Susan Krinard - Chasing Midnight

“Once again I owe you a debt of gratitude,” he said. “Even if you refuse to accept my obligation.”

She laughed. “You wouldn’t like it if I held you to that obligation. Anyway, Gemma made the evening considerably more amusing.”

“Is that truly all that matters to you, Miss Chase? Amusement?”

“What else is there?”

Her insouciant response troubled him past all reason. He’d seen plenty of evidence that she was a most unusual vampire, but he’d also begun to realize that she was not as lacking in character as he had at first chosen to believe.

“May I ask you a personal question?” he said.

“Shoot.”

He began to walk in the direction of the street, where Fitzsimmons waited a few blocks away with the limousine, supporting a sleepy Gemma with his arm about her waist. “There weren’t any other vampires at Lulu’s when I came in.”

“So?”

“So where is your patron, Miss Chase? It was my understanding that vampire patrons are notoriously jealous of their protégés and hardly encourage them to wander loose around the city.”

She fell into step beside him. “That may be true of most protégés, but not me.”

“How is it that you have a choice?”

She hesitated, obviously weighing her answer. “My patron’s dead.”

Griffin missed a step. “But you told me—”

“I know. It got rid of you, didn’t it?” Her voice lost a little of its lightness. “Even when Cato was alive, he let me live as I chose. And that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

“How long since you were…altered?”

“Two years. And you don’t have to dance around the word. It doesn’t offend me.”

And why should it, Griffin thought, when she so obviously hadn’t suffered from the transformation? “So now you choose to associate with humans rather than your own kind.”

“Just like you.” She cast him a sideways look. “You’re curious, aren’t you…about how we live and what we do? Even though you hate us.”

“I hardly hate you, Miss Chase.”

“But it disgusts you, the blood drinking and all. That’s one of the reasons you were so upset that I was with Gemma.”

Griffin glanced down at Gemma’s tousled head, regretting the direction the conversation had taken. “Surely you couldn’t Convert her.”

“Couldn’t even if I wanted to. We’re of different species, after all, and I’m not mature enough to create my own protégés. That usually takes a few years.”

“But you could have…taken her—”

“Blood? That would have been a novel experience. But I’d already fed, and we don’t have to drink more than a couple of times a week.”

“I see.” He tugged at his collar, reluctant to hear any more such confidences. “Whatever your personal habits, I don’t think Lulu’s is an appropriate venue for my sister.”

“You really think bobbed hair and a short dress will ruin her?”

“Rebellion for rebellion’s sake is not an admirable quality.”

They walked half a block in silence. “She guessed what I was, you know,” Allegra said. “She wasn’t afraid.”

“I’m hardly surprised, Miss Chase. Gemma has no experience of your worlds, either of them.You were compelled to rescue her from someone who meant her harm. That’s proof enough that she doesn’t belong here.”

“Only because she doesn’t know how to be what she really is.”

Gemmamuttered a garbled protest and subsided back into her half sleep. Griffin lowered his voice. “She isn’t an animal, and I don’t intend to let her behave like one.”

“An animal? Is that what you think you are?”

Griffin remembered how tempted he had been in the alley…tempted to Change and rid the world of two humans the city would never miss. “I prefer civilization, Miss Chase.”

“Civilization as in the rich snobs on Long Island.”

“If you like.”

“Then you do plan to keep Gemma locked away.”

“Is that what she told you?”

“Isn’t it true?”

“I dislike being rude, Miss Chase, but—”

“You’d prefer I kept my nose to myself.” She shook her head. “Where did you get such a hard view of the world, Mr. Durant? Was it the War?”

Griffin forced himself to keep walking. “What drives you to waste your life on fleeting pleasures and unthinking nonconformity?” he asked.

She said nothing. The sound of her footsteps stopped, and for a moment he thought he had driven her away with his inexplicable rudeness. But then he heard the tap of her heels coming up behind him, and her sweet, earthy fragrance swirled about his head.

“I know what it’s like to live in a small room with no hope of escape,” she said. “I swore I’d never go back to that room.” She caught the sleeve of his coat. “What’s your cage, my friend?”

Her question left Griffin mute. He estimated the distance left to the limousine. Once he had Gemma safely transferred to Fitzsimmons’s care, he would wait for Mal at their rendezvous site on Sixth Avenue. Miss Chase would surely become bored with baiting him and go back to her friends. They would go their separate ways once and for all.

He would find nothing to miss in her unfeminine frankness, her brazen choice of clothing, the firm curve of her calf, the obsidian silk of her hair, the sparkle of aqua eyes…

His thoughts stuttered to a halt. He lifted his head, detecting the faint scent that threaded its way among the city’s common odors of gasoline, steel and refuse. The hairs on the back of his neck stood erect.

“What is it?” Allegra asked. “What’s wrong?”

He took her wrist in a rigid grip. “Stay close to me,” he said. “Don’t interfere.”

“But—” Her eyes searched the darkness as she sensed the others’ approach. Gemma’s face emerged from Griffin’s overcoat.

“Griffin?” she murmured.

“It’s all right, Gemma,” he said. “Keep still.”

“Good advice,” a voice said.

A tall figure rounded the corner of a narrow tenement building, his shadow preceding him. At his side loped two enormous canines, eyes reflecting yellow from a distant streetlight. They ran ahead and came to a stop a few dozen feet from Griffin, pacing back and forth with lolling tongues.

Griffin pushed Allegra behind him and shook out his shoulders, flexing his muscles and breathing deeply. “Ivar,” he said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Ivar strolled forward. “I came to talk business, Durant,” he said, “but not with that around.”

Allegra brushed against Griffin, air hissing between her teeth. Griffin forcibly restrained her with one arm, holding Gemma close with the other.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand you, Ivar,” he said. “Perhaps it would be more convenient if we meet at another time and place.”

Ivar laughed. The wolves stopped their pacing and faced Griffin, lips pulled back from ivory fangs. “Since when did you start consorting with leeches, Durant? You think that’s better than us?”

“You want me to show you, dog?” Allie purred. A cloud of hostile scent rose from her body. It struck Griffin full force, and even Ivar blinked.

“Easy,” Griffin whispered. He met Ivar’s gaze. “It’s none of your business what company I keep,” he said.

“Oh, yeah?” Ivar snapped his fingers, and the wolves sat on their haunches, ready to lunge at the slightest provocation. “It is our business if what you do endangers the rest of us.”

Griffin gently turned Gemma and passed her, coat and all, into Allegra’s arms. “Keep her safe,” he said. “No matter what you have to do.”

“You’re going to fight?”

“I may not have a choice.”

Allegra nodded, though her eyes blazed with fury. She backed away, half carrying Gemma with her. The wolves leaped up and circled behind the women, giving Griffin a wide berth.