Runaway Vampire (20 page)

“Aside from that though,” he added, “If the nanos put you together, you were meant for each other.” When Mary looked dubious, he said, “I know, I know . . . you have not known each other long, but trust me, you will suit each other beautifully. The nanos are never wrong. Dante is your happy ever after.”

Mary merely nodded, unsure how she felt about what Francis said. On the one hand, she'd like to believe in happy ever after, but had learned through her own marriage and the people she'd counseled over the years since getting her doctorate, that happy ever after really didn't exist . . . at least, not without work. Mary had been happy the last two thirds of her marriage, but it had been after years of misery and it had taken a choice and a lot of hard work. Even then it hadn't been perfect. No one was perfect.

Francis patted her hand and said, “You shall see.”

Mary was saved from having to answer by the sudden ringing of a phone. Turning toward the sound, she watched Russell take a cell phone out of his pocket. He looked at the caller ID on the face, and then tapped it and pressed it to his ear.

“Lucian,” he said cordially, straightening from the window ledge and moving to the door.

Mary grimaced at the name.

“He'll want to know if you are awake yet and that the turn went well,” Francis said quietly as Russell slipped out of the room.

Mary nodded and then movement caught her attention, and she glanced to the bed to see that Dante was sitting up. The phone must have woken him, she realized, and smiled as she watched him wipe sleep from his eyes.

“Sleeping Beauty is awake,” Francis sang out. Getting up and smiling at Mary, he said, “I shall go wait outside with Russell while the Hulk here dresses and then we will take you for breakfast. I know you are starved.” His gaze slid over her as she stood up and he added, “Then we will take you shopping.”

“Shopping?” she asked, reluctantly tearing her gaze from Dante's naked chest to peer at him uncertainly.

“We need to buy you clothes,” he decided and then pointed out apologetically, “Darling, you are dressed like an old woman.”

“I
am
an old woman,” she said with amusement.

“Yes, but you look like Barbie. We should dress you accordingly.” He grinned suddenly. “It will be such fun.”

Mary smiled faintly, thinking it might very well have been fun. Unfortunately, she didn't have her purse, and therefore didn't have money until she found a bank. Actually, she realized with sudden concern, even then she'd have a problem, since she had no way to prove
who she was so that she could gain access to her accounts. She had no ID. Not that that would help since she no longer looked like the sixty-two-year-old woman she was.

“Stop fretting,” Francis said lightly, heading for the door. “The council will take care of everything.”

“The council?” Mary murmured with confusion, but Francis had already slipped out the door and was closing it behind him.

“The council is basically our governmental body,” Dante explained, his deep rumble sounding directly behind her.

Mary turned sharply and he immediately drew her into his arms.

“Good morning,” he growled just before his lips covered hers.

Mary sighed into his mouth and slid her arms around him as they kissed. But when he began to back toward the bed, pulling her with him, she broke the kiss and dug her heels in to stop him. “Francis and Russell are outside.”

“Good. They can stay there,” Dante muttered, his mouth moving to nuzzle her neck.

“They're taking us to breakfast,” she breathed, tilting her head to give him better access despite her hunger.

Dante paused, then sighed and slowly straightened. “Food.”

Mary chuckled at his expression. It looked to her like he was weighing his different hungers in his mind. Food or her? She helped him out by saying, “I'm hungry.”

“So am I,” he admitted, and then muddied the water
by grinding against her so that she could feel the morning erection he was sporting.

Mary moaned, and then pushed herself away from him. “Food first.”

“You are a hard woman, Mary Winslow,” he complained, turning to move back to the bed to grab up his jeans.

“I'm not the one who's hard,” she said on a laugh and headed for the door.

“Sassy wench,” he said with affection as she slipped from the room.

“D
id you have any trouble replacing the mattress?”

