Jessie stopped short at what she saw…

Michael stood with his back to her, his hands resting on the tiled wall of the shower as the water pounded down over him.

She’d been right about his body. He was muscular, but with a sleek, swift shape like that of a panther. Tension gripped him, and she saw that tautness from his broad shoulders and strong torso down to his lean waist and trim hips. The impulse to massage the tension out of him came over Jessie, and it was all she could do not to step forward and mold her naked body to his, flesh against flesh.

She stayed where she was. She’d come for answers, and she was determined to get them. “Michael.”

He turned and Jessie couldn’t stop her eyes from trailing down his body.

“What the devil are you doing in here?” he asked in a voice husky with strain.

She moved closer to him then. “That all depends on you.”

The Vampire Affair
Livia Reasoner

www.millsandboon.co.uk

About the Author

A born storyteller, LIVIA REASONER has been spinning tales as a professional writer for more than twenty-five years. Her first novel was a historical romance, and since then she has written numerous paranormal romances, award-winning mystery novels and critically acclaimed historical novels. She enjoys crafting fast-paced stories about vital, interesting characters.

When she’s not writing, Livia enjoys building things, from bookshelves all the way up to houses. She’s been known to ask for power tools for birthday and anniversary presents—and she usually gets them, too.

Livia lives in Texas with her husband, novelist James Reasoner. She invites readers to visit her website at www. liviawashburn.com and her blog http://liviajwashburn. blogspot.com.

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This book is dedicated to Shayna and Joanna,

for holding down the fort.

Dear Reader,

Thank you for picking up The Vampire Affair, my first venture into the dark, compelling world of vampires and vampire hunters. Although I haven’t had the opportunity to write this sort of book before, I’ve long been a reader and fan of the genre. Thanks to Mills & Boon I’m now a part of the Nocturne™ line, and I couldn’t be more excited. I hope you enjoy the romance and adventures shared by Michael and Jessie as much as I did and that their tragedies and triumphs will move you and touch your heart.

Special thanks to Tara Gavin and Stacy Boyd for the editorial expertise that made this a much better book and to my agent Kim Lionetti for all her efforts on its behalf. Thanks, as well, to my husband, James, a never-ending source of advice, inspiration and editing skills.

Livia Reasoner

Chapter One

“I’m not sure if we can reach a deal or not, Mr. Brandt. The current owner of the resort has no interest in selling.”

Michael Brandt opened his briefcase and pushed aside a 9 mm pistol, a vial of holy water, a wooden stake sharpened to a deadly point and an antique knife with a silver filigreed handle. He took out a legal pad, plucked a pen from the pocket of his jacket and wrote a number on the pad. As he turned the pad around and pushed it toward the man seated on the other side of the conference table, he said, “I’m sure you’ll pass along my offer to him anyway, as you’re duty-bound to do as his attorney.”

Long years as the lead partner in a high-powered practice should have given the lawyer the ability to conceal his emotions, but when he saw the figure Michael had scrawled on the pad, his eyebrows went up in surprise. “That’s very generous,” he said. “I certainly will pass it along.”

Michael turned the pad around again, signed his name under the number and tore off the sheet. “I’ll leave that with you to prove to your client that I’m serious about this matter.” He tossed the pad back into the briefcase on top of the weapons. He had been careful to keep the case turned so that the lawyer couldn’t see its contents.

Both men stood up and shook hands. “I’ll be in touch,” the lawyer promised.

“You’ve got my number,” Michael said. He nodded and left the office.

He didn’t like these places, all stuffy and reeking of wealth and power. But dealing with lawyers, stockbrokers, financial analysts and the like was a necessary part of his business. An occupational hazard, so to speak. And although these meetings were sometimes boring, they weren’t likely to kill him.

Unlike some of the other occupational hazards he faced.

As he got into the express elevator alone on the thirty-third floor of the high-rise and watched the doors slide shut, he stiffened as warning bells went off in his brain. The doors were closed and the elevator had already started to sink, not to stop again until it reached the lobby. It was too late to get out.

The hatch cover in the top of the car was torn off with a sudden wrench. Michael twisted to the side as a black-clad figure dropped toward him. He brought the briefcase up and around. Metal rang against metal as a knife blade ripped through the leather exterior of the case and was stopped by the steel underneath. Michael rammed the case against the knife-wielder, knocking the man back against the wall of the elevator. He followed that with a knee to the groin, the attack almost too swift for the eye to follow. The black-clad man sagged in pain, but he wasn’t out of the fight yet. He got a hand on Michael’s face and clawed for his eyes.

Michael pulled back and swung the case again. It slammed against his attacker’s head with a hollow thunk. This time the man fell to the floor of the elevator, out cold.

No, he was more than unconscious, Michael saw. The caved-in side of his head was mute testament to a fractured skull. Michael bent over and checked for a pulse, finding none. In the heat of fighting for his life, he had struck harder than he intended.

But he recognized the man now, images and information from a computerlike mental database popping up in his keen memory. Carl Williams. Human. Professional killer. Suspected in at least seven murders. Often employed by Michael’s enemies to take care of problems that required a more mundane solution.

The elevator car still descended slowly toward the lobby. Michael figured he had another minute or so, tops.

He took a coil of slender but very strong nylon rope from the briefcase, looped it under the dead man’s arms, then jumped and caught the edge of the hatch with one hand. He pulled himself up through it and then used the rope to haul the corpse through the hatch, as well. Then he lugged Carl Williams over to the edge of the moving car and looked down. There was enough room.

Michael rolled the body off the top of the car. It plummeted to the bottom of the elevator shaft, where it wouldn’t be discovered for a while. Long enough, anyway.

