Chasing Shadows(31)
Mark’s eyes were full of hunger, and I saw his raw desire in them. I took my time removing the rest of my clothing, until I stood before him nude, wearing nothing but a smile. With his eyes on mine, Mark reached to remove his shoes and socks, kicking them aside when they were off. But when he went for his shirt, I stopped him again, and taking the hem in my hands I undid the buttons one by one and pushed it off his shoulders. I then reached for the clasp of his jeans and undid those, pushing the pants and his underwear down his legs. He stepped out of them quickly, and when he reached for me again, I let him pick me up and carry me to the bed.
*****
After our languorous session of lovemaking, Mark and I had gone down to the kitchen to make dinner, and during the course of it, he went to fetch Juliette so she could eat with us. When the two of them returned, she informed us that she had once again spoken to her mother, and that Monica had agreed to speak with her pack’s leaders about contacting other shifter breeds for information on the alleged immortality of dhunphyr.
When we sat down to eat, she went on with, “I wonder how Lochlan plans to find that bloodsucker from the movie theater.”
“Well, like you, he’s got his scent now,” I said. “He won’t forget what he smells like, nor what he looks like, so he’ll make inquiries with every vampire he knows to see if anyone they know matches the description. They, in turn, will ask everyone else they know, and so on. Eventually he will find him—Loch’s good at that sort of thing.”
I added that while there was still time before the animals needed to be brought in, that I would also make calls to the vampires I still communicated with, doing pretty much the same thing as my brother—putting out feelers. I had to believe that at some point, one of us would come up with something, some piece of evidence that would confirm or deny the story I had believed since childhood.
I wanted to believe that Lochlan was right, that the fact that my senses identified Mark as an immortal being meant that he was one. That it meant I would not have to contemplate the prospect of turning him into a vampire to keep him with me, or allowing him to die of old age and then following him into death because my grief was all-consuming. But because of what I had learned in the last two days about the addictive properties of dhunphyr blood and the rumors that these infants were killed in the first few hours of life, I found I could not trust an ability that I had until now taken for granted. I’d long trusted my gift to warn me of the presence of vampires and shapeshifters before I even smelled them, yet with Mark it had been the opposite: I’d smelled him before my supe-sense had been triggered. I could not help but wonder what that meant.
My phone calls yielded no immediate results, but I had not really expected they would. My associates were intrigued by my line of questioning, and I gave them the excuse that I was asking in order to locate the person or persons who had told our stories to author Vivian Drake. I’d feared it might make my vampire friends clam up, but was surprised when they all seemed eager to assist in my search—especially when I let slip the little half-truth that I’d already received word that she was planning another book, and that it would expose the massive cover-up of vampires’ addiction to dhunphyr blood.
I did not tell anyone I spoke to about Mark. These were people I saw almost as rarely as my father, and I did not see the point of telling them something they didn’t really need to know.
To my surprise, when it was time to bring in the animals, Juliette offered to help us. I gave her the relatively easy task of making sure all the water and food troughs were full, and said she could try to get the pigs inside but that she didn’t have to if she didn’t want to. Amazingly, though, she actually accomplished that as well.
Juliette also lent a hand in brushing down the horses, and by the time the sun could no longer be seen over the treetops, all the work was done for the day. We bid each other goodnight as I closed the barn doors, then she went back up to the apartment. Mark and I headed for the house, stopping to retrieve Moe and Cissy from the kennel. Then we did the most mundane and normal thing we’d done together yet—we sat on the couch and watched TV. I giggled a little as I sat against him and smiled, and when the movie we’d tuned into was over, we went upstairs to bed. Moe and Cissy eagerly climbed into their miniature of my bed, both turning in a circle as dogs often did, before settling down, sighing, and closing their eyes.
As Mark and I were undressing, he made a quip about whether or not we should even bother putting nightclothes on. Though I smiled when I looked at him, I surprised the both of us by saying, “As much as I enjoy the physical side of our relationship, I think that, for tonight, I just want to be held.”
After a moment of looking at me, he nodded. We each put on our usual nightclothes and climbed into the bed, and Mark pulled the sheet and light blanket over top of us. I laid my head on his shoulder and he wrapped his arms around me, and I sighed before falling into a blissful, contented sleep.
*****
I jerked out of sleep thinking, Good grief, is it seven already? before realizing that it was not the steady buzz of the alarm that had woken me. The telephone rang for a second time, and started its third before Mark reached over and fumbled for the handset.
“Yes?” he answered sleepily, as I leaned across his chest to glance at the clock.
3 a.m. Who the heck was calling here at three in the morning?
I was considering that it was someone who didn’t know I was a night sleeper when Mark held out the phone to me. “It’s Loch,” he said, his voice a little clearer than a moment ago.
I held the handset to my ear as I laid my head back down on Mark’s chest, smiling in spite of myself at the steady, rhythmic beating of his heart. “It’s three in the morning, Loch Ness,” I said into the phone. “What the hell do you want?”
Lochlan chuckled. “Sorry to interrupt another round of hot, lusty sex, dear sister,” he began.
“You didn’t interrupt anything but my beauty sleep,” I retorted.
He laughed again. “As if you need beauty sleep, love. You were born gorgeous,” he replied.
I had to smile. “That’s right, suck up to your mistress, slave, for waking her up in the middle of the night. Speaking of, why did you?”
“I got a hit, thought you’d want to know right away,” Lochlan said, his tone all business. “One of my contacts knows someone in Ireland who might be able to give you some information.”
“Might be able to? Loch, you know we need definite,” I said.
“I know that. But this lass he told me of is apparently renowned across the British Isles and half of Europe for her psychic abilities.”
An old memory popped up to the forefront of my brain. Couldn’t be, I thought dismissively, then amended, Maybe it’s a descendant.
“Saph? You still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. Where in Ireland is this famous psychic?” I asked.
“Currently resides in Briarhill, in County Galway,” Lochlan replied. “My contact said he was fairly certain you could get an audience with her without an appointment.”
“All well and good, brother, if I could get to Ireland quickly, which I can’t,” I said with a sigh.
“Why can’t you?” Mark wondered. “Based on what you were going to pay me, I can only guess you have the means to go.”
I sat up finally and looked at him. “The money isn’t the problem, Mark. I could pay for a couple of tickets just fine. But have you any idea how hard it will be to get even one round-trip ticket to Ireland on the spot, let alone two?”
Lochlan cleared his throat on the other end of the phone line. “Saph, you know you wouldn’t have to pay for the airfare,” he said slowly.
I felt my spine stiffen. “If you’re referring to what I think you’re referring to, you can forget it,” I said harshly. “No way in the seven levels of hell.”
Mark sat up then, putting a hand on my arm. “Sweetheart, what is it?” he queried, concern in his countenance as he looked at me.
I shook my head as Loch was saying, “Don’t be ridiculous. All you have to do is ask. He’d give you world, Saphrona—you know you have only to request it. The use of his plane is nothing.”
I growled as I ran a hand through my hair, drawing my knees up to rest my elbows on them. “Loch, even if I wanted to—which I don’t—I cannot do that. I could not ask him for a roll of toilet paper, not after all these years I’ve spent alternately ignoring him or telling him I hate him. I will not humiliate myself that way, and I will not give him or Evangeline the satisfaction of me having to ask for anything.”
Lochlan loosed what I knew to be an aggravated sigh, and for a moment I felt bad for him. He was constantly being drawn into the battles between Diarmid and I, which I was truly sorry for, but then I remembered that this time he had brought it on himself by suggesting I ask our father for anything in the first place.