Passion In The Blood Read online

  Luckily, he'd arrived home before Howard finished searching the office. Otherwise, he might have escaped with the book. Karl had caught him in the act of opening the secret compartment in the bottom desk drawer. With books from the shelves scattered on the desk and floor, it seemed the intruder had been ransacking the room for antique volumes to sell. Karl hadn't had any reason to suspect the journal as the real target of the search. He'd seized Howard by the neck, planning to throw a scare into him before using hypnosis to make him leave the house and forget any intention of coming back.

  The stranger had thrust a bottle in his face and sprayed him. He'd doubled over, choking. His stomach knotted at the memory of the nauseating fumes. Garlic juice. Blinded, he'd shoved Howard away from the desk. He remembered managing to rake his nails across the man's forearm. The tang of blood had penetrated the suffocating cloud of garlic. He'd heard a yell of pain, followed by the noise of running feet. By the time he'd recovered enough to stagger to the front door, the intruder had escaped.

  It had taken Karl thirty minutes in the shower to scrub off all traces of the foul odor. Cleaning the office carpet had been even harder. He'd trashed the clothes he'd been wearing. Even now, a growl rumbled in his chest at the indignity. The thief had come prepared to face a vampire. How could Howard have known his true nature? How had he known of the book's existence, and what did he want with it?

  Despite the complications of involving Cordelia, in a way her bungled burglary was a stroke of luck. Without her, he'd never have learned Howard's name and location. Honor required Karl to rescue Miranda, of course, but he'd have gone with Cordelia regardless. He had to mesmerize Howard into forgetting everything he knew or suspected about vampires.

  Chapter 3

  * * *

  Cordelia hardly slept that night. She woke over and over to stare into the darkness and mull over the evening's events. How had Karl known about her so-called gift? How had he seen through her psychic veil? He'd tried to hypnotize her as casually as another man would have called the police to have her arrested. Though he and her father had been friends as long as she could remember, she didn't know much about Karl. Not even his age, come to think of it. Aside from a dash of silver at the temples, he hadn't changed much in all these years. Since he didn't look much older than forty now, he must have been in his twenties when she and Miranda were born. Now, though, she realized her ignorance about him went much deeper than such mundane statistics as age.

  To be honest, she couldn't deny she welcomed a chance to spend time with him. She flushed with guilt at indulging herself that way when her sister's life could be at risk. Yet Cordelia couldn't help remembering the thrill of his fingers on her neck, his lips on hers. Her skin grew even hotter. She flung the covers back and spread her arms to welcome the post-rain breeze drifting through the window screen. Her nipples peaked under her sheer nightgown.

  She rolled over, muffling a moan in the pillow. She didn't want the flame of her attraction to Karl fanned any higher. The intense feelings broadcast by other men had scared her away from intimate relationships. At least she knew where she stood with other guys, though. Except for those flares of anger tonight, she'd seldom felt anything from Karl. How did he maintain that mental barrier, and why? What was he hiding?

  By the time she stumbled out of bed in the morning to shower off the clammy sweat of a restless night, her stomach churned at the thought of facing Karl at close quarters again. She tugged the brush through her hair with impatient jerks. Instead, she should worry about facing the blackmailer and keeping her sister safe. Strangely, she half believed Karl could protect them, although she'd never known him to display martial arts prowess or any other talent that could overpower a lunatic with a gun. His hypnotic stare must have affected her more than she'd realized.

  In the kitchen she rummaged through the refrigerator in search of some sort of breakfast. She had to shift four bottles of her father's favorite dark ale to get to the orange juice. For the past five months she'd been shuffling those bottles around because, although she didn't drink the stuff herself, she couldn't bear to give away something her dad had bought in his last week of life. She rubbed her eyes and fished out a carton of strawberry yogurt, the only thing besides juice she felt able to swallow.

  She'd just finished eating when the doorbell rang. She hurried to answer it with her golden tabby, Topaz, trailing at her heels. As usual, she noticed when she opened the door, Karl had found a space for his black sedan at the curb directly in front of the house, a minor miracle on this narrow side street in the historic district of downtown Annapolis. Maybe he did have supernatural powers. Also as usual, he looked more dashing than he had any right to in an open-collared polo shirt. He wore sunglasses, even on this cloudy morning.

