A Midsummer Night's Demon

chapter Eight

One day later

The harsh sound of heavy metal music screamed in her ear. Lyn threw her arm out blindly to the side, her hand smacking at the offending noise.

“Ouch,” she cried, hitting the clock radio on her nightstand. She sent the blasted thing careening to the floor.

She cuddled her left hand to her chest, and rubbed her injured wrist. Perfect. Just perfect! Now she could add a bruised wrist to her injures. She sat up and pulled the sheet away from her legs, looking at her knees. Both had turned a nice shade of purplish-blue from where she’d fallen on them the night before. Her gaze moved to her swollen ankle, wincing when she moved her foot.

Memories of the previous night came crashing in on her, making it hard to breathe. Her lungs fought for air as her panic rose. She looked to her window to see if the sun had finally risen.

All night she’d been awakened with terrible nightmares. Each time she checked the window for sunlight and wiped perspiration from her brow. Despite Lyn’s exhaustion, her mind refused to rest, instead she relived the terrible events of the past week whether awake or asleep.

Vampires!

A week ago, she would have found Ky’s explanation laughable. Now? Well now, it was maddening. Her world had turned on its head overnight.

She ran away after Ky told her he was a vampire, flying down the boardwalk as fast as her shaky legs could carry her. When she got to the parking lot she noticed his car. Lyn pulled his keys from her purse and had just sat inside when she realized that if she took the car he would have to come get it. And that meant she would have to see him, meet him—she never wanted to see him again.

Leaving the keys in the ignition, she jumped out of the car and ran down the road. After about a mile, tears clouded her vision and she tripped over something. The pain in her ankle kept her from caring about what had tripped her as she hopped to the side of the road. Knowing she wouldn’t make it much further on foot, she’d pulled her phone from her purse to discover her cell had just enough charge to make two calls; one to information to get a number for a cab company and the other to arrange for a taxi to come pick her up.

On the drive home, the events of the previous week played like a movie reel in her mind. She’d sought to rationalize the events.

The attack…“Random,” Lyn answered herself aloud.

The fact that Ky didn’t take her to a hospital…“Unnecessary.”

Ky sleeping all day and up all night…”I thought he worked the overnight shift at the precinct.”

All perfectly reasonable explanations. Lyn gave an inelegant snort of contention.

All lies.

She knew the truth now and it stunk like a rotting corpse. A putrid, vampire corpse. Ky worked the overnight shift because he had too. The damned man could not go out in the sun. He hadn’t taken her to a hospital because he did not want any questions about the attack. She fingered the stitches on her neck. This wound had been caused by Juan…or Raziel—whatever his freakin’ name was—biting her. The thought caused her stomach to churn. Ky was every bit as awful as her attacker. And a liar. A traitor.

A vampire for Goddess’ sake!

His first concern had been keeping vampires a secret. He did not care about her at all. She had thought she was falling in love with Ky. Thought he was a good guy. She couldn’t have been more wrong. Thank goodness, they hadn’t slept together!

“Mierda. How could my life go so wrong in a matter of hours?”

Her anger flared and she crossed her legs, forgetting about her swollen ankle until it made contact with the opposite leg. Lyn folded her legs anyway, welcoming the pain as a physical manifestation of her inner turmoil. She sat with her elbows on her butterflied knees, face buried in her upturned palms.

Her clock radio went off again, screeching in her ears. She must have hit the snooze button. Whatever! It served as a good reminder that she needed to get up and get back to her life.

She had a job she needed to go to. She’d wasted enough of her time on Ky something Robinson. Sheesh, she didn’t even know his full name. She didn’t know a lot about his life. Didn’t want to. She just wanted to put the entire thing behind her and move on.

Pushing gingerly out of the bed, she realized it was time to leave Ky and his crazy world behind.

****

Ky opened his eyes, and instinctively sent his senses throughout his home. They flowed through his room, down the hall, into the guest room to find…nothing. He’d never thought such a mundane word could bring him immeasurable pain.

Daelyn had run from him. Run! She’d been terrified of him, of what he was, and he could not blame her. The fight between him and Raziel had been violent. When he’d cleaned up the mess, he realized how awful it must have looked to her. She no doubt thought him a lunatic. A murderer, though he’d only done what had been necessary to protect her.

