The Vampire's Seduction (45 page)

My blood war with Reedrek would finally be over. How much did I love that idea? Let me count the ways. No, it would take too long. The sun was flirting with the horizon. As Jack would say, within the hour I’d be toast.

Ah, I would miss Jack. If nothing else he amused me. That is, when he wasn’t being his Irish-pigheaded self. At least by the end of our time together we’d come to a meeting of the minds of a sort. Melaphia and Renee would help him be a good steward of my legacy from the East Coast or the West. He would be free to choose.

Then there was Eleanor. Yes, I would miss she who must be obeyed. She’d given me too much pleasure for me to leave her behind without regret. I’d hated to part with her on a lie, but it couldn’t be helped.

Last night at the party, after the battle, I’d promised to make her. Sworn to her on my honor as a gentleman and as a master vampire. I’d made the vow not only to give her what she thought she wanted—eternity with me—but to protect her. But I had found a better way. After this sunrise she would no longer be in danger. I glanced over at Reedrek, trussed up and gagged like an escapee from an asylum. He stared back at me in silence from his ruined face. I could feel his utter hatred mixed with his disbelief.

Once Reedrek was dead, all those I loved would be safe.

But I wasn’t about to waste my last hour of consciousness on my evil maker. I felt like a runner on a downhill slope—running faster and with greater ease toward the end of a very long race. My gaze moved to the ever-lightening sky as I drew in a deep breath of ocean breeze. I’d missed the ocean, along with many other things.

Diana, my love. I’m sorry I failed you. I’m sorry I cannot be with you even in eternity. But, after all these years, you will finally be avenged.

Reedrek’s ugly, poisonous voice broke into my silent communion with my wife’s soul.
She lives still.

First pain in the place where my heart used to be, then fury. I yanked the engine throttle back into neutral. The boat lowered and slowed as I swung around to face my tormentor.

“You are a bloody lying bastard!” I searched the closest cabinet for a weapon and found a steel gaff used to fend off other boats. “I won’t listen to you sully her memory with your treachery.” I plunged the sharp end of the gaff between the wraps of chain in the region of his shoulder.

He grimaced in pain but held my gaze. It was his only way to communicate.
I’m not lying, and if you kill me you’ll never know where she is.

I couldn’t control myself. I pulled the gaff free and stabbed him again. “Liar!” Stab. “Liar!” Stab.

Lying in a pool of blood, he finally ceased his evil intrusion. I waited, standing over him like a whaler waiting for the catch to bleed out. When he shut his eyes rather than face my anger, I dropped the gaff and moved back to the controls of the boat. I didn’t kill him. I was saving that for the sun.

Jack

I raced along in the Gladiator speedboat that William let me keep moored at his docks. I had tuned it up myself only the week before, and it was so fast no human could race it at top speed for fear of their mortal lives. It drove literally like the wind, becoming airborne every other second as it launched itself off the latest swell, flying low, fast enough to make me feel like I was alive again. Speed has always been my thing, but right then it was for more than recreation.

I had to catch William.

My eyes stung, not so much from the thinning darkness or the salt spray kicked up by the boat, but from the knowledge that William, my sire and only mentor, meant to sacrifice himself and leave me alone. I forced myself to concentrate again, searching for more understanding. William had spirited Reedrek away in his own boat and was heading out to sea—and to their deaths. But why? Was there no other way to kill the old bastard?

Speeding along, I reached out again with my mind. My sight focused tightly on the fog ahead of me and reverted to a kind of tunnel vision. And then I saw a scene that hurt my head—and my heart. Murder.

Reedrek murdering William’s human family. Along with the vision came the rage. I felt as if I understood William and his sustaining, everlasting anger for the very first time. He’d loved the woman and the boy. And Reedrek had taken them away in a flash of fang and a slash of filthy claws. This was a real vampire, and it sickened me to know that I was a member of his clan. I felt William’s need to kill the monster who’d destroyed his world, even though it meant his own final death and damnation.

Whoever said time healed all wounds was a liar.

I was getting closer. My supercharged blood felt William’s nearby. My boat emerged from a fogbank and William’s slower launch appeared ahead of me. It was a good thing no boat in Savannah could match mine for speed; I’d needed it, not only to catch up with William but to get us back to safety—that is, if I could talk William out of his suicidal scheme.

