Immortal Obsession (2 page)

Chapter Two

“D
O YOU THINK—”
Michel paused, glancing around the club.

“Even if Gaétan were here, we wouldn’t know it until he oozed out of the shadows like puss from a wound. Lucien is
her
soldier, Michel.”

Christian dared not say her name, as if to do so would cause the pitiless bloodsucker to materialize before them. He tried not to think about Solange, but something was coming from across the sea. He felt it in his bones, but he tried not to give it a name or a face.

“Would you consider contacting Gabrielle?” Michel asked nonchalantly, twisting the straw around in his mouth as he eyed a young redhead at the bar.

“You know the answer to that one, my friend.” Christian brushed Michel’s cheek, holding his dark gaze. “You forget how we left her. She has a very long memory and would rather die than aid us now.”

“I disagree. A woman scorned, definitely; in love with you, forever. You plan on following him?” Michel gestured toward the door.

“Need you ask?” Christian scowled. “I’ll be back. Call me if any other uninvited guests show up.”

Christian left the Grey Wolf and strolled down Bleeker Street. He followed Lucien’s scent toward Seventh Avenue. The vampire was on foot, most likely following someone.
Is he following Ryan?
Christian sensed that Lucien had not come to New York alone.
Who would have come with him?
He kept a safe distance, turning left onto Seventh Avenue and heading uptown toward Time Square. They were always present, haunting his thoughts. The ruling class of French vampires he had known in Paris prior to La Révolution Française. Made up of Gaétan, Gabrielle, Lucien, Étienne, and Antoine, plus a host of less powerful bloodsuckers, they had once all mingled with the minor aristocracy, taking them as their mortal lovers.

Then La Révolution Française had come and the Parisian vampires had turned against one another in a bid for control, igniting their own civil war. Like their human counterparts, they chose sides and slaughtered one another. Christian remembered how Gabrielle had enjoyed indiscriminately seducing and slaughtering the young vampires she took to her bed. She relished drinking their blood, just as the New Regime gorged themselves on the aged champagne of the French aristocrats; and he despised her for it. As her influence grew, she took a new lover, an older, more powerful vampire named Gaétan. Their union ignited more unrest amongst the vampires.

The bright lights of Times Square illuminated his white skin and cascading hair. Christian dodged the crowds, following Lucien’s scent across Broadway and up Seventh Avenue, careful to stay downwind of him. The scent of another immortal filled his senses, coming from the east.
Definitely an outsider, but who this time?

His thoughts turned again to Gabrielle and he shivered inside. The machete on his back gave him comfort as he wove his way through the frenetic mortals, scurrying about like ants on such a cool summer night. The streets were congested and noisy, distracting him as he followed the scent of the two vampires heading north.
Damn lackeys.

Christian had always hated politics, and though he managed to elude the wars of mortals, he could not escape the petty jealousies of his own kind. He found his own kind more vengeful and cruel than human beings. Perhaps having eternity to let wounds fester gave them an edge. He had always been a loner, bowing to no one, not even the vampiress who had made him.

Gabrielle and Gaétan lived by their own arbitrary rules, slaughtering those who would not swear their loyalty to them. She had taken both his and Michel’s loyalty for granted. Christian reflected on that infamous night the vampires had met in the catacombs, asking permission to leave her and Paris forever. They knew how vain and full of pride and greed Gabrielle was. She would never acquiesce. Despite her anger toward him, she wished to keep both of them by her side forever.

The vampires hid in the catacombs as the city burned above them. They had asked and she had said no. Forever short on patience, Michel began to argue with her and Gaétan stepped into the fight. In the glow of the torchlight, Christian saw Michel pull a dagger from his coat. Christian charged him before he could reach Gabrielle, knowing he would plunge the dagger into her heart, but not before Gaétan came between them, trying to protect her as well. In one quick movement, Michel pinned Gaétan to his chest with the dagger against his heart.

“Michel, no!” Gabrielle’s high-pitched scream bounced off the dirt ceiling. Her beautiful face was a kaleidoscope of rage, panic, and fear.

“I told you, we are leaving here tonight. Now, shall I cut out his pathetic heart, or do you let us leave?” Michel held Gaétan tight as he struggled. He ripped open Gaétan’s black shirt and plunged the knife into his chest. Blood gushed down to his navel.

“Let him go, Michel,” she hissed, stopping as if she had hit a wall. “Your defiance will not be tolerated.” Michel continued to push the knife into the vampire’s chest as his screams echoed throughout the catacombs.

“When did you turn against us?” She snarled, though Christian could hear the fear in her voice. Michel had always been unpredictable; the thing Gabrielle loved yet feared the most about him.

