Читать книгу I Want You To Want Me - Kathy Love - Страница 11

Vittorio didn’t move, listening to Erika’s footfalls on the stairs. Then the jiggle of the old doorknob, then the slam of the door closing.

He’d angered her again, and he tried to find relief in that fact. But he couldn’t dredge up even the smallest hint of anything akin to relief. Instead, he felt like shit.

He even wanted to tell himself she was likely a little crazy after the random announcement that her psychic had described someone in her future who fit his description. But a vampire finding someone nuts because they believed a psychic seemed more than a little paradoxical.

And then add that she made him cookies—or something that kind of looked like cookies. She made him something—and no one had done that in a long time. Not since he was a small boy, and Cook had made his favorite biscuits sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. Oh yeah, he felt like shit all right.

Lord, he hadn’t thought of his childhood in years, decades. The last two hundred years had obliterated the good memories of his past. Which brought him to why he was here. And why he had to create a barrier between himself and the sweet, beautiful woman downstairs.

He closed his door, a softer, more regretful mimic of Erika’s door-slamming. He’d been stupid to even give her the very small hint of remorse that he had. Luckily, his “thank you” had done little to repair the damage his rudeness had done. Of course, standing here shrouded in darkness when he could be surrounded by her light didn’t feel particularly lucky. Not in the least.

But he couldn’t risk Erika’s safety because he wanted her. That would be far crueler than his churlish behavior. And maybe, maybe, if he was wrong about being responsible for hurting people in his past, he could try to have some kind of relationship with her.

Even giving himself that much permission caused his body to react. His senses sharpening, his body aching.

“Damn it,” he muttered to himself, frustrated with how easily he could lose control of himself when it came to her.

He was the king of control, having spent many years now controlling his appetites, his emotions, and thus his world. Or so he’d thought. But now he wasn’t so sure. His control seemed to be sliding away—until he wondered if he ever had it at all.

He heard a noise below him. Erika. Her feet padding on the wooden floors, the clack of something, even the low, barely there sound of her voice—the words indiscernible, but the rise and fall of the tone fascinating to him. He imagined what she was doing. How she looked.

“Damn it!”

He strode to where he’d undressed the night before, his clothes a heap on the floor. He snagged his jeans, and changed from his sweats to the worn denim. Then he turned to the canvas satchel on a chair. Rooting around, he found a black T-shirt.

A bang sounded from directly underneath his feet, and he paused, the shirt halfway over his head. He listened for a moment longer, detecting the sound of Erika speaking again—the gentle, lilting tones like a caress all around him.

Longing gathered in his stomach, spreading downward. He wanted to be down there with her, hearing what she was saying—although he didn’t doubt that it wasn’t flattering to him.

Jerking his shirt on the rest of the way, he moved to look for his cell phone. Where the hell was Ren? He needed his brother here. At the very least, Ren and Maggie would provide a buffer between himself and Erika. Not to mention he really needed to talk to his brother about things that couldn’t be discussed over the phone.

He paused in his search. Okay, that was worrisome, when he needed Ren’s opinion on a problem. Even though Ren was older, Vittorio had always been the more rational one, the responsible one. Or at least he’d tried to be. But maybe he needed Ren’s more extreme reasoning now. He definitely needed the one person who understood him and his past.

Finding the silver cell phone on the nightstand, he flipped open the cover and scrolled through his short list of numbers to Ren’s. The line rang several times, before his brother answered.

“You have the worst timing in the world,” Ren stated.

“I try,” Vittorio said wryly, not in the mood for Ren’s complaints. He had one of his own. But he did ask, “Why? What did I interrupt now?”

“Maggie getting naked.”

Vittorio made a noise, not expecting that answer. Although knowing his brother, he probably should have.

“Then why did you answer the phone?”

There was silence on the other end, then a little hitch in Ren’s breath.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Vittorio muttered. “You aren’t actually doing it, are you?”

“Not yet,” Ren admitted. “So I’d appreciate it if you made this quick.”

An image of what Ren would likely be doing to Maggie moments after hanging up the phone flashed through Vittorio’s mind. Then the image morphed into himself and Erika with her soft, pink lips and stormy blue eyes.

Do not go there.

He gritted his teeth, forcing down a frustrated groan. “Where are you?”

