Vampire King of New York (3 page)

“I always say, when words are a mess …” He stood and held out his hand. “Dance instead.”

She hadn’t realized the band was playing. How could she have missed seeing them come in and set up on the small stage?

Taking her hand, he led her onto the dance floor. The song was slow. Funny how she didn’t notice what was playing, only how tall Max was, and the way he enfolded her into his arms as they glided between the partners.

“You dance very well,” she said.

“I’ve had lots of practice. At least a thousand years.” He smiled, and she wondered if he ever had a beard. A golden beard would suit him very well, besides she was partial to beards.

“Now you’re teasing me.”

They both laughed.

She felt comfortable leaning against him, and he must have sensed it. He held her closer as they swayed to the music.

“Max, I don’t mean to be rude to you.”

“I know that. It’s only human for you to be curious. I don’t mind your questions at all. Ask me anything.”

She gazed up into the most remarkable pale, blue-gray eyes. “What were you when you were a human?”

“I was a Viking raider, the captain of a long boat.”

“Do you still remember it?”

“Yes, fondly. My Viking life was very happy.”

“All the plundering and pillaging, huh?” Of course, she was breaching some vampire etiquette again, but she didn’t care.

Max only laughed and continued. “Actually it was my family that made me happy. I lost them when I became a vampire.” In that one instant his eyes changed, as if seeing into the past. The expression on his face was beyond pain, and Evelyn regretted having brought the subject up.

“I’m very sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for, Evelyn. Sometimes in order to have great joy, one must survive great pain. In other times, we don’t fully realize the joy we have until we lose it. It was a life well lived and filled with love.”

The band music ended, but the music in her heart had just begun. Max ignited something deep within her. His presence, his touch, his gaze held her spellbound.

“Max, are you trying to mesmerize me?” she asked, while he escorted her back to her seat.

“I would not do that to you, Evelyn.” He held her chair for her, while she was seated.

“Thank you.”

He grinned. “You’re welcome, and thank you for the dance.”

There it was again. Something warm rushed over her in luscious waves. “You’re welcome, too.” She shook her head and laughed. “Sometimes words …”

He turned to her and was about to speak when the waiter appeared again.

“Dessert? Coffee for everyone?”

“Not for us, thank you,” David said. Laura leaned against him.

Evelyn loved how happy her sister was. Though she didn’t tell Laura, it was another reason for her return to Connecticut. Evelyn wanted a life of her own, maybe even a love.

“I’m having the Baked Alaska,” Max said. “Evelyn, you?”

“Oh, no. That’s a big dessert. I’ll have a dish of vanilla ice cream.”

The waiter smiled and was off again.

“I’m trying to lose weight,” Evelyn admitted.

“I don’t see why.” Max’s words were reassuring. When the waiter came with the desserts, she marveled at the difference between them. Max’s dish was almost overwhelmed by the meringue, sponge cake, and ice cream concoction.

“Would you like just a taste of my Baked Alaska?” Max asked Evelyn. It did look divine, and her dish of ice cream looked very small.

“Okay.”

He handed her a spoon. “Take what pleases you.”

Evelyn shook a little. Men didn’t usually say such things, and it thrilled her. She took a healthy blob and put it on top of her plain ice cream.

They looked at each other before digging in. Evelyn couldn’t remember when she last had this much fun. It wasn’t that Laura and David weren’t fun. They had taken her everywhere in the city, the museums, the plays, the art shows, and concerts. But no matter how kind they were to her, how entertaining, no matter how much her sister loved her, Evelyn still needed a life of her own, and there was something about Max that made her heart tremble.

Dinner breezed by. Talking with Max filled her with excitement. Where David and Laura were usually quiet about their experiences as vampires, Max was very forthcoming, not shirking from any of her questions.

“David says you live in New York part of the time and Iceland the other part. Why don’t you just settle in one place?”

“I love them both, and I decided not to choose between them. New York is where my family of vampires resides.”

“Oh, you mean the Arnhem Society. So you’re an Arnhem Knight too.”

