A Vampire for Christmas - By Michele Hauf Page 0,25
took advantage of him.”
He snapped his head up. That wasn’t the reaction he’d been expecting. “I’m afraid so.”
She angled her body to face his. “Why would you want to be a part of an organization that judges you not by your actions, but by someone else’s?”
“It is my duty.” It was all he knew, what he was destined to become.
She made an exasperated sound. “How is it that humans haven’t found all this out by now? Plastered it all over the internet?”
“From time to time, they have. For instance, the man with Leona was a human who’d been petitioning her to change him.”
“So that’s why she thought I was wanting you to turn me into…someone like you? To become immortal?”
“Technically, we’re not immortal. We just live much longer than humans. And it takes the blood of two vampires, not one, to turn a human to a changeling. But, yes, that’s what she’d assumed about you.”
“If I believe you, which I haven’t decided yet because it’s so…far-fetched, then why are you able to go out into the sun? You left my house at dawn when you…ah…stayed over.”
“Not all the myths perpetuated about our people are true.” He explained to her how the UV light affected their kind.
“So have you ever taken my energies? Or wiped my memories?” she asked cautiously.
“I have taken your energies at times,” he admitted, pointedly ignoring her second question. He wasn’t ready to confess that yet. “I try not to, but it flows so easily into me that I really have to concentrate. But sometimes when I’m with you, my thoughts are focused…elsewhere and I let down my guard.”
She rubbed her arms. “So why are you telling me all this? Why not lie?”
He stared out at the bay before he replied. Lights from the city and the far shore danced in warped patterns on the water. A marine horn echoed in the distance, a mournful, melancholy sound in the night air. “Because it makes me feel good to finally tell you the truth.”
Neither of them said anything for a full minute. Then she turned to face him again.
“What do you mean by finally?”
He let go of her and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, but the dread in his heart remained. “Because we didn’t just meet two weeks ago in the parking lot. We met last Christmas, when you decorated the house for the party.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“TAKE ME HOME.”
Those three words pointed one way, and one way only. It had sounded like a death sentence at the park. She’d not said anything more.
Trace parked the car in front of Charlotte’s house and started to get out, but her hand on his wrist stopped him.
“I was in love with you, wasn’t I?”
He sat back against the leather seat and stared out the windshield. “You never told me if you were or not.”
“But I was. I can feel it in my bones. That night when we met again…when you took care of those two guys…part of me knew that I’d loved you. I don’t think I’d have ever let you take me home and…well…do what we did together otherwise. Instinctively, I knew I could trust you. Like it was hardwired into my system. I just didn’t remember that I did.”
Trust him? Shit. He was the last person she should trust. “Charlotte, please.”
“Were you afraid that I’d tell about you and your people? Is that it?”
“Of course not, but it’s written in the old edicts that a human cannot know about the existence of our kind. Once you found out, I had a duty to uphold.”
“So what exactly did I see last year?”
Trace remembered it as clearly as if it were yesterday. The party guests had left, and he’d insisted that Charlotte spend the night rather than drive home. “You were clearing up stray dishes and I was upstairs checking on one of the houseguests. Somehow you ended up downstairs near—”
“The storage room?”
“How did you—? Yes, the storage room just past the wine cellar.”
“I knew it. The other day when you were on the phone, I ran down there to check for a missing box. I got such an uncomfortable feeling that I came back upstairs without going inside. I didn’t know why.” She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “I don’t remember anything, though. What happened?”
“I’m glad you don’t, because—” He silently cursed Sebastian. “You walked in on my cousin and one of his lady friends.”