Incubus Moon (18 page)

CHAPTER 21

The last thing I remembered was falling seven stories on my way to becoming sidewalk goo. Correction. My last vivid memory was of a crazed vampire tossing my terrified ass through a seventh-floor hospital window.

Dissatisfied with letting me die right then and there, Dimitri Ravello clearly had torture and slow death in mind for me. Why else would I be bound naked to the top of a cold, stone slab? Also, why were the twelve blonde women from my dreams here?

Dressed in long, silver and white gowns, they surrounded my stone prison with linked hands, their expressions filled with mounting anticipation. Above us, flames flickered and danced within large, ornate braziers suspended by chains from a towering dome that cast dramatic silhouettes up and over the temple’s vaulted ceiling. Francesca, the pretty young woman from the portrait at Dimitri’s, stood closest to me and offered a wistful smile.

“It is not the vampire you should fear, brother.”

A thirteenth female came into view behind her now.

In contrast to the terrifying, raven-haired being who’d once appeared to me, this woman possessed no sinister air to her regal beauty. Silver-white hair caressed her ivory shoulders in soft waves as she drew closer. “Time to wake up, dear boy…”

I stretched beneath soft bedding, the inevitable stab of pain along my spine mercifully absent. Gone, too, were the thirteen women and massive temple structure. I’d actually woken refreshed and feeling like my old self again. As if this past year of misery and horror had somehow been little more than a bad dream already retreating from memory.

If I got out of bed right now and headed downstairs, would Laura be sitting on the living room sofa of our Monrovia Craftsman, arguing about politics with Mark and Christie? Would Dimitri Ravello simply be their new neighbor and that Andrea person not be lying somewhere cold and dead?

“The delusions of a fragile mind.”

I scrambled from beneath the covers and pressed back against the arched headboard. If I could have willed myself through the padded fabric, through the very wall itself and into whatever lay beyond, I would have. The nightmare, it turned out, was horribly real.

The vampire emerged from the shadows, the sole light source in the room coming from a dim table lamp positioned on the nightstand next to me. He paused at the foot of the enormous bed, no doubt here to make good on his promise.

I searched frantically for a route of escape.

The vampire’s eyes blazed with eerie green light, his gaze traveling up the length of my crouched body to fix on my throat. He offered a chilling smile. “There is no escape for you.”

That was all I needed to hear.

Fixing on the set of double doors at the end of a long corridor behind him, I experienced an acute pulling at the center of my chest, similar to what had happened when he attacked me at his mansion. I zeroed in on my target and the room around me became a blur, the ivory carpet fibers seemingly alive against the bottoms of my bare feet and propelling me toward safety, or so I hoped.

Then I did something incredibly stupid.

I turned to look back at the monster.

One moment Dimitri was standing at the foot of the bed. In the next he was beside me, fangs bared, an arm hooked around my neck and dragging me back toward it.

If this was it. If I was truly going to die, then I was determined to take a piece of the monster with me. It didn’t matter that I possessed a fraction of his physical strength. I could do what years of martial arts training had taught me and use my entire body weight to throw him off balance. Which is exactly what I did.

Twisting sharply in his grip, I pushed straight back with my legs. The move paid off. Dimitri stumbled, giving me enough of an opening to make a break for it.

He was on me in an instant.

We crashed through the set of double doors and into a wider hallway in a shower of splintering wood and jagged metal bits. The crazier thing than fighting an honest-to-goodness vampire? I’d been knocked through a goddamn door and hardly felt a thing!

No time to consider how this was even possible. Dimitri and I were tumbling over each other in an avalanche of tangled arms and legs, until we slammed against a wall, where he grabbed hold of my calf and gave it a crushing squeeze.

I wailed in agony, expecting it to have been reduced to a mass of jelly and shattered bone, which it soon would be, if I didn’t react quickly.

I kicked him square in the face with the heel of my bare foot. Blood exploded from his nose and mouth and he released me with a howling yelp. I scrambled onto my hands and knees and delivered a second kick, connecting with the vampire’s chest and sending him hurtling backwards.
How the fuck am I doing this?

Live today. Marvel later
.

My heart was a stampede in my chest as I sprinted down another long corridor and into a wide atrium. A grand stairwell sat at its center, giving access to the floors above and below. Going up or down it meant the possibility of encountering new traps. Best to stay on this current level, I reasoned, and pray that it would lead me to safety.

The decision was the right one. I’d reached a spacious lounge, where panels of floor-to-ceiling glass spanned the entire width of the room at one end. Freedom and the cover of night lay just a few paces beyond. But halfway there I tripped, the floor pitching beneath me.

This wasn’t a house at all. I was on a goddamn ship!

No matter. I lunged for the sliding door handle and pulled back on it. The large panel of glass slid effortlessly to the side and cool, salty air rushed in to fill my lungs. Sprinting onto an open-air deck and toward the metal railing at the stern some thirty feet away, I knew that if I wanted to survive, I was going to have to jump.

“Don’t be a fool,” Dimitri shouted from the sliding-glass door.

Only a fool would heed the words of a fairytale monster. So I vaulted over the railing and into the salty night air, wind swirling around me, the sound of churning water thundering in my ears. Then I began to choke.

