Microsoft Word - The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance.doc (77 page)

Moira, he thought. Seamus, Saraid, Emilie, his children.  And then, Maggie Cadogan, help me. He strode back to the metal door and willed it to open. And it would open. He could see it in his head as he prepared himself for the holy water and

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crosses on the other side. Instead, the door immediately

collapsed in a heap of rust.

On the other side was a meadow, covered with heather.  Beyond, a hill, rolling with shamrocks, and above the blue sky, banked with clean, fluffy clouds and a golden sun.

Ireland.

He turned back to face the tunnel. It was gone. Instead, the grey and green glistened and rolled, cresting with foam, and a single little seal, riding the swells.  Seabirds wheeled above. He blinked, then gazed down at Claire in his arms, and kissed her like a man who had not seen the sky in 100 years and more, like a man who had nearly lost his soul.

And she kissed him back, like a woman whose every dream had been  answered. Warm lips, hands, skin; eyelashes, soft tendrils of hair.

“Sex magic,” she whispered against his temple. “The  strongest kind there is among the Gifted  –  among your people. It  brought us here.”

He nuzzled her cheek, her neck. His fangs were gone. His heart was beating like the crashing of the waves. “Nay, Claire, love brought us here.”

A seabird cawed as Liam lifted his head and saw an old

grey-haired woman dressed in an old-fashioned kirtle and a grey  woollen shawl standing at the top of the hill. There was a pile of  stones beside her  –  the cairn of his vision. She raised a hand in  greeting and leaned against the rocks with a self-satisfied air.

“
Sonas ort
,” he called to her. Thank you.

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She gestured for him to come closer. As he began to walk towards her, small sod houses appeared in the meadow. Smoke came from holes in the roofs. Pipes played over the rush of a breeze.

Children Laughed.

Children
 
, Maggie Cadogan whispered in Liam’s ear.

Secure in his arms, blessedly safe, Claire gazed around  in wonder and awe. “To be gone from that hell . . .” Her voice caught, and she gazed up at him again. “Liam, will love keep us here?”

He lowered his head over hers and kissed her like her man.

Like her protector.

Like her husband.

“Aye,” he promised. “It will.”

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A Stand - up D ame

Lilith Saintcrow

W

hen a man wakes up in his own grave, he

sometimes reconsiders his choice of jobs.

If he’s smart, that is. Me, I’m as dumb as a box of rocks and my skull felt like a cannonade was going off inside. The agony in my head was rivalled only by the thirst. Aching thirst in every nerve and vein, my throat scorched and my eyes hot marbles. It was raining, but the water from the sky falling into my open mouth did nothing for the dry nails twisting in  my larynx. I struggled up out of clods of rain-churned clay mud, slick and dirty as a newborn pig. My clothes were ruined and the monster in my head roared.

I fell backwards, still trapped to my knees in wet earth, padded hammers of rain smashed along the  length of my body, and screamed. The spasm passed, leaving only the parched desert plains inside every inch of me.

A few moments of effort got me kicking free, the last of the wet clay collapsing in a body-shaped hole now that the body was above ground.  I opened my mouth, rain beating my dirty face, and got only a mouthful of muck.

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Coughing, gagging, I made it to hands and knees. My head was a swollen pumpkin balanced on a thin aching stick, and the headache receded between waves of scorching, unbearable, agonizing
 
thirst
.

There were pines all around me, singing and sighing as the sodden wind slapped them around. It took me two tries to stand up, and another two tries before I remembered my name.

Jack. Jack Becker. That’s me. That’s who I am.

And I’ve  got to find the dame in the green dress
.

Outside the city limits and I’m a duck out of water. The mud wouldn’t dry, not in this downpour; it just kept smearing over the ruin of my shirt and suit pants. Even Chin Yun’s laundry wouldn’t be able to get out the worst. Slogging and slipping, I made it down a hill the size of the Chrysler Building and found the dirt road, turned off the highway, and there was a mile marker right there.

Twelve miles to the city. Cramps screamed from empty belly. Maybe getting  shot in the head works up a man’s appetite.  Every time I reached up to touch my noggin it was tender, a puckered hole above my right eye full of even more mud.

I wasn’t going to get very far. The idea of stumbling off the side of the road and drowning in  a ditch was appealing  –  except for the dame in the green dress.

Think about that, Jack. One thing at a time
.

Thunder rumbled somewhere far away. Miss Dale would be at home, probably talking to her cat or making a nice hot cup of

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tea. The thought made my  insides clench like they were going to  turn into a meat grinder, and my breath made a funny whistling  sound through my mouth. My nose was plugged and, in any  case, I was gasping for air. Sometimes it rains hard enough to  drown you out here.

That was when  I saw the light.

It was beautiful, it was golden, it was a diner. Not just any diner, but the Dentons’ Dandy Diner, eleven miles from the city limits. I couldn’t go in there looking like this. It took me a while to fumble for my wallet and I nearly ended  up in the ditch anyway, my feet tangled together.

The wallet  –  last year’s Christmas present from Miss Dale  –was still in my pocket and held all the usual, plus nineteen dollars and twenty cents. They hadn’t taken any money.  Interesting.

Think about that later, Jack
.

My shirt was wet enough to shed the mud, my suit jacket nowhere in evidence. Stinging pellets warned me the rain was turning to ice.

