Dark Nights

“Kate!” She sprang up from her desk and fumbled with the lock.

The detective stood outside the door, her gun clutched in her hand. But the friend stepped into the office, her eyes soft with concern. “Are you all right?”

“Fine.” Now that she wasn’t alone. “In fact, I’m sure I overreacted. I shouldn’t have called you. You’re a major case detective, and this is just a little vandalism.”

“And these?” Kate asked as she gestured at the arrangement on the desk. “Granted, it’s been a while since anyone has sent me flowers, but still I don’t think black roses are all that romantic.”

“Are you sure?” Paige teased. “The concept of romance could have changed in the many years since you’ve tried it. I don’t remember the last time you went on a date.”

“You’ve been divorced four years. But when’s the last time you dated?”

Paige shrugged. “It’s been a while,” she admitted. What she and Ben did together could hardly be called dating.

“Was there a card with these ugly flowers?” Kate asked.

“It’s stuck to the stake.”

“Stake?” The detective shuddered. “That looks like what someone pounded into the steering wheel of your car.”

“Sebastian’s car,” Paige corrected her, then flinched as she recalled the damage to the sports coupe. “And he’s going to kill me for not protecting his pride and joy.”

“I think he’s going to be more concerned about you than his car,” Kate said. “What does the note say?”

She released a shaky breath. “It says I’m going to get what I deserve.”

“You don’t deserve this, Paige,” Kate said, her voice husky with emotion.

She was such a good friend—something Paige never would have suspected they would become given how they’d met. Back before Paige had joined the law firm, she’d been a public defender, representing some of the people Kate had arrested. Detective Wever hadn’t appreciated that Paige had sometimes gotten the charges either reduced or thrown out.

“You’re right,” she agreed. Whatever she might have done wrong in her life, she had already been punished enough with all that she had lost. “I think this is just a misunderstanding. Or mistaken identity. Or something. I can’t have a stalker.”

“Why not?”

She gestured at herself, pointing out her baggy sweatshirt and disheveled hair. “I’m hardly stalker material.”

“You’re beautiful, Paige,” her friend assured her. “I’m sure you have guys hitting on you all the time.”

“No.” Ben didn’t count. “I haven’t dated in forever.”

“So maybe it’s someone you represented,” Kate suggested.

“I haven’t practiced criminal law in years,” Paige said. “I’ve mostly been doing contracts and wills. Lizzy, being the divorce lawyer, is the one who gets the threats.”

“It’s only been a few years since you stopped practicing criminal law,” Kate said. “Even after you joined the firm, you kept doing pro bono work for the public defender’s office.”

“Much to your disappointment,” Paige said with a smile. “You sure you didn’t send me the flowers? There were times you called me a few unflattering names.”

“That was before I got to know you,” Kate said. “Then I understood that you were only trying to help.” She narrowed her eyes in a mock glare. “Damn bleeding heart…”

Remembering the stake, Paige shuddered. “Not hardly. It’s just that I know that people make mistakes.” Growing up, she’d watched her mother make mistake after mistake. And she vowed she’d never become like that, desperate and dependent on a man. But then she’d fallen for Ben….

“So you have no idea who could have sent these flowers or vandalized your car?”

She shrugged. “None.”

But then the voice reverberated in her head, its faint echo taunting her, You don’t belong here….

And her shrug turned into a shudder.

“What is it?” Kate asked, as perceptive as ever. “You’ve thought of something.”

She shook her head, unwilling to admit to hearing voices. Kate, as practical as she was perceptive, would think she was crazy. “It has to be a mistake.” There really was no voice inside her head.

“The flowers were left in your office. That was no mistake, Paige. And even though it’s Sebastian’s car, you’re the one who drove it here.”

She shuddered again. “And I had a strange sensation,” she confessed, “a feeling that someone was watching me.”

A muscle twitched along Kate’s delicate jaw. “You’re being stalked, Paige.”

“Then it must be some random kook.”

“This feels more personal than that,” Kate said. Her voice deepened with concern, and her blue eyes narrowed. “You’re sure your ex isn’t holding a grudge over the divorce?”

