Nocturne (9 page)

Music had always offered her a wonderful escape from the outside world, a means of releasing her anxiety and emotions. She hadn’t realized until that moment how much she’d missed it. What better method was there to release her pent-up frustration than to play the piano?

Nicole hesitated. Given Michael’s foul mood and his proclivity for being alone, he might not appreciate someone else touching his piano. He was a far superior musician, and she felt a little intimidated at the thought of playing when he could hear. The music might disturb him.

Screw him
, she told herself, mentally squashing all thoughts of awkwardness or consideration.
If he doesn’t like it, he can come out and tell me to stop.

The late afternoon light was dim and gray. Nicole switched on the brass lamp atop the piano and opened the bench. It was stuffed with piano music, some of which looked very old. She shuffled through it until she came to something familiar—Chopin’s Prelude no. 24—a thrilling piece she’d once known by heart, and had played often with great enjoyment. Setting the sheet music on the stand, she sat down on the bench, lifted the lid over the keyboard, arranged her hands in position, and began to play.

Nicole warmed up with a few scales, then plunged into the piece itself. It was complex and required great concentration. From the first bold stanza, an unanticipated surge of pleasure raced through her. As she followed the score, it was as if her brain was siphoning off all her excess energy into the task of getting her fingers into the right place at the right time.

The longer strings of the grand piano produced a larger, richer sound than the instrument she was used to, with truer overtones and lower inharmonicity. With every vibration of the instrument, she could feel the music as well as hear it. The song was glorious and beautiful. A smile built deep down within her soul, and all her tension and frustration began melting away.

Nicole was halfway through the piece when, from the corner of her eye, she caught sight of movement as she played. She glanced up, startled, to find Michael standing by the hearth, arms casually folded across his chest, watching her intently.

Ignoring him, Nicole played on, the room filling with the extraordinary beauty of the music.

“You didn’t say that you played,” he said quietly.

“You never asked,” she retorted bluntly.

She gave her full attention to the music, feeling a little self-conscious now because he was still staring at her. She made a few mistakes, which had more to do with being out of practice than it did with him watching. When she came to the end of the piece, Michael applauded with enthusiasm. She sat back, wondering what was going through his mind. Considering the antagonistic remarks he’d made earlier, she couldn’t begin to guess what he expected of her—so she said nothing and waited. Finally, he spoke.

“I’m sorry.”

She glanced at him sharply. His expression was equal parts surprise, admiration, and contrition.

“I behaved like the most vulgar, offensive, and ill-mannered Neanderthal,” he continued. “You went to great effort—I imagine—to prepare a nice meal for me, and I was entirely unappreciative. I said things I didn’t mean. Please forgive me.”

Okay, as apologies went, it was satisfactory. Nicole sensed that it was genuine and came from the heart. Still, she was in no mood to forgive him.

“I appreciate the apology,” she said coolly, “but it doesn’t excuse or explain the behavior. What were you so angry about? That I found out you have a blood disorder? It’s not such a big deal.”

“You’re right. What can I say? Except, again: I’m sorry. Can we chalk it up to cabin fever?”

The look in his eyes was so hopeful, repentant, and filled with teasing good humor that—despite herself—Nicole felt her anger scattering to the wind, like the billowy parachutes of
Damn him
, she thought, straining to hold back the beginning of a smile.
I can’t even stay mad at him when he deserves it.

“If I seemed frightened, it had nothing to do with you,” she said. “It was the sight of all that blood.”

“The sight of blood makes you squeamish?” He stared at her, shaking his head slightly, as if for some reason he found that ironic.

“Yes. It didn’t used to. But . . . anyway. If you’re worried that I’m going to tell the press you’re a hemophiliac, don’t be. You’re a private person. I get that. And I would never tell anyone who you are.”

“Thank you.”

“I hope you don’t mind that I played your piano.”

“Not at all.” In a few graceful strides, he crossed the room and joined her. “I haven’t heard anyone else play in a long time. I can’t begin to tell you how wonderful it was—how wonderful
you
were. That’s a very difficult piece, and you’re very good.”

“Not as good as you.”

To his credit, he didn’t try to refute that. “Perhaps I’ve just had more practice. You have a lot of talent. How long have you been playing?”

“Twenty-three years. You?”

“A bit longer.”

He stood beside the bench, a foot from where she sat, one hand resting on top of the piano as he gazed down at her. The look on his face was tender. Nicole wanted to bang her head against the keyboard. A few minutes ago she’d been so furious with him that she was ready to cut his head off. All it had

“The piano has long been my solace,” he said, “a source of pleasure when things go right, and a place to escape when things go wrong.”

“The same for me,” she admitted.

“It’s like opening a door to the subconscious.”

She nodded. “To allow the mind to wander.”

