The Merzetti Effect (A Vampire Romance) (11 page)

Still, he mustn’t grant the concession too easily. She wasn’t the type to enjoy a victory if it were too readily ceded.

“Twenty-five percent over an already generous base?” He lifted his eyebrows in what he hoped conveyed surprise. “You realize our armed forces would be lucky to get that, even as they march into imminent danger.”

“Twenty-five percent,” she repeated. “And as far as I’m concerned, we
are
in imminent danger. You’re lucky I’m not asking for it retroactively.”

“Then excuse me while I thank my lucky stars.”

Her chin came up higher. “No need for sarcasm, Dr. Bowen. Oh, and I expect you’ll make the same adjustment for Eli.”

Delano’s snort of disbelief was genuine. “You’re bargaining for Eli now? What’s this? A union?”

“Both of us. Twenty-five percent.”

Wait until Eli heard about this! He already protested that Delano paid him far too much. “What about the security I’ll be providing? Throw the cost of that in with the compensation package, and it’s a pricey office overhead I’ll be paying.”

“True, but it’s a risky enterprise you’re engaged in, particularly here, where your activities will be unsanctioned, in an underground clinic.”

Delano thought about prolonging the exchange just to keep her looking at him with that fire of determination in her eyes. But the time had come to cede her point.

“You make a good argument, Nurse Crawford.” He pretended to consider the issue for another moment. “Okay, twenty-five percent it is, for both of you.”

“Thank you.”

“Now, if there’s nothing else, I really must be going. I need to make contact with potential clients.”

The change of subject left her blinking. “You’re going trolling for vampires?”

“Precisely. We have to get the word out on the street if we expect to do business by tomorrow night.”

“Of course.”

He started to move toward the door when she spoke again.

“Delano?”

He turned back toward her. “Yes?”

“Be careful.”

He knew she wasn’t alluding to the law-abiding vampires he’d be recruiting in the all night establishments down on the street. She meant Janecek.

Something lurched painfully inside of him, something rusty that hadn’t moved in a long time. He turned away from the concern in her eyes before it undid him.

“I’m always careful,” he said. Then he left.

A
INSLEY FOUND
E
LI
on the phone.

“Can you hold on just a sec?” he said into the telephone, then covered the mouthpiece. His eyes took in her face, which was no doubt still blotchy and hideous from that crying jag. “You okay?”

She grimaced. “Small meltdown, but I’m better now.”

“Long overdue, you ask me.” He gestured toward her suite of rooms. “We got you some clothes, if you’d like to ditch that shirt. Not that there’s anything wrong with you in that shirt, you understand.”

She laughed, buoyed by his easy, uncomplicated masculine appreciation. “Thanks. I’ll go check them out.” It occurred to her to tell him about his new pay hike, but thought better of it, seeing as he was in the middle of something. She waved him back to his phone conversation and headed for her rooms.

Ten minutes later, she’d examined everything in the four bags piled on her bed.

Two pairs of flat-front trousers, size 10, one pair chocolate brown, the other navy, just like the ones she’d left in St. Cloud. Two Eddie Bauer wrinkle-resistant, two-pleat khaki pants. One pair of designer jeans she knew must have cost the earth because, in a fit of self-indulgence, she’d paid $80 for an identical pair at a 75% off sale. A waffle-knit top, a long-sleeved v-neck tee, a ribbed v-neck sweater. Two Oxford shirts, one long sleeved and one short. A couple of tanks. The pants were precisely the same issue as the ones she’d abandoned, and the tops were close enough.

The final bag contained underwear. 36C underwire bras that fit, along with matching thongs and boy shorts and hip-hugging briefs. Underwear that mirrored almost exactly the intimates she’d left behind, though the stuff back home had seen better days.

Definitely not Delano’s work. The very versatile Eli must have phoned back to the house in St. Cloud to get the particulars of her wardrobe, then paid a shopper to reproduce it as closely as possible. No wonder he was so invaluable to Delano.

Ainsley tossed the underwear into a drawer, gathered the clothes off the bed and hung them in the closet. Then she stretched out on the bed.

Lord, she was tired. Bone-deep weary, the way she used to get after stringing together too many consecutive 12s at the hospital. Except she didn’t have long shifts to blame for her exhaustion this time. Just one nasty, psyche-rattling shock after another. But at least she knew the score, now.

Or did she?

Delano didn’t seem like he was hiding anything more from her. Of course, she hadn’t thought he’d been hiding anything significant before, and look how wrong she’d been.

She sat up on the bed, drawing her knees up and hugging them to her chest. How was it possible that she could read him so easily one moment‌—‌God, it was freaky … like she could hear his very thoughts‌—‌only to discover he’d effortlessly concealed something as humongous and critical as, “Oh, by the way, I’m a vampire.”

Unless he projected the things he wanted her to know, or things he flat out just didn’t care if she knew, but shielded the rest?

She lifted her chin off her knees. Dear God, she was starting to think about this stuff as though she really had some kind of weird telepathic connection with Delano Bowen! How bizarre was that?

“Argh!” She flopped back against the pillows again.

Her eyes, still slightly puffy from crying, wanted to close, so she let them. God, but it would be good to just crash. If only she could shut her mind down like a computer. Clear the cache. Ctl-Alt-Del. Re-friggin’-boot. That’s what she needed to do. If she could just sleep, she could forget about vampires for a while. And Delano’s murderous nemesis Janecek. And her possible infection with the vampirism virus. And the way Delano’s hot, black gaze had burned straight back into hers, touching her soul.

Her lids sprang open. That was no way to think. Nobody touched her soul, not without her permission. And she was extremely picky.

