A Midsummer Night's Demon (8 page)

Ky sensed her panic rise. She looked confused, afraid. He approached her but she took a step back, her gaze still on his wound. She brought her hand to her mouth and swallowed several times before finding her voice.

“What…” Her eyes locked with his. “What are you?” she asked in a small voice.

Ky held out his hand, and winced when he realized blood painted his flesh. His? The vampire’s? He lowered his hand, wiping it on the side of his leg, watching as his mate took another step away from him. “Lyn, wait. I can explain.”

She narrowed her eyes in disbelief. “No, you can’t.”

“I can. Please give me a chance to explain.” He took another step forward.

She retreated another step, clutching her purse to her chest. Tears welled in her eyes, tearing his heart in two. “Please don’t hurt me.”

Ky stopped his advance. She feared him. And he couldn’t blame her. He’d wanted her to leave the minute he’d arrived at the park as much for her safety as to keep her from seeing the battle. Of course, she had not done what he asked. He should have known she would want to remain behind, to help him if needed. He should have told her what her attacker was then maybe she would have left like any reasonable being. Now, she not only knew her attacker was something other than human, but that he was too. He’d really made a mess of this.

“Lyn, sit down. We need to talk.”

She shook her head violently back and forth, sending tears spilling down her cheeks. “What are you?” she repeated in a whisper.

He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly between his clenched teeth. The warrior scrubbed a tired hand down his face, his body weak from the loss of blood combined with the amount of energy he exerted during the fight. Exhaustion made his limbs heavy, and he still had so much left to do to be sure no evidence of the battle would be found come morning. He swayed on unsteady legs that threatened to no longer support his weight.

Lyn deserved an answer. He needed to tell her the truth about himself. And what that meant for her. As his mate, she would have to convert, become like him in order for them to have eternity together. The alternative would be to love her for the rest of her years, watch as she grew old, then die. And that grim alternative made bile push into the back of his throat. He could see no other way. He had to tell her.

“I am a vampire,” Ky admitted in a soft voice.

Chapter Eight

One day later

The harsh sound of heavy metal music screamed in her ear. Lyn threw her arm out blindly to the side, her hand smacking at the offending noise.

“Ouch,” she cried, hitting the clock radio on her nightstand. She sent the blasted thing careening to the floor.

She cuddled her left hand to her chest, and rubbed her injured wrist.
Perfect. Just perfect!
Now she could add a bruised wrist to her injures. She sat up and pulled the sheet away from her legs, looking at her knees. Both had turned a nice shade of purplish-blue from where she’d fallen on them the night before. Her gaze moved to her swollen ankle, wincing when she moved her foot.

Memories of the previous night came crashing in on her, making it hard to breathe. Her lungs fought for air as her panic rose. She looked to her window to see if the sun had finally risen.

All night she’d been awakened with terrible nightmares. Each time she checked the window for sunlight and wiped perspiration from her brow. Despite Lyn’s exhaustion, her mind refused to rest, instead she relived the terrible events of the past week whether awake or asleep.

Vampires!

A week ago, she would have found Ky’s explanation laughable. Now? Well now, it was maddening. Her world had turned on its head overnight.

She ran away after Ky told her he was a vampire, flying down the boardwalk as fast as her shaky legs could carry her. When she got to the parking lot she noticed his car. Lyn pulled his keys from her purse and had just sat inside when she realized that if she took the car he would have to come get it. And that meant she would have to see him, meet him—she
never
wanted to see him again.

Leaving the keys in the ignition, she jumped out of the car and ran down the road. After about a mile, tears clouded her vision and she tripped over something. The pain in her ankle kept her from caring about what had tripped her as she hopped to the side of the road. Knowing she wouldn’t make it much further on foot, she’d pulled her phone from her purse to discover her cell had just enough charge to make two calls; one to information to get a number for a cab company and the other to arrange for a taxi to come pick her up.

On the drive home, the events of the previous week played like a movie reel in her mind. She’d sought to rationalize the events.

