Free The Merzetti Effect (A Vampire Romance) by Norah Wilson Page A

immediately. She hadn’t done all those years in as an OR nurse in a major trauma center for nothing. “You’re not putting this off,” she said, and this time her tone was calm, authoritative. “I want to know what’s going on here, and I want to know it now.”
    “I’d love to oblige, but I’m afraid it’s impossible just at the moment. See that on the eastern horizon?” He released his safety harness, removed his flight helmet and crawled out of the cockpit.
    Her heart leapt into her throat, scattering her composure. Were they being pursued? Was he going to man some hidden high-tech defense system? She craned her neck to scan the eastern horizon for hostile aircraft, but the pre-dawn sky was empty.
    “I don’t understand. What am I supposed to see?”
    “The sun,” he said dryly. “It’s about to rise. Which means I need to seek shelter.”
    She felt her heart thudding in her chest, hard enough that she could count each and every painful contraction. Time seemed to bow and wobble, and the very air between her and the rest of the world turned liquid, heavy, oppressive.
    Omigod, omigod, omigod, omigod, omigod.
    She sucked in a shallow breath. Then another, deeper one. On the exhalation: “You’re a vampire.”
    “I’m afraid so. Though I had hoped to break the news in more favorable circumstances. “
    “Did you? Did you really?” It was a struggle to keep her tone of voice out of the fishwife register. “Or did you plan to keep me in the dark indefinitely?”
    His brows came together. “Look, I’d really like to have this out with you, but in five minutes, I’m either going to be dead to the world or just plain dead. I strongly prefer the former. So if you’ll excuse me…”
    With that, he brushed past her to flip open the top to what she’d taken for some kind of cargo storage box. Then he climbed inside its satin-lined cavity and sketched her a casual, self-mocking salute. “Until tonight.”
    Then he lay down and pulled the lid shut.
    The lid!
    To. His. Fucking. Coffin!

    Montreal at night. One of his favorite spots on earth. Delano gazed out over the sea of lights spread virtually at his feet, and waited. And waited still longer. But for once, the pulse of the city failed to steal into him to quicken his own heartbeat.
    Instead, he felt … nothing.
    Dammit. It was a sorry vampire whose blood was not stirred by the prospect of all that vibrant life down there on the streets.
    Of course, it was a sorrier vampire still who had to be carted into his penthouse, in full daylight, delivered up like an inanimate piece of furniture.
    Or a numb, cold piece of statuary.
    His brows drew together in a frown. What was this odd feeling dragging at him? What was this strange mood? He looked inward and saw the answer.
    Melancholy.
    His gut clenched. Sweet Jesus. Bring on the mortar shells. Let a hundred enemies rain fire from the sky. But please, God, keep the monkey of depression off his back. Stronger men than he had stepped outside at dawn to witness their last sunrise, impelled by an unrelenting weariness too profound to resist.
    The woman. Ainsley Crawford. That’s what brought it on.
    These past few days, she’d looked on him as though he were an ordinary, if not entirely trustworthy, man. Until that moment in the helicopter. He’d seen the shock, the shift in her eyes when he’d had to seek shelter from the sun.
    What he would give to have her look at him again the way she had before…
    Delano heard the door open behind him but did not turn. That would be Eli, bearing sustenance and a status report.
    Eli came to stand beside him at the window. “Ah, Montréal,” he said, pronouncing it the French way. “Good to be back, isn’t it?”
    Delano sighed and turned his back on the nighttime tableau. “I must be getting old, Eli. The blood doesn’t pump like it used to.”
    Eli looked singularly unconvinced, but said, “It’s been a rough twenty-four hours, I’ll grant you that