“When I play Chopin’s Nocturne no. 2 in E-flat Major, I sometimes feel as though I’m in a kind of trance.”

“Have you played his Nocturne no. 5 in F-sharp Major?” she asked.

“I have.”

“It always carries me away.”

“Me, too. I’ve gone through entire pieces of music without being able to actually remember playing them.” The excitement in his voice was infectious.

“When I get really angry, I play scales and arpeggios.”

“If that doesn’t work, I launch into massive chords.”

“It’s like magic,” she enthused. “I love hearing the music, knowing that I can create this big, beautiful sound all by myself.”

“And the best part is how your own emotions change the meaning of the music.”

“Yes! The same tune played by three different people can express three entirely different things.”

Their eyes were locked now and they were both smiling broadly, bound by mutual interest and excitement. “Would you like to play a duet?” he asked.

“I don’t know any.”

“I used to have some old music for a piano duet that you could sight-read in your sleep. Let’s see if it’s still in the bench.”

Nicole stood. He rifled through the contents of the bench, finally coming up with the music sheet he was looking for. He handed it to her. “Are you game?”

It was Mozart’s Sonata for Piano Duet in D. She’d never played it before. “Why not?”

Setting the music on the stand, Nicole resumed her seat. Michael sat down beside her. The bench was just big enough for the two of them. Nicole felt the now familiar quiver deep inside her as Michael’s thigh and upper arm touched hers. They both moved their hands into position. Michael inhaled an anticipatory beat, they exchanged a glance and a nod, and began to play.

The music sprang forth from the instrument at the touch of their fingertips, resounding throughout the room. Michael’s skill was masterful. Nicole worked hard to keep up with him, matching his precise cadence. As their fingers moved along the keys, Nicole was hyper aware of his taut body pressed against her own. Each unsteady pop of her heartbeat seemed a sharp point and counterpoint to the rhythm they played.

It was wonderful. Delirious. Breathtaking. Exhilarating. Together, they were creating something beautiful, just as they had earlier in his woodshop downstairs. The memory of what had followed after that event made Nicole’s heart thud in her ears, and it became increasingly difficult to concentrate on the score. When they finished the piece, she sat with lowered eyes, fingers still at the keyboard, struggling to control her rapid

Suddenly, Michael’s fingers were at her chin, gently lifting and turning it. His eyes smoldered, wordlessly communicating an attraction that matched her own. His other hand sifted through her long, wavy hair, then tucked a stray lock behind one ear. Lowering his head now, he touched his lips to hers.

His kiss was gentle, soft, and deeply arousing. Nicole turned to face him on the bench, her arms weaving up instantly around his neck and tangling in his hair. His hands smoothed their way around her back, drawing her more closely to him. As Nicole’s breasts pressed softly against the hard expanse of his chest, a melting heat rose within her.

The kiss became more insistent now, Michael’s tongue probing the soft openness of her mouth. As his hands roamed her back, the tingle of desire rushed through her. Their lips parted as each took a sharp breath, then clung together again.

“Nicole,” he whispered tenderly, his lips at her ear, “you bring out feelings in me that I didn’t know existed.”

Michael’s mouth brushed hers again, then traveled down to her throat. Nicole’s eyes closed and her head fell back in ecstasy as his lips nuzzled the tender flesh there. His breathing was ragged now, mirroring her own; she both heard and felt it hot and insistent against her neck, just as she heard and felt his low growl, a sound suffused with passion. Shivers danced through her. Blood moved thin and hot through her veins and pounded in her throat. She felt limp with need.
Take me
, she thought.
Make love to me. Now. Now.

Through her love-gauzed daze, Nicole was vaguely aware of a soft clicking sound. She felt Michael tense in her arms, as if hesitating.

“No, please,” Nicole murmured. “Don’t . . .” Her mind completed the thought:
Don’t pull away again. I want you. I want you.

But Michael’s mouth abruptly left her throat. Why?

As Nicole lazily opened her eyes, it seemed, for one brief instant, as if time stood still. And in that instant, she saw three things that confused her.

The first was the light atop the piano; for some reason it was flickering. The second was Michael’s eyes. Just inches away, they burned into her with all-consuming desire, and seemed to dance with liquid red flames. The third was Michael’s teeth. Through his parted lips, she saw that his canine teeth were long and sharp.

Fangs.

CHAPTER 10

N
ICOLE RECOILED with shock and fright. When she blinked, to her further confusion, Michael’s eyes and teeth became normal again. The subtle clicking sound that accompanied this transformation was overwhelmed by a different, distant reverberation, like the drone of an engine coming to life—and the lights came back on full force.

Michael let her go abruptly, sliding off the piano bench and leaping to his feet.

“The power just went out,” he said, stepping backward hastily. “The backup generator just came on. I’d better check on the . . .” He broke off, turned, strode quickly across the room, and disappeared down the stairs.

