Undeniable (12 page)

Shaking her head from side to side, she covered Luna’s hand
with her own and, turning her face, kissed the small, warm palm. If they were
so bloodthirsty, she would already be dead or—God forbid—one of them.

Diana recalled how her father insisted vampires had no
emotions to guide them or govern their unquenchable thirst. Then why were the
two here so grief-stricken?

And her father had never mentioned the fact that they had
children, children who obviously were not monsters and didn’t consider their
fathers one.

Since she could remember, Diana had listened to her father
rant and rave, his eyes aglow with glee over his latest victim. She had refused
to accept the existence of vampires because to do so would be to accept that he
killed them.

“I’ve already lost my husband, Diana. Don’t take my baby.”
Colette’s voice cracked.

A chill ran down Diana’s spine. She felt herself tumble back
to the night last week when her father had announced he’d caught and destroyed
another vampire. How the giant hadn’t even put up a fight. She’d laughed when
he’d gone to bed. The man looked as if a strong wind could knock him over. She
had always found the idea of him taking down any man, much less a vampire,
ludicrous.

“Put her down.”

Diana turned and smiled through her tears. “It’s okay,
Colette.”

“Don’t hurt her.” Her pleading voice contradicted the threat
of her bared fangs.

“Colette, I would never do,” she stared directly into
Colette’s eyes, “or say anything to hurt Luna or you. Never.”

Luna leaned back and looked at her mother. “Diana loves me,
Mommy. Don’t you, Diana?”

“More than cotton candy, sweets.” Diana kissed Luna’s
forehead as a new line appeared between her reality and her father’s.

Colette stared back into Diana’s eyes a few moments before
nodding. “Marek trusted you. Even after he discovered…well, he trusted you.”

With a relieved sigh, Diana rested her forehead on the
Luna’s and closed her eyes. Saw her father dragging Luna into the pen she now
believed existed. Reaching into her shirt, she lifted the heart-shaped locket
her mother had given her.

“Before my mother left, she gave me this.” She unclasped the
chain, then placed it around Luna’s neck and whispered, “She told me this heart
was filled with her love for me and vowed it would keep the monsters away.”

Luna’s eyes widened.

“Do you believe in monsters?” Diana asked.

“Only one,” Luna said, her voice tinged with anger.

Diana closed her eyes for a moment and swallowed the lump in
her throat. “Well this will keep that one away from you. Do you know why?”

Luna shook her head, her eyes never leaving Diana’s.

“Because in here,” Diana tapped the silver heart she’d worn
since the day her mother vanished, “is my love for you. And if that monster
ever sees it, he’ll know not to touch my Luna.”

“You’re not afraid of us, Diana?”

“Should I be?”

“No.” Luna rolled her eyes. “Well sometimes the males go
over the edge and start throwing trees. Then you’d better run.”

Diana laughed and gathered the child into her arms.

A short time later, when the lights of their trailer
disappeared as they turned out of the parking lot, Diana dropped to her knees.
She recalled all the nights her father had come home triumphant after one of
his vampire hunts. She’d been about Luna’s age the first time she’d heard him
discussing his plans for the pen with her mother. So many nights, so many
vampires.

Had he lied to her all these years? Or had he never taken
the time to discover if vampires were actually as heinous as he had believed
they were? How many children had he orphaned? How many widows now slept alone?

She swallowed the lump rising in her throat and gazed up at
the stars. Were all vampires like Marek, Colette and Luna? She scanned the
forest surrounding the ranch. Owls hooted, crickets chirped, nightingales sang.
Harmless creatures destined to live their lives between dusk and dawn. She
buried her face in her hands. “Oh, Daddy, what have you done?”

The distant sounds of the stable doors slamming shut brought
her to her feet. Never able to hide anything from Stan, Diana knew that if she
saw him now she’d only end up blubbering in his arms. Tomorrow, she’d tell him
that she simply forgot to sign out. Pulling out her cell phone as she ran to
her car, she speed-dialed Terry and made plans to meet her at Cabana’s in an
hour. She needed a few stiff drinks to numb her aching heart.

* * * * *

“No way. You popped your own cherry?” Terry squealed and
slammed her palm down onto the table.

