Читать книгу Vampire, Hunter - Maria Arnt - Страница 8

A fortunate thing that door is steel, Seth mused, otherwise she might have broken it. He had caught the bottle of perfume out of the air before it could shatter on the stone floor below. Now as he sat in his favorite chair, in the study, he pondered the small artifact.

The label read Lilac Breezes, but like most modern perfumes the scent was nothing like the flower it was named for. He imagined that his Tatiana, now gifted with a much more accurate sense of smell, had detected this as well. But why did it seem so important to her? He knew she never wore it.

He closed his eyes and thought. Lilacs. Her elderly aunt, the one she called ‘Nana,’ had grown lilacs in her yard. He still remembered the smell of them as he watched her play in the garden. Smell was a powerful memory trigger—perhaps she kept it as a memento mori?

Seth put the bottle away in a drawer of his desk and ran his hand over the smooth grain of the mahogany top. It was a comforting feeling, along with the smell of leather and books that pervaded the room. Tatiana's awakening had gone more or less to plan—he had expected her to be angry, outraged even. But he had not anticipated it would bother him so much.

Breathing deeply, he settled back into his chair and looked around the study. The architect he had hired to renovate this warehouse had done an excellent job. When Seth had asked that there be no windows, that every door be perfectly sealed, the man hadn't even blinked. Then again, Seth had chosen him because he specialized in underground luxury shelters for paranoid eccentrics. The architect had simply installed a top of the line ventilation system and found creative ways to make up for the lack of natural light.

Once Seth had calmed sufficiently, he left the study to disassemble the structure that had held Tatiana aloft during the extended process of changing her. He had been so excited, so impatient for her to arise that he had forgotten that once she did, he would no longer enjoy the closeness to her it afforded him. Before, he could touch her whenever he wanted, could stay within arm's reach night and day, and take care of her every need. Now she would want to assert her independence again, as well she should. Every child must eventually grow up, he reminded himself.

When the task was complete, he went upstairs to check on Tatiana. The sun was well past risen, so he knew she would be deeply unconscious. She lay on her bed, curled up tight in a ball. That she held such a pose made it clear to him just how upset she was. The rest that the newly-made experienced during the day was profound, and she should have relaxed completely.

He couldn't change her clothes when she was balled up like that, so he pulled the covers out from under her and tucked her in. The next few days will likely be very trying for the both of us... he sighed.

Tanya spent the next day—night, she corrected herself—locked up in her room. Not that Seth had locked the door, or that she was able to. But it did swing outwards from the room, so as soon as she woke up she put her vanity chair under the door knob.

Like that would stop him, she thought darkly. She knew how strong vampires were, he could snap the antique carved chair into kindling with his bare hands. To make matters worse, she stubbed her toe—hard—on the bed frame as she crawled back to the warmth of the quilt.

To her surprise, however, the chair never had to put up a fight. By the clock on her bedside stand, she had been awake 15 minutes when there was a knock at the door. Not a loud, demanding knock, but it made her jump all the same. It was a polite, brief knock that said If you have not yet awakened, please do so.

She ignored it.

"Tatiana?" Seth's voice was muffled by the door, but she had no difficulty hearing him.

"Go away. Leave me alone," Tanya told the door. She wanted to scream at him, but all of her fear and rage had been exhausted, and she was numb. She did not cry, although she sort of felt as if she should. She just stayed curled up under the covers and tried to imagine she really was at home in her room, and not trapped in some twisted nightmare.

Much later, he returned. "Tatiana, the sun will be up in two hours. Are you sure you don't want to come down for a little while?" he sounded so unsure, and that made her angrier.

She threw a hair brush at the door, and it shattered on contact.

"Perhaps we shall speak tomorrow night, then," he suggested archly, and she heard his footsteps on the walkway as he left.

Seth made his way back downstairs, struggling to control his anger. How long is she going to play this game? He knew, though, that he had already pushed her too much. He could not force her to accept her situation, only she could decide what to do with the opportunity he had given her.

As he made his way through the seldom-used kitchen in search of a good cup of calming tea, a small noise alerted him. Pulling the phone from it's hiding place in one of the upper cupboards, he checked the message.

Seth frowned. If only Tatiana would come round to the idea and start cooperating, he wouldn't have to go through this charade.

He sent off the text, hoping that she would not make a liar of him.

When she finally fell back asleep, Tanya had the nightmare again. This time it was different.

None of the details had changed. Every moment was preserved, the ratty oversized sweatshirt the girl wore, the greasy hair and dead, metal eyes of the man who bit her. It was like that horrible commercial you've seen a thousand times but it's on live TV so you can't skip it.

What was different was her.

It was like she was watching a movie through her own eyes—she screamed, but felt no fear. She cried, but wasn't sad. She even felt the pain, but it was distant and didn't worry her. Her emotions were a blank—she had replayed this moment in her mind so many times, and suddenly it had lost all its gravity.

The strangest thing was, because she wasn't terrified, she noticed things she had never picked up on before. Like how hungry and poorly cared for the vampires looked. With an impartial eye, she could see they were barely more than a few decades old. How Jake's transfixed face was caught somewhere between agony and ecstasy.

But when she woke up, the thing that stuck in her mind was the man who had found her. She had never seen him, had been too shocked to look away from Jake. She had never even thought to ask who it was that had called 911, she always assumed it was someone local. Her hometown in northern Missouri was not very big, almost everyone knew everybody else.

She had never questioned why her rescuer had known her name. But now, as she recalled the softest hint of an accent, she remembered again that only Nana called her Tatiana.

And Seth.

Tanya lay in the pitch-black darkness, and for one delirious moment she thought all of it, everything from the attack on, had been one really weird dream.

Slowly, she pushed up her sleeve.

There, on the inside of her elbow, was a crescent shaped scar.

Tanya squeezed her eyes shut, pushing back the tears. She hadn’t really believed it, anyway.