Rising on her tiptoes, she kissed his cheek. “Good evening, my handsome one.”

“What brings you here?” he asked.

She linked her arm with his. “Do I need a reason to visit my godson?”

“No, I guess not.” Mara was a law unto herself. Like Cleopatra of old, she was queen of all she surveyed.

“It’s been too long since I saw you last,” she remarked, urging him to walk with her. “Too long since you’ve seen those you love, those who love you.”

“Did my parents ask you to check up on me?”

“No, though they are naturally worried about you.”

He took a deep breath and blew it out in a wistful sigh. “Are my parents well?”

“Yes, of course, but they miss you. Your mother worries. Your father blames himself for your absence.”

“And Rafe?”

“It pains him that you’ve severed the blood link between you.”

“I doubt if he spends much time thinking about me.”

“Is that bitterness I hear in your voice? If you’re unhappy, you’ve no one to blame but yourself. Go home, Rane. Go home where you belong.”

“I’m not ready.”

“What keeps you here?” Mara asked, and then, with a soft laugh, she answered her own question. “Ah, a woman, of course, The Cordova men are like wild stallions, overflowing with the juices of life.”

“Very funny,” he muttered.

“A woman,” Mara said, and it was no longer a question. She regarded him for several moments, and then shook her head. “You still have not made peace with what you are, have you? The lives you’ve taken still prey on your conscience after all this time.”

He didn’t answer, but there was no need. She knew the truth as well as he did. He didn’t kill often these days, but when he did, the guilt stayed with him, one more stain on his already-black soul. In time, the guilt faded, like everything else, but it never really went away. He remembered each of their faces, the taste of their blood, hot and sweet on his tongue, the faint sigh that always sounded like regret as they breathed their last.

“If it bothers you to take the lives of the young and vibrant, then take those who are sick and eager to go.” She smiled at him; it was a hungry, predatory smile. “Think of it as culling the herd.”

“It doesn’t bother you to take a life? You never regret it?”

She stopped walking and turned to face him. “I am Vampire. It was not something I sought, nor was it bequeathed to me of my own choosing. I could have spent my existence bewailing my fate. Instead, I choose to embrace what I am. I am Nosferatu. It is my nature to hunt, to kill, just as it is yours. If peace is what you are searching for, you will never find it until you fully accept who and what you are. There is no going back, Rane. There is no magic cure. You are what you were born to be.”

“Why do you hide in the night when you can walk in the sun?” he asked, hoping to steer the conversation away from himself.

“The night was my day for many centuries,” she said with a shrug. “After all these years, there is little difference between the night and the day, save the hunting is better in the dark.” She smiled at him again, her eyes aglow. “Come now, let us go and cull the herd.”

He shook his head.

“Ah, Rane, what am I to do with you?” she asked, pouting prettily.

He looked at her and laughed. She was thousands of years old, yet she looked like a young woman trying to wheedle her father into letting her take the car. Her eyes were alight with a lust for life as she tugged on his arm.

“Come, Rane. I’m your godmother. You must do as I wish.”

He snorted softly. “Do I look like Cinderella to you?”

Her laughter spilled over him, as warm as the sun he hadn’t seen in almost a hundred years.

“More like the handsome prince. You must introduce me to the princess sometime soon. Come,” she coaxed, tugging on his arm. “I’m going to Egypt on the morrow. Who knows when we shall have the chance to hunt together again?”

“Why are you going to Egypt?”

“The land calls to me. Every hundred years or so, I get homesick for the valley of the Nile. I want to bury myself in my native earth and rest a while.”

He grunted softly. Very old Vampires often went to ground to rest, sometimes for a year, sometimes for a century or more.

Resigned to doing as she wished, he allowed Mara to lead the way as she searched for prey.

After a time, they came upon a middle-aged man and woman emerging from a nightclub. Hanging on to each other, the couple staggered down the street to where they had left their car.

Mara followed them on silent feet.

Rane followed Mara. Even though he had fed earlier, his excitement escalated as the two of them closed in on the unsuspecting couple. He was a Vampire and as such, he was a predator without equal. There was no denying the thrill of the hunt, the anticipation of holding his prey captive in his embrace, the primal excitement that came with knowing that he held the power of life and death in his hands, the first taste of life’s elixir sliding over his tongue.

Mara took the man as he was fumbling in his pocket for his keys.

