Night Pleasures (Dark-Hunter 1)

Kyrian frowned as he thought about the answer. "Offhand, I would say Tristan, Diana, or Sundown, but I would have to check with Acheron on it."

"Sundown? Nickname, or did his mother not like him very much?"

He laughed. "He was a gunslinger and that was the name they used on his wanted posters. The authorities claimed he did his best work after dark."

"Okay," Amanda said slowly. Now she pictured some Wild Bill Hickok character. Complete with bowlegs and shaggy beard and a wad of tobacco in his cheek. "I take it you Dark-Hunters weren't merchants or um..."

"Decent law-abiding folks?"

She smiled. "I wasn't implying you were indecent, but you have the gist of what I was going for."

Kyrian returned her smile. "Indecent" would certainly describe the thoughts in his mind that concerned his guest. "It takes a certain demeanor and passion to become a Dark-Hunter. Artemis doesn't want to waste her time or ours by picking someone incapable of hunting. I guess you could say we are all mad, bad, and immortal."

Her smile widened, showing just a very tiny hint of a dimple in her right cheek. How odd he'd never noticed that before. "Bad and immortal I will give you, but are you truly mad?"

"If by mad you mean insane, what then would you say?"

Her eyes flashed wickedly. "That you are definitely mad. But you know, I think I like that about you. There's something to be said for unpredictability."

Kyrian wasn't sure which of them was most surprised by her confession. She looked away quickly, her cheeks turning bright red.

She liked him ... The words evoked a truly juvenile response inside him. He felt a peculiar urge to run tell someone, "She likes me, she likes me."

Ye gods, what was that?

He was two thousand years old. Long past the age for such behavior.

Yet there was no denying the satisfaction and happiness he felt.

Awkward silence fell between them while they ate.

As she finished, Amanda did her best not to think about her house. All she'd lost. She would deal with that tomorrow. At the moment, she just wanted to get through the night.

"Tabitha is staying put," she said as she watched Kyrian take his plate to the sink and rinse it off.

"Good."

"You know," she said quietly, "you still haven't told me how you knew so much about my sister the night we met."

He put the plate and silverware in the dishwasher. "Talon and Tabitha have a mutual friend."

Amanda's eyes widened at that. A mole... who would have thought. "One of Tabitha's Zoo Crew?"

He nodded.

"Who?"

"Since this person spies for us, I'm not about to tell you who it is."

She laughed at that, then narrowed her eyes, trying to divine who it was. "I'll bet it's Gary ."

"I'm giving away nothing."

It was intriguing, but not nearly as much as the Dark-Hunter before her. Sighing, Amanda continued to eat and glance around the richly appointed kitchen while Kyrian put the food away. There was a marble breakfast counter that vaguely resembled a Greek temple. It separated the table where she sat from the rest of the kitchen. Three tall bar stools were set before it.

Everything was crisp and clean and enormous.

"This is a big house for one person. How long have you lived here?"

"A little over a hundred years."

She choked. "Are you serious?"

"There's no need for me to move. I like New Orleans."

She got up and took her plate to him. "You put down some serious roots, don't you? Where did you live before here?"

"Paris for a while," he said, putting the plate aside. "Geneva. London, Barcelona, Hamburg, Athens. Before that I wandered around."

She watched his face while he spoke. There was no telltale sign of his mood. He was hiding his feelings from her and she wondered if there was any way to draw him out. "It sounds really lonely."

"It was okay." Still no facial clues.

"Did you ever have friends in any of those places?"

"No, not really. I've had a few Squires over the centuries, but for the most part, I prefer solitude."

"Squires?" she asked. How strange. "Like in the Middle Ages?"

"Something like that." He looked at her, but didn't elaborate. "What about you? Have you lived here all your life?"

"Born and raised. My mother's parents immigrated from Romania during the Depression and my father's people were backwoods Cajuns."

He laughed at that. "I've known a lot of those."

"Living here for a hundred years, I'll bet you have."

Amanda considered the life Hunter must have lived. All the centuries of solitude, of watching people he cared about die of old age while he never changed. It must have been hard for him.

But along with that, his life must have had a few really neat perks.

"What's it like knowing you're going to live forever?"

He shrugged. "Honestly, I no longer think about it. Much like the rest of the world, I just get up, do my job, and go to bed."