  "Ready to go?" He scanned her as if he knew what she'd been thinking half the night.

  "Any time. You've got the book?"

  "In the car." Topaz twined around his legs, as she always did. He bent to stroke her. She swished her tail and purred aloud.

  Cordelia couldn't help imagining that hand caressing her the same way. Blushing, she darted into the living room to grab her purse and dashed out the door.

  She'd never ridden in Karl's car before. The roomy interior with its leather seats momentarily lulled her into forgetting about her sister's plight. Between the luxurious aroma and the smooth ride, she could almost have closed her eyes and dozed off.

  As soon as they cleared the downtown congestion and turned onto the highway, she snapped fully awake. A couple of miles down the road, she said, "We're actually going to invade a kidnapper's lair."

  "As of last night, you were prepared to carry out the invasion by yourself."

  "I was planning to make a deal with him, not fight him. You don't even have a weapon, do you? Or do you have a gun stashed in the glove compartment."

  With a dry laugh, he said, "We won't need one." Turning onto Riva Road heading toward the South River, he lifted one hand from the wheel to pat her arm. "I asked you to trust me. Don't you?"

  "I used to. After last night, I'm not so sure."

  "Considering you're the one who broke into my house, shouldn't I be the one with those reservations?" Though she couldn't see his eyes through the sunglasses he wore for driving, she was relieved to hear a teasing note in his voice. At least he didn't bear a grudge for her screwed-up foray into crime.

  "I'd trust you more if you'd answer some questions. Such as, how come you could tell I was trying to hide from you? And why could you see right through it?"

  "If you and Miranda have psychic gifts, why do you have trouble believing I might?"

  "Randy?" The word popped out as a squeak of surprise. Did his psychic gifts include mind-reading? "What makes you think that?"

  "Purely a guess, but I note from your reaction that it's accurate. She doesn't succeed at Tarot reading by luck alone, does she?"

  "Sometimes she catches glimpses from her customers' lives when they touch her, and she senses people's emotions the same way I do. If I haven't been imagining it all my life."

  "You're not deranged, if that's what you're implying. I have no doubt that your talents are real."

  She would have found the statement comforting if fear for Miranda's safety weren't gnawing on her insides.

  After crossing the South River, they had no trouble finding Howard's place, a two-story house on a heavily wooded lot in an upscale development. A blue sedan in the driveway bore the logo of a local real estate office. That job's irregular hours doubtless allowed Howard enough spare time for the occasional kidnapping. The spacious yards with plenty of distance from the neighbors explained why nobody would have heard Miranda scream even if he'd left her unguarded for a while. Karl parked down the road out of view from Howard's windows.

  "You're onstage," he said. Reaching into the backseat, he produced the journal and passed it to her. "Don't be afraid. I'll be right behind you."

  Her stomach fluttered as she walked up the street. Her palm damp
ened the cover of the book. Although she didn't glimpse a face at either of the front windows, Howard might be peeking through the curtains. Maybe she was the crazy one after all, making a solitary visit to a man desperate enough to pull a gun on a woman he'd never met before. She resisted the temptation to glance behind her in search of reassurance from Karl. She couldn't risk making Howard suspicious.

  With its manicured lawn, sculpted shrubbery, and fresh paint, at first glance the house would have qualified as an ad for its owner's real estate services. When she opened the screen door, though, the damage to the inner wooden door hit her in the eyes. Its panel was cracked, with the screws that held the knob loosened. She tiptoed onto the porch. Nobody flung the door open and lunged at her. She gave it a tentative knock.

  Nothing. She rang the bell. Still no answer. It would serve the man right if somebody had broken into his home, but that sounded like a far-fetched coincidence. And if it had happened, where had Howard gone, and had he taken Miranda with him?

  Ringing the bell again, Cordelia called, "Mr. Howard?"

  From inside, a man's hoarse voice said, "Who's there?"