Michael wasn’t going to lose any sleep over Williams’s death. The man was a cold-blooded murderer and didn’t deserve any mourning.

As he hung one-handed from the hatch opening again, Michael grasped the cover with his other hand and pulled it over. He popped it back into place as he dropped lightly to the floor of the car again. He stowed the rope in the briefcase, looked at the rip in the leather and shook his head. Now that he regretted.

The fight for his life and then the exertion of disposing the hit man’s body had made him breathe hard, but that had settled down by the time the elevator eased to a stop and the door opened. Michael stepped out into the lobby.

And was immediately assaulted again. Not by a killer this time, but by an attractive and determined-looking young woman. Almost as tall as him, she had smooth skin that held a faint shade of copper, dark, intense eyes that caught his and didn’t seem to let go and long, straight, midnight-black hair that hung halfway down her back. Her long-sleeved silk blouse was a deep forest-green. Stylish jeans hugged her hips and long legs, legs that Michael couldn’t help noticing as she blocked his path.

She held a small digital recorder in her hand and said, “Mr. Brandt, if I could have just a few minutes of your time. My name is Jessie Morgan. I’m a journalist and I have some questions.”

Under other circumstances, talking to this woman might have been quite a pleasant experience, Michael thought, but not now. He had a great deal on his mind—the mission that had brought him here, for one thing, and the fact that mere moments earlier he had been fighting for his life, a sure sign that his enemies knew he was in town. He shook his head, brushed past her and strode toward the huge glass front doors of the office building, saying over his shoulder, “Sorry, I don’t have any time right now.”

As he left the place, he didn’t look back.

It never occurred to him that she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Hating Michael Brandt would have been very easy if he hadn’t been so ruggedly handsome, Jessie thought as she hurried to catch up to him on the sidewalk outside the building. Tall and obviously muscular under his casual but expensive clothes, he moved with an elegant, tautly controlled grace that reminded her of a stalking cougar. Intense blue eyes gazed out from a compelling, rough-hewn face. His sandy hair was cut short but was still long enough to tousle a little in the front. Some instinct must have warned him that she was coming up behind him, because he looked back sharply over his shoulder at her, his muscles tensing as if he thought he might be under attack.

He relaxed as he recognized her, but he didn’t slow down. “I’m sorry, Ms. Morgan,” he said as he strode along the sidewalk among towering skyscrapers. “I told you I can’t give you an interview right now.”

Even though she was almost as tall as him, Jessie had to hurry to keep up. Michael Brandt was the sort of man who didn’t look as if he were moving very fast until you realized how much ground he covered.

“Just a few minutes of your time, Mr. Brandt,” Jessie said again as she clutched the little recorder. “I’m sure my readers would like to know—”

Brandt stopped short but was able to make it seem graceful rather than abrupt. “What paper do you work for?” he asked.

“I’m a freelancer,” she said, “but I’m on assignment right now for Supernova.”

“The tabloid?” His voice was flat.

“It’s a weekly newsmagazine.”

“The tabloid,” Brandt said again. He resumed walking, and this time he didn’t apologize for refusing to talk to her.

With an angry toss of her head that threw her long hair back, Jessie started after him as he headed for a limo parked up the street. She wanted to get in at least a question or two before he reached the car.

“Is there any truth to the rumor that you’re dating Angelica Boudreau?” she called after him.

At first she thought he was going to ignore her, but then he stopped and looked at her again. “I’ve never even met the lady.”

Jessie suppressed the impulse to grin in triumph. All they had to do was answer one question and she was halfway to victory. Once she got even the most reluctant interview subject talking, she could keep them going.

“But what about the reports linking her separation from her husband to her involvement with you?”

Brandt shook his head. “They’re false. Like I told you, I don’t know her.”

“Then who are you dating?”

He smiled. “I can’t imagine why my love life would be interesting to anybody.”

“You’re a celebrity. People like to know what celebrities are doing…especially who they’re doing.”

For a second she thought Brandt was going to laugh. A good-humored twinkle appeared in his eyes, making him even more attractive. But then, in a flash, it disappeared. He gave a shake of his head and started walking toward the limo again. “Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t talk about such things. Besides, I’m not a celebrity.”

“No? You’ve driven race cars in Europe, flown a hot-air balloon around the world—”

“Most of the way around the world. I still haven’t quite managed a complete circumnavigation.”

“And you’re worth umpteen jillion dollars,” Jessie went on as if he hadn’t interrupted. “That right there is enough to make you count as a celebrity.”

“I try to keep a low profile on my financial dealings.”

“Easy to do when you can distract the press by dating some of the most beautiful women in the world. You need a private jet just to keep up with all the ladies you’ve got on the string.”

Brandt looked over at her as they walked. “You’re a determined one, aren’t you?”

“Always have been.”

“What if I said this entire conversation was off-the-record?”

“Too late. You can’t go back and put conditions on things like that.”

“What if I sue your paper?”

Jessie had to laugh at that one. “More publicity for Supernova. The publisher would love it. He has an entire army of lawyers on retainer, and they’ve never lost a case.”

“Not even when the paper printed a story about how the First Lady is actually a space alien?”

“Nobody’s ever been able to prove otherwise, now have they?”

Brandt shook his head, probably not in denial of what she had said but more likely in amazement at her audacity.

They had almost reached the long black limo. Jessie knew she was running out of time. She wanted to get in one more question. “What do you have to say to those who claim you obtained your fortune through unethical or perhaps even illegal means?”

He opened the rear door of the limo—the driver didn’t get out to do it for him, Jessie noticed—but paused to look at her before he got in. His steely eyes flashed as if he were angry at her, and she suddenly worried that she might have pushed him too far. Something about this man told her she didn’t want him angry at her.