But the crazy thing was, I wasn’t cold. Just as thirsty as hell.

Maybe the idea of the dame in the green  dress was warming me

up.

Neon blinked in the diner’s windows. It was closed, goddammit, and just when I could have used a phone. I could even see the phone box, smearing my muddy mitts on the window and blinking every time the COLD DRINKS sign blinked as  well. The phone was at the end of the all, right near the crapper.

My legs nearly gave out.

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This is turning out to be a bad night, Jackie boy
.

I found a rock I could lift without busting myself and heaved it. The glass on the door went to pieces, and I  carefully unlocked it. The long slug trail of mud I left going towards the phone might have been funny if I’d been in a grinning mood.

A man like me knows his secretary’s home number. Any dame dumb enough to work for a case like me probably wouldn’t be out dancing at a nightclub. Dale didn’t have any suitors  –  not that she talked, of course. She was a tall thin number with interesting eyes, but that was as far as it went.

Not like the dame in green, no sir.

I hung on to the phone box with fingers that looked swollen and bruised. Dirt still slimed my palms. Under it I was fish-belly white, almost glowing in the dim lighting. The Dentons were going to find their diner not quite so dandy in the cold light of dawn, and I was sorry about that.

“Hello?” she repeated herself, because I was trying to make

my mouth work. “Hello?”

“Dale,” I managed through the obstruction in my mouth.  Sounded like they’d broken my jaw, or like I was sucking on  candy.

“Mr Becker?” A note of alarm, now. “
Jack
?”

“You got to come and pick me up, doll-face.” I sounded

drunk.

“Where have you –? Oh, never mind. Where are you?” I

could almost see her perched on her settee, that cup of tea

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steaming gently on an end table, and her ever-present steno pad

appearing. “Jack? Where are you right now?”

“Denton,” I managed. “Dandy Diner, about eleven miles out

of the city. You got the keys to my Studebaker?”

“Your car is impounded, Mr Becker.” Now she sounded like  the Miss Dale I knew. Cool, calm, efficient. Over the phone she  sounded smoky and  sinful, just like Bacall. I might have hired  her just for that phone voice alone, but she turned out to be  damned efficient and not likely to yammer her yap off all the  time, which meant I paid her even when I couldn’t eat.

You don’t find secretaries like that every day, after all.

“Never mind, I’ll bring my car. Denton’s Dandy, hm?

That’s west out of town, right?”

“Sure it is.” My legs bucked again, I hung on to the box for

all I was worth. “I’ll be waiting out front.”

“I’m on my way.” And she hung up , just like that.

What a gal.

The pain in my gut crested as Miss Dale peered over the seat. I’d barely managed to get the door open, and as soon as I was in the car she took off; I wrestled the door shut and the windshield wipers made their idiot sound for about half a mile as I lay gasping in the back seat.

The car smelled like Chanel no. 5 and Chesterfields. And it

smelled of Miss Dale, of hairspray and powder and a thousand

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other feminine things you usually have to get real close to a

dame to get a  whiff of. It also smelled like something else.

Something warm, and coppery, and salty, and so good. The windshield wipers went ka-thump, and her Ford must’ve had something going on with the engine, because there was another regular thumping, high and hard and fast. My mouth wouldn’t close all the way. I kept making that wheezing sound, and she finally risked another look over the seat at me.

“I’m taking you to Samaritan General,” she said, and I

stared at the sheen of her dark hair. “You sound terrible.”

“No.” Thank God, it was one word I could say without  whatever was wrong with my mouth interfering. “No hospital.”  The slurring was back, like my jaw was broken but I wasn’t  feeling any pain. As a matter of fact, now that the headache was  gone, the only thing bothering me was how
 
thirsty
 
I was.

Another mile squished under the tyres. She turned the defroster up, and that regular thumping sounded like her car was about to explode, it was going so fast. “Mr Becker, you are beginning to worry me.” She lit a Chesterfield, keeping her eyes on the road, and, when she opened the window to blow the smoke out, the smell of the rain came through and I realized what that thumping was.

It was Miss Dale’s pulse. I was hearing her heartbeat. And the tyres touching the road. And each raindrop smacking the hardtop. The hiss of flame as she lit the cigarette showed the fine sheen of sweat on her forehead and I realized Miss Dale

was nervous.

“Don’t worry, doll-face. Everything’s fine. Take me . . .”

Where can you go, Jack? The lady in green knows your

office, and if she thinks you’re dead
 
. . .

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“Take me to your house.” Only it was more like
 
hauwsch
,  like I was a goddamn German deli-owner, and when I ran my  tongue along the inside of my teeth everything got interesting.  My  tongue rasped,  and I  lost whatever it was Miss Dale would  have said because the taste of copper filled my mouth and I  suddenly knew what I was thirsty for.

The knowledge might have made me scream if I hadn’t gone limp against the seat as if someone had slapped me, because it was warm and the twisting in my gut receded a little bit, and because goddammit, after a man claws his way up out of his own grave and breaks into a diner, he deserves a little rest.

The green dress hugged her curves like the Samaritan freeway hugs the coast, and, under the little veil on her hat, those eyes were green too. She even had green gloves, and she accepted a light from me with a small nod and raised eyebrows, settling her emerald velvet clutch purse in her lap.