“I wonder if John Paul went to him for any reason. Or Martin. And before them, Blythe Madison.”
“If Harry is the doctor’s cousin, wouldn’t it be natural for him to ask him to take a look at his sick wife?” Mary Ann wondered aloud.
Destiny was more inclined to think the culprit was a vampire. All along she had concentrated her energies in that direction. The legions of the undead had to be involved. To Destiny, whoever was behind these bizarre character changes was deliberately tormenting and hurting people for amusement. She couldn’t conceive of a human committing such atrocities. Demons were vampire, not human.
At once Nicolae was there, sensing that her thoughts were beginning to shake the very foundations of her world view. His arms were strong, his body sheltering, his mind firmly merged with hers. Her anchor. Nicolae was always with her. She could count on him endlessly. In spite of the crouching darkness that he had fought most of his life. In spite of the tainted blood now flowing in his veins, Nicolae was unfailingly good.
Nicolae. She breathed his name in a sudden overwhelming surge of love. He was slowly handing her back her life. A little piece at a time. And all the while he was there, comforting her, reassuring her as he had always done.
“Destiny?” Mary Ann’s voice shook her out of her reflection. “If the doctor is somehow involved in this… if he actually has done something to harm Helena and John Paul and Martin and Tim and Father Mulligan… and poor Blythe living in a hospital thinking she lost her mind… I could have prevented it. I could have brought charges against him. What if I could have stopped him?” She looked lost, sitting there on the floor with her large eyes and horror in her mind.
“No! Mary Ann, what are you thinking?” Destiny gathered her close, hugged her hard in protest. “You know better than to think anything so ridiculous. How could you be responsible for something a madman chooses to do? We don’t even know if this doctor has anything to do with what’s happened. All the facts aren’t in yet, but even if he is waving a magic wand and casting spells throughout the neighborhood, you cannot possibly be to blame.”
“You sound like me. That’s all well and good in theory, but if I had brought charges against him, maybe he wouldn’t have been able to touch any of my friends.”
“Or, more likely, he would have moved his deviant behavior somewhere else where no one would notice the difference in their friends. Don’t you see, Mary Ann? This neighborhood and the people in it are so close, they don’t readily accept that someone like John Paul who loves Helena so very much would suddenly turn on her and try to hurt her. They don’t accept that Martin would attack Father Mulligan. All of them began to watch one another and try to figure out what was going wrong.”
“Please find out who is doing this and stop it, Destiny,” Mary Ann pleaded.
Destiny hugged her again. “I intend to do just that.”
Chapter Seventeen
Nicolae was waiting outside the office, his long, sinewy frame leaning negligently against the banister. Destiny paused to look at him. The breeze was coolly ruffling the long silk of his hair. The moon cast a silver beam across the angles and planes of his face, illuminating the sheer sensuality there. His body was hard and powerful, a dangerous blend of predator and seductive male. He turned his head and smiled at her, robbing her of breath just that easily.
“You’re very good-looking,” she said judiciously, tilting her head to study his magnificent physique. “Are all Carpathians as good-looking as you?”
His black eyebrows arched. “I do not think that is a safe subject for you.” He held out his hand to her. Destiny studied it carefully, as if examining it for a trap. How in the world had she become so obsessed with him that the sight of his outstretched hand could send her heart somersaulting? Her fingers laced almost reluctantly with his. Up close, he would be able to feel the way he made her pulse elevate, the way her heart beat a little unsteadily. Her entire body ached for him if she ventured too close to his sheer magnetism. A humiliating fact, and one impossible to hide when he was touching her.