Michele Hauf - Seducing the Vampire

“In her hair? Can’t see from here. But don’t you adore how the women cinch their corsets so tightly their bosoms have nowhere to go but—”

“Orlando, watch yourself. Is that how you behave around women you do not know?”

“Yes.”

The boy’s innocence would get him in trouble some day. “You are yet a pup. To win a woman’s regard you must not be so vulgar.”

“And you are the master of wooing a woman? The last time I saw you with a woman—”

“I do not share all my liaisons with you, boy.” Nor did he discuss his affairs.

Rare was it Rhys left the country to seek amorous pleasures. The country women would not think to powder their hair or wrap themselves in ells of expensive fabrics. They appreciated the more rustic male, one whose appetites were fierce and less refined than the city fops.

“I’ve my eye on someone,” Rhys said. “And she will be in my bed soon enough.”

“Oh, yes? Which one?”

“The one with the roses in her hair.”

“Oh, but Rhys …” The werewolf swallowed audibly.

When Lord de Salignac lifted the woman’s hand to kiss, Rhys sucked in a breath. The vampire lord’s eyes closed. He lingered over her hand, inhaling her scent, consuming her in a breath.

Rhys knew that look.

“She is the one,” Orlando said. “Mademoiselle Viviane LaMourette. The one whom Salignac loves.”

Indeed. Rhys closed his eyes. He had chosen incorrectly.

And yet. Was it not his chance for love? Surely Constantine pursued her for one purpose, and that purpose did not require love.

A tendril of spite clutched Rhys’s spine. It was always there, forced up by Salignac. What satisfying vengeance to take away from Salignac the one woman he loved?

Decided, Rhys nodded once and drew up his shoulders. “I want her. I will have her.”

Paris, modern day

“WAS IT LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT?” Simon Markson asked Rhys as they walked through Charles de Gaulle Airport.

“Yes,” Rhys said, smirking wistfully as he recalled the foolishness of his youth. And yet at that time every cut to his person had felt like a blade directly to his heart. He had needed revenge. And the opportunity had been too perfect.

“She was beautiful. She was like … a hummingbird,” he muttered absently.

“What’s that?”

“She was a hummingbird—a woman who can never be caged. And should her wings have ceased to flutter she would have died.”

“She had wings?”

Rhys shook his head. Simon’s head was a veritable database of all paranormal creatures; he’d taken it upon himself to research his employer’s world after being hired a decade earlier.

“Why did you never tell me the legend?” Rhys asked his assistant.

“Never thought much of it.”

“But you’ve heard it before?”

“The Vampire Snow White? Once or twice. While on dates, you know.” Simon tapped away on his cell phone with his free hand. “It’s an urban legend for a reason, Rhys. It’s fiction, a story created to titillate and you know how much the women like vampires nowadays.”

“I’ve told you my history. It could be true.”

“Yeah, I remember the day you told me everything.” Simon whistled. He tucked the phone in his breast pocket. The two walked through the sliding doors to the pickup lane outside. “Who would have thought werewolves and vampires were real?”

Rhys had hired the man as an assistant when he’d needed help adjusting to the technology that moved faster than a hyperactive hare. He’d surrendered to the learning curve with the introduction of the laptop and BlackBerry and the iPod. Now he gladly let Simon handle all the technical stuff.

While Rhys could function in this human-dominated realm without having to divulge his true nature, he was not a man to treat friendship lightly, and always revealed himself to his closest friends, even if they were mortal, which were few. Trust came with truth. Never again would he doubt himself or attempt to hide a part of his nature.

Didn’t mean he flashed his fangs to anyone. The rule of discretion applied always.

Simon flagged down his driver three cars back in the queue. He’d contacted the Paris office of Hawkes Associates and made arrangements the moment Rhys had called him about the legend early this morning.

“I still think it’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Simon said. “There are over five hundred kilometers of tunnels beneath Paris proper. And some of those tunnels go down five, six, even seven layers deep.”

“You made contact with the man who claims to have mapped all those treacherous tunnels?”

“Right,” Simon said. “Guy named Dane Weft claims to have made the ultimate tunnels map. But on his website, he admits the tunnels constantly change. And there are some inaccessible levels. I offered him cash. Didn’t even have to break the bank.”

“Money does not concern me, Simon, but I do appreciate your frugality.”

Raindrops splattered their shoulders. A woman in heels with an immaculate coif stepped back from the curb toward the overhang and bumped into Rhys. “Pardonnezmoi.”

Bright blue eyes held his for a moment and her cherryred mouth slipped into a smile.

Not the same. He’d never hold her again.

He stepped beside Simon as the car pulled up.

“I don’t know what you expect to find, Rhys. Even if this glass coffin does exist, she could have escaped decades ago, centuries, and may have died—for real—when the glass broke.”

“If someone had a witch bespell her and the coffin, I can assure you it will be fail-safe against natural disaster.”

“I thought the legend said it was a warlock?”

“Witch. Warlock. Same thing, only one is a wanted criminal.”

Rhys sighed. Truly, he was jumping to conclusions. And yet, he couldn’t not investigate. He’d never forgive himself if he ignored what felt so real in his bones.

Could it really be her? Shame on him if it were true.

It hurt him deeply to imagine her locked away, alive and aware, in a confining little box. It had been two and a half centuries!

Simon slid into the Mercedes’s backseat and waited for Rhys to follow. “You okay?”

Rhys slid in and confirmed the driver knew his home address. Pushing fingers through his hair, he massaged his pounding temples. “I won’t be okay until I see her again, and know she is not damaged for my foolishness. Or … find irrefutable proof she died in the eighteenth century.”

If the legend was true, the enormity of the repercussions practically took Rhys’s breath away. He was no man for abandoning her.

Don’t get ahead of yourself. It is merely a legend.

“Is it possible you are reaching for chimeras?” Simon asked. “She’s gone. I thought you saw—”

“I don’t know what I saw now. Was it her? How can I be certain? Just think, Simon, if I have walked away and left her to suffer. Could she still be out there somewhere?”

“It’s longer than a long shot. It’s an infinity shot.”

“I have to pursue this.”

“You didn’t know, man.” Simon slapped a palm on his knee in comradely reassurance. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. But what if we do find her? I mean, you know what the legend says.”

Yes, that she would be mad. Locked away for centuries, aware of the dark, the insects and whatever horrors surrounded, yet unable to utter a scream? Rhys recalled her fear of rats. Her mind must be a macabre store of dread and terror.

Did he want to find the remnants of what had once been the most beautiful woman to ever touch his heart, to know him and accept him, even his dark side? And if he did find her, would he be far more kind if he killed her quickly to put an end to her suffering?