Authors: Karen E. Taylor

Hunger (61 page)

BOOK: Hunger

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I stopped and held my breath. “Mitch,” I called tentatively, my voice quavering, “are you here?”

I heard an odd laughing sound from the bedroom, then the crashing of glass. Running down the hall, I felt the icy blast of wind from the broken window, smelled the tangy, warm scent of fresh blood, and a tantalizingly familiar man's cologne. “Larry Martin,” I whispered, and knew that I could follow him out the window and easily catch up with him. But when I arrived in the doorway, the sight of Mitch occupied my complete attention.

He was bruised and badly beaten, clutching his gun with one hand and the open wound on his neck with the other. I dropped to the floor and knelt beside him. His eyes fluttered open and focused weakly on my face. His skin had the bluish-gray color that meant he had nearly been drained of all his blood. Taking his pulse confirmed this.

“Jesus, Mitch, what the hell happened? Who did this?” My voice sounded calm but inwardly I was raving; damn The Cadre and all its members! The time I had spent in Vivienne's room might well have caused Mitch's death. Even the few minutes I had spent on the sidewalk planning the perfect life would have been all the time Larry needed. And if I had been here when Mitch was attacked, I could have prevented this.

Tenderly, I touched his cooling cheek. “Mitch, talk to me, please. Oh, God, you can't die. I won't allow it.”

He stared at me for a moment and coughed weakly.

“Deirdre.” It was the only word he could manage, and even it cost him too much strength.

I did not think of the consequences of my actions; all I could think was that he would die too soon and leave me alone. I could not bear the thought. Taking his shoulders in my hands, I shook him until his eyes opened again and focused on me. “Do you want to live?” I said to him. “Do you love me enough to live?”

He nodded weakly, a small spurt of blood came from his neck, and he managed a ghost of a smile.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Picking up one of the broken shards of glass from the window, I cut into my wrist deeply, and forced it to his mouth before the wound could heal. “Drink, Mitch drink.”

There was no pull on my blood at first. He's dead, I thought, he's truly dead. “Drink, Mitch!” I screamed in desperation, not knowing or caring if he could hear me. “You must drink.”

Oh, God, I raged inside, I spent so much time away from him and we had so little time together. Don't let him die, I prayed. Don't let him die!

Finally after an eternity of despair, I felt the delicate movement of his lips at my wrist, feeble at first and then with greater strength, as he pulled deeply on my blood. The gray color began to fade from his skin, replaced slowly by an internal glow and the appearance of health. I watched as his bruises healed before my eyes and still he drank, until I began to feel the emptiness of my own veins. Then ever so gently I pried myself away from him. He choked, spitting a small swallow of my blood back to me.

His eyes opened briefly, then closed as his body shuddered once, then again, as if adjusting to its new life. His chest moved visibly as he breathed, and I knew he would live. I got up from the floor and looked out the window. There was no one on the street below, no sign of who had broken in here. All I could see was the lightening sky. Panicked, I pulled the curtains shut, but the wind blew them back, splashing the street light on to the floor where Mitch lay.

“Damn,” I swore, wondering how I could move him, how I could keep the sun from him. Then I noticed the tall dresser in the corner of the room. It would cover the window and he would be safe. Frantically, I ran to it and pushed it across the room to block the light. The noise of this movement caused Mitch to awaken and sit up.

“Deirdre.” His voice sounded strong but confused. “What happened? I can't seem to remember anything. And I feel so strange, light-headed.” His eyes sought me out and linked with mine. I had always thought that their strength and intensity were one of his most attractive qualities. But nothing could have prepared me for the shock of their depthâtheir complete and utter transformation; I knew his eyes, but never had they bored so directly into mine, never had they been so searching, so relentless. I choked back my tears and went to his side again.

“Hush, my love,” I said to him, cradling his head on my lap the way I had over two years ago, trying for his sake to hide my despair. “Everything will be fine. Sleep now.”

“But I need to remember what happened. Someone broke in while I was waiting for you. He told me not to remember and I can't. Then you came. And now everything is different. What happened? Tell me, please.” The urgency in his voice almost broke my heart. How could I explain in the few remaining minutes until sunrise the life to which I had doomed him? That in my fear of losing him, I had done what I had resolved never to do?

“Sleep now,” I repeated. “We'll have all the time in the world to talk later.”

We tensed at the same time, reacting to the rising of the sun.

His body writhed in agony and his eyes met mine. They were clouded now with fear and confusion, and in spite of my resolve, I began to cry.

“What's that?” he demanded, his voice deeper and stronger than before. “What's happening to me, Deirdre? Why are you crying? And why do I feel so different?”

“It's only the sun, my love.” I put as much reassurance into the words as I could and my fingers stroked his grayed hair, trying to calm and comfort. “Now is the time to sleep.”

He looked up at me one more time. His eyes were undeniably the eyes of a vampire. Then they slowly closed, the lids falling as if of their own volition, and Mitch fell into the trancelike sleep I knew so well.

And I was alone again for a time, to mourn the death of the man I loved.

Epilogue

A
s soon as arrangements could be made, Mitch and I went to England. We told no one what had occurred that evening in our apartment, explaining only that we would be gone for a while on an extended honeymoon. Mitch needed time to learn, time to adjust to his new life, and I needed time to calm my panic over what I have done.

Before returning to my house and the pub, we decided to travel through the country, seeing the sights at night. Stonehenge was wonderful, and we crept past the guard and the gates and lay in the center, whispering to each other, making love on the dry, cold gravel. At Mitch's suggestion, we even stopped at Whitby. From our hotel bed we listened to the waves beat on the rocks and read aloud from
Dracula,
pointing out to each other the inconsistencies of the book compared to the life we knew. As always, at the end of the story I cried when the stake pierced the count's chest, remembering with a shudder exactly how it felt to kill a man of great power and age. And he laughed and kissed away my tears.

We have found that Mitch has a great instinct for hunting, his senses having been finely honed by his many years of police work. He is as good as I, or perhaps even better, at the post-feeding suggestions, but he still approaches the feeding and the victim timidly, tentatively, as if he had no right to their blood. He senses this hesitation as a liability, and I console him that he will get better with practice.

As for me, I don't dream much anymore. When I allow myself sleep, it's become like a small death, silent and mindless. Mostly, I lie awake and watch him sleep, wrestling with his own private demon of dreams. He moans and quivers, his eyes rolling within his closed lids, and he wakes covered in sweat. I never ask who appears in his dream, with whom he fights daily, what figure haunts his sleep. I fear his answer, sensing deep inside that I already know, not wanting to hear him say that I am the demon. So I lie, my mind pure and emptied of all former ghosts, holding him while he writhes, tormented and struggling in the darkness that is my eternal gift to him.

KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018

Blood Secrets
copyright Â© 1993 by Karen E. Taylor
Bitter Blood
copyright Â© 1994 by Karen E. Taylor

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ISBN: 978-0-7582-7493-9

BOOK: Hunger

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