Forbidden Taste

  Something told her that this vampire inside the walls would be the end of her. Mariah couldn’t say why or pin down the fear, but she knew that whatever they uncovered would be bad. Her fingers tapped the hilt of her stun gun, her other hand hovering near a stake.

  Alejo gave her a nervous look, but Mariah shook her head. They could only watch as the workers Quintus had called broke away the glass and jackhammered the deep stone walls.

  At last, one of them shouted. A jackhammer shut off with a snap, and the man wielding it backpedaled from the wall. The other workers peered at where he’d been digging, and they too backed hastily away.

  Quintus took one look and froze in place. He glared at Mariah, his aura shot through with terror, which he tried to hide as he motioned her forward to take care of the situation.

  Mariah, Alejo at her shoulder, moved to the broken wall. She hesitated for a long time, the darkness of the aura inside escalating.

  Then she squared her shoulders, took a final step forward, and peered inside the hole.

  Eyes looked back at her. Golden, wide, and fierce eyes set in a face creased with grime. It was a man, or at least he looked like a man, but those eyes belonged to a beast.

  His hair hung in hanks around his face, its color impossible to determine. From under it, he focused those savage eyes on Mariah.

  His strength came to her, his power flaring again to crush her mind. He fixed on her, and this time didn’t let go.

  Mariah also sensed desperation, rage, and grief so vast it reached out to swallow her. She knew never to look into the eyes of a vampire, especially one this strong, but Mariah couldn’t look away. Not because he trapped her—she simply didn’t want to.

  He was an Old One. Ancient, deadly, dominating, uncontrolled. Mariah should stake him right now and save the world from him.

  The golden eyes narrowed as though he guessed her thoughts. His lips parted then shut again, firming to a solid line.

  His voice rolled over her, but he wasn’t speaking out loud. The bass rumble of his words shook her to her bones, but Mariah knew no one else in the room heard him.

  Holding both fury and terror, he filled her mind with one hoarse plea.

  Help me.

  Chapter Two

  Light. Noise. Pain. Fear. Sorrow.

  The bright lights seared through Cai’s brain, and voices and noise pounded at him.

  He smelled vampire and human, grime, mold, and dead things. Also strange scents, like smoke when there was no fire to be seen.

  People gazed in at him from outside his prison. A few were vampires, but weak ones, basically humans not long turned. Human men hovered near them, pathetic hangers-on who needed to be with vampires to make their lives meaningful.

  The two who’d pushed their way to the front were different. The man was a Spaniard, like the hated ones who’d forced Cai down here long ago. Next to him was a woman with the coloring of a northern European. She was probably the Spaniard’s servant, though she stood upright and confident.

  He’d touched her mind, found her afraid, vulnerable, and yet strong, resisting him. She’d pushed back, making Cai understand that he hurt her. He’d withdrawn, intrigued.

  The woman had eyes of lightest brown, almost topaz, her face round, her lips firm. Her clothes outlined her body, and though they were loose, Cai sensed her breasts pressing at the fabric, her hips cupped by the full-length breeches she wore. That the Spaniard let his servant dress in men’s clothing didn’t surprise him—servants wore what they needed to in order to complete whatever task their masters asked.

  This woman’s task seemed to be pointing a pistol at Cai with a gloved hand. An odd firearm—Cai scented no gunpowder from it.

  The wooden stake she held in her other hand looked exactly like a wooden stake. No matter how long he’d been in dark sleep, the main weapon against vampires hadn’t changed.

  Sorrow struck him. Cai knew he’d been dormant a long, long time, which meant that Pepita was long gone, dust years ago. He’d failed her.

  Hunger hit him next. Terrible, gripping hunger that stole all other emotion. There was blood in this room, hot and vivid, pumping through human veins.

  A growl tore through his throat. Cai moved his fists, breaking apart the last of the stone that held him. His body felt incredibly weak, but the humans and vamps backed away from him, their fear palpable.

  The brown-haired woman alone held her ground. She was afraid—her hand shook as she lifted the stake—but she remained in place.

