Twilight Illusions (3 page)

His anger pounded down at her like a physical force. “What do
you think?
”

If his tone and his threatening stance were supposed to intimidate her into cowering silence, it didn't work. She thrust her chin up and held his gaze. “
I think
this is a pattern. And if I'm right and it holds true, then I'm next in line, aren't I? I'll know for sure, then. And you know something, Damien? I almost hope you do come for me. Because I'll be waiting.”

She felt his rage. It seemed to zap and spark in the very air between them. If it did, then it must be wrestling with her own, because she was furious. He hadn't denied a thing.

“Oh, will you?”

“You're damn right I will, and you'd better take me out on the first try, because I won't hesitate. And I never miss.”

“Going to shoot me, are you?”

“Blow your head right off your shoulders. I don't know how many other girls you've left lying dead in your wake, but you messed with the wrong one this time. Tawny was my best friend in this world. It ends here. So give it your best shot, magic man. It's gonna be your last one.”

She turned away from him, started for the front door, but his hand shot out to grip her arm and he twisted her around to face him again.

“You're not going anywhere.”

 

Her eyes widened, eyes the exact color of very old amber. He felt the rush of dread that passed through her. But she didn't show it, didn't cower or even lower her head. Her golden blond hair framed her face so she looked like an angel. At the moment, a fiercely angry, avenging angel. He opened his mind, deliberately opened it, for the first time in aeons. The bombardment stunned him. He released her, his hands automatically pressing to his temples at the force of all that hit him. Voices, thoughts, emotions, sensations. Thousands upon thousands, pummeling him all at once. Too much. Too many.

He closed his eyes, took a staggering step backward. The noise of countless voices pierced his eardrums. Feelings of pain, pleasure, heat, cold, sickness, exertion, trampled over his body until it vibrated as if electrified. Visions flashed in front of his eyes, blinding him. A thousand scents assailed him, a thousand tastes coated his mouth before he managed to block them out, slamming the door of his mind like the lid of a casket. Closing it, sealing it.

For the love of Inanna! It had been so long since he'd attempted to receive the sensations of others…he'd grown in power, in strength, in the ability to do the trick, and at the same time, neglected the taming of his own abilities. He'd need to work on it, relearn the ways to filtering the vibrations, to home in only on the mind in question.

Which, at the moment, was hers.

He opened his eyes, blinking the room into focus. He was alone. He turned to stare down the short hallway. The door stood wide, with only the night beyond it.

Gone. As if she'd never been there.

Damien closed the door and stood for a moment, still trembling with the aftereffects of the blow he'd just taken. He made himself move back into his comfort room. The haven he'd created for himself. The place he felt the most relaxed. The sunken eyes of the dead woman stared up at him from photos scattered over gleaming black marble floor. The marks on her lily-white throat seemed to taunt, to laugh at him.

You think yourself the enemy of death, Damien? You think wrong. I've won at last, you see? You've surrendered. I own you now.

He lunged forward, snatching the horrible pictures from the floor, falling to his knees in front of the hearth, throwing them down on top of the cold ashes. “I didn't kill her.” The words came as if on their own, in a harsh whisper. The face of the once-beautiful young actress stared at him, accusation screaming from the silent depths of her sightless eyes. He focused the beam of his thoughts, and the photo burst into flames. Red-orange tongues danced and licked, spreading to the other photos in the hearth and then to the letter he'd thrown there earlier. Damien watched them burn and wondered what more he could have done to prevent this.

The thirst—the damned need—had grown stronger with every year he'd lived. It raged now like the Bull of Heaven, sent down to wreak the vengeance of the gods on mankind. It was impossible to deny, or to deprive the hunger. Animals no longer sufficed. The cold plastic liquid stolen from blood banks couldn't fill his burning need. He couldn't ignore it.

He'd tried. In fact, he'd made it a ritual of self-torment. Whenever the hunger came, he refused to feed, fought the bloodlust, resisted it until it became all powerful. He'd thought that by resisting it, he'd be the one to grow stronger. It hadn't worked out that way, though. Every time he tried, the lust raged more potent in his veins, until every cell of him screamed for the elixir, until his mind left the realm of his control and he hunted, swathed in a bloodred haze of mindless need.

And even then, he'd thought he'd kept a modicum of restraint. He'd fed only in sips, and only from those women who'd hounded his steps after a performance. The groupies. The ones who slipped uninvited into his dressing room, baring pretty necks and offering themselves to him, sometimes begging him to take them.