Despite all the years they’d been friends, Kate had never really met Ben. All those times, before the divorce, that Paige had asked him to join her and her friends for drinks or dinner—he’d been busy with work…and whatever else that he had never shared with her.

“Ben’s not holding a grudge,” Paige insisted. “He never fought the divorce. We never really ever fought.” Maybe if they had, they’d still be married. But, she suspected that Ben hadn’t cared enough to fight with her…or for her.

“You’re lucky you never fought,” Kate remarked, glancing away as if unable to meet Paige’s gaze. She’d never talked about her divorce, which had happened before she and Paige had become friends.

But they were friends, and because they were, Paige felt compelled to confess, “I think it has something to do with this place.”

Kate met her gaze now, her blue eyes carefully guarded. “What about this place?”

“I don’t know. I just feel…I just feel that there’s something off about it. That there’s some secret about it. You mentioned it last night,” Paige remembered. “You know something about this place.”

Kate shrugged. “Rumors. Nothing I can prove.”

“What are the rumors?”

A ragged sigh slipped through Kate’s lips. “Nothing that makes any sense. Just that the club and its patrons are keeping a secret.”

“You don’t know what the secret is?”

“Something dangerous. Something unbelievable, but no one’s ever said what it is. I thought it was some urban legend—something not worth my time to investigate.” That muscle twitched along her jaw again. “But one of my best friends is being threatened. It’s damn well worth my time now to launch an investigation.”

“I know where to start,” Paige shared. Her hand trembling, she turned the knob of the office door and stepped into the hall. Then she pointed to that heavy steel door at the end of it. “That’s the key to the secret. If only I had the key to the door.”

A small smile curved Kate’s lips. “I seldom need keys.”

Instead of excitement or anticipation, a chill of dread rushed over Paige. She wouldn’t like whatever they discovered behind that door. When Kate pulled a small kit of metal tools from her pocket, Paige nearly stopped her, but then she pulled back her hand.

She hadn’t fought Ben, either. She should have pushed him; she should have fought to learn all his secrets. But then, like now, she’d been afraid of what she might discover.

It was well past time to face her fears.

“Live, damn you, live,” Ben beseeched the man lying atop the table. Blood gurgled around the stake protruding from Owen Buskirk’s chest.

He understood how Sebastian had talked this man into protecting Paige. Buskirk owed Ben for saving the mortal he’d tried to turn and nearly killed instead. God, he’d been furious with the careless vampire for nearly killing an innocent girl. He’d threatened that if Owen ever needed him that he wouldn’t help.

“Live,” he pleaded with his patient as he worked frantically to repair the damage. Owen was an idiot, but he didn’t deserve what had been done to him. “You have to tell me who did this to you.”

Ben needed to know before the stake was driven into Paige’s heart. After cutting through what was left of the guy’s chest, he reached for the rib-splitter. But his efforts were futile—the heart had been splintered to pieces.

This undead had just become very dead.

“Someone’s trying to open the door,” a feminine voice warned him.

He glanced to Ingrid, the vampiress who occasionally served as his nurse. She hadn’t even bothered helping him with this patient, as if she’d instinctively known what Ben had refused to accept.

He lifted his gaze to the monitor that displayed the images from the surveillance camera hidden in the hall. His breath backed up in his lungs as he realized it was Paige standing at the door, beside the dark-haired detective who was messing with the lock. Fear was stark on her face, which was eerily pale on the black-and-white screen.

“Oh, God,” he murmured. “We need to move him.” But even if they managed to get him through the only other exit and into the sewers, they wouldn’t have time to clean up the blood that overflowed the metal exam table and pooled on the cement floor beneath it.

“There’s no time,” Ingrid said, voicing his thought aloud. “If they get inside, we will have to get rid of them.”

“No! I won’t let you hurt her.”

“You know the rules of the secret society,” Ingrid reminded him. “No mortal can know of us and live.”

“You’ve made an exception to that rule,” he pointed out.

“You’re the only exception,” Ingrid said, “because we need you.”

“And when you don’t?” Would he be expendable, too?

“We’re going to need you,” she said as she glanced from the body on the table back to him, “as long as we can trust you.”

