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  “You’ll tell me everything I want to know,” he whispered, lethal in his control as he stared into her bleary gaze. “From this moment forward, you, Nurse K. Delaney, will do whatever I tell you to do.”

  He bared his teeth, then struck as fiercely as a viper, draining every last bit of her conscience and her feeble human soul in one savage bite.

  Gabrielle made a perimeter check of her apartment, taking care that all the locks on her doors and windows were secure. She had been back home since mid-afternoon, having left Megan’s place in the morning after her friend went to work. Meg had offered for her to stay as long as she wanted, but Gabrielle couldn’t hide forever, and she hated the idea that she might drag her friend any deeper into a situation that was becoming more terrifying and unexplainable by the hour.

  At first, she’d avoided returning to her apartment and had walked around the city in a paranoid haze, all but giving in to the rising hysteria. Instinct warned her to prepare herself for a fight.

  One that she knew would be coming sooner than later.

  She worried that she’d find Lucan, one of his bloodsucking friends, or something even worse waiting for her when she arrived home. But it had been broad daylight, and she’d returned, at last, to find her apartment empty, not a thing out of place.

  Now, as darkness settled outside, her anxieties returned tenfold.

  Wrapping her arms around her cocoon of an oversized white sweater and jeans, she walked back into the kitchen where her answering machine was blinking with two new messages. They were both from Megan. She’d been phoning for the past hour, since her original message about the body recovered in the playground area where Gabrielle had been assaulted the night before.

  Megan was frantic, telling Gabrielle about the police report she’d gotten from Ray, describing how her attacker had apparently been mauled by animals not long after he’d tried to hurt Gabrielle. And there was more. A police officer had been murdered in the station; it was his weapon recovered from the savaged body found on the grounds of the children’s park.

  “Gabby, please call me as soon as you get this. I know you’re scared, honey, but the police really need your statement. Ray’s about to go on break from duty. He says he can come and pick you up, if you’d feel safer—”

  Gabrielle hit the erase button.

  And felt the hairs at the back of her neck begin to rise.

  She was no longer alone in the kitchen.

  Heart lurching into overdrive, she whirled around to face her intruder, not at all surprised to see that it was Lucan. He stood in the door from the living room, watching her in thoughtful silence.

  Or maybe he was just sizing up his next meal.

  Curiously, Gabrielle realized she wasn’t so much afraid of him as she was angry. He looked so normal, even now, standing there in a dark trenchcoat, tailored black pants, and an expensive-looking shirt that was a few shades darker than the mesmerizing silver of his eyes.

  There was no trace of the monster she had witnessed last night. Just a man. The dark lover she only thought she knew.

  She found herself wishing that he would have shown up with fangs bared and fury sparking in his strangely transformed eyes, as the terror he’d betrayed himself to be last night. It would have been more fair than this outward semblance of normalcy that made her want to pretend everything was all right. That he was actually Detective Lucan Thorne of the Boston Police, a man pledged to protect the innocent and uphold the law.

  A man she might have been able to fall in love with—perhaps already was.

  But everything about him had been a lie.

  “I told myself I wasn’t going to come here tonight.”

  Gabrielle swallowed hard. “I knew you would. I know you followed me last night, after I ran from you.”

  Something flickered within his penetrating gaze, which held her too intensely. Too much like a caress. “I wouldn’t have hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you, now.”

  “Then leave.”

  He shook his head. Took a step forward. “Not until we’ve talked.”

  “You mean, not until you’ve made sure I won’t talk,” she replied, trying not to be lulled into complacency simply because he looked like the man she had trusted.

  Or because her body—even her idiot heart—responded to him on sight.

  “There are things you need to understand, Gabrielle.”

  “Oh, I do understand,” she said, amazed that her voice held no tremor. Her fingers came up near her neck, feeling for the cross pendant she hadn’t worn since her first communion. The delicate talisman seemed like ridiculously flimsy armor now that she was standing in front of Lucan, with nothing to separate them except a few strides of his long, muscular legs. “You don’t have to explain anything to me. It’s taken me a while, granted, but I think I finally understand it all.”

  “No. You don’t.” He came toward her, pausing to notice the knot of chalky white bulbs tied above his head in the door of the kitchen. “Garlic,” he drawled, and exhaled an amused chuckle.

  Gabrielle retreated a pace from him, her Keds squeaking on the kitchen tiles. “I told you, I was expecting you.”

  And she’d done a bit of other prep work before he arrived. If he looked around, he would find the same threshold decoration in every room of the apartment, including the front door. Not that he seemed to care.

  Multiple locks hadn’t stopped him and neither had this further attempt at a security measure. He walked under Gabrielle’s homemade vampire repellant unfazed, his eyes dark and fixed on her intently.

  As he stepped closer, she backed up farther into the kitchen, until the counter came up behind her. A trial-sized mouthwash bottle lay on the polished granite top. It no longer contained Scope but a little something else she had picked up on her way home that morning, when she’d stopped in at St. Mary’s for a long overdue confession. Gabrielle grabbed the plastic bottle off the counter and held it close to her chest.

  “Holy water?” Lucan asked, coolly meeting her gaze. “What are you going to do with that, throw it on me?”

