Kadie waited the rest of the night for Saintcrow to return. She yearned for him, craved his kiss, his touch, longed for him more than her next breath. But he didn't come back.
Not that night.
Not the next night.
Or the next. Where was he? Was it possible he was sick? Did vampires get sick? She grimaced at the idea. They lived forever, so it was likely that they were immune to human diseases. But what did she know? Maybe he had the vampire flu.
With a toss of her head, she plopped down on the sofa. He was probably just trying to make her miss him and, damn his hide, it was working.
By Saturday morning, she was tired of waiting and worrying. After taking a quick shower and downing a piece of toast and a cup of coffee, she jumped into his Corvette-noting that the gas tank was full-and drove to town. The car was insanely fast.
She pulled over to the curb when she saw Marti, Rosemary, Shirley, and Chelsea huddled together outside the grocery store.
She switched off the engine, then joined the others on the sidewalk. "Hi," she said brightly. "What's going on?"
"Mona passed away."
"Who's Mona?" Kadie asked.
"She's the elderly lady who lived across from Chelsea."
"Oh." The old lady on the porch. Kadie recalled seeing her a couple of times. "What happened to her?"
"She died in her sleep. Donna found her when she went to check on her this morning."
"And that's not all," Marti said. "Leslie is missing."
"Missing?" Kadie glanced from one woman to the next.
"How could she be missing? There's no place to go."
"It's a polite way of saying she's . . ." Rosemary choked back a sob.
"She's what?" Kadie asked.
"Dead." The word whispered past Marti's lips.
Kadie heard the tears beneath her words. "What happened?"
"What do you think?" Shirley exclaimed. "One of those monsters killed her. Sooner or later, they'll kill us all."
"How do you know she's dead?"
"No one's seen her since Tuesday night," Marti said. "I went by her house yesterday afternoon. Her things were gone."
Tuesday night, Kadie thought. That was the last night she had seen Saintcrow. The night she had refused him. Had he taken his anger out on Leslie? Kadie shook the thought from her mind. He hadn't been angry. "But, if no one's seen her, how do you know she's dead?"
"Because her house has been cleaned out," Shirley explained. "It's happened before."
"Have you told the others?"
Shirley nodded.
"Why would the vampires kill her?"
"It might have been an accident," Chelsea said without conviction. "That's happened before, too."
"Do you know who did it?" Kadie asked, dreading the answer.
Chelsea shook her head. "We don't know, for sure." Kadie glanced at the other women. "You don't think it was Saintcrow, do you?"
"I think it was Quinn," Marti said. "He saw her the most."
"What difference does it make who did it?" Rosemary wiped the tears from her eyes with the edge of her scarf. "Leslie's dead and one of those monsters killed her. Any one of us could be next."
Those words echoed in Kadie's mind as she drove back to Saintcrow's house. She pulled up in front, then put the car in reverse and continued down the road, hoping she was headed in the right direction.
As luck would have it, she found the cemetery without any trouble. Exiting the Corvette, she stared out over the grave sites. The two new ones were easy to find. The wooden crosses were untouched by wind or rain, the ground freshly turned.
How was she to know which was which? Did it really matter?
She would come back with a knife tomorrow and carve Leslie's name on one of the crosses and Mona's on the other so that they wouldn't be forgotten.
By the time Kadie reached Saintcrow's house, she was thoroughly depressed. She curled up in a corner of the sofa. She hadn't seen Saintcrow in days. She would probably never see her family again. And a woman she had known, however slightly, had been murdered. She remembered Rosemary saying any one of them could be next.
But they didn't need to be killed. In a way, they were already dead, sealed off from the rest of the world. How long before her parents stopped looking for her? So many people disappeared these days, never to be seen or heard from again. In time, they were declared dead and life went on.
Kadie had always felt sorry for the people left behind who never knew what had happened to their loved ones. Did they ever really get over the loss? Ever find any kind of closure? And now she was missing.
Tears stung her eyes as she imagined her father holding back his own tears while he comforted her mother and sister. No doubt they had all imagined the worst, she thought with a bitter smile. But they never would have imagined anything like this place.
She felt a growing sense of anticipation with the coming of nightfall, but again, there was no sign of Saintcrow. Had he left town? Buried himself in the earth again?
She told herself she was better off without him. He was a vampire, a monster. For all she knew, he was the one who had killed Leslie. In his time, he had probably killed hundreds-maybe thousands-of men and women. Perhaps even children.