The attack…“Random,” Lyn answered herself aloud.

The fact that Ky didn’t take her to a hospital…“Unnecessary.”

Ky sleeping all day and up all night…”I thought he worked the overnight shift at the precinct.”

All perfectly reasonable explanations. Lyn gave an inelegant snort of contention.

All lies.

She knew the truth now and it stunk like a rotting corpse. A putrid, vampire corpse. Ky worked the overnight shift because he had too. The damned man could not go out in the sun. He hadn’t taken her to a hospital because he did not want any questions about the attack. She fingered the stitches on her neck. This wound had been caused by Juan…or Raziel—whatever his freakin’ name was—biting her. The thought caused her stomach to churn. Ky was every bit as awful as her attacker. And a liar. A traitor.

A vampire for Goddess’ sake!

His first concern had been keeping vampires a secret. He did not care about her at all. She had thought she was falling in love with Ky. Thought he was a good guy. She couldn’t have been more wrong. Thank goodness, they hadn’t slept together!

“Mierda
. How could my life go so wrong in a matter of hours?”

Her anger flared and she crossed her legs, forgetting about her swollen ankle until it made contact with the opposite leg. Lyn folded her legs anyway, welcoming the pain as a physical manifestation of her inner turmoil. She sat with her elbows on her butterflied knees, face buried in her upturned palms.

Her clock radio went off again, screeching in her ears. She must have hit the snooze button. Whatever! It served as a good reminder that she needed to get up and get back to her life.

She had a job she needed to go to. She’d wasted enough of her time on Ky
something
Robinson. Sheesh, she didn’t even know his full name. She didn’t know a lot about his life. Didn’t want to. She just wanted to put the entire thing behind her and move on.

Pushing gingerly out of the bed, she realized it was time to leave Ky and his crazy world behind.

****

Ky opened his eyes, and instinctively sent his senses throughout his home. They flowed through his room, down the hall, into the guest room to find…
nothing
. He’d never thought such a mundane word could bring him immeasurable pain.

Daelyn had run from him. Run! She’d been terrified of him, of what he was, and he could not blame her. The fight between him and Raziel had been violent. When he’d cleaned up the mess, he realized how awful it must have looked to her. She no doubt thought him a lunatic. A murderer, though he’d only done what had been necessary to protect her.

He’d followed her to assure her safety. Staying in the shadows, he watched her leave his keys in his car and head off on foot down the road. He had seen her trip over a fallen pine branch in the road. It broke his heart to see her tears fall down her soft cheeks.

He had just taken a step out of the nearby copse of trees, his arm reaching for her, when she pulled her phone from her purse to call for a cab. Knowing help was on the way, he melted back into the shadows, to watch over her until the taxi arrived and he could return to clean up the evidence of the battle.

In his world, danger crept in the shadows of the night. The adrenaline rush had gotten him through in centuries past, but now he had something else to drive him—laughter and love wrapped up in tanned skin and beautiful brown eyes to create desire as he’d never known before.

He would give her a little time to adjust. Surely she would come to realize that he was a decent guy, even if he was a vampire. He would wait a day or two then call her, try to explain.

****

One week later

Lyn sat at her desk, glancing at her watch. Almost time to go. She closed her accounting program and shutdown her computer before pushing her chair under her desk. Doing something so mundane and normal made her smile. In the week since the incident in the park, she had tried very hard to channel her anger into something constructive like throwing herself into her work, and forgetting all about vampires and superpowers.

Getting back to normal.

Her nightmares continued to plague her. Sometimes Raziel starred in the dreams, other times they focused on Ky. With Raziel, the dreams always contained violence and death. With Ky in the lead role, they usually started with a romantic tryst, but they always ended the same—with Ky attacking something.

Ten minutes later, she stood in the parking lot unlocking her car. A police car blew by, sirens blaring. She paused, turning her head to watch it pass. The sound brought Ky to mind.

