Hotter Than Hell (49 page)

She laughed hollowly, still conscious of the ecstasy he brought her when his body joined with hers. “Yeah, right, sure I’m going to forget that.”

Then again, she really wanted the man, why shouldn’t she fight for what she wanted? She should find a way to introduce herself and see what—

“There is someone at the door,” the house’s security system announced. It was an old house with a very basic system, so it wasn’t about to be more informative than that. So, unless the water in the scrying bowl suddenly showed her who it was—which it wasn’t likely to do—she had to answer the door herself. Entertaining a visitor, even someone looking to get their future read without an appointment, was better than pacing around feeling sorry for herself.

The man standing at the door was the last person she expected to be there. And the one person in all of space and time she wanted to see.

“Bern!”

He kissed her before she could say anything else. The fire that had been between them from the first moment sparked to flames. She clung to him with all her might, her body molded against his. If he’d taken her there on the front porch she wouldn’t have minded. Instead he swung her around into the house, and kicked the door closed behind them. They fell together onto the entryway carpet and clothes were quickly shed and pushed aside.

He was thrusting inside her, hard and strong and fast, before she managed to breathlessly say, “You remembered me!” Then she came for the first time and forgot about words for a long time afterwards.

“Of course I remembered,” he said later, when they were lying together in a sweaty tangled heap. “You’re unforgettable.”

She stroked his cheek. “Oh, that’s sweet…wait a minute…that means you’re psychic.” He nodded. “I thought Percy was your team psychic.”

“He was, on the civilian side. The military side always tries to have someone who’ll remember the op on a TTP team.”

“Really? I didn’t know that.”

“That’s because that information is shared on a need-to-know basis. This seems like a good time for you to need to know.”

“Now I understand why Kaye kept talking about your gut feelings. I should have guessed he meant your psychic intuition.”

“You should have guessed when we went for each other like we were in heat instantly right after we met. That kind of lust only comes when like meets like.”

“So I’ve heard. Hey, the lust had me pretty distracted. That and starring in orgies and fighting the Saxons and that whole Matter of Britain thing we had going.”

He sighed. “Matter of Britain, my ass.”

She stroked it. “It’s a very nice ass. I have a nice big bed it might fit in upstairs,” she told him.

He helped her to her feet, even though she groaned in protest when he stopped touching her breasts. “I’d be delighted to spend as much time as possible in your nice big bed.”

“Good.”

“But first,” he added, “I did come here to ask if you’d like to go on a date this evening. I’ve got tickets for a revival of an old musical I think you’ll enjoy.”

Curiosity nibbled away some of her lust. “What would that be?”

He grinned. “
Spamalot.
”

She hooted, and they held each other tight, shaking with laughter. What other production could possibly be more perfect for their first date?

EMMA SLID UNDER THE SURFACE OF THE WATER
and stayed there. She lay in the tub, on her back, and stared up at a world made soft, blurred with faint ripples. An unreal world viewed through a distorted filter. For minutes—four, six, ten—she stayed under water and didn’t drown, because she didn’t breathe. Would never breathe again.

The world looked different through these undead eyes. Thicker, somehow. And also, strangely, clearer.

Survival seemed like such a curious thing once you’d already been killed.

This was her life now. She didn’t have to stay here. She could end it any time she wanted just by opening the curtains at dawn. But she didn’t.

Sitting up, she pushed back her soaking hair and rained water all around her with the noise of a rushing stream. Outside the blood-warm bath, her skin chilled in the air. She felt every little thing, every little current—from the vent, from a draft from the window, coolness eddying along the floor, striking the walls. She shivered. Put the fingers of one hand on the wrist of the other and felt no pulse.

After spreading a towel on the floor, she stepped from the bath.

She looked at herself: she didn’t look any different. Same slim body, smooth skin, young breasts the right size to cup in her hands, nipples the color of a bruised peach. Her skin was paler than she remembered. So pale it was almost translucent. Bloodless.

