by Linda Howard
He would avenge Hector’s death. But Hector was already dead, and nothing he did now would change that. If he concentrated on protecting Chloe, he’d be saving her from the same person who had ordered Hector’s murder; he would still discover, eventually, who that person was, and then he’d have his revenge, which really was a dish best served cold, anyway. He’d know more by then, and could make his plans without all these distractions … such as Chloe.
He sat on the couch in her living room, TV remote in his hand, flicking through channels that he wasn’t interested in, mainly to give himself something to do whenever Hurricane Chloe whirled through the living room. She seemed completely unable to sit still. She’d done laundry, she’d vacuumed, she’d gone into a frenzy of folding and packing in that disaster of a guest room. Every so often she would get on her computer, and he figured she was Googling his name or trying different people searches in an effort to find out something about him. She could have saved herself the trouble by simply asking, but he wasn’t in the mood for conversation, so he kept quiet.
If he wanted to keep her safe—and he did—the only way was to go into hiding with her. Otherwise, she was dead, and the only unknown factor was “when.”
Even taking her into hiding wasn’t foolproof. The rebels would have hunters of their own—Sorin, for instance. Sorin was damn good, probably the next best after Luca himself. And again, Luca couldn’t mount a twenty-four-hour guard over Chloe for an unknown length of time that might well stretch into months. He had to feed, and he had to sleep, and she’d be unguarded during those times.
All of that might be managed, somehow, but she simply wouldn’t go along with the plan. For one thing, she wouldn’t want to be stashed away in another country for an unknown length of time. For another, she didn’t trust him enough to go away with him. Other handicaps were that she was physically weak, compared to even a fledgling vampire, and she could be glamoured.
No matter what angle he came up with, Chloe was vulnerable in one way or another. The only solution he could think of was to bond her to him, and everything in him shied away from such a drastic action.
It wasn’t the sex. God knows, he’d love to have sex with her. But sex was the smallest equation of being bonded. He’d bonded with a human once, and once was enough. Her name had been Ena. He could no longer remember her face, but like a sharp blade he remembered the pain. He’d fallen in love with her, and bonded with her hoping that the bond, the blood tie, would let her remember him, but it hadn’t. She had always responded to him physically—bonding did that—but for her it had always been like sleeping with a stranger she simply couldn’t resist. Because she couldn’t remember him, and it wasn’t fair to keep her from ever getting wed and having children, he’d taken himself out of her life and let her get on with living, while he kept watch over her from afar.
On his part, he’d always been aware of Ena, even when they weren’t together. He’d felt her emotions, her pain as well as her joys. And when she’d died in childbirth, at the age of twenty, he’d thought the grief and pain would drive him mad. She’d been a part of him even though he hadn’t been a part of her as he’d hoped. Her death had shredded a part of his heart.
His heart had long since recovered, but he had never bonded with anyone else again. He had never let himself be so tied to another human. Their lives were too short even in the normal course of things, and when he added in their foolhardiness … no. A thousand times no. Bonding was simply asking for pain, and Luca hadn’t reached such an old age by ignoring the lessons of life. Enduring eternity meant simplifying, and bonding with a human was the perfect illustration of a complication.
He gave an inward snort at his own thoughts. As reluctant as he was to bond with anyone, Chloe’s response would be twice as negative, especially when he explained the process.
Yet bonding would protect her in several different ways. The main one was that no vampire, not even him, would be able to glamour her. The second was that it would give her enhanced strength and speed; nothing approaching vampire levels, but enough that she would have an extra second or so in which to escape, and sometimes that was all the time that was needed. The third advantage was that they would be able to sense each other; he would always know where she was, always know how she was feeling. And if something alarmed him, he wouldn’t have to take the time to explain things to her; she would simply know.
Reluctantly, he knew he’d have to offer her the option, but a huge part of him hoped she’d refuse. The emotional price, for him, was too high. Not that there was a snowball’s chance in hell that she’d take him up on it—yet he didn’t know how he could keep her alive if she didn’t.
Chloe couldn’t settle down. For one thing, she had a vampire in her house; never mind that he was sprawled on her couch calmly watching television, he was still a vampire. Anxiously she watched the sun sink lower and lower in the sky. What would happen at dark? Would he keep watching television, or would he get hungry? And if he got hungry, was she dinner?
She tried to keep herself busy, between laundry and dishes and finally getting a start on straightening out the guest room, but there was only so much she could do unless she wanted to sit next to Luca on the couch to watch television, which she didn’t. Besides, he’d appropriated the remote. It was interesting that being a vampire hadn’t negated the male attachment to the gadget.
So … if she had a vampire guest in the house, it seemed smart to find out as much as she could about vampires in general. She got on the computer in the kitchen and Googled “vampire.” It gave her a lot of literary references, some demonic stuff, “living dead,” yada yada, but nothing that was at all pertinent to the reality, or useful when it came to the care and feeding of one. While she was searching the Web, he came to check on her, and braced one hand on the back of her chair as he leaned over to read the article she’d pulled up. She didn’t click off the page, because she didn’t care if he knew what she was researching.
