I won't," Will told the pale, familiar man who sat across from him at the small, round dining table in his rather spartan apartment. Jameson Bryant was Will's first guest, so this was the first time he'd even attempted to see his place through someone else's eyes. It wasn't a bad apartment. Hell, it was a nice apartment. It just didn't look very lived-in.
Will had pretty much settled in over the past two months, though he didn't think it would ever feel like home to him. He wasn't exactly sure what "home" was supposed to feel like, though, so he couldn't be sure.
"You won't?" Jameson Bryant repeated.
"Look, I'm a retired soldier, not a baby-sitter. And besides..." He let his voice trail off, looking at the man again.
"Besides," Jameson said, "you're still not convinced I am what I say I am."
"I'm not even convinced you're sitting here having this conversation with me."
"You've spoken to me before. Covered for me that night at the hospital."
Will averted his eyes. "I was under the influence of some heavy-duty pain meds at the time."
"So you think you hallucinated our entire encounter? If that's the case, Willem, then how do you explain my being here now?"
Will forced himself to face the man-or whatever he was. He had piercing eyes that seemed to bore right into his skull. Into his mind. "It wouldn't be the first time my mind had...played tricks on me."
Bryant continued staring at him, probing with his eyes.
"So are you trying to hypnotize me, or just burn me to cinders with that glare?"
The other man blinked and looked away. "Actually, I was trying to read your thoughts. But you're adept at blocking them. I seem to recall noticing that about you at our last encounter."
Will shrugged. "It's not deliberate."
"That makes it even more interesting. Tell me about these other times your mind has...played tricks."
"No. It's none of your business."
Bryant nodded. "Fair enough. Tell me how you knew I was a vampire that night when we met."
"I didn't know any such thing. I don't know it now."
The man blew air through clenched teeth. Then he seemed to pause, to think, and then he spoke again. "You asked about a woman that night. Sarafina. Who was she to you?"
"Just another figment of my imagination."
"No. No, she's not. I knew it might take some work, Willem, to convince you to help me. Especially since I failed to keep my side of the bargain last time. So I took the liberty of checking into the name- discreetly, of course. She's a vampire, as am I. And she's right here, in New York."
A shudder worked through Will's body. He tried hard to keep it hidden. But his mind raced back to the day he had arrived in New York. The woman he'd seen just outside the airport-getting into the limo and speeding away. He'd caught only a glimpse-her hair, the shape of her cheekbones. The way she moved. It had been more than the way she looked that had hit him that day. He'd felt her, sensed her, felt her tugging at him the way magnetic north tugs at a compass needle. He'd convinced himself it hadn't been-couldn't have been-Sarafina. My God, what if it had?
"Willem?" the vampire prompted.
Will cleared his throat, focused on the here and now. "That's impossible," he said. "She's not real."
"She's as real as I am."
Will started to argue that he wasn't real, either, then stopped himself. The man was sitting here at his table at two in the morning, solid flesh and bone. He wasn't like other men. Most people might not notice it in passing, but Will was trained to notice things, especially abnormal things. The man's eyes took on a slight glow when he became angry or agitated. His skin was pale, but not in the same way an unhealthy, anemic human being's would be. It was pearly. Almost lustrous.
"From what I've been able to learn about Sarafina, she comes from Gypsy stock. A small band that roamed Italy. She was transformed by a vampire who went by the name of Bartrone, sometime close to two centuries ago, and..." He stopped speaking, smiled slowly, and Will saw the tips of his incisors, slightly longer than the other teeth, and sharp. "You knew these things about her?''
"I...imagined them. But they aren't real."
Bryant started to get up, but before Will saw him straighten all the way, he was standing right beside him, clutching his upper arm. He drew Will to his feet bodily, without seeming to exert much effort at all. Will felt a single jerk on his arm, and the floor beneath him was gone. When he felt it beneath his feet again, they were standing in the apartment's bathroom, in front of the oval mirror mounted to the wall.
"How the hell...?"
"I told you, I'm a vampire. I'm far stronger, and light-years faster, than a mortal. Now look, and see the truth." He nodded toward the mirror.
Will looked. There was only his own reflection looking back at him. And even as he watched, his comb rose from the counter beside the basin, floated this way and that way all on its own. Will shot his gaze to the vampire-for that was surely what he was-and saw him holding the comb, moving it back and forth in front of the mirror. He looked at the glass again, and again saw only the floating comb.
"All right." Will had to look away from the mirror. It was too disorienting to keep watching that damned floating comb trick. "All right. You are what you say you are."
