Immortal Sins

"Me? I've never killed anyone!"

"Perhaps not," he replied with a wry grin, "but that slab of meat you are eating came from a living creature."

"That's hardly the same thing!" Kari exclaimed.

"Isn't it?"

It was by far the strangest conversation she'd ever had with a man, or with anyone else, for that matter. "How old were you when you were turned?"

"One and thirty."

"How long have you been a vampire?"

"Seven hundred and thirty-six years."

She blinked at him, the burger in her hand forgotten. Seven hundred and thirty-six years. Good heavens. She did some quick mental arithmetic. He had been born in 1242, making him 767 years old! What would it be like to live such a long time? She nibbled on her lower lip. He had been trapped inside the Vilnius since 1709. You could hardly call that living.

She stared at him, her brow furrowed in thought. Was he alive? Weren't vampires dead? What was it they called vampires in the movies? Undead? She recalled one movie where the vampire had called his kind Nosferatu and said that it meant not dead. Was there really a difference between undead and not dead? If so, she had no idea what it might be. Undead, not dead--both meant not alive.

The grisly thought sent a shiver down her spine.

"Are you cold?" Rourke asked.

She shook her head. "No."

He regarded her a moment. "Afraid of me, are you?"

"No. Yes. I don't know, but I should be, shouldn't I? I mean, you're..." She made a vague gesture with one hand.

"Pray go on. What am I?"

"I wish I knew," she muttered unhappily.

"I am just a man."

"Yeah, right, a man who just happens to be a vampire."

"But still a man." His gaze moved over her face, slid slowly and seductively down her neck and over her br**sts, and returned to her face once more. "I could prove it to you," he said, his voice low and whiskey smooth.

Imagining how he would do that made it suddenly hard to breathe. All she could think about was his mouth on hers, their bodies entwined, bare skin sliding sensuously against bare skin. The look in his vibrant blue eyes told her he knew exactly what she was thinking.

Tearing her gaze from his, she glanced at what was left of her burger, only to find that, thanks to him, she had lost her appetite for char-broiled beef.

"Let's go." She pushed the tray away and gained her feet. "Do you need anything else?"

His gaze brushed her throat. "No."

Without waiting to see if he followed, she dumped her trash, then headed for the escalator. He was right behind her. She could feel his nearness like a physical caress.

Rourke followed Karinna out of the mall, relieved to be outside, away from the bombardment of so many strident voices, the rapid tattoo of a hundred beating hearts all calling his name.

Kari opened the trunk and he dropped his packages inside. When she moved toward the car door, his hand closed over her forearm.

"Not yet," he said.

"What do you mean?" she glanced around, suddenly aware that they were quite alone. What if he...She clamped down on her all too active imagination. If he'd wanted to hurt her, he'd had plenty of opportunity before now.

"I have been imprisoned for three hundred years. I should like to go for a walk and enjoy my freedom."

With a shrug, she said, "So, go."

"I would like some company," he said, gifting her with a wistful smile. "I have been alone for a very long time."

How could she argue with that? She tossed her handbag into the trunk, closed it, and slipped her keys into her pocket. "So, where do you want to go?"

"No place in particular. I just feel like walking."

She fell into step beside him. "I didn't know vampires liked to walk. I thought they always just turned into bats and flew off to wherever they wanted to go."

He looked at her, one brow raised in amusement. "Is that what you thought?"

"Happens in the movies all the time," she said with a shrug.

"Ah, yes, on the television." He had seen movies from time to time. He grimaced at the memory. He had not yet been able to move through the painting the first time he had seen a motion picture about the Undead. Trapped behind a wall of glass, his only entertainment had been watching the moving pictures, some of them in black and white, some in all the colors of the rainbow. One of his former owners had spent hours in front of the screen. Rourke had watched, too, though he had not always understood what he was seeing, or hearing. Shows like Batman, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, The Rifleman, Gunsmoke, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, My Favorite Martian, and Laugh-In. His favorites had been Dark Shadows and The Addams Family. Dark Shadows hadn't been intended to be a comedy, but he had found the life and times of Barnabas Collins rather amusing. Rourke couldn't recall now if Collins had ever turned into a bat. It was something Rourke, himself, had never tried. He grinned, wondering what it would be like. In his time, he had transformed into mist and into a wolf, but never a bat. It seemed undignified, somehow.

"What are you smiling at?" Kari asked.

"I was thinking about turning into a bat."

"Can you really do that? Be a bat?"

"I have no idea. I have never tried."

She stopped walking, her hands fisted on her hips, her head tilted to one side. "I'd like to see it."

"Here, now?" he asked, glancing up and down the street. "Might cause quite a stir, I should think."

"Yes," Kari said, grinning, "I suppose it would. Might even make the news. 'Man turns into bat on Main Street. Film at eleven.'"

Rourke regarded her for a moment, and then he laughed. Times were different now. When he had first been made, everyone believed in vampires. Grisly steps had been taken to make certain that those suspected of being Undead didn't rise again. Heads were lopped off, hearts torn out and burned, bodies buried facedown so that if the dead tried to dig their way out of their graves, they would, instead, dig deeper into the earth. People had hung strings of garlic around their doorways and windows and displayed crosses and crucifixes in prominent places.

With a rueful shake of his head, he continued on down the street.

"I still can't believe you're really a vampire," Kari said, hurrying to catch up with him. "Are there any more of your kind?"

"I am sure there are a few, here and there."

"How can that be? I mean, how is it that nobody knows vampires exist?"