I maneuvered alongside and bumped him, a risky move that could’ve capsized us both, but it succeeded in forcing him so far toward the riverbank that he had to cut his engine to keep from crashing. I cut mine as well and steered hard into the other boat, sending both of us coasting to the marshy shoreline and effectively blocking William’s escape.

“Stay out of this, Jack!” William shouted, his fangs extended. The force of his rage, now directed at me as well as Reedrek, almost blew me over backward. “I
order
you to go back to the warehouse.”

“No,” I said. I jumped into William’s boat. “I know what you mean to do, and I’m not going to let you kill yourself.” I glanced at Reedrek, still bound and bloody in the floor of the stern. He was watching us with beady, hawklike eyes. “He’s not worth it.”

William grabbed me by the collar of the blue jacket and brought us nose-to-nose. I’d never been so scared as I was at that moment, not even when I faced my mortal death on the battlefield. William’s face was contorted, the flesh drawn back from his awful fangs. He was ready to do battle with anyone who got in the way of his lust for revenge. His irises were the gleaming, red-rimmed black of a creature with only death on its mind.

“His death is worth it to me,” William hissed.

“I won’t let you do this,” I repeated. I drew back and hit him squarely in the jaw, using all the strength of the voodoo blood, sending him sprawling against the far side of the boat. This was certainly a night of firsts for me. I’d never taken on William in combat, but sometimes a boy had to rise to the occasion. “We’re taking him back to the warehouse and we’re going to deal with him together—you and me. You’re not going to kill him and die in the process. I won’t allow it.”

William rubbed his jaw and sat up. That’s when I remembered that William had the strength of the voodoo blood as well. Oh, hell. I braced myself, feet apart, ready for the spring. But as usual, he surprised me.

“You’re looking at this all wrong, Jack. Just think of it. You won’t have me to boss you around, tell you what to do.”

“Don’t waste your breath on a psych job. It won’t work.” I crossed over to Reedrek and hauled him up, chains and all, ready to hoist him into my faster boat to race the sun back to the docks. But by the time I turned around, William was blocking my way.

“All the wealth, fame, and speed Reedrek promised you in the dream can be yours now. Just go and claim it and leave me to my destiny. You have your freedom.
Let me have mine.
”

We stood face-to-face now, with only Reedrek’s squirming body in my arms between us. “No. If you’re going to burn to a crisp getting rid of this guy, then so am I.”

“You obstinate, mule-headed mick! What do I have to do to get through to you? I’m offering you everything I have, everything you’ve ever dreamed about. I’m offering you Savannah. And all without me in the picture to hold you back. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?” William hauled off and punched me in the face with enough force to make my head snap back. I lost my grip on Reedrek, and he hit the deck so hard the boat rocked wildly.

“What I always wanted was just to know more, to do more, to . . .
be
more.”

Reedrek tried to yell something, but the gag muffled the words; besides, I wasn’t particularly interested. I gave him a hard warning kick in the mid-region and continued to concentrate on William. “But I never wanted to go it alone—not really. I just needed to know that you trusted me, that you needed me. We made a pretty good team last night. I don’t want you to die.

“Please, please don’t do this.”

Every now and then in a man’s life, whether you’re human or vampire, you have to put your feelings on the line, let it all hang out. This was one of those times. “Aw hell,” I muttered. “I love you, man.” I put my arms around William and hugged him. Then I backed off and slapped him on the shoulder in a guy’s guy kind of way, cleared my throat, and looked away. Sometimes what you learned from beer commercials comes in real handy.

William drew back and blinked. I felt the anger drain out of him like the outgoing tide. He looked more like I had slugged him again instead of given him a friendly hug. “Really?”

“Well . . . yeah. We’ll figure out how to kill this buzzard together.” I heard the buzzard’s—I mean Reedrek’s—bubbling howls and looked down to see what he was screaming about. His face was underwater. I looked back up at William. “Who punched holes in the deck? We’re taking on water.”

