Out of the Night (40 page)

Robin lives southwest of Houston, Texas, with her husband, three kids, three dogs, two frogs, one rabbit, and a mortgage. She is living the American dream.

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Robin T. Popp!

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Seduced by the Night

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Warner Books.

On an otherwise still and silent night, the faint noise and gentle breeze barely registered with Bethany Stavinoski, whose thoughts were focused elsewhere. On her way to the office, she walked another half block along the deserted city sidewalk before it occurred to her that a woman alone at night should be more cautious—and alert.

Spinning around, she half expected a mugger or vagrant to leap at her. She felt both relieved and a bit foolish when she saw that she stood alone. The only other person in sight was a man leaning against the inside wall of a building's doorway, half a block behind her. The feeble glow of the nearby street lamp touched only the outer half of him, leaving the rest to be swallowed by the darkened entryway. His features were unclear, and a trick of the poor lighting gave his eyes a reddish glow. He wore a long black duster over equally dark clothes. With one leg bent at the knee so he could brace his foot against the wall, he smoked a cigarette, appearing both unhurried and extremely dangerous.

Having just come from that direction, Bethany wondered why she hadn't noticed him before. Now, as she watched, he took the cigarette from his mouth to exhale, and his lips lifted in a slight smile as he tipped his head in a subtle greeting. Afraid that her staring might be misconstrued as something more than simple curiosity, she turned and hurried away.

That's right, sweet thing. Be very afraid
. Dirk Adams watched the look of apprehension cross the young woman's face just before she turned and walked off. He raised his hand, bringing the lit cigarette to his mouth and took a long drag before slowly exhaling the smoke.

He waited until she disappeared around the corner before flicking the cigarette to the street, where he watched the tip flare briefly as it bounced and rolled away. It wasn't even his; Dirk didn't smoke—not anymore.

"Thanks for the loaner," he said conversationally, turning to the creature he held pinned to the door by the neck. "But you know? They just don't taste as good as they used to. Probably just as well. Those things'll kill you." He smiled at his own joke as he studied the creature, more monster now than the twenty-something man it used to be. "I don't suppose that matters to you, though."

"I'm… going… to… kill… you," the creature choked out past the constriction of its throat, sounding harsh and wild. "You can't… stop me."

Sharp, clawlike nails raked across Dirk's hand, and he winced at the pain. It hurt like a son of a bitch, and he felt his anger rise but didn't loosen his grip. Instead, he let his lips curl back in a snarl.

For a moment, the creature's eyes widened in surprise as it looked at him, then renewed its struggles. Dirk hesitated to do what had to be done, hoping to get some useful bit of information while there was a modicum of coherent thought left in his captive. "Where are Harris and Patterson? Where is the lair?"

"Go to hell," it spit back.

"Right." Dirk pulled a small dagger from its sheath beneath his duster and drove it into the vampire's heart. "Save me a seat."

Bethany anxiously glanced up and, seeing the familiar shape of the Van Home Technologies Building ahead, breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn't a large building, only four stories in height, but it was home—more so than her apartment, lately. She'd worked there as a research biochemist for almost five years and enjoyed what she did. There was an inherent order to doing research that appealed to her. She liked her life neat, organized and, most important, uneventful.

She reached the door of the building and swiped her ID tag. The doors immediately opened and she crossed the lobby to the security desk, her footsteps ringing loudly in the silence. Bethany found it curious that the guard was not at his post, but assumed he was making his rounds. She signed the after-hours register, noticing her assistant's signature on the line above, and couldn't help worrying what havoc Stuart was wreaking in her absence. The thought sent her hurrying for the elevators.

Stepping inside, she pushed the button to the fourth floor and as the elevator began its ascent, she thought about her latest project. It had her baffled, but she was determined to rise to the challenge, even if it meant running a battery of timed tests that dragged her into the lab at all hours of the night.

She'd questioned Miles Van Home about who had commissioned the project to analyze the plant extract, but he'd remained stubbornly closemouthed. It wasn't that she expected the CEO to divulge that information to just anyone, but she was not only the researcher in charge of the project, she was his…
fiancee
.

The word rolled around awkwardly in her mind, and she tried to view the very recent change in their status from a strictly analytical perspective. She had been dating Miles for almost a year now, and although she'd considered it unwise to date the boss, he had been charmingly persistent.

Miles was quite a bit older than she, and their physical relationship was more PG-13 than R, but that seemed to suit them both. They never mixed business with their personal lives, and she thought it unlikely that she'd find anyone else as supportive of her research and the crazy work schedule she kept. Add to the equation Miles's wealth and status, and the end result was that she could do a whole lot worse.

She'd made the right decision in accepting his proposal, she told herself, running her thumb over the band of the two-carat, emerald-cut diamond solitaire perched on her ring finger. All in all, theirs was the perfect relationship. So when he'd suggested they get married, why had she hesitated?

A soft voice whispered the answer in the back of her head, and she silently scoffed at herself.
Love? Please
. She was far too realistic to believe in that fairy tale. A score of disastrous relationships before Miles flickered through her mind. No, this was a good practical match.

As the elevator stopped on the fourth floor, Bethany forced herself to mentally switch gears and glanced at her watch.
Damn
. She was running late, and knowing Stuart, he'd started without her. She wondered, not for the first time, if she should talk to Miles about the man. Maybe if Miles understood just how incompetent Stuart was, he'd… he'd what? Fire Stuart? Bethany sighed. She didn't want to be responsible for someone losing their job.

