The Secret Night Read online

  He went to the linen closet for a blanket and spread it over her. Then he stole out the back door, into the night, to satisfy his raging thirst.

  He was still worried about the bikers. He had scared them, but he hadn’t wiped their memories. They could come back. He would have to go after them in a little while.

  First, though, he had to drink.

  It was fully dark. The storm had passed, leaving the sky alight with stars. Nick headed for the woods, senses tuned to the sounds and smells of the forest as he looked for his herd of deer.

  The animals were considered a nuisance by many residents of the Baltimore-Washington suburbs. They might be beautiful to look at, but they chomped the greenery and flowers in people’s gardens, leaped out onto the roads to collide with vehicles and served as hosts for ticks that spread Lyme disease. Most people tried every way they could think of to keep the creatures away from their yards. He, on the other hand, had planted a garden designed to attract them.

  As he sensed the herd’s presence, he sent them calming thoughts, making his way almost silently through the trees toward them. It wasn’t like communicating with humans, of course. But the animals had learned to anticipate his moving among them, and they stilled as he approached.

  He selected a doe that he hadn’t used in several weeks, speaking gently to her and stroking her stiff coat. Then he lowered his head, murmuring to her as his fangs slid from their sheaths. He tipped back her head, holding it in place so he could sink the fangs into her neck and draw her blood. Not enough to drain her—he’d learned long ago to control his urge to kill. He took only enough to satisfy his thirst, enjoying the gamy tang of her blood.

  When he had taken what he needed, he stepped away from the doe. She looked at him with huge brown eyes, blinking as if she were coming out of a trance.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Now, go back to your friends.” To speed her on her way, he gave her a pat on the rump.

  She bounded off, and he watched her disappear into the foliage. Deer blood was never as satisfying as the blood that ran in human veins, but it kept him alive.

  As he made his way back through the woods to his house, he thought about the problem of Emma Birmingham. Again, the question arose in his mind: Had Caldwell sent her to spy on him?

  There was another possibility, too, one that would be even harder to determine: The monster might have sent her without her knowing it. Caldwell could have tampered with her mind, then launched her like a guided missile, set to explode when the time was right. That would be a hell of a note. But it wasn’t beyond the scope of the Master’s powers.

  Caldwell, as he was calling himself now, had been on this earth for more than six hundred years, and in that time he had achieved what few vampires ever did: He had learned to tolerate sunlight. He had also made the manipulation of human beings a science, as Nick knew from firsthand experience. He had been under Caldwell’s sway for a time, nearly half a year, until he had finally realized the extent of the man’s evil nature.

  He’d escaped the Master’s coven in France—not unscathed, not even human anymore, thanks to the Master’s error of making him one of the undead. But he had escaped, and he had been dogging the rotter’s heels ever since. He wouldn’t be satisfied until Caldwell was destroyed.

  And Caldwell knew it.

  Suppose the Master had decided on a preemptive strike, in the lovely form of Emma Birmingham? It would be just like him to use a woman for such a purpose.

  Nick strode into the house, aware that time was ticking by. He had to get back to the bikers. But first he checked on Emma.

  She was sleeping soundly, and he took the opportunity to rifle through her leather purse. Her driver’s license said she was Emma Birmingham. So did her credit cards and her library card. The documents all in dicated that she lived in Manitou Springs, Colorado. The IDs might all have been forgeries. Caldwell surely could have provided good ones. But at least on the surface they appeared genuine, even to his practiced, private investigator’s eye.

  She stirred, and he shoved the things back into her bag, then knelt beside her.

  “Nicholas?”

  His chest tightened when she spoke his name. She should be sleeping, but she’d managed to struggle back to consciousness. Taking advantage of her drugged-like state, he questioned her again.

  “Why did you come here?”

  Her word were slurred as she replied, “I need your help.”

  “Who are you working for?”

  “No one. My sister…Margaret.”

  “How did you find me?”

  She started to answer, her eyelids flickering open briefly. But she made only a few soft, incoherent sounds, then fell silent. He didn’t press her further. She needed to heal before they talked.

  “Go back to sleep,” he murmured, then went to the medicine cabinet and fetched sterile gauze and surgical tape—two of the many props he’d bought in case an occasion arose where his house had to appear normal to an outsider. There were similar items scattered throughout the place, things ordinary people used all the time but that he himself would never have need of.

  Carefully, he dressed Emma’s wound before going upstairs to prepare a bedchamber for her. After carrying her upstairs and settling her in bed, he gave her silent orders to stay asleep.

  Outside, he used a detergent and solvent mixture to wash away the gasoline from the foundation of his house. Finding the keys still in the ignition, he drove Emma’s rental car to a small clearing behind the house, where nobody was likely to see it. Then he descended to the basement, his thoughts turning to the problem of the bikers.

  He went to the locked dressing room where he kept his disguises, since it was often convenient for him to masquerade as an entirely different person. Digging around, he found a shaggy wig that made him look like a Woodstock refugee. After applying some makeup to give himself a few wrinkles, he added a pair of window-pane glasses to the look. Finally, he changed into faded jeans and a plaid shirt.