“That’s all wrong,” he said calmly, but with an amused smirk on his face.
“I know that.” If she sounded irritable, well, she was. “I Googled your name, too. You don’t exist.”
“What did you expect to find: ‘Luca Ambrus is a rare specimen of his breed, a blood born—’” He stopped and straightened, a peculiar expression crossing his face.
Something in that expression zinged her gotcha! gene. Chloe swiveled in her chair, her eyes narrowed as she stared up at him. “Whoops. You let that slip, didn’t you?”
He didn’t reply, simply stared back at her with that remote gray gaze of his, as if he wasn’t connected to earth or anything on it. She swiveled back around, pulled up Google, and typed in blood born. The first thing it asked her was if she meant blood borne. There were a couple of movies—or the same movie but a couple of entries, but nothing that was pertinent.
“Don’t bother looking,” he said. “There isn’t a National Registry of Vampires.”
“But how do you get around? How do you get on an airplane, or get a bank account so you can pay your utility bills, assuming you actually live somewhere, instead of hanging upside down in a cave. You exist, so there should be a trail of information.”
“There are always aliases,” he said carelessly. “And, yes, we live in houses. But those houses may belong to dead people, or nonexistent people, or a corporation. There are always ways to get around regulations. And for the record, I have lived in a cave, but I don’t believe I hung upside down in it.”
“Do you pay taxes?” She was unwillingly fascinated—if there was a way to avoid paying taxes, she wanted to hear about it.
That amused look was back. “If I must. If I can avoid it, I do.”
“Well, just a hint: you need to do enough to show up in a Google search. If anyone else does a search—and trust me, they will—the fact that there’s no information on you at all will be suspicious.”
“Why would anyone do a search on my name?”
“Because that’s wh
at people do.”
“You’re the first human who ever has.”
She snorted. “Yeah, right. You keep right on believing that.”
He simply looked down at her for a moment, long enough that his cool, pale gaze began to make her uncomfortable. She finally snapped “What?” then hoped the answer wasn’t, I’m hungry.
He glanced around, hooked one of the kitchen chairs around, and sat down in it, then swiveled her chair around so she was facing him. Leaning forward, he took her hands in his. The heat of his long, hard fingers wrapped around her hands, and he rubbed his thumbs back and forth over the inside of her wrists. “We need to have a very frank discussion,” he said. “You won’t like what I’m going to tell you.”
“Let me guess,” she said, trying for a brisk tone even though her heart was suddenly double-timing. “You’re hungry, and you’re going to suck me dry.”
A wry smile touched his lips. “No, I’m not hungry. As for sucking you … that’s something else entirely.”
Make that triple-time. Her heart was pounding as if she’d done a five-mile jog. He looked at her chest and she knew he could hear her heart slamming away inside, feel it in the beat of her pulse in her wrists. Heat washed over her, until she felt as if she were red from her feet to the top of her head, flushed and hungry with her own needs, her nipples pinching until just touching her bra made them feel raw and achy.
Abruptly he released her hands and sat back, as if he had to break contact with her. He scrubbed his hand over his face and she heard the rasp of beard, which distracted her a little, because who knew vampires grew beards? She could use a little distraction right now; unfortunately, that wasn’t enough, because he immediately pulled her attention back to him.
“I’ve been thinking over your situation,” he said, “and it isn’t good.”
Chloe drew a deep breath. She hadn’t been thinking ahead. In fact, she’d been trying not to think very much at all, concentrating instead on the here and now. All of that about Warriors and a vampire uprising … that was big stuff, and there wasn’t a lot she could do about any of it. Still, hearing that Luca thought she was in big trouble wasn’t a good thing.
“I can protect you while I’m here,” he said, “but I’ll have to leave in order to feed, and I have to sleep. If, while I’m gone, a vampire drags your next-door neighbor to the door and threatens to kill her if you don’t step out, what will you do?”
Chloe gave him a wry, faintly sad smile. “You can’t live life if you hide all the time,” she finally said.
“That’s what I thought you’d say.”
“I live every day knowing that I might die,” she said calmly. “This isn’t anything new for me.”
His gaze sharpened. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t tell a lot of people, because then they’d … they wouldn’t feel comfortable around me. They wouldn’t want me to pick up anything, or go jogging with me, or just be normal. I don’t want to live that way. But I doubt you’d want to go jogging with me anyway—”
“Not really,” he said drily.
“So telling you doesn’t matter. I have an aortic aneurysm. Mine was found after a car accident when I was a teenager. I may have had it all my life or it may be a result of the accident. No one knows. It’s too small for surgery to be an option, because the surgery itself is so dangerous.”
He was silent a moment, then said, “I don’t know a lot about human physical problems.”
“It’s a weak spot, like a bubble, on my ascending aorta, above my heart. Mine is stable, for now, but it can begin growing without warning. It can burst. If it does, then I’m dead. Unless I was already in a hospital, then maybe I’d have a chance if they could get me into surgery within a couple of minutes. Otherwise … no.” Her voice was dispassionate as she explained the situation. As she’d said, she lived with it every day. Life was what it was; she could either live it, or she could curl up in a corner and not have any sort of life at all. “It can remain stable all my life, and nothing will happen. Or it can begin growing, to the point where I can have surgery and have it repaired. I don’t know. No one knows.”