“When you began slaughtering our kind,” Michel hissed, struggling to hold Gaétan as he pushed the knife in deeper.

“Please, Michel, spare him.” Gabrielle begged. “You can go, just release him.”

Michel loosened his grip on the weak vampire and pulled the dagger out of his chest.

“I’ll slaughter you,” Gaétan stuttered, his brown eyes ablaze with anger.

“You are going to do what?” Michel yelled, plunging the dagger back into his chest again. Blood spurted onto Michel’s hand, turning the dagger a deep red. Both Gaétan and Gabrielle screamed as Michel twisted the dagger.

“Perhaps I should cut your heart out and eat it in front of you,” he whispered into the vampire’s ear. “You will kill him, Michel, please,” Gabrielle screamed. “Christian, make him listen to reason.”

Michel pushed the bloodsucker onto his knees and then sliced his own arm, forcing Gabrielle’s second in command to drink from his thin wrist while none of the other vampires moved to intercede. Christian thought it one of Michel’s bravest moments, but as usual, Michel had taken things too far.

Pulling Gaétan up from the dirt floor and pinning both arms behind him, Michel had invited Christian to drink from his enemy. Christian had buried his face in Gaétan’s gaping wound and taken his life force. Christian had wanted to kill him but stopped himself after having gotten what they had come for, safe passage out of France. Christian remembered feeling powerful as he licked the warm blood off his nemesis’s lips and stared into the dark eyes of his adversary.

In offering Gaétan up, Michel had tried to make peace, peace instead of slaughter, but there would be none. In that moment, Christian had felt victorious, but it was short-lived and the rage he tried desperately to suppress continually threatened to consume him. Perhaps if Michel had cut out Gaétan’s heart, he and Michel would have had a different life, but it was impossible to imagine any other path after all these centuries. The past was unchangeable, carved in stone with such clarity it felt like yesterday.

Did Gaétan hate him enough to come for them now? Was Lucien here at the request of Gabrielle or Solange? He reflected on the two beautiful vampires who had played such a powerful role in his life and the young mortal woman whom he had loved above all others.

Lost in his thoughts, Christian found himself at the entrance to Central Park South. Lucien and the other vampire had just crossed inside, into his domain. He knew every inch of the park; he had watched it grow and flourish for the past hundred years.
How ironic
, he thought,
to meet their death in my backyard!

Chapter Three

A
MANDA
P
ERRETTI REACHED
her office at the end of a narrow hallway in the cavernous European Sculpture and Decorative Arts department just as her telephone rang. Despite the fact that it was the Friday of the Fourth of July weekend, the Metropolitan Museum of Art remained opened until 8:45
PM
. She had to get this e-mail out before leaving, and already there had been numerous interruptions. She headed toward her desk, which took up most of the tiny room, dodging piles of books on the floor. Her workday usually ended around six
PM
, unless she was working on a special exhibition. Tonight was one of those nights.

She accidentally knocked over an empty Styrofoam coffee cup perched precariously on one corner of her desk. A stack of books awaiting her perusal took up the rest of the available space. With a sigh, she settled back into her faux-leather chair. She glanced down at a book with the imposing title
Ancient Reliquaries
, opened to the chapter on French reliquaries of the ninth century, in preparation for the next exhibition.
Dare I try to read this tonight?

After ignoring the first three rings, something compelled her to pick up her phone.

“Amanda Perretti,” she said with a sigh, bringing the receiver to her ear without taking her eyes off her computer screen.

“Hey, it’s me.” It was a deep, familiar voice that evoked so much sadness for her.

“Ryan?”

“The one and only.”

“How are you? Where are you?” She grabbed a pen and reached for one of several yellow legal pads buried underneath the catalogs and photographs that littered her desk and began doodling, an old habit from childhood.

“I’m in the park, over by the Boathouse.”

“Ryan, it’s been six months. Where have you been?”

Amanda flashed back to the first time she had walked into the Great Hall of the museum with her mother and brother, Ryan. She was ten. He was fourteen. Her mother had taken them to see a Seurat exhibition one hot summer day. Ryan complained the entire time they were there, but Amanda marveled at the architecture, the bustling crowds, and most of all, the art. She and her mother shared a love of art that transcended their volatile relationship. Ryan, on the other hand, hated the entire experience and refused to ever return.

Amanda had fallen in love with the Met and swore to work there one day. It had been two years since she had taken a job there, yet she still felt like that little girl, anticipating wandering through the European paintings gallery on the second floor, standing before the statues of Roman Gods on the first floor, or marveling at African masks in the Rockefeller Wing. It was her home, her most favorite place in the world.