"At last."
"But I still don't know why you want me for this job. It ought to be pretty clear to you that I'm not up to it. Hell, with all your superpowers, why don't you just do it yourself?"
Sighing, the vampire walked slowly out of the room. Will followed, limping badly without his cane to help him. He sank into his chair, and the vampire took his own. "I can't do it myself. Amber would know if I were there, just as she would know if I assigned another vampire to watch over her. I don't want to break her trust in me forever, but I am not incorrect in feeling she will be at risk without protection. So it has to be a mortal."
"I suppose that makes sense. But there must be a hundred men more qualified. Men who do this sort of thing for a living."
"That's true. But we do not go around announcing our existence to mortals if it can be helped. You already know we exist. You knew it that night in the hospital."
"There must be others who know about you."
Jameson Bryant lifted his brows. "Oh, there are. That's part of the problem. They're mostly dedicated to hunting us down like animals. Slaughtering us, if possible."
Will brought his head up slowly.
"And besides those things, Willem Stone, I trust you."
"You barely know me."
"I know what you did for me that night in the hospital. And I know the kind of man you are. I'm very good at sensing these things-just as you are."
Will lowered his head, thinking it over. He didn't have a job right now. He had all the time in the world.
"I'll pay you whatever you want," the vampire said.
"I have more money now than I'll ever want or need."
"Then what? What can I do to convince you to do this for me?"
Swallowing hard, Will met and held the creature's eyes. "Show me Sarafina."
They walked along the rain-damp sidewalk, past concrete and brick facades, and windows protected by bars, past well-cleaned stoops, the pattern broken only by the occasional alley, until the vampire stopped in front of a red metal door. Cars hissed past, their lights waxing and waning in time. Horns blew now and then. Not with the constant, unending taxicab language of midtown Manhattan. In midtown the horns spoke in loud voices, arguing and cussing each other out in a code only they and their drivers could understand. The yellow cabs spoke to one another with a little more civility in the Village.
"This is where she is?" Will asked. He was impatient, his good leg tired of bearing most of his weight, while his injured one ached mildly as his meds wore off.
"I don't do this thing lightly, Stone," Bryant told him. "Revealing the identity of another vampire to a mortal is-well, it's not done."
"Because of those who hunt you," Will said, nodding in full agreement with the wisdom of it. "But you know I'm not one of those."
"I know you're not one of those. And I know you're no threat to this woman."
He should have been insulted. "Because of my injury," he said, again filling in the blanks on his own.
"No. Because of her power."
Will dragged his gaze from the red door and the sign above it that read The Red Lion, with its stylized scarlet lion silhouettes on either side of the words, and focused on Bryant. He didn't show any sign that he was joking.
"I knew you'd ask about her in exchange for your help before I ever showed up at your door tonight, my friend. As I told you, I did some digging before I arrived. What I've learned about Sarafina-it's less than pleasant."
Will lifted his brows. "Then she's not the right woman. The Sarafina I knew-or imagined-was young and trusting. Too trusting, I'm afraid."
"How much different are you today from the child you were at, say, eight years old?"
Will knew what he was getting at and didn't bother answering. The answer was obvious. He was a completely different person now.
"She's lived five times as long as you have, Willem."
He nodded once. "So what are you telling me? That she's not a tame, friendly vampire like you?"
"Are you patronizing me now?"
He looked away. "I'm sorry. You didn't deserve that."
"No, I didn't." He drew a deep breath, sighed. "From what I understand, Sarafina is...dangerous. Most of us today live on animal blood, or what we can steal from blood banks. Some drink from living beings, but only in small amounts, leaving them unharmed."
"They don't remember and run screaming to the tabloids the next day?" Will asked.
"They remember what we let them remember."
Will digested that without asking any of the questions that were swirling in his mind, though Bryant paused to give him time to ask them. He didn't care about their methods. He wanted to know about Sarafina.
"Sarafina is different. Rumor has it she...well... her victims sometimes disappear."
He blinked. This couldn't be the same gentle woman he'd encountered in his mind. Then again, he had seen what she'd been through. Had losing Bartrone twisted her mind?
"She is not overly fond of humans, I think," Bryant said.
"Then why would we find her here, at a bar full of them?"
The vampire shook his head slowly. "I don't know. But I was told she comes here often, sits at a booth in the back and writes in a book of some kind. She never hunts here, so it's the safest place for you to approach her."
"Why does she never...hunt here?"