But then he seemed to relax, although it took a visible effort for him to do so. “Nobody’s ever been able to prove it, now have they?” he asked, paraphrasing what she had just said to him.

With the slam of the door and a purring surge of the limo’s expertly tuned engine, he was gone, leaving Jessie to stare after the departing vehicle.

Michael settled back against the luxuriously upholstered rear seat. The vehicle’s smooth acceleration as it pulled away from the curb testified to the driver’s skill. He looked at Michael in the rearview mirror and asked without the deference usually associated with a chauffeur, “Who was that?”

“The woman? Just another reporter.”

“I saw the way she was chasing you along the sidewalk.” The big blond man chuckled. “I thought I might have to get out and help you, but then I figured you could take care of her yourself.”

Michael frowned. “What do you mean by that, Max?”

“Well, she was pretty good-looking, in a persistent sort of way.”

“I didn’t notice,” Michael lied.

The truth was, he had noticed how attractive Jessie Morgan was…more than he wanted to. With everything else going on in his life right now, he didn’t need any distractions—especially from a nosy reporter, no matter what she looked like. The resort deal was a delicate and important one, and the attack on him in the elevator proved that he couldn’t let his guard down even for an instant. Not that he would have, even if Carl Williams hadn’t tried to kill him. Years of living with violence and danger had ingrained caution in him. No one got too close to him except the handful of people in the world he trusted…and sometimes he kept his distance even from them.

He wished he had kept his distance from Charlotte. He wished that every day of his life.

“How did the meeting go?” Max asked, and Michael was grateful for the question since it got his mind off those painful memories.

“All right. The lawyer said his client wasn’t interested in selling, but we all know what that means.”

Max grunted. “Everybody’s got their price. You just have to find it.”

“Exactly.” Michael paused, then went on. “Something interesting did happen on my way out of the building.”

“Besides having a hot lady reporter chasing you, you mean?”

Michael tried to ignore the reference to how hot Jessie Morgan was, even though images filled his mind. Her long legs in those sleek-fitting jeans. Her breasts in that silk shirt. Her dark, intriguing eyes…especially those eyes. He forced the images away.

“Carl Williams tried to kill me.”

“Son of a—” The limo lurched a little as Max instinctively hit the brakes. “Williams? He’s in town?”

“Not anymore,” Michael said. “Only his body. It’s at the bottom of an elevator shaft now.”

“Huh.” Max shook his head as he resumed piloting the limo through Dallas traffic with sure, steady skill. “I told you I should have gone upstairs with you. I guess you handled things all right, though, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“That’s right.” Michael fingered the tear in the leather briefcase, annoyed that he would have to replace it. He wasn’t sure why that bothered him; he could afford another briefcase, even a custom-made one like this. He could afford a thousand just like it and never even miss the money.

Maybe it wasn’t the briefcase, or the resort deal, or the fact that his enemies were on his trail. Maybe it was the flicker of something he hadn’t felt in a long time, something he didn’t want to feel. In their brief conversation, even though he had done his best to brush her off, Jessie Morgan had roused something in him, and not just the physical stirrings of desire to which he was no more immune than any other man in the presence of a beautiful woman.

He had wanted to talk to her, he realized now. He’d wanted to open up to her. Could be that she simply had the reporter’s knack of getting people to say more than they should.

But just in case it was more than that, just in case she had stirred up something within him that was better left dormant, he was damned glad that he would never see her again.

It wasn’t enough, Jessie thought. It wasn’t nearly enough. She couldn’t get even a news item out of the information she had about Michael Brandt, let alone a feature. She sat at the kitchen table in her studio apartment with her laptop open and connected to the Internet, searching for something she could add to her file about him.

No reporter had ever been able to determine exactly where or when he had been born, leading to speculation that Michael Brandt wasn’t even his real name. The press had first noticed him in Europe about ten years earlier, when he was apparently in his early twenties. Despite his youth he had quickly made a name for himself on the Grand Prix circuit as a daring and often victorious driver. Evidently he had plenty of money to start with, because from the first he stayed in the finest hotels and squired around the loveliest young women on the Continent. His faint Midwestern accent marked him as unmistakably American, though.

He had returned to the States and continued to race, but in addition he sought the thrills of the stock market and the financial wars. Real estate, computers, communications, other high-tech electronics—Michael Brandt had a finger in all those pies. Everything he touched seemed to turn to gold. And if that wasn’t enough, he was linked romantically with beautiful singers and Hollywood actresses and heiresses. He was the proverbial young man who had it all.

But who was he, really? And where had he come from? Jessie was determined to find out, because her readers wanted to know. And maybe someday if she broke enough big stories—even if they were in the pages of a tabloid like Super-nova—the editors at a real newspaper would notice her, would look beyond the impoverished childhood on the reservation and the education at a junior college and a second-rate state university and see her potential as a reporter and writer.

She might have lived up to that potential already if she had been able to accept the scholarship to Oklahoma University that had been offered to her as a senior in high school. Unfortunately, it was a private scholarship endowed by one of the local oil tycoons. Jessie’s writing on her school newspaper had caught his eye, he claimed. But it was really her looks that had caught his eye, and once she realized that the scholarship carried a high price tag, she’d turned it down flat and settled for the best education she and Nana Rose could pay for.

She still carried that bitter disappointment around with her, though, and had never forgotten that you couldn’t trust rich people who thought they could buy whatever they wanted.

In the meantime, her freelance work kept the bills paid—barely—and she knew how important it was to keep her editors happy, their thirst for sensationalism quenched.

