Читать книгу: «The Vampire Affair», страница 3

“Come on!” she said again.

Brandt nodded. “It’s true.”

“Get out!”

“Maybe I should say the same thing to you,” he replied. He turned and went over to the door. “There you go,” he said as he opened it. “If you don’t believe me, you’re free to leave. After all, if there’s nothing in the dark to be afraid of, why shouldn’t you just walk right out that door?”

Jessie stayed where she was on the sofa. Despite the lights in the trees along the path, a lot of shadows lurked out there. Thick, black shadows that could hide almost anything.

“I thought so.” Brandt closed the door.

Jessie swung her legs off the sofa. She would have stood up, but at that moment a wave of dizziness hit her. “Look, just because I don’t believe you doesn’t mean I want to go out there right now. More of those guys could be around. You said there was a third one who ran off.”

“And what did they want?”

“To kidnap you?” she guessed. “You’re worth a boatload of money, remember?” She waved a hand at Max and Clifford. “That’s why you’ve got bodyguards.”

Max gave a short bark of laughter. “We’re not his bodyguards. Anybody dumb enough to try to kidnap Michael would wish they hadn’t.”

Clifford said, “We assist Michael from time to time in his work, but you can be assured, miss, he doesn’t need us to protect him. He can take care of himself just fine.”

Having seen the way Brandt handled himself in the fight, Jessie had to admit that was true. He wasn’t just dangerous; he was deadly.

And speaking of that…“What did you do with the bodies?” she asked. Her voice caught in her throat as she added, “And where exactly have you taken Ted? I want to see him.”

Brandt shook his head solemnly and said, “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. I told you he’s in a private facility. I deeply regret that his family won’t know what happened to him for the time being, but it can’t be helped. We can’t afford to have the authorities involved in this.”

Outrage jerked Jessie to her feet. “You can’t do that! It’s…it’s kidnapping!”

“As I said, I deeply regret it.”

“I don’t give a damn what you regret. It’s not right.”

“A lot of things are not right with this world,” Michael Brandt said. “Things which you know nothing about, Ms. Morgan.”

“Like vampires?”

Max said, “There’s a war going on. You may not see it or hear anything about it, but it’s happening regardless.”

“As for the other two,” Brandt went on as if they hadn’t been arguing, “once they were destroyed, nothing was left of them except their clothes. We’ll dispose of those. No one will come looking for them.”

“No reason to, right? Since they’re already dead?”

He inclined his head. “Exactly.”

Jessie’s knees were suddenly too weak for her to continue standing. She sank back down on the sofa and covered her face with her hands for a moment as she tried to take it all in. As far as she could see, there were only two options: either she had imagined everything and was truly insane, or else the things that had happened tonight were real and Brandt and his friends were telling her the truth.

And she knew she hadn’t imagined it because her throat still hurt where that son of a bitch had grabbed her. As a journalist, she had learned not to believe anything she didn’t see with her own eyes. Well, she had seen this, and felt it, and knew now that she had to accept the truth of it.

“All right,” she said as she lowered her hands and looked up at Brandt. “You guys kill vampires. I want the whole story.”

Brandt shook his head and said, “There’s not much else to tell.”

“The hell there’s not. For starters, why didn’t security come running down here as soon as the fight broke out? They had to have seen what was going on, on their monitors.”

“They didn’t see anything except what those acolytes wanted them to see,” Clifford said.

“Acolytes?”

“The two who attacked you and Ted, and their friend who took off,” Brandt said. “I’m sure they hoped that by killing us they could move up in the hierarchy.”

“Hierarchy?”

Max said smugly, “It means the ranking system within a group.”

Jessie glared at him. “I know what the word means. I’m a journalist, after all.”

“You work for one of those sleazy tabloids. That’s hardly what I’d call journalism.”

“I’m freelance, damn it! Maybe I’ll sell a story about you lunatics to the New York Times!”

Brandt moved in front of her with a hand upraised. “Settle down,” he told her. He added over his shoulder, “And you’re not helping matters, Max.”

The big man snorted in disgust and turned away.

Jessie didn’t like being told to settle down. Just because Brandt was rich didn’t mean he could boss her around. Still, she was curious enough to suppress her irritation as she switched her attention back to Michael. “What did you mean about the security personnel only seeing what those killers wanted them to see?”

