The Vampire Who Loved Me (11 page)

Julian snorted. “She hasn’t survived this long by being a fool. She’s well aware of your reputation as a vampire hunter.”

“Then perhaps she’s already left London,” Larkin offered.

“She won’t leave him,” Portia said dully but with utter conviction.

“And she won’t leave Portia now that she knows where to find her…at least not alive,” Julian added grimly. “Even if I could find her
and somehow convince her to come away with me, she’d only leave behind one of her minions to finish Portia off. We have to capture her
before
she can give those orders.”

“What if I send Portia away?” Adrian suggested. “I could send her and Caroline and Eloisa to the castle until we settle this matter.”

Portia stiffened. “I won’t give her the satisfaction of running from her! It’s humiliating enough that I let her get the best of me last night.”

“She’d only follow anyway,” Julian pointed out.

Larkin stroked his narrow chin. “If we know she’s going to come for Portia, then why can’t we just sit back and wait for her to make her move?”

Julian shook his head. “Because she’s clever enough to bide her time. For an impulsive creature, she can be extraordinarily patient. She’ll wait until we relax our guard. And then it will be too late.”

“Besides,” Portia said, “we have to draw her out of hiding before she murders any more innocent women.”

She rose to pace in front of the hearth, keenly aware of Julian’s heavy-lidded gaze following
her every step. “She seems to be operating under the delusion that Julian still harbors some sort of sentimental attachment to me, which we all know to be blatantly untrue.”

Although Julian’s jaw tightened, he wisely kept his thoughts to himself and took another sip of the port.

“If we could only find some way to use her jealousy as a weapon against her…” Portia tapped one finger against her bottom lip. “I keep thinking about something Duvalier said right before he locked me and Julian in that crypt together.”

Adrian exchanged a worried glance with Larkin. “You almost died in that crypt, pet. There’s no need for you to relive such painful memories.”

“Your brother almost died, too,” she reminded him before turning to Julian. “Do you remember what Duvalier said right before he shoved me into your arms? He said that if you took my soul, you could ‘enjoy my company for all eternity.’”

“How could I forget? He was suggesting that I make you my eternal bride.” Julian swirled the port around in the bottom of the tumbler,
his expression bitter. “For such a bloodthirsty bastard, he was quite the romantic.”

“What if we made Valentine believe that you’ve done just that?” Portia touched a hand to the white scarf encircling her throat. “She already knows that you’ve left your mark on me. So why not make her think that you returned to London to finish what you started all those years ago? Is there anything that would infuriate her more? Why, it would be as if we’d dashed holy water in her face!” Although she made a valiant effort, Portia couldn’t completely hide her delight at the prospect.

“I thought we were trying to save your life, not goad her into killing you more quickly,” Larkin pointed out. “Won’t infuriating her just make her
more
dangerous?”

“Perhaps. But it will also make her more rash and apt to make mistakes. If she truly believes Julian has chosen me over her, she won’t be willing to bide her time any longer. Her patience will have come to an end.”

“As will your life if you make a single misstep,” Adrian reminded her, his scowl deepening.

Julian eyed her with equal skepticism. “Do
you truly believe you could masquerade as a vampire with enough conviction to fool Valentine?”

Portia shrugged. “Why not? Your kind walks among us mortals with the setting of every sun. You eat our food. You drink our wine. You dance to our music. You mimic our breathing.” She met his challenging gaze with one of her own, her voice deepening on a husky note. “Why, you even make love to us.”

This time Adrian groped for the bottle of port instead of his glass. He took a long swig before handing it to a grateful Larkin.

“But mortals are more easily deceived,” Julian replied softly, refusing to free her from the hypnotic tug of his gaze. “They’re quite adept at seeing only what they want to see.”

For a heartbeat of time, Portia was back in the library again. Back in his arms. “Perhaps that’s because we’re taught to believe in mermaids and leprechauns and noble princes on white horses before we grow up and have to put such foolish fancies behind us.”