Ben clenched his jaw, holding back a sharp retort. Losing his temper wouldn’t protect Paige.

“You’re going to want us to keep trusting you,” Ingrid warned him as the doorknob rattled. “And that means protecting our secret.”

He focused on the monitor again, on the fear on Paige’s face and the frustration on the detective’s. Please, leave it alone. Just leave it alone…

He had no clue if Paige would hear or heed his telepathic message. But all those other times that he’d seen the questions in her eyes, her need to know where he’d been and what he’d been doing, he’d sent her the same message. And her questions had remained in her eyes, unasked.

And the distance and distrust had grown between them.

He’d done it to protect her, as he had to protect her now.

“We need to get him out of here and leave,” he urged her, “in order to protect the secret.”

Ingrid gestured toward the dead vampire. “This is why mortals can’t learn about our society. This is what happens when they find out about us. They set out to destroy all of us. They feel they must kill what they fear.”

Ben shook his head. “You don’t know that a mortal did this. I have treated more wounds that were a result of vampire violence—either to other vampires or to mortals who were hurt as a result of what a vampire had done to them.”

“You shouldn’t be treating the mortals.”

“I’m a doctor first,” he said. “I’ve taken an oath.” Just as he’d once spoken vows to Paige, vows he would not break. He couldn’t leave the Underground, not with her in danger.

He glanced to the monitor and the two women standing in the hall, then back to the knob as it turned….

Chapter 7

“What the hell—” Sebastian’s heart slammed against his ribs as he ran down the hall to where Paige and her friend stood at the door.

“Sebastian,” Paige said, turning toward him. She threw her arms around his neck. “I’m so sorry….”

“Sorry?” Patting her back, he stared over her head at what the detective had done to the lock. Scratches marred the steel surface, but the door remained shut. And locked?

“About your car,” Paige said. She pulled back and lifted her gaze to his, her blue eyes wide with regret. “Did you see it or have the police already taken it away?”

“Oh, yeah, my car,” he said with a brief wince.

“You got my voice mail then?”

He shook his head. “No, I talked to Ben. He told me what happened.”

“Where is Ben?” Kate asked, finally turning her focus away from the door to stare at Sebastian.

“He was with me,” Paige said, her face flushing with color, “when we discovered the damage to your car. But then he had to rush off. He had an emergency.”

“What are you two doing?” He gestured behind them.

“Something strange is going on around here,” Paige said. “And Kate’s going to investigate.”

“Would you open this door for us?” the detective asked. “You’ve been managing Club Underground for a while. You must have a key.”

“There’s a key somewhere in the office,” he admitted. “I could probably dig it out if we had a while.”

“I can wait,” Kate said, folding her arms across her rather impressive chest.

He shrugged. “Fine. I’m pretty tired myself. Haven’t been to bed yet.”

“Really?”

He chuckled. “Well, I haven’t been to sleep yet. I doubt Paige has, either. And don’t you work nights, Detective?”

“So what are you suggesting?” Kate asked. “That we all sleep on this? Why would that be necessary if you have nothing to hide?”

The woman was too damn smart, and that made her a danger—to him and herself.

“It’s really not a problem,” he said. “I’ll dig out the key and open it.” He glanced up, at the camera hidden behind a heat duct register, and wished he could see inside the secret room.

He hoped like hell his vampire friend had been saved and they’d all slipped out the other exit as he stepped inside the office. After banging the desk drawers open and closed a few times, he rejoined the women who had not budged from their spot. He pulled out the ring of keys he always carried. “I think it was right here all along,” he said with a forced laugh. “Per the fire department ordinance, I’m supposed to carry it with me all the time since it opens up the other exit from the club.”

“Other exit?” Paige asked. “But you said nothing was behind that door.”

“Yeah, I didn’t want to mention what it really was, or I thought that you might not want to invest in the club,” he admitted. Honestly.

