Читать книгу The Vampire Affair - Livia Reasoner - Страница 11

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.