Shadows of Fire (8 page)

His
heart swelled at her words. All his fears seemed so inconsequential in light of
what Alex was giving him. He wasn’t sure why he’d let his insecurities keep him
from claiming this sexy vamp.

With
her pinned to the wall, her legs and arms wrapped around his body, he only
needed to hold her tiny waist for leverage. He tilted his hips back, gliding
out along her slick heat, then flexed his ass and rocked forward to fill her. The
sublime friction bunched hot currents of fire in his low back. He dragged his
teeth along her neck and tasted the sweet trickle of blood where he’d opened
her flesh.

Alex
threw her head back, exposing more of her throat to him and he greedily sucked
the coppery liquid oozing from her skin.

“Yes.
take everything from me, Reese.”

It
had been a long time since a woman begged him to enjoy every part of her. The
words echoed in his ears along with the rapid tattoo of her heart. The unique
flavor of her blood lay heavy on his tongue and her scent permeated the air.
Every nerve of his body was filled with her and still he wanted more.

He
moved faster, pistoning his hips in time with her cries. He reached between
their sweat-slick bodies and found her most sensitive spot. Teasing the hard
knot with his thumb, Reese felt the quiver of her internal muscles. The grip of
her legs and arms tightened around his neck and hips as he pushed himself
faster and deeper into her heated core.

Flesh
slapped flesh. Cries of ecstasy echoed off the walls. His pleasure mounted,
carrying him to the edge of release. Reese strained to hold on until the first
shudders of Alex’s orgasm convulsed her body. When her internal muscles
contracted and the sound of Alex’s climax filled his ears, Reese fell headlong into
his own bliss. His seed shot from his body, dragging feral cries of ecstasy
from his throat and filling her with the warmth of his release. He continued to
pump until her groans of pleasure slowed to small hiccups of satiated satisfaction.
Reese breathed in the scent of their coupling, burying his face in the silky
strands of her hair.

When
his assignment in South Kenton was finished, he had no idea how he’d ever walk
away from this woman.

Chapter Four

A
hiss escaped through lips thinned with malice as he watched Glenn Karr bound up
the stairs of the science building. Looking like an angel of mercy awash in the
golden light of the noonday sun, the ancient vampire’s arrival had been
expected. But the man was too late.

A
search of the neatly ordered space had turned up nothing. And though chaos had
been left in the wake of his investigation, there was no doubt Glenn knew
nothing of the professor’s compulsion for order. For anyone who didn’t
understand Paul Morgan, the office wouldn’t have appeared to have been
searched.

Glenn
didn’t even bother to look around to see if anyone was watching.
Stupid,
trusting fool
. Things wouldn’t have progressed in finely tuned precision if
he hadn’t been exacting in every detail. Knowing and understanding all of the
players was what made this whole sordid situation quite a challenging game. Of
course, the vampires and humans who had died in the course of all his scheming
hadn’t had quite as much fun as he had, now had they?

It
had taken months to figure out exactly what had been happening in South Kenton.
Everything had finally fallen into place last night at the old man’s mansion. Soon
the natural order of things would be restored. The purity of the vampire
population would once again be guaranteed and his place within its ranks
solidified.

Whatever
Glenn discovered was of little concern. The hard drive in the good professor’s
office had been swept as clean as the one at the mansion. He’d tamped down the
temptation to dispose of everything in flames. A second university fire would
certainly raise suspicions the first one hadn’t.

Though
it didn’t really matter, the end was near.

Guilt
squeezed and a sigh escaped. Killing Glenn Karr, savior of many lost vampires,
had not been part of his original plan. But watching the man sort through the
charred remains of the professor’s mansion earlier this morning had left little
doubt difficult sacrifices had to made in order to keep his secrets safe.

Now
that everything was set in motion, turning back was no longer an option.

Glenn
took the stone steps into the chemistry building two at a time, looking every
bit like a student or professor who belonged there. The only way to hide your
activities was to do them out in the open. And though he’d been able to bear
the light of early afternoon for centuries, Glenn despised the vulnerability of
being out during the day. But fatherly concern had pushed him to this
recklessness. He needed to finish what Alex had started—whatever the hell that
was.

Instinct
told him the woman was in trouble and once again, she had no one to save her.
He’d be damned if whatever was keeping her out at night and making her ill
would cause her harm. He’d seen how she’d lost weight over the last few months.
He was neither blind nor stupid, though Alex seemed to think he was both. Glenn
worried her behavior was somehow tangled with the rash of fires killing his
vampires—vampires he’d sworn centuries ago to protect.

Even
with the addition of Ronan, RISEN didn’t seem to be making progress in stopping
the murderer. If anything, the number of fires was escalating. With the death
of the professor, Glenn worried Alex could be next. He refused to stand back
and let that happen.

He
hated leaving Alex alone and vulnerable in the cellars this morning. Despite
her tough exterior, the woman needed protection and Reese seemed all too happy
to be the one offering it. Glenn only hoped that stubborn streak of hers hadn’t
sent him away.

Maybe
Reese would also manage to get answers Alex was unwilling to give Glenn.

He
didn’t need to hear the young woman’s thoughts to know she was keeping secrets
about the fire at the professor’s mansion. He’d seen the guilt on her face last
night as plain as her short red hair and lying smile.

Like
the dark chill in the foyer Glenn entered, cold fear weighed heavy in his gut.
Alex was like a daughter to him. He’d found her battered, drained and left for
dead in the woods behind the tavern thirty years ago. A faceless vampire had
raped and nearly sucked her dry. He hadn’t been sure he could save her when
he’d brought her back to his farm. Only weeks of constant attention and blood
he’d taken from well-paid prostitutes in the valley—who’d willingly given him a
pint instead of sex—had brought Alex back to the world of the living dead.

