Linda Nightingale: Black Swan

Dedication

Mary Marvella Barfield

The fact that the man she loved was in bed with another woman ceased to be important when Holly saw the blood. Her heart, which had been running on empty until she met Tristan, stuttered and stalled. Horror freeze-framed time—the shutter snaps of images flooding her brain almost audible. She couldn’t breathe or move, knew she hadn’t made a sound, but Tristan's head snapped up. Wild red eyes honed in on her. Blood smeared his mouth, drizzled from two wounds on his partner's throat. The woman he'd been screwing appeared deathly pale and deadly still.

She should run before he shouted, “What the hell are you doing here?” but fear had turned her to ice. Holly hadn't blinked but Tristan stood on his feet. Her heart tripped over a beat. No one could move that fast. He shook back his mane of black hair and, holding her prisoner in his burning gaze, glided toward her. The last rays of the dying sun bronzed his body.

How incredibly beautiful he was. How she loved him. How dare he do this to her?

She wanted to scream, “You S-O-B! Saturday you said you loved me. Monday you're banging another woman!”

Humiliation, jealousy, and grief burned like fire beneath her skin. She tried but failed to tear her gaze from his. Tristan's eyes were luminous azure not scarlet. The blood on his mouth had somehow disappeared, or, please God, maybe she'd imagined it. His naked body blocked Holly's view of the bed though she knew the woman still lay there. Why hadn't she said something, jumped up or grabbed her clothes and slammed the door? Blood .

Her head gave a dizzy spin. Maybe the woman was dead. Fear broke Holly's paralysis.

“I’d no right.” She folded her arms tight across her chest, holding herself together as she backed away, babbling, “I did knock. The door was open a little bit.” But there’d been no welcoming light only shadows. “I’m sorry. So sorry. I'm going now.”

Before I start crying.

“Hols,” Tristan whispered, his voice as lovely as the music he made. “Wait please. Allow me to explain.”

Hols. His pet name for me .

In one swift move that blurred her vision, he bent and the sheet materialized loosely knotted around his hips. Was he trying to be modest? They'd been sleeping together for a month. In that time, she’d lovingly memorized every contour of his slender, muscled physique. Holly's willful eyes traveled down him, catching on the long lump beneath the sheet. Memories teased her, desire pulsing above her pelvic bone.

Not modesty.

Covering his nakedness marked an end to intimacy, a prelude to goodbye. Her gaze fled from temptation.

Tristan manifested at her side. She clamped a hand to her mouth but a cry escaped. Velvet hands closed on her shoulders, and an electric thrill zinged through her. Holly's heart yearned to believe that she’d imagined the last five minutes, but the image of her Tristan tangled around another woman had been branded in her mind’s eye.

Damn him!

She’d chosen the green-and-white striped Ralph Lauren sheet riding low on his hips. He blinked as if she'd cursed him aloud, and his hands fell away. He gave her a wary smile.

Though she still felt the warmth of his touch, jealousy hardened her voice. “I'm going, Tristan. Sorry I didn't mean to—” Catch you in the act? “To interrupt.”

His smile faded and it seemed the world went dark. As if he could explain without speaking, he stared into her eyes and finally said, “It’s not what you think.”

Unlike the lyrics of an old song, “Regrets I have a few but then again too few to mention,” an army of regrets pursued Tristan, found him defenseless, gazing into suspicious eyes.

As Holly suspected, he'd killed the woman in his bed. When she'd caught him feasting, he'd cast a freeze-frame spell, vaporized from the living room, reappeared in the bedroom. He focused the energy absorbed in his victim's death on the corpse, and in an incandescent flash of light, the evidence disappeared. It was so bloody easy, he felt even guiltier, if that were possible.

Energy vibrated his being, gilded his skin. Textured shadows and silvery moonlight were tangible feelings. Down the street, a man's voice lifted in anger, and a woman cried. Tristan swallowed hard, trying to master the blood high. His hands fisted at his side, and he bit his lower lip, tasting the blood welling around his fangs. With super human effort, he slowed his breathing and calmed the sensations resonating within him.

Exactly three minutes after he'd disappeared, Tristan took Holly's hand and released her from trance. She blinked back to the moment, unaware of the passage of time. No need to guess what she thought, he had but to listen to her thoughts. He could erase her memory with a glance but he’d grown weary of vampire tricks. Holly's pain beat in his heart but sparks of anger danced with the hurt in her eyes. He deserved whatever she dumped on him. The coming inquisition would be a catharsis. For the first time, he noticed her eyes were the same color as Carol's, a clear light green.

Sadness nipped at his heels. Yet another regret joined the battalion of fingers pointing at him.

Carol.

Last year, tired of the Black Swan scene—blood-bartered-for sex parties—he'd hunted London's nightlife and the city's streets in relentless pursuit of sanguine and carnal pleasures. On a lark one evening, he’d put in an appearance at a formal Swan Song in Mayfair.

And met Carol Langston.

“I'm new to this.” Carol's shy smile and the curvy figure sheathed in a red beaded gown intrigued him. “Newly divorced, as well.”

He caught a flash of pain in green eyes. “You're not happy about the divorce.”

She shrugged one bare shoulder. “I was shaken.” Her shyness evaporated, her gaze sliding from his eyes to his lips then down the front of him. “I must say now I'm glad it's over.”

Damn, if he didn't feel her eyes undressing him, firing his libido and the bloodlust. This one wasn't looking for commitment.

Tristan spent the night with Carol, slaking the Thirst while he satisfied physical lust in her body. Tossing beneath him, the wildcat gave him as good as she got. The next eleven months, they were virtually inseparable. She accompanied him to performances, listened to the endless hours of practice, or modeled for his sculptures. They caroused the city, spent moonlit hours in Hyde and St. James Parks. She'd known and accepted him in every way. One rainy night in an alley behind a trendy nightclub, she'd even watched him take a victim. In bed, after the storms of passion had passed, she'd caress him as she read to him from her favorite author, a fellow Irishman, Oscar Wilde.

Then one night it happened. Minutes before dawn on a gray winter's day, he left his lover sleeping and slipped away with no word of farewell. To her credit, Carol rang once, listened to his excuses and never rang back. He buried guilt in the tomb with his other emotions and returned to the hunt. The night he decided to abandon the Old World and the Hunger, he’d killed another woman as they both came, his fifth victim in as many days. Sex and death fed the beast, lust and bloodlust synonyms. Disgusted with himself, he'd dissolved from the girl's bedroom, reappeared in his and packed. A memory of Carol, the wind whipping her long dark hair, flashed through his mind. Bloody hell, indeed it was time to go.

The gig with the Seattle Symphony was a door to escape. He'd hoped that immersing passion in music and art would rescue him from what he was. Donning his mask, he turned his back on the vampire, boarded a plane, and left England without a backwards glance.