  “If I have to.”

  He moved so quickly, she saw only a dizzying blur in front of her as he reached out and snatched the small vial out of her grasp and emptied it into his hands. He smoothed his dripping fingers over his face and into his glossy black hair.

  Nothing happened.

  He tossed the useless container aside and took another step toward her.

  “I’m not what you think, Gabrielle.”

  He sounded so reasonable, she almost believed him. “I saw what you did. You murdered a man, Lucan.”

  He calmly shook his head. “I killed a human who was no longer a man—hardly human at all, in fact. What had once been human in him was bled out by the vampire who made him into a Minion slave. He was as good as dead already. I merely finished the job. I regret that you had to see it, but I cannot apologize. And I won’t. I would kill anyone, human or otherwise, who means to do you harm.”

  “Which makes you either dangerously overprotective, or just plain psychotic. To say nothing of the fact that you sliced that guy’s throat open with your teeth, and drank his blood!”

  She waited for another composed reply. Some other rational explanation that might make her consider that even something as unbelievable as vampirism could actually make sense—could actually exist—in the real world.

  But Lucan didn’t give her any such response.

  “This isn’t how I wanted things to go between us, Gabrielle. God knows, you deserve better.” He muttered something low under his breath, in a language she could not understand. “You deserve to be brought into this gently, by a male who will say the right words, and do the right things for you. That’s why I wanted to send Gideon—” He raked his fingers through his hair in a gesture of frustration. “I am no emissary for my race. I am a warrior. At times, an executioner. I deal in death, Gabrielle, and I am not accustomed to making excuses to anyone for my actions.”

  “I�
�m not asking you for excuses.”

  “What, then—the truth?” He gave her a wry smile. “You saw the truth last night when I killed that Minion and drained him dry. That was truth, Gabrielle. That is who I truly am.”

  She felt a keen sickness in her belly that he hadn’t even tried to deny the horror of what he was telling her. “You’re a monster, Lucan. My God, you’re something out of a nightmare.”

  “According to human superstitions and folklore, yes. Those same stories would tell you to fight my kind with garlic or holy water—all farce, as you’ve just seen for yourself. In fact, our races are very closely intertwined. We are not so different from each other.”

  “Really?” she scoffed, hysteria clutching at her as he took a step closer, forcing her to retreat again. “Last time I checked, cannibalism wasn’t high on my to-do list. Then again, neither was screwing the undead, but I seem to be doing that with a bit of regularity lately.”

  He exhaled a humorless laugh. “I assure you, I am not undead. I breathe, like you. I bleed, like you. I can be killed, though not easily, and I have been living for a long, long time, Gabrielle.” He came toward her, closing the small distance that separated them in the kitchen. “I am every bit as alive as you are.”

  As if to prove it, his warm fingers closed around hers. He brought her hand up between their bodies and pressed her palm against his chest. Through the soft fabric of his shirt, his heart pounded strong and steady. She felt his breath flowing in and out as his lungs expanded and contracted, the warmth of his body seeping into her fingertips, permeating her weary senses like a soothing balm.

  “No.” She pulled away from him. “No, damn you! No more tricks. I saw your face last night, Lucan. I saw your fangs, your eyes! You said that was who you truly are, so what is this? Everything you present yourself to be now—everything I feel when I am near you—are they illusions?”

  “I am real, as I stand here now … and as you saw me last night.”

  “Then show me. Let me see the other you again instead of this one. I want to know what I’m really dealing with, it’s only fair.”

  He scowled as though her mistrust wounded him. “The change cannot be forced. It is a physiological one that comes on with hunger, or during times of intense emotion.”

  “So, how much of a head start will I have before you decide to rip open my jugular and go for broke? A couple of minutes? A few seconds?”

  His eyes flashed at her provocation, but his voice remained level. “I will not hurt you, Gabrielle.”

  “Then why are you here? To fuck me again, before you turn me into something awful like you?”

  “Jesus,” he ground out harshly. “That’s not how it—”

  “Or are you going to make me your personal vampire slave, like that one you killed last night?”

  “Gabrielle.” Lucan’s jaw went rigid, as if his teeth were clenched hard enough to shatter steel. “I came here to protect you, goddamn it! Because I need to know that you are safe. Maybe I’m here because I see that I’ve made mistakes with you, and I want to try to fix this somehow.”

  She stood immobile, absorbing his unexpected candor, and watching the play of emotion on his harsh features. Anger, frustration, desire, uncertainty … she read all of it in his penetrating gaze. God help her, but she felt all of that and more churning like a tempest within herself as well.

  “I want you to leave, Lucan.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I never want to see you again!” she cried, desperate for him to believe her. She raised her hand to slap him, but he caught her easily, before she could strike. “Please. Just get out of here, now!”

  Ignoring her completely, Lucan took the hand that would have lashed out at him, and brought it tenderly to his mouth. His lips parted slowly as he pressed her palm into his hot, sensual kiss. She felt no bite of fangs, only the tender heat of his mouth, the moist caress of his tongue as it teased the sensitive flesh between her fingers.