He had kept a lot from her—ever since he’d entered her life again. But, without her money, the building manager would have shut down the club. Ben had been unable to save the last owner, who’d been fatally wounded in a fight in the club. Sebastian couldn’t have asked Ben for the money; he’d already asked too much of him, forcing him to keep secrets that had cost him his marriage. And with nowhere else to go in Zantrax, most of the society would have moved away—to more welcoming cities and eras. Sebastian hadn’t wanted to leave her.

But she would have been safer had he left.

“Why wouldn’t you want to mention another exit?” Paige asked, her blond brows furrowed in confusion.

“Because it’s an exit to be used only when the other one is blocked. It goes into the sewers,” he said.

“Sewers?” Paige asked, her nose wrinkling with distaste.

“It’s the only other way out of a basement club. So you ladies might want to step to the side of the hall in case some rats run out when I open the door.”

Paige clutched at the sleeve of his suit jacket. “Rats?”

He slid the key into the lock. As he did, Paige dropped her hand from his arm and moved behind him. Kate, however, stepped closer. And covered his hand with hers.

“Uh, that’s okay,” she said. “You don’t need to open it. I can see now that this would open into the sewers.”

“Well, there’s actually another door behind it,” he admitted, “to the stairwell, which takes you down deeper into the sewer. Then you have to follow that tunnel to the ladder that leads up to a manhole cover in the street.”

All of which was true. Zantrax sewers were legendary as passageways for those who wanted to remain unseen. And undead. Club Underground bridged the world between mortals and immortals. A bridge that few should dare to cross.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to open it?” he asked, turning the key in the lock.

The detective tightened her grasp on his hand. “No, it’s not necessary.” She was clever and perceptive. “As you said earlier, it’s late. You should take Paige home.”

It was too late for that. The sun was just rising as he’d slipped inside the club moments earlier. “I can’t,” he said. “Can you see her home? Make sure she gets there safely?”

“But you said you were tired,” Kate reminded him. “Aren’t you going home? So that you can stay with her?”

“Just because I’m going to bed doesn’t mean I’m going home,” he teased with a wink at the obviously disapproving detective. “Besides which, she’ll be safer with you. You carry a gun.”

“I don’t need anyone to see me home,” Paige said, her chin lifted with pride and independence.

He suppressed a grimace over his pang of guilt and regret. Ben was right—he shouldn’t have involved her at all. She should have been the one coming to him for help—not the other way around—but he’d never been there for her like she deserved. She deserved so much better than to have him in her life…

“You don’t have a car, remember?” he called after her.

“Neither do you,” Kate reminded him with a faint smile.

He forced his cocky grin and stepped closer to the sexy detective. “But I never have a problem getting a ride.”

“You’re wasting your time flirting with me, Sebastian,” she warned him.

He only flirted with her because he knew she’d never take him up on his many offers. It wouldn’t take a woman like her long to learn everything.

“I’m too much for you to handle, Detective,” he teased.

She laughed but didn’t deny it. “I already have more than I can handle, Sebastian.” She turned to Paige, who’d stepped out of the office clutching her purse. Instead of joining them where they stood at the door, she headed off down the hall. “But the most important thing is to find who’s stalking your sister.”

“No,” he said.

She glanced at him in surprise.

“The most important thing is to keep her safe.”

Kate opened her mouth, as if she had questions for him. But then she only nodded and headed after her friend.

Sebastian leaned back against the steel door and exhaled a ragged sigh of relief. Then the metal creaked and the door opened. He shifted his weight forward and turned, so that he wouldn’t fall into the room.

God, he hated that room—hated the smell of death that clung to it. Ben had saved many people, himself included, but he’d lost many, too. Like the man who lay atop the table, the stake protruding from his chest.

This was Sebastian’s fault, too. He’d called in a favor to have Owen protect Paige—and the man had died carrying it out. Guilt and self-condemnation gripped him, tightening the muscles in his stomach.

Condemnation filled Ingrid’s dark eyes, for a moment crowding out the madness, as she met his gaze. “You’ve done it again, Sebastian.”

“I stopped them from entering,” he said, and he stopped himself now, holding back from crossing that threshold into the room of death. Blood stained the floor beneath Ben’s makeshift operating table. The surgeon was gone, but he’d been there, trying to save another patient.

“Those mortals wouldn’t have even been here if not for you,” Ingrid persisted.