“Maggie and I are in Italy. Vacation, little brother, something you should look into. What’s going on?”

Vittorio had no idea how to explain what was going on. Nor did he really want to—not why he was in New Orleans, nor this crazy attraction to Erika. The intensity of it was irrational. A weird anomaly. Instead he took out his frustration on Ren.

“Why didn’t you mention that Maggie’s friend, Erika, was staying in one of your apartments?”

“Why would I?”

“Because I arrived here last night to stay in the upstairs apartment for a while and ended up scaring the shit out of her. She brained me with her cell phone.”

As Vittorio could have expected, Ren laughed. “Her cell phone? That’s pretty funny.”

“Yeah, it was a laugh riot.”

Ren’s laughter dwindled, although Vittorio could tell he was still grinning. “So she assaulted you with a phone. I’m sure you’re fine, what with being a big ole vampire and all.”

“Yes,” Vittorio admitted begrudgingly, “I’m fine. But I’m not happy about the whole thing. You could have told me she was here.”

“Well, if I’d known you were coming I would have. And why do you care if Erika is there or not?”

Vittorio heard Maggie’s voice in the background. Then Ren said, “You like her, don’t you?”

Vittorio didn’t suppress a growl. “What are you? A teenage girl? I don’t like her—I don’t even know her. I just—I just wanted to be alone.”

“Okay,” Ren said, but Vittorio knew he didn’t believe him. “What do you want me to do about it? I can hardly kick out Maggie’s best friend.” Then he lowered his voice and added, “I’m sure as hell not going to do it with the potential of kick-ass sex in my near future. I don’t think Maggie would be happy with me, if I did that. Not to mention, I don’t want to. Erika is nice. You should talk to her instead of acting like a miserable hermit.”

Vittorio growled again, both irritated with his brother’s assessment of him and his response to getting rid of Erika. He’d known Ren couldn’t, and shouldn’t, make her leave, but…

Ah, hell!

“When are you coming home?” he asked.

“Wednesday.”

Four more days. Hardly a long time in the life of a vampire, yet it felt like an eternity. He considered telling Ren why he was here, but then couldn’t. Ren would be home soon.

And Vittorio could avoid Erika for that short amount of time—and then he’d have his brother and sister-in-law back to run interference.

“Okay,” he said, mostly to himself.

“Okay. So play nice. And we’ll see you then.”

Abruptly, Ren hung up. He obviously had other things on his mind besides his brother being surprised by the harmless mortal woman downstairs.

Except she wasn’t harmless. She had him seriously rattled. And he wasn’t harmless to her either.

That was why he had to stay focused on finding out the truth. He rummaged around the darkness to find his wallet. And he had to start now. The more time away from Erika, the better.

Maksim followed Vittorio, staying a safe distance behind him, weaving in and out of the tourists crowding Bourbon Street. Just because he wasn’t a vampire, didn’t mean that Vittorio wouldn’t sense him. Vampires were very good at detecting other paranormal creatures.

But it was clear Vittorio wasn’t concentrating on anything but his own mission. His walk was fast and focused, his movements lithe and graceful with the inherent agility of the undead.

Irony, that. Zombies were such a clumsy lot, while the undead…poetry on two feet. He liked that about Orabella, among other superficial things. It was her personality that he found lacking. As well as her morals. The lack of morals didn’t bother him as much as her personality either, come to think of it.

Vittorio turned off Bourbon onto a side street. Maksim waited a moment before following, just in time to see him step through street-dirtied plastic curtains designed to keep the cool air-conditioning inside.

AC. Hallelujah!

Maksim pushed aside the plastic, breathing a pleased sigh as a gust of chilled air blew over him. Even the stale scents of cigarette smoke and beer didn’t dampen his pure bliss at the blast of cool air. But he only allowed himself a moment’s joy before searching the dingy darkness of the small bar.

Vittorio was already disappearing into a small back room. Damn. Even though the area didn’t have a proper door, it looked like a private portion of the bar, and was very tiny. Maksim would be noticed if he followed. Not to mention he’d be sensed. Demons had a particularly strong preternatural imprint. Easy to read in a closed space.

Instead he sat down at the bar in the main room, and waited. Vittorio would be out eventually. And Maksim would learn what had him nearly sprinting around the streets of New Orleans with that single-minded look on his almost angelically beautiful face.