He claimed he worked as a cop. She’d been brought up to believe in the integrity of the police.
Ky
should have had more integrity and truthfulness.

Cops were supposed to be the good guys.
Ky
was supposed to be a good guy. She hated to admit it, but she missed him. Missed the way he made her laugh, the way he made her feel as if she was the only thing that mattered in his life. She thought she had found the love of her life.

As she opened the door and slid behind the wheel, a second police car screamed by, siren wailing. The sound, louder than the first, hurt her ears.

She gave a snort. Sometimes cops could be the bad guys. They could be dirty. They could lie. Ky had definitely lied.

“He’d probably lied about being a cop,” Lyn muttered to herself.

With a harsh flick of her wrist, she turned the key, and the engine purred to life. After putting it in reverse, she punched down hard on the accelerator. With a screech of the tires, she backed out of her space. Her white-knuckled fingers gripped the wheel in anger at the man who had deceived her and broke her heart.

****

Ky sat at his desk staring at his computer screen with sightless eyes. He had been appointed a new case—a series of missing people in the Keys, all of whom disappeared at night. Concerned a vampire may be responsible, his boss had assigned him to investigate. He was supposed to be going through the vampire database for the area, instead, he found himself thinking about Lyn.

The smell of chamomile came wafting in the air when the latest rookie assigned to him sat down with her tea. “Any luck?” she asked.

“No.” The smell of her tea carried a powerful reminder of Lyn. Like a kick to his gut, it pushed the air from his lungs forcing him to take a deep inhale. “Is there any way I could get you not to drink that crap around my desk?” Ky could not keep the growl from his voice, which solicited a raised eyebrow from the trainee.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll go to the break room.”

“You do that.”

His rudeness knew no bounds. He shook his head in irritation at his manners. It wasn’t her fault she wanted to get some work done while he obsessed about Lyn. Wasn’t her fault that the tea she drank reminded him of his mate. But that didn’t keep him from being miserable about the situation.

Ky watched the rookie walk away, any normal male would appreciate the way her hips swayed. She looked beautiful, with blonde hair that fell to the middle of her back and blue eyes that sparkled when the light hit them just right. Yep, any male would be attracted to her.

Not him.

He wanted a woman with long brown hair and matching eyes. A woman who had a slight Hispanic accent that made her roll her R’s in a sexy way. He wanted Lyn. His heartmate. And no other would do. She had come into his life, filling it with hot-blooded passion. Now just an empty shell, he endured each night, did his duty and fought not to check his cell phone every two minutes to see if she returned his calls.

More than once he’d stopped by her townhouse—she refused to answer the door, even though he announced he could hear her breathing inside. He had left her messages on her home and work numbers like some kind of stalker, begging for a chance to explain—they had gone unreturned.

Completely miserable without her, he thought of her every minute, wondering what she was doing. Was she eating? Did she think of him—dream of him?

She needed more time to adjust, and he had no choice but to give her that time, because the alternative would be to give her up, and he couldn’t do that. He needed to win her back, and Ky knew he could, if she would just give him a chance.

****

One month later

The vampire sat alone at his kitchen table eating his first meal of the day. He brought his glass to his lips and took a long swallow of the crimson liquid inside. His throat constricted around the warmed blood. It was Lyn’s type—O positive—but it didn’t taste anything like Lyn.

Her blood tasted like her—sweet, spicy, with a hint of fire and a lot of passion. This crap was plain, cool, and boring. Definitely a stark contrast to his mate.

She’d been perfect for him. Daelyn Torres kept him on his toes. She didn’t take any grief from him. A brave woman, she’d been willing to do whatever it took to get her life back.

A life that no longer included him.

For the past month, he had continued to try to reach her, but she refused him every time. He walked a fine line between contacting her often enough that she knew he still cared, and not sliding over the line to seem like a psychopathic stalker.

Psychopathic. A good word to describe him. Like falling down the rabbit hole, his life seemed dark and strange without her.