Читать книгу The Vampire Affair - Livia Reasoner - Страница 9

Michael watched her as she threw up, wanting to help her somehow but unsure what to do. The rare moment of indecisiveness on his part passed quickly. When Jessie groaned and started to topple to the ground, he stepped forward and caught her. She sagged against him as his arms went around her.

He might have liked to have her in his embrace under different circumstances, but not like this. Not with the dust that was all that remained of the two recently destroyed enemies drifting away in the night breeze and the crumpled body of the kid from the night desk lying there. Not with Jessie unconscious, shocked into insensibility by everything she had seen here tonight.

“Clifford,” Michael said as he turned toward the door, still supporting Jessie, “see to the clerk.”

Small, intense, graying Clifford lowered his crossbow and hurried over to kneel beside the young man. With a couple of fingers he searched for a pulse in Ted’s neck. That was his name, Michael recalled. Ted.

Rhymed with dead.

“He’s alive,” Clifford said, sounding relieved. “I don’t know the extent of his injuries, but at least he’s still breathing.”

Michael nodded. “You and Max know what to do.”

Max, the burly, blond man who had been driving the limo that afternoon, gestured toward Jessie and asked, “What are you going to do with her?”

Michael looked down into Jessie’s face, which was slack-featured in unconsciousness.

“I’ll take her and find her car,” Max offered when Michael didn’t answer. “I’ll put her in it and when she wakes up she’s liable to think she dreamed the whole thing. Either that or had a hallucination.”

Michael had no doubt that Max could do exactly as he said. The locked car hadn’t been made that could keep Max out. Even the most advanced security system wouldn’t slow him down much. He could sling Jessie’s senseless form over a shoulder and tote her away from here, right out of Michael’s life again, just as he had thought he would never see her again after their encounter that afternoon. That would be the best thing, the wise thing.

But when Max reached for her, for some reason Michael turned away, keeping her out of his grasp. “Help Clifford with the kid,” he ordered as he got his left arm around Jessie’s shoulders and bent to slip his right arm behind her knees. He straightened effortlessly, picking her up and cradling her against him as if she were little more than a child. “With that bruised throat she’s going to have, she’ll know that something happened. We’ll have to figure out another way to proceed.”

As he carried Jessie toward the door of the lodge, he heard Max make a strangled sound behind him, as if the big man couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Michael couldn’t quite believe what he was doing, either. He thought he had learned his lesson years earlier with Charlotte. Keep close ties to a minimum, and for God’s sake don’t let anybody in on his secrets. That only led to disaster and tragedy. He knew better, damn it. He knew better.

But he carried the woman inside anyway, and heeled the door shut behind them.

As gently as he could, he placed Jessie on the thickly upholstered sofa in the lodge’s living room. His right hand brushed back some of the raven’s-wing hair that had fallen over her face. Her jacket hung open, so he had no trouble seeing that her breasts rose and fell in a steady rhythm under the silk blouse. He pulled his gaze away, not wanting to intrude on her privacy while she was unconscious.

He moved across to an armchair near the fireplace and sat down to think. He had to figure out what to do about this. His enemies had sniffed him out, and Jessie and the young night clerk had blundered in right where they had no business being. The clerk must have been one of Jessie’s sources, Michael realized. He had tipped her off about Michael staying here, and the whole business about a messenger having some papers from Eddie Sterling to deliver had been a lie designed to get Jessie in here so she could ask more questions of him. He had to admire her persistence, even though he hated what it had led to.

“I was persistent, too, wasn’t I, lover?”

Michael’s jaw tightened. He knew the slightly mocking voice existed only in his head. Despite that knowledge, he didn’t look up. Her image might be hovering there, taunting him with her beauty…the beauty that had been so pure at first, only to turn evil through no fault of her own.

Charlotte. The woman he had loved. The woman he would have married…

She had insisted on knowing his secrets, and like a fool, he had told her. She didn’t believe him at first—no sane person would—but when she had come to accept the truth, she wanted to become part of his work. Max and Clifford hadn’t been with him then; if they had been, they would have warned him against bringing Charlotte into the war against evil that Michael and his family had been waging for centuries. He might not have listened, though. Probably wouldn’t have, because he was blinded by love.

And because of that, Charlotte was gone, ripped from his side, tainted by evil…turned into one of them, his ancient enemies.

The door opened and Clifford came in, and once again Michael was glad for the distraction. “At least two of the boy’s ribs are broken,” Clifford reported, “and it’s possible he has internal injuries, as well. Max is putting him in the car. We’ll take him to the clinic.”

Michael nodded in approval. The clinic Clifford spoke of was a small private facility, part of a network that extended all across the country, financed by the Brandt wealth. The work in which Michael and his relatives were engaged meant they might need medical attention on short notice for themselves or others. The doctors and nurses who staffed the clinics were well paid, highly competent and knew how to keep their mouths shut, an ability almost as important as their professional skills. Michael didn’t have to tell Clifford to see to it that the injured young man received the best possible care; that was a given.

Clifford inclined his head toward the still-unconscious Jessie and went on, “We could take her, as well, you know. It might be a good idea to have her checked out by the doctors.”

Michael shook his head. “No, leave her here. Her pulse and respiration are fine. She just fainted from the shock of everything that happened. She’ll come around in a little while, I’m sure.”