“Evelyn,” David interrupted, “Max is the first Arnhem Knight. He created the Arnhem Society in 1626.”

“That’s when it was New Amsterdam.” Evelyn tried not to let her mouth fall open. “You came here with the Dutch?”

“I helped negotiate with the Native Americans for Manhattan Island.”

She stared at him, then the thought crossed her mind and it was out of her mouth before she could stop it. “You didn’t mesmerize them, did you?”

“Not my finest hour.” He shook his head.

David interrupted. “Evelyn, Max helped carve this great city out of the wilderness. There isn’t a business in the city that wasn’t helped in some way by Max or VMeer Industries.”

Max shook his head in what she took to be modesty.

Evelyn chewed on her lower lip in thought. “Wow. It must have been something.”

Max smiled and nodded. “Yes. It was a brave new world then. Now you just have to be brave to be here.”

Chapter 3

Evelyn was having the best time. They went outside and headed for Max’s limo.

The balmy summer night had grown chilly and windy. Max took off his coat and put it over her shoulders. “There’s a storm coming in.”

She found his kindness irresistible. The way he spoke to her, touched and comforted her. His sense of fun made Evelyn happy, and she had not felt happy in a long time. She tried to push out the thoughts that kept popping up—pure abandon, passion, and adventure. When the time was right, she wanted to ask more about his Viking past, more about his reasons for keeping Iceland his home.

“Feel like dancing in the tempest, my darling?” David leaned over to Laura.

“No, it’s not a storm of consequence. It’ll blow over.”

Laura’s comment made Evelyn smile. Her sister was at ease with her powers and exercised good judgment in using them. At times, Evelyn regretted that the gift of the storm skipped over her.

“Believe me, you don’t want this gift,” Laura whispered in her ear, then poked her in the arm. “You’re it.”

Evelyn poked her back.

“Am I missing something?” Max asked.

“Only Laura being a sister.”

Her sister shook her head. “When we were kids, Evie was always making me
it
and running away.”

A woman screamed. It came from around the corner.

Evelyn ran toward the sound, but Max caught her by the arm and pulled her back. “We’ve got to help.”

“No. David, take a look and see what’s going on.”

David nodded to Max and became invisible. He reappeared a minute later. “A man and woman are being mugged in the alleyway.”

“Aren’t you going to do something?” Evelyn looked to Max. “You can’t just stand there and do nothing.”

One moment Max was sighing. In the next, he vanished, quick as a blink, leaving no trace that he had ever been there. Metal crashed on metal in the alleyway. All three rushed to peek around the corner.

Max held the robber up above him, the man struggling, his feet dangling in the air. “You are going to sleep. Tomorrow when you wake, you will go out and get a job. You will forget everything about tonight and will never steal again.”

When he put the man down, the thief collapsed and curled into a ball on the ground snoring.

The woman knelt beside the unconscious man on the ground. She held him and cried. Evelyn could see the shine of moonlight on his blood.

Max leaned over the man for several minutes. Evelyn could not see what he was doing. Then he changed his focus to the woman.

“We’re going to get you and your husband into a cab to get him to the hospital. Here is his wallet. You are not going to remember me.”

He carried the man and the wife followed. David held Laura and Evelyn in the shadows against the wall. Max walked right into the street and a cab stopped. He put the couple in the taxi, gave directions to the driver, and paid him. Max stepped onto the curb and the cab sped off.

“What’s going to happen to them?”

“They’re going to the hospital and won’t remember anything about me. Neither will the driver.”

“Will the man die?” Evelyn asked.

“No.”

“What did you do?”

Max smirked and nodded to David. “It’s time we went home.” He steered their little group towards his limo, and they climbed in. This was the first time he didn’t answer one of her questions, and she took note. She would ask again later.

Laura rested her head against David’s shoulder.

Evelyn sat a distance from Max. Leaning against the door, she gazed at the legendary vampire of New York. David sometimes referred to Max as his father, but Evelyn wasn’t sure what that meant. Even after living with them for a year, there was a lot about vampires she still didn’t know.

“Why won’t you tell me what you did to that man to save him?” she asked.