"It would stir up too many questions, attract the vampire hunters in droves, and that would mean she would no longer be able to come here every night. It would ruin it for her. The place without a single sign of a vampire is the place where you'll find them in droves, Willem. A place where there has been a kill, or a blood bank break-in, or any other sign of our presence, is the last place you will find us."
Again Will nodded. "You'd make good soldiers."
"In a way, that's exactly what we are." Jameson paused for just a moment, then reached for the door. "Are you ready?"
He nodded. Inside, he was preparing himself for disappointment. This woman was not going to be his Gypsy enchantress. She wasn't. There was no way that the Sarafina of his dreams could have become a killer.
"I'm not going in with you. She'll sense the presence of another vampire immediately and might perceive you as more of a threat. She tends to shun the company of others like her, or so I'm told."
"So she's not overly fond of humans or vampires," Will said, thinking aloud. "Maybe she just likes being alone."
He looked through the door Bryant held open. People milled around carrying drinks, while others sat at small square tables on impossibly high stools. Still others lined the bar. The place was smoke-filled, the music a little too loud for his taste. A little too hip-hop for his taste, as well. He preferred classic rock, probably a sign of his age.
"I'll meet you tomorrow night at your apartment to finalize our bargain, Willem," Jameson Bryant said.
"All right." The vampire didn't seem to harbor any doubt whatsoever that this was going to be the woman Will sought.
"Be careful."
Will nodded, barely hearing him as he stepped into the bar. The door closed behind him. He limped to the first vacant stool he spotted, sat down to rest his leg and ordered a shot of Black Velvet.
Sarafina sat in the back, at her usual place, her pen moving slowly and deliberately over the parchment-like pages of the large, velvet-covered book. She was writing about Dante now. About his betrayal and their resulting estrangement. He had been her only surviving family member, her grandnephew. But they'd been more than that to each other. She'd become his mother when she'd found him near death on the ground and fed him from her veins, making him immortal, as she was. She'd become his sister when he had grown in power and wisdom until he was nearly her equal. And then he'd become her betrayer when he'd chosen his precious lover over her.
Dante and Morgan lived in bliss like a pair of happily wed mortals in Maine. Dante had been neutered, she wrote. His fangs filed off, his claws clipped. He no longer lived the life of a lone predator. The life of a vampire.
She did. She relished it. And she always would.
An odd chill brushed over the nape of her neck, and Sarafina's pen stilled. She lifted her head slowly, feeling the room around her. There was someone there. Someone familiar.
Turning, she searched the bar, her gaze guided by instinct. There was a whisper tickling her mind, one she couldn't quite hear, but the sensation was so like one from long ago. It had been a century since she'd felt this particular presence. But the last time, he had told her his name. Willem. And that he lived in New York. And while she hated to acknowledge it, that was part of the reason she had come here after her break with Dante. She'd vowed never again to become dependent upon another living being for her happiness. They only let her down; it never failed. But perhaps her friend from the spirit realm would contact her here. And, she had to admit, she would welcome that. It had been so long....
"Sarafina?"
The voice came from behind her. It was the voice of her familiar spirit. It was a voice she would never mistake. And yet it came not in a mental whisper but as an actual sound. How could that be?
She turned her head slowly, not getting up.
A man stood there. A mortal man. She'd seen her spirit once, in her crystal. This man looked harder. Less mystical, more physical.
He extended a hand in greeting. "My name is Willem Stone. Do you remember me?"
She glanced down at the hand he offered. "You're just a man." He couldn't be the one. He couldn't be. He only sounded the same-and looked similar, too. But her spirit could not be flesh. She didn't trust people on this plane the way she'd trusted him. He couldn't be the one. Please, God, she thought, don't let him be the one. Not an ordinary man.
He withdrew his hand slowly, nodding once. "Yeah. Do you mind if I talk to you? Just for a few minutes?"
Blinking slowly, she let her gaze explore him. He was, perhaps, not so ordinary. His build, his physique, spoke of power. He must be strong, for a mortal. He used a cane to help him walk, which she supposed was a flaw, but a recent one, she sensed. He was in pain. She knew that immediately. He kept it pushed to one side of his awareness, as if he were the one in control of it, rather than the other way around. He wore suede hiking shoes, khaki trousers that fit loose in the crotch, making her wonder what they hid. His sweater was a pullover in olive drab, with leather patches sewn onto the shoulders and elbows, and a patch on the front that bore foreign letters.
Perhaps he was not so ordinary at all.
"Sit with me...for a moment."
