She braced for the next attack, but instead he hissed like a snake, cringed back. She flicked her gaze down, saw he was staring at the cross that had come out from under her shirt.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” He snarled as he circled her. “You actually believe your own hype.”
Whatever he’d drunk had juiced him up good, she determined. So good, she’d never be able to take him in hand-to-hand. She held up the cross as she tried to gauge the distance to her stunner, and her chances of reaching it.
“I’ll drink you dry.” His tongue ran over his long incisors. “Almost dry. And make you drink me. I’ll change you into what I am.”
“What? A babbling lunatic? Why didn’t Tiara change?”
“She wasn’t strong enough. I drank too much of her. But she died in bliss under me. As you will. But you’re strong, strong enough to be reborn. I knew it when I saw you. Knew you’d be the first who’d walk as I walk.”
“Uh-huh. You have the right to remain silent.”
He sprang, leaping like a great cat. She blocked the first blow, though she felt the force of it sing down her arm, explode into her shoulder. But the second sent her sprawling. She thudded hard against one of his metal tables, and tasted her own blood in her mouth as she rolled painfully onto her back.
He was standing over her now, fangs gleaming, eyes mad. “I give you the gift, the ultimate kiss.”
Eve swiped the blood off her mouth. “Bite me.”
Grinning, he fell on her.
Outside the door, Feeney pulled out his master and a bag of electronic tricks to bypass the locks.
“I’ve got it.” Blood seeped through the ragged tear in Roarke’s jacket where a knife point had slipped through. He flipped out a recorder, closed his eyes to focus first on the tones of the beeps.
Quickly, he played his fingers over the keypad in the same order, then held the recorder to the voice command.
“Enter Dorian,” the recorder replayed.
“Hey, Dallas said nothing was to be recorded.”
Roarke spared one glance over at Feeney’s wide grin. “I’m a poor team player.”
They pushed in the door, Roarke going low as he knew Feeney preferred high.
She was flat on her back, blood soaking her shirt. Even as Roarke rushed toward her, she pushed herself up on her elbows. “I’m okay. I’m okay. Call the MTs before that asshole bleeds to death.”
Roarke barely spared a glance at the man lying on the floor with a wooden stake in his belly. His own stomach muscles were knotted in slippery fists. “How much of this is yours?”
She looked down at her shirt in some disgust. “Hardly any. Missed the heart. Bastard was on top of me. Gut wounds are messy. Feeney?”
“Contacting the MTs,” he told her. “Situation below is nearly contained. Hell of a show. But looks like you’re the headliner here. Jesus, what a freaking mess.”
“I can’t believe I’m going to have to thank Baxter for being a smart-ass. Lost my weapon. He’d’ve done some damage before you got through if I hadn’t had the pointy stick.”
She started to stand, and with Roarke’s help made it to her feet. Once there, she swayed and she staggered. “Just a little shaken up. Hit my head on various hard objects. No, no, don’t carry me.”
He simply scooped her into his arms. “You’re doomed to have me disobey.” Then he pressed his lips to the side of her throat where he saw the faint wounds. “Got a taste of you, did he?”
She heard the rage, and tried to tamp it down. “Told him to bite me. It’s the first time anyone’s ever taken that suggestion literally. Except you.” She turned Roarke’s face with her hand so that he looked at her rather than Dorian. “Put me down, will you, pal? This seriously undermines my authority.”
“Hey, hey!” Crouched over Dorian, Feeney stopped even his half-hearted attempt to stanch the blood flow. “Is this guy sporting fangs?”
“He must’ve had them filed down that way,” Eve said. “Then had them capped. Easy on, easy off. We’ll sort it out.”
Peabody ran in. There was a darkening bruise on her cheekbone and a nasty scrape along her jaw. “Unit’s heading out to escort the MTs in. Holy crap!” she added when she saw Dorian. “You staked him. You actually staked him.”
“It was handy. Let’s get those medics in here. I don’t want this guy skipping out on multiple murder charges by dying on me. I want to know the minute he’s able to talk. I think we’re going to get an interesting confession.”
“It’s supposed to be the heart,” she heard Peabody mutter. “It’s really supposed to be the heart.”
Eve blew out a long breath. “Keep it up, Peabody, and I may have Mira shrink your head after she’s done with this second-rate Dracula. I want some damn air. I’m going up to the real world.”
Once she had, she took the bottle of water Roarke passed her and drank like a camel. She lifted her chin at the blood on his sleeve. “Is that bad?”
“It damn well is. I liked this jacket. Here, take a blocker. If you don’t have the mother of all headaches yet, it’s only due to adrenaline. Take the blocker, and I won’t haul your stubborn ass into a health center for an exam.”
She popped the blocker without a quibble. Then since it was there, she sat on the edge of the floor through the open door of the police van.
“He believed it,” she said after a moment. “He actually believed he was a vampire. Drugs probably pushed the act into his reality. Mira nailed the profile from the get. It was the pretending to be the Prince of Darkness that was the pretense, for him.”
“More likely he was just pushing the con as far as it would take him-and gambling to use it to plead insanity.”
“No. You didn’t see his face when he looked at this.” She held up the cross. “And thanks, by the way. It bought me a few minutes when it counted.”
Roarke sat beside her, rubbed a hand over her thigh. “Illogical superstition. Sometimes it works.”
“Apparently. He’s got himself some kind of super-Zeus recipe, is my guess. Not just the whacked brain it causes, or the temporary strength. Speed, too. The bastard was fast. Magician training, grift experience, drugs. I wonder when it turned on him, stopped being a way to case marks.”
Gently, Roarke traced a fingertip over her neck wounds. “There are all kinds of vampires, aren’t there? Darling Eve.”
“Yeah.” Very briefly, since all of the cops running around were too busy to notice, she leaned her head against Roarke’s shoulder. “Under it, he wasn’t really like my father. Not the way I thought. My father wasn’t crazy. Dorian, he’s bug-shit.”
“Evil doesn’t have to be sane.”
“No, you’re right about that.” And she’d faced it-and she’d beaten it. One more time. “Well, the bad news is he’s going to end up in a facility for violent mental defectives, not a concrete cage. But you take what you can get.”
Roarke’s hand rested on her knee. She laid hers over it, squeezed. “And right now, I’ll take a hot shower and a fresh shirt. I’ve got to go in and clean myself up, and clean this up, too.”
“I’ll drive.”
“You should go home,” she told him, but her hand stayed over his. “Get some sleep. It’s going to take hours to close this up.”
“I have this image I can’t shake.” He got up, drew her to her feet. “Of the sun rising, all red and gold smears over the sky. And you and I walking toward home in that lovely soft light. So taking what I can get, I’ll take sunrise with you.”
“ Sunrise it is.”
She kept her hand in his as she pulled out her communicator to contact Feeney, Peabody, the team leaders to check on the status below.
With her hand linked with Roarke’s, the demons that plagued her were silent. And would stay silent, she thought, through the night. And well past sunrise.
