Incubus (3 page)

He drew a deep breath and stood up. He no longer felt
weak. Warmth and strength surged through him. Blood was a pale shadow by comparison. This satiation went deeper.

He righted Caroline's clothing and smoothed her hair, letting his hand linger on her face. Did she have family or friends living nearby? Someone who could help her when she needed it?

“Not that I care,” he murmured, covering her with a blanket and tucking it close around her. “And that's best for you because believe me, baby, you wouldn't want me around if you knew what I am.”

The dog woke again and watched him with soulful eyes while he gathered his clothing from the chair before the fire. He grinned at the shepherd. “You are one lucky dog to belong to this lady. You know that, right? Better take good care of her.”

He pulled on his jeans, but zipping them up was another matter. Meical looked down at himself and whistled softly. “Neshi, my man, never let it be said that you aren't a perfectionist.”

Meical grinned and zipped up his jeans—carefully—and finished dressing. Without warning, he shivered. It was a familiar feeling.

Dawn.

The sensation stole over his spine like pinpricks. Soon every soul he knew would be wrapped in the deep sleep of the vampire. But this time, the day-death would pass him by.

He went to the door of the cabin, opened it and stared at the night sky. There was a bit of light blue toward the
east. He slipped out the door and fixed his gaze on it, drank it down.

There was pink. Rosy pink. Only hours ago, it would've been enough to kill him. Neshi's experiment hadn't been a complete failure.

Meical bounded into the yard and skidded to a halt in the snow. His heart thudded in his chest, while the pink became orange. Beautiful fiery red came next, but it was the gold he wanted to see, the bright, gold-white light of a new day, full in his face until it blinded him and burned its way into his memory forever. He'd take it with him wherever he was bound.

Defiant, he shot into the air. Birds in the trees took flight around him. The wild things ran for cover.

Higher. Higher. It was brighter now. So bright. Too bright. Oh, yes! Nearly there. Nearly sunrise. He let the fragile warmth engulf him, felt it all the way to his soul. His face, his head, his entire body were warm in a way he hadn't felt in two centuries.

The ball of fire and life topped the horizon and blasted away all the night, all the darkness, all the pain and isolation. Meical flung back his head and let his exultation fill the world below. “Neshi, you are a GENIUS!”

Closing his eyes, he basked in the golden glow that touched every inch of him. The sun rose higher, while he hung suspended in its light.

Voices echoed up to him from the woods far below. He ignored them. He wanted only the silence and the light, clean and pure and unending.

The voices became clearer, and the smell of human
males tainted his serenity. Meical growled and turned his head to look down. It was just a pack of hikers, laughing as they slogged along the trail that passed Caroline's cabin. They were harmless, pleasant enough fellows.

So why did he have the urge to rip their heads off?

The contentment of the moment paled as Meical hung lazily in a sunbeam and eyed their progress closer to Caroline's home. As they trudged along, their heavy, sweating bodies made crunching noises in the snow with every step they took. Even that bothered him.

Surely they weren't foolish enough to come so close to Caroline, to encroach on what was his. Never mind that he wasn't going to be around much longer. While he was still breathing, she was his to protect.

With another glance at the sun, Meical dropped out of the sky and landed soundlessly in the woods. Seconds of icy wind in his face and an easy burst of speed brought him to Caroline's porch. He slunk into a pool of shadow the sunlight couldn't reach and dissolved to watch the intruders.

As the hikers reached the cabin, one of them made the mistake of stopping to admire it. Meical scarcely felt himself move. He materialized and stepped from the shadows of the porch, into the yard. Judging by the guy's change of expression, he must look like the devil's own. The men hurried on, casting nervous glances over their shoulders at him.

Meical glared at the woods with the irksome feeling that it might spew forth a host of similar trespassers. Caroline was alone and unprotected, hurt and vulnerable.
What harm was there in lingering awhile, as long as his hunger stayed at bay? She had friends, no doubt, who would come to her soon. He would wait and see. And while he hung around, he'd see what he could learn about her—not that he cared who she was, of course, but there was no point in dying with a lot of questions disturbing his peaceful last moment.

Meical reentered the cabin without opening the door, so as not to wake her, and had a look around. There was a closet with a pair of jeans and some sweaters in it. Three single left shoes stood all in a neat line. Their companions lay discarded at the back of the closet in a pile.