Fantasies, he knew. And he'd laugh off their offers, only to appear in their bedrooms—in their dreams—a few hours later. There, twined in their warm, mortal arms, he could sate his roaring lust. And by his simple command, these willing victims would remember the entire exchange as an erotic, pleasure-filled dream. As they drew their first breaths; bathed in sunlight, the marks on their throats would begin to heal. If they noticed the wounds at all, they'd remember a minor accident to explain them. One that had never happened. He thought he'd been so careful. Always leaving them asleep, looking utterly tranquil and contented, having gained as much satisfaction from the exchange as he had.

Had he gone too far? Had that desire inside him overwhelmed him to the point that he'd drained one of them and not even been aware of it? Could it?

That's right, Damien. I've won. You've not only surrendered, you've joined my army. Joined it alongside sickness and war and famine. One of my horsemen now, Damien. An instrument of death.

He moaned in agony and folded his arms around his middle. No one despised the shadow of death more than Damien. No one. Death was his enemy. His greatest foe. If he'd reached the point where feeding his own demon meant feeding death another victim, then he'd end his existence tomorrow. He'd walk naked into the sunrise. He'd…

No.

He straightened his body and stared into the blackened remains of the photos in the hearth. Red still glowed around the edges of the letter, and bits of white showed amid the charred paper. Before he did anything, he needed to learn the truth. If he'd killed, if indeed he had taken a life, then he deserved to surrender his own.

But if not, then there was someone else.

He paced the floor, deep in thought. Someone who, perhaps, wanted the world to believe Damien was guilty.

His steps stopped near the first archway. Someone who was doing it by preying on the women whose blood he'd tasted?

No, how could anyone know that? He would have been aware if anyone had seen him, wouldn't he?

Preying on the women who'd assisted him onstage, then?

His gaze flew to the spot where he'd last seen Shannon.

If he didn't go after her, watch over her, and his theory was on target, her life might very well end tonight.

If he did go after her, as his every instinct was screaming at him to do, and his greatest fears were true…her precious life might end anyway.
Anu,
how could he risk killing someone he wanted only to protect? How could he risk his need for solitude by giving in to the urge to protect her, when his mind was telling him to run in the opposite direction?

What the hell was he going to do?

T
he raven soared into the night, its glistening blue black wings spread as it rode the wind, spiraling upward, ever upward. Then, folding those gleaming wings to itself, it dove at dizzying speeds, until anyone watching would have caught his breath in alarm, fully expecting to witness the death of a once-graceful bird. Instead, though, the wings unfurled. The bird slowed, arched upward and, with gentle flapping, alighted upon the rail of a balcony on the twenty-third story.

 

She slammed the apartment door, turned the lock, shot the dead bolt, fastened the chain. Breathless, she leaned back against the door, closed her eyes. The courage, the defiance, had been flawless right up until he'd grabbed her and told her she wasn't leaving. At that moment, with that iron manacle of a hand gripping her arm, those cold, sure words hanging in the air and those unnaturally gleaming, jewel black eyes holding her captive, she'd felt pure, undiluted panic.

Instantly his image flashed into her mind, a snapshot of the way he'd looked at that moment. What had happened to him? He'd released her all of the sudden, his hands going to his head as if it were splitting in two. His eyes squeezed shut tight in apparent pain.

And she'd run like a rabbit.

She'd climbed over the fence to make her escape, no longer caring how many alarms she set off. Her rope and grappling hook still hung from the monster of an oak tree out front. Her Cat Woman hood probably still lay on his front step. She'd forgotten the photos of Tawny and the autopsy report. She'd forgotten everything except that she didn't want to die. When he'd grabbed her arm and told her she wasn't leaving, she'd thought she was about to.

She squeezed her eyes tighter to prevent the stupid tears that tried to leak through, and shook her head at the bitter irony. Her, running from death. Her, not wanting to die. God, what a joke! Not for the first time, she heard herself cursing fate for its idiotic mistake in choosing Tawny as the victim of this sick killer's whim. It should have been Shannon. Tawny had a future, a life waiting for her. A career. She'd have made it happen, too. Shannon knew she would have. She had a way of willing things to go the way she wanted. Shannon swore and swept a hand over her damp eyes.

It shouldn't have been Tawny. It should have been me. God, why wasn't it me? At least one of us could have gone on, lived, maybe had a family someday….