“Valentine is no fool. You won’t just have to convince her that I’ve turned you into a vampire.
You’ll have to make her believe that you’re in love with me.”

“That shouldn’t be too difficult.” Portia’s voice sounded a shade too bright and brittle, even to her own ears. “You’ve said yourself that I’m an accomplished actress.”

Adrian sighed, visibly running out of arguments. “Do you think this scheme stands a chance of working, Jules? You know this…
woman
better than anyone.”

“In every sense of the word,” Portia could not resist adding.

Julian slanted her a look that would have quailed any stranger he happened to encounter in a dark alley. “There’s a chance it might work.”

Larkin cleared his throat. “And just how is Valentine to learn that this momentous event has taken place? Should we take out an ad in the
Undead Gazette
?”

Julian glanced toward the fire, the set of his jaw one Portia was coming to know only too well. “I just might know a way.”

They all gazed at him expectantly.

“Adrian may have driven all of the vampires
out of London, but he hasn’t driven them out of England. There’s a flourishing nest of them living in a country house in Colney, less than an hour’s ride from the city.”

“I’ve heard rumors about the existence of such a place,” Adrian admitted. “I suppose I should have paid them a visit before now but ever since Eloisa was born…” He shrugged, plainly reluctant to admit that the birth of his daughter had encouraged him to guard his own life with more care.

“I took shelter there briefly after Cuthbert moved back into his father’s house,” Julian said. “Their overlord won the manor in a wager from some poor drunken sot who’d already gambled away the rest of his family’s fortune. Vampires are worse gossips than mortals, you know. If we make an appearance there, I can promise you that Valentine will hear all about it before dawn of the next day.”

“Oh, goody!” Portia exclaimed dryly. “I do so love a country house party! When do we leave?”

“Don’t start planning your ensemble yet,” Adrian warned her. “If you think I’m going to allow you to march into that nest of monsters all alone—”

“She won’t be alone.” Julian rose from his chair to join Portia, the note of authority in his voice quelling even Adrian. “I’ll be right there by her side.”

Adrian eyed him disbelievingly. “Weren’t you the one who kept me up until dawn blistering my ears because I let her coax me into using her for bait?”

“She won’t be the bait this time. I will. Once Valentine finds out that I’ve ‘betrayed’ her, she’ll be too hellbent on my destruction to worry about anyone else.” He took Portia’s hand, drawing her even closer to him. “And I can promise you that I’d drive a stake through my own heart before I’d let anyone, living or undead, harm a single hair on Portia’s head.”

Before Portia could react to that impressive vow or the disarmingly natural feel of having his fingers laced through hers, Adrian said, “If you expect me to give this unholy little alliance my blessing, you’re going to have to tell me exactly what you intend to do with our quarry once our trap springs shut.”

Portia held her breath, trying to pretend her entire future didn’t hinge on Julian’s answer.

He was silent for a long moment before finally
saying, “I’ll take her away from here. So far away she’ll never again be able to hurt anyone I—” He stopped, his grip on Portia’s hand tightening until it was almost painful. “Anyone at all.”

Feeling as brittle as one of the Dresden shepherdesses she had coveted as a child, Portia dragged her hand from his. “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I should probably go inform my sister that I’ll be attending a country house party tomorrow night hosted by a nest of bloodthirsty vampires.”

After the study door had closed behind her, Adrian shook his head, his handsome features clouded by both bewilderment and anger. “What in the bloody hell are you doing, Jules? I don’t understand your reluctance to destroy this creature.”

Julian turned on him, his dark eyes blazing. “Well, maybe I’ve never understood your reluctance to destroy me!” Pivoting on his heel, he started for the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Adrian demanded, moving to block his path.

“Out,” Julian replied shortly, refusing to yield so much as an inch to his older brother.
Once Adrian might have cowed him with little more than a disapproving look, but now they stood toe to toe, equal in both stature and determination.

“Do you really think that’s wise?”

“I don’t know. That depends on whether I’m here as your guest…or your prisoner?”

When Julian’s resolute expression did not waver, Adrian reluctantly stepped aside, freeing him to stride from the study and the house.

