The Vampire's Seduction (35 page)

“Have a seat, Gerry. We need to catch you all up on some things.” The scientist sat down, looking like he smelled something he wanted to scrape off of his Italian shoe. I remained standing. “I’ve got bad news and bad news.

“I don’t know how much you knew about this Alger guy, Olivia’s sire, who was going to be the guest of honor at the big party,” I said. “In fact, I don’t know why we don’t know more about each other to begin with.”

Iban looked around at the others before he answered, as if seeking a consensus. “It’s a security precaution, Jack. None of us is supposed to know very much about the others, for our own protection. The only reason Tobey and I know each other is because we live in the same state and cross paths now and then. William and Alger are the only ones who hold all the pieces of the puzzle.”

Gerard said, “William and Alger are the only vampires whom we know outside of our own colonies.”

“Colonies?” I asked. I’d heard Olivia mention the word before, but I wasn’t sure what that meant when it came to vamps.

“Each of these men represents a colony of vampires in another part of the country,” Olivia said. “Alger told me a little about them, but I didn’t know much more until tonight.”

“Okay. Whatever.” I looked at Olivia, who was steeling herself for what came next. “Alger’s dead. He was murdered on William’s boat, the
Alabaster,
before he reached Savannah.”

The three newcomers gasped in horror and Olivia looked at the floor. “He was staked and burned on the deck, and the human crew was murdered along with him. We found one body; we assume that the others went overboard. William ordered me to scuttle the boat so the authorities wouldn’t ask questions. When we told you earlier that William was out on personal business, that was, well, a lie. He’s actually out looking for Alger’s murderer.” That was a lie, too, of course, but they’d already had enough to digest without the news that William was seen hunting with Reedrek.

“Do—do you know who killed him?” Tobey asked, his blue eyes round and troubled.

Olivia rose to stand beside me. “Yes. It was Reedrek—William’s sire. He must have stowed away on the
Alabaster
or boarded it from another craft. In any case, he’s definitely here in Savannah.” She paused to look sidelong at me. “We’ve both seen him.”

And one of us may be at least partly enthralled by him,
I almost added. I still wasn’t sure I could trust Olivia, but I didn’t know if I trusted these guys either. By the looks on their faces, they already knew plenty about Reedrek. Better not to open my mouth about him and Olivia.

“It begins, then,” Gerard said, his mouth set in a hard, thin line. Tobey and Iban exchanged worried glances.

“It?” I asked. “What ‘it’?”

“Maybe not,” Olivia said, ignoring me. “Right now he only seems interested in the voodoo blood.”

“He knows about that?” Gerard demanded, alarmed.

And clearly so did they. I guessed William had managed to share the info with the rest of them at some time in the past. It made me feel less special, but there was a lot of that going around.

“I think so,” Olivia said in a small voice.

“How?” Gerard said.

I just looked at her, wondering if she would ’fess up. After glancing at me again, she said, “He revealed himself to us at a nightclub. I was so enraged at him for murdering my sire that I followed him before William and Jack could talk sense into me. I don’t remember much of what happened when I was with Reedrek, except that I couldn’t kill him. And during the ordeal . . . I think I may have told him about the blood.”

“You mean—he tortured you?” Iban asked, plainly outraged.

Olivia hugged herself and looked at the floor again, but said nothing, leaving them to assume Iban was right. This chick could be in one of his movies and win an Academy Award.

They were silent for a long moment and then Gerard asked her, “How long have you been in the U.S.?”

“Almost a week. Why?”

“If Reedrek only found out about the voodoo blood in the last few days, that is not why he came all the way over to America. Why did he come if not to destroy us?” Gerard asked.

“Who else came with him?” Tobey wanted to know.

I thought back to my earlier conversation with Olivia and Melaphia when they mentioned the bad vamps and how we needed “strength in numbers.” This was some serious shit, by Ned. I answered Tobey, “Nobody that we know of. That is, we haven’t seen anybody else.”

“If he came to challenge us, why did he come alone?” Tobey said.

We all looked at one another. Silence. Finally, Iban asked, “What do we do now?”

