He raced out of the lab without even glancing back at the witch and dialed Samson’s home phone. A recording answered. “You have reached a number that is out of service …”
Twenty-nine
Maya reached for the cordless phone next to the bed and punched the call button to get a line. Silence greeted her. She pulled the phone to her ear to verify, but her suspicion was right: the phone was dead. Ricky had disabled the line to the house.
She threw the useless receiver onto the bed and swiveled. Her eyes scanned the room in record speed – the vampire speed she was grateful for now. Her gaze zeroed in on her handbag. Two large strides and she was there, pulling her cell phone out of it with the next move. She held down the on button for a few seconds, her heart beating into her throat as she heard steps on the stairs.
He was coming for her.
She silently begged that her battery hadn’t run too low in the days she hadn’t used the phone and was relieved to see the screen coming on.
Good. A few more seconds and the screen was fully booted. But she could only stare at it. This couldn’t be happening, not now, not when she needed to call for help! No service, it said.
The sound of the door opening made her lift her head, and then she saw him. Ricky stood just inside the room, the door behind him sliding shut a moment later.
“I had your service disconnected,” he drawled, his Irish lilt a little more pronounced now. “No use wasting money when you won’t need to make any more phone calls where we’re going.”
Maya froze. Her mind worked frantically to assess her chances of getting past him and out of the house, but he was blocking the door effectively and short of her knocking him over, she would come up short. Her skin prickled uncomfortably now, and she realized it was the same feeling she’d had in the hospital and also that time when she’d met Ricky in the kitchen. At the time she’d written the feeling off to her illness, the approaching fever, but had she been well, she would have been able to connect the sense of danger in the air with Ricky.
It was too late now.
“I want you to leave,” she said as calmly as she could. “Yvette will be coming soon.” Despite the suspicion she had, she needed to stall him from whatever he was planning. Her suspicion was confirmed with his next words.
“I’m afraid Yvette’s a little tied up right now.” He chuckled at his own sick joke.
“Is she dead?”
“She will be, soon. But let’s not talk about other people. Let’s talk about us.”
Gabriel would be back soon. Despite the fact she didn’t want to talk to Ricky, she knew she had to keep him talking, but not about herself.
“What did you do to her?”
He ignored her question. “You liked me at first. I know you did. Did you know that I dumped my girlfriend for you? And what thanks did I get?”
“I’m sure I didn’t ask you to do that for me. I never go after men who’re in relationships.” And for sure she wouldn’t have gone after him – just looking at him made her skin prickle with revulsion.
“We met the night your car had stalled. I helped you fix it. You were grateful, very grateful,” he insinuated.
She didn’t believe it. No, she would have never allowed him to touch her. “No.”
“Oh, yes. Shall I tell you more about how it was between us?”
Disgust rose in her stomach and settled uncomfortably at her solar plexus. “There’s no us. There’s never been an us and there’ll never be an us.” Even though she still remembered nothing about him, she knew instinctively that she’d never had sex with Ricky. Her body told her as much. It recoiled from his presence.
“See, that’s where you’re wrong.” He took several steps into the room, closing in on her.
“Gabriel will kill you if you lay a hand on me,” she warned and took a step back.
“We’ll be long gone by the time Gabriel figures things out and gets back here.” He pulled a small, flat device out of his pocket and turned it to her. Maya looked at what appeared to be an iPhone with a map. In the middle of it, a red dot blinked. “I know exactly where he is right now, so don’t you worry about Gabriel.”
Maya cursed. “You prick!”
“Now, now, are those the words for a lover?” The sick grin around his mouth made her physically nauseous. She would never be his lover.
She’d rather kill herself before she let him touch her.
“You can’t possibly think I’d ever become your lover.”
“The way I see it you don’t have much of a choice, seeing that you’ll be all tied up soon. And then I’ll take what I want, whenever I want and how often I want. It’s your own fault. It could have been different between us. But no, you had to lead me on, make me want you, and then just turn away as if I was a nobody. And generous as I am, I even gave you a second chance. We started all new, and you little bitch did the same thing again. There are days when I really love my gifts.”
Then he growled.
“And there are days when I recognize their limitations.
Unfortunately now that your doubts about me are confirmed, there’s no more dispelling them, nor erasing your memories. It was easier when you were human, at least I could wipe the slate clean. But you left me no choice.”
The snarl around his mouth made his average face look ugly. She could practically see the ugliness inside him, the evil that lived within him. Her skin crawled with awareness of the bad vibes his body was projecting.