“Vampires have certain…characteristics.”

“You mean like not showing up in mirrors? Are you saying that you can’t see them with a camera, either?”

“That happens to be true,” Brandt admitted. “But they can also alter a human’s perception for a limited amount of time, make them see things that aren’t there…or not see things that are. For example, vampires are not shapeshifters. They don’t turn into bats or wolves or even mist. But they can make someone who sees them think that they do.”

“So they cast a spell over the rent-a-cops?”

“Basically. The effect will wear off soon, although that depends on how long the third one hung around to continue it and cover up his escape. Also, calling it a spell implies some sort of magic, and it’s really more a matter of their vampiric condition allowing them to tap into previously unused portions of the brain—”

Jessie held up a hand to stop him. “Let’s just call it a spell,” she suggested. “I’m already mind-boggled enough. I don’t need a science lesson on top of it. The question now is…who are you, and why do you, well, kill vampires?”

Clifford said, “I’m not sure how much you need to go into the details, Michael.”

“I want answers to my questions,” Jessie snapped. “Or else I might have to go to the cops and tell them what happened here tonight. You already said you can’t afford to have the authorities poking around.”

She knew she was taking a chance. She was alone with three obviously dangerous men, and even though she was athletic and had studied martial arts in addition to the rough-and-tumble experience she had picked up as a kid, she knew she was no match for them. They could do whatever they wanted, and she wouldn’t be able to stop them.

But she had seen something in Michael Brandt’s eyes…Not friendliness, exactly. Maybe more like a touch of respect for her tenacity, and for her ability to absorb everything she had heard and seen tonight and roll with those stunning punches.

She wished, suddenly, fleetingly, that she could see something else in Michael Brandt’s eyes. Something like interest, or even desire.

Jessie pushed that thought out of her head. This wasn’t the time or place for such things.

Yet whenever that certain spark existed between people, it was no respecter of time and place. It happened whether or not it was convenient for the man and woman involved.

“You don’t want to try blackmailing us,” Max said.

Brandt shook his head. “She’s not blackmailing us. She can’t do anything to harm us.” He turned to Jessie. “You know perfectly well the police would never believe your story, don’t you, Miss Morgan?”

Jessie didn’t say anything. She just looked at him stubbornly and defiantly.

After a moment Brandt went on, “But if I tell you the truth, will you give me your word that you’ll let this drop and allow us to go about our business?”

“Maybe,” Jessie said. Get the story first, she told herself, and worry about the details like lying later.

Brandt shook his head. “Not good enough. I need your word.”

Why did he think her word counted for anything? She was just one of those sleazy tabloid reporters, wasn’t she, the bane of rich celebrities like him?

But he was willing to put his trust in her. For some reason, that made her heart pound a little harder in her chest.

“All right,” she said. “You have my word on it.” If she wound up breaking that promise, she would deal with the moral aftermath in her own way.

Brandt nodded. “All right, then. Clifford, I think we could use some coffee.”

“I’ll see to it,” Clifford said.

“Max, if you’ll deal with that other matter…”

Max grunted in assent and left the room. Only after he was gone did Jessie realize that Brandt had probably sent him to dispose of the clothes that had been left when the two acolytes disintegrated.

Think about that later, she warned herself. For now she needed to just concentrate on getting to the truth.

Brandt pulled an armchair over and sat down facing the sofa where Jessie sat. As always, no matter what he did, he looked relaxed and at ease.

“For hundreds of years,” he began, “a struggle has been going on between the forces of darkness and the forces of light.”

Jessie nodded. “Yeah, yeah, good versus evil, I know. Get to the vampires.”

A flash of annoyance flickered through his eyes. “You make it sound more simple than it really is. But in a way, you’re right. It is just the old story of good versus evil. Vampires are a manifestation of that evil, one that members of my family have been fighting for centuries.”

“Let me guess…your name was originally Van Helsing?”

“Are you going to let me tell this or not?” She sat back and waved a hand. “Sorry. I have a smart-ass streak that sometimes gets away from me. Go on.”