  In the garage, he selected a Toyota Corolla—a small car that shouldn’t draw any notice—opened the secret door and drove up the steeply angled ramp, heading for the bar where he knew the Ten Oaks gang hung out.

  He had to repress a wave of disgust when he stepped inside the place. It was a pigsty—thanks to the presence of Butch McCard and his friends.

  They were all there, getting drunk as usual, including the guy whose fingers he’d mangled with his boot heel. The moron was probably too drunk on cheap gin to feel the pain.

  Nick approached the bar and ordered a beer. When the bartender handed it to him, he stuck his tongue in the mouth of the bottle while he pretended to take a swig. As he carried the bottle to a table, he managed to pour some of the brew into a couple of empty glasses, shielding the action with his body.

  He sat down at a corner table, his back to the wall. With his vampiric hearing capabilities, he had no trouble listening to the biker’s conversation.

  “Dude, are you okay?”

  “My head hurts.”

  “That bastard. He’s got, like, jet engines on his feet or something.”

  “And jackhammers for fists.”

  “Yeah. We should go back and finish the job—burn his house down, like we was gonna do.”

  “Naah, he’s a menace, dude. We gotta be careful.”

  “What about the girl? We gonna get in trouble for that?”

  “She don’t know who we are.”

  “But what about the freak? Suppose he comes after us.”

  Nick had heard enough. Keeping his head down, he sent his thoughts flying toward them.

  You don’t remember what happened this afternoon. You went to a man’s house, but you don’t remember why or how to get there. You don’t remember who he was. You don’t remember that anyone was with him. But you do remember you want to keep away from the guy. Because something really bad will happen if you tangle with him again.

  He leaned back in his seat, waiting to make sure the message ha
d gotten through.

  He didn’t have long to wait.

  “Are you okay, dude?” one of them said.

  “My head hurts.”

  “Something bad happened to me, but…I can’t remember.”

  “Wasn’t we ambushed?”

  “Uh…something….”

  “Wait a minute. Didn’t it have to do with…with…”

  Nick smiled to himself as he left the bar. The Ten Oaks gang was under control. They wouldn’t be back to bother him again.

  He hurried to his car and drove out of the parking lot, onto the road that would lead him home. When he was sure nobody was following him, he yanked the wig off of his head, relieved to be rid of the hot, itchy thing.

  His thoughts were once more focused on Emma Birmingham and what to do about her. Nobody else had ever spent the night—or the day—at his house. But she was going to have to rest and regain her strength. He couldn’t simply turn her out. If she was telling the truth and Caldwell found her…Nick knew what the consequences would be for Emma, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he threw her to the wolves.

  Yet allowing her to stay at his place, having her so close, could rapidly become intolerable for him—and downright dangerous for her. She had aroused him in his dreams, and now the flesh-and-blood woman was lying in one of his bedrooms. He wanted her—badly—and he didn’t know how long he would be able to resist her. Deer blood was perfectly sufficient for his needs, but it was like a steady diet of beer when he craved champagne.

  Emma was the very finest champagne. And he was dying of thirst.

  Sighing, he weighed the choices and came to the conclusion that there was only one. He would have to keep Emma at home, with him.

  He hoped he could keep his hands—and all the rest of his body parts that wanted her—under control. But he feared the hope was futile.

  DAMIEN CALDWELL struggled to contain his rage. He’d lost Emma Birmingham. Frazier and the rest of the incompetents he’d sent after her had let her slip through their grasp. In doing so, they’d failed him, and he took such failure very personally.

  He’d been born into an age when most of the population lived in hovels, toiled in the fields for harsh masters and died before they were thirty. He’d started out as one of those sniveling wretches.

  Then a group of vampires had taken up residence in a desert fortress near his home. They’d captured a dozen local youths, including him, to use as servants—and as food. But Felora, one of the women, had taken a fancy to Ali, as he was called then. She’d invited him to her bed, where she’d taught him sexual secrets he’d never even dreamed of.

  He eventually would have died from blood loss, but when he was bitten by a poisonous snake, Felora had realized that she wasn’t willing to give him up. To save his life, she’d turned him into one of her kind, without asking permission of her master.

  Kahlile, the vampire master, had found out and killed her. He would have killed Ali, too, but while the Master was focused on Felora, Ali had escaped.

  He’d managed to join a caravan heading across the desert. Only a few of the travelers made it to their destination alive. Ali fed off them, killing many. As soon as they neared civilization, they fled, leaving the wealth of the caravan to Ali. He sold the goods and purchased a luxurious residence in Baghdad. He had then proceeded to gather as much wealth as possible, for he had long since learned that great wealth gave one great power. And he had made a vow to himself that he would never again be vulnerable to any human being—man or woman.

  Over the years he’d carefully changed his speech patterns and his appearance to conform to the age and the country where he was living, but he had seen no reason to change his way of life. He was a student of psychology and mind control and a whole host of mental disciplines. That knowledge and his vampire powers had given him absolute control over his followers.

  Yet he’d sent his slaves to do a simple job, and they had failed him.