Blinking, she crawled out of the self-pitying puddle she'd stepped into. If she didn't get herself together, it
would be her.
And it would end any chance she had of bringing Tawny's killer down before her time on this planet ran out. If he was coming for her, it would probably be tonight. Tawny had died the same night she'd volunteered as his assistant. And as far as she could tell, the other woman, Rosalie, hadn't been seen since the night she'd taken her turn in the spotlight. So he would probably come tonight. Probably pretty soon.

She was tired. Damn, but she was tired.

Shannon dipped her hand into the fanny pack for the stubby .38 revolver. It had been with her the whole time she'd been at Damien's. She'd never
really
been in any danger. She could have dropped to one knee, pulled out the little black handgun and pumped all six rounds into him in under three seconds. Sure, it would've been tough to prove self-defense, when she'd broken into his house and he'd been unarmed. So, she'd have done some time.

Not a hell of a lot, though.

She took the gun into the bathroom with her, set it on the little sand-colored counter that surrounded the shell-shaped coral basin. Within easy reach. No one was going to sneak up on her. Not even someone who walked as quietly as he did.

She stripped off her clothes, quickly and not too neatly, tossing them and leaving them where they landed. Then she stepped beneath the hot, pounding spray and just let it soothe her aching muscles. God, it would be good to take a break from all of this. Relax with a good book, or a bowl of popcorn and an old Bogart movie. Jump in the car that often cost her her grocery money and head south until she hit sand and sun, and just bask for a while. But she knew she couldn't. Not now. She'd set the wheels in motion and she had to see things through to the end. There wasn't a lot of time. She was all too aware of that.

Even with Tawny's death and all its repercussions, all the questions screaming for answers, Shannon still couldn't stop her mind from wandering where she least wanted it to go.

Damien Namtar.

The image of him floated into her brain again, damn him. He was a murder suspect. Not to the police, granted. But in her mind he was. Right now he was the
only
suspect. So she shouldn't think about the odd awareness she felt around him, the prickling sensations that encompassed her, the palpable touch of those eyes. “Physical distractions,” she muttered, and tipped her head back to let the hot water drench her hair. She inhaled the moist steam, hoping it would put some sense into her head. He was utterly handsome, in a dark, exotic kind of way. Add to that the fact that his performances were always loaded with sexual innuendo, and it was no wonder her libido was responding this way.

Or was it? She'd thought herself immune to sexual desire. She'd had little experience; the clumsy, drunken gropings of the man who was supposed to be her guardian, the foster parent she'd been sent to when she was sixteen. She'd had no choice about going to live there. Orphans, abandoned children didn't have a hell of a lot of choices, and God knows she'd had none to speak of up to that point in her life. Certainly no choice over what that bastard had tried to do to her.

From that day on, though, the choices had been all hers. No one had ever told her what to do again. No one ever would.

Only one good thing had come out of that time in her life, and that was that she'd met Tawny. They'd been sent to the same foster home, from different orphanages. They'd suffered the same abuse, albeit for a short time. They'd fled before the bastard's attempts could lead to the ultimate violation. They'd had little choice. Neither Shannon nor Tawny had trusted authority enough to turn him in then. Whom would they have told? The same pencil pushers who'd sent them to him? And where would they be sent next? Someplace worse?

Later, Shannon had written a letter to the social worker, recounted everything, even signed her name—but she hadn't told them where to find her. She couldn't risk losing control of her own life again.

The results of their brief stay with that man had been totally different. For Tawny, there was no more respect for her body. It became a means to an end, and she used it that way, laughing inwardly at the men foolish enough to pay her for something they could get at home free. Idiots, she'd called them. If they were dumb enough to hand over their hard-earned cash, that was their problem. She'd always said the johns didn't know it, but they were the ones being used.

For Shannon, it was different. She'd made up her mind that she would never want to be touched by a man. Never. She couldn't even think of sex without remembering the disgust, the humiliation, the stench of his breath. How could closeness with any man ever bring her pleasure? She'd shunned Tawny's methods of survival, taken a menial job cleaning hotel rooms, instead.

It had been a long time, though. And for some reason, she wasn't recalling all that revulsion when she thought of Damien. She probably should be.

She sighed and tried to put him out of her mind, but she couldn't. She remembered his performance tonight. Scantily dressed beauties running their hands up and down his body to some frantic jungle beat as he prepared to perform the next feat, seductively touching and caressing him as they fastened chains around him for an escape trick. It was little wonder he had groupies throwing themselves at him. Little wonder he seemed to exude some mystical allure to her. He probably had the same effect on most women, which surely accounted for the gossip she'd read in the fan magazines about the ones who were constantly offering to take him to bed after a show.

