Uncross My Heart Page 5

  “I’ll be there,” Tanya answered with another meaningful glance at Bryan.

  He just nodded. “Milo’s, at seven.”

  Zoe took her leave, grateful to be out of the noise and confusion of the crowded club. As she walked to her car, she scanned the streets, paying close attention to the deepest shadows. Would she see Julian Devlin again? Why couldn’t she put him out of her mind?

  Hunger had driven Julian back to his usual feeding grounds. The upscale bars downtown wouldn’t admit him dressed as he was, so he hung back in the shadows, eyeing each potential meal that waltzed along the sidewalk in high heels.

  Finally the perfect morsel caught his eye. A willowy blonde who looked just the right height for a comfortable nibble gave him more than a passing glance. He moved into step with her and turned on the vampire charm.

  “Shall we find a quiet spot to talk?” He projected the usual air of subtle sensuality that women found irresistible. As expected, she slowed her pace and gave him a sidelong glance.

  Her painted lips quirked in an interested grin. “You’re pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

  Julian offered his hand. “I’m sure you’ll enjoy yourself.” He returned her knowing smirk and tugged her toward the shadows. The nearby alley would suffice. His only interest at the moment was in feeding.

  Just like old times. She followed him easily into the dark and slid into his arms. Despite her strong perfume, the scent of her blood teased him, and he rejoiced at not having lost his hunting instincts.

  He lulled her with a determined brush of his lips along her jaw, and she responded with an appreciative purr. This wouldn’t be so hard after all. Obeying his wordless command, she tilted her head, exposing her neck for him to nuzzle, to nibble. He tested the tender flesh with a gentle nip then grew bold at her acceptance of his need.

  With his incisors poised above her jugular, he prepared to feed…

  “Umm, what are you doing?” She reared back, her sculpted brows rising.

  Julian met her gaze. “Kissing you.”

  “Felt more like you were sucking on my neck. I mean, hey, I like a little kink, but you’re slobbering.”

  “I am not.” To prove his point, he grabbed her and prepared to bite. This time, however, rather than falling into his hungry embrace, she stabbed her stiletto heel into his instep and elbowed him in the ribs. Like the gypsy girl in the cellar, she swung her purse at him. Julian staggered out of range and ducked deeper into the alley.

  “Pervert!” The blonde’s angry voice followed him, but thankfully she did not. He hid for a moment in the dark between two dumpsters until the click of her heels receded completely.

  What had he been thinking? Blood had sustained him for so long, he couldn’t even conceive of assuaging his hunger any other way.

  Desperate now to fill the empty spot in his gut, he followed his nose for several blocks and strode into the first fast food place he found. Reasonably clean and not very crowded, at least it met two of his immediate requirements. They’d serve him, and they accepted cash.

  He stepped up to the counter and eyed the mop-headed teenage boy manning the cash register. “What kind of meat do you have?”

  “Uh…burgers and chicken? Oh wait, we have fish too. I don’t know if that’s meat though. Since it’s…like, fish.”

  Julian blinked. “I’ll take a burger. Make it two. Rare, please.”

  The teenager smirked. “Sorry dude, they’re already cooked, you know?”

  No blood. No time to search for anything else. Lambert would pay for every indignity Julian suffered this night. “Fine. Give me the value meal.”

  “Super size?”

  “Why not?” Julian tossed some cash on the counter and a few minutes later wandered back outside with a sack of food and a tall paper cup full of root beer. His stomach rumbled at the aroma, but he refused to join the other patrons chowing down at the few metal tables in front of the store.

  He walked two blocks back the way he’d come and ducked under the wide awning of an outdoor café that had closed several hours ago. Here, at a table for two behind a potted ficus, he unwrapped his pre-cooked value burger and took a bite. Nirvana.

  The last meal he recalled eating as a human had been pheasant under glass and new potatoes with bread pudding and creamed shallots followed by brandy and a fat cigar in the library of the man who had soon after become his sire.

