The Last True Vampire (5 page)

“I swear, Mikhail, if you take another step, I’ll stake you myself.”

A familiar voice caused Michael to halt and he cursed under his breath. The only dhampir who could stop him in his tracks just so happened to be in this club. Coincidence? Not a chance.

“Ronan.” Michael turned, his teeth clenched to keep him from snapping his jaws around the other male’s throat, and faced the fair-haired dhampir. “Your timing is—”

“Perfect?” Ronan ventured with a cocky grin.

“Unfortunate.” Bodies pressed in as every dhampir in the club converged on him.
Very
unfortunate.

*   *   *

Claire burst through the doors of the club gasping for breath. She could feel him close behind, pursuing her like a beast on the hunt. She gripped the Patek tight in her fist as she kicked off the too-tight stilettos and raced down the sidewalk, ducking into the nearest alley. Thoughts of tetanus, or worse, threatened to send her back for her shoes, but she pushed the fear of cutting her feet and contracting something nasty to the back of her mind. She had to get the hell out of there.
Now.
Before he caught up to her. The last and most important rule of the hustle: Get while the gettin’s good.

Truth be told, it wasn’t the fear of being caught that had Claire’s heart thundering and her breath racing. She’d never let things get so out of hand with a mark before. Especially one as shady as Michael. There was more to him than met the eye and she should have been wary, but instead, she threw herself at him like some kind of sex-starved coed looking for a Saturday-night hookup. Classy.

Despite the prize she tucked into her pocket for safekeeping, she didn’t feel any sense of accomplishment. Instead, shame flushed her cheeks at the memory of his kisses, the sting of his teeth at her throat, and the soft touch of his skilled fingers as he drove her crazy with want. She ran out on him not because she had the watch and wanted to make a speedy getaway but rather because she was afraid that she’d shuck her pants right there in the middle of the club and let him do wicked things to her whether they had an audience or not. The truth hit her like a baseball bat to the forehead as she dashed across Sunset toward Clark and another back alley.

No man had ever given her an orgasm like that, and she and Michael had barely revved their engines. She could only imagine what he could have accomplished given a little privacy and an hour or three of her time. And what the hell kind of magic had he worked on her throat, anyway? Waves of desire pulsed low in her stomach at the recollection. The not-so-gentle bite followed up with a deep suction that sent a shock of searing heat through her bloodstream. She’d been on the edge of orgasm just from that contact. Her body literally
ached
for him by the time he finally went to work on her zipper.

Claire reached down to the front of her jeans and felt the rip he’d made below the seam. Talk about anxious to get into a girl’s pants. He’d torn the heavy denim as if it were tissue paper. He had to have superstrength to accomplish the feat. Then again, she’d seen people do some pretty inhuman shit while they were high.

Using side streets, she backtracked until she was a few blocks down from Diablo and on Sunset once again. Confident she’d managed to shake her pursuer, Claire slowed her pace, giving her tired, pavement-scraped feet a rest until she could hail a cab. “Four Twenty South Westlake,” she said to the driver.

“That’s out of my way.” The cabbie sounded more than a little put out.

No way was Claire going to hop two or three cabs with bare feet to get home. “I’ll make it worth your while. Promise.”

He grumbled under his breath but put the car in gear and pulled out into traffic. Money. The timeless motivator. Claire let her head fall back against the seat and her eyes drifted shut. A silver and turquoise blue stare haunted her thoughts, and his voice raw with emotion when he said, “We’re not done here. You’ve had your pleasure; now give me mine.”

That sort of entitled male bullshit was usually the thing that made Claire run in the opposite direction. Right after she drove her knee into the guy’s nuts. But the way Michael said it … the words were more of a plea than an angry demand. She’d stolen the guy’s watch and left him with a serious case of blue balls. Was she the world’s biggest asshole or what?

Claire spent the entire thirty-minute cab ride replaying the night’s events in her mind. There was something about Michael—other than the fact that he’d lied about his name—that spoke to a hidden part of her. As though she’d known him for a lifetime. Or, rather, was meant to know him for a lifetime.