The question of the hour was, did he murder them after obliging them? Had Tawny been taken in by his sex appeal and offered herself as others did? It was something Tawny wouldn't have hesitated to do. Was that why he'd killed her?

Or maybe the opposite was true. It might be the ones who seemed indifferent to him that suffered the ultimate punishment. Maybe Tawny had turned him down. Maybe that was why he'd killed her.

But why do it in such a grisly way? And how? How the hell do you drain the blood out of someone, leaving only two tiny wounds in her neck? How do you do it without a drop of blood spilling on the sheets, or the pillows the person is lying on? What the hell do you do with it after you've taken it?

She lathered her body, rinsed it, washed her hair, and still felt no closer to knowing what had happened to her friend.

There had been precious few other cases demanding her attention. She'd referred them to larger investigations firms, hating to have to give away business when she'd fought so long and so hard to get established. But this took precedence, and besides, she wasn't exactly saving up for retirement. It wasn't as if she was going to be spending much money. All she needed was enough for the next few car payments, and another month or two's rent, if that. She wouldn't be taking on any new cases. She kept the office open only for her own case now. And when she found Tawny's killer, she'd close it for good.

She intended to focus solely on Tawny's murder from here on. She couldn't afford a single distraction. She would use every second of the time she had left to—

Dizziness swamped her and she reached out blindly, clutching the shower curtain to keep from falling. She let her body rest against the cool, wet tiles of the shower stall, held her head with one hand and shut the water off with the other. She waited for the vertigo to pass, but it didn't.

Damn! Why now? Why the hell now?

She groped for a towel, twisted it around her and staggered out of the shower, pausing only to clumsily pick up her gun before continuing through to the living room. She had to get to bed, had to lie down, rest until it passed. It would pass. It always did. God willing, the bastard wouldn't show up to kill her before it ran its course.

She needed the bed, and she fought to keep her balance until she got there. She had to huddle into the blankets, because the chills would come next. And then she'd shiver and shake and run a fever until they finished with her. They usually lasted only an hour or so. But they'd been coming more frequently lately. Her body's little alarm clock, reminding her every so often that time was nearly up.

She made it just to the doorway of the bedroom before she collapsed. She felt her legs melt from her ankles to her hips, and then the floor rose up to greet her. She pulled her arms under her to push herself up, but they'd become useless, heavy, nearly impossible to move.

The shaking kicked in. Her body jerked with the chills, and she could hear her own teeth chattering. God, she was so cold. She felt the goose bumps rising on her arms and legs. If she could just get to the bed. She'd always had time to make it to the bed. The damned episodes were hitting faster, harder, than before, she realized, as well as more often. She didn't want to think about what that meant.

But why the hell did it have to happen tonight?

Concentrating fiercely, she managed to tighten her hand around the gun, though the effort cost her. She broke into a cold sweat, fought to catch her breath. She couldn't lose the gun. She had to cling to it in case he came for her. He'd kill her if he found her defenseless like this. God, she hated being helpless, weak, not in control of her own body. She focused on the feel of the cold wood grips in her hand, made herself feel the trigger, kept her mind on where the barrel was pointed, even as she strained to make her arms function and struggled to pull her shuddering body across the floor. Every muscle in her throbbed and ached in protest, burned with an unseen fire. Then the damned convulsions tried to tear them from the bone.

Someone bent over her, lifted her, and a familiar scent invaded her awareness. Dusky. Subtle. Somehow erotic. The arms around her, the chest against her, felt familiar and warm and hard. She forced her eyes open, tried to focus her vision, but saw only a blurred outline. It didn't matter. She knew perfectly well who held her, who carried her across the room and lowered her to the bed. Covers were tugged over her, tucked tightly around her. The electric blanket she'd so recently purchased for just this kind of occasion was plugged in, turned on. She knew, because she felt it begin to heat her chilled skin. He gently worked the gun out of her trembling hand and set it aside. His hands, those big, hard, magic hands with their long, elegant fingers, pushed her hair away from her face.

“Do you want me to call an ambulance, Shannon?”

She heard the words, heard that soft voice, which had been harsh the last time he'd spoken to her. It was still like velvet music on her ears, but so gruff now. So hesitant.

She tried to form an answer, gave up and shook her head, instead. Even that small effort took every ounce of energy she could summon.

“Your family, then?”

“N-noo. There's…no one.”