The Perfect Kiss (8 page)

“Not interested!” Hawthorne’s expression fell. “How can you say that? You barely glanced at the photos. How can you decide that so quickly?”

“I said I’m not interested,” Zach said, very quietly. “There is nothing in the least exceptional about either of these women. They have none of the qualities I’m looking for.”

It was Hawthorne’s turn to frown. “You mean they don’t look like Anya Valorian. With all due respect, Mr. Christopher, I can’t understand why you are so obsessed with that woman. These models are just as beautiful—”

“No one is as beautiful as Anya Valorian.”

Zach stood abruptly and paced to the window, his back to Hawthorne. He stared out at the clear blue sky and wondered what she was doing this morning.

He still wanted her, Zach realized. He still wanted her even in the face of her rejection. Maybe more so. “What kind of fool are you?” he muttered.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing.” Zach waved an impatient hand, signaling their meeting had come to end. “Find me a model, Hawthorne. Find me a model that…”

“That what?” Evan’s skepticism showed plainly in his voice.

“That meets with my expectations.”
That makes me forget Anya Valorian.

“That may be difficult,” Evan muttered as he left Zach’s office.

Left alone, Zach pulled open his desk drawer and took out a folder containing several magazine covers of Anya. He stared at her incomparable features, remembering every delicate nuance of her face. Her eyes in the older photographs—her
blue
eyes—struck him again. The crystalline silver eyes that had stared at him last night were so different, but no less beautiful, no less appealing. Obviously, she wore contacts now, but Zach couldn’t help wondering what had compelled her to make the color change. Another bit of mystery, he thought and smiled.

He’d wanted to kiss her last night. He’d wanted to kiss her since the moment he’d first laid eyes on her. If he were truthful with himself, he’d have to admit he wanted to do a whole lot more than just kiss her.

Was his judgment concerning the Seduction campaign clouded by his desire for the woman? He didn’t like to think so, but Anya Valorian had intrigued him as no woman had in a very long time. Maybe ever.

He let his gaze rest for a moment on the pictures of the other models on his desk. How much easier—and perhaps wiser—to simply choose one of them. Time was of the essence. Money was definitely a factor. He could please his conservative board, keep his father off his back, and everyone would be happy.

So why couldn’t he just forget he’d ever met Anya Valorian and move onward with his campaign?

Because the lady was unforgettable, that’s why. Because Zach didn’t like to take no for an answer. Because, deep down, he liked a challenge.

But, challenge or not, there was no way he would call
her again. No way he would continue the pursuit. She’d made her decision, and no matter how much it galled him, he had to respect her wishes.

The next move, if there was one, would have to be hers.

* * *

Anya needed money. Desperately.

She stared at the telegram in her hand. How like Dr. Traymore to communicate in such an old-fashioned, dramatic way. In many ways, he still lived in the past with his archaeology background and his passion for rare and antique books, but perhaps that was why he had been so willing to accept what she’d told him years ago. Why he’d been so anxious to help her.

The modern world would find her situation hard to believe, to say the least, but to Dr. Traymore her revelation had been a fascinating discovery, a confirmation of suspicions he’d had for years.

Anya’s fingers trembled so badly she could hardly hold on to the paper. Dr. Traymore’s words blurred before her eyes, but she already knew them by heart: “Anya. Victory at last. Will need the money ASAP for purchase. Love, L.T.”

“Anya?” Freida’s voice drew Anya’s gaze across the room to where the housekeeper stood just inside the doorway. “Is it good news?”

Anya held out the paper to Freida, and quickly the housekeeper crossed the room. She scanned the telegram, then lifted her blue eyes to meet Anya’s. “Oh, Anya! He’s found it! He’s found the book! Now you can truly be saved—”

“It could be legend, nothing more, Freida,” Anya interrupted, trying to control her own growing excitement, her desperate hope. “We won’t know until Dr. Traymore has the book in his possession and can study it carefully. Even
then, it could take months, years, to decipher the meanings.”

