Rhiannon stopped and looked up as Detective Salvatore placed a third chair at their table, turned it around so that the back was facing forward, and sat down, draping his arms over the back of it. “Nice to see you again, Mimi. Have you ordered yet, or should I get the waiter over here?”
Mimi had the decency to look chagrined, despite her youth. Her face warmed in a way that hid the freckles across the bridge of her nose and the apples of her cheeks, and she averted her gaze.
Rhiannon tried to school her thoughts as Salvatore waved the waiter over like he said he was going to, and the waiter, who was not Giancarlo but was very good at his job nonetheless, rolled with the punches, accepting the unexpected newcomer without so much as a wayward glance.
“Veggie pizza for the young lady, please, and a Diet Coke,” Salvatore ordered. The waiter nodded, writing it down, and Mimi’s eyes got wide.
“How did you know?”
“Pizza is what every nine-year-old under the sun would order,” he said, smiling. “I took a chance with the veggie. And at this time of night, no kid needs the forty grams of sugar in a real soda.”
Mimi smiled back at him, clearly pleased as punch with his decision. Mimi was a vegetarian, after all, and he was right about nine-year-olds and pizza. Rhiannon felt herself smile, and a bit of the cold that had been spreading through her warmed back up again.
She ordered next, choosing a classic pasta dish dripping in sauce and cheese, and Salvatore ordered the same. He shrugged, claiming it was his favorite dish. Whether that was the truth or he’d ordered it to impress Rhiannon, she seriously couldn’t tell. But she was leaning toward the latter.
The waiter left, and Michael asked Mimi why Earth and Space Science was her favorite class. The girl’s eyes lit up like supernovas, but then she narrowed her gaze. “Who says it’s my favorite?”
“I’m a cop,” Michael laughed.
Michael, Rhiannon realized. I’m thinking of him as Michael now.
“I could tell by the look of regret on your face when I mentioned you were missing it back at the studio.”
Mimi thought about that and finally nodded. Then she dove into an incredibly detailed explanation of why she loved the class, and a table-wide discussion about the wonder of the Cosmos picked up the time and tossed it out the window. They were fully immersed in the mysteries of neutrinos and dark matter when the waiter returned with more bread and salad. Rhiannon had enjoyed several rolls and dipping sauce and was on her second glass of wine. She was beginning to feel much, much better…. She was enjoying herself, in fact. Truly enjoying herself. For the first time in a very long time.
Not long thereafter, their food came in magnificent Italian flair, and several waiters filled their table with deliciously loaded plates. Mimi didn’t even wait for them to leave again before digging into her pizza.
“Giancarlo makes the best pizzas,” Michael told her. “He’s Puerto Rican, and his father was a Spaniard, but his mother was Italian.” His smile turned mischievous. “Deep Italian. He has an Uncle Vinnie, an Uncle Joey, and an Uncle Frankie.”
Mimi was giggling around a mouth full of bread, sauce, and cheese when the waiters left again. The aroma of everything in front of Rhiannon was so mouth-watering, she couldn’t wait either, and before she realized it, she was shoveling food into her mouth right along with Mimi.
“You know, your last name is pretty deep Italian too,” said Mimi as she peeled off a mushroom and popped it into her mouth. “You on the take with the mafia, Uncle Sal?” she asked, grinning like an imp.
Rhiannon’s eyes got very big, but she couldn’t say anything around a mouthful of spaghetti. Mimi was the most precocious child she had ever met.
But the detective took it in expert stride. He laughed and shook his head. “Now, now, Mimi. You know there’s no such thing as a crooked cop in New York City. Now finish your pizza. I’m late for a meeting with an accountant and a cement mixer.”
Chapter Nineteen
It was the laughter that woke him. It was a sound both unexpected and foreign for Gregori. It had been forever since he’d heard someone laugh, really laugh. It was a child’s laughter, too, which made it worse.
