Kitabı oku: «The Vampire Affair», sayfa 2

She smelled a story, maybe the biggest story of her career, and she would take any risk to get it.

Chapter Two

The night had a chill in it, but in her jeans and lightweight brown leather jacket, Jessie didn’t really feel it. She parked her sturdy old blue Toyota pickup at the edge of the lot in front of the Chateaux. It looked out of place among all the limos and luxury cars.

She carried the little recorder in her jacket pocket, even though she wasn’t really after an interview tonight. She wanted to get some shots of Michael Brandt and the men with him. Maybe if Brandt’s companions really were mobsters, one of her law enforcement contacts could identify them for her.

Getting the pictures might be tricky, though. Brandt had been a celebrity long enough to have developed a knack for dodging the paparazzi.

Not that she considered herself one of those guys. She was a reporter, damn it, not some sleazy celebrity photohound.

She knew the Chateaux had security cameras all over the place and personnel watching the video feeds 24/7, so trying to sneak around to the lodge Brandt had rented would just net her a hassle from some burly rent-a-cops. Instead she walked openly into the main building and headed for the registration desk where Ted Carlisle stood behind the counter. His eyebrows rose in surprise and maybe even alarm when he recognized her.

“Jessie, you can’t just barge in here like this,” he hissed between his teeth as he leaned forward over the desk.

She ignored the warning and reached inside her jacket to pull out a folded manila envelope. “I have some legal papers here for Mr. Bennett Chapman,” she said in a normal tone of voice, remembering the alias Ted had told her Brandt was using.

“I—I’ll take those for him.” Ted held out a trembling hand.

“No can do, hon,” Jessie said. “He has to sign for them, and I have to get his signature personally.” She smiled. “You wouldn’t want me to lose my job, would you?”

This masquerade was just for the benefit of the security cameras and the men watching them, of course. Ted hesitated and then poked a few keys on his computer. “I’ll have to escort you to Mr. Chapman’s lodge,” he announced.

Jessie hadn’t counted on that, but she had little choice other than to play along with him. She nodded.

Ted said, “Just a minute,” and picked up a phone. After a second he said into it, “Stacy, can you cover the desk for a minute? I have to escort someone making a delivery to one of our guests.”

He hung up, and less than a minute later a blond woman came out of a rear office to take Ted’s place. Like him, she wore cream-colored slacks and a blue blazer, the employee uniform here at the Chateaux. Ted came out from behind the desk and said to Jessie, “Come with me, miss.”

Nobody would think anything unusual was going on. A lot of high-powered businessmen stayed here while they were in town, and it wasn’t uncommon for them to have visitors and receive deliveries at all hours of the day or night. After all, on the other side of the world it was already the middle of the next day.

Jessie and Ted left the building through a glass door that opened onto a flagstone walk. Discreet but effective illumination came from lights in the trees that covered the property. The walk split into various paths that led to the different lodges. As they moved along one of the paths, Ted said, “What were you thinking, walking in like that?”

“Oh, come on, Ted. You know as well as I do that if I started skulking around this place, security would be all over me in two seconds. This way the guys keeping an eye on the cameras think it’s all legit.”

“That’s what they’ll think until you start annoying Brandt and he starts yelling. Then it’ll be my ass for letting you in.”

“You won’t get fired over something like that. Reprimanded maybe. But you can blame the whole thing on me. After all, I did lie to you about who I am and why I’m here. You can’t catch everybody who has an ulterior motive for wanting to see one of your guests.”

“Wanna bet? That’s exactly what I’m supposed to do. If anybody else asked me to do this…”

“I’ll make it worth your while, Ted.” Before he could get any wrong ideas, she added, “If I get some good shots and a story to go with them, Supernova will pay through the nose and I’ll cut you in on it.”

“Well…all right. What’s really in that envelope you showed me?”

“Half a dozen pages of meaningless boilerplate. You’d have to actually start reading them to know they aren’t valid documents.”

“You’ve pulled this scam before, haven’t you?”

“It’s not a scam. I’m not trying to rip anybody off.”

“Sorry,” he muttered.

They came to one of the lodges set deep in the trees. It was lit up like Brandt was having a party or something, but according to Ted the only people in the lodge were the mysterious millionaire playboy and his two goombah-looking associates.

“Maybe you should have showed up dressed like a hooker,” Ted suggested. “Guys like that are the type who’d send out for a call girl.”

Jessie laughed. “You just want to see me all slutted up. No thanks. I’m a working girl, but not that kind.”

Ted mumbled something she couldn’t make out, probably an apology. Then he pointed to the intercom mounted beside the front door and said, “I’m supposed to announce visitors. Technically, I should have called from the desk before I even brought you out here.”

Jessie pressed the button on the intercom before he could back out. “Don’t worry, you’re doing fine.”

A voice she recognized as Brandt’s crackled from the little speaker. “What is it?”

Ted leaned closer to the intercom and said, “It’s Ted from the front desk, Mr. Chapman. There’s a lady here who says she has some legal papers to deliver to you.”