Mary glanced up from the bacon and eggs on her plate at that question from Dante and followed his gaze to Russell as the man shook his head. They were in a mom and pop restaurant up the road from the hotel. The décor wasn't much to look at, but Francis had assured her the food was extremely good when she'd joined him and Russell in the hall back at the hotel. He'd then led her to the room next door to the one she'd woken in, and made her feed on three bags of blood in a row while they waited for Dante to dress.

Mary hadn't thought she'd been feeling that kind of hunger at the time, but Francis had insisted it was better to be safe than sorry, especially since they were going out among mortals, and the moment he'd handed her one of the bags, her canines had dropped down into
fangs. So Mary had gone through the three bags he'd handed her and even asked for a fourth when those were gone. As he'd said, better safe than sorry. The last thing Mary wanted was to find herself attacking some poor waitress or store clerk on her first outing as an immortal.

“The store manager was very accommodating,” Russell said now, drawing her attention back to the conversation. “She arranged to have the new mattress delivered right away and even had her deliverymen take away the old one.”

“Yes, and we did not even have to use mind control to get her to do that,” Francis said, then added with amusement, “After Russell gave her one of his sexy smiles, she was smitten. I think she would have dragged the mattress out herself to please him if she had not been able to get ahold of her moving men.”

Russell just shook his head and said, “We did have to use a little mind control with the movers. They were a bit alarmed when they saw the blood on the hotel mattress.”

Dante grunted and nodded as he took a bite of his toast, apparently not surprised. Once he'd chewed and swallowed, he said, “Thank you for handling it.”

“It was no problem,” Russell assured him, and then cast Francis a teasing look and said, “Francis likes to shop.”

“Shopping for mattresses is not my idea of the fun kind of shopping,” Francis said with a sniff, then smiled at Mary and added, “Now clothes shopping for
you
, though? That
will
be fun.”

“Clothes shopping?” Dante asked slowly.

Mary smiled with amusement at his expression. He looked as pleased at the prospect as she would at the idea of visiting the dentist.

“Yes, clothes shopping,” Francis said with exasperation. “Just look at her, Dante. Mary
needs
clothes.”

Dante didn't look convinced. Mary wasn't surprised. Joe had always hated going clothes shopping too. Taking pity on him, Mary said, “Dante doesn't have to come with us. He could head back to the hotel and get some more sleep while we shop.”

“No,” Dante said at once. “I will come with you.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, thinking it would probably actually be nicer for her if he wasn't there, looking miserable and bored.

But Dante nodded firmly. “I will accompany you.”

“Mary, honey,” Francis said with amusement. “Now that he has found you, Dante probably will not let you out of his sight for . . . oh . . . a good century or so. We will just have to deal with it. Although,” he added, turning to Dante. “Your coming with us means I will finally get the chance to tweak your wardrobe a bit.”

“Tweak my wardrobe?” Dante asked, stiffening, and then he shook his head. “My wardrobe is fine.”

“Everything you own is black,” Francis said at once with a shudder that showed his opinion of that. “We need to change you up from faux funeral to fashion fabulous.”

Dante scowled at the suggestion. “No. If I let you dress me, I would end up looking like one of the Village People.”

Mary blinked at the comment, surprised at the refer
ence to a band that had been around in the seventies. It reminded her that while he looked too young to know the band, he wasn't.

“You wound me,” Francis said with irritation. “I have better taste than that.”

“You are wearing pink,” Dante pointed out and Mary had to bite her lip to keep from laughing at the comment. It wasn't that long ago Dante had been wearing her pink joggers and flowered T-shirt.

“That comment just shows how much of a Neanderthal you are,” Francis assured Dante. “This is salmon and—” Pausing abruptly, he turned to stare at Mary wide-eyed. “Really? Pink joggers and a flowered—Oh, my, those did not fit him well at all, did they?”

Mary's eyes widened incredulously, and she found herself covering her forehead with her hands as she realized he was plucking the memory and image right out of her mind.