  She spoke, her voice clear like a summer rain, but Cai didn’t understand a word.

  He switched his gaze to the Spaniard, who remained fixed behind the woman. Cai said in Spanish, “Get me food. I hunger.”

  The man jumped, as though surprised Cai spoke his language. The man said something rapidly to the woman in what sounded like English, which Cai had never bothered to learn. The woman shook her head and replied to him.

  In Spanish, the man answered, “I’m Alejo Cruz, Sergeant, LAPD, PNR division. This is Detective Forrester. You’ve been out a long time. We’ll take you to a place where you can feed, clean up, and tell us all about yourself.”

  He was afraid, this Spaniard. They’d always been afraid of Cai, but the priests had been much more arrogant. This man must be a layman, a flunky, he and his servant both. The priests would be waiting outside to bind Cai and end him. The spell that had locked him behind the wall had faded, but that did not mean he was safe. No matter how many years passed, they did not give up.

  But Cai had no choice. He drank, or he died right now.

  The woman would taste like a song. Cai looked straight into her eyes and saw complete understanding looking back at him.

  She knew he wanted to drink her—it showed in the depths of her mind. And the idea terrified her to the bottom of her soul.

  Cai had just enough strength to allow the scrap of compassion for her to stop him. He turned his head to let his gaze skewer one of the human vamp followers. The man was young and plenty healthy.

  Cai reached a hand toward him. The young man squeaked in fear, then sudden need flooded his face and he rushed forward. Cai broke away from the rest of the rubble and stepped out onto the polished wooden floor.

  Instantly the Spaniard and the Englishwoman, and everyone else in the room, started yelling.

  “Stop!” the Spaniard shouted at him.

  The woman lifted her weapon and fired directly at Cai.

  A hot tingle bit into Cai’s side, but he ignored the pain. The young man pushed past those who tried to hold him back. The older vamp was the only one who didn’t move, understanding Cai’s hunger.

  The woman’s eyes widened when Cai brushed off the sting of the weapon. Cai had no idea what she’d expected to happen, but the gun had not been loaded with anything that could bring down a vampire, especially one who’d walked since before the Romans had overrun his people.

  The young man shoved aside the Spaniard and the stunned woman. Cai clamped his big hand around the young man’s neck, pulled him close, and fastened his teeth into the man’s damp flesh.

  Blood burst into Cai’s mouth, fiery hot, pulsing from the vein. All other sensation disappeared as Cai fed, his terrible hunger making him draw the blood harder.

  His strength returned as he drank, his mind awakening, his body reinvigorating.

  Those around him were shouting again. Cai scented a waft of something like roses, and then the woman was next to him, the tip of her stake wedged against the center of his chest.

  “Stop,” she said in quiet, careful Spanish.

  Cai lifted his gaze to look into her eyes. He could fix her in place until he finished, then cut her away from the others and find out about her. In this stinking, confusing place, she was fresh, light, clean, and he wanted to know her.

  “I will stake you,” she said. “I don’t want to, but I’ll do it.”

  It took Cai a moment to realize she hadn’t spoken Spanish, but he’d understood her. Not her exa
ct words, but the gist of them.

  A witch. No, not quite a witch, but she had witchlike powers. The people who had walled up Cai would have burned her for it.

  The stake broke the top layer of his skin. She would do exactly as she threatened, intent on saving the young man’s life.

  Carefully, Cai took his fangs out of the man’s neck. The young man collapsed to the floor, holding his hand over the wound, looking pleased and sated. One of the lesser vamps hauled him up and out of the way.

  Who are you?

  Cai formed the question in his own language, one that hadn’t been spoken in thousands of years, and he asked it in his head.

  The woman’s eyes rounded. “Mariah Forrester, LAPD,” she answered out loud, in English. “I need to take you in. Do you understand me?”

  Cai held her gaze as he nodded once. I understand. That is not what I asked. Who are you, Mariah Forrester?

  “I’m paranormal police,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “Who are you?”