Julian walked the bustling London streets
as if he owned both the city and the night, sending everyone who dared to look upon his face scurrying out of his path. Some of them instinctively recognized a monster when they saw one while others had simply learned that it was wiser not to provoke a man who had been born to both privilege and power, but who still stalked the night with the dangerous grace of a predator.

When a pasty-faced clerk unwittingly bumped his shoulder as he ducked out of his Threadneedle Street office, it was all Julian could do to bite
back a growl. He knew he ought to be relieved when the crowds slowly began to thin, but the thought of them all rushing home to their cozy fires and the welcoming arms of their loved ones only sharpened the edge of his temper. He didn’t even have Cuthbert’s stolid company to give him cheer. The note he’d had a footman deliver to his friend’s house earlier in the day had been returned to him with its wax seal unbroken.

Although he walked the streets unfettered, he felt as if he was still dragging the chains from the crypt behind him. Duvalier’s taunts had never stopped haunting him.

You disappoint me, Jules. I had expected so much more from you. You’re not willing to be a vampire, but you’re not a man, either.

Duvalier had been wrong. He was both man and vampire and cursed with the hungers of both. Hungers that gnawed at the aching hole where his soul had once resided every time he looked at Portia, caressed the milky softness of her skin, tasted the forbidden sweetness of her lips.

Duvalier would have been gratified to know that after all these years he still hungered for both her flesh and her blood.

Someone jostled him from behind and he whirled around, his lips parting in an involuntary snarl.

A woman was standing there, her pretty, freckled face wreathed in a halo of auburn curls. “Sorry, guv’nor. Me mum always said I was clumsy enough to trip over me own feet.”

Although her cloak was threadbare, she’d taken some care with her appearance. Bright spots of rouge stained her cheeks and she’d tucked a wilted pansy behind one ear.

“No harm done, miss,” he assured her stiffly. “I’m sure the fault was mine.”

Before he could dismiss her, she boldly wrapped one gloved hand around his forearm. “’Tis a bitter cold night, sir. I thought perhaps ye might be lookin’ for somethin’ softer than a heated brick to warm yer bed.”

She was his for the taking. Julian could see that in the inquisitive tilt of her head, the appreciative gleam in her eye. She believed him to be a gentleman, not a beast.

There was nothing to stop him from accepting her offer and escorting her to some nearby inn with worn but clean sheets. He could court her with the same pretty words Portia had
mocked, then feast on her in whatever manner he chose. By the time his practiced caresses had banished the memory of the fumbling hands and sweating, heaving men who had come before him, he doubted she would cost him a single coin.

But he couldn’t shake the notion that she might cost him something much dearer.

Ignoring a savage stab of regret, he dug a coin out of his coat pocket and pressed it into her hand. “Why don’t you take this and warm yourself by your own fire tonight?”

Tipping his hat to her, he started across the street, where a butcher was just stepping out to lock the door of his shop for the night.

Portia was back in the crypt.

The dank smell of crumbling earth and ancient decay filled her nostrils. She would have been paralyzed with terror if Julian hadn’t been there. If he hadn’t wrapped his strong arms around her to still her trembling. He had already torn away the gag and ropes Duvalier had used to silence and restrain her, chafing the feeling back into her numb wrists with his own unsteady hands.

“Why did Duvalier say those terrible things?” A
sob caught in her throat as she wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek to his chest. “Why did he say you were going to kill me?”

Julian shoved her out of his arms and staggered toward the corner, ducking his head and lifting a hand to shield his face from the torchlight. “Duvalier was right,” he growled. “You need to stay the bloody hell away from me!”

Despite his warning, she took an instinctive step toward him. “But why? Why should I listen to anything that miserable monster has to say?”

“He may be a monster, Portia. But so am I.” Julian slowly lifted his head and lowered his hand, baring his face to the torchlight and her anguished gaze.

