Damon (21 page)

They’d been criminals, murderers, possibly even identity thieves.

They’d killed a man, cut off his hand and then morbidly put it in a box. They’d burned down their houses and moved away, changed their names and started over. A life based on lies. Only three remained, and I felt they owed me an explanation. I spent my days with two of them. I entrusted my mother to Mrs. Jarvis, or Davis, or whoever, while I was gone during those days. Chester was lying to the IRS, paying taxes under a false name.

I was learning things I didn’t want to know about. Things I’d have been better off not knowing. Who knew what else they’d lied about? They really could be vampires for all I knew. There had to be a reason why Mama and Damon’s dad had gone crazy. Why Damon and I craved blood.

Damon gave up when we found nothing but endless woods, and we set off again on the main road, heading forward. I didn’t ask where we were going because I knew. To find the cave or the portal or the hidden village.

Our adventure was far from over.

I couldn’t decide whether to be glad or sad. Damon wouldn’t give up until he found what he was looking for. Not exactly the honeymoon I’d always imagined. Not that I’d ever really given honeymoons or even marriage much thought over the years. I’d just assumed Mama would ruin any chance I’d ever have.

I consoled myself staring down at my beautiful wedding ring and reminding myself to be grateful I’d found a man who could tolerate me, and my mother. And tried not to worry about the fact that my new husband was mentally ill and potentially dangerous.

Damon put his arm around me and pulled me closer. “I didn’t mean to do this, baby. I meant to take you home. I never gave you your wedding night.”

“We’ll make it up.”

“I’m scum.”

Well…. A part of me did want to blame him for putting this chase ahead of the most important night of our lives, but I knew he honestly couldn’t stop the forces inside him. Mama hadn’t remembered my birthday in years. This was the same sort of thing.

I just stuffed the ugly feelings way down deep in my gut where I could barely feel them. “We have the rest of our lives,” I told him.

He sped up, driving too fast over the winding road. “I’m going to give you your wedding night, Maggie Jennings.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Damon kept his word and that afternoon we were stepping into a nice rental cabin in the woods.

Despite our history with rented rooms, I had hopes we might be able to spend at least one night here. I was tired and needed somewhere to rest for a few hours. Our cabin sat at a short distance from the others, nestled in tall trees, without people pressing in on us. I thought that would help.

Damon was in good spirits as he looked around. The cabin was big enough to house eight people. It was two stories with a full kitchen, a potbelly stove in the living room, and a balcony off the upstairs bedroom. I put away the groceries we’d bought and listened to him praise our temporary abode. He came into the kitchen and led me by the hand up the stairs to the bedroom.

I thought he was eager to get started on our wedding night, but he left me standing by the bed while he lifted a silver briefcase from our pile of luggage. I hadn’t noticed the case before.

Once he had the case on the bed he gave me a warm hug then stepped back and held my hand. “Ask me again,” he whispered.

He was in such a secretive, dramatic mood I didn’t want to spoil the moment by not understanding his request. So I stood there trying to think what he meant.

“Ask me how much money I have,” he prompted.

“How much money do you have?”

His eyes sparkled and he led me to stand in front of the case. He opened the case and stood back to watch me gape at the stacks of cash. I stepped forward, so intimidated I was afraid to touch it.

“Damon,” I whispered. “What is this?”

He stood proudly, trying to appear casual, and handed me a stack with a rubber band around it. “I’ve still got about thirty-five thousand.”

Well, he might have lied about many things, but he hadn’t lied about being good on cash for the trip. “You brought all your money with us?”

“No,” he said, trying not to grin. “This is spending cash. This is nothing.” He grabbed me into his arms. “But you’ll be proud of me. I wanted to tell you I’m a millionaire. I almost did, but I didn’t. I’m close but it would’ve been a lie. Baby,” he whispered in my ear, “I’ve got over nine-hundred-thousand dollars.”

I wasn’t sure if I believed him, but the amount of cash we had sitting on the bed seemed like a fortune to me, and I couldn’t begin to conceive of nine-hundred-thousand dollars, so I didn’t quibble.