“I’m not expecting any papers,” Brandt replied. “Send her away.”

“I’m right here, sir,” Jessie said, raising the pitch of her voice so that Brandt wouldn’t be as likely to recognize it from their brief conversation that afternoon. “My boss will be very upset with me if I don’t follow his orders and deliver these papers. It won’t take but a second for you to sign for them.”

“There’s been a mistake,” Brandt insisted. “Sorry.”

“What am I supposed to tell Mr. Sterling?” Eddie Sterling was the biggest real estate mogul in town, and a former Super Bowl-winning quarterback to boot. It made perfect sense that if Brandt was in town to arrange some sort of deal, Sterling might be involved.

Silence came from the speaker for a moment, then Brandt said, “Hang on. We’ll get this straightened out.”

Jessie smiled. The ploy had worked. Either Brandt really did have something going with Eddie Sterling, or else he was intrigued by the idea that Sterling had something he wanted him to look at. Either way, Brandt was about to open that door.

“What are they doing in there?” Ted asked as they waited. “Cooking the world’s biggest pizza?”

“What are you talking about?” Jessie said.

“Don’t you smell that garlic?”

Now that he mentioned it, she did. In fact, the scent was pretty strong. She hadn’t noticed it before because she had been concentrating on getting in to see Brandt.

Jessie didn’t have time to worry about smells. She slipped her hand into her jacket pocket and took out the camera. She planned to get a shot of Brandt as soon as he opened the door, then maybe aim past him to catch the other two men in her lens, if luck was with her.

Unfortunately, just as the door started to swing open, Ted gasped and disappeared from beside her. She had the vague impression, seen from the corner of her eye, that he had been jerked violently backward like a puppet on a string.

She was about to turn to see what had happened to him when a bar of iron slammed across her throat, cutting off her air and making it impossible for her to speak or even breathe. Fear and surprise exploded in her brain, and for a second she couldn’t think. Then she realized that it wasn’t a bar of iron choking her, it was somebody’s arm. Her feet scrabbled on the flagstone walk as her attacker dragged her backward.

But she was almost six feet tall, and she had learned to fight as a kid on the rez. With all the strength she could muster, she jabbed an elbow backward into the belly of the man who had grabbed her.

The move didn’t do a bit of good. It was like hitting a brick wall.

“Come on out, Brandt,” a voice like ten miles of bad road grated beside her ear. “Come on out where we can see you.”

The door to the lodge gaped open. Brandt stood there, his muscular figure silhouetted by the light inside the building. Two men crowded up behind him and started to push past as if they intended to rush outside, but Brandt thrust his arms out to stop them. “Wait,” he said.

Better not wait too long, Jessie thought, or it would be too late for her and Ted. She saw him a few feet to her right, being held from behind by a big guy dressed all in black. She had no doubt that the bastard hanging on to her was the same sort.

The difference was that Ted was considerably shorter than her, and his captor had lifted him so that his feet were no longer on the ground. His legs kicked wildly. His face had turned blue and purple. He was strangling to death as surely as if there had been a rope around his neck.

“What are you going to do, Brandt?” the man holding Jessie asked. “Are you going to let these two innocents die because you’re too much of a coward to face us?”

This was a mob hit, Jessie thought. She had been right about Brandt being mixed up with gangsters. The two men who had grabbed her and Ted had come to the Chateaux to kill Brandt. For some reason they were trying to lure him out of the lodge before they got rid of him. But Brandt wasn’t biting on the bait.

“I’m not the coward,” he said. “That would be you and your kind.”

“All right.” A ghastly chuckle came from Jessie’s captor. “Have it your way.”

Some sort of signal must have passed between the two killers. The one holding Ted suddenly flung him through the air with no more effort than if he had been tossing away a rag doll. Ted cried out in terror, a cry that was cut short when he crashed into the thick trunk of one of the trees that dotted the grounds. Jessie thought she heard bones snap. Ted bounced off the tree and landed in a limp sprawl. A tendril of blood leaked from his mouth. He was either unconscious…or dead.

The scream Jessie felt welling up inside her was still trapped, unable to get past the iron-muscled barrier across her throat. The man holding her said, “How about it, Brandt? Are you coming out, or do I kill the woman?”

In a rough growl that sounded as dangerous as the threats issuing from Jessie’s captor, Brandt said, “Don’t kill her.”

“I thought that would do it. Well, come on. Step out here.”

Brandt took a step forward, moving over the threshold. One of his companions suddenly grasped his arm. “Michael, wait.” Now he and the other man were the ones urging caution, where they had been ready to charge into battle before.

“I don’t have any choice,” Brandt said. “You know he’ll do what he says. I won’t allow them to hurt anybody else.”

The one who had slammed Ted against the tree laughed. “Oh, we’ll kill her, too,” he said, “once we’re through with you and your lapdogs.”

He moved forward as Brandt took another step out of the lodge. Even to Jessie’s terror-fevered brain, it was obvious that this man intended to fight Brandt.

