Enraptured (5 page)

“Did she do that?” Mike, his other adopted
uncle, inquired.

“No,” Ian informed them. “Should I put her
on the couch?”

“There’s a bedroom back here,” Mandy
said.

She hurried down the hall. The slight hitch
in her step wouldn’t have been noticeable to anyone with human
eyesight and who didn’t know she had a prosthetic leg. The dim
candlelight flickering in the room she led him into illuminated her
mocha skin. Ian laid the woman carefully on the maroon quilt
covering the full size bed.

Mandy opened a small medical bag and began
to shuffle through it. “I have some needle and thread…”

“The punctures are already closed, but she
needs blood.”

Mandy turned toward him, her deep brown eyes
were filled with concern. She’d cut her black hair since he’d last
seen her; it was now cropped close to her head and enhanced her
high cheekbones and full mouth. “I’m only a med student,” she said.
“I don’t have anything like that.”

“We can get some,” Stefan volunteered.
“There’s a small emergency clinic in the next town.”

Ian’s hands lingered upon the girl; he
forced himself to take a step away from her. “I’ll be the getaway.”
Jill smiled after saying this, but her light words didn’t ease the
tension in her sable eyes. The blond streaks she’d had when he’d
first met her had faded from her mahogany, shoulder length
hair.

“I’ll go with you,” Emma volunteered.

“Stay, I’ll go.” Ethan took hold of her hand
and squeezed it. Emma started to protest, but Ethan pulled her
close and kissed her forehead. “Help Mandy. We’ll be back
soon.”

She stepped away from him as Mandy broke out
a blood pressure kit and stethoscope. “I’m going to need a syringe
too,” she called after them, but her attention remained focused
upon the girl lying on the bed. “And make sure the blood is O
negative.”

Ian found his attention riveted upon the
girl while Mandy wrapped the cuff around her sinewy bicep.

Ian sat up straighter in his chair and rubbed at the
stubble lining his chin when the woman lying on the bed stirred.
Her eyelids fluttered briefly before closing again. Ian slumped
back in his chair, folded his hands in his lap, and stretched out
his cramped legs. He stared at her slumbering form.

“She’s going to be fine,” Mandy assured him.
“She’s still healing.”

She had his blood in her and a whole pint of
someone else’s, but the knowledge couldn’t help him shake his
concern for her. Mandy glanced between them before walking out of
the room. “We’re going to have to change her memories,” Stefan said
from the doorway.

Something within him bristled and revolted
at the idea of messing with her mind, but Stefan was right. Nodding
his agreement, he turned to find her startling turquoise eyes
watching him. He’d expected to see fear in her gaze; he hadn’t
expected the simmering fire and resentment smoldering within their
depths.

Sitting forward in his seat, he folded his
hands in front of him before speaking. “You’re going to be
fine.”

Her forehead furrowed as she stalwartly held
his gaze. Stefan shifted in the doorway, drawing her attention to
him. “Do you remember what happened?” Stefan inquired.

A small flicker of unease slid through Paige
when her gaze landed on the man standing in the doorway. His eyes
were the same color as his raven colored hair.
Black
ice
, she thought as she met his chilly gaze.
Vampire
,
was her next realization. She didn’t know how she knew it; she
certainly hadn’t known it about the man sitting across from her
now. She still wouldn’t have suspected it, if she hadn’t seen his
reddened eyes and fangs in the alleyway.

She’d escaped one hideous nightmare only to
find herself right in the middle of another one. Her heartbeat
picked up, something they could detect. She tried to slow its beat
as she forced herself to keep her face impassive. She wouldn’t give
them the satisfaction of seeing her fright before they ripped out
her heart, turned her into some type of blood donor pincushion,
drained her dry, or whatever it was they planned to do to her.

Her lips compressed as she stared at him
before turning back to the man across from her. She didn’t know
why, they were both lethal, but she felt more comfortable speaking
with the blond man in the chair. Maybe it was because she’d met him
under more normal circumstances originally, or maybe it was his
stunning, golden boy looks that made him appear more inviting and
trustworthy. Whatever it was, she found herself able to deal with
him a little bit better.