“Dr. Traymore is a brilliant man,” Freida insisted, folding her arms over her thin bosom. Her excitement thickened her German accent, even though she’d been in the States for the last ten years. “He will find the answer now. I know it.” She glanced at the telegram again, and her eyes suddenly clouded. “The money. Anya, where can we get that kind of money so quickly? Your modeling fees are sizable, but not nearly as much as he’ll need. What can we do? What if Gershom is following Dr. Traymore? What if he finds out about the book? What if he obtains it before we can get the money?”

Freida put voice to the same questions that had been tormenting Anya ever since she’d received Dr. Traymore’s telegram. Lately, she’d been sensing Gershom’s presence so strongly. Her dreams were plagued with images of him. What if he somehow found and destroyed the book before they learned the answers? She would never be free of him then. She would be doomed to an eternity of darkness. Of loneliness. She would never know love.

Anya turned away from Freida and walked to the window. Dusk was falling, and a full moon hung low in a sky as clear and fragile as blown glass. She took a deep breath, feeling her senses sharpen in response. But the coming darkness held no excitement for her. Only torment. Another long night of endless yearning.

She closed her eyes, remembering that first night, the awful beginning of her nightmare. She had waited for Gershom by the river, and he had come to her in darkness….

When it was over, she’d stared down at the blood on her fingers, not yet realizing the full horror of what he had done to her. She’d lifted tormented eyes to Gershom, and he’d laughed down at her.

“One perfect kiss, Anya, and already you and I are inseparably linked. You are mine now. For eternity. From this night forward, you can never know the love of a man, for a man who arouses your passions will also unleash your hunger. That is my gift to you.”

Terrified, Anya turned, stumbling through the darkness, but Gershom’s taunting laughter followed her. “You can run, but you cannot escape me. I will always be with you, in your mind and in your dreams. One day soon you will come to me. When your hunger becomes unbearable, you will come to me….”

By the time Anya returned to her hotel room in Bonn, she was weak and sick, barely able to stand. She collapsed onto her bed, sobbing and shivering from a cold chill that seeped through every fiber of her being. A darkness had invaded her already, a shadow that slowly but surely robbed her body of its warmth, its vitality, its life.

“Oh, God, what have I done?” she moaned. Her skin burned to the touch, raged with fever, but inside, where it mattered, Anya had grown cold. Cold and empty.

Sometime before dawn, Anya became aware of shadows moving inside her room, of faces peering down at her. She tried to move away, but the fever had dazed and weakened her. She tried to scream, but her parched throat allowed no sound.

“It’s all right,
liebchen.
We won’t hurt you. We’re here to help you,” a woman’s voice soothed her. Cool hands touched her face. “She’s burning up, Karl. The fever has taken her. Hurry. We must hurry.”

And then Anya was being lifted, and though the man’s arms were gentle around her, Anya wanted to cry out in pain. Her body raged at the contact. She writhed in his arms, but his grip tightened, wouldn’t let her go. Helpless,
Anya closed her eyes to the pain, and let the darkness take her.

She awakened in a strange, dimly-lit room with the woman sitting by her bedside. The woman got up and came to stand over Anya, her faded blue eyes clouded with worry.

Anya moistened her dry lips. “Where am I?”

“You are at our home, just outside the city.” The woman spoke with a heavy German accent. Her gray hair had been caught in a bun at the nape of her neck, and the dress she wore was also gray, without adornment. “My name is Freida Aldermann. My husband, Karl, and I brought you here to help you.” For the first time, Anya noticed that Freida clutched something in her left hand. It was a cross.

Anya lifted her gaze to Freida. Her voice trembled with fear. “Help me—how?”

“Do you remember anything about last night?”

“I remember meeting someone…Gershom. He—” Anya’s eyes widened in terror as her hand flew to the raw wounds on her throat. “Oh, my God. It’s true. It wasn’t a nightmare.”

“He gave you the vampire’s kiss.”

Anya’s breath left her in a painful rush of denial. “Vampire? No. There’s no such thing—” but Freida’s pitying glance cut her off short.

“You are sick now. Very weak. Your body is undergoing changes already. Do you not feel cold, Anya? Do you not feel as though every drop of warmth has been drained from your body? There will be other changes. Your eyes will change, too. Outwardly, you will become even more beautiful, irresistible to those around you. You will flourish in darkness and retreat from the sun. You will no longer be able to eat solid foods, but your hunger will continue to
grow, becoming more urgent with each passing day until…”

“Until?” Anya was shaking all over, huddling beneath the covers as though they would somehow protect her from the truth.