  This had it beat hands down. Each sumptuous bite buoyed his flagging strength and gave him cause to believe that somehow he might survive the indignity to which Lambert had subjected him.

  He finished one burger and started on the next, pausing for a long, refreshing draught of the root beer. There was a flavor he remembered from his youth. A rare treat he’d never thought to indulge in once he had the means to afford it.

  He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed food until this moment. Could a vampire eat, he wondered? He’d never given it much thought since his transformation. Blood had sustained him quite well for so long, and he spent little time in the company of humans, so he’d never needed to feign an interest in eating. He’d enjoyed the freedom of not having to plan meals or hire a housekeeper who could cook.

  By the time he’d finished the second burger he’d decided, by all that was unholy, when he made the transition back to his true form, he’d give eating another try. He wondered if Zoe Boyd liked value burgers and root beer…and cursed himself for such a counterproductive thought.

  He had to put the girl out of his mind and concentrate on his one and only objective. Revenge.

  Reluctantly, he let his mind wander back over the events that had led him to this moment.

  A routine meeting with Lambert to discuss overfeeding had taken him to their usual meeting place, a bar not far from his town house called The Velvet Rope. The conversation had been light, pleasant. Enoch had agreed to exert some influence over his underlings, the vampires he’d sired himself, to make sure no one got carried away, especially on the college campuses where young blood was easy to find.

  There hadn’t been an argument or even a moment during which Julian had been suspicious of his friend. He couldn’t recall a single detail of the evening that in hindsight might have been a red flag.

  Instead he remembered the smoke. A crimson cloud had obliterated his vision and footsteps fled the scene. Enoch had released a smooth projectile at him—a glass vial no bigger than his palm filled with amber liquid. It shattered on the floor at Julian’s feet, and the smoke had spewed upward like a volcanic eruption, thick and fluid. The sharp scent of it still clung to his clothes and his skin.

  He hadn’t breathed it in, of course, but it had blinded him and left him strangely disoriented. All he knew for a moment was that his colleague had deserted him in the suddenly empty back room of the bar.

  He hadn’t waited for the smoke to dissipate. Waving his arms to clear a path, he’d lurched toward the door through which he’d entered and stumbled back down the stairs to the basement of the building and into the tunnels beneath. Footsteps and shouts followed him not long afterward, driving him deeper underground. At first, he had no idea what Lambert had done to him, but he knew they were following him and, weakened as he’d been by the concoction in the vial, he would be at their mercy if they caught him.

  So he’d run.

  It made no sense. If Enoch had wanted Julian out of the way, he could have staked him just as easily. Turning him human again was adding insult to injury.

  Enoch Lambert was no sorcerer. The potion he’d doused Julian with had to have come from a powerful magical source, but who?

  Dammit, if Lambert himself had made the potion, then the vampire’s death alone might reverse the spell. But if he merely used what someone else had given him, Julian would have to keep him alive long enough to get that information.

  Before anything else, Julian needed an ally. Just one loyal soul—no pun intended.

  Julian finished his meal and laughed softly as he disposed of the
cup and wrappers in a garbage can. He barely recognized himself. No one he had ever counted as a friend would help him now. His weakness would disgust them. Could he hide his new identity somehow? It might be too late for that already. Lambert would have put the word out that his coup had worked.

  Options? Limited.

  The only thing Julian was sure of right now was that another meal would help bring him closer to full strength. Pushing Lambert and Zoe Boyd out of his mind, he set off in search of more sustenance.

  Decades ago, Enoch Lambert had lost the desire to roam the darkened city streets. He no longer needed to hunt. With plenty of money and a loyal staff of younger vampires to bring him his meals, he needn’t tax his patience by mixing with humanity. But tonight he relished the cool spring air, even tainted as it was by the flavor of exhaust that lingered in the back alleys.

  Like a wraith, he clung to the shadows, wrapping darkness around himself to remain unseen by pedestrians. Safe in his disguise, he hovered close enough to Julian Devlin to touch him, to breathe a cold breath on the back of the man’s neck…if he’d had breath, of course.