Not for long.

She dried her brown hair so it hung straight to her shoulders and dressed with more care than she ever had before. Not that the clothes she put on were by any means fancy, or new, or anything other than what she’d already had in her closet: a tailored silk shirt over a black lace camisole, jeans, black leather pumps, and a few choice pieces of jewelry, a couple of thin silver chains and dangling silver earrings. Every piece, every seam, every fold of fabric, produced an effect, and she wanted to be sure she produced the right effect: young, confident, alluring. Without, of course, looking like she was
trying
to produce such an effect. It must seem casual, thrown together, effortless. She switched the earrings from one ear to the other because they didn’t seem to lay right the other way.

This must be what a prostitute felt like.

Dissatisfied, she went upstairs to see Alette.

The older woman was in the parlor, waiting in a wingback chair. The room was decorated in tasteful antiques, Persian rugs, and velvet-upholstered furniture, with thick rich curtains hanging over the windows. Books crammed into shelves and a silver tea service ornamented the mantel. For all its opulent decoration, the room had a comfortable, natural feel to it. Its owner had come by the decor honestly. The Victorian atmosphere was genuine.

Alette spoke with a refined British accent. “You don’t have to do this.”

Alette was the most regal, elegant woman Emma knew. An apparent thirty years old, she was poised, dressed in a silk skirt and jacket, her brunette hair tied in a bun, her face like porcelain. She was over four hundred years old.

Emma was part of her clan, her Family, by many ties, from many directions. By blood, Alette was Emma’s ancestor, a many-greats grandmother. Closer, Alette had made the one who in turn had made Emma.

That had been unplanned. Emma hadn’t wanted it. The man in question had been punished. He was gone now, and Alette had taken care of her: mother, mentor, mistress.

“You can’t bottle feed me forever,” Emma replied. In this existence, that meant needles, IV tubes, and a willing donor. It was so clinical.

“I can try,” Alette said, her smile wry.

If Emma let her, Alette would take care of her forever. Literally forever. But that felt wrong, somehow. If Emma was going to live like this, then she ought to live. Not cower like a child.

“Thank you for looking after me. I’m not trying to sound ungrateful, but—”

“But you want to be able to look after yourself.”

Emma nodded, and again the wry smile touched Alette’s lips. “Our family has always had the most awful streak of independence.”

Emma’s laugh startled her. She didn’t know she still could.

“Remember what I’ve taught you,” Alette said, rising from her chair and moving to stand with Emma. “How to choose. How to lure him. How to leave him. Remember how I’ve taught you to see, and to feel. And remember to only take a little. If you take it all, you’ll kill him. Or risk condemning him to this life.”

“I remember.” The lessons had been difficult. She’d had to learn to see the world with new eyes.

Alette smoothed Emma’s hair back from her face and arranged it over her shoulders—an uncharacteristic bit of fidgeting. “I know you do. And I know you’ll be fine. But if you need anything, please—”

“I’ll call,” Emma finished. “You won’t send anyone to follow me, will you?”

“No,” she said. “I won’t.”

“Thank you.”

Alette kissed her cheek and sent her to hunt alone for the first time.

Alette had given her advice: go somewhere new, in an unfamiliar neighborhood where she wasn’t likely to meet someone from her old life, therefore making her less likely to encounter complications of emotion or circumstance.

Emma didn’t take this advice.

She’d been a student at George Washington University. Officially, she’d taken a leave of absence, but she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to continue her studies and finish her degree. There were always night classes, sure…but it was almost a joke, and like most anything worth doing, easier said than done.

There was a place, a bar where she and her friends used to go sometimes when classes got out. They’d arrive just in time for happy hour, when they could buy two-dollar hamburgers and cheap pitchers of beer. They’d eat supper, play a few rounds of pool, bitch about classes and papers they hadn’t written yet. On weekends they’d come late and play pool until last call. A completely normal life.