An unsettled feeling hovered over him like a shroud as he rose from the massive chair he’d fallen asleep in and made his way to one of the magical windows of his ice palace. It was clear and provided a view to the white world beyond, but allowed no cold to pass through its invisible barrier. The interior of the palace, in fact was a very comfortable 69 degrees Fahrenheit. He liked it a hair on the cool side to make up for the suits he dressed in; and the cool air cleared his head.
It helped now as he braced his hands on either side of the window and leaned against the ice wall, ignoring the equally magical un-melting chill that seeped in through his palms and up his arms. He gazed out into the stark beyond and concentrated.
As he did, an image began to form above the ice. It was like watching a massive movie screen hung impossibly over a wasted, barren landscape. In that moving picture, Gregori saw the final archangel of the Favored Four seated at a restaurant table with his fated archess and a little girl. They were laughing.
Gregori heard a crack, and his gaze drifted to the ice beneath his right hand. A stress fracture had opened up under his palm and was inching skyward, testament to the emotions spinning through him.
Gregori pushed away from the wall and took a step back. As he did, the image over the ice vanished. In the crack in the ice, green sprouts began to emerge. Before his eyes, those sprouts grew into small, young weeds. And then those weeds sprouted blooms.
Black dandelion blooms.
Gregori straightened his shoulders. He felt a presence at his side and glanced over to find Mr. Smith had approached him. “It appears, Mr. Smith, that we will have to take matters into our own hands after all.”
*****
Michael glanced into his rear-view mirror to find Mimi sinking lower and lower into the back seat of the unmarked squad car, a basic silver gray Crown Victoria, paid for partially by the city and partially by him. Up ahead and on the right, a group of boys loitered on a street corner, attempting skateboarding tricks amongst themselves.
“Friends of yours?” Michael asked Mimi.
Rhiannon glanced at him and then looked back through the bars and wire mesh that separated the back seat from the front area of the vehicle.
Mimi shrugged as if she couldn’t really care, which meant she cared a whole lot. “Not really.”
“Would you like to be friends?” Michael asked.
Mimi looked up at the mirror and met his gaze. “Why?”
Michael grinned. He flipped a few switches and the car’s lights and siren came on. “Grab hold of the bars and make a show of trying to get out,” he told Mimi.
Mimi’s eyes grew really wide, as did Rhiannon’s, but it didn’t take her long to catch on. In a heartbeat, she was grabbing the bars with both hands and thrashing around, her mouth wide-open in a silent scream.
Michael did his part to play it up too, mouthing fake warnings and pretending to radio something in. For her part, Rhiannon simply looked forward in a semi-serious manner, no doubt attempting to look like another plain clothes cop.
It did the trick. The boys on the corner froze when they heard the sirens, and when they saw who was in the back seat of his car, a few of them nudged each other. They exchanged surprised glances and words he couldn’t hear, and he knew they would have a hard time waiting to meet up with Mimi for their last day of school so they could ask her what had happened.
Michael drove the car past the boys, made it a few blocks, turned down another street, and Michael switched everything back off again. Mimi was laughing riotously in the back seat. “That was awesome!” she exclaimed. “I can’t wait to hear the rumors that get spread over that!”
Michael looked over at Rhiannon, who had been biting her lip to keep from laughing, but now failed. She chuckled, shaking her head. “You’re really something.”
&nb
sp; Michael felt his chest swell. Whatever it was filling up with was warm and felt like an orgasm in his heart. He found himself laughing as well when they finally pulled up in front of Rhiannon’s apartment complex. He was more familiar with it than he’d admitted thus far, having been inside to deposit the chest filled with gold in Rhiannon’s room. Of course, her room was the only portion he’d seen. He’d used his archangel ability to travel from a door in one location to a door in another location in order to evade the cameras and detection.
“Last stop,” he announced as he opened his door and got out. Mimi’s door had to be opened from the outside, and on the passenger side. He walked around the car and popped it open just as Rhiannon was getting out beside him.
Things slid into slow motion in his very male mind, and he was watching her emerge with her long, lean legs and her mass of red hair and her gorgeous, well, everything, when he suddenly stumbled back as Mimi catapulted from the back seat and he was caught in a bear hug by an overly ecstatic nine-year-old.
