The Merzetti Effect (A Vampire Romance) (9 page)

The woman. Ainsley Crawford. That’s what brought it on.

These past few days, she’d looked on him as though he were an ordinary, if not entirely trustworthy, man. Until that moment in the helicopter. He’d seen the shock, the shift in her eyes when he’d had to seek shelter from the sun.

What he would give to have her look at him again the way she had before…

Delano heard the door open behind him but did not turn. That would be Eli, bearing sustenance and a status report.

Eli came to stand beside him at the window. “Ah, Montréal,” he said, pronouncing it the French way. “Good to be back, isn’t it?”

Delano sighed and turned his back on the nighttime tableau. “I must be getting old, Eli. The blood doesn’t pump like it used to.”

Eli looked singularly unconvinced, but said, “It’s been a rough twenty-four hours, I’ll grant you that much.”

Delano raked his hair, still wet from the shower, back from his forehead. “It was our Czech friend, of course.”

“Yeah, it was Janecek, all right.” Eli moved away to place the unit of blood he carried in the blood warmer. “Our sources in Prague confirm he was Stateside as of last week, and he was spotted in New York two days ago. And just in case we might have had any lingering doubts, the blast you left for them took out one of his key lieutenants, a merc by the name of Liam Hanlon.”

Delano whistled. “Hanlon? Are we sure about that?”

“Absolutely.”

Janecek would be extremely pissed. As would Hanlon, if he were still around to reflect on his fate. Word had it Hanlon had made a deal with Janecek. When he’d served long enough and faithfully enough, he would be rewarded with his master’s eternal kiss. If nothing else positive came out of last night’s firefight, the world was far better off without a merc-turned-vamp rampaging around it.

“The body?”

“Our people let their people retrieve it.”

“What about police?”

“Nothing to worry about there. The scene was sufficiently sanitized before their arrival. The HAZMAT team that went in was 100% ours.”

Always good when the contingency plans one laid so carefully actually fell into place. “The media? How did they characterize it?”

“Natural gas explosion. No injuries, since you were out of town and your staff had the week off.”

More good news. “Repairs to the lab?”

“Already underway.”

He nodded his satisfaction. “Sounds like everything is under control.”

Eli coughed, to disguise either a laugh or a snort. “Under control. Absolutely. Except for that little detail that the Butcher of Bohemia is apparently out for your head.”

“Indeed.”

Eli shot Delano a hard look. “You know, I can do my job better when I have the full picture.”

“Point taken. When I have the full picture, I’ll fill you in.”

Eli blew out an exasperated breath. “Okay, I appreciate it’s a little early for definitive conclusions, but if you had to speculate, what would you say? What’s this about?”

“If it were just me he wanted, he could have ambushed me any number of times over this past week, but he chose to strike my home, my lab. So I would say I have something Radak Janecek wants. Or perhaps something he wants to see destroyed.”

“The fruits of your research?”

“Definitely. Also the woman.”

Eli’s lifted his left eyebrow, which for him was tantamount to gaping. “The Crawford woman?”

The Merzetti woman
, he thought, but instead he nodded. “Ainsley Crawford, yes.”

“But why?”

Delano inhaled, released his breath slowly. It was past time to tell Eli. He was right about that; he couldn’t do his job unless he knew the situation. “Because she’s the key. She can bring it all down, the whole vampire kingdom. And somehow, Radak must have figured that out.”

This time Eli’s face showed no reaction. “Bring the Kingdom down? How?”

Delano waved his hand dismissively. “It doesn’t matter how. What matters is keeping her safe. She is now my number one priority, Eli. The research must continue, but above all, her life must be preserved.”

Eli held his gaze for a few beats. “Does she know?”

“No.”

“When will you tell her?”

He ran a hand over the back of his neck. “With any luck I won’t have to.”

The soaring eyebrow again. Twice in a single night. A record.

“Delano, I don’t like this‌—”

“In the long run, it would be better for her if she doesn’t know.”