Rane swept the woman into his arms. He silenced her startled cry with a look and a touch. Speaking to her mind, he wiped away her fear, and then he stood there a moment, gazing down at her, wishing he held another woman in his arms, a woman with hair the color of summer moonlight and eyes as blue as the sky.

Muttering an oath, he summoned Savanah’s image to the forefront of his mind.

And then he lowered his head and drank.

Chapter Thirteen

Savanah woke with a start. She glanced at her watch, noting that it was after ten. Sitting up, she stretched her arms and legs, a little surprised that she had fallen asleep, and then she shrugged. At least she’d had a few minutes of blessed forgetfulness, but now, all too soon, everything she had learned earlier that evening came rushing back.

Rane was a Vampire.

She didn’t want to believe it was true, couldn’t abide the thought that he was one of them, a blood drinker, like the hideous creature that had killed her mother and very likely murdered her father, as well. Nor did she want to believe that Rane drank blood. She didn’t want to believe that he had lied to her about what he was. A shape-shifter, indeed! Not that she could blame him for lying. Who would admit to being a godforsaken, blood-sucking, creature of the night? She didn’t want to remember that she had made love to him only hours ago. At least she didn’t have to worry about getting pregnant, she thought with relief.

She picked up the book that had slipped from her fingers when she dozed off. Thumbing through it, she frowned when she looked at the list of Cordova names again. How could Rane’s parents be Vampires? Everyone knew the Undead couldn’t create life. She glanced at his mother’s name. A notation in the margin indicated that Cara Aideen DeLongpre Cordova had been adopted by Roshan DeLongpre and Brenna Flanagan. There was no such notation alongside the names of Rane or his brother, Raphael. Had it been an oversight on her mother’s part? Or had Rane’s parents found a way to reproduce?

Savanah shook her head. Such a thing was unthinkable. There were enough Vampires in the world already without their being able to mate and produce dozens, maybe hundreds, of Vampire offspring. And since male Vampires didn’t age and females didn’t go through menopause, they could probably reproduce indefinitely. Lordy, that was a scary thought, a world overrun by Vampires. Not to mention Werewolves and who knew what else.

She wrapped her arms around her midsection as she imagined giving birth to a Vampire child. Would it sleep all day and need blood to survive? She was letting her imagination run wild. Rane and his brother had to have been adopted. Vampires didn’t age. If they had been born Vampires, they would have remained infants forever. Wouldn’t they?

Shaking off her disconcerting thoughts, she closed the book and set it aside, then glanced at her watch again. Rane had said he would see her tonight. What would she do when he showed up? Alarm skittered down her spine. Vampire.

She jumped when the doorbell rang. Was it Rane? Gaining her feet, she ran into the kitchen. Opening the metal box on the table, she grabbed one of the wooden stakes and slid it into the waistband of her slacks. It felt reassuring against the small of her back. Deciding it was better to be safe than sorry, she dropped a bottle of holy water into her pants’ pocket.

She took a deep breath when the doorbell rang again; then, shoulders back, she went into the living room and peered through the peephole. Rane stood on the porch. She didn’t have to let him in, she thought, her mind racing, but then, he no longer needed an invitation. If she didn’t let him in, would he huff and puff and break down the door?

“Calm down,” she muttered. “He’s never hurt you before. He doesn’t know that you know what he is. Just open the door and revoke your invitation. He can’t come in without it. And don’t look in his eyes!”

She waited a moment more, and then opened the door just a crack.

Rane sensed the change in Savanah the minute he saw her, knew that, somehow, she had discovered the truth about him. The knowledge was in her eyes, though she avoided meeting his gaze directly, and in the way she held herself, as if poised for fight or flight. He could hear it in the rapid beat of her heart, smell the fear on her skin. See it in the heavy silver filigreed cross that nestled in the hollow of her throat.

“You can’t come in,” she said quickly.

“Yes,” he said dryly, “I guessed that.”

She blinked at him, surprised that he could find humor in the situation.

“Who told you?” he asked, curious in spite of himself.

“My mother.”

“Indeed?”

“Well, not directly, of course. I found your name in a book.”

He didn’t like the sound of that. “What book?” he asked sharply.

“Does it matter?”

It mattered a hell of a lot. For years, it had been rumored that Van Helsing, the most famous hunter of them all, had compiled a list of all the known Vampires in the world, and that it had been handed down from generation to generation. Rane, like most of his kind, had scoffed at the idea. Now it looked like such a book did, indeed, exist, and that Savanah had it. Did she have any idea that just possessing such a book put her life in danger? That it was, in all probability, the reason her father had been killed.