jumped out of the chair at the sound of footsteps, her hand pressed to her heart in relief when she recognized Darrick walking toward her.
“What are you doing here after dark, Kadie?”
She waved her hand toward the chair. “I was reading and I . . . I fell asleep and when I woke up, I was afraid to go outside, and then a vampire showed up. . . .”
“What? Who?”
“I don’t know. But something scared him off and then you came in.”
Darrick glanced around the room, then shook his head. “Saintcrow,” he hissed.
“What?”
“Nothing. Come on, I’ll take you home.”
“How did he disappear so fast?”
Vaughan shrugged. “He didn’t really disappear.”
“Well, he certainly vanished from sight. What else would you call it?”
“Vampires can move faster than the human eye can follow.”
“So, he just left the room at the speed of light?”
“Something like that.” Vaughan opened the door for Kadie and followed her outside. “Vampires get stronger as they get older.”
“Really? How long have you been a vampire?”
“A little over five hundred years.”
Kadie blinked at him. Five hundred years. Try as she might, she couldn’t believe it. Sure, people were living longer these days, with more and more men and women living to be over a hundred. But five hundred?
“It’s true,” Vaughan said. “I was turned in 1513. Henry the Eighth was king of England.”
Kadie turned that over in her mind as she crossed the street toward her house. She had always been fascinated by Henry the Eighth and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Kadie had always questioned Anne’s wisdom in defying Henry. Had Kadie been the queen at the time, she would have taken young Elizabeth and fled the court. In Kadie’s opinion, being queen wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, especially if you were married to Henry, who had divorced two wives and beheaded two others.
They had reached the house. Kadie stopped at the door. “Thanks for walking me home.”
“If you’d really like to thank me . . .” His voice trailed off as his gaze moved to the pulse throbbing erratically in the hollow of her throat. “I know a way.”
Kadie shook her head. “No. I know you’re stronger than I am. I know fighting is useless. But I’ll never surrender to you willingly. I don’t care what you do.”
“Is that right?” He closed in on her, his hands flattening on the door on either side of her head. “Look at me, Kadie.”
She tried to look away. She tried to close her eyes, but she had no will of her own. She stared into his eyes and all thought to resist fled her mind.
“I want to drink from you,” he said. “And you want me to.”
“I want you to.” She hadn’t meant to say the words aloud, but they passed her lips of their own accord. She stood there, helpless, as he brushed her hair aside, then lowered his head to her neck. She felt a faint sting as he bit her. It wasn’t really painful, but the thought of what he was doing filled her with horror and disgust.
When he released her from his preternatural power, she slapped him as hard as she could, then escaped into the house and slammed the door.
She stood there, breathing heavily. Had he gone? Stepping closer to the door, she pressed her ear to the wood, but heard nothing. Was he still there?
Going to the window, she peered outside. At first, she saw nothing, but then, from the corner of her eye, she saw movement. She stared at the scarf fluttering in the breeze for several minutes. Vaughan had gone, but he had left a black silk scarf tied to the porch rail.
The scarf was still there the next morning. Black. The color of death. Removing it from the railing, Kadie let the silk slide through her fingers. If she wore it, she would be admitting to everyone, and to herself, that she belonged to Darrick Vaughn. A shiver of unease slithered down her spine as she wadded it up and shoved it into her back pocket.
Feeling a sudden need to get away from the house and everything it represented, she quickly changed out of her nightgown and into a pair of jeans and a sweater, grabbed her car keys, and left the house, deciding a drive was just what she needed.
At the end of town, she turned onto an unpaved road flanked by stands of timber that grew taller and closer together the farther she went.