How simple he made it sound. Yet she sensed something else from him. A deep-rooted sadness. Living without dreams must be excruciating. The human spirit needed goals to strive for, and killing Daimons just didn't seem like much of a goal to her.

She dropped her gaze to the counter and tried to imagine what Hunter had been like as a man. Julian had told her how they would drink after battle and how much Hunter had wanted children.

Worse, she remembered the way Hunter had looked holding Vanessa.

"Have you ever had any children?"

Intense pain flashed through his eyes for only an instant until he recovered his stoicism. "No, Dark-Hunters are sterile."

"So you are impotent."

He gasped indignantly and looked at her. "Hardly. I can have sex, I just can't procreate."

"Oh." She wrinkled her nose devilishly at him and tried to lighten the mood. "That was really a nosy question. I'm sorry."

"It's all right."

Hunter started the dishwasher. "Would you like a tour of the house?"

"House?" she asked, cocking a disbelieving brow. "If this is a house, then I live in a two-room shanty." Her breath caught as she remembered that she didn't live anywhere anymore. Clearing her throat, she pushed the thought aside. "Yes," she said quietly. "I'd like to see it."

Hunter led her through the doorway on her left, into a massively large living room. The walls, crown moldings, and medallions were absolutely gorgeous in their old-fashioned grace and elegance, but the furniture in the house was as modern as it could be.

The room was decorated for comfort, not to impress visitors. But then she imagined vampires didn't entertain guests too often.

A huge entertainment center lined one wall with a JVC component system, big-screen TV, double-decker VCR and DVD player.

Though there were lamps all around, the room was lit only by candles from three ornate sconces.

"You don't like modern light bulbs, do you?" she asked as Hunter moved to light a candelabrum.

"No," he said. "They're too bright for my eyes."

"Light hurts you?"

He nodded. "Dark-Hunters have eyes made for darkness. Our pupils are larger than yours and they don't dilate the same way. As a result, our eyes let in a lot more light than human eyes."

While he spoke, she noticed the floor-to-ceiling windows were covered with black shutters that would shield the house from daylight.

As she stepped around a black leather sofa, Amanda stopped dead in her tracks.

There was a coffin sitting in front of it.

"Is that..." She couldn't finish the sentence. Not while she held a gruesome image of Hunter lying asleep inside it every day.

Hunter glanced at it, then met her shocked gaze unblinkingly. "Yes," he said in a deadpan voice. "Yes, it is. It's my... coffee table."

He walked over to it, lifted the lid and pulled a remote out of it. "For the TV if you want to watch it tomorrow."

Amanda shook her head. Now that she noticed it, she saw there were all kinds of weird little vampire trinkets lying around. Miniature statues, small crossbows, even a vampire tarot deck on the mantel.

"Nick thinks it's funny," Hunter said as she picked up the deck of tarot cards. "Any time he finds something with a vampire in it or on it, he brings it here and leaves it for me to find."

"Does it bother you?"

"No, he's a good kid most of the time."

As he led her room by room through the old mansion, she began to get lost. "Just how big is this place?" she asked as they entered a game room.

"There are twelve bedrooms and it's a little over seven thousand square feet."

"Jeez, I've been inside smaller malls."

He laughed.

An elaborate pool table was set in the middle of the game room, along with a collection of arcade games and a big-screen TV with an entire array of game consoles lined up on a low coffee table in front of it. But what she found most peculiar was a pair of baseball gloves and a baseball on a drop-leaf table in one corner of the room. Amanda went over to them.

"I toss the ball around with Nick some nights," Hunter explained.

"Why?"

He shrugged. "It clears my head when I'm trying to sort through things."

"Nick doesn't mind?"

He laughed at that. "Nick minds everything. I don't think I've ever asked him to do something he didn't complain about it."

"Then why do you keep him around?"

"I'm a glutton for punishment."

Now it was her turn to laugh. "I would really like to meet this Nick."

"No doubt you will tomorrow."

"Really?"

He nodded. "Anything you need, you tell him and he'll get it for you. If he offends you in any way, let me know and I'll kill him when I get up."

There was a note in his voice that told her it might not be an empty threat.

Hunter opened the large French doors and led her into a glass-enclosed atrium. The ceiling was clear and showed a million stars flickering overhead and their shoes clicked idly on the tile floor.

"It's beautiful in here."