Holiday with a Vampire 4 (18 page)

Chapter 6

S
avannah shot to her feet and turned to confront a reality that no longer made sense and quite possibly hadn’t from the start. Dylan McCay stood there in front of her, though it should have been impossible for him to get into a secured building. He stood there looking as solid as anyone could be, and yet he had not appeared on that screen.

“We don’t photograph or reflect,” he said calmly. “The theory goes that after we lose our mortal selves, our spark goes with it, taking away our reflection. Since we’re no longer the beings we were before death, some outward, physical relationship to those parts of us is gone.”

Savannah’s mouth went dry. “I see you,” she said.

“You can see us in person if we choose to show ourselves,” Dylan said.

“Us?”

“Myself and the others like me.”

She blinked slowly. “What do you mean when you say ‘after we lose our mortal selves’?”

“I was mortal once, Savannah. Now I’m something else.”

“A ghost? Because that’s the only way you wouldn’t show up on this monitor.”

He shook his head. “Not a ghost.”

“Then how did you get in here? Whatever method you used, please use it again to get out. I have enough problems at the moment. I think that I...”

He stepped closer to her. “You touched me, Savannah. We...” The remark went unfinished. He started again. “Surely you know that I’m flesh and bone. You’d be certain of it. I’m just not like you.”

“You’re trespassing.” Her charge was weak.

“I came here to explain about last night. We didn’t settle the issue of the reason for my visit, and I owe you that.”

“I thought we settled things pretty nicely,” she said.

“I meant what I said about liking you, Savannah, and wanting to be with you. That came as a surprise and wasn’t supposed to be part of the deal.”

The remark hung between them, floating like a cloud.

“Deal?” she said.

“An agenda brought me to you, though it’s not what made me stay. After meeting you, I found that I couldn’t do what I’d been sent to do. Nor could I leave. I couldn’t leave you.”

Savannah struggled to take this in. “What do you want from me, Dylan? If that’s your name.”

“It is my name, and I shared it with you when I haven’t done so with anyone else. I trusted you with my appearance, my voice and a warning about why I had come. I didn’t take all that from you when I left. Not permanently. I’ve remained at great peril to my cause.”

She turned her head to look at the image of her bedroom, frozen on the monitor. “What do you think you are, if the term
ghost
doesn’t apply?”

“Immortal.”

Savannah felt the blood drain from her face and wondered if he was a madman. When Dylan took another step closer to her, she backed up until her thighs were pressed to the desk.

“That’s ridiculous,” she insisted.

His hands came up in a gesture of placation, the same hands that had pleasured her earlier. “I would have thought so once, too. But I remember my death and being reawakened to the light. I bear the mark of having passed through death and wear it like a collar. So, tell me, Savannah, do you have another explanation for why I’m not on that screen?”

“Glitch. Has to be a...glitch.”

He smiled sadly, and her stomach wrenched in reaction. She had liked that smile. Heaven forgive her, she liked it now. Was Dylan McCay merely the embodiment of her need and desires? Not real at all?

“I am the offspring of an angel,” he said soberly. “I’m a product of light meeting with mortal flesh and heaven meeting with the earth. I’m a soldier in the fight with darkness, and a foe of the Fallen. And yet it took a woman like you to put the spark of humanity back inside me and to remind me of the kindness and generosity some mortals possess, as well as how far removed from those things I’ve become.”

Savannah shook her head violently. “I can’t listen to this. Can’t believe this.” Nevertheless, a feeling of rightness suggested he had told the truth.

“I’ll go back to the shadows,” the man who had captured her with a smile, and who had been intimately inside her, said. “I won’t take one bit of your light from you, my dearest Savannah, without your permission. I merely made it harder for you to remember why I had come so that I’d have time to think about what to do.”

He raised his hands, then dropped them to his sides. “You will be safe only if you stop searching for that star. I would not see you hurt, or my brethren. This is the dilemma I face.”