  Using miracles of technology, the computer and the cell phone, as well as his hacking skills, he had tracked Emma Birmingham to a hotel in Baltimore, an ATM in the inner harbor, a car rental firm at BWI airport, a gun shop in Elkridge and a Wal-Mart in Ellicott City. It should have been easy to waylay her in any one of those places, especially the airport where he had stationed several slaves, thinking she might try to get a flight home to Colorado. But no. Frazier, Findlay, Briggs…she had eluded all of them. They had spent an entire day running after her, calling him each time they failed, expecting him to tell them how to do their jobs, as if he hadn’t already done that.

  And now the beautiful and sly Ms. Birmingham had vanished. She’d been missing for over twenty-four hours, and the trail was growing colder by the minute.

  In frustration, Damien ran a hand through his hair. He felt anger building inside his skull, giving him the mother of all headaches. He made more phone calls, barked orders. But still his head pounded.

  Well, he knew how to soothe himself. He thought about his herd of prime female flesh.

  Pressing a button on his phone, he waited for Leroy Putnam to come into the office. Men and women at the Refuge had very different duties. Only men became guards and his personal assistants.

  “Yes, sir?” Putnam asked, stepping into the office and closing the door behind him.

  “I want to hold a special ceremony tonight.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Gather the inner circle, and have them ready to go to the amphitheater at midnight.”

  “Yes, sir.” Putnam licked his lips nervously. “Who is going to be the sacrifice?”

  He made his slave wait while he thought about the women, evaluating their good and bad points, and deciding who among them he could do without. Finally he named a short plump brunette who held limited sexual appeal and who, frankly, bored him. Still, she would perform one final service for him.

  When he announced her name, Putnam visibly relaxed, obviously glad that he wasn’t scheduled to die tonight.

  Damien rarely killed men these days. He much preferred the blood of women because he craved the extra edge of their sexuality flowing into his body. But he sacrificed a man every once in a while because it helped keep the males in line. It was always someone who displeased him. Someone who had failed to carry out his orders.

  He gave instructions to Putnam. “Have her bathed and dressed in the traditional white robes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then put her in the holding cell.”

  Headache abating, he felt much calmer than he had a few minutes ago. He smiled as he anticipated the pleasure that was to come.

  Chapter Five

  Emma struggled toward consciousness, but somehow it was impossible to break through the final barrier. She was asleep and yet she wasn’t.

  Her head felt muzzy. Like the time her boyfriend Barry had stolen some of that designer drug from his brother and given it to her. It had made her sick, and Margaret had taken care of her. Margaret always knew what to do. Margaret would help her…. Margaret would…

  Margaret!

  Emma fought desperately to wake up as memory drifted back to her. Margaret was in trouble, in terrible danger. She had to help her, rescue her…. But she couldn’t wake up.

  What was wrong with her? Was she drugged? But, no, she knew the man wouldn’t have given her anything that would hurt her.

  Man. What man?

  Oh, yes. The man she’d found in her dreams. Lovely dreams. Maybe he was there now, waiting for her. She could try to find him again and…

  Suddenly, memory floated back, and she remembered that she didn’t need to dream to find him. She was in his house, and he was real. He had saved her from…something.

  His name. She needed to remember his name.

  “Nicholas Vickers,” a deep voice said, and she knew he was standing beside her.

  Her eyelids fluttered open. He was bending over her, brushing back her hair.

  She blinked at him. When he took a quick step
backward, her gaze followed, widening her perspective on her surroundings. She was in a large bedroom filled with polished antiques and rich fabrics. The bedsheets were like a flower garden. She moved her head against the pillow, letting her mind drift, simply wanting to be alive in this place.

  Then frightening memories intruded, and her gaze snapped back to the darkly handsome Nicholas Vickers.

  “That guy in the leather jacket,” she breathed. “He shot me.”

  “And you wouldn’t let me take you to the hospital,” Vickers supplied, his tone disapproving.

  “Because of Caldwell.”

  His expression turned stony, and she looked away. Shifting on the bed, she reached down to touch the wound over her ribs. It was covered with a light bandage, but she felt no pain below the gauze. No pain at all. Impossible. Unless…

  Her gaze flew back to his. “How long have I been here? What day is this?”

  “The day after you arrived,” Vickers replied.

  She frowned. “But my side doesn’t hurt. I mean…”

  “You’re young and healthy, and you obviously heal fast.”

  “From a bullet wound?”

  “It seems so,” he said easily, yet his gaze shifted away from her.

  She studied him carefully, certain he was hiding something. “Do you have some magic healing potion?”

  He gave her a negligent shrug. “Perhaps.”

  Clearly, she wasn’t going to get a real answer out of him, not about her injury, anyway.

  “Tell me about those guys in leather jackets,” she said. “The ones who were trying to burn down your house. Do they have something against you?”

  “Actually, they do. A local homeowner’s association hired me to eject them from a graveyard they’d been defiling.”

  “So they decided to retaliate,” she concluded.

  “It would appear so. But they didn’t succeed—and I do most sincerely appreciate your brave efforts to save my humble home.”

  She felt heat rising in her cheeks. “Well, I wasn’t going to just sit there and watch them set your house on fire.”