Free The Vampire's Seduction by Raven Hart Page A

finally come and I needed to face him alone.
    Reyha, with a subdued look of guilt, left Jack and moved across the room to me. I slipped an arm around her and whispered in her ear, “It’s all right, sweeting.” With my permission to play with Jack granted, she held on to me harder for a moment, then danced away. Having soothed her feelings, I stepped over to the sideboard and poured a brandy. Through the years I’d cultivated a taste for brandy. In many respects it was as rich and dark as blood. A complicated, ancient taste that could placate my ever-present hunger. For Jack, I opened the wine refrigerator and withdrew an IV bag of human blood. Jack needed to feed, for both our sakes.
    “Would you like a glass?”
    Jack had been busy pinning Reyha down for a good tickle. He glanced up and shoved mussed hair out of his eyes. Instead of answering, he kissed both of Reyha’s smooth cheeks. He was like some Italian playboy, and he caused a gale of pleased giggles from Reyha. Then he pushed up from the couch.
    “Yep, a glass. And a splash of Dewar’s to boot.”
    Of course I already knew what he liked to drink. I knew everything about him, but I didn’t want him aware of that. “I remember now,” I said, handing him the bottle before pouring the blood into hundred-year-old crystal. “It makes such a pretty combination, alcohol and blood.”
    “Hmmmm,” Jack acknowledged in a noncommital sort of way. I could practically watch his mind calculating, waiting for the right moment to announce the real reason he’d shown up so early after sunset, before I had even called him.
    “I need to know what you’re planning,” he said as he accepted the drink. “And if you aren’t gonna let me in on it, I at least have to know what you want me to do.”
    Plans. That was the crux of it. Right then my only plan was to wait. Reedrek would come in his own time. If I’d left Savannah, it only would have extended the suspense. I couldn’t avoid him forever.
    “We wait.”
    “Wait? Sit back and let some monster do who-knows-what in our town?” Jack held the fragile crystal in his hand but didn’t take a drink. He swallowed back his anger instead. “I swear, I think I felt him in Bonaventure.” He looked uncomfortable, like a sinner at confession. “The sleeping ones were singing, saying he’d walked on their graves.”
    I used my power to project a calm facade—to hide my alarm. Yes, Reedrek would find Jack and follow him to me. But Jack had to be left out of it as much as possible. For that reason, I’d purposely kept him ignorant. He had no clue what he was up against and no training to counter what Reedrek could do.
    “I want you well out of it,” I told him firmly.
    He almost choked on his disgust. “You won’t even tell me what you know? You’re so almighty strong you don’t need my pitiful help? Well, I sure as hell have a stake in this, too—no pun intended. And if you expect me to stay out of it, you’re gonna have to lock me in a box somewhere deep and quiet cause I’m not leavin’ here until you fill me in.” With a smirk of bravado, Jack added, “Here’s blood in your eye,” then knocked back the cocktail in his grip before handing the empty glass back to me. “Maybe if we wait long enough, he’ll come knocking on your door to say hello.”
    He was closer to the truth than he knew, and I was just about to award him a good dose of my temper when someone actually did knock on the door.
    Jack laughed out loud as Deylaud moved to the solid river oak panel and stared at it, evaluating who was on the other side. Reyha stood a few paces behind him.
    “I don’t know this scent,” Deylaud said. Both he and Reyha looked to me for orders.
    The being was unfamiliar. Not Reedrek, not a human.
    I motioned my faithful guardians to the side as I grasped the doorknob. Jack took up a position on my right, determined to face whatever fate waited on the landing.
    I swung the door open.
    An extraordinarily