  Cai Marcena. Later Caius Marcellus Atilius in the Roman way. After they slaughtered my people, I took their names to stay hidden. Now I am Cai again, because no one remembers. And still I must hide.

  Her lips parted as she listened—soft, red lips glistening in the dim light of the room. Cai had said more than he meant to, but he could speak to her without the others hearing and he somehow wanted her to know.

  Mariah lifted her chin, her emotions coming loud and clear to him. Ancient vampires could read people, a skill most humans and younger vampires didn’t have. This woman, though, could read his thoughts and respond. No wonder she’d been sent to capture him.

  Mariah was afraid but determined to conquer her fear. Cai could rip her throat out without thought, and she knew it, but she held her ground.

  “Cai Marcena,” she said clearly in English. “I am taking you in for processing. Please understand that this is not an arrest, but a necessary step for your integration into human society. If you resist, then I will be forced to incarcerate you. Do you understand?”

  Cai understood very well. Humans were terrified of vampires, and they’d do anything to lock away or kill them. The priests hadn’t been able to get close enough to stake Cai, but they’d trapped him by cunning and by the very witch magic they feared. They’d no doubt killed the witch who’d frozen Cai in the walls for them.

  No one would trick him again. Cai stepped past Mariah and looked around.

  The ceiling rose high, like a cathedral’s, but this was no house of God. Cai recognized a tavern when he saw one, even if it had more ornamentation than any he’d ever walked into.

  He sensed that there were more rooms above him, felt the weight of a building with many floors, like the Romans used to build. The Spanish in this part of the world had been good builders as well, leaving stone houses in the deserts of the Southwest. He’d see if the place was sound, and then make it his own.

  Mariah stepped in front of him again, the stake once more at his heart.

  “Fair warning,” she said, trying to hide the tremor in her voice. “If you do not come with me quietly, I will be forced to stake you.”

  He looked into her eyes. Mariah looked back at him, her entire being full of fear but equally full of resolve.

  Cai smiled. He lifted a hand and sent a silent command to everyone in the room, humans and vamps alike.

  They stilled, eyes going glassy as each mind clouded and every will succumbed to his. Even the vamp who was pretending to be an Old One surrendered to Cai’s mastery.

  Only the woman remained unaffected. She knew what had happened, could sense the others’ minds going to sleep.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She really did sound sorrowful. “But you leave me no choice.”

  Cai spread his arms and threw his head back, pressing his chest up to the tip of the stake.

  “Do it, then,” he said, his tongue forming words in her language, picked out of her head. “I have nothing here. Nothing left. Give me oblivion. I welcome it.”

  Chapter Three

  Mariah stilled as Cai closed his eyes, his chest touching the point of her stake.

  He was stark naked and filthy, the blood of the human lackey staining his mouth. And yet, Cai had power, strength in every muscle and bone.

  He was asking for death. Daring Mariah to give it to him. Accepting it.

  The weight of his mind was hard to take, but Mariah forced herself to look inside it. She found sorrow—the heart-wrenching grief she’d felt when his aura had touched hers. Mixed with that was pain, fear, anger, anguish.

  Images came to her. First a very young woman with black hair and brown eyes—that picture brought forth the most caring and the most grief. Then men in cowled robes, surrounding Cai, one man weaving spells to bind him.

  They drove him into a cave, into a dugout part of the cave wall, one man chanting and waving incense. She saw Cai paralyzed and furious, his rage twining with his aching sorrow. They shoved him inside the wall and sealed it up with stones and mortar.

  And then, nothing. Darkness, silence. That darkness pressed Mariah and nearly sent her to her knees.

  They’d trapped him and walled him up—why? For being a vamp? Or because he’d done things to warrant them imprisoning him in stone?

  “Who was she?” Mariah asked in a whisper.

  Cai’s eyes opened. The gold of them held fire and also emptiness. He lowered his arms. “Pepita,” he said, the name soft and lilting on his tongue. “My daughter.”

  “Oh.” Mariah’s lips parted in surprise. Vamps didn’t have children—did they? Could they?