Maybe Michael Brandt was a space alien, she told herself with a wry smile. Or was possessed by the spirit of Nostradamus. Yeah, that would explain how he’d been so successful in the stock market. He could predict the future.

Her cell phone beeped.

She picked it up and looked at the screen then smiled as she recognized the number. She thumbed the button to answer the call and said, “Hello, Nana.”

“Let me guess,” her grandmother said. “You’re working again when you should be out enjoying your youth.”

“I’m working so I can pay the bills this month,” Jessie said.

“My bills as well as yours. I feel like I’m stealing from you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I could never pay back everything I owe you.”

Nana Rose had raised her on the Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma, taking Jessie in when her father had died of complications brought on by his alcoholism and her mother had taken off…somewhere. Jessie never knew for sure where her mother had gone or what had happened to her. All she knew was that from the age of seven, the only real parent she’d had was Nana Rose, her father’s mother.

It was Nana Rose who had worked two jobs to support them, Nana Rose who had denied many of her own needs to save the money to send Jessie to school. True, her education wasn’t going to impress anybody, but it was the best Nana Rose could afford and Jessie was determined not to let her grandmother down. She was going to fulfill her dream and be a respected, successful reporter…one of these days.

“What are you working on now?” Nana Rose asked. She took a keen interest in Jessie’s career and had ever since Jessie left the rez and moved to Dallas. As soon as Jessie started getting assignments and making a little money, she began sending some of it back home, over Nana Rose’s emphatic objections.

“I’m trying to write a profile of Michael Brandt.”

“Who?”

“He’s some ruggedly handsome, mysterious tycoon who’s supposed to be dating Angelica Boudreau.”

“Oh, her! She goes through men like they were tissues.”

Jessie had to laugh. “Yeah, but Brandt claims he doesn’t even know her, let alone date her. We’ll see. I haven’t given up digging for the truth just yet.”

“No, you never gave up, even when you were a little girl. I remember a time—”

Jessie didn’t want to be rude, but she knew her grandmother could reminisce for hours if given the chance. “Nana, did you call for a reason, or just to chat?”

“I need a reason to talk to my granddaughter now?”

“No, of course not. It’s just that I am working.”

She heard Nana Rose take a deep breath, then say, “I hate to ask, but there’s a problem with the plumbing here in the house, and I’m going to have to get it fixed.”

“How much do you need?” Jessie asked without hesitation.

“The plumber said three hundred dollars ought to cover it.”

Jessie winced, knowing Nana Rose couldn’t see that over the phone. But she kept her voice light as she said, “No problem. I’ll wire it to you first thing in the morning.”

“Thank you, Jessie. That will sure be a load off my mind, I tell you.”

The money wouldn’t wipe out Jessie’s checking account, but it would take a serious bite from it. Still, she had no choice. “Don’t worry about it at all,” she assured Nana Rose. “Everything will be fine.”

“Thank you so much. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

This time Jessie smiled. “Well, you’ll never have to find out, because I’ll always be here for you.”

They said their goodbyes after Nana Rose urged her one more time to go out and have a little fun occasionally. As Jessie broke the connection and set the phone down by her laptop, she reflected that she didn’t really have time for fun, not with all the obligations that hung over her. This new, unexpected expense made getting a good story out of Michael Brandt’s visit to Dallas even more urgent. If she could come up with something really spicy, Supernova might pay a bonus for it, maybe even enough to take care of the plumbing problems in the old house in Oklahoma.

Three hundred bucks would be pocket change to a man like Brandt, she reflected bitterly. Less than that, really. Even if the amount were ten times that, in his carefree life he would never miss it. But it meant the world to an old woman on a reservation.

The phone rang again, and this time Jessie didn’t recognize the number. She answered the call. “Morgan.”

“Jessie, it’s Ted Carlisle.” The voice belonged to an eager young man. When she didn’t make any response right away, he went on, “You know, from the Chateaux.”

“I know who you are, Ted,” Jessie said, even though she hadn’t really until he mentioned the resort hotel that was so high-class it was practically stratospheric. Ted worked there as a night clerk, one of numerous sources she had cultivated over the years. “You have something interesting for me?”

“How about Michael Brandt?” asked Ted. “Interesting enough for you?”

Jessie’s grip tightened on the phone. Like all reporters, coincidences made her suspicious, and it was strange that Ted would call with information about Brandt while she was working on a story about him.

But you had to make some allowances for serendipity, and Jessie’s instincts told her this was one of those times.

“Go on,” she said. She hadn’t been able to find out where Brandt was staying. “Is he at the Chateaux?”

“Interesting enough that maybe you’d, uh, like to have a cup of coffee with me sometime?”

Ted was a nice enough guy, but he was not only younger than her, he was almost a full head shorter. If Jessie went out with him she would feel sort of like she was dating her little brother.

But she didn’t tell him that. Without committing to anything, she said, “That sounds nice.” Let him draw his own conclusions. “What about Brandt?”

“He’s here,” Ted said. “He’s registered under the name Bennett Chapman, but it’s him. I got a good look at him, and I saw his picture just last week on the cover of your paper.”

Jessie was about to say that Supernova wasn’t her paper, she only freelanced for it, but that wasn’t important. Instead she said, “Is he there now?”

“Yeah, he came in a little while ago. But here’s the thing…he had some guys with him.”

“Guys? What kind of guys?” Oh, Lord, thought Jessie, Ted wasn’t about to tell her that Michael Brandt was gay, was he? Not that there was anything wrong with that, as the old saying went. And the more she thought about it, the more she realized what a great story it would make if she could reveal that Brandt’s carrying on with Angelica Boudreau and all those other beautiful women had been just a front to cover up his homosexuality.