Dog-eared paperbacks lined the mantel and overflowed from a small bookcase nearby. Meical ran his hand over the titles. Most of them were novels. Jane Austen seemed to be a favorite, although he spotted a number of her predecessors and contemporaries. There was some nonfiction, too, droll and dry and not particularly enticing. But a pattern began to emerge. By the time he'd looked through all her books, rummaged through all her DVDs and flipped through all her CDs, he began to realize Caroline's peculiarly limited taste in escape and entertainment. His chosen prey was a walking compendium of eighteenth-century British life.

Meical let his gaze wander to the dark beams of the ceiling above. It would be just like the Alchemist, given his twisted imagination, to think Caroline's interest in the day and age Meical had known as a human would
somehow make her more conducive to what Meical needed from her.

Magazines lay strewn in front of the bookshelf. Meical knelt to thumb through the titles.
Counseling Today. The Holistic Counselor. The American Journal of Juvenile Psychology. The Child Psychologist.
There were other magazines of the same type, too many to suggest a casual interest in counseling children. It must surely be her profession, or had been.

How had Caroline ended up on the wrong side of people who were sadistic enough to bash her legs to bits and leave her to die? Who were they? And where were they? And how difficult would it be to find them and wipe them off the face of the earth?

Meical quirked a brow. It was something to consider if not for the fact that he'd probably be dead by nightfall.

He prowled the cabin for anything else that might tell him more about Caroline than her love for his moment of history and her professional interests. There was nothing, not even a photograph on the wall. Did she have no family, then? Perhaps
that
was why Neshi thought she was the perfect fatted calf. No ties meant no one cared, should something happen to her.

Well, something had.
He
had happened to her.

He watched her curl into a ball of vulnerability on the bed and realized with a mixture of regret and longing that he might be inclined to elude death a while longer.

S
he definitely had more respect for John's meds.

Caroline's brain felt like mush, but her body told no lies. She grinned, stretched long and hard, and with a shudder of delight, curled up under the blankets of her bed, languid from head to toe.

When was the last time she'd had one of
those
kinds of dreams? About a faceless stranger, no less, a delectable man who knew just which buttons to push.

She had felt no fear. No fear of being powerless, no fear of being hurt. She'd felt only pleasure and a sense of her own sexuality she thought she'd lost forever.

The sound of her own laugh surprised her. It sounded free. Happy. Neither fettered with cynicism nor laced with an undercurrent of tears. Maybe she was finally healing inside.

Dash's ecstatic bark broke the still morning. There was only one thing that provoked that kind of joy in her dog and that was chasing her squeaky cow. But she didn't play with just anybody. Who was out there with her? Not her patient, surely.

She sat up and looked around her empty sunlit cabin. His clothes were gone. He'd really recuperated quickly. Maybe all he had needed was warmth and rest.

Caroline grabbed the closest of her crutches, surprised to find them propped up within reach instead of by the chair where she'd left them last night. She was halfway to the window when she realized she wasn't hurting this morning.

Maybe the medicine was still in her system. Even so, she'd have expected to feel more stiff and sore than usual after her romp in the snow and sleeping in a chair all night.

But she hadn't slept in the chair. She had awakened in bed. She'd been moved from the chair at some point and never even realized it. Caroline's face flushed blister hot, and she looked over her shoulder at her rumpled bedcovers.

That dream…

No way. No matter how real it had seemed, it had only been a dream. She wouldn't climb into bed with some guy she didn't know, no matter how drugged out she was. Her Adonis had obviously been nice enough to move her from the chair to the bed when he woke up. Considering the condition they had found him in last night, it was amazing he'd had the strength to do it.

She peered through the frosty glass of the window,
but all she could see was Dash dancing around someone who looked real good in jeans. Who in the world…

Rubbing the condensation off the window, Caroline looked again. It was her Adonis. And by the look of him, he'd made a stunning recovery.

She dug her cell phone out of a drawer and dialed the number John gave only to close friends and family. While she waited for John to pick up, she eyed herself in the mirror over her dresser. She looked more rested than she had in weeks. In fact, she looked really nice for someone who'd just woken up.

John answered with an absent “hello.”

“Hey, there,” Caroline said, “just thought I'd let you know your patient's awake.”

“Any sign of fever?”

She laughed. “Not a bit. He's up and at it, in fact.”

The alarm in John's voice made her wince. “I've got one more patient to see, and then I'm on my way. Maybe I'd better call Millie to come over and wait with you until I get there, so you won't be alone.”

“No, I'll be okay until you get here. I've got Dash.”

