“I don’t want you going anywhere alone.”
“I went to my father’s funeral.”
He shrugged. “You couldn’t very well avoid that. And you weren’t alone. Your uncle was with you.”
“I can call a cab. I should be safe enough at the Chronicle if I stay inside. Jolie can bring me home.”
“No.”
“Do you really think a Werewolf will attack me in broad daylight? There haven’t been any reports of attacks during the day.”
“There’s a first time for everything. Besides, I’m sure no one expects you to go to the office today.”
He was right, of course. Even though she was certain it would be perfectly safe for her to go to work, there was no point in taking chances when she didn’t have to. Still…
As if sensing her indecision, Rane said, “I went outside late last night, after you had gone to bed. The Vampire who killed your father has been snooping around again, and the Werewolf, too.”
His words sent a cold chill down her spine. “How do you know?”
“Their scent was fresh. One of them left a footprint in the dirt alongside the house. It can’t be a coincidence that they’re showing up at the same time. They’ve got to be working together.”
Filled with a sudden sense of urgency, she said, “Let’s leave tonight.”
Savanah went through the items in her suitcase a second time, wondering if she had packed more than she needed, then decided it was better to take too much rather than too little. For one thing, Rane hadn’t said how long they would be gone, and she still wasn’t sure where she wanted to go. Exotic locales flitted through her mind: Hawaii, Rome, Bora Bora, Cabo, Portugal. They all appealed to her, yet on some deep level she didn’t quite understand, she was reluctant to leave the country. Frowning, she tried to think of someplace a little closer to home, some vacation spot where she had always wanted to go. Graceland? The giant redwood forest in Northern California? Yellowstone? Disneyland?
Savanah shook her head. She couldn’t imagine Rane wanting to visit any of those places; the thought of a Vampire touring Disneyland struck her as ludicrous, somehow. She had to grin when she pictured him in the Haunted Mansion. It was one ride where he would fit right in!
She slipped her mother’s Vampire kit under the layers of her clothing before closing the suitcase, then checked her overnight bag. She had packed everything she needed, save for her comb, brush, make-up, and toothbrush; she would add those later.
With nothing else to do, she decided to change the sheets on her bed. While carrying them to the laundry room, she paused outside her father’s bedroom. Rane slept inside. Feeling like Pandora, she put her hand on the knob, then hesitated. Did she really want to see him when he was caught in the sleep of the Undead? Did Vampires dream? Would he know if she opened the door and peeked inside? Would he look like he was sleeping, or would he look like a corpse, pale and unmoving? An image of her father as she had last seen him flashed through her mind, and with it a knifelike stab of grief.
She closed her eyes for a moment, then moved on down the hallway to the laundry room, which was located adjacent to the garage at the back of the house.
Blinking back her tears, she dumped the sheets into the washing machine, added soap, and turned the dial to Wash. How had her life turned into such a nightmare? Her mother and father had both been killed by Vampires. How could she be in love with such an odious creature?
Leaving the laundry room, she paused again outside her father’s door. Overcome by her curiosity, she took a deep breath and pushed the door open just enough to peek inside.
The first thing she noticed was that Rane had covered the room’s single window with the bedspread so that no light entered the room.
He lay on the top of the blankets, his eyes closed, one arm curled behind his head, the other resting at his side. He had removed his shirt, shoes and socks. From where she stood, she couldn’t tell if he was breathing. If she called his name, would he hear her? Her gaze moved over him, her fingers yearning to delve into his thick black hair, to trace the outline of his broad shoulders, to run her palms over his muscular chest and six-pack abs. How did he stay in such good shape? Did Vampires work out? Somehow, she didn’t think so, yet she knew from experience that he was firm and fit. If only things were different. If she wasn’t mourning her father, if Rane was an ordinary man, she would have crawled into bed beside him and awakened him with a kiss.
With her curiosity satisfied, she quietly closed the door and went upstairs to her own room.
At least he didn’t look dead. She was grateful for that. And grateful that the burns on his cheek and neck had disappeared, just as he had said they would.
But he was still a Vampire, and Vampires killed to stay alive. How many lives had he taken in the last week? In the last ninety years? The possibilities were staggering. Even if he had to feed only once a month, he would have killed over a thousand people. And if he fed every night…
Until this moment, she hadn’t really let herself think about his feeding habits. He had said he’d “tasted” her. She wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but obviously he hadn’t had to kill her to do so. Maybe he had never killed anyone. Maybe all he needed to survive was a “taste” now and then. But even as she tried to convince herself of that fact, she knew it wasn’t true. One of her mother’s books had described, in lurid detail, how Vampires fed off their victims.