People assumed most of their neighbors
were pleasant and normal too, until they found out they were serial
killers who liked to wear human skin for fun
, she reminded
herself.

“Where am I?” she demanded.

“At a friend’s. You’re safe here,” Ian told
her.

“Am I?”

The hoarseness of her voice drove him to his
feet. He lifted the glass of water Mandy had left at her bedside
and handed it out to her. She eyed it like she would the poisoned
apple. “It’s only water,” he assured her.

“Is it?” she inquired.

“You
are
safe here,” he said again.
“Besides, we wouldn’t need to poison or drug you.”

He had a point there. Paige glanced at the
water again before forcing herself up in the bed. Her sore muscles
protested the movement, but she refused to be lying down with this
monster looming over her. Glancing around, she searched the room
for a possible weapon, but she didn’t see anything she could use to
defend herself. Her eyes fell on the needle stuck in her arm. If
anything, she could always rip it out and stick him in the eye with
it, but she’d still have to get by the one in the doorway. She
didn’t think any of them would take well to her blinding golden
boy, but she was willing to find out if she ever got the chance to
try an escape.

“No one is safe around a monster,” she
murmured when she focused on him again.

Ian’s eyebrows shot up at her words. “I can
assure you, I’m not a monster.” Her jaw locked; she turned away
from the glass of water he still held out to her and folded her
hands in her lap. Ian focused on Stefan as he tried to quell the
strange twinge her words had caused him. “Let Mandy know she’s
awake.”

Stefan eyed her for a minute before stepping
out of the room. “Do you remember what happened?” he asked her.

Paige refused to meet his eyes again so she
stared resolutely at the wall on the other side of the room. Who is
this Mandy he’s talking about, and how many vampires were here in
this house? More importantly, what were they going to do with her?
She tried not to dwell on that final question; she was afraid she
might go a little crazy if she did. Panicking and insanity wouldn’t
do anything to help her escape this situation. No, only a level
head and some damn good luck were going to get her out of here.
Unfortunately, she tended to be about as lucky as the gum on the
bottom of someone’s shoe.

“Of course. I suffered blood loss, not brain
damage,” she retorted.

He returned the glass to the table. “Aren’t
you a prickly little cactus of gratitude, I did save your life,” he
drawled.

Her eyes briefly flitted toward him, a vein
jumped in the corner of her eye, but she didn’t respond to him
before returning her attention to staring at the wall. He folded
his arms over his chest as he studied her profile. Her youthful
looks belied the air of wisdom and age emanating from her. Her hair
was so deep a brown it shone almost black in the flickering
candlelight. The tendrils of it hung in tumbled curls to just
beneath her breasts.

Movement in the doorway finally pulled his
eyes away from her. Mandy yawned as she walked into the room, but
she broke into a bright smile when she spotted the woman sitting up
on the bed. “You’re awake!” she greeted cheerfully. She walked
around the bed to stand by the girl’s side and went to grab hold of
her wrist. The woman jerked away from her; she recoiled on the bed.
Ian stepped forward to stop her if she decided to lash out at
Mandy. Holding her hands up in a conciliatory gesture, Mandy moved
back a little. “My name is Mandy. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I don’t want any of your kind touching me!”
the woman countered.

Mandy’s eyes flitted briefly toward him.
Taking a deep breath, she kept her hands in the air as she focused
on her hostile patient once more. “I’m human,” Mandy said
soothingly. “and I won’t harm you.”

The woman’s gaze raked Mandy’s body; she
glanced at Ian and Stefan before looking toward Mandy again. “How
do I know that?” she demanded.

Mandy frowned thoughtfully and then shook
her head. “Because I can’t run a mile in three seconds flat, I
don’t have fangs, I’m going to med school, and the idea of drinking
blood is about as appetizing to me as eating dirt. Actually, I
think I’d rather eat dirt with worms.”

The woman continued to stare distrustfully
at her. She lowered her hand to her side, but kept it fisted. “Are
they forcing you to do this?” she demanded.

Mandy’s forehead creased; she glanced at him
and Stefan again. “No one is forcing me to do anything,” she
replied.