  “She was mine,” Cai said in a firm voice. “I am an ancient one—I know how to make such things happen. But they destroyed her, believing her touched with evil. There was nothing evil about her. Nothing. She was pure innocence.”

  Mariah swallowed. Cai’s loss came to her full force, awakening grief for him and also compassion.

  She tried to push that compassion aside. Mariah couldn’t let the fact that she felt sorry for him keep her from taking him in. She couldn’t let an unregistered vamp—an Old One especially—out on the streets to harm the innocent and not-so-innocent citizens of Los Angeles. The rogue gangs might decide to follow him, and to hell with Septimus and his rules. Old Ones knew how to play on emotions, how to turn humans to them.

  That was one reason Mariah was sent to deal with recalcitrant vamps and demons, because she could see the truth. No glam worked on Mariah—she saw their real thoughts.

  “Don’t make me stake you,” she said, her plea genuine. “I want to help you.”

  Cai held Mariah with his golden gaze as he touched the tip of the stake with one finger and gently pushed it aside. “Then help me.”

  “Come in with me.” Mariah stepped back, not wanting to risk him touching her skin. “We’ll get you registered and set up with a place to stay.”

  Cai looked away from her, taking in the mirrored walls and art nouveau carvings. “This is a good place. I will stay here.”

  He moved past her, Mariah jumping out of the way before he could brush against her. He headed across the floor where the rest of the humans and vamps, including Alejo and Quintus, stood like so many statues, and made for the spiral staircase.

  Mariah ran after him. “You can’t. You really have to come with me for processing. I can’t let you go.”

  Cai paused at the bottom step to look at her. “I am going nowhere. I will find water and wash and then explore.”

  “This is Quintus’s club,” Mariah argued. “He runs it—you can’t just come in and do what you want.”

  Cai glanced back to where Quintus stood frozen, an expression of frustration on his face. No doubt he heard every word.

  “You mean him?” Cai asked. “His name is not Quintus, and he is not an Old One. He is perhaps a few centuries old, and he is called Archibald.”

  Quintus had enough give in his face to look furious.

  “Really?” Mariah asked, holding back a desire t
o laugh. “Archibald?”

  Cai climbed the stairs, and Mariah hurried to keep up with him. He moved unerringly up the ramp to the ground floor and through to the empty vestibule. There he stopped and turned, searching, seeking, then opened a black door that led to an industrial-looking staircase. Even vamp clubs had fire stairs.

  Mariah stayed right behind him as he went up. “Let the others go,” she said. “They have lives.”

  Cai glanced back down at her, eyes full of fury. “They will go when I—and you—are safe.”

  “Me?” Mariah quickened her pace. Cai moved swiftly for a being who’d been asleep a hundred and more years—longer than that, she’d sensed. “Safe from what? The vamps downstairs? They’re not going to hurt me.”

  Cai turned around so suddenly that Mariah clutched the railing to keep from touching him and to stop herself falling backward.

  The dangerous one in this building was Cai. The vamps downstairs were peanuts. Mariah should run outside into the sunshine, jump into the SUV, open the sun roof wide, and call for backup. The best vamp hunters in the LAPD would show up and take Cai down.

  But then, Cai hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d fed on a human, true, but that human was a willing blood slave, and Cai had stopped before he’d drained him.

  Not because of any threat Mariah made—she understood that now. Cai had stopped because he’d chosen to. Instead of going on a blood rampage and taking any human he wanted, Cai had listened to what Mariah had to say, then decided to let the man go and check out the building. None of that was illegal.

  Maybe not, but the way he looked at her, full of power and fury, told Mariah that Cai had the potential to break every law in the book and probably laws that had yet to be made. Cai had spread his arms and told her to stake him, but Mariah knew that he could have stopped her if he’d wanted to, nothing she could do about it.

  “You are not safe from them.” Cai’s voice surrounded her, filled her, touched every part of her. “The vampires would drink you if your master gave you to them. The one pretending he’s an Old One would have your body as he drinks your blood. He craves you. The others wait for you to be vulnerable. Your master is weak. Only I can keep you safe, Mariah Forrester.”