His face was very still as he looked at her; she couldn’t read a single emotion in his expression, didn’t know if he were even feeling any emotion at the moment. Probably not; after all, what did she matter to him? And yet she could feel the weight of his gaze as if it were a tangible thing, a probe going straight to her soul. Was he wondering what it was like to know you might die at any minute? Did the passing years weigh on someone who was immortal? Did he ever wish that his life was finite? Did anyone? Everyone she knew wanted to live long and prosper.
Finally he blew out a breath that sounded a little ragged to her, but he continued as if she hadn’t said anything at all. “Another option is for us to leave here, for me to hide you somewhere until this is over. Your Warrior can still contact you wherever you are.”
“That’s a plus?”
Her tone was so skeptical that it drew a smile from him. “There’s nothing you can do to stop it, and maybe now that you know what’s going on the process will be easier.”
“How long would I have to hide?” she asked. “I have a job, I have a family—”
“There’s no way to tell. Months, possibly.”
“Then … no. I can’t do that.”
“I didn’t think you’d be willing.” He drew a deep breath. “That leaves one other option.”
“I don’t want to be a vampire,” she said rapidly, in case that was what he had in mind.
He shook his head, his long dark hair falling about his chiseled face like some ancient god. He gave no reaction to the unintentional insult she’d just thrown at him. “It isn’t that. I can bond you to me.”
That didn’t sound good. In fact, it sounded even worse than being made a vampire. “Like Renfield?” she asked incredulously.
That was evidently the wrong question, because he looked pained and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Forget Renfield,” he finally said with what sounded like strained patience. “Renfield was glamoured—Hell, what am I talking about? Renfield is fiction. Got it? Fiction!”
“So this bonding thing doesn’t have anything to do with glamouring?”
“No. In fact, it’ll prevent any vampire, even me, from glamouring you. You’ll be stronger, quicker, and for what’s coming you’ll need every advantage you can get.”
Cautiously she said, “That sounds like the upside. What’s the downside?”
He drew in a breath. “It’s a lifetime bond. We’ll always be linked. I’ll know if you’re happy, if you’re sad; you’ll know if I’m nearby. When a vampire and human fall in love, they’ll usually bond.”
His gaze was getting more and more remote and his tone was flat. Chloe studied him, picked up on the reluctance he couldn’t quite hide. A little pang hit her, and this time she was the one trying to hide her reaction. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Have you bonded before?”
“Once,” he said, his tone so final it was like hitting a verbal brick wall, and she knew she didn’t dare pursue that subject any further.
But all in all, bonding didn’t sound all that drastic, so she knew there was more or he wouldn’t have offered this as the last option. She waited, staring at him.
He met her gaze, then held it. “The way bonding is accomplished,” he said gently, “is through sex and blood.”
“Sex and blood,” she repeated, something in her going cold.
“I take your blood, and I give you mine.”
“During sex,” she said, just for clarification.
“Yes.”
Chloe shoved her chair back, stood, and walked away. That was certainly an original pickup line, she thought as she went into her bedroom and firmly closed the door. She hoped he took the hint and didn’t come in, because she didn’t know what she’d do if she had to talk to him right now.
She sat down on the bed and laced her trembling fingers together. Yes,
she’d had a strong physical reaction to him from the start. If things had been different, maybe they could have had something together. But he was a vampire, and in her mind that had put sex between them in the “can’t happen” category. That hadn’t done away with the longing, the heat; she couldn’t deny both were still there, as strong as ever.
The hell of it was: how did she know he was telling the truth? People lied all the time to get what they wanted. Men pretended to fall for a woman just to get sex, women pretended to be crazy about sports or a guy’s friends, some people lied just to be lying. She didn’t know how vampires operated. Was deception part of how they got what they wanted, namely sex and blood?
At least he’d been up-front with her, telling her what was involved. And she couldn’t assume that he was lying. After all, he’d twice saved her life, endangering himself at the same time. She’d been too dazed to really know what was going on when Enoch had attacked her, but she had no doubt he’d been about to kill her, until Luca stopped him. And Sorin … she’d been preoccupied with Valerie, but she’d seen enough of the fight to know how fast and brutal it had been. No pretense, there.
So far, she thought Luca had told her the truth, about everything.
But did she want to be bonded to a vampire? No.
Not even to Luca, who looked like walking sex. It wasn’t even that he was a vampire; she wanted to stay completely herself, a separate and autonomous human being. She would love to be in love, to one day have a husband and children, a family, and that was a bond, too, but it was an emotional and mental one, not something that sounded like an implant by which she could be tracked.
Sex and blood.
What he’d been telling her was that, because she was one of the conduits for these damn Immortal Warriors, she was a target and he couldn’t protect her. She would be hunted down and killed, and unless she was willing to completely abandon her life, run away and hide, there was nothing else he could do.
Should she run away and hide? Would that even work? Or would the vampires then go after her parents, thinking they’d know where she was?