  Man—not vampire. His plan had worked so well it actually gave him chills. For someone who hadn’t felt warmth of any kind in a hundred and seventy years, the cold tingle delighted him.

  Confident in his own invisibility to Julian, Enoch followed his prey farther downtown, chuckling to himself when he caught a glimpse of longing in those familiar dark eyes. Julian had been just a boy, raw and hungry, when Anton Brae sired him. He was fortunate to maintain youthful good looks for an eternity while Enoch sported prematurely gray hair and wrinkles that came from the decades of back-breaking work and poverty he’d endured before his own transformation.

  But jealousy over Julian’s physical attributes hadn’t brought Enoch to this victory. His long-suppressed quest for power had. That quest was far from complete, of course. Julian was down…left wandering in search of the greasy sustenance of humans, but he wasn’t out. Full surrender would require time, and being immortal, Enoch had buckets of it.

  Patience had brought him this far, and only patience would see him through to his ultimate victory.

  He even haunted her dreams.

  Zoe walked through a dark place where cold water dripped and unseen creatures scuttled around her feet. She didn’t scream in response to the brush of wiry fur against her bare ankles only because he was beside her, his hand on her shoulder, guiding her toward a safe refuge.

  “Where are we?” she asked, and her voice echoed.

  “We’re almost there. You have to hurry.”

  She obeyed him, picking up the pace through the grimy water that swirled around her feet, but the very atmosphere of the place seemed to hold her back. Each step sapped her strength and brought her no closer to her goal.

  “Don’t let them catch you,” Devlin told her. “Keep running.”

  She tried, but the harder she pumped her legs, the slower her progress became until she was certain she was moving backward. His warm hand slipped from her shoulder, and when she turned to look for him, he was gone, replaced by a looming, shapeless shadow that wrapped cable-like arms around her.

  A hand clamped across her lips, cutting off her air supply. Her lungs protested. She kicked and struggled and finally opened her eyes to find Julian Devlin hovering above her.

  “Don’t scream. I won’t hurt you.” Julian dropped his hand from Zoe’s lips and backed away from her bed, hands up, his movements deliberately slow and non-threatening.

  In the blue neon glow of her bedside alarm clock, her pale skin looked like alabaster, and her eyes were huge and terrified. Clutching a thin blanket to her chest, she scrambled to a sitting position amid the tumble of pillows that populated her bed. “How did you get in here? Are you insane? What if I kept a knife under my pillow or something?”

  “You don’t. I checked.”

  She squeaked in indignation. “You broke into my house.”

  “No. I let myself in with your spare key, which you obviously put back right where you got it from after we came in before. You know, you’re asking to be murdered in your sleep, or worse. It amazes me that a girl as trusting as you is still alive.”

  “You weren’t supposed to look.”

  “I looked. Sue me.” He shrugged. This had all been too easy. He’d probably be doing her a favor by draining her dry as soon as he transformed back. This blonde gypsy belonged in another era, a simpler time when people left their doors unlocked and everyone knew their neighbors. Either that or she needed a body guard twenty-four/seven.

  “What are you doing back here? Didn’t you find someone to help you?”

  He sighed. A lie would be easy, even if it did little to preserve the mere shred of dignity he had left. “It’s almost dawn. I needed someplace to go before sunrise, and I was kicked out of the bus station. They don’t allow people to sleep there anymore, I discovered.” Truth was, she was the only trustworthy soul he could find at this hour.

  She blinked at him. “Sunrise? Um…humans can go out in the daylight. Or have you been revamped already?” One delicate hand slid toward her slender throat. Julian watched the subtle movement with a mixture of amusement and—dear God—arousal.