Nodding, he came around the table, limping, and slid into the booth opposite her. There was a candle burning inside an amber glass jar in the table's center. Its light played on his face, which was not handsome, but hard. Sharp lines at the jaw and nose. An iron brow. Arctic-blue eyes in stark contrast to the dark, closely cut hair and deeply tanned skin.
"What did you want to speak to me about?" she asked, leaning back in her seat, enjoying her exploration of him. Enjoying even more that it didn't seem to bother him or unsettle him in the least.
"Excuse me? I'm sorry to interrupt," a waitress said, standing beside the table.
Sarafina lifted her brows, sending daggers with her eyes, but the twit was too focused on the man to notice.
"Are you Colonel Stone?" she asked. '"Cause I saved the issue of TIME that had you on the cover, and I'd just love to get your autograph to go with it. I think you're just-"
He held up a hand, which stopped the woman's mindless chatter, thank the stars. His eyes met Sarafina's, then shifted to the little redhead. "Sorry," he said. "I get this a lot, but I'm not him."
The girl frowned, as if confused. "Oh. I'm...sorry, then." She walked away, puzzling things over in her very tiny mind.
Sarafina looked at her mortal companion. "So it's Colonel Willem Stone."
"Retired."
"And you're some kind of...war hero?"
"I was captured and tortured and lived to tell the tale. To some that makes me a hero. Given the choice, I'd have foregone the pleasure."
She felt her lips pull at the corners. And she remembered a vision of her spirit lover-bound and being tortured by red-hot irons. It drove a deep chill up her spine, and she had to shake the image away. This wasn't him, though he used the same name and appeared in the same place her spirit had told her he would.
"I know you," he said. He dropped the words and just left them lying there.
She was unsure what he expected her to do with them. "I doubt that, Willem. No man truly knows me."
"I do. I know all about you. I know about the camp. I know about your sister, Katerina, and how she and Andre betrayed you. I know about Bartrone and the way he died. And I know what you are."
She sat very still, watching him, listening to him, a sense of unholy dread spreading in her chest. When he stopped speaking, she leaned across the table, curling her hand around his nape and drawing him closer to her to whisper against his ear. "And you think that I can allow you to live, now that you've confessed all you know about me?"
His own whisper, just as soft, and spoken so close that his lips moved against her ear with the words, startled her. "I'm not an easy man to kill, Sarafina. But if you want to try, I'd be more than happy to play."
The feel of those lips, that warm breath against her ear, set a fire in her loins. Images of the night her spirit had come to her in her dreams-made love to her in a way no man, mortal or vampire, had ever done-made her shiver with desire. She drew away sharply, flicking her eyes to his. "Perhaps we'll play first. And you can die later."
"However you want to do it."
She nodded slowly, reminding herself that he wasn't the one. It was safe to love a spirit. Not so a man. "How do you know all the things you know about me, Willem Stone?"
He held her gaze as a vampire might do, probing, trying to read her thoughts with his eyes. "My God, Sarafina, you have to remember. I was there. I was with you. I was the voice that spoke to you inside your mind. You called me your beloved spirit. I told you I was just a man."
She nodded slowly, searching her mind for an explanation besides that one. He was going to put out the one remaining sliver of light in her life-the hope that one day her spirit would return to her, love her again as he had so long ago.
"That's impossible," she whispered. "You weren't yet born when I was experiencing those things."
"I know it's impossible. I also know it happened. I used to doubt it, thinking maybe it was because of the torture or some kind of mental illness, but now that I've seen you..." He shook his head. "I know it was real, Sarafina. Do you?"
She studied his face. "The things you describe... happened. There was a voice that spoke to me at those times. He said the very things you claim to have said to me. I've never told these things to anyone, nor even written of them in my journals."
"Then there's no way I could know them-unless I was there."
She nodded slowly, realizing it was true, and trying to keep the fact that his words had shattered what remained of her heart hidden from him. He was real. Physical. Physical beings lied and betrayed and died, and left their beloved alone and in pain. She couldn't love her spirit lover if he were a physical being. She wouldn't.
She kept her eyes averted. "What do you want from me now?"
He seemed stunned, maybe a bit hurt. "I...I don't know. I guess I just wanted to see you. To convince myself I wasn't losing my mind."
"You needed your experiences validated." It was difficult to keep her voice from trembling with the pain. "That's done. What else?"
He blinked, perhaps taken aback at her directness. "I had to know that you were all right. When last I saw you, you were..."
The pain overwhelmed her restraint. "When last you saw me, you promised to try to come again as soon as you could. But I never heard from you again until now. It's been a hundred years, Willem."