“Sherri,” Vittorio greeted the bartender, one of his longtime acquaintances. He hesitated to call her a friend, since they never saw each other outside of this shabby back room. But he supposed in a strange way, they were.

“Vittorio,” she greeted with a smile. Her smiles always held a sardonic quality, as if she knew far more about you than she let on—and in many cases, he was sure she did. In fact, he was counting on it.

“You haven’t been in for a while,” she said, already reaching under the bar for a highball glass to make his drink.

“Been doing some traveling,” he told her. That gave such a pleasant ring to what he’d been doing.

“Nice.” She lifted the bottle of whiskey before pouring. “The usual?”

He nodded, sliding onto a barstool, pleased to see the room was empty. Too early for the type of crowd who came here. Vampires, the occasional werewolf and other forms of shapeshifters—and musicians, a sort of supernatural breed all their own. Ironically, Sherri was the only constant—and she was human.

She slid the whiskey on the rocks in front of him, but he didn’t immediately take a drink. Instead he got right to what he’d come here for.

“Do you remember Amanda?”

Sherri frowned for a moment, searching her memory bank of late-night patrons. “Amanda? The one who fronted that band at The Purple Haze?”

Vittorio nodded. “What happened to her?”

Sherri gave him a surprised look, as if she couldn’t believe he hadn’t heard. After all, Vittorio had once spent plenty of time with Amanda.

“She was found dead in her apartment. God, that must have been at least three years ago now. I think they labeled it heart failure. You know, she had a cocaine problem for years. Well, of course you know that.”

Vittorio nodded. Amanda struggled with drugs for years. When he’d first met her, she hadn’t just restricted herself to coke. She mixed; whatever she could get. But he also knew she was doing a great job staying clean the last time he’d seen her.

But relapses were common. And maybe she had. Maybe she had just gotten careless. Fallen off the wagon, hard.

“But you know,” Sherri added as she absently wiped down the worn bar top, “I recall hearing that they didn’t find any drugs in her system.”

Vittorio’s muscles tensed. “Really?”

“Probably the damage was already done. Her heart just gave out or something.”

Vittorio nodded again, even though he wasn’t sure he agreed. She’d been killed. Possibly like Angela, Jessalynn. God, the list went on and on.

Nausea swelled over him like a warm, salty wave, threatening to drown him. Amanda made number twenty. Twenty women in as many years. Women he’d known. Women he’d helped—or thought he’d helped. They’d all trusted him. And now they were all dead.

Anyone looking at all these deaths, however, wouldn’t necessarily find them unusual—after all, they were all drug users, some were prostitutes, others just living hard and fast lives. Prime candidates for early deaths. But even for a vampire who’d been alive for over two hundred years, the rate of unusual and premature deaths around him was high.

He glanced at his acquaintance on the other side of the bar. Sherri didn’t realize just how lucky she was that they had only remained acquaintances. Friends didn’t fare well around him. Maybe it was the natural course of things, or maybe it was something more.

He was leaning toward something more these days.

“And you remember Julianne, that little short girl from where The Impalers play?” Sherri asked, dragging him out of his thoughts. “I think she started there while you were still playing with the band.”

“Yes,” he said slowly, already dreading what Sherri would say about the sweet girl who’d moved here from backwoods Alabama. A girl he’d lent a sympathetic ear to on a number of occasions when he’d worked with the band. He’d even seen her some months ago while visiting Ren.

“Last April, she was found dead. Jumped out the window of her apartment on Decatur. You didn’t hear about that?”

Vittorio shook his head, feeling numb. That’s when he’d seen her. April. He’d been here for Ren and Maggie’s wedding. He’d sat at the bar, after hours, and chatted with her. Something about her always called to him. She looked a little—lost.

“It was weird too,” Sherri continued. “She was in here the night before she died. With her boyfriend, and they seemed quite happy. All sweet smiles like she always was. She certainly didn’t strike me as someone who was going to hurl herself out a window the following night.”

“What night was that?” He could feel nausea rising, making it hard to swallow.

“Early April, I think.”

Vittorio nodded. She’d killed herself right around the time he’d seen her. Or she’d been killed.