Savanah stared at her reflection in the mirror above her dresser, imagining Rane bending over her neck, his eyes glowing red, his arms imprisoning her as he sank his fangs into her throat…. Of course, he would cast no reflection. She wondered how female Vampires applied their make-up without looking in a mirror. How did they try out a new hairstyle, or decide on new clothes if they couldn’t see how they looked? She remembered the night she and Rane had gone to the mall and he had bought that long black duster that looked so good on him. She now knew why he hadn’t wanted to check it out in the mirror.
How could she be in love with one of the very creatures she was supposed to destroy?
With a sigh, Rane rolled onto his side. He had known that, sooner or later, Savanah’s curiosity would get the best of her. She was a newspaper reporter and she was a woman. Add the fact that she was also thinking of becoming a hunter into the mix and her snooping was inevitable. He knew he was taking a chance, resting in her home, but at the moment it wasn’t his life he was concerned about, but hers. And if she decided to drive a stake into his heart, well, so be it. Better to be sent to hell by the hand of a beautiful woman than by some heartless, no-account hunter.
He swore softly. Why were a Werewolf and a Vampire working together? Or were they? He could understand why a Vampire wanted the books now hidden under the spare tire in the trunk of his car, but of what interest would the volumes be to a Werewolf? Was he wrong to assume the only reason Savanah was in danger was because the books now belonged to her? What other reason could there be? Since she hadn’t yet made a kill, he was reasonably certain that he was the only one who knew that Savanah intended to follow in her father’s footsteps. Not that it mattered. So long as she was in danger, he intended to do everything in his power to keep her safe.
Since Savanah couldn’t decide where she wanted to go, Rane made the decision for her.
“The mountains,” Savanah exclaimed. “You have a place in the mountains?” She couldn’t have been more surprised if he had sprouted horns and a tail.
Rane grinned at her. “It’s not mine. It belongs to an old friend of the family.” In point of fact, it was Mara’s place. Through the years, she had acquired property in a number of towns and cities, not only in the States, but in a good many foreign countries, as well.
“The mountains,” Savanah muttered, and went back upstairs to pack some warmer clothing.
An hour after sundown, they were ready to go. Rane had packed earlier that evening. It didn’t take long to throw his clothes into a suitcase. Since he had no permanent home, he carried everything he owned in the trunk of his car. He had canceled his remaining tour dates and settled up with the owner of the house he had been renting.
He carried Savanah’s bags outside, waited on the porch while Savanah locked the front door.
“My car or yours?” he asked.
“Yours,” she answered without hesitation. Her car was nice and relatively new, but nothing like his.
Rane stowed their suitcases in the trunk, made sure her mother’s books were where he had left them, and then slid behind the wheel. “Ready?”
Savanah bit down on her lower lip, then nodded. “Ready.” She had canceled the newspaper, put a hold on her mail, informed Mr. Van Black that she had decided to take him up on his offer of an extended leave of absence.
Settling back in the seat, she sent a sideways glance at Rane, wondering what in the world had possessed her to think that going off to the mountains with a Vampire she hardly knew would be safer than staying home. But it was too late to worry about it now. For better or worse, she had put her life in his hands.
It was a beautiful drive, even in the dark. As the road wound ever higher, more and more stars were visible in the night sky. A full moon cast her light over the earth, bathing the tips of the mountains in silver splendor, while the car’s headlights cut a wide swath through the darkness, occasionally startling a deer grazing in the meadow that stretched for miles along the side of the road.
Soft music came from the car stereo, lulling Savanah to sleep.
Rane took a deep breath, filling his nostrils with the scent of the woman beside him. He saw her clearly in the darkness. Her eyelashes lay like golden fans against her cheeks. Her hair fell over one shoulder in a fall of moon-shadowed silk, leaving the other side of her slender neck exposed to his view. The whisper of her life’s blood flowing through her veins was like sweet music to his ears, the smell of it more enticing than the sight of her smooth, unblemished flesh. His gaze lingered in the hollow of her throat.
His hands clenched on the steering wheel. What madness had tempted him to bring her to this lonely place in the mountains? No one had come here in years. If he lost control of his hunger, there would be no one to save her, no one to hear her scream.