“As a matter of fact, my family name didn’t start out as Brandt. It was Anglicized when my ancestors moved to England from the Balkans about a hundred and fifty years ago. From there the family spread around the world. We had to, because the vampiric threat was spreading, too.” “Before that it was more of a local thing?” Michael nodded. “That’s right. The condition originated in Europe and was contained there for a couple of hundred years before making the jump to other continents. Occasionally a vampire would manage to travel elsewhere, which accounts for stories of bloodsucking creatures in other cultures, but they were always destroyed before their unholy plague could be firmly established.

“In the old country my family was always dedicated to fighting the vampires, so when they migrated to England, so did we, and the war continues to this day.”

“Then Max and Clifford are related to you?”

“Distant cousins,” Clifford answered as he came back into the room from the kitchen, carrying a tray with three cups of coffee on it. “Michael is a direct descendant, so the bloodline is much stronger in him. That’s why his powers are greater.”

Jessie’s eyes widened as she looked at Michael. “You have powers?”

Clifford winced. “You hadn’t told her about that yet? Sorry, Michael.”

He waved off the apology. “No, that’s all right. I was coming to it. I wouldn’t really call what I have powers. It’s more like…an edge. My reflexes are better. I can move faster than a regular human and I have more strength. And I can sense a vampire’s presence, even when I can’t see it.”

“Sounds like powers to me,” Jessie said. “How in the world did you get them?”

“It wasn’t through any doing of my own,” Michael said as he picked up one of the coffee cups. He took a sip and then said, “You see, my ancestor, the first one to wage war against the creatures, was a vampire himself.”

Chapter Four

Jessie stared at him for a moment before saying, “You’re descended from a vampire?”

“He was a vampire,” Michael said. “I didn’t say he stayed one.”

So far she seemed to have accepted everything he had told her with surprising ease, but he knew that deep down her natural skepticism had to be insisting that none of it was true. He could have used that skepticism to his advantage if he had just been content to lie to her and reinforce her assumption that the men in black were kidnappers. Her brain would have glossed over the inexplicable things she had seen, like a man bursting into flame and turning into dust when a wooden stake pierced his heart.

What the human brain could not explain adequately, it made excuses for. Michael knew that.

But for some reason that he couldn’t pinpoint, he hadn’t wanted to lie to Jessie. When he looked at her, the falsehoods wouldn’t come out of his mouth. He wanted to share the truth with her…even though he knew it was a mistake.

Jessie raked her fingers through her long dark hair. He could tell she was struggling to work through everything he had told her. “That doesn’t make any sense,” she finally said. “You have to be dead to be a vampire, and once you’re dead, you can’t come back to life.”

Michael shrugged. “There are different schools of thought on the subject. Some people believe that vampirism is a condition that can be cured. I’m one of them. I have to believe it, because my ancestor was cured. Cured by the love of a good woman.”

Jessie frowned. “That’s crazy.”

“What, the idea that love can change a person?”

“That’s not what I meant. Although I haven’t seen a lot of evidence supporting that idea, either.”

“Now you’re just being cynical. Anyway…” He took a deep breath. “What I meant was, he was cured by his lover, a gypsy woman who also happened to know the proper herbs and spells to use. Unfortunately, the secret died with her. But my ancestor’s time as a vampire changed him, made him stronger and faster and able to sense them, even though he was human again in all other ways. Obviously, some sort of genetic modification took place when he was infected, because he was able to pass those traits on to his offspring and they’ve continued to be passed down through the family ever since.”

“Wait a minute,” Jessie said. “One minute you’re spouting mystical mumbo jumbo and the next you’re talking about genetic modification. Is this vampire business magic, or is it science?”

Michael smiled. Jessie had no way of knowing that he had asked himself that very question many times over the years. Probably every member of the family had.

“Take your pick. You can make a case either way. The truth is, even after several hundred years of studying vampires so we can fight them more effectively, we don’t really know all the details. We know that some of the folklore is true—the thing about garlic warding off a vampire, for instance, or the fact that they can’t enter a home uninvited—but whether that’s because of magic or something scientific, we just don’t know.”

“That explains the garlic smell outside!” Jessie exclaimed in sudden realization.

“Yes, we spray around doors and windows with an especially potent garlic derivative as an added layer of protection.” Michael made a face. “It stinks pretty bad, especially to me, because in addition to having some modified version of a few vampiric abilities, I also have some of their weaknesses, like an unusually high sensitivity to garlic and sunlight. But you saw what happened when I tossed that vampire through the doorway.”