  "It's me, Cordelia Torrance. You told me to come at eight, so here I am. Where's my sister?"

  "Oh, yeah, you. Might as well come in."

  She twisted the damaged knob and shoved the door, which swung open. Stepping inside, she noticed part of the frame broken, with a bolt dangling from it. She didn't bother shutting the inner door. Closed drapes dimmed the living room. A husky, middle-aged man with close-cropped brown hair slumped on the couch.

  Slouched with his arms resting on his knees, he peered up at her from eyes dulled with either exhaustion or pain. Maybe both, considering the bandage on the left side of his neck. He wore a sweatshirt that looked much too warm for the mild day. Cordelia's pulse stuttered when she noticed the gun on the cushion beside him.

  He raised it and aimed at her with a tremulous hand. "Stop right there."

  She raised both arms. "What's wrong with you? You invited me in."

  "Are you alone?" Strain made his voice shrill.

  "Why wouldn't I be?"

  After peering past her for a second, he laid the gun down. "Okay, you can relax, I'm not going to shoot you." He rubbed his eyes. "Sorry about that. I was afraid one of them might come back."

  "One of who?" Her voice quavered. She swallowed and managed a steadier tone with her next remark. "Never mind. Where's my sister?"

  "You're too late. She's gone."

  "You're lying!" But he wasn't, she realized in the next instant. He projected pain, fatigue, and fear, but no deception.

  She marched over to the couch and glared at him with hands on her hips. "What do you mean, gone?" A hopeful thought leaped into her head. "Did she escape? Great! I hope she hurt you real bad in the process."

  He fingered the bandage. "She didn't do this to me. He did."

  "Who?"

  "The man she left with. The other vampire."

  "The other what?" That settled it. The man was insane.

  At that moment she heard a brisk stride behind her. She hadn't even noticed Karl coming in through the half-open door. Just as he swooped past her, Howard grabbed the gun and fired it.

  The explosion reverberated through her skull. Her ears rang.

  Karl shoved her aside and let out a roar of pain and fury. For once, she had no trouble sensing his feelings. The bullet must have hit him. Her head reeling, she stumbled to the nearest chair and collapsed into it. Karl charged at the couch and knocked the weapon from Howard's hand.

  The other man fumbled for the collar of his sweatshirt. With a wordless growl, Karl seized both his arms and pinned them to the back of the sofa. "What happened to Miranda? What vampire did she leave with?" She could hardly hear the words through the ear-piercing aftereffects of the gunshot.

  Had Karl lost his mind, too? No, he must be humoring the lunatic.

  "A man, like I just told her." Howard jerked his chin toward Cordelia. "Does she know you're one?" He began muttering under his breath, a rhythmic string of syllables like an incantation. The air around him vibrated with barely suppressed panic.

  "Look at me." Karl shook him like a cat with a rat. "Stop that babbling and answer my questions." Now that the ringing in her ears began to fade, she could understand him even though his tone softened to an ominous purr. "You want to tell me everything, don't you? Why did you kidnap Miranda? What did you want with that journal? How did you know it exists?"

  "Oh, hell, what could it hurt now? I've been hunting for you on the Internet for almost a year. I moved here from the Eastern Shore after I found out where you live. I looked up your class schedule online and staked out your place to make sure you'd be out of the house at those hours." He hung his head with a weary sigh. "Just my luck I lost track of time while searching the place and you showed up before I left."

  "Yes. Bad for you, fortunate for me. Go on."

  "There was a ton of stuff to search through, but I almost had the book. I was that close. Ms. Torrance there thinks I'm crazy, talking about vampires, right?"

  She answered with a spasmodic nod.

  "Well, it sounded insane to me, too, but I came prepared anyway." He shifted his eyes to Cordelia. "I had a spray bottle of garlic juice. When I squirted him in the face, he collapsed."

  "Wouldn't anybody?" she said.

  Howard looked back at Karl. "You stayed down longer than anybody would just from getting sprayed in the eyes. It really hurt you. That was when I knew my family tradition wasn't pure bull after all."

