Chapter
19
Once Zack’s frustration receded and his
anger cooled, he gave serious thought as to how to get Kaitlyn
back. He had no idea where her father had taken her, although the
Fortress she had talked about seemed the most logical destination.
But whether her father had taken her there or somewhere else,
locating her wouldn’t be a problem. He had tasted her blood and she
had tasted his. All he had to do was follow the blood bond that
bound them together.
The following night, he informed
Scherry he would be leaving town on Saturday for an extended
vacation. Assuring her that he would keep in touch, he gave her the
combination to the safe, as well as a list of bar supplies that
needed to be ordered on Monday. Once he was satisfied she
understood his instructions, he left the casino and drove to his
favorite haunt in the city. Transporting from one country to
another required a great deal of energy and concentration. Best to
be wellfed before he attempted it.
After parking his car in the lot, he
entered the nightclub and made his way to the bar. He stood there a
moment, studying the customers, his mind touching first one and
then another. Mortals all seemed to worry about the same things, he
mused. The men were usually concerned with sex and how soon they
could get it, or money, and how to make more of it. The women
fretted over a wider variety of mundane things—their husbands,
their children, their hair, their weight. He had yet to meet a
mortal woman who was happy with her figure and wasn’t obsessed with
losing five to ten pounds, or more.
He settled on a middle-aged redhead who
was standing at the far end of the bar, alone. She was pretty, she
was single, and she was happy to be so. As was her wont, she had
stopped in for a drink on her way home from the hospital where she
worked in the admitting department.
It took little effort to draw her
attention. When she met his gaze, he mesmerized her with a look.
Speaking to her mind, he told her to follow him outside, which she
did.
Taking her by the hand, he led her into
the alley that ran between the nightclub and the building next
door.
There had been a time when he’d felt
guilty for luring women into the shadows and taking their blood,
but the guilt hadn’t lasted long. Not feeding regularly was far
more dangerous for his prey. He had learned early that people died
when he waited too long. It was impossible to stop feeding once
discomfort turned to agony.
He spoke quietly to the woman, assuring
her that he meant her no harm, and then he bent his head to her
neck and drank. When he had taken all he dared, he escorted her
back into the nightclub, then wiped the incident from her
mind.
She blinked at him as he released her
from his enchantment.
Zack smiled at her. “Can I buy you a
drink?”
“What?” She looked confused for a
moment.
“I asked if I could buy you a
drink.”
“Do I know you?”
“Zack, remember?”
She frowned at him.
Zack grinned inwardly. He knew she was
trying to figure out why she felt faint and disoriented and why she
didn’t remember inviting him to sit with her. Since he had erased
his memory from her mind, it was unlikely that she would ever
recall being in an alley with a vampire. And even if the memory
surfaced, no one would believe her.
“You should go home, Karen,” he
said.
“Yes. Yes, I should.” She stared at
him, her brow furrowed, and then she left the nightclub, her steps
a little wobbly, due, no doubt, to the amount of blood she had
lost.
Well, it had been for a good cause,
Zack mused as he left the bar and drove back to the casino.
Tomorrow night would find him on his way to Romania.
Zack rose with the setting sun. Time
was of the essence. Being able to close his eyes and transport
himself from one location to another was one of his favorite
vampire perks. After he was first turned, it had taken a little
getting used to, and even knowing he was nearly indestructible, it
had scared the hell out of him the first few times he had tried it.
And there was always the fear, at least in the beginning, that he
might misjudge where he wanted to go and wind up inside a mountain
or something. Thankfully, that had never happened.
At first, he had gone only short
distances—from one city to another, then one state to another, then
across the country. He had been a vampire for a year or so before
he got the nerve to go hopping from country to country, and then
he’d wondered why he had waited so long.
Of course, he had to time things just
right. It wouldn’t do to arrive at his destination when the sun was
up. A quick check on the computer and he figured if he left in the
next few minutes, he would arrive in Romania with just enough time
to find a suitable place to hole up until sundown.
He took a quick shower, dressed, and
left his lair. Transporting himself to the woods near Kaitlyn’s
cabin, he concentrated on the link between them, felt a growing
surge of supernatural power stir the leaves on the trees as he
opened his senses. The bond between them was like invisible strands
binding them together, a sort of preternatural GPS that only he
could see. All he had to do was follow it.
The sense of moving swiftly through
time and space had once filled him with trepidation; now, it was a
thrill like no other. A rush of cold wind, a sense of
weightlessness, of being part of the very air that surrounded
him.
When he came to himself again, he was
standing outside a massive gray stone edifice located atop a high
mountain. The structure was magnificent, with tall, narrow, leaded
windows on the ground floor. Three wide stone steps led to a pair
of iron-strapped doors that looked strong enough to withstand an
army.
“The Fortress,” he mused. It could be
nothing else.
He went to ground in the midst of a
stand of timber located behind the Fortress. Mortals would
undoubtedly consider spending the day buried in the ground utterly
morbid. But, for his kind, it was quite refreshing. He had heard of
old vampires who went to ground for a year or two when they grew
weary of their long existence. Others who were bored with a
particular century went to ground until it was over.
Zack had never done that, but he could
see how awaking in a new century might add a certain zest to one’s
existence. With the passage of a hundred years, there would be new
inventions to explore, new dynasties, new fashions, perhaps a new
language, new countries, new methods of communication and
transportation.
He closed his eyes as he sensed the
coming sunrise. When he was first made, the onset of the sleep of
his kind had been scary as hell. It was like falling into a deep
black pit, with no assurance that he would ever wake again. In the
beginning, he had feared being discovered by a vampire hunter and
destroyed while he slept, but that had proven to be a needless
worry. Some innate vampire sense warned him when his life was in
danger; if necessary, he awakened long enough to defend himself. He
called it vampire adrenaline, that burst of energy that roused him
from sleep.
He reached out, his senses searching
for Kaitlyn, as the dark sleep overshadowed him, dragging him down
into oblivion.