She forced herself to focus on what Ted was saying. “Two tough guys. They looked almost like…like crooks, Jessie. Gangsters. Only the old-fashioned kind, like in mobster movies.”

Jessie’s brain shifted gears as smoothly as any of those race cars Brandt drove. Forget the gay stuff, she told herself. Brandt might be connected to the mob. A made man, for all she knew. Maybe that was how he had gotten his money in the first place. Maybe he’d been a contract killer for the syndicate. Yeah, that would make a great story.

Although it was hard to reconcile the idea of him being a cold-blooded killer with the way he looked. Tough and ruthless, yes, maybe even dangerous when he had to be, but not evil. Not with those eyes that masked depths of feeling and that jaw that needed to be stroked so that it unclenched and the anger and pain went away…

And why in the world had she described him as ruggedly handsome to Nana Rose, without even thinking about what she was saying?

“Jessie? You still there?”

“I’m here,” she said with a little shake of her head as she banished those thoughts. “Ted, I have to get in there.”

“What!” Ted’s voice rose to a mouselike squeak. “Into Brandt’s lodge?”

The hotel was actually a group of buildings modeled after Alpine ski lodges, scattered across some rolling hills on the edge of the city and clustered around a central building that housed all sorts of amenities, including a five-star restaurant. The appeal of The Chateaux was not only its luxury, but also its privacy.

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Jessie said. “If he’s having some sort of meeting with his gangster buddies, maybe they’ll order room service or something like that. I’m on my way, Ted.”

“But you can’t! I’ll get in trouble! I’ll—”

She didn’t hear the rest of his protest, because she had already closed her cell phone and was on her way toward the door of her apartment, her digital camera dangling from its strap around her wrist.

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.

“Come on!” she said again.

Brandt nodded. “It’s true.”

“Get out!”

“Maybe I should say the same thing to you,” he replied. He turned and went over to the door. “There you go,” he said as he opened it. “If you don’t believe me, you’re free to leave. After all, if there’s nothing in the dark to be afraid of, why shouldn’t you just walk right out that door?”

Jessie stayed where she was on the sofa. Despite the lights in the trees along the path, a lot of shadows lurked out there. Thick, black shadows that could hide almost anything.

“I thought so.” Brandt closed the door.

Jessie swung her legs off the sofa. She would have stood up, but at that moment a wave of dizziness hit her. “Look, just because I don’t believe you doesn’t mean I want to go out there right now. More of those guys could be around. You said there was a third one who ran off.”

“And what did they want?”

“To kidnap you?” she guessed. “You’re worth a boatload of money, remember?” She waved a hand at Max and Clifford. “That’s why you’ve got bodyguards.”

Max gave a short bark of laughter. “We’re not his bodyguards. Anybody dumb enough to try to kidnap Michael would wish they hadn’t.”

Clifford said, “We assist Michael from time to time in his work, but you can be assured, miss, he doesn’t need us to protect him. He can take care of himself just fine.”

Having seen the way Brandt handled himself in the fight, Jessie had to admit that was true. He wasn’t just dangerous; he was deadly.

And speaking of that…“What did you do with the bodies?” she asked. Her voice caught in her throat as she added, “And where exactly have you taken Ted? I want to see him.”

Brandt shook his head solemnly and said, “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. I told you he’s in a private facility. I deeply regret that his family won’t know what happened to him for the time being, but it can’t be helped. We can’t afford to have the authorities involved in this.”

Outrage jerked Jessie to her feet. “You can’t do that! It’s…it’s kidnapping!”

“As I said, I deeply regret it.”

“I don’t give a damn what you regret. It’s not right.”

“A lot of things are not right with this world,” Michael Brandt said. “Things which you know nothing about, Ms. Morgan.”

“Like vampires?”

Max said, “There’s a war going on. You may not see it or hear anything about it, but it’s happening regardless.”

“As for the other two,” Brandt went on as if they hadn’t been arguing, “once they were destroyed, nothing was left of them except their clothes. We’ll dispose of those. No one will come looking for them.”

“No reason to, right? Since they’re already dead?”

He inclined his head. “Exactly.”

Jessie’s knees were suddenly too weak for her to continue standing. She sank back down on the sofa and covered her face with her hands for a moment as she tried to take it all in. As far as she could see, there were only two options: either she had imagined everything and was truly insane, or else the things that had happened tonight were real and Brandt and his friends were telling her the truth.

And she knew she hadn’t imagined it because her throat still hurt where that son of a bitch had grabbed her. As a journalist, she had learned not to believe anything she didn’t see with her own eyes. Well, she had seen this, and felt it, and knew now that she had to accept the truth of it.

“All right,” she said as she lowered her hands and looked up at Brandt. “You guys kill vampires. I want the whole story.”

Brandt shook his head and said, “There’s not much else to tell.”

“The hell there’s not. For starters, why didn’t security come running down here as soon as the fight broke out? They had to have seen what was going on, on their monitors.”

“They didn’t see anything except what those acolytes wanted them to see,” Clifford said.

“Acolytes?”

“The two who attacked you and Ted, and their friend who took off,” Brandt said. “I’m sure they hoped that by killing us they could move up in the hierarchy.”

“Hierarchy?”

Max said smugly, “It means the ranking system within a group.”

Jessie glared at him. “I know what the word means. I’m a journalist, after all.”

“You work for one of those sleazy tabloids. That’s hardly what I’d call journalism.”

“I’m freelance, damn it! Maybe I’ll sell a story about you lunatics to the New York Times!”

Brandt moved in front of her with a hand upraised. “Settle down,” he told her. He added over his shoulder, “And you’re not helping matters, Max.”

The big man snorted in disgust and turned away.