Savannah tried to soothe her shakes by placing her hands behind her. There was nothing she could do to hide the way her voice shook. “I don’t even know what that means. What light could you have taken from me, if you had chosen to?”

He tapped his head with two of the long, lean fingers that had traced her lips so agonizingly well. “I was sent here to remove the necessity of continuing with this particular research from your mind and memory.”

“You can do that?”

“Yes.”

“And instead you settled for my body?”

“Instead, I found happiness and joy, perhaps for the first time in my long existence. I found trees and sugar-covered dough and the concept of a magical Santa Claus who can close the gap between good thoughts and dark thoughts, and between the living and their departed loved ones.”

He took another step. “These things are magical, special, and so are you. You’re angry and hurt that I left you on your own. I don’t blame you. I had to leave so that I could think this through.”

Perhaps seeing the direction of her next question on her face, he said, “I’m no vampire, Savannah. I thirst for light and knowledge. I was born in the light of love but had forgotten about love as an ideal to strive for. I’ve misplaced the beauty of how love makes us feel.”

His dark hair glistened in the fallout from the tiny dome lights, and Savannah remembered how soft it had felt on her face and when it had brushed her naked shoulder. Did being unearthly beautiful mean that he was unearthly? Was it his Otherness that had captured her from the start?

Dylan McCay actually looked like an angel.

That hidden light behind his blue eyes was shining now. Her recognition of it left her feeling even more confused.

“I discovered how much being with you meant to me, knowing I couldn’t have more time,” Dylan said.

Savannah winced. She felt dizzy. Her knees felt weak and as though they wouldn’t hold her up for much longer. In spite of that, her will remained strong.

On some level she had known and accepted that one night was all they might have together. She had been willing to settle for that, or so she thought. She was a grown woman. She was supposed to be able to deal with rejection. But in his presence, with his explanations confirming that he had wanted more time with her, without being able to face his feelings, her anger fizzled.

“I’ve been left before by people I cared about,” she said. “It hurts.”

Waking in her bedroom to find Dylan gone had brought back the pain and sorrow of her parents’ deaths.

“You made me feel special. I sampled something extraordinary,” she said. “And then you disappeared.”

Was that what bothered her the most, or the potential evidence of Dylan’s madness?

“I divulged secrets that have been safely guarded for centuries,” he said. “You alone know what those secrets are.”

“Hidden celestial events? The fact that an immortal came to my home to check on my research? Who would believe that if I were to shout it out loud? I’d be the nut of the scientific world.”

She quieted slightly. “My research has saved my sanity, Dylan. It has taken the place of friends, lovers and family.”

“And I would give anything to have it not mean so much to my people and yours. But it does.”

“So, you want to take the research from me now, the way you had meant to last night?”

“There are plenty of other stars, Savannah. If you forget about that one, I’ll know you’re all right, even if I can’t see it with my own eyes, even if I can’t be here with you to fill the empty space in your soul.”

He was serious, his gaze almost beseeching.

Damn if she wasn’t starting to believe him.

The way the shadows hugged his face...

The graceful turn of his head...

“If you’re going to take it from me, then tell me what it is about that star that makes knowing about it so dangerous,” she demanded.

“The star you’ve been searching for isn’t meant to be found, Savannah. Miracles aren’t to be explained. Believe that star existed and that it also, all this time later, brought us together. Can’t that be enough?”

His voice had grown hesitant. He wasn’t immune to the strain of the moment, Savannah realized. The sexual tension between them hadn’t lessened any, with all the craziness surrounding this meeting. Dylan could very well be certifiable, and she still desired him. She longed to have his hands and mouth all over her, which proved, once and for all, that hearts worked independently of superior reasoning skills.

He spoke again. “In this case, the search for that star has caused two lonely souls to meet, while stumbling upon the possibility of love. That is what kept me from doing my job and also kept me from leaving.”

“Love?” Savannah repeated, glancing up.

“I love you, Savannah,” he said. “I love you with every fiber of my immortal being, which means that when I love, I love forever.”

“You just met me. We...”