“Where did you get it?”

“Granddad,” he said. “What about the place where we were today?”

“For what?”

“In case we don’t make it in time. In case we have to run away and hide. I have enough money to see us through.” He laughed softly. “We could build a house with rubber walls and bars on the windows. We could live where our ancestors lived.”

“Out there in the woods? It’s not very far from people. There’s the family on the hill and that little town we drove through just up the road. It might not even be for sale.”

He shrugged off my concerns, a slow smile growing. “It’s exciting, isn’t it?” he said.

“What?”

“We’re getting close. Tomorrow, we’ll find the cave and then… then we’ll know.”

“Know what?”

“What we are.”

My mood was rapidly deteriorating. “You mean the children of liars?”

“Hmm,” Damon murmured, stepping back to look at me. “And I’ve lied to you. Pick something you really want to know and I promise on my life, no, on
your
life, which is far more precious, I won’t lie.”

I stepped back and sat on the bed, trying to think of what I most wanted to know. “Do you really love me? I mean,
me
me? Not just because I know how to live with someone with… issues?”

He rushed at me and grabbed me by the shoulders. “God, more than anything! With all my heart and soul.” As quickly as he’d bound into action, he calmed down and sat beside me. “That’s too easy. Ask me something hard.”

“Damon,” I complained. “I don’t care.” I’d heard so many lies recently my brain felt scrambled. I was too tired to remember all Damon had told me. I leaned in to give him a warm kiss on the temple. “I’ll love you no matter what. Stop asking me questions.”

“I watched you,” he blurted, his eyes widening until he looked terrified.

“What?”

He held my face between his hands. “Right now, on our wedding night, I want to make you a promise. I’ll tell you the truth. I’ll lie to you sometimes, because I get mixed up about what’s real and what I make up in my mind. But, as soon as I remember, I’ll tell you the truth. That’s a promise. Okay?”

I nodded. “Okay. But what were you saying about watching me?”

“Oh, yeah.” He stepped back and swept his hand through the air, as if it wasn’t important. “I’ve been watching you for months. I’ve been in your house, many times. I’ve loved you for so, so long, Magic Maggie. Since last winter.”

“You knew who I was? Months ago?” I stood and backed away, not certain how I felt about that. “Where were you and what were you doing? How many times were you in my house?”

He glanced up and shook his head. “I don’t know. Whenever I felt invisible. Whenever it felt right.”

That thought sent chills up and down my spine. My mother had probably seen him and thought he was the devil. “Why didn’t you just come in the store and meet me instead of spying? Why did you wait so long? I could have used you during the winter, Damon. It was a long, miserable time.”

“No, I watched you,” he answered, frowning. “You seemed okay. You worked too much, with all those extra jobs, but you weren’t depressed.”

I’d been depressed all winter, but I must have hidden it by staying busy. I’d cleaned houses and filled in doing laundry at the rest home in my spare time, trying to save up enough money to have the house painted come spring. And trying to fill the vast, empty hours after work. I’d been all alone over winter. I’d been dull and miserable.

“I didn’t know,” he whispered. The pain in his eyes reached all the way inside my heart and squeezed till it hurt. “I thought you’d hate me. I had to know you’d come to me. I had to see if you would recognize me before I said one word. I needed to see if you could feel me, too.”

“Good grief.” I sat on the bed again, now even more exhausted. I’d promised to love him no matter what, but I hated that he’d spied on me, and invaded my privacy. That he’d stalked me instead of acting normal and talking to me. But I’d known going in he was mentally ill. I’d decided I could live with it. Now I had to decide if I still felt that way.

“I told Bella I thought you were my soul mate. I never say things like that.”

He put his arm around my shoulders and began to rock us from side to side. “I’ll be here from now on, I promise. Right here, not sneaking around.”

“I really wish you would be.”

“Give me my ring.” He loosened his embrace to look at me. “Where is it? Before we do this and we’re really married.”

Grampa Harvey’s wedding ring, the one Gram had given to the man she’d loved. Except they weren’t Grampa Harvey and Grammy Elizabeth. They were Harold and Ellen Bosch. Virtual strangers. “It’s in my purse.”