“Hey listen, I was wondering …”

That’s how it always began. She wouldn’t hear from him for months, and then he would call, strung out and desperate. She could only imagine where he crashed and how he survived day to day, but somehow he always managed to find her.

With the phone against one ear, she began to straighten up her desk. As she slid aside the latest Eighteenth Century European Decorative Arts catalog, she exposed a photograph of the two of them with their father that she kept on her desk. Taken the Christmas before her thirteenth birthday, she and Ryan stood next to their artificial Christmas tree while her mom snapped away. Amanda was smiling, her arms wrapped around her dad’s thin waist. Ryan was seventeen, sullen and already using drugs. Their mother had tried to keep their father’s illness from them, but they knew the truth. Their mother only confided in them that he was terminally ill when he became noticeably thinner and weaker. One month later, he was dead.

Ryan locked himself in his bedroom, angry and withdrawn, while Amanda continued to be the straight-A student. Ryan had left home right after high school, and now Amanda rarely spoke with him unless he needed money or a place to crash for a few days.

“Let me guess, Ry?” She picked up a strand of her wavy hair and twirled it around her finger.

“Amanda, I … I need a couple bucks … I promise …”

“Spare me your promises, Ryan.”

“Man, I’m grateful for whatever you could lend me.” She scribbled a smiley face with a frown next to his name.

“Look, I have to take care of some things before I leave tonight. The best I can do is fifteen minutes, if you can wait that long.” She checked her watch. It was ten
PM
.

“Sounds good,” he slurred. “I’ll be in front of the Boathouse.” The receiver clicked.

Great, one of the most romantic places in New York and I’m meeting my drug-addicted brother who needs desperately to score.
Framing the Lake in Central Park, the Loeb Boathouse, commonly known to New Yorkers as the Boathouse, consisted of an indoor restaurant with windows that looked out onto the lake. An outdoor patio and dock with rowboat rentals completed the scene. One could even rent a gondola. When Amanda fantasized about a dream date, the Boathouse figured in there somewhere, along with Bethesda Fountain, situated on the southern tip of the Lake.

The focal point of Central Park, Bethesda Fountain and Terrace was a meeting place all year long for tourists, couples, and families. On nice days, Amanda tried to get out of the museum to take her lunch break there. She loved staring up at the eight-foot bronze angel, alighting upon the fountain, holding a lily in one hand while blessing the water with the other. She never tired of sitting on the stone wall, watching the passing scene as weddings were conducted, tourists snapped photographs, celebrities sashayed past and New Yorkers on their lunch hour watched one another.

She imagined getting married there one day with Bethany as her bridesmaid—her only witness—and the groom? There was no one in her life right now, but she sensed he was close by and it was only a matter of fate until their paths crossed.
You hopeless romantic, Amanda
, she thought, finishing writing her e-mail.
The man you want doesn’t exist.

She straightened up the piles of books and notepads on her desk, tossed out her Styrofoam coffee cup from that morning, and grabbed her purse. It was Friday and the weekend could not start fast enough.
Just give him the money and go
, she thought as she exited the main entrance of the museum. She headed up Fifth Avenue and back into Central Park. A cool summer night, rare in New York, enveloped her as she headed down East Drive. It was still light, and people flooded into the park. She dodged bicyclists, rollerbladers, and joggers as she cross the 72
^nd
Street Transverse heading south.

Her high heels click on the pavement as she walked along; thankful she had worn a cotton sweater. She and Bethany had plans to watch the fireworks tomorrow night and just relax over the holiday weekend. Work had been so hectic lately, and she needed to recharge her batteries with a good book and one of her favorite movies,
Dangerous Liaisons
.

Up ahead on her left, she noticed the Renaissance man, as she called him, playing beautiful music on a flute. She nodded as she passed. He smiled back and kept playing. She heard the din of the diners at the Boathouse as she turned right off East Drive, and scanned the crowd for her brother, wondering what he looked like these days. Something caught her eye as she passed a pedestrian tunnel, and suddenly there he was, hunched over on the steps leading down into the tunnel.

“Ryan?”

He stood up slowly and she felt herself swallow hard. He appeared gray in the street light, his eyes sunken and his skin broken out and sallow. His usual jeans and T-shirt were filthy, just like his dark hair. She tried to remember the older brother she loved and admired. The youthful beauty he was before the drugs had claimed him. Although he was four years older, they were often mistaken for twins, with the same wavy dark hair, dark green eyes, and angular faces. He was taller, taking after her mother’s side of the family.