Nicole stared after him, her pulse still racing.
What in the hell?
What had she just seen?
Red flames? Fangs?

One second, it had seemed as if a monster was staring down at her—a red-eyed monster with fangs, like the terrifying, cloaked figure in her nightmare. The next, he was Michael again. She’d seen flames like that in Michael’s eyes the night before—or
thought
she did—but told herself she’d imagined it. Was she going crazy? Was cabin fever playing tricks on her mind? Or was it was a trick of the flickering light?

The backdoor slammed downstairs. Nicole turned to the front windows and looked outside. Michael must be going back to the barn again, to check on the horses. In a few seconds, she’d hear the sound of his truck engine roar to life, catch a glimpse of the truck emerging from the garage around the side of the house, and see it pull out onto the road, his snowplow at the fore. All of which would reassure her that everything was fine and totally normal.

Snow was still falling gently, but a brief break in the wind enabled her to see quite a distance. The roads Michael had cleared that morning were already covered with more than a foot of new snow. Her gaze was drawn to the side road running from the driveway toward that other building about two hundred feet away, hidden by the trees. Inexplicably, a narrow, ragged channel had been blazed through the newly fallen snow on that road, as if it had been haphazardly carved out by a running man—or a whirlwind.

To Nicole’s surprise, through the pine branches and snow gloom, she saw a man standing outside that other building. A man in a black parka. He opened a door and vanished inside. Nicole froze in disbelief.
Who was that?
It couldn’t have been Michael. Michael left this house a couple of seconds ago. He could never have gotten over there so quickly. He’d barely have

The building couldn’t be the barn; Michael had said his barn was down the back side of his hill. Did someone else live across the way? If so, why hadn’t Michael mentioned him?

Bewildered, Nicole raced for the stairs, flew down to the mud room, and threw open the door to the garage. Michael’s truck and Range Rover were still there. She dashed out the backdoor onto the covered side porch, where freezing cold air slapped her in the face. It was so cold it hurt to breathe.

The drone of a generator came from behind a partition next to the porch, but Michael wasn’t there. Shivering, rubbing her arms, Nicole glanced in every direction, scanning the forest, gazing out through the cascade of ever falling snowflakes. There was no sign of Michael anywhere.

Nicole darted back inside the house, stunned. It must have been Michael, after all, whom she’d seen entering that place—whatever it was—across the way.
But that’s impossible
, she told herself.
No human being could have moved that fast.

No human being . . .

As Nicole heard the words in her mind, the hair stood up on the back of her neck. A cold fear rippled through her veins.

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

All at once, every confused thought she’d ever had about Michael, everything she’d wondered and puzzled over, came together in a rush in her mind:

He never ate or drank. He was never tired or chilled. The bags of blood. The eyes that flamed like torches. The fangs. The journals in his study, all in the same handwriting—
the same
, she suddenly realized,
as the man who’d signed her book
. The man in the photos . . . for more than a century and a half,
he had never aged
.

With growing horror, Nicole realized what he must be.

Michael was a vampire.

NICOLE’S MIND REELED, trying to reject the notion.

It was impossible.

Beings like that were the stuff of fantasy and legend. They didn’t really exist.

But a phrase Michael had uttered the night before came back to her in a flash:

Even legend is founded in a kernel of truth.
However impossible, this was
real
, it was happening.

Terrified, she now understood why he’d saved her life in the first place, what the past two days had been all about. She was, indeed, the fly in the spider’s web. He’d just been keeping her until he got hungry. The look in his eyes a few minutes ago had revealed what he’d wanted.

He’d wanted her blood.

Panic seized her, the only thought in her mind to run for her life. Now. This very instant. While he was gone. It might be her only chance to escape.

Nicole’s mind raced. If the legends were true—
My God, could they really be true?
—then he could overtake her in a second and could overpower her without effort. She had to get away fast and pray that he wouldn’t notice until she was far out of his reach.

But how to do it? Where to go?

He’d said his closest neighbor to the east was twenty miles away. She couldn’t take one of his vehicles, even if she could find the keys; the highway was closed and covered with snow. It was freezing outside and snowing hard. His snowshoes were still there; apparently he hadn’t needed them. But even with snowshoes, how far would she get? There was only about an hour of daylight left, two at most. It would be exhausting to tramp through all that fresh snow, and it’d be dark before she knew it.

Then she remembered. She’d noticed them in the garage, out of the corner of her eye.

Yanking open the door to the garage, she saw them—a pair of cross-country skis and poles hanging neatly on the wall. On a shelf beside them rested a pair of black cross-country ski boots.

She could ski out.

Although Nicole was an accomplished downhill skier, she had never tried cross-country. But she’d seen how it was done. His boots would be too big, but she could make them fit.