He’d followed her to assure her safety. Staying in the shadows, he watched her leave his keys in his car and head off on foot down the road. He had seen her trip over a fallen pine branch in the road. It broke his heart to see her tears fall down her soft cheeks.

He had just taken a step out of the nearby copse of trees, his arm reaching for her, when she pulled her phone from her purse to call for a cab. Knowing help was on the way, he melted back into the shadows, to watch over her until the taxi arrived and he could return to clean up the evidence of the battle.

In his world, danger crept in the shadows of the night. The adrenaline rush had gotten him through in centuries past, but now he had something else to drive him—laughter and love wrapped up in tanned skin and beautiful brown eyes to create desire as he’d never known before.

He would give her a little time to adjust. Surely she would come to realize that he was a decent guy, even if he was a vampire. He would wait a day or two then call her, try to explain.

****

One week later

Lyn sat at her desk, glancing at her watch. Almost time to go. She closed her accounting program and shutdown her computer before pushing her chair under her desk. Doing something so mundane and normal made her smile. In the week since the incident in the park, she had tried very hard to channel her anger into something constructive like throwing herself into her work, and forgetting all about vampires and superpowers.

Getting back to normal.

Her nightmares continued to plague her. Sometimes Raziel starred in the dreams, other times they focused on Ky. With Raziel, the dreams always contained violence and death. With Ky in the lead role, they usually started with a romantic tryst, but they always ended the same—with Ky attacking something.

Ten minutes later, she stood in the parking lot unlocking her car. A police car blew by, sirens blaring. She paused, turning her head to watch it pass. The sound brought Ky to mind.

He claimed he worked as a cop. She’d been brought up to believe in the integrity of the police. Ky should have had more integrity and truthfulness.

Cops were supposed to be the good guys. Ky was supposed to be a good guy. She hated to admit it, but she missed him. Missed the way he made her laugh, the way he made her feel as if she was the only thing that mattered in his life. She thought she had found the love of her life.

As she opened the door and slid behind the wheel, a second police car screamed by, siren wailing. The sound, louder than the first, hurt her ears.

She gave a snort. Sometimes cops could be the bad guys. They could be dirty. They could lie. Ky had definitely lied.

“He’d probably lied about being a cop,” Lyn muttered to herself.

With a harsh flick of her wrist, she turned the key, and the engine purred to life. After putting it in reverse, she punched down hard on the accelerator. With a screech of the tires, she backed out of her space. Her white-knuckled fingers gripped the wheel in anger at the man who had deceived her and broke her heart.

****

Ky sat at his desk staring at his computer screen with sightless eyes. He had been appointed a new case—a series of missing people in the Keys, all of whom disappeared at night. Concerned a vampire may be responsible, his boss had assigned him to investigate. He was supposed to be going through the vampire database for the area, instead, he found himself thinking about Lyn.

The smell of chamomile came wafting in the air when the latest rookie assigned to him sat down with her tea. “Any luck?” she asked.

“No.” The smell of her tea carried a powerful reminder of Lyn. Like a kick to his gut, it pushed the air from his lungs forcing him to take a deep inhale. “Is there any way I could get you not to drink that crap around my desk?” Ky could not keep the growl from his voice, which solicited a raised eyebrow from the trainee.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll go to the break room.”

“You do that.”

His rudeness knew no bounds. He shook his head in irritation at his manners. It wasn’t her fault she wanted to get some work done while he obsessed about Lyn. Wasn’t her fault that the tea she drank reminded him of his mate. But that didn’t keep him from being miserable about the situation.

Ky watched the rookie walk away, any normal male would appreciate the way her hips swayed. She looked beautiful, with blonde hair that fell to the middle of her back and blue eyes that sparkled when the light hit them just right. Yep, any male would be attracted to her.

Not him.

He wanted a woman with long brown hair and matching eyes. A woman who had a slight Hispanic accent that made her roll her R’s in a sexy way. He wanted Lyn. His heartmate. And no other would do. She had come into his life, filling it with hot-blooded passion. Now just an empty shell, he endured each night, did his duty and fought not to check his cell phone every two minutes to see if she returned his calls.

More than once he’d stopped by her townhouse—she refused to answer the door, even though he announced he could hear her breathing inside. He had left her messages on her home and work numbers like some kind of stalker, begging for a chance to explain—they had gone unreturned.