"It was the night before last," he told her.
That brought her head up, her eyes to his. She held his gaze only a moment, then looked away from the power of it. "I'm fine."
He nodded. "I can see that." He drew a breath. "You've changed."
"People do. It's irrelevant. What else do you want from me, mortal?"
He took his time about answering, leaning back in his seat, studying her as freely and openly as she had studied him. Perhaps hiding some pain of his own behind those eyes. If he was, it didn't show. He had a good deal more self-control that she did.
"I want to know how it happened. I want to understand how I was able to tap into your memories and your past the way I did."
She smiled just a little at that.
"What? That's amusing somehow?"
"It's only typical. You mortals and your curious minds, wanting answers, always answers. Over the centuries, one learns that things simply are. There's no rhyme or reason. Young ones of my kind, fledglings, go through an inevitable period of demanding to know why. Why do we exist? What is our purpose? It usually takes at least a mortal lifetime of living as an immortal before they stop questioning and simply accept."
He tilted his head to one side. "You don't believe there's a purpose to it all? A grand design?"
"That you and I were soul mates, connecting through time and destined to meet at last in this time and place?"
"Yeah, something like that."
She rolled her eyes and fought to keep a sob from ripping free of her chest and giving her away. "It's rubbish."
"All right. Maybe it's rubbish."
"Then we've nothing left to talk about. And your time is up."
He reached across the table, clasped her hands in his. "I want to know you, Sarafina. I want to know what's happened to you since Bartrone's death."
She studied his hands on hers and felt flushed with warmth, and a longing almost too intense to ignore. He had some foolish romantic attachment to her, just as she had to him. But his was all based on the woman she had once been. She wasn't that woman anymore. And yet she wanted him. God, how she wanted him. And that was dangerous. It gave him the power to hurt her, to destroy her, perhaps. She'd long ago determined it was best to associate only with those she disliked, or those who left her utterly unmoved and uninterested. Or the slaves, for whom she really did come to feel affection-safe in the knowledge they would never betray her.
Willem Stone was none of those things, and because of that, he was dangerous. And she had a feeling he wouldn't stop coming to her, especially not if he had felt as strongly for her as she had for him. She'd had a century to get used to being without him. He'd had-what had he told her? Two days?
Maybe she should just show him that she wasn't the innocent girl he thought he had loved once. "Would you like to know what I want from you, Willem Stone?"
"I really would," he told her.
She gripped the front of his shirt and drew him across the table toward her. She knew he was a strong man. She wanted him to resist, so she could demonstrate that she was far stronger, but he didn't oblige. "I want to ride you until you're too exhausted to stand anymore. And then I want to sink my teeth into your throat and drain you dry. I want to pleasure myself with your body and gorge myself with your blood. And that's all I want."
"You really think so?"
"I know so."
He slid his hand around her neck, tangled his fist in her hair and pulled her head forward, mashing her mouth to his. She didn't fight him. She let him kiss her, let him drive his tongue into her and taste her. Let him feel the razor edges of her incisors.
Then he broke the kiss. "I think you want more, and I think you're fighting it, but I'm damned if I know why."
"You delude yourself. And risk your life by doing it."
"You wanted me to come back to you when I was nothing more than a spirit, a voice in your head. You didn't want my blood or my body then, because for all you knew, I didn't have either one. You wanted me. You loved me, Sarafina. I know you did."
"I wanted company. A stray cat would've done just as well. But I've cured myself of that flaw, Willem Stone. I no longer need companionship. In fact, I revile it."
He released her, and she released him. They sat back in their seats, staring at each other. "Then I guess I should leave," he said.
"While you still can," she advised.
He smiled slowly at her, got to his feet, reached for the cane beside the chair and walked out of the place without once looking back. Sarafina swallowed hard. God, she'd missed him so. She wanted him. Exactly the way she had told him she did, with one exception. She didn't want to kill him. He fascinated her, in spite of herself. She wanted his voice, his friendship, his comforting presence in her dark times, the way she'd had it once.
But those were desires she would not satisfy. He was a mortal. Not even one of The Chosen, just an ordinary mortal. She would not allow herself to become even passingly fond of a creature who would inevitably leave her alone. She knew that pain too well and had no desire to experience it again.
No. Not ever. And especially not with him.
Sarafina closed her eyes, turned her face toward the rear wall, and, for the first time in a very long time, she wept. Tears rolled down her cheeks against her will.
She still felt him with her. She didn't know where he was, but she knew he was aware of her crying. And she knew he was bleeding inside.