She tried to read him, pluck his thoughts out of the air like she used to, but it had become impossible. She promised herself she would give him all the money she had and would leave before they had a chance to fight again.

This time will be different
, she thought, forcing a smile.

“Hey,” he said with as sigh, reaching for her.

She felt herself stiffen in his embrace.

“How are you, Ryan?” She searched his face for a hint of the boy she remembered, but could find nothing, only a stranger, and a bag of bones who needed more than just a hot bath and a meal.

“Ah, you know, hanging in there. How’s the museum? Are you still into all that blood and guts?” He gestured with his index finger across this throat.

She knew exactly what he meant. The French Revolution was her passion. She had learned even more from working on a recent exhibition titled
Jewelry of La Révolution Française
. The experience had culminated with her contact with one of rarest and most beautiful suites of jewelry to survive the destruction of the French aristocracy, a parure belonging to Marie Antoinette. Even as a child, she had been obsessed with the French Revolution. She never questioned her love of one of the bloodiest periods in modern history, nor thought it odd. Most of her family was of French ancestry. It was her mother, Catherine Richard, who had muddied the waters of her perfect French lineage by marrying an Italian.

Fascinated by both French history and her own genealogy, Amanda had researched her family tree back to a Monique Moulin, who had been born in California in 1842. She had married Charles Devereaux and come to New York at the turn of the century, where she died in 1901. Amanda knew nothing more about Monique except what a New York census could tell her. Her relatives were names and dates on a page, and for some reason the trail had gone cold with Monique. Though Amanda had no proof, she sensed her family had fled France and gone to England during the French Revolution.

“Where are you living?” She asked impulsively.

“There’s this place in the West Village I’ve been hanging out—”

“A halfway house, I hope.”

“Well, not really. Ryan sighed and ran his hands through his hair. He began to walk toward the tunnel as a couple passed them.

Amanda followed hesitantly.

“There’s this club …” He stared straight ahead as he walked. “I give blood and I get paid so I can buy—”

“What do you mean, you give blood?” She stopped him. “Ryan, what the hell are you talking about?”

He seemed distracted, more distant than she remembered.

“Here.” She reached into the side pocket of her leather purse for a fifty-dollar bill. “This is all I have.”

“Thanks a lot, ’Man. You always come through for me.” He gave her the same line every time.

“Yeah.” She fought back tears, promising to make this short and sweet. “That’s my lot in life, I guess. Always there for you.”

There was so much she wanted to say, but then, what was the use of it?

“I’d better go now,” he announced, giving her a weak smile.

“What are those marks, Ryan? She noticed marks on his neck, just below his left ear. They looked like puncture wounds.

“I told you I give blood to …” He reached up and touched the wounds.

“Ryan, who are these people you are hanging out with?”

“No, it’s
what
are they … they’re … beautiful and different, Amanda.”

“Why don’t you come home with me tonight, let me help—”

“I gotta get back. One of them owes me money. He promised to pay me later.”

“Where is this place?” She ran her hand through her hair, something she did when she got angry. “Who are these people?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, baby sister. I am well taken care of.” He glanced off into space, and at that moment Amanda felt afraid for him. There had been a time when they could read each other’s thoughts, and then it had stopped. She blamed it on the drugs.

“You don’t appear to be well taken care of, Ryan. Let me get you cleaned up and—”

“I can’t, Amanda. I give them my blood and … it doesn’t hurt and—”

“Ryan, you aren’t making sense. Why would anyone take your blood?”

“They are vampires, man. In fact, the guy I was just with was asking about you. He musta read my mind.”

At that moment, she thought he was delusional. Later she would think about their conversation often, replaying it in her mind.

“Ryan, you aren’t making any sense.” Panic gripped her as he pulled away.

“You’re a great sister.” He smiled and tried to hug her again. “I gotta go.”

“Fine. Keep in touch.” She choked back tears.

Their eyes locked, and for brief second she recognized him, which made the moment all the more painful. She turned, listening to her footsteps on the pavement. Amanda tried to put him out of her mind. It wasn’t like she was responsible for him, but he always haunted her. She was almost out of the tunnel when she decided to turn back. Maybe she could catch him, and maybe it could be different this time.

Suddenly, the echo of his screams filled the tunnel.

“Ryan?” She ran back into the darkness, away from the crowds at the Boathouse.

In the streetlight she saw them, but it took a second for her mind to wrap around what was happening. Ryan was flailing, pinned up against the wall, held up by his throat by a tall figure in dark clothes. It took her another second to realize that he was dangling about two feet off the ground.