  She’d traded her peasant blouse for a thin-strapped tank top. Clingy and white, it contrasted with her honeyed skin and did little to hide the sumptuous curves of her breasts, now peaked with taut nipples. Gooseflesh stood out on her bare arms. He wondered if she might be considering the possibility that he would lower his lips to her neck and drink…

  He blinked away the traitorous thoughts. “No. I’m still human.” He laughed. “I guess I’m so conditioned to avoid sunlight that it never occurred to me. Nevertheless, I need a place to sleep for a little while. I don’t have enough cash to go to a hotel, and if I use my credit cards, I could be leading Lambert right to me.”

  “Vampires have credit cards?”

  “We’re undead, not Amish. How else would one purchase Gucci loafers?”

  Warm yellow light illuminated her skeptical gaze when she switched on the bedside lamp. “Okay, silly question. I admit it, but give me a break. It’s four fifty-nine A.M., and I just woke up with a man’s hand over my mouth. You’re lucky I didn’t bite you.”

  He let his gaze roam her half-hidden curves again. She’d be lucky if he didn’t bite her one way or another. “I apologize for sneaking in…something I would not have been able to do if you had an ounce of common sense.” He tossed the spare key to her and, just as he’d hoped, she let go of her death grip on the blanket to catch it.

  Delicious. He’d have climbed into the bed with her if he hadn’t been so desperate to keep her trust for just a little longer. He needed this girl. And he hated needing her. “Do yourself a favor and hide that somewhere else. Better yet, give it to your boyfriend for safe keeping.”

  “I told you, he’s not my boyfriend.”

  Good. The thought crossed his mind unbidden, and he squashed it. “Can I borrow your couch? Just for a few hours?”

  Her lips quivered a bit before she responded. “Sure. I’ll get you a pillow and a blanket.”

  “No need to treat me like a guest.”

  “But you are one.” She rose, and Julian’s gaze traveled up and down her bare legs, pausing only briefly at the still-red scrapes on her knees. She’d hurt herself running from him and, for some inexplicable reason, he regretted that. He shook off the unproductive thought and took inventory of the rest of her outfit.

  Tiny panties rode low on her hips, leaving a band of naked skin beneath the hem of her skimpy top. Ah. The twenty-first century had so many advantages over the nineteenth. Each decade, it seemed women became less inhibited about their bodies. It made being immortal so much fun.

  She moved unselfconsciously now, and Julian followed her into the living room. When she bent over to retrieve a blanket and pillow from within the square hassock, he stifled an appreciative sigh.

  She tossed the items at him while he deb
ated sinking his very human teeth into one creamy inner thigh. “Put your eyes back in your head, Romeo. I already told you, I’m nobody’s entrée. Now, go. Sleep. I’m going back to bed in my room behind a door that locks, and there’s no spare key above the frame, so don’t get any ideas. If you’re still here in the morning—the actual morning—I’ll think about cooking you breakfast, and we’ll talk about getting you a decent place to stay until your house is fixed, okay?”

  He stared for a full second, dumbfounded by her. One bite. Just one bite was all he wanted. “Okay.”

  She disappeared into the bedroom then, shutting the door firmly on any further comment or fantasy on his part.

  Disappointed but still oddly amused, Julian made himself comfortable on her couch.

  Zoe’s heart thundered in her shamelessly exposed chest. She’d just been parading around in her underwear in front of a lunatic—a drop dead gorgeous lunatic—who’d stolen into her bedroom in the middle of the night.

  Her face burned with shame and something else. He’d been looking, and she’d enjoyed letting him look.

  Was she insane? It was not okay to pretend that Julian Devlin was a normal guy. He thought he was a vampire, for heaven’s sake, and he certainly hadn’t tried very hard to disguise his desire to bite her.

  She leaned against the locked bedroom door, breathing deeply to calm herself. What would she do if he was still there in the morning—later in the morning? What if he didn’t leave?

  Thank God he was all right. That thought came out of nowhere and pushed all the other ones aside. Her guilt at letting him wander off into the night evaporated and was replaced by complete shock that he’d come back.

  He trusts me. That notion frightened her a little. That made it her responsibility to help him. But how?

  Certainly not by giving him an eyeful of her ladies’ Fruit of the Looms. Though he had definitely liked what he saw.