A Midsummer Night's Demon(23)

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.