“They would make you say that,” Paige
muttered. Her eyes roamed over the pretty young woman before her.
She didn’t see any bite marks on her or any other signs of abuse,
but the woman may have been coerced into helping by the vampire’s
powers of persuasion.

“I’m here of my own freewill. I volunteered
to help.”

Ian watched her intently as the woman
glowered at him and Stefan before turning back to Mandy. “Do you
know what they are?”

“Yes,” Mandy answered. “They’re my
friends.”

Paige’s mouth fell; her gaze flitted over
them as she tried to figure out what was going on here. Mandy
attempted to take hold of her wrist again but she jerked it away.
“They’re monsters,” she whispered fervently. How could this woman
not see that? She was going to be a doctor, yet she was helping
these
things
. Well, she supposed technically Mandy had
helped her, but what awaited her once she was healthy again?
“They’re killers.”

“I’ve never killed a person,” Ian grated
from between his teeth. He had killed a few vampires, but he had a
feeling the murder of vampires wouldn’t matter to this woman and
might actually be something she’d appreciate.

Paige snorted, “Liar.”

Stepping away from the bedside, he grabbed
hold of the curtain next to the bed and jerked it open. Early
afternoon sunlight spilled into the room and over him. “Since you
think you know so much about our kind, then you should know I
wouldn’t be able to stand in the sunlight
if
I was a
murderer of humans.”

Her eyes narrowed; her gaze ran over the
sunlight filtering over him. “That’s not possible, no vampire can
stand the sun. I saw you, in the alley, I saw your
true
face.”

“I am a vampire, I am
not
a murderer.
You’d do better to learn the difference.”

Ian jerked the curtain closed again. This
girl was going to be a lot tougher to get to trust him than he’d
realized. His gaze traveled to the scars on her neck. Her hand
fluttered toward the same spot. Her fingers froze for a minute
before moving over the two scars there, the only marks left upon
her flesh.

“I gave you some of my blood to heal the
wounds before you bled out,” he explained.

Her eyes widened in horror. “I’m not… I
won’t…”

“You won’t become a vampire,” he assured
her.

Her shoulders slumped, her head bowed as she
inhaled a shuddery breath. He could feel the relief washing out of
her and over him. “You shouldn’t have.”

“You would have died.”

Her eyes slid toward him, her chin jutted
out. “There are fates worse than death.”

Ian shook his head. “I don’t know what
you’ve been told, or what you’ve experienced, but it’s not true.
Only the worst of our kind, the brutal murderers amongst us, are
unable to tolerate the sunlight. The rest of us are perfectly
capable of walking about in the day, crossing large bodies of
water, tolerating holy water and crucifixes. We are essentially the
same as you, only stronger and we feed on blood.”

Paige glanced at the curtain and the sun
peaking around its edges. Her mind spun as she tried to comprehend
what he’d just told her. Had Nabel and the other survivors she’d
met been wrong? Were
all
vampires capable of walking about
in the day, or was he telling her the truth and only those who
didn’t kill were. But what vampire didn’t kill? They had to in
order to survive, didn’t they?

They all lied, she reminded herself. Their
entire existence was built on lies.

But she’d seen him leave the bar with three
different women and each one of those women had been alive the next
night. She’d seen them. All the vampires she’d come across would
never have allowed those women to live, after covering their
tracks, they would have left them battered and lifeless in a ditch
somewhere.

“It could be a trick, you’re lying to me,”
she muttered.

“It’s no trick,” he told her. “There are
those of us who kill, and those of us who don’t. Apparently, you
don’t know as much as you think you do about us. Now, let Mandy
take a look at you.”

“Do you mind?” Mandy asked and gestured at
Paige’s wrist.

Paige hesitated for a minute before shaking
her head. She couldn’t argue with allowing a human to look at her,
and though the idea of his blood pulsing through her body caused
her stomach to turn, she was glad to be alive. It could have ended
so much worse. She shuddered; her hand fluttered back to the two
scars on her neck. She’d been living on borrowed time for four
years now; it was only a matter of time before the sand ran through
her hourglass. Last night was a close call, but she would not fail
at her mission before her time was up.