That was what Emma found herself missing, a few months into this new life. Laughing with her friends. Maybe she should have gone someplace else for this, found new territory. But she wanted to see the familiar.

She came in through the front and paused, blinked a couple of times, took a deep breath through her nose to taste the air. And the world slowed down. Noise fell to a low hum, the lights seemed to brighten, and just by turning her head a little she could see it all. Thirty-four people packed into the first floor of this converted townhouse. Twelve sat at the bar, two worked behind the bar, splashing their way through the fumes of a dozen different kinds of alcohol. Their sweat mixed with those fumes, two kinds of heat blending with the third ashy odor of cigarette smoke. This place was hot with bodies. Five beating hearts played pool around two tables in the back, three more watched—these were female. Girlfriends. The smell of competing testosterone was ripe. All the rest crammed around tables or stood in empty spaces, putting alcohol into their bodies, their blood—Emma could smell it through their pores. She caught all this in a glance, in a second.

She could feel the clear paths by the way the air moved. Incredibly, she could feel the whole room, all of it pressing gently against her skin. As if she looked down on it from above. As if she commanded it. There—that couple at the table in the corner was fighting. The woman stared into her tumbler of gin and tonic while her foot tapped a nervous beat on the floor. Her boyfriend stared at her, frowning hard, his arms crossed, his scotch forgotten.

Emma could have him if she wanted. His blood was singing with need. He would be easy to persuade, to lure away from his difficulty. A chance meeting by the bathrooms, an unseen exit out the back—

No. Not like that.

A quartet of boisterous, drunken men burst into laughter in front of her. Raucous business-school types, celebrating some exam or finished project. She knew how to get to them, too. Stumble perhaps. Lean an accidental arm on a shoulder, gasp an apology—and the one who met her gaze first would be the one to follow her.

Instead, she went to the bar, and despite the crowd, the press of bodies jostling for space, her path there was clear, and a space opened for her just as she arrived because she knew it would be there.

She wanted to miss the taste of alcohol. She could remember the taste of wine, the tang on the tongue, the warmth passing down her throat. She remembered great dinners, her favorite Mexican food, overstuffed burritos with sour cream and chile verde, with a big, salty margarita. She wanted to miss it with a deep and painful longing. But the memories turned her stomach. The thought of consuming anything made her feel sick. Anything except blood.

The glass of wine before her remained untouched. It was only for show.

She never would have done this in the old days. Sitting alone at the bar like this, staring into her drink—she looked like she was trying to get picked up.

Well, wasn’t she?

When the door opened and a laughing crowd of friends entered, Emma turned and smiled in greeting. Even before the door had opened, she’d known somehow. She’d sensed the sound of a voice, the tone of a footstep, the scent of skin, a ripple in the air. She couldn’t have remembered such fine details from her old life. But somehow, she’d known. She knew
them.

“Emma!”

“Hey, Chris.” Finally, her smile felt like her old smile. Her old friends gathered around, leaned in for hugs, and she obliged them. But the one who spoke to her, the one she focused on, was Chris.

He was six feet tall, with wavy blond hair and a clean-shaven, handsome face, still boyish but filling out nicely. He had a shy smile and laughing eyes.

“Where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in weeks. The registrar’s office said you took a leave of absence.”

She had her story all figured out. It wasn’t even a lie, really.

“I’ve been sick,” she said.

“You couldn’t even call?”

“Really sick.” She pressed her lips in a thin smile, hoping she sounded sad.

“Yeah, I guess.” He took the cue not to press the question further. He brightened. “But you look great now. Really great.”

There it was, a spark in his eye, a flush in his cheek. She’d always wondered if he liked her. She’d never been sure. Now, she had tools. She had senses. And she looked great. It wasn’t her, a bitter voice sounded inside her. It was this thing riding her, this creature inside her. It was a lure, a trap.

Looking great made men like Chris blush. Now, she could use it. She knew how to respond. She’d always been uncertain before.