“Wait,” he said as I walked back, licking the diamonds so they would sparkle. “There wasn’t any dump truck,” he continued to confess. “In your yard the day we met, when I messed-up your rock pond and kicked your beautiful lawn. I was trying to get your attention. You wouldn’t really look at me.”

I lifted his hand and looked at his bare finger. “Anything else?”

“One night you needed ten dollars because you hadn’t had a pizza in six months, and you cried because you felt old and worn out and you wanted just one nice thing, but you were broke because your mom had busted out the front windows. You found a twenty in your coat pocket. That was me. I wanted to give you a hundred, or a thousand, or a million. But you’d have been suspicious. Twenty was the most I could get away with.”

I could only manage a stunned little laugh. “Oh, honey, that was so sweet.” I remembered that pizza. It had been the best pizza I’d ever tasted because the money had appeared in my hand as if placed there by an invisible friend. I’d needed something special that night. I’d been awfully depressed.

God, how I loved him. I forced the ring onto his finger although it was a little too small, and met his eyes. “You’re the one for me. No doubt.”

He slowly unbuttoned my spring dress and slid it off my shoulders to land in a pile on the floor. My bra followed and went flying across the room. I unbuttoned his shirt enough to pull it over his head and we pressed our hot flesh together, both of us shivering against the intensity.

“I knew it,” he said, “the first time I saw you. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been dreaming of you for years. And then suddenly, one day, there you were, coming out of the drugstore.”

I stepped back to see him better. “Really?”

“I only wanted to know if it was the same for you. When you first saw me.”

“It was. Let’s get in bed.”

He nodded anxiously, looked at his ring, and worked to get his jeans and boots off. “Incredible,” he said. I shed my panties and stretched out on my back. Damon put a knee on the bed, then stepped back. “First,” he said.

He took our lancing device out of his bag and showed me. The sight of that thing aroused me so I had to close my eyes and let out a long sigh. We were going to fly tonight.

“God!” he complained and rushed from the room. Seconds later, he returned with an armload of blue towels and dropped them on the bed.

Then he dove on top of me.

All thoughts left my head under his seductive caresses and I opened myself to him, amazed as always by the dizzying warmth and sensations as he thrust himself inside me.

I’d never known a lover who could read my every desire as if they were his own. He knew exactly where to touch, how to move. He anticipated my every need the instant they occurred, as if he could read my mind.

Whatever trust he’d lost by telling lies, he gained back in bed. I didn’t have to tell him what to do, or when to do it, when to stay and when to move on. His skill gave me the freedom to relax and float on warm turbulent waves of pleasure. And allowed me to return with eagerness everything he gave.

I was so close to orgasm it hurt when he slowed and reached for the lancer. He carefully sat up, staying inside me, and stared down at me. His face was flushed, his eyes were wild, and he tossed the lancer away. It banged off the closet door.

“I’m real,” he growled.

“Hmm?” was all I could manage before he attacked me, driving himself hard inside me and clamping down on my neck.

A searing pain shot through my head as his teeth tore at my flesh and he drank with ferocity, pounding me with a force that threatened to crack my skull against the headboard. I could only lie in thunderstruck silence as he devoured me.

The room turned cloudy and red, everything turned red, as my senses pulled me under, into a realm of pleasure and pain and disbelief. Before I realized I was so close, tremors rocked my body and a harsh scream tore from throat, sounding so far away.

Damon continued to drink as I recovered and I could feel myself slipping into unconsciousness. He was taking too much and I was growing so dizzy I could barely form words.

“Stop,” I tried to say but I couldn’t hear my voice.

He stopped moving and slowly lifted his head. What I saw leaning over me, staring down at me with blood dripping down its chin, was a real life monster. Red dripped from two long, sharp fangs in its mouth and its eyes were silver.

Its eyes were icy silver and they shined. No, they glowed!

I could only stare at him in utter shock.

Damon really was a vampire.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I awoke with a struggle through thick black syrup and lay blinking at the ceiling, trying to catch my breath and swallow past a viciously dry throat.