“No,” he agreed. “None of them would have, including Ben.”

“Who is she—this new mistress of the Underground?” Ingrid asked, her usually husky voice even thicker with disdain.

“Someone important to me,” he said. “I don’t want her getting hurt. If you know who’s threatening her…” Or if she were the one threatening her…

Ingrid’s hatred of humans was well known. “And if I did…?”

“You’d be wise to let them know that I’m going to stop them,” Sebastian said.

“Stop them?” Her dark eyes widened with curiosity and amusement. “How?”

He glanced over her shoulder, to the body with the stake through the heart. “I will do whatever necessary to protect her.”

“So she is important to you,” Ingrid said. “She’s not your sister, as she thinks. Who is she really?”

“She’s my daughter.”

Frustration nagged at Paige as she jammed the key into the lock and opened the door…to her condo. She shuddered at the thought of opening that other door and having rats run out.

Maybe it was better that she didn’t learn whatever made her feel unwelcome—and out of place—at Club Underground. Catching sight of her reflection in the mirror above the hall table, she winced at the dark circles beneath her eyes and the lines fanning them and her mouth. She looked like her mother, not just because of her blond hair and fair skin, but because she looked older than she actually was—courtesy of all the stress and pain she’d had in her life. “Forty’s the new thirty, my ass.”

Her age was probably why she felt so out of place at Club Underground. Everyone else, patrons and staff, including Sebastian, seemed so much younger and more beautiful. Kate was wrong; no one was stalking Paige. No one would want to….

Then she tilted her head, listening…to the sound of running water. The walls were thick in the old warehouse that had been converted to condos; the noise could not be coming from an adjoining unit. It had to be coming from her bathroom. Her pulse raced with fear. She should have had Kate walk her to the door, as the detective had wanted. But Paige had insisted that no one would have gotten past the doorman in the lobby or her security system.

She glanced to the alarm panel near the door. The lights were off; someone had already disabled it. How? Only she and Sebastian knew the code, and he’d remained back at the club.

She fumbled inside her purse for her cell phone. She could call Kate again; she might not have left the parking lot yet. But why would someone break in to use her bathroom?

She dropped her purse onto the hall table and reached instead for one of the bottles on the wine rack beneath it. As she had back at the club, she intended to use it as a weapon. She lifted it, like a bat, over her shoulder as she stepped inside her bedroom. When she crossed the hardwood floor to the open bathroom doorway, the water sputtered and cut off. Steam billowed from the room.

Paige tightened her grip on her weapon of choice. Her intruder would need another shower after she broke the bottle over his head.

But then the man stepped out, water sluicing over his naked skin—all that naked skin. And she dropped the bottle onto the floor. The neck spun until the cork pointed toward him.

“So today’s game is spin the bottle?” Ben asked.

“Game?” she repeated, her eyes wide as her gaze traveled up and down his body.

Ben tensed, every muscle taut with desire at her blatant interest in him. He would have figured he was too worried—and too tired—to want her again. But none of that mattered now. He would want her even if he was dead, which since he’d learned of the secret society had become an inevitable fate.

“Is this a game,” she asked, “your breaking in here and scaring me again?”

“I didn’t break in.” But had it been necessary he would have, so that he’d been able to secure the place before she’d come home.

“Sebastian’s not here,” she said. “He didn’t let you in.”

“He didn’t need to,” he explained. “He gave me a key.”

“He gave you a key?” she repeated. “To my place? And he gave you the security code, too?”

“I guessed the security code.”

Color flushed her face, making her blue eyes even brighter. “It…it’s just easier to remember,” she sputtered.

While she was embarrassed that she’d used the date of their wedding as the code, like they had at the home they’d shared, Ben was encouraged that there might be hope for them. At least he had been until he reminded himself that he had nothing to offer her but secrets and danger.

“Of course,” he agreed, “it’s easy to remember.”

“So you just let yourself in,” she remarked, then gestured toward the bathroom, “and helped yourself to my shower?”

“I needed it.” He’d needed to rid himself of the blood and the scent of death that always clung to him when he went to the Underground.