Wow. Way to rock the hopeless romantic vibe
.
What a loser.
Life wasn’t all rose petals and rainbows. Claire had firsthand proof of that. And besides, the guy had been high on something and that violated Claire’s number one most important dating rule: No drugs. Ever.

The cab pulled up to her building and she dug the wad of bills from her pocket. “That’ll be seventy bucks,” the cabbie said with a sneer.

Seventy dollars? What a crock. She knew for a fact that he shouldn’t have charged her more than forty-five. But the jerk had turned off the meter when they pulled out onto Sunset so she couldn’t call him on his miscalculation. She’d been more than willing to give the guy a generous tip—more than the seventy he asked for—for going out of his way to take her home. But instead of trusting her to do as she promised, he’d chosen to rip her off. Typical L.A. bullshit.

“Here.” She gave him two twenties and a ten and opened the door.

“What the hell?” he barked. “I thought you said you’d make it worth my while.”

“You made it more than worth it,” she said as she climbed out of the car. “It’s not my fault you calculated your own tip.”

She closed the door on the string of profanity he was throwing her way. What a jerk. Without a look back, she took off at a slow jog toward her building. The place was only a notch above condemned and it still cost her nine hundred dollars a month in rent. If she could manage to pick up a double shift or two at the diner, she’d be elevated to “just scraping by” status. And it was a total downer to admit that she aspired to that lowly fiscal existence. Scraping by was still way better than anything she’d had so far in her twenty-four years of life.

Once inside the building, Claire made her way up the stairs to the second story. She paused at unit 216 and pulled the rest of the money and the watch from her pocket. Midnight. Probably too late to knock.

“Hi, Claire!” a soft ten-year-old voice said as the door opened. “I thought I heard someone out in the hall.”

Claire gave her young neighbor an apologetic smile. Ever since they day they’d moved in, something about the girl had tickled her instincts. Like an itch that she couldn’t quite reach. Maybe it was simply the kinship of their similar childhoods. Either way, it had instantly endeared her to Claire. “Hi, Vanessa. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No,” she said. “Mom’s having a bad night, so I was up making her some soup.”

Bad night. Right.
Vanessa’s mom, Carlene, was addicted to oxy and paid about as much attention to Vanessa as she did to their scrawny, malnourished cat. Carlene had sold her daughter’s bike last month to fund her fix and Claire was pretty sure that Vanessa didn’t have anything but ramen noodles in the house. Why was it so hard for some people to love and take care of their kids? “I wanted to drop off a little something for you.” Claire motioned for Vanessa to come out into the hall, extended her hand, and put a wad of bills in the girl’s palm. “Go out tomorrow and buy some food. And get a new outfit for school and some notebooks and pencils, okay? Tina will help you if go down to the thrift store at the end of the block. You don’t want to start a new year without at least one pretty new dress.”

“I know Tina. I play with her new puppy sometimes. But … I can’t take this,” Vanessa said, her eyes wide. “Mom would—”

“Your mom doesn’t need to know,” Claire interrupted. If Carlene found out about the money she’d spend it on pills before you could say “back to school sale.” “Think of it as an early birthday present.”

Vanessa’s mouth puckered. “My birthday isn’t until February.”

“An early Christmas present, then. Take the money and hide it somewhere, okay? Don’t tell anyone else about it. Just go out tomorrow and buy some stuff.”

“Okay,” Vanessa said reluctantly.

“Promise me.”

Vanessa gave her a sheepish smile. “I promise.”

“All right. Now get to bed. It’s way past your bedtime.” Claire gave Vanessa a peck on the cheek and sent her back inside.

A hundred bucks wasn’t enough to buy Vanessa much, but it was a start and maybe if Claire picked up that second shift she could do a little more. God knew the kid needed every bit of help she could get. She turned Michael’s watch in her hand and examined the intricate detail of the gears visible through the crystal face. It had to be worth fifty grand, and if she was lucky she could fence it for five or six thousand.

Claire continued down the hall and stuck a key into the lock of unit 219. Being a witness to Vanessa’s childhood was too much like reliving her own. Maybe if she’d lived close to a concerned neighbor who slipped her a twenty now and then she wouldn’t have resorted to hustling for cash. And maybe, just maybe, if her mom had been marginally more responsible and behaved like an actual parent who, you know, passed a few values on to her kid Claire wouldn’t have given herself over to her passions and let a stranger do the things Michael had done to her tonight.