He’d
taught her how to survive on animals and she, in turn, had found the missing
combination for the synthetic
blood wine
they now offered to a small
portion of the vampire population living in the mountains—a population that waned
with each passing month. He prayed Alex wasn’t part of the trouble, but
suspected, at the very least, she had information about what was happening.

Alex
had certainly been acting odd the last couple of months. He’d seen how queasy
she’d become when they’d bottled the last batch of blood wine. Hoping it was a
figment of his imagination, he’d tried to ignore the signs right in front of
him.

Either
way, guilt or innocence, he hoped his quest today would keep Alex from the
attention of the RISEN investigation.

Glenn
removed neither his sunglasses nor ball cap as he scanned the building’s
directory in the marble foyer. Quickly, he found what he was looking for.
Dr.
Paul Morgan, Head of Chemistry Department … Room 308
. Glenn headed down the
hall. Though it was a weekday, students seemed to have cleared out early for
the weekend, leaving the halls empty. He found the stairs and leaped gracefully
up the three flights without fear of discovery. Locating the office door, Glenn
scanned the hall before shoving two paperclips into the lock mechanism. A push,
a twist and a little luck and the lock disengaged. Glenn couldn’t hold back his
self-satisfied grin. Sometimes even vampires could learn a thing or two from
crime shows.

Slipping
inside, he quickly shut and locked the door. Educators, Glenn suspected, ran in
two flavors; neat to the point of obsessive order or systematic clutter. It
appeared Professor Morgan fit the latter category. Files, periodicals and books
were strewn about on the floor, chairs, and shelves. The desk in front of him
was cluttered as well with a mess of notebooks and papers surrounding a
computer monitor. The only organization seemed to be on the bookcases standing
on either side of the window on the opposite wall. Textbooks and, he assumed, research
materials, marched neatly across the shelves. His cheeks puffed as he exhaled
in frustration. The proverbial needle lay somewhere among these stacks.

The
answer had to be here. Glenn only wished he knew the question.

What
he did know, aside from the fact the professor was one of a handful of humans
who knew of the existence of vampires, was that he’d found no evidence of
wrongdoing by Alex in the charred remains of the professor’s mansion. Glenn had
snuck in after everyone had left, sifting through the debris throughout the
morning.

Passionate
people like the professor didn’t go through life without a mission. And though
Glenn didn’t know the man well enough to know
what
pushed him out of bed
every morning, he had no doubt proof of the professor’s life work
existed
.
He also suspected the man wouldn’t chance leaving the only copy of that passion
to be destroyed. Somewhere, there was more evidence and he would find it
himself and obliterate everything that might indict Alex. Then Glenn would help
her fix whatever damage she’d done and restart her life.

He’d
done it once before—he’d do it again.

Glenn
stared at the computer. Over the years he’d become a master hacker. It was a
time-consuming venture at best and not something he wanted to deal with at the
moment. He’d taken the burnt hard drive from the professor’s computer at the
mansion. Even though he didn’t have the expertise to deal with that, Glenn had
simply not wanted to make it available to anyone else. If he couldn’t find
anything in this mess, he’d take this computer with him and hope the answers
revealed themselves in Morgan’s computer files.

Removing
his sunglasses, Glenn stared at the office, trying to think like a professor.
Of all the professions he’d had over his five centuries, teaching had not been
one of them. But scientists were linear thinking creatures, surely he could
manage logic. Surveying the cramped quarters, Glenn tried to see consistency in
the randomness. The books on the shelves were the only ordered part of the
room. He’d start there.

Leaping
over four stacks of magazines and the desk, Glenn wondered how the professor
had navigated the crowded space. With a careful eye he read the bindings of the
books. An hour later, as the afternoon shadows lengthened, Glenn found what
he’d been searching for. Three quarters of the way through the fourth set of
shelves, a couple of feet above the floor, it glared at him like a neon beer sign
in the forest. It was so cleverly hidden in the open, if he hadn’t been
searching with an eye to inconsistencies, he wouldn’t have tripped upon it.

Pulling
out the new copy of the John Grisham novel, tucked neatly among well-worn
chemistry tomes, Glenn ran his fingers reverently over the embossed title—
The
Innocent Man
. He had no doubt the title held not only irony, but some dark
secret. He inhaled, praying whatever he found wouldn’t lead to Alex, but knowing
deep in his gut that it would.

Glenn
opened the cover, finding nothing but a generic inscription from the author
himself. But several pages in, right at the end of Chapter Two, the story stopped
and so did his heart. Lying neatly in a ragged hole sawed through the pages
were a key and a Greyhound bus schedule.

He
shoved both into his pocket and replaced the book on the shelf, careful not to
make it stand out. Glenn had no delusions he was the only one searching for the
professor’s secrets.

Obviously
the man had been killed trying to keep them hidden.

* * * *

“So if Josh called this meeting,
where the hell is he?”

“How the hell would I know?” Reese
stepped from the bathroom, finger-combing his wet hair. The shower had done
nothing to wash away his irritation.

Ronan had been at the cabin for
nearly an hour annoying the hell out of him.

“Wasn’t my turn to babysit him,”
he said. Josh had called before noon and scheduled an emergency meeting for one
o’clock, forcing him to leave Alex at the tavern. Though both Chris and the
part-time bartender had shown up, he hated leaving her without the protection
of another vampire. He’d heard Glenn’s concerned thoughts and knew the man
would be hours before getting back to the tavern. With his patience paper-thin
and his anxiety jacking his nerves, Reese was none too happy his roommate had
yet to show.

“Did he happen to share with
you
what we’re doing here?” Ronan had his fancy boots resting on the coffee table, a
glass of red wine in his hand.