“I don’t know you, sir, and you’re scaring me. I’m in a great hurry, so please let me go.” Shea used her coolest, most disdainful voice, and she deliberately spoke English. The man was enormously strong, and it terrified her.
“I am Byron.” He gave only his first name, as if that should be enough. “I am a male of our race, you a single female. The sun is climbing, and you did not give yourself enough time to seek refuge from the dawn. I can do no other than help you, offer my protection.” He switched easily to heavily accented English.
His voice seemed to slide right inside her. He gave the illusion of being a gentleman, so friendly, yet he had not released her or moved even an inch to allow her to get by him. He inhaled, dragged her scent into his lungs. Suddenly his entire demeanor changed. His body stiffened. His fingers dug into her arm. White teeth gleamed a predator’s flash of warning. “Why did you not answer me when I spoke to you?” His words were low and menacing. The suave stranger was frightening.
“Let go of me.” She kept her voice even, her mind working at top speed, looking for a way out. He seemed to hold all the cards, but…
“Tell me who you are,” he demanded.
“Let go of me now.” She lowered her voice, pitched it to a soft, hypnotic melody. “You want to let me go.”
The stranger shook his head, his eyes narrowing, recognizing the hint of compulsion in her voice. He inhaled a second time, drinking in her fragrance. At once his face seemed to go still. “I recognize that scent. Jacques. He is dead these seven years, yet his blood runs in your veins.” His voice crawled with deadly threat.
For a moment she was frozen with fear. Was this the betrayer Jacques had spoken of? Shea swung her head sideways to remove his fingers from her chin. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Let go of me now!”
Byron let out his breath in a low, venomous hiss. “If you wish to see another night, you will tell me what you have done with him.”
“You’re hurting me.” He was drawing closer, leaning toward her neck, bending her backward like a bow as she tried to elude him. His breath was hot on her throat, and Shea gasped as she felt needle-sharp teeth pierce her skin. With a low cry she jerked sideways, her heart pounding.
Without warning he caught at the neckline of her shirt to examine the bruises at her throat. She could feel his puzzlement, his confusion. Shea took advantage of his momentary distraction. As hard as she was able, she brought up her knee and screamed for all she was worth. Byron looked so shocked, she nearly laughed. He had been absolutely certain “she wouldn’t want attention drawn to her. His hiss, a deadly promise of retaliation, was the last thing she heard before he melted away.
And he literally melted away. Shea never saw him move. One moment he was there, his body trapping hers against the wall, and then he was gone. A fine mist was mixing with the layers of fog covering the ground to about knee level.
Two orderlies came running, hearing her screams. Shea, holding her palm to the trickling wound on her neck to cover it, allowed them to soothe her, to assure her the animal she thought she saw lurking in the shadows was most likely a stray dog, not a wolf. They went off shaking their heads and laughing at how silly women could be.
Shea loaded the supplies into her truck, taking as much time as she dared. If the sun affected her, it had to be just as lethal to her assailant if he was like Jacques. It had never occurred to her that she might have to contend with a vampire. Don Wallace had been her nightmare; she suspected this was much worse. She packed the blood carefully in the center of her large cooler, surrounded by the blocks of ice. She had to find a way to get the blood to Jacques without leaving a trail for the vampire.