Blood Born Read online

  She was so hungry that when the doorbell rang in the foyer, she rushed to answer it. A dignified middle-aged man in a uniform pushed a rolling cart into the oval living room. The aroma of the burger was tantalizing; there was nothing like comfort food when one’s world was falling apart. If she couldn’t have her mother’s meat loaf and mashed potatoes, a cheeseburger and fries were the next best thing.

  Luca sat on the sofa, still and contemplative. No one did still like a vampire. The room service guy nodded to them both, then politely asked if he’d gotten the order correct. The meal was for one, with a single plate and one glass of water. Luca smiled. “Yes, that’s right.”

  She signed the bill, added an extra tip even though the surcharge was outrageous, and handed over the leatherette folder. The delivery guy nodded, thanked her, and headed for the foyer, where he turned, thanked her again, and then said, “Sir, I didn’t see you there. Is the order correct? It’s for one, but I can bring another plate and a glass of water, if you’d like to share.”

  Chloe froze.

  “The order’s correct,” Luca said, smiling politely. “Thank you.”

  The room service waiter exited and they listened to the foyer door close behind him. Chloe turned to the calm vampire sitting on the sofa as if there was nothing at all wrong in the world. She stared at him for a moment, her mind racing. Then she said, “He didn’t remember you.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Neither did the man in the elevator, or the desk clerk. Or Valerie! I thought it was a glamouring thing you did to her, but it wasn’t, was it?”

  “No.”

  For a moment, she forgot that she was hungry. A chill swept over her as she thought of other things, the stunned look on his face when she’d called him by name, the careful, almost alarmed way he’d acted. “No one remembers you,” she whispered.

  “No. No one but you.”

  She swallowed. “Why do I remember you? Is it because I’m a conduit?”

  He looked at her, an unreadable expression in his piercing gray eyes. “I don’t know. No other conduit has remembered me, not that I’ve met many of them—that I know of, anyway.”

  She got the feeling Luca wasn’t accustomed to encountering anything he didn’t understand, not because she could read anything on his face, but because she felt what was inside him.

  Chloe then turned her attention to something she could understand: hunger. She sat at the wheeled-in table and took a few bites, swabbing her fries in ketchup, aware that Luca watched her closely. Maybe the ketchup got to him, reminded him too much of blood, but abruptly he stood. “I have something to do in the bedroom. Don’t disturb me.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked. Sleep? Unlikely. Masturbate? Even more unlikely, not after the night—day … whatever—they’d shared. Not when she was right here, handy and frighteningly willing. “Some gross vampire thing I don’t want to know anything about, I suppose,” she guessed, trying to sound nonchalant even though she felt anything but, then she couldn’t stop herself from smiling at him.

  “I’m going to put myself in a meditative state so I can locate Sorin.”

  Chloe almost choked on her most recent bite of burger. Forget nonchalant. “Locate him? I thought we were hiding from the psycho!”

  Luca smiled gently. “Either we find them, or they’ll find us. I’ve never been the type to sit around waiting for anything to come to me. I want the advantage of surprise.”

  “Great,” Chloe said as she took another bite of what very well might be her last cheeseburger; at least it was a good one. Come to think of it, she’d be perfectly happy to hide here for a while, if the alternative was hunting vampires. Forget her job; she was willing to be jobless and live in this beautiful suite with its oval living room. She’d never been in a physical fight in her life; in school she’d always been the peacemaker, the one who tried to mediate the inevitable squabbles that erupted between her friends. She wasn’t a coward, she didn’t think, but she was definitely out of her element. All that aside, she knew without a single doubt that if Luca was going to rush into battle, she’d be rushing right along with him … the jerk.

  Instead of immediately returning to D.C. as he should’ve, Sorin found a room in New York and holed up for the rest of the day. He was tired, and he liked the city; in an odd way he fit in here. He’d been born a farmer’s son, had lived most of his human life inside one or two square miles, as most of his contemporaries had. And still, he felt as if he’d been born to a place like this. Though reading energies wasn’t one of his gifts, even he could feel the energy of this city; even he could get lost here.

  He needed to get lost for a while. He needed time to think.

  By not killing Phillip Stargel, he’d basically committed treason, though committing treason against a traitor was a convoluted idea. Jonas wasn’t psychic, he wouldn’t know exactly what had happened, but he’d realize Stargel was still alive, and active. If Jonas reported the truth to Regina, if Sorin told her the job was done and Jonas contradicted him, she’d gladly take his head—or try. No, she wouldn’t do it herself, she’d simply set three or more vampires on him, and not even he could win against those kind of odds unless he were very, very lucky and they were very, very bad fighters.

  Then again, Jonas had no reason to go out of his way to volunteer information. The way Regina had treated him, why should he? Instead of making Jonas a part of the higher order, she’d used and abused him, she’d treated him no better than the humans she kept prisoner.

  At the end of a long day spent in a hotel room in Manhattan, sleeping some and thinking too damn much, Sorin decided he didn’t regret his decision to allow the conduit to live. He’d never thought that the human race was without value—after all, he’d once been human himself, and vampires couldn’t live without humans to feed off of. Nor had he ever really wanted to make slaves of them all, though when one of them pissed him off he’d think fondly of it, for a while. At the end of the day, he simply wanted to be a part of that life again, to be accepted for who and what he was. The constant hiding, changing his name and location on a regular basis, keeping the secret of his existence … that was what he wanted to leave behind.

  As night fell, he became restless, and the thought surfaced that humans had their uses, beyond providing food.

  He walked around until he found a busy nightclub, where the line waiting to get in snaked down the block. Sorin walked to the front of the line, glamoured his way past the waiting throng and into the exclusive club filled with beautiful women, loud music, men trying to get laid, and copious amounts of alcohol. He couldn’t lose himself in drink, but he did sometimes like the taste of a good whiskey and the memory it stirred.

  He walked up to the crowded bar and patrons instinctively parted, moving smoothly out of his way. He ordered a Scotch whiskey, and as the bartender placed it before him a pretty brunette—a human who apparently did not have the protective instincts of the others around him—sidled up close to him. He looked into her dark brown eyes and she flinched a little as something inside her instinctively noticed the monster inside him. She didn’t walk away; she should have, but she didn’t.

  She wasn’t drunk; she’d come here for another reason entirely.

  “I haven’t seen you here before,” she said.

  “I haven’t been here before.”

  Her smile was practiced, a little strained. “That would explain it.”

  Sorin took a sip of his whiskey. Normally he preferred vampire lovers to humans; the emotional component could be messy, and so many humans reminded him of children, they were so inexperienced and ignorant. But this one was looking for sex, nothing more, and tonight he could use the comfort of sex and nothing more.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Ryan.” He couldn’t be honest with her, the way he’d been honest with Phillip Stargel. Besides, Ryan was the name on his fake driver’s license and very real credit card.

  “Ryan what?”