Personal Demon (8 page)

“I know,” he said. “I saw the ghost of Catherine Howard at Hampton Court Palace once, poor scared girl running down a hallway over and over. Very sad.”

The girl looked at him with new interest. “Were you a member of the Tudor court?”

“Nope. Just part of a midnight tour group.” He tilted his head thoughtfully. “What do you think of Midnight Tourist for the name of a band?”

She put her free hand on her hip. “You’re chattering to distract me, trying to get into my head again. Give it up. It won’t work.”

It would if he tried harder, but he wasn’t ready to cause her that sort of pain yet. Or he could bite her, claim her as his own, and get whatever he wanted out of her.

He smiled at the idea.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You know why,” he told her.

“You said you wanted breakfast, and I’m not on the menu.” She tugged him up the sidewalk. “Come on. I know a place that’s open all night.”

“You’re going to be fun.”

Fun, or would it be too much trouble to claim her? Trouble and fun, he decided. But he didn’t have time for breaking in a new pet right now.

Still, the heat of her body registered as lilacs and electric
blue against his senses one moment, red as burning roses the next. The swift changes of her moods and body reactions were enticing. He breathed in her growing awareness of him, the slight attraction mixed with defiance and fear. She aroused so many of his senses at once that the notion of claiming her grew more remote with each step. At least, he tried to make his awareness of this enemy of the strigoi remote, aloof, while his body kept telling him,
You know, mate, it’s been a while since anyone interesting has come along…

It would be pleasant to see all of her, sense all of her, take all of her. Just how intoxicating and satisfying would the combination of her blood and body be?

He did enjoy thinking about all the many possibilities as he let her lead him along the empty street. He stopped arguing with himself and greatly enjoyed the time it took to walk several blocks to the one source of light spilling out into the late-night darkness.

Christopher looked around carefully before going inside the all-night diner, appreciating the long winter night as well as making sure they hadn’t been followed. He hadn’t let her distract his senses entirely.

No one had followed them, and it was about two hours before he had to find shelter.

I
vy was aware of the vampire looking her over for the entire walk. It felt like that saying about someone’s undressing you with his eyes, only real. Somehow, feeling his attention on her so intently had done things to her, made her feel more vulnerable, more female. She’d found her body swaying sensually every now and then as she walked.

Okay,
she thought,
I’m naked under my clothes. You don’t have to be so obvious about your interest.

It was a ploy to rattle her, right? And this form of telepathically
tactile attention did rattle her from head to toe to her inner workings. It made her breasts feel heavy and her insides curl with heat.

I can smell you,
he whispered inside her head.
Delicious.

With a nose like that, you better be able to.

“Just leave me alone,” she grumbled when they reached the door of Theo’s Diner.

He laughed softly in her ear, making her do that shiver thing again, and insisted on opening the door for her and bowing slightly as she went in ahead of him.

“Oh, you’re a real gentleman,” she said.

“I’ve had lessons.”

“Night school?”

He gave her that infectious grin again. And seeing it in full light for the first time, Ivy’s knees almost buckled. Shock stopped her as she realized that not only had he spoken in her head, but that she had easily replied. How could that have happened? How had
he
done that? Why could she talk to him, like he was somehow special?

She stumbled forward as he dragged her all the way to the booth at the back, on the side away from the kitchen doors.

“We’ll be lucky if a waitress even finds us back here,” she said.

“Shove over,” he said, and sat down close beside her.

She was pinned between him and the wall. His broad shoulders took up a lot of room in the small booth, his thigh was pressed against hers. He plucked his leather coat off her shoulders and tossed it onto the seat opposite. She was still wearing her own coat but didn’t bother trying to wiggle out of it.

Naked under her clothes. It was stupid, but it still felt safer to have on as many layers as possible. The body against hers was hot and hard-muscled and—

“Damn it,” she grumbled.

“Am I making it hard for you to think? Or are you thinking too much about—?”

“Bugger off,” she said.

He chuckled, in a most satisfied way.