  "Family tradition?" Karl said.

  "That's how I knew about you in the first place. I'd been following you off and on for weeks, so I also found out about Ms. Torrance and her sister. You visited them enough times that I figured they might be able to get into your house easier than I could. I didn't want to take any chances on running into you again."

  In the midst of the confusion buzzing in her head, Cordelia clutched onto this one remark that made a little sense. "So you decided to blackmail one of us to help you by snatching the other one. Why'd you pick Randy?"

  He attempted a shrug that turned into a twitch of the shoulders because of Karl's grip on his arms. "She's the one who happened to show up on the doorstep when I was watching your house. I used the gun to keep her quiet until we got in the car. I forced her into the backseat, and as soon as I was sure nobody was watching, I tied her hands behind her. Other than that, I didn't hurt her. She's been locked in the basement bedroom suite the whole time since then." He jerked his chin in that general direction.

  "But how did she get away? And don't give me any fairy tales about vampires."

  "You don't have a clue, do you?" He glanced from Cordelia to Karl. "I guess I can forget about getting my hands on that diary."

  "Hardly." A fleeting smile punctuated Karl's dry answer. "I'll ask you only once more. How did you know about it, and why were you so determined to own it?"

  "There's a legend handed down in my family, in a manuscript written by my great-great-whatever grandfather in the nineteenth century. He fell in love with a woman who lived with a strange man. My ancestor was worried about her and tried to persuade her to elope with him. She turned him down. He got the idea her lover had some kind of occult power over her. Also, he claimed she stayed miraculously young-looking into her fifties. After she died, he managed to steal a memoir she'd written. That book." He nodded toward the volume Cordelia clutched on her lap. "When he read it, he found out the lover was a vampire. The vampire got the journal back from him, but by then my ancestor had written down the whole story."

  "You believe this nonsense?" Karl said.

  "I was skeptical, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to investigate. When you reacted to the garlic the way you did, that cinched it for me." He glanced at Cordelia again. "You think this is a load of crap and I'm nuts, don't you?" Pity tinged the question.

  "Well, yeah."

  "My ancestor wasn't some superstitious Transylvanian peasa
nt. He was a hardheaded English shopkeeper. Between what he wrote and what I saw when I broke into your friend's house, I decided the vampire legend had a chance of being true. And I was desperate enough to go through with my plan on the assumption it actually was."

  "A plan that involved the journal, I take it," Karl said.

  "I was going to threaten to scan the whole thing and post it on the Internet unless you gave me what I wanted. Most people would think it was a hoax, but the few who believed it would make your life hell." He lifted his head with a defiant glare at Karl. "I wanted to blackmail you into making me a vampire. Since I don't have any way of forcing you, I'll beg you. Change me."

  Cordelia sensed a rush of anger from Karl, drowning Howard's earnest plea in renewed fear.

  Karl's grip visibly tightened, wrenching a moan from the other man. "Even if vampires existed, why in hell would you want to become one?"

  "Because I have the gene for Huntington's. Ever since the test result came, I've been tracking you. I saw what that disease did to my dad. Living forever as a vampire looks like a great alternative."

  Cordelia covered her mouth to stifle a gasp. In spite of what Howard had done to her sister, she couldn't help feeling sorry for him. With a slow death sentence hanging over him, no wonder his grasp on reality had slipped.

  "It doesn't work that way." Karl's voice softened with something that verged on compassion. "A vampire's bite wouldn't change you any more than a tick's or mosquito's would. You've been wasting your time and disrupting these women's lives for nothing."

  "You're lying." A miasma of desperation oozed from him. "You're taking away my hope to punish me for what I did."

  "Enough of this idiocy. Tell me how Miranda escaped."

  "About four in the morning a noise woke me. I realized it was somebody breaking in the front door. I ran downstairs to investigate. I had the gun, but he was so damn fast." A long breath shuddered from him. "He pounced out of the shadows and knocked me down before I even knew he was there. Kicked the gun out of my hand. All I could see was a dark shape and his eyes--glowing red. The way yours did for a second there."