The thought cheered him. He had been tied to one woman and one identity for too long. Why had he wasted his time and energy trying to find a way to impregnate female vampires? What did he care if there were female vampires who felt unfulfilled because they couldn’t bear children? Or if there were vampires who wished to regain their humanity? True, had he accomplished those goals, he could have amassed a great deal of wealth, but he didn’t need the money. He was already rich. Nor had he conducted his experiments for any altruistic reasons, but simply out of sheer boredom with Janis and his current way of life. Tomorrow night he would put it all behind him.
Whistling softly, he left the lab and went out in search of prey, something warm and fresh and overflowing with the elixir of youth.
A new life awaited him. It was time to celebrate.
Chapter Forty-two
Mara woke feeling sluggish. For a time, she lay there, wondering what was wrong. Was she sick? Had she come down with a bad case of the flu? She felt strange, almost as if she was in someone else’s body.
Sitting up, she glanced around. She was in Logan’s room, in his bed. Naked. She frowned. Had they made love? Surely she would have remembered if they had.
She blinked, suddenly realizing that she saw everything clearly even though the room was pitch black. And then she remembered. Logan had brought her across last night.
Flinging the covers aside, she threw back her head and let her senses expand. Laughter bubbled up inside her. She was Nosferatu!
The colors in the room were crystal clear and bright. She could hear the tick-tick of the mantel clock downstairs, the low hum of Logan’s computer, the drip of a faucet in the bathroom. She took a deep breath and her nostrils filled with a myriad of scents—the soap used to wash the sheets, the faint fragrance of Logan’s cologne, the promise of rain in the air, and overall, the rich, musky scent of Logan himself.
Leaping from the bed, she twirled around, her arms outstretched, her body humming with preternatural power. Oh, how she had missed it! She felt alive again, strong again. Lighter than air, now that she had shed the weight of mortality. But, most of all, she felt like Mara again. And how hungry she was. Not for bacon and eggs, but for the warm, rich blood of life itself.
She dressed quickly, then hurried downstairs.
She found Logan in the living room, staring out the window at the gathering storm.
He turned as soon as she entered the room, his gaze moving over her, his expression one of relief.
She smiled at him, a brilliant smile filled with happiness, and a hint of fang. “You did it!” she said exuberantly, and throwing herself into his arms, she kissed him soundly. “Thank you!”
“You don’t hate me then?”
“Hate you? Why would I hate you?”
He shrugged. “In spite of what you said to the contrary, you seemed to like being human, eating, drinking . . .” His gaze searched hers. “No regrets?”
“No.” She lifted her arms over her head. “I feel like me again! And I need to hunt!”
Anticipation rose up within her at the thought. She remembered how it had been when she had been turned the first time. The hunger had been insatiable, uncontrollable. With no one to teach her, no one to guide her, she’d had no way of knowing that she could feed without killing. She had hunted among rich and poor alike, untroubled by guilt. She was a vampire. Humans were her natural prey. It was only later that she had discovered she could satisfy her hunger by feeding from many instead of killing one; only later that she had learned she didn’t have to hunt them down at all. No, it was far more pleasant to seduce them, to give them pleasure and find a deeper pleasure in return. But tonight, ah, tonight she wasn’t interested in seducing her prey; she wanted to experience the excitement of the hunt, feel her prey’s fear as she closed in, hear the frantic beating of a human heart, and feed. Feed until she was sated.
She glanced at Logan then, a smile of anticipation on her lips as she left the house, certain he would follow.
Logan trailed after her, hanging back as she prowled the dark alleys of the city, and it was as if she had never been human, never been anything but the Queen of the Vampires. She stalked her first victim, trapped him in the web of her stare, and took what she wanted. Logan feared she would drain the man dry, but she took only a little, and moved on.
She called the second man to her, quick and confident, took what she needed, and moved on.
Logan couldn’t stop watching her—the glow in her eyes, the way she moved, like liquid silver. The sound of her laughter warmed his heart and yet he waited on tenterhooks, waited for her to say she was leaving him. She made no mention of the baby or Kyle. Had she forgotten them completely, or only for the moment?
She fed and fed again, until she was drunk on the taste of the crimson nectar. With her hunger satisfied, she left the city and returned to her home in the hills of Hollywood.
And Logan followed her, as he had always followed her.
Mara stood in the front yard, her gaze searching the darkness, jubilation filling her as she reveled in her restored powers. It was dark, but nothing was hidden from her. She saw and heard everything clearly, the delicate veins in the leaf of a tree, the rustle of feathers as a bird stirred in a nest overhead. A deep breath filled her nostrils with the scent of earth and foliage and the stink of an animal long dead.
A thought, and she transformed herself into swirling mist. She floated over Logan for a moment before resuming her own form, laughter again bubbling from her throat as her feet touched the ground.
Logan’s laughter joined hers. Bound by blood, he knew what she was feeling, thinking. Like a proud parent, he watched her test her powers. She changed into a beautiful black wolf with startling green eyes. Resuming her own form once again, she held her arms out at her sides, palms up, and rose into the air. She hovered there a moment, then drifted slowly to the ground, her eyes glowing with delight.
“Oh, how I’ve missed this!” She twirled around, arms outstretched, spinning faster and faster, until she would have been a blur to any eyes but his.
She was like a woman reborn, he thought. Venus rising from the sea. Eternally young, eternally beautiful.
She lifted her face toward the heavens, her eyes closed as she communed with the darkness, as she became one with the night. He could feel her summoning her power, drawing it around her like an invisible cloak. It lifted the hair along his nape.
Thick black clouds gathered overhead. Bolts of jagged yellow lightning slashed through the darkened skies. Thunder rolled across the heavens and shook the earth.