Shadows of Fire (18 page)

“Then
this isn’t a problem?”

Ronan
sent the vial crashing to the floor. She lunged, but was too late. Her life’s
salvation lay puddled at his booted feet.

“You
lie, you sad, pathetic woman.” He hauled her to her feet. “The good professor
didn’t happen to mention that his cure has never worked … did he?” Angry
spittle sprayed her face. “I didn’t know until recently that he’d continued his
research. But I’ve destroyed it all.” Ronan shoved her away from him. “This
briefcase which Glenn so graciously located, holds the last remnants of the
professor’s formulas for both the serum and the gruel. And it shelters one
other document.” Ronan pulled a piece of paper from the satchel. “It seems you
were helping the good professor with his research. Tell me, Alexandra, how many
vampires did you turn back when his
cure
didn’t work?”

She
stared mutely at him, unwilling to play his game.

“Oh,
please, don’t insult me with your doe-eyed-innocent act. It’s all right here.
How he brought them to the brink of death trying to make them human and how you
offered your vampire talents saving them from the human frailty of death and
restoring their immortality.” He snapped his finger on the paper. The noise
echoed like a clanging cymbal in the stillness. “And it seems you were busy
helping him burn those who didn’t survive.”

“I
didn’t know about the fires.” Her defeated words came out in a whisper. “He
confessed to me later that he’d only wanted to give them a proper funeral pyre.
I thought he’d stopped …” The words winded her and Alex inhaled deeply, trying
to catch her breath.

Ronan
picked up the thread of conversation, “but he continued experimenting, changing
and adapting the formula. How lovely that he found an assistant.”

“I
have copies of all the formulas.” Another lie.

Ronan
simply shook his head. “No you don’t, Alexandra. Your body begs for both the
serum and his gruel. If you could’ve manufactured it, you wouldn’t be laying in
a heap of quivering muscle.”

There
was no use fighting the truth. “He didn’t want me to be liable if someone
discovered his work.”

“Yes,
my father was an honorable man. It’s such a shame it had to be me who
guaranteed an end to his heinous research.”

“Your
father?” Alex’s question came out trembling and weak.

“Professor
Morgan.”

“But
Paul had no children.”

With
a feral cry of frustration, Ronan picked up the wooden desk chair and shattered
it on the floor. When his angry eyes locked on hers, they were filled with
unshed tears. “I was his dark secret. An abomination! Neither human nor vampire.
I got dealt the shittiest of hands.”

“I
don’t understand.”

The
heels of Ronan’s boots clicked along the cement as he paced wall to wall like a
caged animal. She heard another muted explosion and wondered why the smoke
detectors hadn’t engaged. Ronan had probably disabled them. She wondered if he
would have lured her into his staged drama if she hadn’t stumbled upon it
herself. Because if one thing that had become perfectly clear—he’d done
everything at the tavern to guarantee she died in this final conflagration.

“Of
course you don’t understand. No one understands. How could a human sire a child
with a vampire?”

“I
didn’t know it was possible.” Her statement stopped him cold.

“Obviously,
neither did he.” Ronan thumped a fist on his chest. “But here I am. Despite
everything, I live!” Long fingers pushed the blond hair from his face. “And
thanks to
him
I walked between the worlds. Too weak to be considered a
vampire. Too aberrant to be considered human. I couldn’t eat food, but I had
worthless fangs. Barely formed, they weren’t strong enough to tear flesh. I had
to live off my mother’s kills. She brought woodland creatures home for us to
feed on together. Woodchucks, rabbits and deer.” He laughed derisively. “I
gotta tell you, it was a helluva a childhood.”

Alex
felt her strength seeping from her. She hadn’t expected to be so dependent on
the serum— or the gruel supplement. She knew of the side effects. Had seen them
on several occasions before convincing the professor to try the cure on her.
He’d believed he’d made a breakthrough with his last formula modification.
She’d had her last injection and batch of gruel the night of the fire. Of
course, the man hadn’t expected to be murdered by his own son. Another bout of
nausea filled her throat. Under the guise of retching, she shifted closer to
the wood scattered on the floor. She couldn’t let Ronan get away with all the
killing. She had to keep him talking until she could figure out how to stop
him. “Your parents loved you.”

