasted rich. She would keep him until he died.

An animal howl echoed through the building, clattering
the walls. Viviane searched in the darkness and found the door, threw it open and dashed into the bare hallway.

Again the howl skittered up her spine. It sounded wild, feral. Familiar. Viviane hated wolves. Yes?

Oh, yes, wolf slayer
.

So long she had been trapped underground. Frozen, yet ever knowing. Seeing all. Which hadn't been much. Though occasionally rats would swarm over the glass coffin.

She cried out in disgust and wrapped her arms about herself. So many of them, crawling, stirring, swarming over her. Their long horrid tails flicking across the glass. And she, so fearful the glass would crack and they would spill over her like a hideous flood.

She crouched, eyeing the floor. They crawled along the walls, silent, until they were not silent. Their chattering squeaks still rang loudly in memory.

Again the howl rippled through the atmosphere. The wolf summoned the rats, hordes of them, surely. Unwilling to remain and discover the source of the sound, Viviane dashed down the hallway.

“Must get out of here. Need to be safe. I am free!”

And yet, what would she do? Where would she go? The world had changed. She was not dead!

“I will survive.” Yes, she was strong. “I always survive.” She would take the man with the rich blood with her.

Pushing open a door, she entered an open port that housed two of the noisy machines. They had wheels but no horses. Both were shiny black, like the sheen on Constantine's eyes.

“I will kill him,” Viviane ground through clenched teeth.

She touched the slick surface of one machine, yet at
that moment the howl again tapped against her brain. “Rhys?”

The name came to her, unattached to memory or image, yet it weighed so heavily in her mind that she turned to the door and stepped back inside the hall.

He'd sat in the back of one of the machines next to her. Pleading her forgiveness. So big and strong. Not familiar. But—yes, something about him.

“Rhys Hawkes,” she said on a gasp. Images of her running her fingers through his hair, gasping as his kisses traveled her skin…

“My lover, you are here? Where are you?”

Following the insistent howl, Viviane tracked past the open door where the mortal lay enthralled from her bite, and onward down a long passage that turned sharply right. There were no lights, but she saw well. Ahead, a small green light blinked beside a door handle.

The howl came from behind the door. Viviane slapped her palms to the cold metal door. “Rhys!”

She remembered now. She had thought of nothing but Rhys Hawkes the moment Salignac and Grim had abandoned her in the dark depths beneath Paris. Her fingers had frozen about the hummingbird she still grasped, yet she had thought to feel the warmth of her lover's skin imbued within the polished wood. He had been there with her.

Why was he not here for her now?

He put you in the machine
.

Had he? Her thoughts were scattered.
Not dead
. Why did he abandon me?
So alone. The rats…

She pounded the door, but howls answered.

One thing she did know; her lover only howled during the full moon. There were no windows in the hall. She did not know if it was night or day, but she guessed the
moon must be high and full. Which meant Rhys must be werewolf.

A form she had once run from. A form she had defiantly stood up to. A form she recalled had been ruled by his vampire.

Viviane had contemplated Rhys's double nature for ages while underground. Could it have been centuries before her mind had finally gone blank and her eyes void?

She had decided one truth. One pertinent detail they both had overlooked. It was…

She clutched her gut. “Hungry.”

The mortal donor lay close. She could feel his heartbeats. Many times she had felt a heartbeat near. In the darkness. Others had come close but had never found her. She wanted blood. She needed blood. Blood would—

“He needs my blood!” She beat the door. “I can tame your vampire! Let me in!”

Down the hall, the mortal stumbled out from the room. Viviane dashed to him. “Rhys is trapped. You must help me.”

Drunk from the swoon, the mortal eyed her cautiously as she grabbed his hand and dragged him down the hall.

“He's in there for his own safety,” he said. “And to protect you.”

“Get him out! I can save him.”

“Save him?” He laughed. “He just saved
you,
lady.”

“My name is Viviane.” She sauntered toward him and ran her fingers down the front of his shirt. Warm, so warm.
Never get warm again
. The mortal's eyes tracked hers, sobering him instantly. “Rhys is my lover.”

The man nodded. “I know about you two. You remember him? You're not…mad? Insane?”

She tilted her head. The scent of his blood hypnotized.
“Would you not be insane after being buried alive two centuries?”

“Yes. But you seem pretty rational right now.”

“The blood makes me clear.”

And it would make Rhys clear, too.

“You will open this door right now.”

Lunging, she bit into his vein again. Hot, thick blood oozed over her teeth and tongue. He did not struggle but instead embraced her as she forced her persuasion into his thoughts.

Open the door.
“Now.”

“Yes.” He leaned aside and tapped on the number pad near the door. “But this only opens the outer door. He's locked in a cage inside.”

“You'll open the cage.”

“I—” She gripped his chin and squeezed. “I will,” he hastily agreed. “Anything you ask of me. But as soon as I do that, I'm closing this outer door. I will not let him loose to torment innocents. You'll be trapped inside.”

“Trapped with my lover?” Viviane stood aside. “Open the door for me.”

The square cage stretched to the ceiling, twice as high as a man. Around the top tiny blue lights cast an eerie glow over the creature who now stood at the center of the cage, seething, its fangs revealed, its talons bared and prepared to strike.

Not a creature. “My lover.” A man who had taken her away from the despicable Constantine de Salignac.

A man who had not rescued her when Salignac had enacted his greatest revenge.

“Rhys?”

The wolf huffed, and slapped a paw about one thin bar.

It was him, her lover. The gray fur declared it so. She was not afraid.

