The phone trilled, jarring Cynthia awake. She blinked in the darkened room, reaching automatically for the hard, male body that should have been behind her and finding nothing but empty space. She closed her eyes and willed away the tears, curling her body around the ache in her chest. The phone jangled its wake up call again, and she reached out irritably, knocking the receiver away, listening to the automated voice spilling out. She lay there for a moment more, feeling the arousal of her body, the fine sheen of sweat that covered her skin. It was so real. So very real. And it was all a lie.
Throwing aside the covers, she forced herself to stand and head for the shower. One day at a time, wasn't that what all those anonymous help groups said? One day at a time. She wondered what they'd think about her using their mantra against the memory of her vampire lover.
* * * *
Cyn swore as the hotel lobby's automatic doors opened and she stepped outside. “It's f**king freezing out here,” she said to no one. “I thought Texas was warm."
"Cynthia Leighton?"
She stiffened, swinging around to stare at the man standing next to a long, black limo parked in the porte-cochere. No, not a man. A vampire. Not that most people would have noticed. The small things gave him away—a bulge in his upper lip concealing fangs emerging in an instinctive show of aggression, the too still way he watched her over the bulk of the limo. Cyn knew vampires, knew that as much as they might resemble humans, they were definitely different—better, stronger, faster. The Six Million Dollar Man, but without the plane crash. This particular vampire was looking at her with distaste, as if he desperately hoped he was wrong about her identity. She grinned, happy to ruin his night. “That's me!"
The vampire didn't crack even the shadow of a smile. “Lord Jabril Karim is waiting."
Cyn made a point of checking her watch. “My appointment is at seven.” It was six o'clock, and Jabril Karim's estate was about forty minutes outside the city. She knew because she'd checked.
The vamp merely looked at her. Cyn opened the limo door and slid across the soft leather seat. It was going to be a long forty minutes.
Chapter Three
Mirabelle woke. It was not a slow wakening, not a gradual return of the senses, as if from sleep. It was the clarity of difference between black and white, life and death. She was Vampire and she was awake.
Remaining perfectly still, she listened to the small sounds around her—a car moving slowly away from the house, a bird singing outside the window, voices from the kitchens beneath her rooms. But nothing closer. Safe. For now.
She sat up in the near perfect dark of a walk-in closet, throwing off blankets she no longer needed but used anyway. They comforted her, perhaps a memory of better times. The darkness itself was no impediment; her eyes compensated for the absence of light, making do with the small amount leaking from beneath the door, showing her the outlines and shadows of shelves and hangers, clothes and shoes. She sighed and climbed to her feet, pulled open the closet door and hurried into the bedroom beyond.
It was a spacious room, elegantly furnished with a huge four poster bed and heavy satin and velvet furnishings. Elaborate brocade drapes covered the wide windows, dark burgundies and blues to match the bed coverings. It was all very beautiful and very expensive ... and nothing she would have chosen for herself. But then she never slept here. It felt safer, somehow, to hide in the closet. It was foolish, and ultimately pointless. But she did it anyway.
A tug on the thick rope and the drapes drew away. Beyond the window, the night was driven back by the bright, almost garish, artificial lighting of the estate grounds. Mirabelle stared out without seeing and wondered why she was so unsettled tonight. It was a night like any other. Wasn't it?
A knock sounded on the door and she turned, heading across the room with a smile. It was probably her sister Elizabeth who was her only real friend and the one bright spot in her nights. Only seventeen and still human, Liz lived in a separate building on the edge of the estate, along with the housekeeper and other servants. It had been days since they'd seen each other. Liz couldn't come every night, but she did try, and—
Mirabelle stopped before she reached the door and scented the air carefully. Her visitor was definitely human, but...?
She glanced down nervously at her silky nightgown. It was a secret indulgence to her femininity, the last one left to her. She rushed back to the closet and drew on a long, thick robe, tugging it closed around her neck and tying it securely before going over to pull open the door.
"My lady.” The servant outside lowered his eyes, unwilling to look upon her, even in the all-encompassing robe. “Lord Jabril Karim requests your immediate presence.” He glanced up at her night clothing and tightened his mouth in disapproval. “That is, my lord requests your presence as soon as you are decently clothed."