Dash, who was at that moment selling her soul for another bout of catch with the stranger. If Dash trusted the guy, that meant he was okay. Caroline double-checked with a quick empathic probe of the man's emotions and sensed nothing threatening in him. His soul seemed to gleam with contentment.

After John said goodbye and hung up, she went to the kitchen sink to wash her face. Moments later, having brushed her hair and dressed, Caroline donned her parka and went outside.

She told herself it was just a lingering throb from her dream that made her ache inside when she saw her Adonis. He was just so beautiful to look at.

He stood with his back to her, looking up at the sun, with the sunlight glistening on his collar-length golden hair. He was a lot bigger and beefier than he had seemed last night. Easily six-three, with a build like Mr. Hard Body. He held Dash's squeaky cow poised in one bronze hand. The dog bounced around him, electrified by the joy that emanated from him, begging him to throw it.

The elation of man and dog filled the morning, washing over Caroline in waves of pure joy. She stifled a sigh. “You sure look better than you did last night.”

He turned, and her breath hung in her chest. There should be a law against a guy looking this good first thing in the morning. He had electric gray-blue eyes that crinkled with suppressed laughter and a sun-bright smile, with perfect white teeth. When he looked her up and down, Caroline felt as if he'd embraced her. His energy wrapped around her, from head to toe. Part of her froze inside; part of her wanted to dive in.

She maneuvered off the porch, propped herself on one crutch and held out her hand. “I'm Caroline.”

His hand was warm and callused. The instant he touched her, a rush of teasing humor poured out of him. “Meical Grabian. Thank you for rescuing me last night.”

Caroline waited for him to explain how he'd managed to end up unconscious in a snowdrift. When he didn't, she dropped his hand and turned to pet Dash. She
shouldn't pry. After all,
she
didn't like questions. He probably didn't, either.

“Hey, if you need to call home, you're welcome to my phone. Your family must be pretty worried.”

“There is no one I need to call.”

No family or friends? He was alone, then. Just like her.

“Need a ride somewhere? John will be by as soon as he's through at the hospital.”

“John?”

The edge in Grabian's voice made her look up at him. His eyes narrowed, and caution wafted from him like an arctic wind. “John is my doctor and friend. He helped me bring you in last night.”

His gaze fell and he seemed to relax. “I should thank him, too, then.”

“Let me fix you something to eat.”

He ran a hand over his middle but shook his head. “But you should eat. You're very hungry.” He looked into her eyes, straight into her soul. “Perhaps I'll rediscover my appetite in a while.”

He really did have the most beautiful eyes, the kind that held secrets she wanted to be in on. The rest of the world disappeared. She didn't think. She just opened her mouth and said it. “Look, you've obviously been through something terrible. If you need to talk to someone…I'm a psychologist. My specialization is juvenile counseling, but I may be able to help you. You just have to ask.”

He had a nice laugh, the sort she'd call smoky because it came from deep in his chest like a dragon's chuckle.
“Being a counselor, I'm sure you know much more about this than I do, but isn't confiding a two-way street?”

Was she transparent or something? “Right. Well. Not that I wouldn't like to spill my guts to someone and have it turn out to be the best decision I've ever made, but sometimes life doesn't work that way.”

He leaned closer and his gaze slipped over her again. “I'll make you a deal. If I ask you a question you don't want to answer, you can say so. The same goes for me. Fair enough?”

As fair as could be—and they'd both part ways as clueless about each other as they were now. What a lousy way to treat the only other empath she'd ever met. But she couldn't afford more. Maybe he couldn't either. And maybe that was for the best.

Caroline patted Dash again to avoid looking at him. “Okay. Come on in. I can at least make you some coffee.”

He followed her onto the porch, as silent as a cat, and reached around to open the door for her. That put him close enough for her to see the lines of strain around his eyes. He definitely didn't feel up to full strength yet.

He sat at her table and watched her while she fed Dash, made oatmeal and ate. Did he even blink? Not a word passed between them, but she rode the steady hum of his emotions, which felt like floating on her back in a heated swimming pool. Interest, benevolence, total openness and beneath it all, unmistakable attraction.

Oh, cut it out. He's just one of those people who's naturally sensual. And it's not like you can keep him.

Caroline reached for her coffee and took a sip,
probing his mind a little. She'd done it so many times with her patients. He'd never know she was there.

Smack. She ran headfirst into a wall inside him, a big reverberating muscle of power as black as night and as thick as steel. What was he hiding on the other side? She surreptitiously plumbed the ethereal haze of emotion surrounding the barrier.

Grabian groaned.