Jessie didn’t like being told to settle down. Just because Brandt was rich didn’t mean he could boss her around. Still, she was curious enough to suppress her irritation as she switched her attention back to Michael. “What did you mean about the security personnel only seeing what those killers wanted them to see?”

“Vampires have certain…characteristics.”

“You mean like not showing up in mirrors? Are you saying that you can’t see them with a camera, either?”

“That happens to be true,” Brandt admitted. “But they can also alter a human’s perception for a limited amount of time, make them see things that aren’t there…or not see things that are. For example, vampires are not shapeshifters. They don’t turn into bats or wolves or even mist. But they can make someone who sees them think that they do.”

“So they cast a spell over the rent-a-cops?”

“Basically. The effect will wear off soon, although that depends on how long the third one hung around to continue it and cover up his escape. Also, calling it a spell implies some sort of magic, and it’s really more a matter of their vampiric condition allowing them to tap into previously unused portions of the brain—”

Jessie held up a hand to stop him. “Let’s just call it a spell,” she suggested. “I’m already mind-boggled enough. I don’t need a science lesson on top of it. The question now is…who are you, and why do you, well, kill vampires?”

Clifford said, “I’m not sure how much you need to go into the details, Michael.”

“I want answers to my questions,” Jessie snapped. “Or else I might have to go to the cops and tell them what happened here tonight. You already said you can’t afford to have the authorities poking around.”

She knew she was taking a chance. She was alone with three obviously dangerous men, and even though she was athletic and had studied martial arts in addition to the rough-and-tumble experience she had picked up as a kid, she knew she was no match for them. They could do whatever they wanted, and she wouldn’t be able to stop them.

But she had seen something in Michael Brandt’s eyes…Not friendliness, exactly. Maybe more like a touch of respect for her tenacity, and for her ability to absorb everything she had heard and seen tonight and roll with those stunning punches.

She wished, suddenly, fleetingly, that she could see something else in Michael Brandt’s eyes. Something like interest, or even desire.

Jessie pushed that thought out of her head. This wasn’t the time or place for such things.

Yet whenever that certain spark existed between people, it was no respecter of time and place. It happened whether or not it was convenient for the man and woman involved.

“You don’t want to try blackmailing us,” Max said.

Brandt shook his head. “She’s not blackmailing us. She can’t do anything to harm us.” He turned to Jessie. “You know perfectly well the police would never believe your story, don’t you, Miss Morgan?”

Jessie didn’t say anything. She just looked at him stubbornly and defiantly.

After a moment Brandt went on, “But if I tell you the truth, will you give me your word that you’ll let this drop and allow us to go about our business?”

“Maybe,” Jessie said. Get the story first, she told herself, and worry about the details like lying later.

Brandt shook his head. “Not good enough. I need your word.”

Why did he think her word counted for anything? She was just one of those sleazy tabloid reporters, wasn’t she, the bane of rich celebrities like him?

But he was willing to put his trust in her. For some reason, that made her heart pound a little harder in her chest.

“All right,” she said. “You have my word on it.” If she wound up breaking that promise, she would deal with the moral aftermath in her own way.

Brandt nodded. “All right, then. Clifford, I think we could use some coffee.”

“I’ll see to it,” Clifford said.

“Max, if you’ll deal with that other matter…”

Max grunted in assent and left the room. Only after he was gone did Jessie realize that Brandt had probably sent him to dispose of the clothes that had been left when the two acolytes disintegrated.

Think about that later, she warned herself. For now she needed to just concentrate on getting to the truth.

Brandt pulled an armchair over and sat down facing the sofa where Jessie sat. As always, no matter what he did, he looked relaxed and at ease.

“For hundreds of years,” he began, “a struggle has been going on between the forces of darkness and the forces of light.”

Jessie nodded. “Yeah, yeah, good versus evil, I know. Get to the vampires.”

A flash of annoyance flickered through his eyes. “You make it sound more simple than it really is. But in a way, you’re right. It is just the old story of good versus evil. Vampires are a manifestation of that evil, one that members of my family have been fighting for centuries.”

“Let me guess…your name was originally Van Helsing?”

“Are you going to let me tell this or not?” She sat back and waved a hand. “Sorry. I have a smart-ass streak that sometimes gets away from me. Go on.”

“As a matter of fact, my family name didn’t start out as Brandt. It was Anglicized when my ancestors moved to England from the Balkans about a hundred and fifty years ago. From there the family spread around the world. We had to, because the vampiric threat was spreading, too.” “Before that it was more of a local thing?” Michael nodded. “That’s right. The condition originated in Europe and was contained there for a couple of hundred years before making the jump to other continents. Occasionally a vampire would manage to travel elsewhere, which accounts for stories of bloodsucking creatures in other cultures, but they were always destroyed before their unholy plague could be firmly established.

“In the old country my family was always dedicated to fighting the vampires, so when they migrated to England, so did we, and the war continues to this day.”

“Then Max and Clifford are related to you?”

“Distant cousins,” Clifford answered as he came back into the room from the kitchen, carrying a tray with three cups of coffee on it. “Michael is a direct descendant, so the bloodline is much stronger in him. That’s why his powers are greater.”

Jessie’s eyes widened as she looked at Michael. “You have powers?”

Clifford winced. “You hadn’t told her about that yet? Sorry, Michael.”

He waved off the apology. “No, that’s all right. I was coming to it. I wouldn’t really call what I have powers. It’s more like…an edge. My reflexes are better. I can move faster than a regular human and I have more strength. And I can sense a vampire’s presence, even when I can’t see it.”

“Sounds like powers to me,” Jessie said. “How in the world did you get them?”