A waiter came up with two steaming mugs and set them on the table, and he was gone in an instant.

Ivy glanced at the mug in front of the vampire.

“Is that tea?”

“Very refreshing before bedtime,” he said.

“Stop trying to act English,” she said. “I know you can’t be.”

Oh, Goddess, that was a mistake!

He knew it, and chuckled. It was the scariest sound she’d ever heard. “And who told you that?” He pinched her chin between his fingers quicker than she could see. His eyes had gone a fierce, feral red. Every bit of amusement had left him. He was nothing but hardness now, radiating threat. “Tell me how you know. Tell me!”

His whisper sent painful cold terror through her head, into her soul. “H-hunters.” She was squeaking like a terrified little mouse-girl! But at least she was able to keep up the lie. “It’s vampire-hunter knowledge.”

“No, it is not,” he answered. “No mortal has ever lived long enough to pass on that information.”

Your kind really know nothing of our secrets
; the thought hissed through her.

Fine. Right then, that was just fine with her.

“There are no vampire secrets,” she said in a rush.
Please don’t kill me,
she thought. “There’s no such thing as a vampire. Can I go now?”

“Don’t pretend to be afraid of me.” After his gaze bored into hers a moment longer, he said, “You’re not pretending, are you?”

“Of course not.”

“Then I’ll let you live until I’m done with you.”

All she wanted at that moment was to get away from those angry red eyes. She wanted more than anything else to get out alive. But she couldn’t help but point out, “Of course you’ll let me live until you’re done with me. You don’t kill someone
before
you’re done with them.”

“Point taken. How about, I won’t cause you undue pain?”

“Define un—”

“Hush.”

She closed her mouth and nodded.

Oh. His eyes were blue again. They were still looking angrily into her own, but he once more looked like a man instead of a monster.

He let her go as the waiter came back and put down two plates of eggs, bacon, and hash browns. The waiter asked if they needed anything else. How about tea refills? The vampire murmured no thanks at him.

Ivy sat looking down, her fingers tightly gripping the edge of the table. All her bravado evaporated as his threats sank in. She was shaking again. This time with soul-wounding fear. She wanted to howl with it, like a beaten animal. She’d begged a moment ago! Maybe she’d recovered from it, but she shouldn’t have begged at all.

She’d never really been afraid of a vampire before encountering this one. Now she was sick with it. Now she knew what normal people felt like when they came face-to-face with these monsters.

“Eat up,” the English vampire said. He held a fork out to her, then pried her hand away from the table and wrapped her fingers around the utensil. He sounded perfectly cheerful again. “You’re going to need to keep up your strength. Stop thinking of me as
the English vampire
. It’s getting tedious. My name is Christopher. Call me that from now on. Since you belong to me now.”

T
he vampire—Christopher—looked critically around her living room, then looked down his long nose at her. “Are you always so messy?”

He’d made her bring him home with her. “Tourists don’t have lairs,” he’d pointed out to her.

She’d given the address on her driver’s license to the cab waiting outside Theo’s a half hour before dawn. But Christopher wasn’t having any deception on her part and gave her the distinct impression that the cab driver might be the one who suffered for her lie. So Ivy did what she had to do to keep a fellow mortal safe.

By the time they reached her door, she’d gotten over her initial scare. It had to have been because she’d never been so eye-to-eye close with a strigged-out vampire—or was it vamped-out strigoi—before.

Honestly, the worst thing this guy could do to her was
kill her. Not a pleasant prospect, of course, but fear of her demise had faded. He could hurt her, but he couldn’t make her into a slave or companion. Bad blood had its uses.

Ivy managed to look away from Christopher’s sneer and gasped as she saw what he was talking about. “What the hell?” She walked to the center of the room, having to kick through a pile from an overturned bookcase to get there. Shock and outrage raced through her.

The vampire had scared her, but this, this—

“Violation?” he suggested.