Completely miserable without her, he thought of her every minute, wondering what she was doing. Was she eating? Did she think of him—dream of him?

She needed more time to adjust, and he had no choice but to give her that time, because the alternative would be to give her up, and he couldn’t do that. He needed to win her back, and Ky knew he could, if she would just give him a chance.

****

One month later

The vampire sat alone at his kitchen table eating his first meal of the day. He brought his glass to his lips and took a long swallow of the crimson liquid inside. His throat constricted around the warmed blood. It was Lyn’s type—O positive—but it didn’t taste anything like Lyn.

Her blood tasted like her—sweet, spicy, with a hint of fire and a lot of passion. This crap was plain, cool, and boring. Definitely a stark contrast to his mate.

She’d been perfect for him. Daelyn Torres kept him on his toes. She didn’t take any grief from him. A brave woman, she’d been willing to do whatever it took to get her life back.

A life that no longer included him.

For the past month, he had continued to try to reach her, but she refused him every time. He walked a fine line between contacting her often enough that she knew he still cared, and not sliding over the line to seem like a psychopathic stalker.

Psychopathic. A good word to describe him. Like falling down the rabbit hole, his life seemed dark and strange without her.

He battled to keep himself focused, keep his mind sharp. Every time he did something, it reminded him of her. He got in his boat to go to shore—he remembered bringing her to his island that first night. He looked at pictures of the crime scene at work—it reminded him of the park where he lost her. He got in his car to come home after a long day—it still smelled like her after all this time.

He took a deep breath, relishing the scent of jasmine and chamomile that lingered in his home. She was everywhere, he could not escape her. And heaven help him, but he’d started to want an escape.

It killed him to think about what he was missing. He had found heaven in her arms and hell without her. He could not go on like this forever.

If she didn’t come around soon, he would have to go to her one last time to erase all memories of their time together from her mind. Goddammit, he didn’t want to do that, but he would. Keeping vampires a secret meant their survival. No demon could know about them, especially one who hated them as Lyn did.

He threw his plate across the room. It shattered, sending ceramic bits mixed with uneaten toast crumbing to the floor.

****

Lyn sat at the kitchen table alone, eating her dinner. Looking at the omelet on her plate transported her back to the day Ky had made one for her. They had been so happy. She had been so happy.

He had attempted to see her, called her numerous times, and she denied him each time, refusing to allow him to talk to her. For weeks after the incident in the park, her fear kept her from returning his calls. She wanted to have her normal, sane life back. Now she found herself wondering what sane was.

Was it sane to believe every vampire to be the personification of evil? Not all demons acted the same, so why should she assume all vampires did?

Ky didn’t seem evil. Deadly, yes. She’d seen that with her own eyes. But she didn’t think of him as evil. And she’d spent a lot of time thinking about him, replaying their time together in her mind.

He had been nothing but good to her, treating her with tenderness, and taking care of her injuries. He could have taken advantage of her while she stayed in his home, but he had not. Instead he’d been a perfect gentleman.

There had been depth to their passion that went beyond anything she had ever experienced before. She wanted him in a way she’d never wanted any other man. Had Ky somehow influenced her into wanting him, like the vampires in the movies did?

She didn’t think so. If he’d been controlling her mind, he would have continued doing so after she refused to see him. He had been very persistent in his pursuit of her since that night in the park.

Every few days she arrived home to find a message on her machine requesting she allow him to explain. Had he been controlling her mind, he could have forced her to contact him or let him inside any of the times he’d knocked on her door.

Life seemed so empty without him. Every time she heard his voice she struggled not to call. Well, not at first. The first few weeks after the incident, she had been angry and upset. Ky had made an easy target for her pique at the time and that wasn’t fair.

In the past couple of weeks, she’d come to realize the fault lay with her attacker. He deserved her anger, her hatred. She now blamed Raziel for what happened to her, not Ky.

Lyn looked across the table at the empty chair. It taunted her, reminding her of her loneliness. She’d given up the one man in her life she thought she could love. A tear of regret rolled down her cheek at the loss. The loss of her normal world. The loss of passion.

The loss of him.

****

Two months later

Lyn rolled over in her bed, and kicked the covers from her body. She turned her head to look at the clock. Three in the morning and all was not well.

Ky had stopped calling. It hurt worse than she could have imagined. She had not realized how much she loved the sound of his voice. In a strange way, his messages seemed as if she were coming home to him. Hearing his voice, knowing he still wanted to see her had kept her heart light.

