“I have your phone and a pretty good hacker on my team.”
Her heart rate, which had only just begun to calm down, ratcheted up again. Bolstered by the fact she was safely inside and needing to not show her fear to him, she said, “Yeah, that doesn’t sound stalkerish at all.”
“Not my intent. I just need to talk to you.”
She hesitated, not sure she wanted the answer to her next question. “You’re outside, aren’t you?”
“Yes. But you know I can’t get to you, so you’re safe.”
Then why didn’t she feel safe? A pane of glass seemed like such an insubstantial barrier for a being with that much strength. She’d felt that barely restrained strength a hairbreadth from snuffing out her life, and later pressing her next to him as he pulled her to safety. And yet a human bent on crime could more easily pass through that pane of glass than a vampire.
Olivia stood and limped slowly toward the window. Somehow she knew imagining him out there would be worse than actually seeing him. When she looked out, there he was staring up at her from the sidewalk. He waved and even smiled a bit awkwardly, as if he didn’t do it often.
“Why—” Her voice broke, and she had to swallow against the invading dryness. “Why are you here?”
“To apologize for last night.”
“That seems out of character.” Well, hadn’t she suddenly grown ballsy?
“Suppose I deserve that,” he said. “Sometimes I get so wrapped up in the task at hand that I can be a jackass.” He paused, as if this whole apology thing was a foreign language he was stumbling through. “I shouldn’t have dragged you into that den. You’d already been through enough.”
She’d heard stories about good vampires, but the vamps had always frightened her so much that she couldn’t quite believe them. Now she wondered, especially if there was some sort of vampire police force patrolling the nights. This one, this Campbell Raines, really did seem as though he regretted attacking her.
Of course, it could all be a ploy to win her trust, to lull her into making a deadly move. That thought didn’t ring true, though, not after he’d taken a pretty good beating in order to save her life. She couldn’t believe she was giving a vampire credit for anything positive, but the truth was the truth.
And since he’d fed, he seemed in control, much more human than when he’d been staring down at her with those awful red eyes.
“You and your friends—are you V Force?”
Even with the distance between them, she thought he looked surprised that she’d heard of V Force. Of course, she wasn’t going to tell him that she’d only heard the term within the past day.
“Yeah. How did you know about that?”
“I own a diner. You hear things.” She took a shaky step forward and sat on the window seat before her legs totally gave out and dumped her on the floor. When she took the weight off her ankle, it throbbed worse than when she’d been walking. In fact, she felt as if she’d been body-slammed repeatedly. “Well, that explains a few things, I guess.”
“The fact that a truckful of vamps dragged you around the city without killing you?”
“That and the whole black commando look you all have going.” She motioned toward his clothing. Gone was the bare chest, and she wasn’t quite sure if she was grateful or not.
He glanced down at his black boots, cargo pants, tee and flak vest. It struck her that they suited him, his dark hair, angular features and muscular build. When he looked back up at her, he was also wearing a crooked grin that was thankfully fang-free. And it made him oh-so-damn sexy.
That thought startled her enough that she squeezed the decorative pillow next to her.
“But there’s not a cape in sight,” he said.
She laughed at the unexpected joke. For a moment she feared she’d finally gone crazy. But then came the stunning realization that his comment had in fact alleviated more fear than her continually telling herself she was safe as long as she stayed inside.
“What’s with the vest? Part of the look?”
He reached toward his waist and pulled a wooden stake from his belt. “So I don’t get one of these to the chest and go poof.”
She realized how little she really knew about vampires, what was fact and what fiction. The past two years had been a blur of work and grief. She didn’t have time to think about vampires. She guessed a part of her wanted to pretend they didn’t exist, and as long as she stayed indoors at night, she didn’t have to think about them too much. Until last night.
“Is that what happens? You really go poof?”
He replaced the stake in its slot. “No. For whatever reason, wood in the heart is poisonous to vampires and we die in seconds.”
“You don’t know why?”
He shook his head. “I’m still working my way through the history, trying to figure out what’s true and what’s a load of crap.”
“So you were turned recently?”
“About five years before the virus hit.”
She’d swear she heard regret and loss in his response. Could vampires remember what it was like to be human? Did they miss it?
“What did you do back then, before?” She couldn’t stop asking questions. Odd as it might seem, talking to him was better than being alone in her quiet apartment with only her thoughts and overactive imagination.
He laughed a little. “One of New York’s Finest.”
She felt herself smile and was fully aware of how surreal it was that the man who’d made her smile had tried to kill her only a short time ago. “Couldn’t get away from it, huh?”
“Once a cop, always a cop, I guess.”
“You like it still?” The idea that vamps would even have laws or law enforcement boggled her mind.
“Gotta do something good with eternity.”
“And you’re the head honcho?”
“Of Team 1. We cover Manhattan along with one other team. There are different teams in the other boroughs, other cities.”
She stared at him for several ticks of the clock on her mantel. “So it’s true? There are good vampires and bad ones?”
He leaned back against a car parked at the curb.
“Yeah. Well, as good as a vampire can be, anyway.”
She shifted on the seat, leaning back against the wall. “What determines it? Free will like humans?”
“In a way. This is going to sound a bit woo-woo, something I would have laughed at before I was turned.”
“We live in a world full of woo-woo now.”
He nodded. “There are two kinds of vampires—Souled and Soulless. The Souled ones used to be good people and they brought that into their vampire lives. The Soulless were not so good—criminals, sociopaths, the kind of people we locked up. The Souled don’t like being vampires any more than humans like the fact that we exist. The Soulless thrive on being immortal and powerful.”
“So you believe we have souls?”
He shrugged. “It makes as much sense as anything else. Whatever the dividing line between good and evil is, it’s what separates vampires.”
Wow, she’d had no idea. She’d just assumed vamps were vamps, hungry and dangerous beasts one and all.
“Are the Souled vampires the ones who set up the deal with the blood banks?” She, like everyone else she knew, donated blood on a regular basis to help keep vampire attacks to a minimum.
“Yeah, at the direction of the Imperium, our ruling body. Humans might not believe it, but we have laws, too. For centuries vampires weren’t supposed to feed any more than necessary for survival. Since the Bokor virus, it’s been illegal to feed from humans at all. If they do and drain a human, they have to be eliminated.”
Olivia swallowed hard at the idea that she might have been drained the previous night.
“That means...” For some reason she couldn’t force the rest of her thought into words. Her eyes met Campbell’s and held.