“Until you take your first victim.”

“Victim? No! I would never…I couldn’t…I’m not a monster!” Anya screamed. She lay back against her pillow, sobbing hysterically, trying to deny what she knew in her heart to be true.

“Your hunger will demand it,” Freida said gently. “When you have taken…a life, then the transformation will be complete. You will be as Gershom is.”

“And if I don’t take a life?” Anya cried. “If I refuse? If I fight this hunger you speak of?”

“Then you will remain as you are now. Belonging to neither the day nor the night.”

When at last Anya’s weeping subsided, Freida touched Anya’s dry cheek with her fingertip. “See,
liebchen?
You no longer even have tears. Those, too, have been taken from you.”

And somehow, at that moment, that seemed the greatest loss of all to Anya.

Over the next few days, Freida’s predictions all began to come true. Anya’s blue eyes took on a silvery glint. Her hair grew even more lustrous, her complexion more silky smooth. And the hunger, the insatiable thirst, began to creep up through the dark emptiness inside her to torment her night and day. If it hadn’t been for Freida and Karl, for their unfailing strength and support, Anya knew she would never have survived. She would have succumbed to those loathsome urges.

But her will was strong, and Anya continued to resist.

Eventually she learned the Aldermanns’ story as well,
and discovered why they were so willing to help her. Their daughter, Katrina, had also been seduced by Gershom, but she hadn’t been as strong as Anya, Freida told her. Katrina had welcomed the darkness. She had craved Gershom’s kiss. She had eagerly made the transformation. She had taken her first victim.

Because they had loved Katrina more than life itself, Karl and Freida had destroyed the monster she’d become in order to save their beloved daughter’s soul.

From that time, two years ago, they had vowed no other young girl would meet such a fate at Gershom’s hands. They had watched him, studied him, followed him. They had tried to get to Anya in time, but Gershom had been cunning as always. He had tricked them, had slipped through their grasp. Now, they would do everything they could to help her resist his lure, to save her from the ultimate darkness.

And so the battle for Anya’s soul began. Gershom couldn’t enter Karl and Freida’s house—they had seen to that—but Anya couldn’t keep him out of her dreams. Night after night he called to her, tormenting her sleep with visions of what she would someday become. Night after night Anya woke up screaming in terror at the images.

“His pull is getting more powerful everyday,” Freida told Anya one day, when she had brought Anya a bowl of the broth she had concocted to assuage Anya’s growing hunger. “Here, near his home, his powers are the strongest. We must take you back to the place that is
your
home, where your resistance will be strengthened. Gershom won’t follow you. To stray so far from his native soil would weaken him. But he won’t relinquish his control over you, Anya. Make no mistake about that. He will use his powers and cunning to try to make you come to him.”

Within a week the arrangements had been made. A night
flight to Paris. A hotel room to wait out the day. Another night flight via the Concorde to New York. Then eventually, always traveling by night, Karl, Freida and Anya had arrived at her grandmother’s estate, the only place Anya had ever called home.

For ten years, they had lived a quiet existence outside the tiny village of Towering Oaks, while Dr. Traymore searched two continents for the answers that would save Anya. For ten years, Anya had fought the evil planted inside her—the dark, insatiable hunger. For ten years, no one had threatened her control.

Until now.

You can never know the love of a man, for a man who arouses your passions will also unleash your hunger.

Slowly but surely the images of the past dissolved inside Anya’s mind, replaced by a shimmering vision of Zach Christopher. She could see the lushness of his green eyes and the lustrous gold of his hair. She could hear the sound of his voice, could feel the warmth of his skin beneath her own. If she closed her eyes, if she concentrated hard enough, she could smell the warm scent of his blood, an essence as unique to him as his fingerprints.

Anya shuddered. “There is a way, Freida. There is a way to get the money.”

“How?”

“I can accept the Renee Alexander contract.” Anya realized she had purposefully avoided saying Zach’s name. Why? Was she afraid of what her voice might give away?