“It wasn’t through any doing of my own,” Michael said as he picked up one of the coffee cups. He took a sip and then said, “You see, my ancestor, the first one to wage war against the creatures, was a vampire himself.”

Chapter Four

Jessie stared at him for a moment before saying, “You’re descended from a vampire?”

“He was a vampire,” Michael said. “I didn’t say he stayed one.”

So far she seemed to have accepted everything he had told her with surprising ease, but he knew that deep down her natural skepticism had to be insisting that none of it was true. He could have used that skepticism to his advantage if he had just been content to lie to her and reinforce her assumption that the men in black were kidnappers. Her brain would have glossed over the inexplicable things she had seen, like a man bursting into flame and turning into dust when a wooden stake pierced his heart.

What the human brain could not explain adequately, it made excuses for. Michael knew that.

But for some reason that he couldn’t pinpoint, he hadn’t wanted to lie to Jessie. When he looked at her, the falsehoods wouldn’t come out of his mouth. He wanted to share the truth with her…even though he knew it was a mistake.

Jessie raked her fingers through her long dark hair. He could tell she was struggling to work through everything he had told her. “That doesn’t make any sense,” she finally said. “You have to be dead to be a vampire, and once you’re dead, you can’t come back to life.”

Michael shrugged. “There are different schools of thought on the subject. Some people believe that vampirism is a condition that can be cured. I’m one of them. I have to believe it, because my ancestor was cured. Cured by the love of a good woman.”

Jessie frowned. “That’s crazy.”

“What, the idea that love can change a person?”

“That’s not what I meant. Although I haven’t seen a lot of evidence supporting that idea, either.”

“Now you’re just being cynical. Anyway…” He took a deep breath. “What I meant was, he was cured by his lover, a gypsy woman who also happened to know the proper herbs and spells to use. Unfortunately, the secret died with her. But my ancestor’s time as a vampire changed him, made him stronger and faster and able to sense them, even though he was human again in all other ways. Obviously, some sort of genetic modification took place when he was infected, because he was able to pass those traits on to his offspring and they’ve continued to be passed down through the family ever since.”

“Wait a minute,” Jessie said. “One minute you’re spouting mystical mumbo jumbo and the next you’re talking about genetic modification. Is this vampire business magic, or is it science?”

Michael smiled. Jessie had no way of knowing that he had asked himself that very question many times over the years. Probably every member of the family had.

“Take your pick. You can make a case either way. The truth is, even after several hundred years of studying vampires so we can fight them more effectively, we don’t really know all the details. We know that some of the folklore is true—the thing about garlic warding off a vampire, for instance, or the fact that they can’t enter a home uninvited—but whether that’s because of magic or something scientific, we just don’t know.”

“That explains the garlic smell outside!” Jessie exclaimed in sudden realization.

“Yes, we spray around doors and windows with an especially potent garlic derivative as an added layer of protection.” Michael made a face. “It stinks pretty bad, especially to me, because in addition to having some modified version of a few vampiric abilities, I also have some of their weaknesses, like an unusually high sensitivity to garlic and sunlight. But you saw what happened when I tossed that vampire through the doorway.”

“He burst into flame.”

Clifford put in, “Technically, by forcing him in, you invited him, Michael. But the garlic got him anyway. I think it’s probably an extreme allergic reaction caused by the vampirism. I hope to investigate it further someday.”

“And when you drive a wooden stake through their hearts, they…disintegrate?” Jessie asked.

Michael nodded. “That’s right. And we don’t know exactly why that happens, either. In most instances, since they’re usually trying to kill us at the time, it’s enough to know that it works.”

Jessie still had questions. Michael saw disbelief stubbornly warring with acceptance in her dark, beautiful eyes. “So this whole international playboy slash business tycoon identity you’ve come up with—”

“Makes it possible for me to go where I need to go and do what I need to do in order to carry on the fight.”

“Yeah, well, for somebody who wants to keep what he’s really doing quiet, you sure as hell attract a lot of attention.”

He shrugged and laughed. “The millionaire playboy bit works just fine for Batman. Anyway, because of it nobody really takes me seriously. They just see all the surface shenanigans.”

“Except for the vampires,” Clifford said. “They know who you are, unfortunately.”

Michael sighed. “Yes, it’s impossible to keep the enemy from finding out. I think they can sense us, just as we can sense them.”

“So why did you really come here?” Jessie asked. “To chase after a particular vampire, or gang of vampires? This hierarchy you mentioned, maybe?”

“That’s right.” Michael’s face settled into grim lines. Everything he had told her so far could still be laughed off as a wild joke if she tried to tell anybody else about it, but now they were getting down to some serious business. “We received some intel indicating there’s going to be a gathering of vampire clan leaders from all over the country. A summit meeting, I guess you could call it.”

“How did you find out about that?”

Michael nodded toward Clifford. “He hacked into their communications system.”

“Vampires send each other e-mail to set up meetings?” Jessie sounded like she was trying very hard not to laugh.

“They’re not a bunch of Luddites,” Michael said. “They know how to take advantage of technological advances. Some of them resist change, but most don’t.”

“Yeah, it’s the same with my people,” Jessie said.

Michael frowned at her. “Your people?”

She ran her hand through her hair again and said, “I’m half Cherokee. I grew up on the reservation in Oklahoma.”

“Oh.” That explained the coppery shade of her skin, the slightly high cheekbones, the raven-dark hair and eyes.

“Hey, it wasn’t that bad.” She sounded defensive. “Sure, we never had much money, but that can be true of anybody, anywhere. And yeah, I didn’t go to some fancy-schmancy Ivy League school—”

Michael held up his hands to stop her and said, “You don’t have to defend yourself to me, Ms. Morgan. I didn’t mean anything by what I said.”