Diana cringed and peered through her fingers at the people
standing near their booth. “Why don’t you get a frigging megaphone? I think the
people on the dance floor didn’t hear you.”

Terry giggled, “I’m sorry. It’s just so funny.”

Diana leaned across the table and scooped another handful of
pretzels from the bowl. “Funny? I must be the only woman in this bar who saved
herself for marriage and you think it’s funny that I lost my cherry to
myself
?”

“Di, you couldn’t have.” Terry leaned back and shook her
head. “It’s impossible.”

“There was blood on my sheets this morning, Terry. And no,
it’s not my period.” Diana tilted her head back and drank the last of her beer.
“God, I’m so thirsty.”

“Blood, huh?” Terry frowned. “Did you check for scratches?”

Diana raised her brows. “No, Terry. I just immediately
jumped to the conclusion that it was from losing my virginity. Of course I
checked for scratches!”

“So you went at it in your sleep and popped your cherry.”
Terry whistled. “Man, Di, you must have had some horny dream.”

“You have no idea.” She glanced at the empty beer bottles on
her side of the table. “I’m getting another. Want one?”

“That’s four. Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

Diana bit down on her lower lip to stem the fresh tide of
tears she could feel burning her eyes. She’d lost so much today. Her virginity
hardly seemed important compared to the realization that vampires, creatures
with long, sharp teeth, dwelt in a world she’d believed held nothing more
frightening than a handful of criminals. And, even though he rarely gave her
much attention, she mourned the loss of the father she hadn’t believed could
hurt a fly. “I think I’m going to need a hell of a lot more than four tonight,
Ter.”

“Just because you popped your cherry? You’re still a virgin,
silly. Just not physically.” Glancing at the beer bottles, Terry sighed. “Di,
you can’t even handle one beer, much less four. Why are you letting this get to
you?”

Diana groaned. She wished she could tell Terry about her
father, but it was just too humiliating. And she could just imagine how Terry
would handle the news that Diana now agreed with his theory that vampires
roamed the streets of Lake George. Instead she raised her head and, blinking
back her tears, said, “I wanted the love of my life to be the one who popped
it, Terry. I wanted him to feel it and know, without a doubt, that he was my
first.”

I did.

Diana froze. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

Someone chuckled behind her. She glanced over her shoulder
and glared at the group of young men grinning down at her. “Get lost, jerks.”

Looking at her as if she were crazy, they turned their backs
on her.

“Thanks a lot! I just made eye contact with one of those
hunks. Geez, don’t cry. Look, when your grandmother told you that line about a
true soul mate lurking in your future but only if you kept your virginity
intact, you should have seen it for what it was. Some old lady tricking her
granddaughter into keeping her legs closed until marriage!”

“You didn’t see the way her eyes welled up when she said a
child from a quick fling could destroy my chance of spending eternity in the
arms of my one true love. Like she knew.”

Terry still smirked. “Typical grandmother trick.”

Diana shook her head. “She had my father at fifteen. Maybe
when she was older she met her soul mate but it was too late.” Diana wagged her
finger in front of her friend’s face. “And you know as well as I do that she’s
psychic. She’s been right about everything she’s seen in my future and past for
twenty-five years.”

She flung herself back against the hard wood of the booth
and raised her hand to clutch the locket, then remembered she no longer wore
it. “Oh, God, you don’t think those tears were because she knew I’d screw up, do
you?”

“Yeah, right. You’re gonna get pregnant from fingering
yourself.” Terry let out a bark of laughter. “I’ve been doing it since I was
thirteen,” she said, then held her arms wide and frowned down at her belly. “Oh
my God! I must be sterile! Either way, there’s no such thing as a soul mate.
God, I’d hate to imagine—”

Diana stared at Terry. Her friend’s mouth moved, yet only
the pounding of a heart rang in her ears. She focused on the rhythm, felt her
own heart speed up to keep pace with it. Every beat seemed to call to her. “I
gotta go…uh…get a beer,” she mumbled, unwilling to even attempt to explain this
phenomenon to Terry.

“Di, wait. You’ve had enough.”

“I have to…Shit!” She scratched at the insistent twitch on
her neck. “I have to go to the bar.”

