The Vampire's Seduction (19 page)

“Put her in the passenger seat,” I ordered and got in the car. It was better if I didn’t touch her, less dangerous. But the smell of her blood seemed to swim around my head.

I stripped off my blue velvet jacket. When Jack returned I thrust it at him.

“I want you to wear this jacket at all times. It gives us a slight advantage with Reedrek, probably temporary, and it’s not as strong as Lalee’s charm, but it’s better than nothing.”

He rebelled, of course. “You expect me to go around Savannah looking like a fugitive from the gay pride parade? No way is that happening. Or in vampire-speak—not on your immortal life.” He put his hands behind his back like a child refusing to eat his vegetables.

“Jack—”

“You can’t make me.”

I really didn’t have time for this. As usual, he knew how to pluck the strings of my anger. In order to get through Jack’s pigheadedness I had to resort to threats. “Do you think I cannot?”

He looked at me steadily for a long moment. “You might just have to go ahead and kick my ass, then. Get it out of your system.”

Bloody hell!
Without the calming effect of the jacket and on the heels of the night I’d already had, I could feel my blood rage rising. As my feet left the ground I grasped Jack by the throat and brought him up with me, pushing him against one of the massive oak trees sprouted from the moldering dead.

Jack looked too stunned to fight. I’d never touched him in anger before and didn’t wish to now. But I had no choice. His eyes bugged out slightly at the sight of blood oozing out like sweat, soaking my shirt.

“How does the jacket work?” he hissed through his trapped throat.

“It’s been blessed,” I said, holding my anger somewhat in check. I knew Jack well enough to know he wouldn’t simply acquiesce. He had to come to his own decision. “Voodoo blue—the color of the sky, the color of your damnable stubborn eyes. It’s to keep evil from passing over a threshold. As your sire, I order you to wear it until you retrieve Lalee’s charm.”

Fluttering like a banner on the breeze, the ghostly face of a young woman materialized next to the heavily mossed limb of the oak. She looked from me to Jack, then smiled her eagerness to see what would happen next. Jack kicked his feet against the solid mass of the tree, searching for the ground.

“I can hold you here for what little remains of the night. And all the while, your Consuela will be in danger, along with Olivia—” I angled my head toward the Jag. “—and that dying girl. We’ll just stay here until you get over your fashion snit.”

“All right,” he said in a strangled voice. “Let go of me. I’ll wear the freakin’ thing.”

“As you wish,” I said, and released my hold on him. I heard a colorful curse as he hit the ground. Ghostly laughter echoed around us like the clacking of dead branches in a cold wind.

I tossed the jacket to him and waited until he put it on before leaving. I’d done all I could for my reluctant ally. Now I had to attend to Shari—either ease her death by taking the last dregs of her lifeblood or perform the ritual to make her a blood drinker.
My
blood drinker.

Jack

I didn’t need a watch to know the sun was about to come up. I was getting tingly all over. And not in a good way. I’d been pacing in Connie’s hallway for half an hour. I’d forgotten that since she was on the night shift, she wouldn’t get off work until seven
A.M.
Right around sunrise. Good thing her apartment came off an interior hallway, or I’d be a crispy critter any minute.

Just as I was about to give up and beat it back down the hallway to make it home before I was toast, Connie came around the corner, still in her cop’s uniform. The charm was no longer around her neck. Oh, Lord.

“Do you have some blue suede shoes to go with that?” She pointed to my jacket with the index finger of the hand that held her door key.

I looked down at the damned blue velvet jacket. “I lost a bet, so I have to wear it until Halloween,” I blurted.

“Hmm. You must be going as the ghost of Elvis. Where’d the blood come from?”

I brushed at one of the bigger splotches. “Uh, I agreed to wear the jacket, but I had to kick the guy’s ass first, just on general principles.”

“That’s not very sportsmanlike. You lost fair and square, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, well, it’s a long story. Hey, can I come in for a minute? There’s something I have to talk to you about.”

“Sure.” She unlocked the door and I followed her in. “Have a seat. Want some coffee or anything?”