“I have loved you for years,” he said, reciting those words with a passion that all women wanted to experience in their lifetime.

With her heart booming, Savannah met his eyes.

* * *

Dylan feared the way Savannah’s body swayed.

His powers didn’t exempt him from this confrontation or make it any easier. Though he had been determined to see this through, he just stood there, waiting for Savannah to come to her senses.

If he’d been that vampire, he would have bitten her right then, passing some of his angelic light into her bloodstream. That light would extend her life, allowing them years together, decades. Longer.

It was a terrible thought, born of the passion he felt for Savannah and fueled by a need for her that he couldn’t escape.

“I can’t remain with you, protecting you. I can’t take you with me, when I want one or the other of those things so very badly.”

He had been desperate to view her reaction when confronted with who and what he really was. He now desired to give her a choice as to what the next move was to be.

When viewed with insight, giving her a choice seemed selfish. If he had taken the star from her completely, as had been his plan, Savannah wouldn’t have been hurting at all. She wouldn’t be confused. She’d have remembered nothing about him or how the star reminded her of her family. Now she faced it all.

At the moment, she had nowhere to go, having backed into the wall of knobs and lights behind her. The interesting thing was that though she looked at him with wide, questioning eyes, there was no real fear in her even now.

“Are you lying about everything?” she finally asked in a soft, insistent voice.

“An angel offered me the choice of dying in the dark or living in the light, Savannah. Given that kind of choice, I wonder what you would choose.”

Dylan waved at the giant lens of the telescope above their heads. “No one is supposed to know the truth of some things for a reason. Why else do meanings elude us?”

A frown creased Savannah’s forehead. Her hand fluttered there, as if that area ached.

“Why would an angel offer anything or concern itself with things happening here?” she pressed.

“The angels came to create a wall against the dark.”

“That star had darkness in it or beneath it?”

“It has no darkness, but it masked another event that saw the creation of my kind. That celestial event masked the spark of the angel coming to ground. The Fallen ones would like to know about this, about those of us tied to that angel and where we reside. Your research might provide that for them.”

She didn’t speak to that. Dylan held out his hand. On it was a small golden vial. “This is the gift I offer to you. A compromise of sorts.”

“What is it?” She was right to be wary.

“A mixture of the two special essences of frankincense and myrrh. It is more precious than gold, and a blessing to those who taste it.”

She glanced at the vial.

“Because of my feelings for you, I’m offering you a choice,” Dylan said. “It is to agree to let the star go, allowing you to remember this meeting and all that I’ve said, or to drink from the vial in my hand and forget everything. Which, I wonder, would suit you better, and which option would prove to be painful?”

The woman across from him paled.

“My purpose wasn’t to cause you pain, Savannah, but to protect you and others from finding out about what exists on the fringes of your world. You can see the need for this, surely?”

“Yes,” she replied weakly. “If it were true.”

When he saw her slump down, her frantic energy finally depleted, Dylan closed the distance. He gathered her into his arms, a breach of the etiquette of giving Savannah choices that didn’t include him getting close.

His smile had no mirth in it and merely served to expose his fangs. Savannah’s head was back. She was staring at this mouth.

“In knowing what I am, would you have others see this and worse?” he asked.

She didn’t answer.

“The potion in this vial contains the power to restore and rejuvenate. Mixed in equal parts from plants blessed by angels, the concoction has other properties, as well,” he explained.

“Poison?” she said through her swollen lips.

“No, my dear Savannah, my love. What it does is repel the shadows. One drop of it on your tongue and the light of the angels seeps into your soul for good and forever. No darkness can touch the person who drinks from that bottle. None of the Fallen can have you.” He spoke the final words regretfully. “But neither can I.”

Although she was as white as paper, her features set to an expression that resembled stubborn resolve. Dylan mustered his courage to tell her the rest.

“If you sip from this bottle, none on earth with Other blood in them, whether that blood be dark or light, will have the power to override the mixture’s magic. You will be untouchable to all immortals, and I...” His voice cracked with emotion. “I will lose you forever.”