“That will not help,” Francis informed her, and then added apologetically, “But I shall endeavor not to see and hear the things you are projecting.”

Mary lowered her hands slowly, her eyes narrowing. “The
things
I am projecting?” she asked. “Plural?”

He nodded, his expression almost pitying, and Mary's eyes widened.

“What kinds of things?” she asked with alarm.

“Oh, you know,” he muttered, suddenly seeming fascinated with the food on his plate. Picking up the end of a piece of bacon, he turned it back and forth on the plate from one side to the other. “Things you have seen . . . and done . . . and stuff.”

When Mary then glanced to Dante, he grimaced and gave a slight, almost apologetic nod.

“You are not the only one. Dante is projecting too,” Francis said reassuringly as if that should make her feel better. “Like we said, it is a new-life-mate and new-turn thing. It will pass eventually.”

Mary stared at him with dismay. If she was running around projecting images of her memories, things she'd seen, and the
stuff
she'd done . . . Good Lord! She couldn't even look at Dante without thinking of him naked or all the things he'd done to her and they'd done together. That meant that, basically, her mind must be projecting what amounted to homemade porn.

“Pretty much,” Francis agreed as if she'd spoken her thoughts aloud. “But as I said, it will pass eventually.”

“How long is eventually?” Mary asked at once.

Francis shrugged helplessly. “It varies with each couple. And how it ends does too. For some it stops abruptly, and for others it just slowly fades over time, like a radio being slowly turned down.”

“How long though?” Mary insisted.

Francis glanced to Russell. “How long would you say it was for us?”

Russell shrugged. “A year and a half, maybe closer to two.”

“Years?” Mary breathed with dismay.

“I have heard of couples that were only projecting for one year though,” Francis reassured her. Biting his lip, he then added, “Of course, I have also heard of couples that projected for as much as four years or more too.”

“Years?” she repeated with horror.

Francis nodded, his expression sympathetic. “I suspect that is part of the reason new life mates tend to spend the first year or so mostly at home.”

“That and the fact they cannot drag themselves out of bed long enough to actually do much else,” Russell said with amusement.

“That too,” Francis agreed.

Mary stared at them blankly for a minute, and then stood up abruptly, muttering, “I need to visit the ladies' room.”

She didn't wait for anyone to comment, but moved quickly through the tables to get to the hall with the sign reading
WASHROOMS
. It was a long hall and while she expected the bathrooms to be at the front, they weren't. She passed a door with a sign that read
EMPLOYEES ONLY
, and then another that had a small window in it that looked into the restaurant's large kitchen. Then there was a long stretch of wall before she reached a door with a male symbol on it. The women's bathroom was the next door, the last one before the hallway ended at an emergency exit.

Sighing, she pushed her way inside the ladies' room.

The tiled room had three stalls, all presently empty, she noted with relief. It also had a counter with two sinks in it and a mirror over the sinks. Mary immediately moved to the sink and turned the cold tap on, then automatically glanced up and blinked in surprise at the young woman peering out of the mirror at her. She stared at her reflection for a moment, and then
shook her head. Her reflection did the same and Mary lowered her head, wondering how long it would take for her to get used to this new her.

Probably about as long as she would be projecting her thoughts to everyone, Mary thought grimly, and cupped her hands to catch some of the cold water splashing out of the tap. She then splashed it on her face.

It was a bit alarming to think that every little thought she had was being broadcast to any and every immortal around her. But it was positively humiliating to think that every time she glanced at Dante and thought about . . . well, anything, someone would be picking up on it.

Sighing, Mary turned off the tap and straightened to look at herself again, ignoring the water that slid from her face to run down her neck in rivulets before it was absorbed into the collar of her T-shirt.

“You can do this,” she told herself solemnly. “You may look like Barbie, as Francis put it, but you are a beautiful, intelligent and mature woman. We are all grown-ups. They've been through this themselves and obviously been around others who went through this. Stop acting like a shrinking virgin and deal . . . and maybe try not to think so much about Dante naked,” Mary tacked on with a grimace, and then added, “And sex with Dante.”