Weeks had passed since his last message. He must have given up on her ever calling back, and she could not blame him. For over six weeks, she’d ignored his pursuit. He probably thought she hated him.

Funny, but it was herself she hated. She chastised herself for not realizing sooner how much she cared about him. It took his complete absence from her life to realize she needed him. She didn’t want to live without him. Without hearing his voice. Without knowing he cared.

Daelyn realized she loved him. And the time had come to admit it, to both herself and him.

Her hand went to her throat, her fingers traced the faint scar. Could she live with him being a vampire? Did she feel safe with him?

YES, her mind screamed.

She had never been surer of anything in her entire life. It had taken time, but she now realized Ky, the man, and Ky, the vampire, were one in the same. He had never hurt her, just the opposite, in fact. He’d been kind and tender. He had stirred a fiery passion within her that melted her bones. He was everything she wanted in a man.

Handsome, sweet, and he put her needs before his own. The way Ky looked at her, as if she was the only woman in the world, touched her heart. He opened doors for her, and saw to her comfort. She could spend the rest of her life loving a guy like Ky.

The rest of my life. She looked at the ceiling of her bedroom. I wonder how we could be together.

Demons lived a long time, often more than two centuries. If the movies could be believed, then Ky would live a very long time. Being mated to a vampire wouldn’t be so bad if her mate came with a long life, superhuman strength and speed. While not keen about the drinking blood part, she decided she could handle it, if it meant several lifetimes with a man like Ky.

And for all she knew vampires didn’t drink blood. In their time together, she never saw Ky consume anything that looked like blood. Since she had not given him a chance to explain about himself, she couldn’t be sure blood drinking came with the territory.

Daelyn needed to talk to Ky. She had questions and was finally ready to discover the answers. She realized they were meant to be together. Fate determined them mates, and she could only hope it was not too late to find happiness again in his strong arms. After all, he’d promised to take her to the Litha Festival and that celebration happened to be today. If nothing else, maybe she could use his promise to make him see her.

Lyn reached for the phone next to her bed.

****

Ky rubbed the back of his neck to ease the tension that pooled there in a painful ache of clenching muscles. Finding no relief, he blew out a heavy sigh, and brought his hand around to rub the night’s growth of beard. He stood in the wake of hopelessness. Lost in desperation, his insides cried out for him to end his suffering. He had found hope in Lyn. Hope for his future, that it might be full of joy and love.

Now he knew better.

It had been more than week since he’d last called her. Ten days? Thirteen? He couldn’t be sure, since time had lost all meaning. His life had fallen apart around him. Ky had no reason to get out of bed without the hope of talking to her. Utterly alone now, he realized the future held no hope for them.

He’d waited two months for her to come around. Two long, miserable months, during which he’d suffered in innumerable ways at the loss of her. She’d obviously given up on their love and moved on without him. The realization ripped his heart from his chest, just as he had done to her attacker. However, unlike Raziel, death did not take away the pain. Each day had become a struggle to exist, for without Lyn, his life seemed incomplete, unlivable.

He hated each day, took his anger and frustration out on those around him, until his boss forced him to take some time off. That only made things worse. Now he found himself alone each night in his home, surrounded by her scent, by the memories they’d made in this house. They haunted him like a malevolent poltergeist, closing in on him until he could not breathe.

His chest tightened, each breath became a struggle. His muscles knotted under his shirt as tension settled in. He knew what he needed to do and could not deceive himself any longer. Happiness with Lyn would not happen. And if they couldn’t be together, he could not allow Lyn to remember him. He would have to erase the memories of him from her mind. His gut twisted at the thought.

This was it, once he erased himself from her mind, there would be no hope for them to ever be together. He would just be another stranger on the street. The pain in his chest grew, his breaths shortened.

Putting it off any longer would only prolong the agony of making the fateful decision. He would go to her tonight, slip into her apartment while she slept. Her mind would be open, easy to manipulate in her sleep. He could make their time together seem like a dream.

It certainly seemed like a dream to him. A beautiful dream that had somehow transformed into a horrible nightmare.

He forced his feet to move forward one slow step at a time. Taking a deep, fortifying breath, he reached for the knob of his front door. With a twist of his hand, he resigned himself to the fact his future had changed forever—for the worse.