“It’s all right, David.” He turned his body to directly face her. “Evelyn, are you sure you want to know?”

“Yes, I really do. David and Laura don’t share their secrets.”

“Good for them. But I can see we’re going to be friends.”

“I hope so.”

“That means I can trust you to keep my secrets.” Max gazed into her eyes and she shivered.

“Yes.”

“I introduced some of my saliva into his wounds, so he would heal. He won’t become a vampire if that’s what you’re thinking but he will still need the care of the hospital. The healing won’t happen quickly for him. The man was critically injured.”

“He would have died if you hadn’t?”

Max nodded.

“Will you show me how it’s done?”

He raised his hand to his mouth, and she grabbed it. “No, I mean on a human.”

Taking her hand in his, his fingers became claws. One claw made a quick jab at her forefinger.

“Ow.”

“Sorry to have to hurt you, but this experiment does require an injury.”

Max held her finger and licked the wound. He put her finger in his mouth like a lollipop and sucked. Then he released it reluctantly, as if he couldn’t let her go.

Oh!
Evelyn thought she was going to faint. He could suck all her fingers, suck anything else he liked for that matter. Oh, my God, he had her feeling reckless and wild with abandon. She glanced down, unwilling to give him any peek at her feelings. Evelyn remembered how naïve she’d been when she met her late husband.

As she watched the fold of separated skin on her finger knit itself back together, every thought of the past evaporated. “That’s amazing.” Disappointment set in when the limo stopped. They had arrived at David’s apartment building.

Laura and David went in first leaving her with Max in the hallway of the building. He shuffled his feet like a small boy and then gave her the most incredible smile. He leaned over her with one arm against the door.

“Evelyn, I was wondering if you would honor me by being my guest at the opera Thursday night. They’re performing
La Boheme
.”

Everything about him made her nervous and giddy and not very clear-headed. “Yes. I mean no. Max, I don’t really know you.”

“You know more about me than most people. Please, come to the opera with me. I’d feel stupid being all alone and dressed up in a tux without the benefit of your lovely presence whispering beside me.”

“Whispering what?”

“I would enjoy anything you cared to whisper in my ear.”

She laughed. He was both funny and sweet, endearing. “I don’t know, Max. You and I are not a good idea. I don’t want to be a vampire.”

“I know.”

“And you still want to go out with me?”

“Yes.”

She bit her lower lip. This was hard. He was too handsome, too soft spoken. “No. I’m sorry. I can’t.” Quickly she opened the door and slipped inside before he said anything else.

Even with the door shut behind her, Evelyn felt his presence alone in the hall. Waves of sadness rushed toward her, and she didn’t understand what it was. Were these feelings his? She didn’t know him well enough to feel sad.

“What’s wrong?” Laura asked.

“Max asked me to the opera, and I said no.”

“Why?” David’s face fell.

Laura hugged her and ushered her into the living room. “Don’t mind him. You have every right to say no, if you want to.”

“But that’s just it, part of me wanted to say yes.”

Laura looked at her. “I don’t understand. Why were you thinking of saying yes?”

David came into the room and took a seat. “Evelyn, I apologize.”

Trembling, she said, “What?”

“I consider you as my sister, too, and even though Max is my father, you have every right to say no. I want you to be happy.”

Evelyn lowered her gaze and took a deep breath. “David, thank you. The problem is I am lost. I don’t want to say no. I don’t want to say yes. I’m still in mourning.”

Turning, she walked down the hall to her room and escaped into it.

In the dark booth in the back, Max was on his third blood, when he saw David enter the bar.

“It took you long enough to get here. Couldn’t you hear me?”

David took a seat opposite the King of New York. The bartender came over and poured Max another blood and left the bottle. Then he went and shut down the place. Max owned this particular establishment in addition to other businesses throughout the city.

“I heard you, but there was a problem at home I had to resolve.”

“It’s resolved?”

“No.”

“What’s the problem?” Max stared into his glass as if the meaning of life was contained there. In his earlier years, when life was one raid after another before meeting Svenna, it was.

“What exactly did you say to my sister-in-law?”