Yeah, that would work, she thought dryly, and turned the tap back on. Just saying the words had brought a tsunami of memories and images to her mind. Every one of them X rated. Mary splashed her face twice this time, then stayed bent over the sink and reached out
to grab paper towels from the paper towel dispenser. Her top was already a mess with a hole in the side and a couple stains that laundering hadn't removed. She didn't need to add to its disheveled state, so she quickly dried her face before straightening this time.

“Think of something else,” Mary instructed herself firmly. “That article, the ‘Profile of Cognitive Aging,' that you read last week, was interesting. Think of that.”

Mary paused for a minute and focused on the article she'd read in one of the medical journals she still got. Once she was satisfied that her thoughts were purely boring and safe and miles away from anything to do with sex or Dante, she nodded to her reflection and turned to leave the bathroom.

There was a man in the hall when she stepped into it. He was leaning against the wall outside the men's room. She automatically offered a polite smile as moved toward him, but then paused as he raised his hand and she heard a sharp hiss-thump sound and felt something punch her in the chest. Glancing down with confusion, she stared at the red tipped dart protruding from her shirt just above her breast. Instinct made her reach for it, but before her hand could connect, she noticed that the floor was leaping up to meet her.

M
ary had barely left the table when Francis pulled a notepad out of his pocket and began writing down items.

Dante immediately leaned toward him and began to
read the list aloud, “Toothbrush, men's and women's razors, panties?” Pausing, he straightened and asked, “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I am doing?” Francis asked dryly. “I am making a shopping list.”

“Oh,” Dante murmured, and asked, “For Mary and me?”

“For Mary and
I
,” he corrected. “You said you did not want help shopping.”

“Why do you have a man's razor on there then?” Dante asked. “I saw your shaving kit in the bathroom.”

“Mary thought it was yours and used the razor,” he explained. “And then she broke it to slice up her T-shirt. She also used my toothbrush thinking it was yours.”

“Oh. Sorry,” he muttered.

Francis shrugged. “It is fine. I am not afraid of getting cooties or anything. I just thought it would be nice to get her a toothbrush of her own, as well as her own razors and such.” He paused briefly and then began to write again, muttering, “A hairbrush too.”

“Dante,” Russell said, drawing his attention away from the dark-haired man busily scrawling on his notepad. Once he had Dante's attention, he suggested, “Now that the worry of Mary's turn is out of the way, perhaps we should discuss ways we can set up another trap for the kidnappers.”

Dante nodded slowly, and then frowned and added, “If they are still around and have not given up.”

“They are still around,” Russell assured him.

Dante stiffened at this news and glanced worriedly toward the hall Mary had disappeared down.

“Relax. I kept an eye out for them when we left the hotel for here, and there was no sign of them. However, there was a dark van following Francis and me when we went to the furniture store and back. They left when the delivery truck pulled up, but I suspect they will pop up again, and we have to decide how to deal with them.”

“Yes,” Dante agreed, but glanced toward the hall to the bathrooms again and muttered, “Mary is taking a long time.”

Francis glanced up from his list at that comment and said, “Relax. I am sure she is fine. She was just embarrassed and wanted some time alone to compose herself.”

“Hmm.” Dante scowled at him. “That is your fault. You are the one who told her about that projecting business.”

“What? I should have left her ignorant?” Francis asked dryly. “Knowledge is power, my friend. She needed to know.”

“Yes, but—” Dante paused and sat back in his seat as their waitress rushed to the table.

“Um . . . hi,” she greeted them, her expression flustered, almost panicked. “Er . . . I was out having a cigarette and I think—I mean I saw—That lady who came in with you guys? I think she's in trouble. Some guy just carried her out the back door of the restaurant and put her in a van. She was unconscious.”