She clapped a hand to her mouth, but it was too late to smother her horrified gasp. His skin was stretched taut over the striking bones of his face, his eyes hollow but glowing with a primitive hunger. It was as if everything he was had been pared down to its very essence, leaving something that was both beautiful and terrible to behold. As she watched, mesmerized by his feral grace, his eyeteeth sharpened and lengthened, curving into a pair of gleaming fangs designed by the devil for only one deadly purpose.

“Adrian was never a vampire, was he?” she asked softly, already knowing the answer.

Julian slowly shook his head.

“It’s always been you.”

He nodded.

She was distracted from the unlikely sight of his fangs by an even more impossible one. The rags of his shirt hung open halfway to his waist, revealing the familiar shape burned into the flesh of his chest.

With a broken cry, Portia ran to him. She traced the outline of the crucifix seared into his flesh as if she could somehow absorb his pain through her fingertips, then lifted her tear-filled eyes to his face. “Dear God, what did he do to you?”

Julian swallowed, his tongue sweeping over his parched lips in a vain attempt to moisten them. His voice had deepened to a raspy croak. “He drained me of my strength with the crucifix. Starved me. Refused to let me drink.”

He struggled to pull away from her, but he lost his balance and stumbled to his knees, his body wracked by uncontrollable shivers.

Portia dropped to her knees beside him. “You’re dying,” she whispered, no longer able to deny the staggering evidence before her.

He nodded. “I don’t have much
…
time left. You’ll be safe once it’s done. Duvalier will make sure we’re discovered.” A bitter smile curved his lips.
“The bastard never could resist
…
showing off his handiwork. Do you see those manacles over there?” he asked, pointing to the rusty chains dangling from hooks embedded deeply in the stone wall. “I need you to use them to chain me to the wall.”

She recoiled, unable to hide her distaste. “Like some sort of animal?”

“I am an animal, Portia. The sooner you accept it, the safer you’ll be.”

She shook her head, her voice steady despite the tears trickling down her cheeks. “I won’t do it. I won’t leave you chained up to starve like some sort of rabid dog.”

He closed his hands over her upper arms, his fingers biting into her tender flesh with bruising force. “Damn it, girl, you have to listen to me! I don’t know how much longer I can trust myself not to
…
hurt you.”

“You can drink from me,” she urged. “Just enough to keep you alive until someone comes for us.”

He made a strangled sound deep in his throat and she understood for the first time that this was about more than just bloodlust. “Don’t you understand? If I allow myself to take that first taste of you, I won’t be able to stop. Not until it’s too late for the both of us.” He shifted one hand to her face, his unsteady
fingers stroking a sooty curl from her cheek with devastating tenderness. “Please, Bright Eyes, I’m begging you
…
”

Portia closed her eyes to block out his pleading gaze, knowing what she had to do. When she opened them, she was able to offer him a smile through her tears. “Why, Julian, you know I’d do anything for you. Anything at all.”

Ignoring the threat of those deadly fangs, she cupped his face in her hands and pressed the softness of her lips to his
…

Portia opened her eyes to gaze up at the canopy of her bed, both her body and her heart consumed by a wistful ache. As strange as it seemed, she wanted to summon back the dream. To return to that crypt and the ghost of her former self. That girl had been so sure of herself, willing to sacrifice everything—even her life—for the beautiful boy she had loved with such innocence and passion.

The dream had only served to remind her that Julian had once been willing to do the same. That he would have ended his existence as a soulless husk with no hope of salvation rather than risk hurting her. She rolled to her side,
hugging her pillow to her breast in a vain attempt to dull the ache in her heart, and wondered what had changed. Just what hold did this Valentine have over him?

She squeezed her eyes shut, knowing it would be far wiser to wish for a dreamless sleep. But before her wish could be granted, the notes of a distant melody came drifting to her ears. Still hugging the pillow, she sat up, blinking in bewilderment. Had her dream somehow conjured up another ghost from her past?

Drawing her silk dressing gown over her night rail, she climbed down from the bed and padded to the door. She eased it open, half expecting to discover the music existed only in her overwrought imagination. But it grew a whisper louder—a bittersweet lullaby being played for the dreaming occupants of the mansion.

