Night's Pleasure (Children of The Night 4)

“I thought…How can you be awake?” Hardly daring to breathe, she waited for his answer, hoping he would tell her he had been playing some horrible joke, that he wasn’t really a Vampire at all, just a shape-shifter, as he had said.

He shrugged. “The sun doesn’t affect me the way it does most Vampires. I don’t know why. Probably because my mother was mortal.”

She frowned at him. “So, you can go out during the day?”

“No, but I don’t have to take my rest until I’m ready.”

She pondered that a moment, and then frowned. “If you can’t leave the house, where are you going to…ah…you know?”

He lifted one brow, amused by her rising concern for where he intended to succumb to the Dark Sleep. “Will it bother you if I rest here?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had a Vampire for a house-guest.”

“I’m not particularly crazy about the idea of sleeping in a hunter’s house, either,” he remarked dryly.

“Talk about strange bedfellows,” Savanah muttered.

“I promise not to bite you if you promise not to take my head.”

Savanah grimaced at the grisly image. “It’s a deal.”

Rane took notice of her attire for the first time and frowned. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To work, of course.”

“Oh, no, I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want you going anywhere alone.”

“I went to my father’s funeral.”

He shrugged. “You couldn’t very well avoid that. And you weren’t alone. Your uncle was with you.”

“I can call a cab. I should be safe enough at the Chronicle if I stay inside. Jolie can bring me home.”

“No.”

“Do you really think a Werewolf will attack me in broad daylight? There haven’t been any reports of attacks during the day.”

“There’s a first time for everything. Besides, I’m sure no one expects you to go to the office today.”

He was right, of course. Even though she was certain it would be perfectly safe for her to go to work, there was no point in taking chances when she didn’t have to. Still…

As if sensing her indecision, Rane said, “I went outside late last night, after you had gone to bed. The Vampire who killed your father has been snooping around again, and the Werewolf, too.”

His words sent a cold chill down her spine. “How do you know?”

“Their scent was fresh. One of them left a footprint in the dirt alongside the house. It can’t be a coincidence that they’re showing up at the same time. They’ve got to be working together.”

Filled with a sudden sense of urgency, she said, “Let’s leave tonight.”

Savanah went through the items in her suitcase a second time, wondering if she had packed more than she needed, then decided it was better to take too much rather than too little. For one thing, Rane hadn’t said how long they would be gone, and she still wasn’t sure where she wanted to go. Exotic locales flitted through her mind: Hawaii, Rome, Bora Bora, Cabo, Portugal. They all appealed to her, yet on some deep level she didn’t quite understand, she was reluctant to leave the country. Frowning, she tried to think of someplace a little closer to home, some vacation spot where she had always wanted to go. Graceland? The giant redwood forest in Northern California? Yellowstone? Disneyland?

Savanah shook her head. She couldn’t imagine Rane wanting to visit any of those places; the thought of a Vampire touring Disneyland struck her as ludicrous, somehow. She had to grin when she pictured him in the Haunted Mansion. It was one ride where he would fit right in!

She slipped her mother’s Vampire kit under the layers of her clothing before closing the suitcase, then checked her overnight bag. She had packed everything she needed, save for her comb, brush, make-up, and toothbrush; she would add those later.

With nothing else to do, she decided to change the sheets on her bed. While carrying them to the laundry room, she paused outside her father’s bedroom. Rane slept inside. Feeling like Pandora, she put her hand on the knob, then hesitated. Did she really want to see him when he was caught in the sleep of the Undead? Did Vampires dream? Would he know if she opened the door and peeked inside? Would he look like he was sleeping, or would he look like a corpse, pale and unmoving? An image of her father as she had last seen him flashed through her mind, and with it a knifelike stab of grief.

She closed her eyes for a moment, then moved on down the hallway to the laundry room, which was located adjacent to the garage at the back of the house.

Blinking back her tears, she dumped the sheets into the washing machine, added soap, and turned the dial to Wash. How had her life turned into such a nightmare? Her mother and father had both been killed by Vampires. How could she be in love with such an odious creature?

Leaving the laundry room, she paused again outside her father’s door. Overcome by her curiosity, she took a deep breath and pushed the door open just enough to peek inside.

The first thing she noticed was that Rane had covered the room’s single window with the bedspread so that no light entered the room.

He lay on the top of the blankets, his eyes closed, one arm curled behind his head, the other resting at his side. He had removed his shirt, shoes and socks. From where she stood, she couldn’t tell if he was breathing. If she called his name, would he hear her? Her gaze moved over him, her fingers yearning to delve into his thick black hair, to trace the outline of his broad shoulders, to run her palms over his muscular chest and six-pack abs. How did he stay in such good shape? Did Vampires work out? Somehow, she didn’t think so, yet she knew from experience that he was firm and fit. If only things were different. If she wasn’t mourning her father, if Rane was an ordinary man, she would have crawled into bed beside him and awakened him with a kiss.

With her curiosity satisfied, she quietly closed the door and went upstairs to her own room.

At least he didn’t look dead. She was grateful for that. And grateful that the burns on his cheek and neck had disappeared, just as he had said they would.

But he was still a Vampire, and Vampires killed to stay alive. How many lives had he taken in the last week? In the last ninety years? The possibilities were staggering. Even if he had to feed only once a month, he would have killed over a thousand people. And if he fed every night…

Until this moment, she hadn’t really let herself think about his feeding habits. He had said he’d “tasted” her. She wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but obviously he hadn’t had to kill her to do so. Maybe he had never killed anyone. Maybe all he needed to survive was a “taste” now and then. But even as she tried to convince herself of that fact, she knew it wasn’t true. One of her mother’s books had described, in lurid detail, how Vampires fed off their victims.