Although, as she turned on the light in her beat-up kitchen and rifled through the thirty-year-old fridge for the leftovers she’d brought home from her shift last night, she was struck with the thought that even if she’d grown up to be an honest, forthright girl with plenty of cash in her pocket she still would have given herself to Michael tonight.

Who in the hell was this man who made her feel things she didn’t know she could feel? And how could she find him again?

CHAPTER

4

“If you’re looking for a distraction, Ronan, go find one in the city. Otherwise, quit staring at me. You’re making me feel like a damned bug under a microscope.”

Ronan had been with Michael from the beginning. The beginning of his solitary existence, anyway. He had been starved, weak, his body emaciated after a century trapped underground, and without Ronan’s help in escaping Kiev under the nose of the Sortiari Michael wouldn’t be standing here now. Of course, also thanks to Ronan, he wouldn’t have lost the female tonight. Fate certainly had a way of balancing the scales.

Michael paced the confines of his living room. Sunrise was still a couple of hours off, but already the walls felt as though they were closing in around him. It didn’t help that Ronan’s gaze followed Michael back and forth, back and forth, like a child watching a caged tiger in a zoo.

“I can’t help it,” Ronan replied. He crossed to the bar at the far end of the room and poured himself a finger of scotch. “I mean, have you looked at yourself, Mikhail? You’re…”

“Agitated.” Michael massaged his naked left wrist, just now noticing that he no longer wore the Patek. On top of losing the female, he’d lost a sixty-five-thousand-dollar watch.
Lovely.

“I was going to say ‘a walking miracle.’ How did this happen? And where the hell is the female who donated her vein, because I want to shake her hand. Maybe even kiss her. Didn’t I tell you that feeding from humans wasn’t doing you a damned bit of good? A little dhampir blood was all you needed.”

Michael shot Ronan a glare as a predatory growl gathered in his chest.

“Someone’s wound a little tightly tonight,” Ronan remarked before he tossed back the drink. He poured another and crossed the room to resume his vigil in one of the brown leather wing chairs. “I already apologized for stopping you. What more do you want?”

The moment Ronan had accosted Michael, the dhampirs in the club had converged on him in an anxious crowd. All of them eager for more of the strength he’d bestowed on them. Like drought-stricken land after a hard rain they’d nourished themselves on the sudden burst of power, and both a searing guilt and sorrow tore through him for keeping them all in a state of near starvation for so long. Tender emotions had no impact on the untethered. And until his soul had been returned to him tonight he’d not been bothered by such crippling emotions. He felt it all now, though. Every painful one. Under their assault, the dhampirs had brought Michael to his knees, and the massive draw of energy from his stores made it nearly impossible for him to stand on his own two feet. If not for Ronan, Michael would still be there, beneath the press of eager bodies. It was the only reason he hadn’t beaten the male bloody for waylaying him.

“You can hardly blame me for my enthusiasm. Or my curiosity. I feel fucking fantastic. And if I feel this good, then you must be positively—”

“Enraged beyond belief.”

“Stop doing that,” Ronan complained, this time sipping from the highball glass. “You feel alive. Invigorated. Like you could conquer the world and defeat your enemies with a single blow. I
know
how you feel, Mikhail,” he said, low. “And it is
not
enraged.”

Ronan was an eager fool.

Michael continued to pace, his frustration mounting with each carefully placed step. Already the distance between him and the human was too great to track her, and with the rising sun he risked the chance that the distance would grow greater still. Ronan’s elation would be short-lived once he discovered the female—and the source of Michael’s resurging power—had disappeared into the night thanks to his untimely interruption.

A tethering with a human was unheard of. Would Ronan even believe it if he told him? Michael wasn’t sure he believed it himself. “Gone,” he said, interrupting his own train of thought this time. “The female is gone.”

Ronan gave an unconcerned shrug. “How hard can a dhampir female be to track once you’ve shared blood? Besides, maybe you spooked her with your”—Ronan waved his hand up and down—“dark prince vibe. Once she calms down, she’ll come sprinting back to you.”