“He burst into flame.”

Clifford put in, “Technically, by forcing him in, you invited him, Michael. But the garlic got him anyway. I think it’s probably an extreme allergic reaction caused by the vampirism. I hope to investigate it further someday.”

“And when you drive a wooden stake through their hearts, they…disintegrate?” Jessie asked.

Michael nodded. “That’s right. And we don’t know exactly why that happens, either. In most instances, since they’re usually trying to kill us at the time, it’s enough to know that it works.”

Jessie still had questions. Michael saw disbelief stubbornly warring with acceptance in her dark, beautiful eyes. “So this whole international playboy slash business tycoon identity you’ve come up with—”

“Makes it possible for me to go where I need to go and do what I need to do in order to carry on the fight.”

“Yeah, well, for somebody who wants to keep what he’s really doing quiet, you sure as hell attract a lot of attention.”

He shrugged and laughed. “The millionaire playboy bit works just fine for Batman. Anyway, because of it nobody really takes me seriously. They just see all the surface shenanigans.”

“Except for the vampires,” Clifford said. “They know who you are, unfortunately.”

Michael sighed. “Yes, it’s impossible to keep the enemy from finding out. I think they can sense us, just as we can sense them.”

“So why did you really come here?” Jessie asked. “To chase after a particular vampire, or gang of vampires? This hierarchy you mentioned, maybe?”

“That’s right.” Michael’s face settled into grim lines. Everything he had told her so far could still be laughed off as a wild joke if she tried to tell anybody else about it, but now they were getting down to some serious business. “We received some intel indicating there’s going to be a gathering of vampire clan leaders from all over the country. A summit meeting, I guess you could call it.”

“How did you find out about that?”

Michael nodded toward Clifford. “He hacked into their communications system.”

“Vampires send each other e-mail to set up meetings?” Jessie sounded like she was trying very hard not to laugh.

“They’re not a bunch of Luddites,” Michael said. “They know how to take advantage of technological advances. Some of them resist change, but most don’t.”

“Yeah, it’s the same with my people,” Jessie said.

Michael frowned at her. “Your people?”

She ran her hand through her hair again and said, “I’m half Cherokee. I grew up on the reservation in Oklahoma.”

“Oh.” That explained the coppery shade of her skin, the slightly high cheekbones, the raven-dark hair and eyes.

“Hey, it wasn’t that bad.” She sounded defensive. “Sure, we never had much money, but that can be true of anybody, anywhere. And yeah, I didn’t go to some fancy-schmancy Ivy League school—”

Michael held up his hands to stop her and said, “You don’t have to defend yourself to me, Ms. Morgan. I didn’t mean anything by what I said.”

Clifford added, “It sounds like you’ve run into some prejudice from people.”

Jessie sniffed. “I don’t think I need psychoanalysis from a couple of vampire hunters.”

“We’re not offering analysis,” Michael said. “Just commenting.”

“Well, your comments aren’t welcome.”

“I told you, you’re free to leave if you don’t want to talk to us anymore,” Michael said.

He found himself hoping she wouldn’t go, though. He felt that if she walked out the door, something very important would be walking out with her.

“Really? I was starting to think I was a prisoner here.”

He shook his head. “No, not at all. We’ve answered your questions and told you the truth about everything that happened here tonight. You gave your word you wouldn’t write about it.” It cost him an effort to do it, but he crossed his arms over his chest and nodded toward the door. He couldn’t keep her here against her will, no matter how much he wanted her to stay. “I’d say we’re done.”

The problem was, suddenly, Jessie didn’t want to be done. The feeling took her by surprise, but she didn’t want to leave yet. The idea of walking out that door and never seeing Michael Brandt again wasn’t acceptable for some reason. She wanted to spend more time with him.

She wanted to spend all her time with him.

Again, she had to force that thought out of her head. Sure, with those muscles and those rugged good looks and that hint of danger about him—well, more than a hint—he was undeniably attractive. He was hot as hell, in fact. But while she liked a good-looking guy as much as the next woman, she had never let such things interfere with her work.