Clifford added, “It sounds like you’ve run into some prejudice from people.”

Jessie sniffed. “I don’t think I need psychoanalysis from a couple of vampire hunters.”

“We’re not offering analysis,” Michael said. “Just commenting.”

“Well, your comments aren’t welcome.”

“I told you, you’re free to leave if you don’t want to talk to us anymore,” Michael said.

He found himself hoping she wouldn’t go, though. He felt that if she walked out the door, something very important would be walking out with her.

“Really? I was starting to think I was a prisoner here.”

He shook his head. “No, not at all. We’ve answered your questions and told you the truth about everything that happened here tonight. You gave your word you wouldn’t write about it.” It cost him an effort to do it, but he crossed his arms over his chest and nodded toward the door. He couldn’t keep her here against her will, no matter how much he wanted her to stay. “I’d say we’re done.”

The problem was, suddenly, Jessie didn’t want to be done. The feeling took her by surprise, but she didn’t want to leave yet. The idea of walking out that door and never seeing Michael Brandt again wasn’t acceptable for some reason. She wanted to spend more time with him.

She wanted to spend all her time with him.

Again, she had to force that thought out of her head. Sure, with those muscles and those rugged good looks and that hint of danger about him—well, more than a hint—he was undeniably attractive. He was hot as hell, in fact. But while she liked a good-looking guy as much as the next woman, she had never let such things interfere with her work.

And she was starting to see a way around the promise she had made to him earlier. The thought of Nana Rose and the money she needed made Jessie realize what she had to do.

“This is too big a story not to tell,” she said.

Michael’s face hardened. “You gave me your word.”

“If Max were here, he’d be talking about shutting you up again,” Clifford warned.

“You can’t kill me,” Jessie said boldly. “You represent the forces of light, remember?”

“What about the greater good?” Michael asked in a soft yet menacing voice, and for a second Jessie wondered if she had just made the worst mistake of her life.

But she pressed on, knowing it was too late to turn back now. “I’m not going to expose your secret,” she said. “I can write about what you’ve told me without revealing who you are. You’ll be an anonymous, confidential source.”

“You can do that?” Michael didn’t look or sound convinced.

“Sure I can.”

“And you won’t drop hints that will identify me in any way?”

“Word of honor.”

Clifford grunted, but Jessie ignored him. Her brain raced with possibilities. She said, “You’re going to bust that vampire summit meeting, right?”

“That was the plan when we came here, yes,” Michael admitted.

“Take me with you.”

Both men stared at her in disbelief. Clifford was the one who finally responded. “Impossible! Utterly impossible!”

Michael, though, looked at Jessie with a cool, speculative expression in his eyes.

“Why is it impossible, Michael?” she asked him. “Max and Clifford go with you, and they don’t have your special powers.”

“They’ve made this their life’s work,” he replied. “They’ve trained for years.”

“And we have some of the same edge as Michael,” Clifford added.

Jessie looked at him and said, “I’ve been fighting against one thing or another all my life. Try growing up on a reservation if you want to be tough. And I’ve been studying tae kwan do for the past five years.”

Clifford snorted as if he wasn’t impressed.

“What happens if we don’t take you with us?” Michael asked, his eyes narrowed. “You’ll expose us?”

“Expose you to whom? You said it yourself. The cops would never believe any of this. And according to what you told me, the vampires already know who you are. So exactly how can I blackmail you?”

Michael crossed his arms and frowned in thought. “All that is true,” he admitted. “So why should we even consider the idea?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do. Because you owe me.”

His eyebrows went up. “How do you figure that?”

She fingered her bruised throat. “Ted Carlisle is hurt and I nearly got killed, because of your war.”

“No one invited you to horn in,” he said.

“Maybe not, but if you’re going to live in this world and carry on your fight here, you’ve got to expect it to spill over sometimes into the lives of innocent people.”

Clifford said, “We do everything we can to see to it that doesn’t happen.”

“But it still does,” Jessie argued. “Tonight proved that.” She came to her feet as emotion gripped her. “Trying to keep innocents safe isn’t enough. People ought to know what’s going on so they can protect themselves. I need to write this story. I need to tell the world the truth.”

“We go to considerable lengths to keep the truth from coming out,” Michael said.

“Maybe you need to stop doing that. Maybe if you did, fewer people would die at the hands of those…those creatures. And in the long run, there would be fewer of them for you to have to fight.”

“That argument sounds noble, but it won’t work,” Clifford said.

Michael said, “I’m not so sure.”

Clifford looked at him in surprise. “You can’t actually be considering—”

“Ms. Morgan might be right. Over time, a little education might make our job easier…and save some lives.” He turned to Jessie.

“I’m not saying that we’ll let you in on everything that’s going on,” Michael told her, “and you’ll have to do as you’re told. But if what you want is the inside story of what we do, I think we can accommodate you.”

“That’s exactly what I want,” she told him. She didn’t like that bit about doing what she was told—that had always rubbed her the wrong way—but they could work that out later.

Michael held out a hand to Jessie. “Welcome to the team, Ms. Morgan.”

As she took his hand and felt his cool, strong touch, an unexpected thrill crackled through her. That spark she had thought about earlier…it was there, all right. Lord, was it ever!

“If I’m joining forces with you, don’t you think you ought to call me Jessie?”

He smiled. “All right. And I’m Michael.”

She didn’t tell him that in her mind she had already begun to think of him that way.

Nor did she mention how her heart started pounding harder in her chest the instant his skin made contact with hers, even though just their hands touched, not their lips or bodies or—

Stop that, she told herself. She had to remember this relationship was all business.

Vampire-killing business.

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