The Last True Vampire (8 page)

The bell above the glass door chimed in protest with the priest’s passing and Claire released a shuddering breath as she slumped against the counter. She leaned over his cup, noting that he hadn’t taken a single sip. The five remained on the counter, untouched. Claire didn’t want it. Didn’t want anything to do with him.

“What was that all about?” Lance asked from the kitchen.

“Maybe he just really loves being a priest?” Claire suggested with a nervous laugh. “We get some interesting people in here, Lance.”

“You said it. Let’s just hope he doesn’t come in again.”

Somehow, Claire doubted tonight would be her last encounter with the priest.

*   *   *

“Three nights,” Michael growled. His agitation grew by the hour, his inability to find her a burr that had worked its way under his skin. “
Nothing
.”

“L.A. is a big city, Mikhail.” Always the voice of reason, Ronan’s optimism wasn’t so easily squashed. “If you’d let me call in additional help, our chances of finding her would be that much better.”

“No.” Michael couldn’t afford for anyone else to know about her yet. He trusted Ronan with his life, and yet he was one person too many. Michael had nothing of her but a first name—Amy—and her blood in his veins. That alone should have been enough to find her. But since she was human, tracking her wasn’t as easy as he’d hoped.

“You’re the boss,” Ronan said with a sigh. “But we are merely two bodies, Mikhail. There is only so much ground we can cover in one night.”

True.
They’d been operating on the assumption that Amy lived somewhere near the nightclub. But after the first night Michael couldn’t find even a trace of her scent. He didn’t feel her presence at all. Which meant she didn’t live anywhere near the club district, and that left a vast city for him and Ronan to search. They might as well be looking for a single snowflake amidst a blizzard.

Michael estimated that if she was within a twenty-mile radius he’d be able to sense her. The metropolitan area alone boasted almost five thousand square miles. At this rate, her blood would cycle through his system before he could find her.
Gods damn it
. Would he have to suffer feeling the presence of her soul but never see her again? “We’ve wasted precious time.” On that Michael could agree. “We’ll start in the Valley and work our way back.”

Ronan settled back into his chair and regarded the liquid swirling in his glass. “It’s as good a place as any to resume the search.” He cast a sidelong glance at Michael and cleared his throat nervously. “I think that you should feed.” A low growl rumbled in Michael’s chest and Ronan held a hand up as though to calm him. “Your strength is flagging, Mikhail. I do not suggest this lightly.”

“I will not feed again until I find her.” Stubborn? Perhaps. But he’d made a decision from that first taste. He’d never feed from another. If he starved himself, so be it.

“What of me, then? What of the others? Do we not deserve to be nourished?”

Dhampirs needed blood much less frequently than vampires. Four times a year. Dhampirs’ hearts beat every day, not only when they drank. Their bodies functioned, metabolized food. The drinking of blood wasn’t a necessity. Especially when they could draw on Michael’s own stores of power for nourishment. “Have a cheeseburger.”

“You’re a cranky bastard. You know that?”

Michael cocked a brow. “Am I?”

“Yes. You are. And you know what I mean, Mikhail, so don’t think you can offer me up a Big Mac and assume that I’ll be satisfied.”

The onslaught of emotions Michael had experienced over the course of the past few days had begun to take its toll. He hadn’t meant to be so callous. Neither Ronan nor any of the dhampirs deserved his disdain. But nothing short of finding his mate would smooth Michael’s sharp edge. “Tell me in truth, Ronan. Are you concerned that I find the female for my own well-being or for yours? I know what you expect of me should we find her.”

Ronan’s face screwed up into a grimace. “That hurts me, Mikhail. After all we’ve been through?”

Ronan’s words tempered Michael’s ire. He fixed Ronan with a solemn expression. “Is it not what you desire?”

Ronan let out a heavy sigh. “Of course it is. I’ve only asked you for this favor for decades. And now that you have the means to give it to me, why shouldn’t I want it?”

Why indeed? It was Ronan’s birthright, after all. He had a warrior’s heart and strength. Surely he would endure the transition with little difficulty. Michael knew from experience what it was, to feel so unfinished. Incomplete. And only one creature on the face of the earth could give him the gift that would turn him into what he was born to be.