Resigned to working with the man for now, she opened the door to her office and saw the light on in the lab beyond—Stuart hard at work, no doubt. Yeah, that was a laugh.
Please don't let him have started the next phase of the experiment
, she silently prayed.

She stashed her purse in her desk drawer, grabbed her lab coat off the nearby rack and, shrugging into it, hurried through the connecting doorway.

"Stuart—?" She came to an abrupt halt and felt her heart lurch. Her lab resembled the aftermath of a tornado.

Beakers lay shattered about the room; reagents ran across countertops and dripped on the floor where puddles already formed. Stands that had held flasks and tubing in place now lay strewn about in broken pieces. Everything was ruined—all of her hard work, flushed down the proverbial toilet.

And Stuart was conspicuously absent.

She felt anger burning inside and fought to control it. Had he done this? There was no question that the man hated her. He'd practically accused her of sleeping her way to the department manager position. Maybe this destruction was yet another childish act of professional jealousy. Well, this time, he'd gone too far.

Hurrying back into her office, she grabbed the phone and called the front desk. There was no answer and she hung up, her irritation growing to include the absent guard as she next punched in Miles's cell number. He picked up on the second ring, but she didn't give him time to say a word, launching immediately into her tirade.

"Everything is ruined, absolutely ruined. I'm going to have to start all over again. I can't believe he'd do such a thing—"

"Who?"

"Stuart! He destroyed everything. All of my work on this project is now strewn across the floor. I still have my notes, of course, but really! Is this his idea of working together? How could he—?"

"Bethany!" Miles's raised voice stemmed the flow of angry words. "Slow down and tell me what's going on. Are you all right?"

She took a deep breath, trying to bring herself under control and then, speaking more slowly, told him what she'd found.

"Okay," he said when she finished. "I'm on my way. Don't touch anything. I'll be there shortly, and then we'll decide if we need to call the authorities or not. If Stuart is responsible, I'll deal with him. Just in case he's still around, though, I'd feel better if you called Frank to come wait with you."

She felt another stab of annoyance at the mention of the missing guard. "I tried. He's not at his desk."

"He's probably making his rounds. Go down to the lobby and see if he's back, but first call me back on your cell phone. I want to be in touch with you the entire time."

Bethany hung up, grabbed her cell phone from her purse, and headed for the elevator. She knew the phone wouldn't work once the doors closed, so she waited until after she reached the ground floor to place the call. Though she'd grown accustomed to the silence of the office after hours, now the quiet took on an ominous quality.

"Okay, I'm downstairs," she told Miles when he answered. She crossed to the front desk and looked around. "Frank's still not here. Let me check the monitors to see if I can find out where he is."

She walked behind the desk and sat in the chair, studying the images from the various security cameras throughout the building. "No, I don't—wait, I think I see something." She studied the controls, finding the ones that would change the angle and zoom of the lens. Adjusting the camera's view, she took a closer look. "Oh, God."

"Bethany, what is it?"

"I found Frank."

"Good. Tell him to get his ass back to the desk where it belongs."

"I can't. He's dead."

Dirk hauled the body of the dead vampire from the back of his SUV and slung it over his shoulder. He didn't have to carry it far, only about ten yards to the "dump" pile. He threw it on top of the bodies already there and then studied the sight. Six vampire-corpses—and he'd
been responsible for bringing in four of them. The numbers bothered him because he knew that tomorrow, there'd be more. It almost seemed like lately, Harris and Patterson, the two Primes, had been engaging in some orgiastic feed-fest.

Dirk gritted his teeth and searched the pockets of the latest victim, looking for some form of ED to hand over to Detective Boehler. Their ally in the police force was getting good at making up stories to cover the inexplicable deaths that seemed to be growing in number.

Dirk's hand closed around the vampire's wallet and pulled it out. In with the credit cards and driver's license was a photo of the man beside an attractive young woman and a little girl. Closing the wallet, he shoved it into the pocket of his duster and glanced toward the back of the mansion he called home. The admiral would need to know so that another anonymous donation could be made to a grieving family.

With one final task remaining, Dirk returned to the SUV and retrieved the rolled blanket in the backseat. He took it out, holding it carefully, and placed his hand against one end. There was a brief hum of energy and then a warm pommel hit the palm of his hand. He wrapped his fingers around it, and pulled the long, gleaming sword from the scabbard inside the blanket. He placed the blanket and scabbard back in the car and held the sword up, admiring how the blade glinted in the moonlight. It was the Death Rider sword, used to slay vampires, and only a changeling—half vampire, half human—could wield it and command its full power. There were only two changelings in the entire D.C. area, hell, in the entire United States. Dirk was one of them. As he held it, the pommel grew warm in his hand and the ruby eyes of the vampire's head, etched in the side gleamed a bright red.

He went to stand before the pile of bodies and not for the first time, wondered what would happen if he pulled the dagger out of a vampire's heart. Would the body rise again? His cell phone picked that moment to start buzzing, and he glanced at the caller ID before answering it. "Yes, Admiral?"

"John Boehler called. There's been another killing. He thought we'd want to take a look. I saw you drive by the house—are you almost done?"

"Yeah. I'll be right there." Dirk put away the phone and stared at the sight before him. Tomorrow, the sun would turn the pile of corpses into a stone mass that the first stiff wind would then reduce to dust. Only one last task to perform.

Raising the sword high, he brought it down in one swift, smooth stroke. There was no blood as the head hit the ground with the muted thud that Dirk had grown accustomed to. With a grim countenance, he tossed the head back on the pile and cleaned the blade of his sword on the dead man's clothes.