Mirabelle flushed, more from humiliation than anger. Even the servants presumed to judge her, though it was her money that fed and clothed this man and his entire family. And because she was feeling unhappy and unsettled tonight, she did something she rarely did. She threw courtesy to the wind and closed the door in his face, locking it with a loud click.
A petty defiance, she admitted as she hurried back to the closet, and one that would probably come back to haunt her in the form of small holes in her clothing and erratic visits to her room by the cleaning staff. Not that she cared either way. She hated the so-called modest clothing Jabril Karim insisted she wear, and the rooms were little more than a prison cell. What did she care if they were clean or not? Still, if the old bloodsucker had sent someone to fetch her, it was probably important—to him anyway. And he had ways of punishing her that were far worse than anything the cleaning staff could dream up.
She stripped off the robe and nightgown, went into the bathroom and turned on the shower, letting the room fill with steam while she brushed her teeth. Jabril might complain she'd taken too long, but she'd be damned if she'd go without a shower. He knew very well that she woke long after he did, long after the other vampires in the house did. She was very young, as such things were reckoned. She'd been barely eighteen when she was turned, and that was only five years ago, a century or more younger than any of the other vampires living here. The sun had to be well below the horizon before she began to stir, which meant everyone else had been awake a good hour by the time she drew her first full breath of the night.
She rinsed her mouth and stepped under the hot spray, letting it pound away the tension, forcing herself to put aside her many grievances, shoving them far into the back of her mind. It was how she had survived this long, how she would survive long enough to break away someday, to take Liz and make a life for the two of them far away from Texas and Lord Jabril f**king Karim.
Chapter Four
The thick fabric of her skirt hung heavily on her hips, and Mirabelle tugged at it, trying to settle it comfortably around her legs. Her clothes were unrelieved black—ankle length skirt, t-shirt and loose black sweater, even a scarf to hide her long blond hair. Her shoes were black Nikes, and she wore black old lady socks that rose above her knees, as if somehow the sight of even the tiniest bit of her flesh would prove an irresistible temptation to the male vampires of Jabril's court.
Mirabelle didn't feel irresistible or tempting. She felt old and ugly, and she looked resentfully at the richly dressed men who filled the room. The penile brigade clothed themselves in silks and soft wools in a rainbow of vibrant color.
Mirabelle was the only female vampire on the estate. For that matter, she'd never even met another female vampire, although she knew they existed. Jabril Karim rarely sired female vamps. Normally, he had no use for women beyond the nutritional value of their blood and the sex that came with it—and his basement stable of human blood slaves provided that. He'd made an exception in Mirabelle's case, because she had something else he wanted ... a lot of money.
Fortunately for her, he had yet to figure out a way to get to the money without keeping her alive, assuming a vampire could be considered alive. She didn't know the science of the matter, but she certainly felt alive. Sometimes she thought it would be worth dying for good just to keep Jabril from getting his slimy hands on her part of the money. But then, he'd just go after Liz that much harder, plus she'd be well and truly dead and unable to enjoy his reaction, so that kind of took away from the satisfaction of the whole idea.
With an effort, she forced her thoughts away from Jabril and his followers and onto something more pleasant, what little there was to choose from. She wondered where Liz was. Not that her little sister ever ventured into this part of the house at night. There were only two types of beings in this room—vampires and food. If you weren't one, you were the other. And Liz was determined to be neither, an aspiration Mirabelle had every intention of seeing realized. Bad enough Jabril had succeeded in turning her; she would not stand by and let him turn her little sister as well.
A ripple of movement shivered across the room, and Mirabelle glanced up through her lashes. It was a big room, a “great” room her parents’ architect had called it, with broad pillars dotted throughout the empty space. The pillars were only for effect—Mirabelle knew from a childhood spent playing here that they were quite hollow and not at all the marble monoliths they appeared to be. But that had been before her parents had died, before Jabril had claimed their home for himself. There were no children playing in this room, not anymore. A familiar wave of sadness rolled over her as she remembered all those other times. The grand receptions and parties of Texas society—fund raisers hosted by her parents and others, charitable events where guests stood around sipping cocktails and eating dainty finger foods before writing big tax deductible checks.