Her chest felt as if a hundred butterflies struggled from
within to break free. She stared at the crowded bar, then turned to Terry. “My
grandmother always said I’d know when my soul mate was near by the way my heart
beat.”

“Romantic mush,” Terry muttered, shaking her head.

The room swayed as if she sat on a boat floating on the
undulating swells of the ocean. Holding onto the table until it stopped, she
took a deep breath to quell a sudden wave of nausea. “I really think he’s
here.”

“At the bar? Fine, get me a beer while you’re there.” Terry
smirked, “And listen, Di, if your soul mate has a cute brother, have
him
bring my beer.”

Diana slid out of the booth, then stood up. The room tilted.
For the first time, she welcomed the warning that she’d gone beyond her limit.
She wanted to get drunk, to block out every thing that had happened tonight, to
forget that her father—

“You don’t look so good, Diana. Maybe I should just drive
you home.”

Come to me.

Chapter Five

Sebastian arrived at Cabana’s much later than he’d planned.
He’d wasted precious time explaining the turn of events to the elders and
requesting more time. The meeting had gone so well and he’d found Diana’s scent
so easily that when he’d zeroed in on the ranch, he’d felt confident that she
had nothing to do with Marek’s death.

But as he’d soared over the ranch, a sight met his eyes that
nearly sent him crashing to the ground and shattered his confidence that
destiny had finally sent someone to fill the endless, lonely hours of his life.

He’d hovered high above the scene, telling himself that his
eyes had deceived him, that the trailer just looked like Marek’s, that the
child wrapped in Diana’s arms merely resembled Luna and that the woman standing
beside Frank Nostrum’s daughter and Marek’s daughter couldn’t possibly be
Colette. But their voices rose up to his ears and he could no longer deny the
truth. Diana Nostrum knew Marek’s wife and daughter.

As the trailer had pulled out onto Route 9, he’d probed
Colette’s memories. His heart missed a beat and a roar of denial lodged in his
throat when he uncovered a recent memory of Marek standing beside Diana as she
lifted Luna onto a gray pony. To make matters worse, when he’d tried talking to
Colette, she insisted that Diana’s grief over Marek’s death was proof of her
innocence.

Tears? Tears proved nothing. He wondered how many other
vampires knew Diana, how many relatives of her father’s victims had memories
that included time spent wrapped in Diana’s arms, time trapped in the spell she
had so easily cast over him during the past week. How many had met her? Trusted
her? Her guilt weighed heavy on his mind and he doubted he’d ever trust her.

He had returned to Mina’s Cove and dipped into the minds of
every vampire, searching for any memory that included Diana, but none of the
vampires strolling hand in hand down Main Street, shopping in the all-night
boutiques or eating at the all-night restaurants had ever encountered her. A
slight shift and he searched the minds of the vampires sitting along the shore
of the town beach, swimming in the lake and picnicking in the park, but found
no memory that included the hunter’s daughter.

Sebastian transformed into mist and whisked past the bouncer
and smokers milling around the entrance. After materializing in a dark corner,
he made his way to the central bar. Immediately Diana’s scent overpowered those
filling the club and called to him like no other woman or vampire’s ever had
before. Following the trail of her scent, he found her standing beside a booth.

He entered her friend Terry’s mind and through her watched
Diana’s every move, heard Diana’s every word. Now, watching Diana through
Terry’s eyes, he wondered if his soul mate had tricked him last night, if she
had used some inner power to speak to him. He snatched the bartender’s
attention from a group of women at the other end of the bar. A minute later, he
held a cold bottle of beer up to his lips.

Diana’s voice, a whisper that crackled with fear and the
question she asked Terry caught his attention and filled him with dread.

“And that? Did you hear that?” Diana gazed toward the doors
leading to the deck overlooking the lake.

“What?”

“I could swear someone spoke to me again. Right in my
ear…this time from o-outside.”

Sebastian lowered the bottle and forced down the beer trapped
in his mouth.

Terry slid out of the booth. “Yeah right. I can barely hear
you over the music, but you hear someone calling from the deck? That’s it.” She
wrapped her arm around Diana’s shoulder. “I’m taking you home.”