She whirled to glare at him. His defining her reaction sickened her more. “You didn’t do this,” she said. “You’ve been with me—”

Not all evening. What about the time she’d been at her aunt’s? Maybe Christopher had found her place, ransacked it, brought her back to reinforce her fear. But—

Then she saw the word written large and bright red on the clean white paint of the wall over the couch. Four awful, ugly letters:
Mine.

“Son of a bitch! You did do this!”

Ivy launched herself at him.

I
vy tripped over the piled books, and Christopher swooped close to catch her before she fell. “Not I,” he told her. “Don’t you blame me for this.”

This didn’t stop her from slapping him.

He was oddly pleased that she wasn’t scared of him anymore. Her fury rang like loud silver bells in his mind, full of a thousand different tones. The layered sound was pleasant, bracing, a glimpse of the real woman. He appreciated her strength for a moment, but time was getting on. The sun was on the way.

Christopher held Ivy out at arm’s length. “I did not do this. I do not like that someone did do this. We will do something about it. Tonight.”

“What do you mean tonight. It is night—oh.” Ivy glanced toward the window. He meant tomorrow night. “Oh, no, you are not staying here!”

“Dawn’s coming.”

She looked back at him, a fierce smile on her face. Pert and perky turned predatory. He liked it.

She said, “You should have had the cab wait. Leave now.”

“We both know how this is going to end,” he said. “Let’s go see if the bedroom is a wreck, too.”

He took Ivy by the hand and led her through her own flat like he was the one giving the guided tour. “No one’s thoughts singing in my head,” he said as he opened the living-room coat closet first. “Nothing and no one.” He checked the front door. “No emotional color here. He didn’t break in this way.”

“I did unlock the door for us to come in,” Ivy said.

“Which raises the question, did he have a key? Or did he come in some other way? Not by magic,” he went on.

Ivy didn’t offer any comment because he was talking out loud but not to her. She went along passively as he walked from room to room. Unless she wanted to somehow rip her hand off at the wrist, she had no choice but to tag along.

He looked into the spare bedroom. “Exercise equipment? No witch’s workroom? I’m surprised. But I did detect a twinge of sweat in your aura.”

I hate you,
she thought.

They moved on to her bedroom. She dreaded what she’d find when Christopher switched on the overhead light, but let out a relieved breath when she saw that nothing had been disturbed. And thank goodness the room was neat, the crowded bookcase still standing and the bed made. She
didn’t want to hear any more snide comments from him about her being a bad housekeeper—not that it was any business of his.

They skirted the queen-size bed to reach the bathroom. A cool breeze rushed out the moment he opened the door. The small window over the toilet was wide open.

“Point of entry,” Christopher said.

“If you went away, I could call the police about the break-in,” Ivy said.

“You wouldn’t. You’d call your coven to do a cleansing. What good would that do?”

She was more likely to call her family to help her paint and fix up the living room. And to help hunt down and take out the bastard suddenly stalking her. Her
coven
were not gentle, nature-worshipping pacifists. Nature wasn’t gentle.

“Who uses the term
coven
?” she asked the vampire holding her prisoner.

“What would you call your little group of mystics?”

“Dangerous,” she answered with a toothy smile. Not that her toothy smile could look as wicked as his, but she made the effort.

He laughed. “Aren’t you the funny one?”

Oh, yeah, real funny. She had a stalker. She had a vampire. She had an obsidian knife she was expected to do something with.

When had her life gotten so complicated?

Christopher pulled her all the way into the tiny bathroom with him. He took up too much space. She shivered from the cold let in by the window, but even more with the shock that someone had so easily invaded her home. Christopher’s arm went around her as though he was being comforting.

The little room contained the toilet; a pedestal sink with a medicine cabinet over it; a tall, narrow linen cupboard; and the shower stall. The decor was all in shades of pale
blue, which made her feel weak and wimpy and girly all of a sudden.

There was barely room for one person to stand in the bathroom, let alone two, when one was the wide-shouldered vampire. Pressed up against him in her own little bathroom, Ivy was more aware of the imposing size of him than she had been in the other places where they’d been squeezed together. This was
her
place, and he was filling it, overpowering her world.