Nobody said anything. I was getting more and more fed up with one crisis after another and no answers about any of them. Beside me, Olivia’s body began to jerk. “You all right?” I asked. Stupid question. When people started to jump like somebody threw them into a hot, greased skillet, they’re not all right.

“I—I have to go,” Olivia said through clenched teeth. “It hurts!”

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I just have to go.” Olivia lurched toward the stairs.

Iban said, “It must be residual effects from the torture. She must have suffered some kind of neurological damage.”

“She was fine a moment ago. It must be something else.” Gerard narrowed his eyes.

I had my own theory—Reedrek’s enthrallment kicking in again—but I decided to follow Olivia’s lead and not mention it. “Probably just a reaction from that human blood she had this afternoon. Donor might’ve eaten some tainted oysters or something.”

I caught her by the arm to steady her before she fell out of the trailer and down the stairs. She calmed immediately, so much so that she sagged against me, forcing me to wrap both arms around her to keep her from falling. “Your touch,” she said, “has made it better. Just like that.”

The three other males exchanged glances while I shifted my arms underneath Olivia’s to support her better. “What?” I asked them.

Iban rubbed the back of his neck. “You seem to be giving her strength simply by touching her, Jack. Maybe you should, uh, you know . . .”

“Have sex with her,” supplied Gerard. Leave it to the scientist to be clinical. “If you can make her stronger just by holding her, think what you can do with actual genital penetration.”

“Dude, seriously,” Tobey said, looking at Gerard, then Olivia. “Have some sensitivity.”

“Thanks for spelling it out, Gerry. I’ll take care of it.” Absurdly, I flashed back to that old soul song “Sexual Healing.” Olivia had had plenty of that for one day. She and I exchanged glances, silently agreeing it was not the time to share the results of our last encounter. “Okay, we’re going, then. Stay put until you hear from either me or William.”

“Shouldn’t we help hunt for Reedrek?” Tobey asked as I led Olivia down the stairs. I could tell he didn’t particularly want to but felt like he should at least offer.

“No. It’s too dangerous. You don’t know Savannah well enough. Just let Chandler know if you need anything. I’ll be back in touch by tomorrow night, if not before. Can you guys take it if I wake you in the daytime?”

“By all means,” Gerard said. “The butler said he would secure my coffin. I believe it will be in the cellar as usual.” He had the same old-fashioned way of speaking that William sometimes fell back to. Plus the hint of a French accent.

“If you need to rouse Iban and me, just have someone thump real hard on that back wall,” Tobey said. “I’m a light sleeper.”

“Will do.” On the middle step, I decided it would be easier just to carry Olivia rather than half-drag her along. I swung her into my arms as if she weighed nothing at all. My strength was still supersized and it seemed that my hearing was as well because halfway to the car, when I should have been out of earshot, I heard Tobey say, “Did you see that? What a stud! Man, just imagine what could happen when he puts it to her. She could go all Supergirl with the power he gives her.”

So much for Mr. Sensitivity.

I set Olivia in the passenger seat. When I crossed in front of the car to get to the driver’s side, she let out a wail. “Don’t walk away! I’m in pain when you’re not touching me!”

“Why is that?” I said, putting the Stingray in reverse but making no move to touch her. Let her suffer a little. Maybe she would come across with some information. “I have a feeling you know exactly what’s going on with you right now, so spill it.”

She scooted as close to me as she could get without actually being in my lap and clung to my right arm.

“I have to shift the damn gears, lady. Give me some room.” I pushed her away and got the car headed back down the driveway. “What’s happening?”

“He’s calling me to him!”

She plastered herself to my side again, and this time I let her.

“Who? Reedrek?” I started to turn in the direction of the highway, but Olivia grabbed the wheel. “Hey!”

“Yessss.” She drew the word out on a long painful breath. “He’s that way.” She pointed opposite the direction I’d been headed in.

I sucked in some air of my own when it hit me that this was how to find William. Reedrek would draw Olivia and me to both of them. As Olivia urged me on, past the turnoff to first one major road back to Savannah and then another, I realized where we were going.