And she was starting to see a way around the promise she had made to him earlier. The thought of Nana Rose and the money she needed made Jessie realize what she had to do.

“This is too big a story not to tell,” she said.

Michael’s face hardened. “You gave me your word.”

“If Max were here, he’d be talking about shutting you up again,” Clifford warned.

“You can’t kill me,” Jessie said boldly. “You represent the forces of light, remember?”

“What about the greater good?” Michael asked in a soft yet menacing voice, and for a second Jessie wondered if she had just made the worst mistake of her life.

But she pressed on, knowing it was too late to turn back now. “I’m not going to expose your secret,” she said. “I can write about what you’ve told me without revealing who you are. You’ll be an anonymous, confidential source.”

“You can do that?” Michael didn’t look or sound convinced.

“Sure I can.”

“And you won’t drop hints that will identify me in any way?”

“Word of honor.”

Clifford grunted, but Jessie ignored him. Her brain raced with possibilities. She said, “You’re going to bust that vampire summit meeting, right?”

“That was the plan when we came here, yes,” Michael admitted.

“Take me with you.”

Both men stared at her in disbelief. Clifford was the one who finally responded. “Impossible! Utterly impossible!”

Michael, though, looked at Jessie with a cool, speculative expression in his eyes.

“Why is it impossible, Michael?” she asked him. “Max and Clifford go with you, and they don’t have your special powers.”

“They’ve made this their life’s work,” he replied. “They’ve trained for years.”

“And we have some of the same edge as Michael,” Clifford added.

Jessie looked at him and said, “I’ve been fighting against one thing or another all my life. Try growing up on a reservation if you want to be tough. And I’ve been studying tae kwan do for the past five years.”

Clifford snorted as if he wasn’t impressed.

“What happens if we don’t take you with us?” Michael asked, his eyes narrowed. “You’ll expose us?”

“Expose you to whom? You said it yourself. The cops would never believe any of this. And according to what you told me, the vampires already know who you are. So exactly how can I blackmail you?”

Michael crossed his arms and frowned in thought. “All that is true,” he admitted. “So why should we even consider the idea?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do. Because you owe me.”

His eyebrows went up. “How do you figure that?”

She fingered her bruised throat. “Ted Carlisle is hurt and I nearly got killed, because of your war.”

“No one invited you to horn in,” he said.

“Maybe not, but if you’re going to live in this world and carry on your fight here, you’ve got to expect it to spill over sometimes into the lives of innocent people.”

Clifford said, “We do everything we can to see to it that doesn’t happen.”

“But it still does,” Jessie argued. “Tonight proved that.” She came to her feet as emotion gripped her. “Trying to keep innocents safe isn’t enough. People ought to know what’s going on so they can protect themselves. I need to write this story. I need to tell the world the truth.”

“We go to considerable lengths to keep the truth from coming out,” Michael said.

“Maybe you need to stop doing that. Maybe if you did, fewer people would die at the hands of those…those creatures. And in the long run, there would be fewer of them for you to have to fight.”

“That argument sounds noble, but it won’t work,” Clifford said.

Michael said, “I’m not so sure.”

Clifford looked at him in surprise. “You can’t actually be considering—”

“Ms. Morgan might be right. Over time, a little education might make our job easier…and save some lives.” He turned to Jessie.

“I’m not saying that we’ll let you in on everything that’s going on,” Michael told her, “and you’ll have to do as you’re told. But if what you want is the inside story of what we do, I think we can accommodate you.”

“That’s exactly what I want,” she told him. She didn’t like that bit about doing what she was told—that had always rubbed her the wrong way—but they could work that out later.

Michael held out a hand to Jessie. “Welcome to the team, Ms. Morgan.”

As she took his hand and felt his cool, strong touch, an unexpected thrill crackled through her. That spark she had thought about earlier…it was there, all right. Lord, was it ever!

“If I’m joining forces with you, don’t you think you ought to call me Jessie?”

He smiled. “All right. And I’m Michael.”

She didn’t tell him that in her mind she had already begun to think of him that way.

Nor did she mention how her heart started pounding harder in her chest the instant his skin made contact with hers, even though just their hands touched, not their lips or bodies or—

Stop that, she told herself. She had to remember this relationship was all business.

Vampire-killing business.