“My
mother loved me. My father loved my mother.” Ronan lost himself in his
reminiscences. “My mother was loathe to let him experiment on me, but she
continued the treatments, dreaming of making us both human one day. My father
worked tirelessly to discover what made vampire blood different. He took
samples upon samples, injecting her with serums he hoped would work.” Tears ran
unchecked down Ronan’s face. “He took everything from her and never got any
closer to finding anything. Still, she let him experiment. Over and over, he
stuck her. Until she became incapacitated and could no longer get out of bed. I
was a teenager by then. I was forced to learn how to hunt and feed. I fashioned
false canines and honed my skills so I could feed us both. I was so angry at
what he was doing to her. My father and I argued. I wanted him to stop, but he
insisted it was what she wanted.”

Alex
moved again, the splintered chair leg now resting beneath her thigh. “She
wanted to save you from the hell of immortality.”

“Immortality?”
He laughed at the ceiling. “I wasn’t given that power. I couldn’t heal. I had
no superior senses. I was weak like my father. I hated him for creating me. I
hated him for killing my mother.”

“She
died?”

“She
was
murdered
!” Ronan’s frustration echoed off the stone walls.

Alex
could barely breathe. “Your father was a kind and gentle man. He offered
vampires salvation.”

“Look
at you. You call the life you have right now salvation?”

“I
didn’t want to be a vampire. I was pulled into this world without my consent.
Glenn saved me from the monster who left me for dead. I will never blame him
for completing the transformation. But I never wanted this life.”

Ronan
squatted in front of her and stared into her eyes. “Look at me, Alexandra.
Really
look at me.” With a vicious growl, the vampire within him was unleashed.

This
close, with his fangs hanging in her face and the fires of hell burning in his
eyes, she recognized the vampire who had possessed her dreams for thirty years.
“You? But that can’t be. The creature who attacked me was no more than fifteen.
You wouldn’t have aged.”

Ronan
squeezed her chin. The unexpected spike of pain burned hot behind her eyes as
he dragged his tongue up her cheek. With a sharp hiss of air, he filled his
lungs with her scent. “The night my mother died, I ran from the house.” His
voice was hot in her ear. “I was angry and alone. I wanted to kill. To feel the
power of the vampire. You were a student of my father’s. So young and weak. I
recognized you in town and I followed you to the tavern. I waited patiently
until you left and I took you. Dragged you into the woods. Pierced your neck
with the canines that had become my life’s salvation. I drank greedily. You
were my first. A vampire never forgets his first.” His fangs grazed her neck
just above the scarf. “I figured I’d killed you. Imagine my pleasant surprise
when I returned to South Kenton and found you alive. My sweet Alexandra.”

He’d
turned her. She no longer thought about the professor or Glenn. Ronan needed to
burn for bringing her into a world she abhorred and an existence she hadn’t
chosen. Alex let the hatred fill her. With all the years of rage behind it, she
swung the splintered leg of the chair up toward Ronan’s chest. With explosive
reflexes, Ronan wrenched it from her fingers and threw it across the room.

“Stupid
woman. You have no idea who you fight.” Ronan stared down at her, his features
easing back into a mask of human contempt.

“No.
I don’t know.” Alex closed her eyes in apparent defeat. She would not let Ronan
get away with what he had done to her—to the others. Keeping him in the cellar
while the tavern blazed above them and leaving him without an escape route was
her only chance to make him pay. She didn’t fear death. She welcomed it.
Anything would be better than the agony coursing through her body. She inhaled
slowly. “Tell me how.”

“How?
How did I age? Why didn’t you recognize me? Why didn’t my
own father
recognize
me when we worked together at the university?”

Alex
nodded and forced herself to meet his evil gaze.