Bonaventure.

William

The burning . . . the burning.

My mind flew deeper into the past to ward off the excruciating pain of the present.

Flames. The whole city seemed to be burning brightly. People screaming and running . . . some of them on fire.

Two great fires had devastated Savannah, one shortly after Georgia ratified the Constitution and another, larger one, twenty-four years later in January 1820. I had unfortunately been occupying my house in town for the second.

Agony.

Now, as I had that night, I staggered through the smoky, ember-filled streets, horrified. A screaming woman, skirts aflame, threw herself into my arms. The smell of burnt flesh filled my senses as I shoved her to the ground and rolled her to extinguish her clothes. But she was beyond help, even if there had been anyone to tend her. People were running past carrying children, belongings. One man had a dog in his arms, another a chamber pot filled with water. They were heading for the squares, away from the scorching heat of the burning buildings. There they stood, shivering in the hope that the blessed coolness of a well or a fountain might protect them.

But they had forgotten the trees. The great oaks, limbs weighted down with beards of moss, lit the sky like oiled torches, dropping flame and death on those below. I stood in the center of the street and howled into the night—for death, for pity’s sake, for rain. Lalee had made certain I would not burn, nor would my holdings on the river. But the city—there was not enough magic in the old
orishas
to save the city.

I heard Lalee’s chant over the roaring destruction. The words made little sense but the sound immediately calmed me. I looked down and saw that my legs and feet were wreathed in blue flame. But the pain had receded, the smell was far less choking. Lalee would keep me from wanting death. At least for a while. I would burn, but I would survive; I would heal yet one more time.

I had to save Jack—

Time shifted. Without warning I was standing outside Eleanor’s house on River Street, looking up as ominous black smoke billowed from the third-story windows. Flames licked along the curtains of Eleanor’s bedroom and I could see her face through the glass. She was screaming, her hands blistered, pushing outward. There were sirens in the distance, but I knew they would be too late. I had to save Eleanor, to break down the front door. To my horror I found that, as in a nightmare, I couldn’t move. My feet seemed frozen to the ground, my chest tight with fear. All vampires dread fire, but Eleanor was mortal.

Eleanor.

I could only watch as the windows shattered from the heat, spraying the sidewalk with glass. Her beloved face disappeared as the inferno spread from room to room until the entire building was engulfed.

Jack

On our way to the cemetery, the more Olivia came in contact with my bare skin, the more she perked up. I’d heard of clingy females, but this was ridiculous. You couldn’t pass a penny between us if your afterlife depended on it. She gathered her wits enough to form a theory about my effect on her.

“I know what it is,” she said. “It was the sex earlier. You’re backward. It bound me to you in the way it usually binds a male to a female—you got my power instead of me getting yours. And when Reedrek’s thrall kicked in, my bond to you counteracted it. It made me feel like I was being pulled in half. But now that I’m close to you and we’re headed toward where Reedrek is . . .” She craned her neck to look at the speedometer. “. . . and going really, really fast, I feel much better.”

After suffering through California career envy, being called backward was just glaze on the stale doughnut of my night. But if in my
backward
sort of way I’d managed to get something over on Olivia—the know-it-all—then that was something. Might even come in handy with good old Uncle Reedrek. “What’s going to happen when we’re face-to-face with him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Great.”

When we pulled into the cemetery, the gates were locked, but the chain was no match for my strength—well, and that of the bolt cutters in my trunk. You’d think they’d wise up. I’d cut the lock off the gates so many times the security guard had to think there was a crazy lock collector in the neighborhood. In the last few years I’d sent Rennie over to replace the hardware and leave the keys on the base of the stone lion just outside the gate.

Olivia guided me straight through the old part of the graveyard, past the Jewish section, with its Hebrew writing and Stars of David on the tombs, on to an even older part back near the edge of the marsh. Not far from where we’d found William’s Jag and Shari. Twitching again, Olivia got out of the Corvette and hurried to an ancient-looking tomb covered by a slab of marble so old that the epitaph could have been read only by making a paper rubbing of it. She placed her hands flat against the worn surface.