That was the understatement of the century. And if she did know, she could very well withhold her consent. He’d seen the look on her face when she realized her attacker was dead. Relief so profound she couldn’t hide it, but mixed with an equally strong measure of guilt and remorse. If she felt that conflicted thinking that he had killed Edward Webber to avenge the attack, imagine the turmoil she’d feel to know that, strictly speaking, it was her blood that caused his demise. Even though her role in his death had not been an active or deliberate one, even though the responsibility still lay squarely on Delano’s shoulders, he knew she would suffer for it. And if he went on to use her blood to bring down other rogues, which indeed he planned to do, she could multiply that guilt a hundredfold.

Once upon a time, taking the decision out of her hands would have been beyond him. As a physician‌—‌hell, as a morally upright human being‌—‌he could not have crossed that line. But he was infinitely older now, and his once black-and-white world had long since dissolved into gradations of gray, a world where he frequently had to choose between the lesser of evils.

“What about her safety? Doesn’t she have the right to know?”

“She’ll remain under my protection until all threat is removed. And if I’m not satisfied she’ll be safe in her ignorance, I will certainly tell her the truth. But mark my words, Eli, it would pain her greatly to know. I seek only to spare her the burden. You know the work must go on.”

Eli held his gaze for a long moment, measuring the veracity of his words. “Okay,” he said at last.

Delano inclined his head in acknowledgement.

“But I still don’t like it.”

Delano narrowed his eyes. “Nevertheless, it’s my decision.”

This time, Eli inclined his head in acceptance. “You should eat.”

Eat. Delano’s lips twisted. Despite being a medical professional, Eli clung stubbornly to language that characterized Delano’s nightly infusion as some manner of meal. And Eli well knew he never ingested anything, beyond the occasional sip of whiskey he took just to feel the alcohol sear his throat, or maybe a sip of ice water to feel the cold.

For better or worse, caffeine could not jolt him. No amount of alcohol consumption could produce the warm, welcome, barely-remembered buzz of inebriation. No matter how many cigarettes he smoked, they couldn’t create, and then fill, receptors in his brain to give him an instantaneous nicotine rush. The only, the sole intoxication available to him whispered in the veins of humans.

And that was an intoxication no vampire could indulge freely, lest he become ruled by it. That was how creatures like Edward Webber were born. Far better to imbibe disembodied blood from a bag. Granted, it was like eating a K-ration when a sumptuous, aromatic buffet beckoned, but it was the only path he dared walk.

Eli handed him the unit of blood. “You’d best eat. Ms. Crawford knows you’re awake and is probably preparing to knock down that door this very moment. I won’t be able to hold her off much longer.”

Delano’s fingers closed around the bag of blood. Warm. Thirty-seven degrees Celsius. Body-temperature. “She waits outside?”

“I expect so.”

“Then send her in.”

“But‌—”

“Send her in.”

Eli sighed. “You don’t have to do this, Delano.”

Ah, but he really did. “She’s a nurse, Eli. I don’t think she’ll develop a case of the vapors. You didn’t.”

“I’ve also killed men in hand-to-hand combat.”

“Show her in, Eli.”

Without another word, Eli turned to do his bidding.

A
INSLEY
’
S MOMENTUM AS
she entered the study carried her right past Delano. Belatedly, she caught a glimpse of him in her peripheral vision, standing still as a statue just to the left of the door.

“Over here,” he drawled. “You seem to have overshot me.”

She rounded on him, a flush warming her neck. The rat. No doubt he’d positioned himself there strategically so she would blow right past him. Well, she refused to feel like she was overreacting.

“Dammit, Delano, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I thought you’d had quite enough rude shocks to cope with.”

She made no attempt to stifle a snort of disbelief. “Really? So it was my welfare you were concerned about?”

“Absolutely.”

“And the fact that I might have declined the job had I known the boss was a blood-sucking vampire didn’t enter into your decision-making process?”

His face hardened. “I shouldn’t have to explain to you, of all people, that there’s no sucking involved. And to answer your question, yes, that did enter into the equation. But frankly, I don’t think it would have been a deal-breaker, had I told you. You still have that crippling need to feed your bank account, and a decidedly lackluster reference from your employer.”

“But I deserved to know!”

“Know?” His face hardened still further, making him look even more remote. “You want to know, Ainsley? Then you shall know.”