“I
went high into the Rockies. They live there, you know. Small clusters of them
feeding. Living as pure vampires are meant to live. I trained with them. Nearly
six years I learned their ways, aged and grew strong. The night of my
twenty-first birthday, when the moon was full, she came to me. The leader of
the clan. A female vampire so ancient and powerful, no man challenged her
position.” Ronan squatted beside her and brushed his fingers across her cheek. “Her
skin was white as ivory, glowing in the moonlight.” His hand slid down her
chest, squeezing her breast with such force, she gasped. “With tits so ripe and
full, I greedily filled my hands.”

Disgust
rolled the acid in her belly.

“I
took what she gave me. With the lust of youth and the passion of a grown man, I
loved her. And as my pleasure filled her, she took me. With great fangs of
power, she sucked my blood. Then offered me hers and made me a full vampire.
Have you ever loved a man that way, Alexandra?” His thumb dragged across her
lip, slicing it with his nail. “Your teeth buried in his flesh, giving him
power while his cock is buried in you?”

Alex’s
eyes narrowed and she frowned, cold revulsion shivering through her body.

“Oh,
don’t look so disgusted.” Ronan grabbed her hair and wrenched her neck to the
side, ripping the scarf away with the other hand. “Reese has done it to you. I
smelled him on you the minute I entered the room. And the scarf was just a
little too obvious.” He pulled her to her feet as he stood. “Does he know what
you are?”

“What
I am?”

“A
two-bit tramp who is neither human nor vampire?” He shoved her away and she
landed hard on the floor. “Won’t he be surprised when he finds your charred
remains here in the cellar?” Something exploded above them. “The final stage is
set. The professor. Glenn. That bitch of a reporter. Now the winery. Months of
work are finally finished.”

“Hope?
What the hell did you do with Hope?”

“Ah
yes, your dear human friend.” His demonic laugh bounced eerily around the stone
walls. “A pathetic excuse for a human. Having Chris ditch her car in the lake
the night of the fire was absolutely my
pièce de résistance
. Burkett
will never find that body. And isn’t that so sad for him?”

Ronan
lifted his nose, his hand churning the air as if enjoying a pleasant aroma and
not the stench of charred wood. “Fires are such wonderful things. They bury so
much evidence.” He began pulling papers from the briefcase. “This is the last
of my father’s research. Glenn found it when I could not. My father ruined my
mother’s purity by convincing her to become something less than the powerful
vampire she was. You and Glenn did the same with your blood wine. After
tonight, these blights will be eliminated and balance will be restored to the
vampire population.” He held the paper up with the evidence of her involvement.
“I thought about giving this to Colton. But it really does absolve you of any
culpability. We can’t have that if we want him to believe you to be the
murdering bitch who killed poor defenseless humans.”

Alex
had no intention of telling him that Reese already believed her to be innocent.

Glass
shattered above them. Surely, the fire department had been alerted. Reese would
come, run into the flames and rescue her, like he’d done with Glenn. But once
again, it would be too late. At the thought of him, sadness poured into Alex’s
hollow chest. She wasn’t sure when Reese had stolen her heart, but it belonged
to him as surely as the Grim Reaper was whispering her name. Alex refused to
cower at his beckoning. “You won’t get away with this. Reese will hunt you down
and destroy you.”

“Colton
and his team from RISEN?” Ronan snorted in disgust. “They will never suspect
the one they seek is hidden right beneath their stuck up noses. I came to South
Kenton to finally avenge my mother’s death. Imagine my astonishment when I
discovered vampires who didn’t feed. Having them around to minister their rhetoric
to others was unacceptable, so I killed them.” He knelt beside her, running his
hands over her body. She was too weak to fight the intimate touch. “But your
winery is a closely guarded secret, Alexandra. Many were loyal to Glenn … and
you.” He palmed her crotch and lifted his fingers to his nose. “I couldn’t
infiltrate their ranks until I joined RISEN. It was such a pleasant surprise
when I found it was you fermenting the blood wine. The fact that you’d been
working with my father—bonus!”