Maksim waited. And waited. Frankly, demons were not known for their patience. But his frustration was compounded by the fact that he couldn’t simply enter this vampire’s mind, take the information he wanted, and be done with him. His mind-connect couldn’t work with other preternatural creatures.

So he had to find out the answers he wanted, the old-fashioned way. Eavesdropping. Tedious—especially when he wasn’t in the position to do so.

He leaned back on his barstool, trying to peer through the doorway that led to the back room. Vittorio still sat at the bar, his profile to him, nursing a drink and occasionally chatting with the female bartender back there.

The vampire looked decidedly ill. Although the lighting in this joint was hardly flattering. And the undead often did look a little peaked. But still Maksim got the feeling that it wasn’t the unflattering lighting and lack of a pulse that made this one look unwell. Given Vittorio’s rapid pace and intent look as he walked here, he had come to find out something. And that something apparently wasn’t sitting well.

There was no way for Maksim to move closer without garnering notice, so he was stuck here trying to decipher any vibes he could pick up, which were diluted by the others in the bar.

Maksim sighed, pushing his lukewarm beer away. Well, if this vampire had any dastardly deeds planned for the evening, he wasn’t rushing off to act on them. Frankly, he didn’t look in any shape to do anything terribly dastardly anyway.

There was nothing to be learned here tonight. Maksim was better off going back to Orabella and trying to gather any information he could from her. And she would ask him to continue following this Vittorio. So there would be other times to figure out the deal with this vampire and his relationship to Orabella.

He fished around in the pockets of his jeans for a few dollars. He tossed the crumpled bills on the bar and strolled out of the narrow, squalid little hole-in-the-wall.

Vittorio sat in the bar for how long, he didn’t know. Then he wandered back to Ren’s house, taking the long way, the darker, dangerous streets away from the relative safety and lights of Bourbon Street.

Several shady-looking characters approached him, one asking for a cigarette, another asking for money, the third drunk, and itching for a fight. None of them worried Vittorio. This is where he’d spent much of his time when he’d lived here. Trying to help these people. And trying to save himself.

But all his efforts hadn’t done an ounce of good. How hadn’t he realized what was going on?

He unlocked the large barnlike doors that led into Ren’s house. The courtyard was dimly lit and silent. The air was heavy and still, humidity hanging in the air like an entity unto itself.

Even as he told himself not to look, his eyes moved right to the windows of the lower apartment. Erika’s apartment was dark. Hardly a surprise, it had to be after 3 a.m. She’d said she kept odd hours too, but he doubted they were as late as his. Most mortals’ weren’t.

Despite the horrible things he’d discovered tonight, he still found himself longing to see Erika. Was he mad? He couldn’t risk being a part of her life. Or rather making her a part of his. What he’d learned tonight was enough to ram home that fact.

Julianne. She of all the women was proof he had to be careful. He hadn’t been anything more to her than a sympathetic listener—someone to listen to her, period. She’d been a good girl, not part of the darkness he usually surrounded himself with. She was out of her element in the Big Easy. Shy, quiet and not suited to the wild bawdiness of Bourbon Street. But she’d come here and was determined to stay because of her love for a musician who worked at one of the many bars on Bourbon.

She hadn’t been happy here. But her boyfriend hadn’t struck Vittorio as the type to settle down into a mundane, domestic life. So to have him, she had to stay in his world.

Maybe she had really killed herself. Although she hadn’t struck Vittorio as that type either. But he really didn’t know. And somehow, awful as it was, her taking her own life was a better alternative to the one he’d come up with.

That women were being killed just because they knew him.

He dropped down on one of the wrought iron benches nestled among the overgrown magnolias and ferns and other lush greenery. Maybe he was wrong about everything. Twenty-one women dying was hardly a huge number when you factored in the number of years he’d been alive, and the lives they’d led. Maybe the deaths had been, if not natural, at least not abnormal.

He crossed his arms across his chest and closed his eyes, feeling every bit his two hundred-plus years. Sometimes he thought it would be almost lovely to have a natural death. Hell, he’d thought that a lot during his first years of vampirism.

Just then the still night air was filled with a brief shriek as loud and skin-crawling as what he imagined Julianne’s cry to her death had been. Vittorio shot upright, all muscles tense, all senses alert, any feelings of weariness gone.

But it wasn’t Julianne.

Erika!