A vampire.

It was a gift of strength that only the worthy received. The transition—even for a dhampir—was brutal. Violent. And the sacrifice—that of one’s own soul—wasn’t something to be considered lightly. Knowing that it could be decades, millennia, before he found the female who would tether him didn’t seem to matter to Ronan. Neither did the fact that none of the dhampirs Michael had attempted to turn over the past century had survived the process. But things were different now. If Michael could find his mate and sustain his strength, he was certain Ronan would survive. He was too damned stubborn to die. If anything, he would survive the change just to prove a point. Michael appreciated the male’s tenacity. He was more than worthy.

“If we find her,” Michael said, “I will turn you. I give you my word.”

“
When,
” Ronan stressed. “When we find her.”

In addition to having tenacity, Ronan was an optimistic fool. “
When
we find her. I swear.”

“Well then. Let’s get our asses in gear.”

Ronan deserved to be turned. So many dhampirs did. And Michael made a silent vow that he wouldn’t rest until he found the female. And resurrected the vampire race.

CHAPTER

6

Claire’s shift had been brutal. A steady stream of customers all day, which was great for the diner but not so great for her. She’d almost reconsidered going out, but the looming threat of eviction sent her out in search of easy money. Good lord, she was tired. Her final—for real this time—night of hustling had proved to be fruitful, though she’d violated one of her own rules by hitting a place she’d already been to.

She’d made enough to cover rent and then some in just two games.
Grocery store, here I come!

Claire walked out of the pool hall and stared across the street at Diablo’s bloodred sign. It was slow for a Monday night, the horde of weekend partiers absent from the sidewalk outside. As though her feet moved on her own, they took Claire across the street. She was
not
going in. A couple brushed past her on their way to the entrance, and she took a step to the side, craning her neck to get a glimpse inside the club before the doors closed. Just because he’d been there once didn’t mean he’d be there again. Which was why she wasn’t going inside.

“The cover’s twenty bucks tonight.”

Not exactly sure how she’d gotten from the sidewalk to the entrance, Claire looked up at the guy holding open the door. If she wasn’t going in, why was she handing him a twenty? He grabbed her hand and stamped her wrist, leaving behind a red pitchfork that stood out against her pale skin.

Okay, so she was going in. But just for a second.

The place was considerably less hectic than it had been three nights ago. The clientele a little less highbrow. Claire ordered a five-dollar Coke—
what a rip-off
—so she wouldn’t look like a complete freak and also to give her hands something to do so she wouldn’t fidget. Because right now she was as jumpy as a grasshopper in a field of tall grass. What would she do if she saw him? Just march right up and say, “Hey, remember me? Probably not, because you were absolutely loaded, but I just wanted to let you know that you gave me the best orgasm of my life. Oh, and I’m pretty sure I’m obsessed with you. And also, I stole your watch.”

Claire, you are one classy lady.

It didn’t take long to determine that the mysterious Michael wasn’t there tonight. Claire fought against the disappointment that settled in her stomach like a stack of too-heavy pancakes from the diner. It had been stupid of her to make an almost-twenty-mile trek across the city tonight. Sure, she’d told herself that the pickings had been easy at the pool hall and that’s why she’d come back for round two. But that wasn’t why she’d spent forty dollars in cab fare to come down here. She came hoping to find
him
.

It was as unsettling as it was pathetic.

Claire sidled up to the bar, determined to finish every last drop of her five-dollar soda before she left. It wouldn’t be too hard, considering the glass barely held a few swallows. Especially with all of the ice the bartender had loaded into the glass. Claire snorted. Bars were a total con. These guys ripped people off nightly and it was all totally legit. Talk about a sweet deal …

“Can I get you anything else?”

Claire looked down into her almost empty glass and said to the bartender, “Nah, I’m good. But—”
Don’t do it, Claire. Don’t be that girl
. “I was wondering, do you remember a guy who was in here a few nights back? Really tall, muscular. Designer clothes. Sort of stood out from the ravers. He was sitting in the VIP section?” Too late. She’d officially crossed over into crazy stalker territory.

“Sorry,” the bartender responded. “There are too many bodies coming in and out of here on event nights. You got a name?”

