J. Ward - Dark Lover

Perfect date material , she thought. A vampire with the social equivalent of road rage.

She approached cautiously. As he slid the seat under her, she could have sworn he bent down to her hair and inhaled deeply.

"Why were you so late?" he demanded while sitting at the head of the table. When she didn't answer, he cocked an eyebrow at her, the dark arch rising over the rim of his black sunglasses. "Did Fritz have to talk you into coming?"

To give herself something to do, she took her napkin and unfolded it in her lap. "It was nothing like that."

"So tell me what it was."

"Butch followed us. We had to wait until we got free of him."

She sensed the space around Wrath darkening as if his anger sucked the light right out of the air.

Fritz came in with two small plates of salad. He put them down.

"Wine?" he asked.

Wrath nodded.

After the.butler had finished pouring and left, she picked up a heavy silver fork and forced herself to eat.

"Why are you afraid of me now?" Wrath's voice was sardonic, as if he were bored by her fear.

She jabbed at the greens. "Hmmm. Could it be because you look like you want to strangle someone?"

"You walked into this house scared of me again. Before you even saw me, you were frightened. I want to know why."

She kept her eyes on her plate. "Maybe I was reminded that last night you almost killed a friend of mine."

"Christ, not that again."

"You asked," she shot back. "Don't get mad if you don't like my answer."

Wrath wiped his mouth impatiently. "I didn't kill him, did I?"

"Only because I stopped you."

"And that bothers you? Most people like to be heroes."

She put her fork down. "You know what? I don't want to be here with you right now."

He kept eating. "So why did you come?"

"Because you asked me to!"

"Believe me, I can handle the rejection." As if she were of no concern to him whatsoever.

"This was a mistake." She put her napkin down next to her plate and stood.

He cursed. "Sit down."

"Don't tell me what to do."

"Let me amend that. Sit down and shut up."

She gaped at him. "You arrogant ass-"

"Someone's already called me that tonight, thank you very much."

Fritz picked that moment to breeze in with some warm rolls.

She glared at Wrath and pretended she was only reaching across the table for the wine bottle. She wasn't about to march off in front of Fritz. And besides, she suddenly felt like sticking around.

So she could yell at Wrath a little longer.

When they were alone again, she hissed, "Where do you get off talking to me like that?"

He took a final bite of salad, placed his fork on the edge of his plate, and dabbed the corners of his mouth with his napkin. Like he'd been trained by Emily Post herself.

"Let's get one thing straight," he said. "You need me. So get over your hangups about what I might have done to that cop. Your good buddy Butch is still above ground, right? So what's the problem?"

Beth stared at him, trying to read through his sunglasses, searching for some softness, something she could connect to. But the dark lenses shut her out of his eyes completely, and the tight lines of his face gave her nothing to go on.

"How can life mean so little to you?" she wondered aloud.

The smile he gave her was cold. "How can death mean so much Xoyou ?"

Beth sank back in her chair. Cringed from him, was more like it. She couldn't believe she'd made love-no, had sex-with him. He was utterly callous.

Abruptly, her heart hurt. Not because he was being hard on her, but because she was disappointed. She'd really wanted him to be different than he appeared. She'd wanted to believe the flashes of warmth he'd shown her were as big a part of him as those hard edges.

She rubbed the raw patch at her sternum. "I'd really like to go, if you don't mind."

There was a long pause.

"Ah, hell…" he muttered, letting out his breath. "This isn't right."

"No, it isn't."

"I thought that you deserved… I don't know. A date. Or something. Something normal." He laughed harshly as she looked at him with surprise. "Dumb idea, I know. I should stick to what I'm good at. I'd be better off teaching you how to kill."

Underneath his thick pride, she sensed a kernel of something else. Insecurity? No, that wasn't it. Naturally with him, it would be more intense.

Self-hatred.

Fritz came in, picked up their salad plates, and reappeared with soup. It was cold vichyssoise. Interesting , she thought absently. Usually it was soup first, then salad, wasn't it? But then, she had to imagine vampires had lots of different social traditions. Like the men having more than one woman.

Her stomach lurched. She wasn't going to think of that. She simply refused to.

"Look, just so you know," Wrath said as he picked up his spoon, "I fight to protect, not because I've got a jones for murder. But I've killed thousands. Thousands, Beth. Do you understand? So if you want me to pretend I'm not comfortable with death, I can't do that for you. I just can't."

"Thousands?" she mumbled, overwhelmed.

He nodded.

"Who in God's name are you fighting?"

"Bastards who would kill you as soon as you go through the transition."

"Vampire hunters?"

" Lessers . Humans who have traded their souls to the Omega in return for a free reign of terror."

"Who-or what-is the Omega?" As she spoke the word, the candles flickered wildly, as if tormented by invisible hands.

Wrath hesitated. He actually seemed uncomfortable with the subject. He, who wasn't afraid of anything.

"You mean the devil?" she prompted.

"Worse. You can't compare them. One's just a metaphor. The other's very, very real. Fortunately, the Omega has a counterpart, the Scribe Virgin." He smiled wryly. "Well, maybe fortunately is too strong a word. But there is a balance."

"God and Lucifer."

"Maybe according to your lexicon. Our legend has it that vampires were created by the Scribe Virgin as her one and only legacy, as her chosen children. The Omega resented her ability to generate life, and he despised the special powers she gave to the species. The Lessening Society was his defensive response. He uses humans because he is incapable of creation and because they are a readily available source of aggression."

This is just too strange , she thought. Trading souls. The undead. The stuff just didn't exist in the real world.

Then again, she was having dinner with a vampire. So was anything really all that impossible?

She thought of the gorgeous blond man who'd stitched himself up.

"You have others who fight with you, right?"

"My brothers." He took a drink from his wineglass. "As soon as the vampires recognized they were under siege, the strongest and most powerful males were weeded out. Trained to fight. Turned loose against the lessers . Those warriors were then bred to the strongest females over generations until a separate subspecies of vampires emerged. The most powerful of this class were indoctrinated into the Black Dagger Brotherhood."

"Are you brothers by blood?"

He smiled tightly. "In a matter of speaking."

His face shuttered, as if the matter were private. She had the sense that he would say no more about the brotherhood, but she was still curious about the war he was fighting.

Especially because she was about to turn into one of those he protected.

"So it's humans you kill."

"Yes, although they're basically dead already. In order to give his fighters the longevity and strength they would need to fight us, the Omega had to strip them of their souls." Distaste flickered across his harsh features. "Not that having a soul ever prevented a human from coming after us."