Caroline jerked her gaze up to look at him. He sat with his eyes closed and a soft smile on his face—a knowing smile. Whoa.

He opened his eyes. “Why did you stop?”

She stared at him. One second his pupils looked dilated and his irises burned fiery red, and the next, his eyes were cool gray again. It had to be a shadow in the room or something.

She smiled ruefully. “Sorry. You shouldn't have been able to feel me checking you out.”

His brow rose. “Your stealth leaves something to be desired.”

“Oh, yeah?” She set her coffee mug down with a laugh. “Let's see you try to sneak up on me like that. I'll bet you my shield will hold.”

Now
he
was laughing.

Caroline gave him a come-hither wave of her hand. “Come on, let's see what you've got.”

His smile widened. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I can handle it.”

“You won't take it personally?”

“You're just scared, aren't ya?”

He laughed again, shaking his head. Oh, such a
smug and superior man, but oh, so gorgeous when he grinned.

Caroline mimicked his posture, crossed arms and all. “Go ahead, buster, hit me with your best shot. Come on and—”

The words hung in her throat. Grabian locked on to the center of her being so hard she had to grab the sides of her chair. That was no probe. That was an all-out delving dive, right down to her soul. And it felt really, really good.

Better than good.

“Hey…” she moaned, “…enough…”

His teeth grated, and his smile hardened. He closed his eyes and—

“Ohhhhh…”

Everything in Caroline ran like a river, bleeding into the thrust of power that surged into her, manifesting itself in her body as pure, raw pleasure. A roar in her ears swept everything away but the sound of her own labored breathing. The splash of sunshine on the floor dimmed to splotchy gray. A heartbeat away from cataclysmal ecstasy, the gray turned to black.

The next thing she knew, Grabian was picking her up off the floor. “You were saying something about your shield?”

Caroline looked up into his teasing gray eyes and waited for the three of him she was seeing to stop circling like vultures. “Not funny. That was below the belt.”

His gaze slipped over her and he grinned.

She laughed. “Okay, so that's a poor choice of words, but what you just did to me was overkill.”

He lifted her into her chair and gave her a friendly pat on the back. “Nothing personal, remember?”

“Yeah, right. Never mind how you did it, just tell me why.”

He returned to his chair across from her and sank into it with a graceful shrug. “I wanted to give you back some of what you gave me last night.”

“Hold on, I never gave you anything like
that.
All you needed last night was someone to pull you out of the weather, throw a few blankets on you and keep you warm.” But the blankets hadn't warmed him. Not even the electric one.

He'd sapped her warmth from her last night, drunk it down like a thirsty man in the desert, and only then had his body warmed. She had eased his emotional emaciation, seen him go from starving to robust. But overnight? Unbelievable.

Caroline leaned forward. “You
are
an empath.”

He hesitated, running his tongue over his upper lip. “I have empathic abilities.”

Which wasn't the same as saying, “Yes, I am an empath,” but he was probably as reluctant as she was to disclose that to anyone. “I knew it. But how did I give you what you needed? How does that work?”

“Haven't you ever met someone who drained your energy and left you feeling lifeless?”

“Lots of people, yes, but they're not empaths, and they don't do it on purpose. And they sure don't do it like that. Last night, you just…took what you needed.”

“But you trusted me, didn't you? You trusted me not to take it all.”

Caroline looked down at her lap with painful, reckless hope that vied with her self-preservation. He was someone like her. She could learn so much from him. And he could learn a lot from her.

But that didn't matter. As long as Rivera kept sending men like Burke after her, she was no good for anyone. She'd only get Meical killed.

“You're in such pain,” he whispered.

And suddenly there was nothing in the room but that whisper. She raised her gaze to his and couldn't look away. His eyes were pewter gray again, cool and soothing. Gray mists swathed her, wrapped around her body, caressing…

“You have nothing to fear from me.”

But it was fear that had kept her safe.

“You trust me completely. You know you do.”

His mouth seemed close enough to kiss. She wanted that kiss so badly.

“Take what you need from me. I'm yours.”

Yes, she'd take him. All of him. She'd never get enough.

Halfway into the hungry fog, Caroline's inner senses picked up a quiver of desperation coming from somewhere beyond the cabin. She came back to herself with a jolt and jerked her head around to look out the window. Two throbbing, familiar waves of hurt and confusion reached her.

“Oh, no. Not again.”

 

Meical latched on to the slap of emotion that hit Caroline about two seconds before she plucked up one of her crutches and half hopped, half hobbled to the door. Her dog leaped up and followed her.