“No, I’m fine.” I’d never been in her apartment before. The only place we ever hung out, if you could call it that, was in the garage and usually with at least a couple of the regulars present. Not what you’d call romantic. It felt strange being alone with her in her place. Good, but strange. Her decorating style was more feminine than I’d expected. She had a few nice antique pieces that didn’t match exactly but still managed to look right together. Everything was neat and tidy, though, just like I’d imagined it would be. I’d mostly imagined her bedroom to tell you the truth (bloodred satin in my fondest dreams) but I couldn’t see it from here.

I was too nervous to sit down, so she didn’t either. While I was waiting for her to arrive, I’d tried to think of something to tell her about that damned charm, but everything I’d come up with sounded incredibly lame. “Do you still have that necklace I gave you?”

“You mean this?” She put her purse down on a pedestal table and opened it. She fished out the gnarly thing and held it out to me. “Um, are those what I think they are?” She pointed to two chickens’ feet strung next to some seed beads on the ancient-looking leather thong.

“Yuh-huh,” I said. What could I say? Chickens’ feet are chickens’ feet.

“You know, I hate to sound ungrateful, but it just doesn’t match anything in my wardrobe. Do you want it back?”

“No. I want you to keep it. In fact, I want you to wear it.” If this mess wasn’t so serious, I would have doubled over laughing at her expression. As it was, I felt like an idiot. “I want you to wear it all the time.”

She gave me a long, incredulous look. “So does this mean we’re going steady?”

I smiled at her hopefully. “Want to?”

“Be straight with me, Jack. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. This is a
gris-gris.
I wouldn’t have thought you believed in black magic. What’s going on here, and why do you think I need to wear a voodoo charm?”

Well, there went the medical experiment cover story, the make-believe niece’s college anthropology assignment cover story, and every other cover story I’d thought up while I was waiting. All that was left was the truth. Or something close to it. I took a deep breath. “Do you remember my uncle Fred?”

“From this afternoon? The one who was flirting with me?”

Is that what she’d thought he was doing? Boy, he’d really done a number on her. “Mmm, yeah. Well, he’s kind of a bad dude.”

“Bad in what way?” Her eyes narrowed. All of a sudden she was a cop again.

“You see, he believes in all that black magic stuff, and we’re not on very good terms right now. There’s sort of a family feud going on.”

“That’s why you seemed so tense earlier.” She nodded slowly.

“Yeah, that’s right.” She was sensitive to my moods, and I realized how much that pleased me. I stood up a little straighter. “Anyway, I don’t really believe in that voodoo hoodoo, but I try to keep an open mind, you know?”

“Hmm,” she said, an unreadable expression on her face.

“So I want you to wear it.”

“But it’s you he’s feuding with. Not me.”

“Yes, but . . . he thinks I’ve . . . got the hots for you.” I looked away from her, feeling the “hots” rise to my face. When my gaze fell on the shuttered window, I realized it wasn’t just from embarrassment. Razorlike beams of sunlight were oozing between the slats. I stepped back toward the door. As long as the beams didn’t actually reach me, I should be all right. “Does this apartment building have a basement?”

Now Connie was looking at me like I was an escapee from the state mental hospital in Milledgeville. “It has a cellar.” She took a step closer to me as I backed toward the door. “Three questions for you now, Jack. First, why does your uncle think you have the hots for me? Second, what does that have to do with the charm?” She put her hands on my shoulders. “And last but not least,
do
you have the hots for me?”

By this time, my back was against the door, and the sunbeams were sliding my way. To hell with them. I slipped my arms around her waist. “Answer to the first question—I guess it’s obvious. Answer to the second—I’ll tell you in a minute. Answer to the third—” I pulled her to me and kissed her. Her lips were soft and tasted like strawberries. I pressed her firm, vibrant body against my cold, undead one and bathed in her living, breathing warmth. She hugged me back, molding me to her until, if it wasn’t for the hardness straining my jeans, I wouldn’t have known where she left off and I began.

I broke off the kiss, dragging my mouth away from hers, feeling like I’d been drugged. Damned sunbeams. “Answer to the second question—he’s a mean sonofabitch, that Uncle Fred. Now that he knows that I . . . have the hots for you . . . he may try to hurt you just to get to me. If you see him again, run the other way. And
please
wear the charm. I know it sounds silly. But do it for me. Promise me, Connie.” I took her hand and brought it to my lips. I could feel the pulse in her thumb beating right beneath my fangs. I fought the urge to nip her there, to get myself just a taste for the road.