The cold water swirling around his ankles seemed to shock William back to reality. “Shit,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

He helped me haul Reedrek into my boat. Since I was driving, we set off for the safety of the warehouse. The first rays of the sun were creeping their way over the horizon, making the sky lighten with the softest shades of purple and pink. William found a tarp stowed with the life jackets and came to stand beside me at the wheel, pulling the covering over both our backs, leaving Reedrek squealing and squirming on the floor.

“Jack,” William said, squinting against rays of the coming dawn.

“Yeah?”

“I love you, too.”

“I know.”

William

Rather than risk death ourselves, we decided to take a page from Reedrek’s torture book. We’d bury him deep for a few hundred years, then decide what to do with him. If anything happened to Jack and me—the only ones with the information—Reedrek would stay buried forever. In the world war of the 1940s the Americans had a slogan: “Loose lips sink ships.” Only in our case the ship (Reedrek) was already sunken, and we wanted it to stay on the bottom.

Just after sunset the next evening we transported my sire to the construction site of our new hospital wing. Since most of the money for the addition had come from my blood bank foundation, no one questioned my request to bury a time capsule underneath the twenty-ton Georgia granite cornerstone of the building. I told them the curious coffinlike steel box contained original plans for the building, photographs from the state archives, and a length of anchor chain used on the first ship launched from Thorne Marina in the 1800s. That was in case they heard something clank inside when the box was moved.

No pomp. Just two workers with a bulldozer and voilà, Reedrek was buried twenty feet down. After our own private voodoo ceremony, courtesy of Melaphia, to keep him down, concrete was poured and the cornerstone set in place. Jimmy Hoffa had nothing on my sire. Buried deep enough and dark enough to be forgotten. I didn’t even bother saying good-bye. He’d wasted enough of my time.

As far as the rest of the vampire world knew, Reedrek died screaming at sunrise on November 1, 2005.

Since I’d been out of pocket for a few days I had other issues to attend. According to my list of waiting e-mails, Gaelan, the other missing offspring, had been found in Amsterdam, but in desperate condition. On Lillith’s advice, the Abductors had buried Gaelan in her home ground for a rest of sorts. She would be safe there. As in the old days, a long cord with a bell at the end hung over her tomb. When she was ready she could ring her way out.

Another message held good news and bad, as well as an indirect answer as to why my sire had shown up in Savannah alone. Before traveling to the New World, he’d organized the killings of one of the stronger European clans in a grab for ultimate power. The killings had weakened him, so he’d come for me, thinking to force me to make offspring to help him regain his strength. Now the European clans were in factions, their treaties in ruins.

Good. Let them argue among themselves. It gave us more time to make our own plans. The time for hiding was at an end. We’d need a council of the New World clans and a plan of defense.

I had to admire Jack’s loyalty and sense of timing. He’d talked me into staying around, just in time for a war.

Within a week, life had returned to somewhat normal. I’d shipped Olivia off, back to England carrying news and messages to those loyal to me. With my blessing she was to form a new group of vampires—those committed to peace—among her female friends. She’d even chosen a name, the Bonaventures, I believe. By eavesdropping on a conversation the night before she left, I found out more than I needed to know about the relationship between her and Jack.

“Hey now, are you sure you don’t want to take another walk on the wild side? For old times’ sake?” Jack had suggested. “You could rest up on the trip.”

“No can do, Jackie-boy.” Olivia sighed. I waited through a space of silence, politely refraining from tuning into Jack’s thoughts. I’m sure some kind of bodily contact was proceeding. “I’ve got clan business to do. Can’t afford to give any power away. Come and see me in London. We’ll work something out.”

I made a note that before Jack went anywhere, he and I needed to have a serious talk about sex among the undead. And the living. Jack was still moping about his policewoman, Connie. He knew there was no future for them and he was taking it hard. I didn’t look forward to a lesson on the birds and the bees.

On the subject of sex: You’d think I’d lived long enough to learn that outsmarting a woman was nigh on to impossible.

In my rage-inspired insanity the night of the party, I’d promised to make Eleanor. Sworn it by my dead vampire heart. And now, since I was still around, she intended to hold me to it. We’d settled on a date in early December—her birthday. She’d decided that she would enjoy being thirty-nine eternally. I had already begun the process of having her lovely house rebuilt. She would reclaim her business and her life, but I would have all her nights.