She let her lids drift closed again. It felt so good to close her burning eyes. But aaaaaaahhhhh, she couldn’t sleep. Not now. Not yet. If Delano was planning to have a clinic up and running by tomorrow night, she’d better stick to the night rhythms, and sleep by day.

Besides which, if he were hiding something more from her, she’d have to match his hours so she could keep an eye on him. Groaning, she rolled off the bed and headed for the shower.

Delano stayed out until almost 4:30.

By 2:30, he’d already recruited more candidates than he needed. After all, these were familiar stomping grounds. He knew where to find the usual suspects. But he just wasn’t ready to go back that soon. So he inserted himself into the current of humanity moving from bar to bar to after-hours club.

From Ste-Catherine Street, he moved northward along St-Denis Street, through the Quartier Latin, letting the scent of sweat and sex and booze and perfume and high spirits wash over him. He rarely walked among people like this, choosing not to torture himself with what he could not have. What he could not
be
. Except tonight, the hot, bright, slightly desperate gaiety was his salvation. Sweet, sweet distraction.

Eventually the sky started to lighten in the East. Only then did he head back in the direction of the high-rise.

It was her fault, dammit. The smell of her, the sound of her pulse, the way it quickened when he moved close to her. He’d had to tell her, had to show her, what the blood lust did to his kind. But she hadn’t recoiled from him, as he half hoped she would. Instead she’d offered him her slender, delectable, innocent white throat. It had taken every shred of discipline he could summon to step back.

And this even knowing it could be the death of him. Literally.

Damn Edward Webber to the furthest reaches of hell for muddying the waters. Delano still didn’t know if it was Ainsley’s blood itself that killed the rogue outright, or whether her blood merely started a rapid reversal of the mutation.

The legends were murky. This particular strain of the Merzetti family was said to be lethal for vampires. But interestingly, not all vampires who partook of the blood died. According to the old tomes that Delano had unearthed, some vampires who infused themselves with the fabled toxic blood were reputed to have been mysteriously restored to a “state of grace”. Delano interpreted that to mean their mutation was reversed, leaving them once again human.

And knowing what medical science now knew about transfusion medicine, it was entirely possible that those who died did so because the Merzetti blood reverted them to type, so to speak. Unaware of what was happening internally, they might have gone on to feed upon another victim whose ABO type was incompatible to their resurrected blood type.

Is that what happened with Webber? Would the Merzetti blood have killed him outright, even if he hadn’t taken the second victim’s blood? Or had the Merzetti blood already reset his genetic code, setting off the reversal?

Somehow, he hadn’t imagined the reversal could be so quick. But why not?

Certainly the original mutation had acted quickly enough. Contrary to what he’d led Ainsley to believe, it generally took just over twenty-four hours for the change to begin, once the virus was imparted. Thirty at the outside. Why shouldn’t the reversal be equally expeditious?

Clearly, what he needed to do was orchestrate another attack on Ainsley. Only this time, he’d be right there,
right goddamn there
, to monitor the situation. It had been frighteningly close the last time. The shock of the blood loss might have killed her if he’d been a moment later arriving.

The thing that had lurched in his chest earlier made another jerking wrench. His hand went to his breastbone as though to still the pain.

Damnation. This couldn’t possibly be good. It happened every time he thought about putting her in the path of another rogue. But it had to be done. He didn’t see a way around it.

And dear Lord, all that talk about taking blood from a sexual partner. It made him hard just to think about it. Hard and angry with himself.

Oh, it was all true, the incomparable rush, the full-on body-brain-soul connection. But what he’d failed to tell Ainsley was that he hadn’t shared that sacred act with a living soul in almost 80 years.

How safe would she feel in his penthouse if she knew that?

And, oh Christ, how safe was
he
?

Well, that was a question for tomorrow. Tonight was all but gone. He glanced to the eastern horizon and picked up his pace.

Two minutes later, he entered the building’s lobby, only to be braced by security. The shift must have changed in the night, because the security guard was different than the one he’d passed on his way out earlier. This one was older, military haircut, and clearly unimpressed by Delano’s claim to be the owner of the building. As was the German Shepherd at his side.

“All due respect, mister, I don’t care if you own the entire Island of Montreal. You’re not taking that elevator or the stairwell until or unless I see some identification. So let’s have it.”

The dog growled, its hackles rising.

Delano ignored the dog. It didn’t do to make eye contact with them. He always wound up in a pissing contest, and in this case, he didn’t want to leave the security guard with a permanently cowed guard dog.

“So, Douglas,” Delano said, reading the name from the nametag on the guard’s his uniform, “you must be a friend of Eli Grayson’s.” He fished a laminated card out of his wallet and proffered it.

The guard accepted the ID from Delano, leaned closer to his computer and hit a button, then toggled the cursor. Within a few seconds, he apparently found what he was looking for and handed the card back. “Sorry about that, Dr. Bowen, but I’ve got a job to do.”

“Don’t apologize. I’d have bent Eli’s ear if you didn’t challenge me.” The dog sat back on his haunches, the motion drawing Delano’s gaze. At the eye contact, the dog pinned his ears back, narrowed his eyes and growled. Delano looked away. “Has Eli told you what to expect?”

The guard’s expression remained placid. “Pretty much anything, up to and maybe exceeding what I might expect to see in a combat situation.”

Well, that about summed it up. “Glad to have you on the team, Doug.”

On the 27th floor, Delano emerged from the elevator to a similar scene‌—‌security guard behind a desk with monitors. But this one was sans dog, thank God, and Delano had already met him earlier tonight. After checking in briefly, he strode to a second elevator and rode to the 29th floor.

The first elevator went no higher than the 27th floor, and the second started at 27 and went straight to 29. The 28th floor, where Delano’s lab resided, could only be reached via the stairwell, and only from the 29th floor. Which was one of the reasons he’d bought this building. Couldn’t be careful enough.