Page 19
Or his wife.
She was being ridiculous. He hadn't said anything about having married again. Anyway, he had been trapped inside a painting for three hundred years. Even if he'd had a girlfriend or a wife or a daughter, any or all of them would be long dead by now.
Unless the woman was a vampire.
Now there was a scary thought! One vampire was bad enough. Two would be. . . impossible. Still, vampires were made, not born, so it stood to reason that there had to be at least one other.
The jealousy she refused to acknowledge ratcheted up a notch as Kari watched Jason and the woman walk down the street, arm in arm.
After dropping the curtain back into place, Kari went into the living room and sank down onto the sofa. She didn't know why she was so surprised to see Jason with another woman. Vampire or not, he was gorgeous, though she couldn't help wondering how and when he'd had time to get to know another woman.
Hot tears stung her eyes and she blinked them away. She would not cry!
After what seemed like an eternity but was, in fact, only a few minutes later, she heard the front door open.
Kari stood and turned to face Rourke, her arms crossed under her breasts. "Who was that?"
He lifted one brow at the barely concealed jealousy he detected in her voice. "Her name is Melina. "
"Who is she?"
"She is the vampire who made me. "
Kari blinked at him. Even though the thought had crossed her mind, it was the last thing she had expected him to say. "What is she doing here?" Kari's hand flew to her throat. "She's not going to make me one, is she?"
Rourke laughed softly. "No, I will not let that happen. " His gaze moved to her throat. "If anyone brings you across, it will be me. " He lifted one hand as her face drained of color. "I would not turn you against your will. "
Mollified by his words, Kari dropped back down onto the sofa. "Why did she come here? What did she want?"
"She wanted me to spend the night with her. We have done so every year since she made me. "
"Every year?" Once a year didn't sound like much until she realized he had been a vampire for 736 years. Of course, she supposed the last three centuries didn't count.
Rourke nodded.
"So, why didn't you go with her?" Kari asked, injecting what she hoped was a note of indifference into her voice.
His gaze moved over her from head to foot, his dark-eyed perusal like a physical caress. "Why, indeed. " He had always enjoyed the time he spent with Melina, but that was before Karinna had entered his life. When he was with Karinna, he felt alive, truly alive, in a way he had not felt since Melina brought him across so long ago.
Kari stared at him. There was no mistaking the hungry look in his eyes. But did she really want to compete with a vampire for this man?
Who was she kidding? She had been fascinated with him from the moment she first saw the painting in the art gallery. Fascination had become obsession, and obsession had become. . . what? Was it possible she had fallen in love with Jason Rourke? With a vampire?
She frowned as a horrible thought occurred to her. "Are you in love with that. . . with Melina?"
"No. "
"You've lived for hundreds of years. I can't believe you've never been in love. I mean. . . why haven't you?" she asked, and then bit down on her lower lip. Maybe vampires were incapable of love.
He pondered her question for several moments. He had no good answer to give her, at least none she was likely to condone, or perhaps even understand.
"I was born into a noble family, the second of five sons. My older brother, Joseph, became a priest. My brother Paul went off to fight in the Crusades with my father. Mathias was a physician, Joshua, a merchant. It fell to me to look after the family estate, though I had no desire to do so, and no desire to marry. I am ashamed to say that I was not a good husband. My wife and children deserved better than I gave them. " He paused a moment, his thoughts turned inward. "I have often wondered if becoming a vampire was some form of divine punishment. It was only after I had been turned that I realized what I had lost. "
He sighed with the memory. "My father was killed in the Crusades. Paul brought him home and gave me his sword, saying it was my father's last wish that I should have it.
"I was one and thirty when Melina made me. For a time, I was able to hide what I had become but. . . " He shrugged. "As I said, as the years passed and I did not age, my family became suspicious of me. One night I took my father's sword, kissed my sons good-bye, and left home, never to return. "
"That's so sad. "
He shrugged. "It made me grow up. I wandered the world, never staying long in any one place. And then, one night, I met a woman in a tavern. She was young and innocent and all the more tempting because of it. She played the wanton, tempting me, teasing me, even though I knew she had never been with a man. "
He paused a moment, as though seeing it all again in his mind. "I knew it was wrong, but I was determined to have her. I took her virginity and her blood and spent three hundred years imprisoned in that accursed painting because of it. " Even now, he could remember the way Ana Luisa's blood had burned his tongue. It was the taste of her blood that would lead him to her now. "You know the rest of the story. "
"It all sounds so far-fetched," Kari remarked. "Vampires and wizards and evil curses. It's hard to believe that any of it's real. "
"Sometimes I have trouble believing it myself. "
"Did she know you were a vampire?"