  Her head swam with the delicious feel of his lips on her skin.

  Her legs weakened beneath her, her limbs, and her resistance, beginning a slow meltdown that started at her core.

  “No,” she said, hurling the word at him as she pulled her hand out of his loose grip and shoved him away from her. “No. I can’t let you do this to me, not now. Everything between us has changed! It’s all different now.”

  “The only thing different, Gabrielle, is that you see me now with your eyes open.”

  “Yes.” She forced herself to look at him. “And I don’t like what I see.”

  His smile held no mercy whatsoever. “You only wish you could say the same about how I make you feel.”

  She wasn’t sure how he did it—how he could move so fast in the time it took for her to blink—but in that same instant, Lucan’s breath was skating close below her ear, his deep voice rumbling along her neck as he pressed his body against hers.

  It was too much to process: this terrifying new reality, the questions she didn’t even know how to begin asking. And then there was the other disorientation brought on by the exquisite power of Lucan’s touch, his voice, his lips softly grazing her tender skin.

  “Stop it!” She tried to push him, but he was a wall of muscle and cool, dark purpose. He withstood her anger, and the futile blows she threw at his massive chest didn’t seem to faze him in the least. His placid expression remained as unmoving as his body. She backed away from him in frustration, in anguish. “God, what are you trying to prove here, Lucan?”

  “Only that I am not the monster you want to believe I am. Your body knows me. Your senses tell you that you are safe with me. You need only listen to them, Gabrielle. And listen to me, when I tell you that I did not come here to frighten you. I will never strike you, nor will I ever take your blood. On my honor, I will never harm you.”

  She let out a choked laugh, a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of a vampire possessing anything close to honor, let alone pledging it to her now. But Lucan was unwavering, solemn. Maybe she was crazy, because the longer she held his silver stare, the weaker her grasp on the doubt she wanted so desperately to cling to.

  “I am not your enemy, Gabrielle. For centuries, my kind and yours have needed each other to survive.”

  “You feed on us,” she whispered brokenly, “like parasites.”

  Something dark moved across his features, but he did not rise to the contempt in her accusation. “We have protected you as well. Some of my kind have even cherished yours, sharing life together as blood-bonded mates. It is the only way the vampire race continues. Without human females to bear our young, we would eventually be extinct. It is how I came to be, and how all those like me came into being as well.”

  “I don’t understand. Why can’t you … mix with women of your own kind?”

  “Because there are none. Through a genetic failure, Breed offspring are solely male, from the very first of the line, down through hundreds of generations.”

  This last revelation, among all the other astonishing news she was hearing, gave her pause. “So, that means your mother is human?”

  Lucan gave a slight nod. “She was.”

  “And your father? He was…”

  Before she could say the word vampire, Lucan replied. “My father, and the seven other Ancient Ones like him, were not of this world. They were the first of my kind, beings from another place, very different from this planet.”

  It took her a second to absorb what she had heard, particularly on the heels of everything else she was coming to grips with at the moment. “What are you saying—they were aliens?”

  “They were explorers. Savage, warminded conquerors, in fact, who crash-landed here a very long time ago.”

  Gabrielle stared at him. “Your father was not only a vampire, but an alien besides? Do you have any idea how insane that sounds?”

  “It is the truth. My father’s people did not call themselves vampires but, by human definition, that is what they were. Their digestive systems
were too advanced for Earth’s crude protein. They could not process the plants or animals as humans did, so they learned to take their nourishment from blood. They fed without restraint and wiped out entire populations in the process. You’ve heard of some of them, no doubt: Atlantis. The Mayan kingdom. Countless other unnamed, unrecorded civilizations that vanished seemingly overnight. Many of the mass deaths historically attributed to plagues and famine were not that at all.”

  Good Lord.

  “Assuming you can be taken seriously about any of this, you’re talking about thousands of years of carnage.” A chill spread over her limbs when he said nothing to deny it. “Do they they … do you—God, I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. Do vampires feed on any living thing, like each other maybe, or are we humans the main course?”

  Lucan’s expression was grave. “Human blood alone contains the specific combinations of nutrients we need in order to survive.”

  “How often?”

  “We must feed every few days, a week sometimes. More is required if we are injured and need strength to heal from wounds.”

  “And you … kill when you feed?”

  “Not always, seldom, in fact. Most of the race feeds from willing human Hosts.”

  “People actually volunteer to let you torture them?” she asked, incredulous.

  “There is no torture involved, unless we will it. When a human is relaxed, the bite of a vampire can be very pleasurable. When it’s over, the Host recalls nothing because we leave no memory of ourselves behind.”

  “But you do kill sometimes,” she said, finding it hard not to sound accusing.

  “At times, it is necessary to take a life. The Breed shares an oath never to prey on the innocent or infirm.”

  She scoffed. “How noble of you.”

  “It is noble, Gabrielle. If we wanted to—if we gave ourselves over to that part of us that is still the warring conqueror of our forebears, we could enslave all of mankind. We could be kings, with every human existing only to feed and amuse us. That very idea is at the core of a long, deadly battle between my kind and our enemy brothers, the Rogues. You saw some of them yourself, that night outside the dance club.”