“Thank you so much, Uncle Sal!” Mimi exclaimed before she hoisted her bag over her shoulder and rushed to the entrance of the building. The doorman’s brow raised when he saw her out so late. But he asked no questions, instead opening the door for her so she could run straight on through.
Rhiannon turned to Michael as he steadied himself and watched the kid disappear into an elevator beyond the glass doors. “What she said, Uncle Sal,” she told him, laughing softly. “Despite the gargoyles, it was actually a pretty cool night.”
Michael turned to fully face her, and the rest of the world took a few steps back.
“You still haven’t told me who you really are,” she continued as she moved in closer, and his heart rate kicked up several notches. “And I have no idea what you’re after.”
Another step, and Michael saw his entire future moving steadily toward him.
“But whoever you are and whatever you want, Michael Salvatore, I have to think it can’t be all that bad.” She shook her head and stopped just a few inches away, leaving them toe to toe and a breath apart. “Not with you.”
There was no pretense, no drawn-out gazing or awkward waiting. Michael had waited long enough.
His arm slid around her waist, his body bent, and his mouth trapped her own in a crushing, bone-deep kiss that made the world stop turning – just for a second.
When it started turning again, it spun wildly, and Michael’s inner archangel soared on newly grown wings as Rhiannon melted into him, opened herself up, and let him in. Her body was as hot as the fire in her hair when he pulled her against him, holding her to him in a steel grip. He caught the scent, once again, of her soap and shampoo and a hint of cherry bark and almond that must have been in a lotion she used.
She tasted like the wine they had shared – wine laced with laughter. It had a flavor, laughter. Like Pop Rocks and champagne and something else, a note that rode a little deeper. Something like root beer. There was a hint of hope in it, a possible promise of redemption. And now, through the taste and feel of her, no longer tentative but strong against him like the fighter that she was, that promise was in him as well.
But along with it rode a rumbling, waking storm, a hunger that moved upon the tides of his burgeoning happiness like a serpent in the seas. There was a dragon waking from the bottom and rising to the surface like a massive, dripping shadow.
He felt a prickling in his gums, and his vision went red behind his eyelids. The tips of his fingers stung as his claws began to extend. A twinkling black, like sparkling, dark smoke, slunk away from him and curled hungrily around his archess.
His magic was taking over.
She moaned against him, warm, inviting, weakening. Her long, silken locks brushed like butterfly wings against the back of his hands, tingling through his body and fueling the fire that was already spreading. He felt her move in, giving in against the pressing of his strength, and he knew he could have had her then and there, right there on the hood of his car. No one would have noticed them; his power surrounded them, hiding their magic from the world. To the watching, ignorant human universe, he was a man kissing a woman, nothing more.
When in truth, he was a Nightmare vampire on the brink of devouring the only salvation he could ever know.
Stop.
He had to release her. He had to let her go or he would destroy them both.
This was the curse Samael had given him. Now, here in this moment, it became abundantly clear. If he couldn’t control the monsters the Fallen One had turned him into, he would lose everything.
Rhiannon would never love him. How could a fighter like Rhiannon ever come to accept being a virtual prisoner? Warrior that she was, his mate could never know love as a blood-drained slave to the dark, seductive whims of a vampiric incubus.
Michael warred with the beasts, holding Rhiannon even tighter and kissing her harder, stealing her breath as he drank her in – before he had to steel himself and pull away.
He broke the kiss, gently, slowly, painstakingly, and straightened. His hand steadied her as she stood before him, swaying slightly with her eyes still closed. It took him a moment to regain his voice. It was stuck somewhere just beneath the need that had all but taken him over.
His gums stung again, his body burned, but his heart went from racing to simply pounding, timing out the ache inside him like a drum sending waves of regret through his system.
He couldn’t stay. There was something he needed to tend to once and for all, and the sooner the better. But he also needed to escape this moment, before he did something that he could never undo.