Her grim thoughts weighed down on her, thick and oppressive, as did the silence, which always seemed worse at night. She dropped a DVD into the player, but couldn't seem to focus on the movie. Canned conversation did nothing to make her feel less alone.
The house felt empty without him.
The house. Sitting up, she glanced at the staircase. She had only given the house a cursory look.
Rising, she tiptoed up the stairs, then laughed at herself. Why was she being so quiet? There was no one else here.
She went into the first bedroom. She ran her hands over the walls, looking for cleverly disguised levers that would reveal hidden stairways or secret doors, but to no avail.
She bypassed her room and explored the other three. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. Disappointed, she returned to the first floor. In the movies, old houses like this always had concealed passageways. And sometimes a bolt hole. Was he hiding in some hidden closet?
She frowned, then glanced around the living room. There could be a door behind the bookcase, only it was too heavy for her to move. Maybe the fireplace. It was big enough to hold a horse. She pressed one brick after another, hoping to find a hidden lever that would lead to a secret room.
"Looking for something?"
Kadie whirled around at the sound of his voice, a guilty flush climbing up her neck into her cheeks. "Yes, if you must know. I was looking for you."
"Looking for me?" One brow arched inquisitively. "In the fireplace?"
She folded her arms across her chest. "Where have you been?"
"Don't change the subject. What were you really looking for?"
"A way out."
"Are we back to that again? I was hoping you'd finally resigned yourself to staying here."
"That's never going to happen. I don't have the luxury of hundreds of years. I only have one short lifetime, and I want to go back home and live it."
"I'm sorry, Kadie, but you'll never see your home again, so you might as well accept that fact and move on."
"That's not fair! My family and my friends will never know what happened to me! How can you be so cruel? And what about Marti? And the others? They all had lives before they came here. You have no right to keep us against our will!"
She was crying now, her shoulders shaking, her tears coming faster and faster.
Saintcrow swore under his breath, moved by her tears in spite of himself. The others had cried, too, but he'd been immune to their pleas. He was a vampire. As such, he lived outside the rules of humanity. He scarcely remembered what it was like to be human, subject to pain, sickness, fear, and death. Family life was only a faint memory, but it surfaced now. He'd had a wife once. She had died two years after their marriage, and their daughter with her. He had never loved Eleanor, but he had grieved for the loss of his child.
"Dammit." He drew Kadie roughly into his arms.
Stiff as a board, she endured his embrace, her tears subsiding at the touch of his hand lightly stroking her back, the brush of his lips on the top of her head. His chest was rock hard beneath her cheek. He drew her closer, his thigh pressing against hers.
She looked up at him. His eyes were dark with an emotion that might have been guilt, but before she could be sure, his mouth covered hers, chasing away every thought, swamping her senses, until there was only Saintcrow, his strong arms holding her tight, his whiskey-soft voice murmuring her name as he kissed her again and again.
What was he doing to her? Standing on her tiptoes, she twined her arms around his neck, every part of her yearning toward him, wanting to be closer, closer.
She was drowning in a world of sensation. His lips caressed her neck and she turned her head to the side, granting him access, wanting to give him everything she had, everything she was.
"Kadie, forgive me, but I can't let you go."
Let her go? That was the last thing she wanted. She was repulsed by what he was and yet some part of her was attracted to the man he must have been before he became a vampire.
His fangs scraped lightly over her skin and then, with a low groan, he gave in to the need coursing through him.
She moaned softly, her body sagging against his as the world went red. There was no pain and, oddly, no fear, only a remarkably sensual euphoria. She closed her eyes, drifting, falling into velvet blackness that threatened to sweep her away into oblivion.
"Dammit!" Saintcrow knew a moment of genuine fear when she went limp. He scooped her into his arms and carried her to the sofa. Sitting down, he brushed a wisp of hair from her cheek, cursing himself for his weakness. Her face was pale, her breathing shallow, her heartbeat slow and labored. What the hell was he thinking, to drink from her like that? He could have killed her, but never, in nine hundred years, had anything tasted so good, pleased him so much, satisfied him so well.
Biting into his own wrist, he dipped his finger into the blood and slid it past her lips. He repeated it several times, until the color returned to her cheeks, her heartbeat grew stronger.