“That’s so sweet,” she whispered. “But it’s not regulation.”

“Wear it under your uniform,” I said.

“Those chicken claws look awfully scratchy.”

“I’m not kidding.” I looked deeply into her cola-colored eyes. “Promise?”

She cocked her head to one side. “I promise.”

I put my hands on her hips and pushed her away gently. “I’ve got to go now.”

“Wait a minute. You’re going to declare your undying . . . hots . . . for me and then just walk away? Just like that? No ‘I’ll call you sometime’ or ‘Want to go out for dinner and a movie?’ ”

“Yes, all of that stuff.” Hey, this was working out pretty good. Alan Alda had nothing on me. “But I’ve got to get this situation with Uncle Fred worked out before something bad happens.”

“Something I’d have to arrest him for?”

I closed my eyes against the image of the kind of havoc a rampaging vampire with Reedrek’s strength could do inside the closed space of a police station. “I pray it doesn’t come to that.”

Connie looked at me for a long moment. “I want you to know something. I never would have let you kiss me just now if I hadn’t sensed that you were being honest with me. But I also know you’re still holding back. As soon as this trouble with your family blows over, if you really do want to get close to me, you’re going to have to tell me everything. And I know that you know exactly what I’m talking about.” Her delicate dark brows arched toward each other in a way that told me she meant every word.

I swallowed hard. “It’s a deal,” I said, and hoped she didn’t also sense that I had my fingers crossed behind my back. “I’ll talk to you soon.” I’d turned to go when I felt her hand on my sleeve.

“Wait,” she said. She moved to the corner of the room, to a little shrine I hadn’t noticed before. I started to follow Connie and then shrank back. A cross was nailed high on the wall over a sconce that held a statue of the Virgin Mary, a rosary, and a few other small items.

“If I’m going to be wearing the charm, I want you to have this for protection. One of the sisters took a trip to the Holy Land and got this vial of water from the Jordan River. She then had it blessed by a bishop that she met on the trip. For protective properties, I’ll put my holy water up against your voodoo charms any day of the week.”

She held it out to me. As far as I knew, holy water didn’t hold any special powers over me. I was convinced that the lore about holy water and vampires not mixing well was just the stuff of Dracula movies.

I took it. And it immediately turned hot.

She didn’t seem to notice as I passed it quickly from hand to hand, afraid it would start boiling any second. “Gee, thanks,” I said. What the hell was I going to do now? I looked down, remembered the jacket, and popped the little vial in the pocket before it blew like Old Faithful. I patted the pocket, as if for security’s sake, and immediately felt that it had cooled.
Well, I’ll be a suck-egg mule.
It worked. They
both
worked. The holy water against evil entities (yours truly), and William’s voodoo blue jacket.

I planted a kiss on Connie’s forehead and she gave me a smile that weakened my knees. “I’ll call you,” I said, and backed out of the apartment, closing the door behind me. I headed toward the door to the stairs humming the tune to “Blue Suede Shoes” and wondered if Elvis’s eyes were as blue as mine.

William

Limp in my arms, Shari seemed to weigh no more than a winter woolen topcoat. There was very little warmth left in her, very little life. If I tossed her in the air I wouldn’t have been surprised to see her float away—a loose flag in the wind. I had to do something soon or her spirit would very quickly follow the direction of my thoughts.

Would it be punishment or paradise I offered? Did my sweet swan want to become a giver of pain rather than the grateful recipient? I would have to revive her to find out. It was possible the choice had already been taken out of my hands, although I was sure Reedrek knew what he was about when he’d brought her to the brink of death. After all, he’d proven to be a master at changing fates.

Deylaud opened the garage door and held it for me to enter the house. “You found your car,” he said. Then he sniffed. “It smells like death. Is this one dead?”

Reyha, seeing yet another female in my arms, flounced out of the room, only to return with Melaphia close behind her. Everyone looked unhappy to find one more stranger in the house.

“She’s not dead yet. Did Tarney deliver a coffin for Olivia?” I asked as I headed past them toward the back of the house. Close to the stairs and my own sleeping place.