LITMIR.BIZ

      When he woke, Eric felt as if his head were stuffed with wet cotton. He’d swung his legs to the floor, landing with unusual clumsiness. He hadn’t needed a window to sense the pale blush that still hung in the western sky. It hadn’t been the coming of night that had wakened him. Hadn’t been that for weeks. Always her cries echoed in his head until he could no longer rest. Fear and confusion were palpable in her wrenching pleas. He felt her need like a barbed hook, snagged through his heart and pulling him. Yet he hesitated. Some preternatural instinct warned him not to act hastily. No sense of imminent danger laced her nightly summons. No physical weakness or life-threatening accident seemed to be the cause. What, then?

      That she was able to summon him at all was incredible. No human could summon a vampire. That anything other than mortal danger could rouse him from his deathlike slumber astounded him. He longed to go to her, to ask the questions that burned in his mind. Yet he hesitated. Long ago he’d left this place, vowing to stay clear of the girl for her own sake. He’d hoped the incredible psychic link between them would fade with time and distance. Apparently it had not.

      He relaxed for an hour in the comfort of his lair. With the final setting of the sun came the familiar rush of energy. His senses sharpened to the deadly keenness of a freshly whetted blade. His body tingled with a million needles of sensation.

      He dressed, then released the multitude of locks on the heavy door. He moved in silence through the pitch-black hall and pushed against a heavy slab of stone at the end. It swung inward easily, without a creak of protest, and he stepped through the opening into what appeared to be an ordinary basement. The door, from this side, looked like a well-stocked wine rack. He pushed it gently closed again and mounted the stairway that led to the main house.

      He had to see her. He’d known it for some time, and avoided the knowledge. Her pull was too strong to resist. When her sweet, tormented voice came to him in the velvet folds of his rest, he felt her anguish. He had to know what troubled her so. He moved into the parlor, to the tall window, and parted the drape.

      The DPI van sat across from the front gate, as it had every night for two months now. Another reason he needed to exercise caution. The division had begun with a group of pious imbeciles, intent on the destruction of any and everything they did not understand, over a century ago. Rumor had it they were now under the auspices of the CIA, making them a threat not to be taken lightly. They occupied an entire office building in White Plains, according to Eric’s information. It was said they had operatives in place all over the United States, and even in Europe. The one outside seemed to have made Eric his personal obsession. As if the front gate were the only way out, he parked there at dark every night and remained until dawn. He was as bothersome to Eric as a noisy fly.

      He shrugged into a dark-colored overcoat and left through the French doors off the living room, facing opposite the front gate. He crossed the back lawn, stretching from the house to the sheer, rocky cliff above Long Island Sound. He went to the tall iron fence that completely surrounded his property, and vaulted it without much effort. He moved through the trees, gaining the road several yards behind the intense man who thought he was watching so well.

      He walked only a short distance before he stopped, cleared his mind and closed his eyes. He opened himself to the cacophony of sensations that were usually denied access. He winced inwardly at the bombardment. Voices of every tone, inflection and decibel level echoed in his mind. Emotions from terrible fear to delirious joy swept through him. Physical sensations, both pleasure and pain, twisted within him, and he braced himself against the mental assault. He couldn’t target an individual’s mind any other way, unless that person was deliberately sending him a message—the way she’d been doing.

      Gradually he gained mastery over the barrage. He sifted it, searching for her voice, her thoughts. In moments he felt her, and he turned in the direction he knew her to be.

      He nearly choked when he drew near the ice rink and caught sight of her. She twirled in the center of the rink, bathed in moonglow, her face turned up as if in supplication—as if she were in love with the night. She stopped, extended her arms with the grace of a ballerina and skated slowly, then faster, carving a figure eight into the ice. She turned then, glided backward over the ice, then turned again, crossing skate over skate, slowing her pace gradually.

      Eric felt an odd burning

Скачать книгу