He stroked her cheek with his fingertips. Her skin was as soft as down, her hair like silk. It grieved him that she was unhappy here even as he fought down an irrational rush of jealousy for everyone she had known before she came to Morgan Creek. He begrudged her every minute she had spent with anyone else, every second of life she had lived before they met.
Bending, he brushed her lips with his, then jerked his head back, his eyes narrowing. Had she had a lover? The thought was beyond bearing. She was his. No other would have her. He would rip the heart out of any man who touched her.
She hadn't mentioned a husband or a lover. Was she a virgin then? In this day and age, that seemed highly unlikely.
She stirred in his arms, her eyelids fluttering open. "What happened?"
"You fainted."
She touched a hand to her head, then frowned. The last thing she remembered was Saintcrow's mouth on hers, his fangs brushing her throat.
She bolted upright. Another memory tugged at the corner of her mind, but it eluded her. She licked her lips, wondering why there was such a bad taste in her mouth, and then she stared up at him. "You gave me your blood!" She grimaced. "How could you do that?"
"You needed it."
"That's ridiculous! I'm not a vampire." Her eyes grew wide. "Am I?"
"No, Kadie. I got a little carried away and took more than I should have. That's all."
"That's all? That's all!" She pushed away from him and stood up, swaying as the room spun out of focus.
"Easy, now." He was beside her in an instant, his arm steadying her. "Rest a minute," he said, urging her back down on the sofa. "I'll get you something to drink."
She watched him leave the room, her mind filling with morbid thoughts. He'd taken too much. How could he be so casual about it? If he had taken it all, she would be dead now, just another body buried in an unmarked grave like all the others. The thought made her stomach roil and she leaned forward, her head down, afraid she was going to faint again.
"Kadie? Here, drink this."
He handed her a glass of orange juice. She hadn't realized how thirsty she was until she'd drained the glass and asked for more.
She drank the second glass more slowly. Not meeting his gaze, she said, "You could have killed me."
He didn't deny it.
"Was that what happened to Leslie? You took too much and killed her?"
"Is that what you think?"
"Did you?"
"It wasn't me."
"Do you know who it was?"
"Of course. I know everything that happens here. It was Quinn."
So, Kadie thought, Marti had been right about that.
"You should go to bed," Saintcrow said, taking the glass from her hand. "You'll feel better in the morning."
She lifted a hand to her neck, but there were no bite marks, at least none she could feel. "Will I?"
"What do you want me to say? I'm sorry?"
"Are you?"
"No. I can't make you understand. I don't understand it myself. But like it or not, Kadie, you're here to stay."
Her heart sank at his words. "Have you ever let anyone leave here?"
"Just once, under duress."
He was referring to Carl Freeman, she thought, smiling faintly. "One of the women said the other vampires can't leave either. Is that true?"
He nodded.
"So, they're prisoners, too?"
"In a way. They came to me for sanctuary. I agreed to give it to them, but only if they agreed to stay inside."
"Why?"
"I don't trust any of them not to betray this place."
"Why would they?"
"There is a rather large bounty on my head."
Kadie's eyes grew wide. "Really? Why?"
He shrugged. "Perhaps because I'm the most powerful vampire in the country."
"You are?"
"Impressed?"
"I don't know. Should I be?"
He laughed, amused by her bravado.
"How much are you worth?"
"Last I heard, they were offering a cool five million for my head."
Kadie's brows shot up. "Wow!"
"Thinking of trying to claim it for yourself ?"
"Of course not!" She didn't think any amount of money would persuade her to do such a thing. "So, who wants you dead so badly?"
He looked at her askance. "You don't know?" Was it possible she really had no idea?
"Well, since you're a vampire, I suppose a lot of people want you dead," she replied candidly.
He laughed again. "True, enough, but there are others-hunters-who are more persistent, more knowledgeable about my kind, who have sworn to wipe us from the face of the earth."
Kadie's brows drew together. "But you leave town."
He shrugged. "I'm a master vampire. I can do whatever I wish."
In a voice dripping with sarcasm, she said, "Must be nice."
He nodded again. Then, reaching for her hand, he drew her to her feet and walked her up the stairs. "Shall I tuck you in?"
"That won't be necessary."
"Too bad." His gaze swept over her from head to foot. "Good night, Kadie," he said quietly. "Sweet dreams."
She closed the door, then stood there, his scent all around her, her thoughts muddled. How was it possible to hate him so much and still burn for his kisses?