“Max, Clifford, stay inside,” Brandt said to his friends. “I’ll take care of this.”

“All you’ll take care of is dying.”

And with that the black-garbed man lunged at Brandt, moving faster than it seemed possible for a human being to move. His arms shot out. His fingers were hooked like the talons on a bird of prey.

But Michael Brandt was no ordinary prey. He whirled aside with blinding speed. The reflexes that enabled him to pilot a car around a racetrack at two hundred miles per hour pulled him out of the way of his attacker and sent him leaping into a spinning kick that struck the man on the side of the head. Big and strong though the man might be, that blow was too powerful to be shrugged off. He stumbled to the side and fell to one knee.

Still moving almost too fast for Jessie’s eyes to follow, Brandt hit the man with a right and a left, rocking his head back and forth, and then kicked him in the chest. The man went over backward, but he rolled and flipped and came back up on his feet. He rolled his shoulders and moved his head from side to side, shaking off the effects of the battering Brandt had given him.

“Not bad,” he said, “but nowhere near good enough.”

He charged Brandt again.

As if the man holding Jessie had just realized what Brandt planned to do, he called, “Wait!” but it was too late. Brandt had already shifted smoothly to one side, grabbed the black shirt that his attacker wore and used the man’s own weight and momentum against him by twisting and heaving him along the path toward the door of the lodge. The guy yelled in panic, unable to stop his out-of-control plunge. That yell became a scream of agony as he stumbled through the doorway and burst into flame.

Jessie hadn’t been expecting that.

Brandt’s two friends—Max and Clifford, he had called them—were waiting for the man who was now on fire for some reason. They pulled weapons of some sort from under their coats. Knives? Jessie couldn’t tell. But they used the weapons like knives, stabbing them into the man and driving him to the floor of the foyer inside the door.

Funny thing, though. Nothing actually hit the floor except the now-empty black shirt and trousers the man had been wearing.

Where had he gone?

Jessie didn’t have the time or inclination to worry about that, even though the tiny part of her brain that wasn’t gibbering in mindless terror made a mental note of the oddity. Stars began to explode behind her eyes as the lack of oxygen finally got to her. A red mist seemed to drift in front of her, cloaking her vision as Brandt faced her and the man holding her.

“Damn you!” the man said. “You killed him!”

“That’s what he…intended to do to me.” Brandt was a little breathless, despite being in superb physical shape. His voice grew stronger and steadier as he went on, “Now let her go.”

“I’ll let her go, all right,” the bastard growled, and his grip tightened even more.

This was it, Jessie knew. She was about to die. He was going to snap her neck like a twig. Maybe even twist her head right off her shoulders.

But before the man could do that, Brandt’s arm drew back and then flashed forward. Something whipped past Jessie’s face, brushing her cheek so closely it felt like a kiss. A rough kiss, because it also stung as if something had scraped her skin.

The man holding her stiffened and staggered and suddenly the crushing force on her throat went away and air, precious, life-giving air, flowed back into her lungs. She gasped and gulped as she fell to her knees. Although it hurt her neck to twist it, she half turned and looked back over her shoulder at the man who had been her captor until a couple of heartbeats ago.

He stood there with his face twisted in a rictus of agony as he pawed at a six-inch-long wooden shaft maybe an inch in diameter sticking out of his right eye.

“Get down!” Brandt shouted to her.

Jessie obeyed the order without thinking, pitching forward so that she lay flat on the flagstone walk. Brandt sailed over her in a flying kick. Both his feet crashed into the man’s chest and knocked him backward. Brandt landed with an agile grace, leaned over and ripped the shaft out of the man’s eye socket. It had been sharpened to a wicked point on the end.

A wooden stake?

An instant later, Brandt drove the stake into the man’s chest. Jessie heard a sound like bacon frying, and then the guy was gone, just like the other one.

“Stay down, Michael!” one of the men from the lodge yelled as he and his companion burst out of the place carrying crossbows loaded with similar wooden stakes. “There might be more of them!”

“No,” Brandt said with a shake of his head as he straightened from his crouch over the remains of the man he had just…killed? Destroyed? Jessie wasn’t sure what the right word would be. “There was another one, but he ran off into the night. I don’t sense any others.” She couldn’t think straight as he moved to her side, grasped her arm and effortlessly lifted her to her feet. “Are you all right, Miss Morgan?”

“You…you remember me,” she said. The words sounded stupid to her.

“Of course I remember you. And I’m not surprised you tried a ruse like this.” His voice hardened. “Too bad it got your friend hurt.”

Ted! Oh, God, he was right. Ted was injured—or worse—and it was all her fault.

Despite that, his callous comment made her so furious she wanted to slap him or curse him or both. But she couldn’t do either because her head was spinning so badly and as she staggered to her feet she was so sick to her stomach all she really wanted to do was puke or pass out.

Instead she did both of those, first one and then the other.

Chapter Three

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.