Dante extricated himself from the tangle of naked limbs and put his bare feet on the floor of the unfamiliar apartment. He could hardly catch his breath yet, his heart still hammering hard. He felt fingers running up the small of his back. Irritated by the unwanted touch, he got up off the sagging mattress and began searching for his clothes in the dark.
"Don't go," one of them complained. "Mia and I aren't finished with you yet."
He didn't answer. All he wanted right now was to be moving. He'd been still for too long. Long enough for death to come looking for him.
"You okay?" asked the other girl. "You have a bad dream or something?"
Bad dream, he thought wryly. Far from it.
He'd been seeing the same vision--living it in vivid detail--for as long as he could remember.
It was a glimpse of the future.
His own death.
He knew every agonizing second of his final few moments of life; all that remained unanswered was the why, the where, and the when of it. He even knew who to credit for the curse of his vision.
The human woman who bore him in Italy some 229 years ago had seen not only her own death but that of her beloved mate, the Darkhaven vampire who had been Dante's scholarly, aristocratic father. Just as she'd envisioned it, that gentle female met a tragic demise, drowning in an ocean riptide after she' d swum out to pull a child from the same disaster. Dante's father, she had predicted, would be slain by a jealous political rival. Some eighty years after her death, outside a crowded meeting hall in the Rome Darkhaven, Dante had lost his father just as his mother had described.
His mother's unique Breedmate gift had passed down to her sole offspring, as was often the case among the Breed, and now Dante was the one damned with death visions.
"Come back to bed," one of the young women pleaded from behind him. "Come on, don't be such a drag."
Yanking on his clothes and boots, Dante strolled back over to the bed. The females pawed at him as he came near, their movements drowsy and fumbling, their minds still sluggish from the thrall of his earlier bite. He had sealed their wounds right after he'd fed, but there remained one thing to do before he could make his escape. Dante reached out and put his palm against the brow of one girl, then the other, scrubbing all recollection of this night from their thoughts.
If only he could do the same for himself, he thought, his throat still dry with the taste of smoke and ash and death.
Chapter Nine
"Relax, Tess." Ben's hand came to rest at the small of her back, his head bent low near her ear. "In case you hadn't noticed, this is a cocktail reception, not a funeral."
Which was a good thing, Tess thought, glancing down at her garnet-colored dress. Although the simple, resale-shop halter was a favorite, she was the only one wearing color amid the general sea of black. She felt out of place, conspicuous. Not that she was used to fitting in among other people. She never had, not from the time she was a little girl. She was always... different. Always apart from the rest of the world in ways she didn't fully understand and had learned it better not to explore. Instead, she tried to fit in--pretended she did--like now, standing in a crowded room of strangers. The urge to bolt from the crush of it all was strong.
Actually, more and more, Tess was feeling like she was standing at the front of a rising storm. As if unseen forces were gathering all around her, shoving her out onto a bare ledge. She thought if she looked down at her feet, she might find nothing but chasm beneath her. A steep fall with no end in sight.
She rubbed her neck, feeling a dull sort of ache in the tendons below her ear.
"You okay?" Ben asked. "You've been quiet all night."
"Have I? I'm sorry. I don't mean to be."
"Are you having a good time?"
She nodded, forcing a smile. "This is an amazing exhibit, Ben. The program says it's a private patrons' event, so how did you manage to get tickets?"
"Ah, I've got a few connections around town." He shrugged, then downed the last of his champagne. " Someone owed me a favor. And it's not what you're thinking," he said, his tone chiding as he took her empty soda glass from her hand. "I know the bartender, and he knows one of the girls who works in events here at the museum. Knowing how much you enjoy sculpture, a few months ago I put a bug in his ear about scoring me a couple of extra tickets for this reception."
"And the favor?" Tess prompted, suspicious. She knew that Ben often mingled with some questionable people. "What did you have to do for this guy?"
"His car was in the shop and I loaned him my van one night for a wedding he had to work. That's it, all on the up and up. Nothing shady." Ben gave her one of his melting grins. "Hey, I made you a promise, didn't I?"
Tess nodded vaguely.
"Speaking of the bar, how about I refresh our drinks--another mineral water with lime for the lady?"
"Yes, thank you."
As Ben wended through the crowd, Tess resumed her perusal of the art collection on special display around the grand ballroom. There were hundreds of pieces of sculpture, representing thousands of years of history, all encased in tall Plexiglas kiosks.