Suddenly, he was beside her. Just like that. One second he was standing twelve feet away, his features perfectly distinguishable. Then, the very next instant, he was there, right there, mere inches away, too close for her to adjust the focus. All she’d seen was a blur of motion.

“Jesus!” Her hand leapt automatically to the pulse hammering in her throat.

“Not even close.”

He drew his lips back in a caricature of a smile, and before her eyes, the two upper cuspids telescoped into pointed fangs more fearsome and lethal looking than those of her attacker. Reflexively, she jerked back, but his hand shot out to grasp her wrist.

“Don’t go all weak-kneed on me now, Ainsley. You want to know? Then watch and learn.”

Then he raised what she realized was a unit of blood and sank his teeth into it. Holding her gaze, he squeezed the plastic bag, creating the pressure required to push the blood into his venous system.

She watched, half revolted, half fascinated.

It took thirty seconds. Maybe a little longer. When the bag was all but empty, he wrenched it from his mouth. Her eyes dropped to his teeth, to the elongated canines that gleamed red with blood. Then, drawn by motion, her gaze dropped to his chest. Beneath the black cashmere sweater he wore, his chest heaved as though he’d just run a marathon.

Or as though he was sexually aroused.

Her gaze jerked back to his face, and she sucked in an audible breath.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Pure need had chiseled his features into brutally hard planes and angles. It blazed from his dark eyes and escaped in gusts from his still parted lips.

And deep in her belly, a dark, matching excitement unfurled.

Oh, God.

He’d said it was pleasurable for a woman. Intensely so. She’d doubted it then; nothing about her own experience had been anything but horrifying. Of course, that had been an assault, an act of violence, the equivalent of a rape. This would be different. Her blood thrummed with the certain, inborn knowledge that Delano Bowen could bring her pleasure beyond imagination.

Her skin tingled. His breath on her flesh was a caress. Beneath the man’s shirt that Eli had procured for her, she felt her nipples tighten and her stomach muscles contract. Oh, God, yes.

She let her eyelids drift down, let her head fall back, tilting it to the right to expose her neck. Trembling with the force of a raw and unfamiliar need, she waited for the searing kiss of his teeth.

His grip on her wrist tightened to the point of pain. She gasped. Her eyes flew open, but he’d already released her. Once again, he stood on the other side of his study, this time with his back to her, shoulders tight and tense.

“Delano?”

“That was nothing personal.”

She blinked, watched him dispose of the spent blood bag in a bio-hazard waste disposal unit mounted on the wall. Calmly, he took a paper towel from a dispenser, wiped his mouth, then disposed of it, too.

“Excuse me?”

He turned to face her, his face once again composed and controlled, though his voice was slightly thicker than normal. “It’s just the bloodlust. It’s awakened when we feed.”

She blanched. This happened to all vampires when they fed? “You mean all those males who came to the clinic…?”

“I’m afraid so.” An apologetic smile curved his lips. “And perhaps more than a few of the females. Which is why we offer them a private, safe environment for their infusions. It takes a few moments to regain complete control afterward.”

Great. Her face burned. He’d had what amounted to a basic physiological reaction that would have happened with or without her presence, and she’d practically leapt on him. She closed her eyes again, this time in utter humiliation.

“Lighten up on yourself, Nurse Crawford. You may not have known about vampires and the delights of blood-sharing, but your primitive brain does.”

She blinked. “My primitive brain?”

“The primitive arousal center of your brain, yes. It knows, Ainsley.” His voice was like velvet brushing against her skin. “It’s as deeply embedded in your instincts as the fear of serpents or saber-toothed tigers or lightning. Don’t punish yourself for what it remembers.”

No. Un-uh. She wouldn’t have reacted the same way had this happened with any of the clients she’d processed in his clinic. Not even the one who bore a strong resemblance to Alan Rickman, right down to the voice, and she adored the hell out of Alan Rickman. Truly, madly, deeply adored him. But she was happy to take the out he offered.

“Well, that’s a relief. I was beginning to think‌—” Omigod! Her words trailed off as another thought occurred to her. That’s why he hadn’t wanted to draw her blood that time. But she’d pushed and pushed until he relented. That’s why he’d practically fled afterward. What might have happened if she had but looked into his eyes?