Rhiannon opened her eyes and nodded, as if she knew.
Michael leaned over her and whispered in her ear. “Good night, Rhiannon.”
Then he let her go completely and stepped back.
Confusion clouded her beautiful irises. Her gaze was unfocused, her lips parted, her cheeks flushed feverishly. He knew his magic was still wrapped partially around her, suckling at her. He had denied it the feast of a lifetime. It sulked now. And waited.
He turned, walked around the car, got in, and started it up. When he was half-way down the block, he chanced a look in his rear-view mirror. Rhiannon was still standing where he had left her, tall, strong, beautiful beyond compare, and ultimately vulnerable.
His fangs at once erupted fully in his mouth. His vision altered, shoving everything into stark contrasts of white, red, and black.
It was definitely feeding time.
Chapter Twenty
Despite his role as an NYPD detective, and the department’s very real need to figure out, for insurance purposes, who and what had caused the building fire on the corner of third and thirty-third, Michael hadn’t himself been back to the location of the destruction since that night last week. Not until now.
The night was long, and the moon was lowering itself in the sky behind the haze of pollution over Manhattan when Michael found himself alone in an alley, surrounded by shadow. He faced one of those shadows, a long and deep one that ran the length of the building that had been partially destroyed by Rhiannon. Using the powers of both vampire and incubus, Michael touched the shadowed brick. The brick warped beneath his touch, and his palm sank partly into the stone. He smiled. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
The shadow deepened further, until it was clear that it was no longer solid rock, but space beneath his touch. Michael readied himself. As soon as he felt the brush of movement under his fingertips, he gripped tightly and held on, yanking the figure toward him with brutal, unnatural strength.
A strangled sound accompanied the rather miasmic, not entirely formed figure that Michael pulled from the darkness. It wriggled in his grasp, and its incorporeal darkness wisped into hardened spaces here and there, clawing at Michael’s arm like shreds of sandpaper. But he held on, and his gaze narrowed.
“We need to talk,” he stated calmly, his eyes glowing hot and red. “Cooperate and I will allow you to form before you suffocate.”
The writhing figure stopped struggling, drooping into what looked and felt like a shadow-sand version of an unconscious octopus.
Michael loosened his grip just a little, and the figure began to solidify. Within seconds, it had taken on the form of a stone woman, curves, breasts and all. That female then went from stone to flesh, clothing itself in the process, until Michael’s hand was wrapped around the throat of what appeared to be a slender, middle-aged woman with dark blond hair and amber eyes.
Michael at once released her completely, moving his hand back to his side. The woman rubbed her neck gingerly and eyed him with astute wariness.
“Who are you?” she asked, her voice gravelly from Michael’s grip.
“It isn’t important. I need to speak with you about Rhiannon Dante.”
The woman blinked, her brow furrowing. “The Fire Healer.”
Fire Healer. That makes sense, thought Michael. Rhiannon’s hair resembled fire, and she could control fire. She could also heal.
The woman nodded, but her look was despondent. “I know very little. The men in our horde are the ones with the knowledge. They keep it to themselves, knowing that it gives them power.”
Her voice seemed to lower a bit, and she glanced around nervously.
“There are no others here at the moment,” Michael assured her, realizing she was afraid to talk to him for fear she would be overheard.
She looked back up at him, and her eyes filled with questions. “What are you that you can control the shadows enough to open the passageways of the gargoyles and sense their nearness?”
“As I said, it isn’t important,” he repeated, attempting to remain patient with her. “Tell me everything you know about the Fire Healer. I especially need to know who informed the men of your horde that she could heal.”
Again, the female gargoyle shook her head. She closed her eyes, sighing. “Like I said, my sisters and I know little. Our horde is a rogue horde, broken off from the Dynasty ages ago to escape the king’s rules. He determined females and males were equal. Our males, however, felt differently. My sisters and I were taken from our rock beds to help fuel their bloodlines and satiate their desires.” She seemed to shrink into herself, just a little, and her arms wrapped around her middle. “It’s been centuries.”