“Why? Why did you not save me?”

The werewolf twisted its head and reared back, howling long and loud so that the sound cloaked Viviane like a sodden garment she could not shuck. It charged the bars, slashing out with an arm. It meant harm.

“Your werewolf does not scare me.” She lifted her head, drawing a breath through her nose for courage. “You couldn't be there,” she said, remembering now it had been a night like tonight when the moon had reigned. “I wish you had been. I thought of you. Always.” She lifted her head proudly and beat her breast. “Not dead!”

The bars rattled, but no matter how much the wolf beat against them, they did not budge. Strong metal. Must be magical, she decided. But the cage door had been unlocked. The werewolf was unaware. She sought the door, eyeing the far side, and found it.

Dare she?

So many years she had thought about this. Decades, surely. And then the rats would make her scream. Silently. Achingly. She had only desired Rhys's warm embrace. To know safety. To remember love.

“Do you love me?” she asked, walking toward the cage door. “I love you, Rhys. I think.”

She glanced aside, opening her palm. A wooden hummingbird? Who had given her this?

Viviane shook her head. Her thoughts jumbled so easily. “Blood,” she whispered.

Yes, the blood.

Gripping the cage door, she swung it wide. The werewolf leaped out and slammed her body to the floor. Her skull hit the floor hard, and she winced, blinking at the bright flashes interspersed with blackness.

The beast roared, exposing its long maw of glistening teeth. Teeth that could take off her arm or head with one
bite. Fearless, Viviane clasped his head, determination forcing her actions before she lost focus.

“I love you, Rhys Hawkes, and I will tame you this night. I know what you need.”

Chasing the painful and unanswerable desire she had lived in for two centuries, Viviane lunged. Her fangs descended, and she bit into the werewolf's leathery neck where the fur receded to bare skin. The wolf bucked, but she held tight, wrapping her legs about its waist and clinging. Hot blood gushed into her mouth and over her lips, streaming down her chin and neck.

It was difficult to hold fast, but she shoved her hands into the fur on its scalp and licked at the heavy, throbbing vein. So sweet, virile and hot, his blood. The werewolf's blood.

It was all that she needed. Knowledge fit into that empty slot in her mind. She knew. She remembered. She was Viviane LaMourette, strong, free. Rhys Hawkes's lover.

Yet right now her lover, while in werewolf shape, had the mind of a vampire. A vampire who had been enchanted to shackle its vicious desire for blood. A vampire who needed to know a new master, a new patron, a new lover who would blood bond with him.

That master would be her.

With a ferocious twist of his shoulders, Rhys shucked her off him. Viviane landed on the floor, sprawled, crying out at the pain of landing on her hip. The wolf charged her.

She bit into her wrist, opening the flesh raggedly, and the blood spurt. It hit the wolf's maw, staining its teeth crimson.

“Take it,” she gasped. “Taste me for the first time, lover. Know I am yours, and you are mine.”

Dizzied by the gush of blood from her vein, Viviane's lashes fluttered. She closed her eyes to the tug at her wrist as the werewolf lapped in her life's blood.

 

R
HYS CAME TO, SPRAWLED
facedown in a sticky puddle of blood. It did not offend. It smelled sweet. Like wine on a summer afternoon.

He studied his hands, covered with blood, and looked down at his naked body. He had survived the full moon once again. Yet he lay outside the titanium cage.

“Viviane.”

Slapping a hand in the blood, he twisted at the waist to spy her frail body lying next to him, her hair strewn across the floor and curling into the crimson puddle. Her wrist was caked with dried blood where his werewolf had fed, spurred by his vampire to take every last drop—yet he had not.

He must not have taken it all.

“Viviane?” He tugged her into his arms and shook her. So pale, her skin. Her mouth lolled open. “No, you cannot be dead. Please.” Tears dropped onto her blood-stained lips. Rhys cried out.

Just then the lock clicked. The outer door moved inward a few inches. No one entered. It was merely the timed mechanism setting him free.

Never free. Not if you have killed her. Again.

He slapped two fingers aside her throat, searching for a pulse, but he could not find one. Too much hair in the way. He scrambled to move it aside when suddenly her body jerked and she sucked in a breath.

Azure eyes blinked open and fixed to his. The tiny crease at the right side of her mouth appeared.

“Rhys, my love,” she managed to say in the smallest voice. “I've saved you.”

Had she? Hell, the notion of it made him chuckle.

Had their sharing blood indeed tamed his vampire and released him from the darkness? Had she traveled through time, frozen in a glass coffin, to finally set him free?

Only time would tell—and the next full moon.

He wanted to tell her how sorry he was. To explain why he had thought her dead. He wanted to erase the centuries and do it all over again.

Right now, all he needed was to hold Viviane. To kiss her.

Deep in Viviane's kiss he found the man he once was. The man who had walked through the Enlightenment in dark clothing and with his head held down stepped aside. The proud half-breed who had pursued Viviane without relent stepped up and breathed in.

Her breath moved into him, warming him and reigniting his spirit. And he noticed their heartbeats, pressed chest to chest, pulsed in synch. He had consumed her blood, as she had his. Only time would determine their fates.

“Lover,” she whispered against his mouth. For the first time since he'd found her, her eyes were bright, so clear. She moved his hand down to her belly. “Can you feel it?”

The odd question redirected his focus and when Rhys pressed his fingers gently to her smooth stomach, he thought he felt another rhythm. Rapid and small. But how was that possible?

“A child?” he asked.