Knotting the sash of her dressing gown, she hurried down the stairs. Instead of discouraging her, the shadows that draped the deserted corridors of the house seemed to welcome her, drawing her deeper into their embrace with each step. The next thing she knew she was easing open the door of the music room, her thirsty senses
drinking in the notes pouring out of the grand pianoforte beneath the window.

Julian sat at the instrument, his fingers dancing over the keys with a lover’s grace, coaxing forth a response that was both tender and passionate. The sunlight might be his mortal enemy, but the moonlight streaming through the broad bay window clearly adored him. Her silvery rays kissed the glossy silk of his hair and caressed his strong masculine profile, limning it in silver.

It took Portia a puzzled moment to identify the piece he was playing as the first movement of Mozart’s “Requiem,” the only section the composer had completed before his tragic death at the age of thirty-five. She had heard the piece played on the towering pipe organs of more than one cathedral but never on the piano and never with such haunting depth of feeling. As rendered by Julian’s ardent hands, it wasn’t difficult to believe the requiem had been commissioned, as both gossip and legend claimed, by a mysterious stranger who had turned out to be a harbinger of Mozart’s own death. Julian played it as both triumphal march and lamentation—the
song of a man celebrating and mourning his own mortality before his voice was forever silenced.

He poured all of his hunger and passion into the piece, bringing it to a close with a dramatic flourish. The final note hung in the air like the tolling of a cathedral bell on a crisp, cold midnight.

When even its echo had faded, Portia said softly, “For a man who claims his soul belongs to the devil, you still play like an angel.”

He didn’t look the least bit startled to find her standing in the doorway. “It’s one of my favorite pieces. Do you remember the words they found written in the margins of the score—
Fac eas, Domine, de morte transire ad vitam
?” he recited, the Latin rolling effortlessly off of his tongue.

Portia wasn’t nearly as fluent in the language. She’d always been too busy reading about leprechauns and fairies to bother with such dry subjects. “Let, oh Lord, souls,” she murmured, “enter through death…into eternal life.”

“It’s a pity I couldn’t have warned the poor bloke that eternal life isn’t everything it’s reputed to be. So have you come to turn the pages of my music, Bright Eyes?” he asked, his crooked
smile reminding her of the many happy hours she’d spent doing just that at Trevelyan Castle before she’d discovered he was a vampire.

“I would have sworn you were playing from memory.”

“So I was.” He nodded toward the sheet music opened on the stand. “But I’m not nearly as familiar with this next piece. I could use an extra hand…or two.” He slid over on the mahogany bench to make room for her. When she hesitated, he added, “As my eternal bride-to-be, there’s really no need for you to cling to your maidenly modesty.”

Unable to resist the challenging sparkle in his eye, Portia marched across the room and slid onto the bench next to him. She reached across him to open the first page of the piece, refusing to shy away from the press of his muscular thigh against hers or the fleeting brush of his elbow against the softness of her breast.

As she watched his deft hands stroke the achingly tender Beethoven melody from the keys, it was only too easy to imagine them dancing over her own flesh with equal skill. She could not help but wonder what breathless song he might coax from her lips with those long, aristocratic
fingers. Feeling a flush creep into her cheeks, she stole a look at his face only to find him watching her instead of the music.

Plagued by a niggling suspicion, she reached over and flipped the sheet of music a full measure before he reached the end of the page. He kept playing without missing a single note.

She cleared her throat with enough force to be heard over the rippling passage.

Julian’s fingers froze on the keys, bringing the piece to a discordant halt. “Oh, dear. I’ve been found out, haven’t I?” His nose brushed her unbound curls as he leaned over and whispered, “If you must know, I’ve always played from memory—even at the castle. I just never could resist the way you leaned across me to turn the pages or the scent of your hair.”

This time she leaned away from him. “Why, Julian Kane, you really are an incorrigible rogue!” She struggled to keep her lips pressed together in stern disapproval, but could not stop them from tilting up at the corners.