For a second Clifford looked like he might argue, but then he shrugged and nodded, as if he knew the futility of protesting once Michael Brandt made up his mind. He left the lodge.

The two men weren’t gone long. Within half an hour they were back, walking into the lodge carrying the crossbows. Michael had spent that time slouched in the armchair, trying to decide what to do about this newest problem. This problem with the maddening body and the intriguing eyes.

On the sofa, Jessie let out a groan and began to stir. Michael came to his feet and gestured to Max and Clifford, saying, “Put those weapons away. I don’t want them to be the first things she sees when she wakes up.”

He wasn’t sure what he did want, but he needed to figure it out quickly.

Jessie Morgan was only seconds away from regaining consciousness.

Jessie still felt sick when she woke, but with nothing left in her stomach to come up all she could do was lie there, wherever she was, and hurt. A moan escaped from her mouth, despite her efforts to hold it back.

“You’re awake. That’s good.” Michael Brandt’s voice. “I didn’t want to have to take you to the emergency room and try to explain what happened to you.”

What happened?

Ted was dead, that’s what happened. And her throat hurt like hell, and so did her stomach, and she had not only seen one of her friends die, she had also witnessed a man bursting spontaneously into flame, only to disappear when he was stabbed with wooden stakes, just like the other guy. That’s what happened.

She lifted a shaky hand to push back her hair and she forced her eyes open. She had decided from the feel of it that she was lying on a well-upholstered sofa, and now she saw that she was right, although her vision was rather blurry. She blinked her eyes a few times until it cleared. She was in the luxuriously furnished living room inside the lodge. Her gaze focused on Michael Brandt, who leaned over her with an anxious expression on his face.

“You’re all right,” he told her.

“Says…you,” she replied in a weak voice.

“I know you’re shaken up and your throat is bruised. And you’re upset about your friend getting hurt. But I checked your neck and there are no bite marks. You’re safe.”

Jessie struggled into a sitting position, rubbed her sore throat for a second, and then said, “Ted’s not…dead?”

Brandt shook his head. “No. He has a couple of broken ribs, possibly some internal injuries, but he’s being well cared for.”

“He’s in the hospital?”

Brandt didn’t answer for a moment, then shrugged and said, “A private facility.”

Something else he had said a minute earlier occurred to Jessie. “Did you say something about…bite marks?”

Another voice said, “Michael, be careful. There’s no need to tell this woman anything else.”

One of the men she had seen with Brandt earlier came into view. He was very tall, at least six-six, and had massive shoulders. His hair was blond and cropped close to his head. Something about him struck Jessie as familiar, and after a second she realized that she had seen him at the wheel of Brandt’s limo that afternoon. Clearly, he wasn’t just a chauffeur, though. Not the way he’d been running around brandishing a crossbow.

Brandt said, “I think she’s already seen enough that we’re beyond worrying about that, Max.”

“I thought you said she was a reporter.”

“She is.”

Max scowled. “Then you know what we ought to do with her.”

The third man moved around the sofa and said, “Don’t be ridiculous. Just because our enemies go around slaughtering innocent people doesn’t mean that we have any right to.” He was smaller than Max but had a look of compact strength about him. Older, too, with touches of gray in his dark hair.

“Thanks, Clifford,” Brandt said. “I’m glad you agree with me.”

“I didn’t mean we should kill her, blast it!” Max said in a surly voice. “You know that, Michael.”

“But the lady’s presence does represent a problem,” Clifford went on as if the bigger man hadn’t spoken. “There’s no getting around that.”

Neither man really looked like a gangster to Jessie. She supposed that Ted had gotten that impression because they both wore dark suits. They looked to Jessie more like government agents, the sort who would climb down out of the black helicopters when those ominous aircraft finally landed. Who were they, and what was their connection with Michael Brandt? Obviously all of her earlier theories had been wrong. He wasn’t gay, and he wasn’t a mobster. He was…he was…

What the hell was he? she asked herself. Because she sure as blazes wasn’t prepared to admit, even to herself, that based on everything she had seen tonight, he was some sort of…well, vampire sl—

“I kill vampires,” Brandt said as he looked right at her. He held a hand palm out toward Max and Clifford to forestall any protests they might make.

Jessie stared at him, the pain in her throat and the sickness in her stomach forgotten for the moment. She opened her mouth but couldn’t get any words out. She had to swallow a couple of times before she was able to speak.

“Oh, come on!”

Brandt smiled. “You don’t believe me?”

“There’s no such thing—”

“As vampires? Be glad that neither of those bastards bit you, or you’d find out how wrong you are.”

Jessie continued staring at him. It was a shame that someone so good-looking was a nut job.

But what if he wasn’t crazy? She thought back over the countless stories she had written about UFOs and alien abductions and Bigfoot and swamp monsters…and she knew firsthand that strange things existed in this world, things that couldn’t be fully explained by logical, rational thought. Those things were the bread and butter of her work.

So why couldn’t vampires be real? They had appeared in popular fiction for more than a hundred and fifty years, and the old folk tales about them went back a lot further than that. Plenty of people believed in them. Anything with such a stubborn, persistent presence in a culture had to have its roots in some sort of truth, otherwise it wouldn’t resonate so strongly in the collective psyche.

Either that, or people just liked to believe in a load of crap.

“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.”