Yeah, but not his real one.
“Michael?” she asked more than said.

“That’s it?” The bartender laughed. “No last name?”

“No.”

So not only did Claire feel like a desperate stalker; she also was pretty sure that now the bartender shared that opinion. He gave her a rueful smile and shook his head. “I wish I could help you out.”

“No worries,” Claire said with a nervous laugh. She wasn’t usually the type to get embarrassed, but this was a new low, even for her. “Have a good one.”

“You too,” the bartender said with a nod of his head.

God, Claire, you are such a
loser.

She left Diablo, only marginally mortified. She was supposed to be the stone-cold hustler. The woman who refused to let her emotions rule her. She’d never once chased after a guy or even worried about her love life. Having food to eat and money to pay for electricity had always been her priorities. There’d never been a man worth her time before—
Before what, Claire? Before him?

Pathetic.

She hailed a cab and told the driver to drop her off at the bus stop at Sunset and Miller. No way was she going through the bullshit of haggling with a cabbie ready to take her for a fifty-dollar bill. She’d already wasted forty dollars to get to the club district and another twenty-five bucks on a miserable fifteen minutes inside of Diablo. The cab fare just to get her to the bus stop would cost her another five. She’d already thrown away seventy of her four-hundred-dollar take. Good thing tonight was her last night. Because Claire was seriously losing her touch.

The Patek’s metal wristband dug into her thigh and Claire shifted in her seat, stretching out her legs so she could dig it out of her pocket. She shouldn’t have brought it. Should have left it under her mattress or stuffed it in a Ziploc and floated it in the toilet tank for safekeeping like she had her other treasures. For some reason, though, she couldn’t part from it. She traced her fingers along the ridges of the wristband, brushed her thumb across the crystal face.

What in the actual hell was wrong with her?

Claire’s life was supposed to be about breaking away from what she’d grown up with, breaking the cycle of dysfunction, and all that uplifting healthy psyche crap. Going after someone who obviously had a laundry list of his own problems wasn’t a good idea. He was probably an addict. A liar. And god only knew what else.

Aren’t you a liar and a con artist? Way to rock that double standard
.

But she wasn’t an addict. She’d never popped a pill or smoked so much as a cigarette. She’d never stuck a needle in her arm or snorted a damned thing up her nose. And it wasn’t like she’d never had the opportunity. Even alcohol was a touchy subject with Claire. She rarely drank and most of the time she used alcohol as a distraction, liquoring up her mark while she pretended to imbibe. She never wanted anything less than a clear and level head at all times.

And somehow, in the course of one brief, amazing encounter, this man—this
stranger
—had unraveled her. How?

The cab dropped her off at the corner of Miller just as the bus pulled up to the stop. Claire tossed the driver five bucks and hoofed it across the street, barely making the bus before it pulled back out into traffic. She made her way to the back of the bus—
great, not a single seat
—and grabbed onto the metal bar in the aisle to keep from falling on her ass as they negotiated the late-night traffic. L.A. really was a city that never slept. Not to mention a city of a million cars. Did no one care about the environment?

Oh, who was she kidding? If she could afford a car, she’d be cruising all over the city just like everyone else. In her defense, though, she’d totally spring for a hybrid. Claire’s stomach soured as the scenery transformed from the fancy storefronts and luxurious clubs and became the run-down, neglected, poor part of L.A. that she knew but certainly didn’t love.

As though a switch had been flipped inside of her, Claire’s chest swelled with a surge of strong emotion. A sense of elation that stole her breath and blurred her vision.
Michael.
The uncanny instinct that never steered her wrong told Claire in an instant that he was close.
How? Why
? But most important,
where
? She leaned to her left over the seat and two very annoyed passengers and caught sight of a sleek jet-black sports car in the opposite lane of traffic.
There.
She caught sight of Michael seated in the passenger seat and their eyes met for the briefest moment. The car drove past the bus and Claire shifted, pressing her palms flat against the back window. Michael turned in his seat, his gaze locked on hers. In a flash of red brake lights, the car skidded, the squealing of tires followed up by angry horns as the vehicle came to a dead stop right in the middle of the street.