Heart racing, Nicole hauled the equipment into the mud room, then sped upstairs to the bedroom. In a frenzy, she tossed out everything unnecessary from her small backpack and stuffed in her purse, water bottle, camera, an extra sweater, and several pairs of socks. Frantically she redressed in her ski clothing: ski pants, turtleneck, and sweater over thermals. After donning two pairs of socks, she pulled her warmest ski hat down over her ears.

From the laundry room, she retrieved her parka and scarf and put them on, then darted back to the mud room where she

Desperately she glanced at the building hidden in the trees across the way, but Michael was nowhere to be seen.
Wherever you are, please stay there
, she prayed.

The wind was picking up. Even with all her warm clothing, her hat pulled low, and her scarf covering her face, she was cold. Quickly, Nicole studied the ski bindings: unlike downhill skis, these only clipped onto the shoe at the toe. She stepped into them. The latches clicked in place. Leaning forward, she dug the ski poles into the snow, sliding one leg forward and then the other. It was very different from downhill skiing—like pulling herself through the snow and gliding.
He must fly like the wind on these
, she thought. For her, it was a lot of work. It took a few minutes to get the hang of it, but soon she was off, skimming across the snow.

Nicole crossed the snowy driveway and coasted down the long, winding road that led downhill. The ski edges felt different, and maneuvering was a bit more awkward than usual due to the boots’ toe attachment, but Nicole managed to make it down the sloping road with relative ease. All the way, her heart pounded furiously and she kept looking back over her shoulder, afraid that Michael might be following her; but he wasn’t.

When she reached the highway, she hesitated briefly. It was covered in at least three feet of snow. She scanned the embankment

Should she cut off the road into the trees so that Michael couldn’t see her? No; that was crazy. She could easily lose her way in the woods, even if she tried staying close to the road, and the terrain was so uneven, it would greatly slow her down. Better to stick to the open road and just pray that he wouldn’t come after her.

Nicole plunged onto the main highway. To her dismay, her skis promptly sank down a good eighteen inches into the snow. Using her poles for balance, Nicole pushed her skis forward, packing down the snow as she went, but to her frustration it was very slow going. With each forward slide, a heap of snow cut over the top of the ski, coming up against her legs and weighing her down. She had to lift each ski up to disperse the accumulated snow, slide it forward again, create a new hole, then repeat the process all over again.

It was utterly exhausting. With every movement of the skis, Nicole felt as if she were climbing a mountain and then sinking back down again. Still, she urgently forged on, sinking, sliding, pulling, moving forward at a snail’s pace.

It was so very cold. The small patch of skin around Nicole’s eyes that was exposed to the elements felt frozen. Her eyes stung from the flakes driven by the biting wind. Every breath burned her lungs, and she soon found herself gasping.

After spending several days in the mountains, she would have thought she’d become accustomed to the altitude by now; but apparently not. Her fingers inside her gloves felt like icicles. Even her feet, with all those socks and insulated boots, began

To her dismay, daylight was fading. The wind was whipping in a frenzy now, the air once more a mad confusion of misty, swirling whiteness. Nicole couldn’t see more than ten feet in any direction. Her teeth began chattering. She felt lost, disoriented. Was she still on the road? Was she heading in the right direction? Her entire body felt like a Popsicle. She was shivering, utterly worn out, nearing the end of her resources.

Silently, she berated herself.
Idiot. What made you think you could do this?
She could never cover twenty miles on these skis. She’d be lucky if she made it another ten yards before collapsing. She felt bad for her mother and sister and nieces, who’d be distraught and confused when they learned what had happened. What was Nicole doing out on that road in a blizzard? Why didn’t she stay inside where it was safe and warm?

Safe and warm. Ha! Nicole moved in a daze, her mind whirling as fast as the falling snow, images from the past two days flashing through her mind. Michael’s smile. His hands on her body. His hands on the piano keys. His kiss. His red eyes. Fangs.
Vampire.
No wonder she’d been so sexually attracted to him. He must have put her under some kind of spell. Had anything he told her been true? Was he really Patrick Spencer? She was the one who’d made that assumption. Had he simply agreed, after she avowed herself a fan? Was it just a clever lie to lower her guard?

A faint voice drifted by on the wind. A man’s voice. It seemed to be calling her name. Who would be calling her?
No, no. Please. Not him.

Nicole slogged on, not daring to look back. There was the voice again, closer now, urgent and admonishing:

“Nicole! For God’s sake, stop! Come back!”

Her pulse raced in terror. Her head spun. She wouldn’t stop. Couldn’t. So exhausted. Pull. Slide. Slide. Lift. Lift. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Suddenly two strong hands were grabbing her by both arms and Michael was standing on top of her skis, looking at her with frantic blue eyes.

“What the hell are you doing? Where are you going?”