The collar of my T-shirt had snagged on something and was serving as a noose. My hands flew up in a violent attempt to break free from whatever I’d become ensnared on, but instead I connected with cool flesh. Dimitri had me by the collar.

I kicked out frantically to find some toehold just as the cotton material gave way and my body dropped. Air flooded back into my lungs and the tiny pinpoints of light crowding the outer edges of my vision retreated. But I was far from safe.

The powerful roar of engines and stench of diesel fuel filled my ears and nostrils, while a roiling mass of white foam and whirling propeller blades churned beneath me.

The vampire gripped me by the waistband of my cargo shorts, the leather belt cutting painfully into my stomach. His hold was the only thing standing between me and certain death.

“Attempt such an act again, and I shall willingly let you die.”

To my considerable relief, he hoisted me back over the stern, where I collapsed onto the damp, wooden decking at his feet, coughing up salt and exhaust vapors, but very happy not to have been turned into propeller lubricant. On second thought, those blades might have been a kinder fate than the one he presumably had in store for me.

“Why didn’t you?” My voice came out raw, bruised.

“I’ve shown you all the consideration I care to this night.” He seized me by the arm and yanked me up to my feet. “It would be unwise to press for more.”

With a bloodied chin and shirtfront, Dimitri half-pushed, half-dragged me back to the stateroom. Once there, he shoved me along the corridor, up the three steps to the raised section nearest the bed, and then knocked me to my knees. “Remain here until I come for you. Indulge in another idiotic attempt at escape, and trust that it shall be your last.”

I clambered to my feet, a fusion of fear, despair, and rising anger causing my body to tremble. “Why are you doing this?”

He regarded me for a long moment, some of the hostility in his expression diminishing. “Allowing you to live?” I nodded, the first glimmer of hope that he might actually show me some mercy. “Who said anything about that?”

My body tensed, but I stood my ground. I was prepared to do whatever was necessary to survive.

“I haven’t quite decided how to do it yet,” he said, shooting me a withering stare. “Perhaps the element of surprise would be more enjoyable, killing you while you slumber.”

And yet, if Dimitri Ravello truly wanted me dead, he’d have let those propeller blades finish the job for him, or left me a broken mass on the hospital sidewalk.

He answered my next question before I could voice it.

“You have been with me for several days now. Unconscious and sick with fever for the better part of them. Your injuries were too severe. I saw no alternative but to…” A storm of emotions played across his face again. “…give you some of my blood.”

His blood?

I stared at the opening we’d created in a hailstorm of flying wood and metal and tried not to dwell on the method of delivery of that blood, certain it had had nothing to do with sanitary tubes and bags of plasma and everything to do with sharp teeth, biting, and swallowing.

More shocking was that Dimitri Ravello had now saved my life on two occasions.

The
Shadow Walker
about whom I’d been warned was supposed to be hell bent on my demise, not putting me up in some posh stateroom aboard a mega-yacht.

Yeah
, I reminded myself,
but he’s still your judge, jury, and executioner
.

That vampire who’d attacked me in Prague, for surely that’s what he was, had lived up to the warning label, and then some. How had he been able to materialize to me in Las Vegas and so thoroughly infiltrate my mind? If I hadn’t been strong enough (or lucky enough) to push him out of my head at the last minute, I would have hurt or killed that male stripper.

The flashback sent a cold shiver through me. It also caused my dick to twitch.

The unexpected idea of wrapping my arms around that beautiful young man’s hard, smooth, naked muscle and draining him dry of every last precious drop of blood was giving me one helluva a hard-on. I could actually envision myself fucking him and drinking him down.

“Do it!” the voice in my head had whispered to me. “Take it all.”

Oh, I’d wanted too.

I began pacing back and forth at the foot of the large bed, focusing all of my energy on burying the memory of that voice. I refused to let that
thing
back inside me.

Or, was being pumped full of Dimitri’s blood the cause for this erotic yet disturbing memory? I was certainly a lot physically stronger because of it

I brought fingertips to my mouth to feel for the set of fangs that were thankfully not there. That was where my relief ended. Whatever Dimitri Ravello’s endgame was it couldn’t bode well for me. Every fiber of my being told me this was true.

At least one aspect of my imprisonment stood in my favor: The sun would eventually rise and limit Dimitri’s ability to pursue me. I’d use this to my advantage.

The first order of business, however, was to find a weapon.

Shame Caulfield’s gun and silver-tipped bullets weren’t lying around. Despite all the drama back at the hospital, I hadn’t missed the fact that silver was evidently akin to vampire kryptonite.

Poor Caulfield
. I’d only just met the woman, and didn’t particularly like her, but I hoped she’d survived our ordeal at the hospital. She might be the one person in this world who could track and find my vampire captor. But she wasn’t here now. I was on my own.

To my dismay, the closets contained all the fancy but useless items one might expect to find aboard a luxury vessel. Fine clothing and mega-thread-count sheets weren’t going to do the trick. Rummaging
through drawers and feeling along upper shelves produced the same worthless results. Luck, evidently, was not on my side.

Then I tried the last place I could look within the confines of the stateroom.

The closed door to the left of the enormous bed opened onto an opulent marble and chrome bathroom. A fragment of broken mirror could easily be fashioned into a weapon. It had worked well on that Texan back in Monrovia. But the sound of shattering glass wasn’t what stopped me cold. The image reflected in the mirrors was.