"No. "
"How could you take her blood without her knowing, or at least suspecting?"
"I took but a little. "
"What did she say when you told her what you are?"
"I never told her. "
"So, she still doesn't know?" Kari shook her head. "That's hard to believe. "
Rourke shrugged.
"Do you think the wizard's daughter is still alive?"
He nodded. "I know she is. " Closing his eyes, he blocked everything from his mind and then he conjured Ana Luisa's image even as he drew upon the memory of the fiery taste of her life's blood on his tongue. He murmured her name, felt his senses reach out across endless time and space, homing in on the unique scent of her blood, the slow, steady beat of her heart.
"Rourke. . . "
"Shh. " Concentrating harder now, his senses expanding, he continued to reach out, crossing land and water as he searched for that one scent, that one heartbeat.
It took several moments of intense concentration, and then, as if looking through the wrong end of a telescope, he saw Ana Luisa and the painting that imprisoned her. A unicorn with golden hooves and a golden horn stood in the midst of a field of flowers, its head raised to sniff the wind. Ana Luisa sat on its back, her long blond hair flowing down her back and over her shoulders. Clad in a long white gossamer gown, she gazed into the distance, her luminous green eyes filled with unspeakable sorrow. A single tear glistened like a drop of morning dew on one rosy cheek. He wondered if Vilnius had painted it there, or if it was one of Ana Luisa's own tears, shed the night her father had found them.
Rourke quietly cursed the wizard's cruelty. If he lived another seven hundred years, he would never understand how a man could condemn his own flesh and blood to such a horrid fate.
"Rourke? Rourke, are you all right?"
He shook his head. He would never be all right until Ana Luisa had been freed from her prison of glass and canvas. She was so young, far younger than she had professed to be when he seduced her. Had he known she was little more than a child, he never would have touched her. But she had professed to be older and acted far more worldly wise than her years.
"I need to make a journey," he said. "And I need you to come with me. "
"A journey?" Kari asked doubtfully. "Where do you want to go? And why do you need me?"
"I need to find Ana Luisa," Rourke said. "And I need you to help me find my way around. There is
still much here I am not familiar with. "
"But I can't just take off. I have a job, you know. " She frowned. "How do you know where she is, anyway?"
"She is in Romania. "
"Romania? As in Transylvania? Are you kidding me? I can't go running off to Romania. "
"Karinna, I cannot do this without you. " Had he been stronger, he could have flown there under his own power, but he needed time to regain his full strength, he needed added sustenance to restore his preternatural powers. In his present condition, he could never make such a long journey, let alone bring Ana Luisa back with him. He could wait until his strength and his powers were fully restored, but that might take weeks. Some might say he was being too impulsive. After all, what was another few weeks after so many centuries? But anyone who suggested such a thing had never been confined in a stagnant world of paint and canvas.
"But. . . "
"She has been trapped in that painting for three hundred years," he said quietly. "I know what she is feeling, thinking. She has no supernatural powers of her own that I know of. " True, she was a witch, but if she couldn't move or speak, she had no way of casting a spell, no way of easing the torment of being immobile year after year. He shook his head. "I cannot leave her there, alive yet lifeless. "
There had been a time, soon after the wizard had cursed him, when Rourke had found pleasure in knowing that Ana Luisa had also been cursed. He had blamed her for not telling him how young she was, or warning him that her father was a powerful wizard. But those feelings had soon passed and he had admitted that he was as much to blame for what had happened to them as was she, perhaps more.
"I cannot leave her there," he said again, "not when I have the power to free her. "
Kari's shoulders slumped in defeat. "Where, exactly, do you want to go, and when do you want to leave?"
Chapter 12
It took Kari several days to make all the necessary arrangements. Not only did she have to get a passport, book a flight, and make reservations for a place to stay, she also had to arrange to take a week of her vacation a few months early, buy a coffin for Rourke to travel in, rent a hearse to transport it to the airport, and arrange for someone to pick it up at the other end, all of which was going to put quite a dent in her bank account.