Dark Obsession

Cold and shivering, she watched as Father Grady said the final prayer, then tossed a handful of dirt into the grave. He motioned to Erin, and she stepped forward. Unfastening her necklace, she dropped it into the grave.

The silver cross seemed to glow with an ethereal light as it lay atop the ebony coffin. It was the last thing—the only thing—Erin could give to her sister to thwart the darkness that had tormented them both for years. Megan needed it more than Erin did now, but as Erin stood at the edge of the grave, an almost overwhelming sense of foreboding stole over her.

As if drawn by a magnet, she turned her head and glanced over her shoulder. Through the misty veil of rain, she saw a male figure dressed all in black standing at the edge of the cemetery as if hovering on the threshold of a room he was forbidden to enter.

The form seemed to waver in the drizzle while the mist swirled around him with an unnatural movement. Erin couldn’t see a face, but somehow his dark gaze penetrated the layers of fog as easily as a beam of concentrated light. There was something familiar about the apparition, she thought. Something…dangerous.

Something evil.

Erin began to shake. She struggled to look away, but his dark gaze held her imprisoned. A strange lethargy crept over her. She tried to fight it, but slowly Erin felt herself drifting away, floating on a mystical cloud that seemed to carry her to this menacing stranger. She heard a voice, a dark, persuasive voice borne by the wind. We’ve been waiting for you, it whispered. Your sister’s here, Erin. I can take you to her. Don’t let her down this time.

A wave of dizziness washed over Erin, and a blackness so cold and so swift it seemed as if icy waters were closing over her head. She felt herself sway, and then her knees began to buckle. She was falling, plunging toward Megan’s open grave, descending toward that yawning abyss, that dark place from which there would be no return….

Erin! Help me!

Was that Megan’s voice that called to her? Was that Megan’s cry she heard?

Suddenly Erin no longer had the will to fight. She closed her eyes and let the darkness take her.

A gasp rose from the crowd. Just as she was about to pitch forward into the grave, someone grabbed her and pulled her back, with a hand that seemed capable and comforting, yet cold and dangerous. A hand that was scarred and battered, yet beautiful and strong. Erin opened her eyes and felt Detective Slade’s grip tighten on her arm.

“Are you all right?”

“I…felt faint,” she said weakly. His hand was still on her arm, and beneath the fabric of her coat, Erin imagined that she could feel the warmth of his hand seeping through her. Her skin tingled with awareness, with warning. Her heart began to thud against her chest as he guided her away from the grave.

He’d turned up the collar on his black leather coat, but he didn’t have an umbrella, and his dark hair glistened with droplets of water. She’d forgotten how tall he was, how formidable he appeared. He was still wearing the dark glasses she found so daunting, but even guarded, his stare was powerful, mesmerizing, as he gazed down at her. Suddenly Erin remembered last night and how his gaze had seemed to trap her.

“Rough day” was all he said, guiding her out of the cemetery toward the street. But somehow those two simple words conveyed everything Erin was experiencing at that moment. She wanted to cry and gave silent thanks for the mask of rain on her face.

At the edge of the graveyard, she stopped and looked back. The tombstones blurred in the rain, creating an eerie, almost mystical illusion. Someone was watching her, she thought. Someone was watching her again, and she shuddered, a dark portent creeping over her. She looked up and found Detective Slade gazing down at her with hidden eyes.

“What is it?” His voice held an edge, as if he knew—or sensed—what she was feeling.

But Erin didn’t want to admit even to herself that she was suddenly, desperately afraid. She hugged her arms to her chest, then shrugged. What could she say? That her imagination was running away with her? That she was seeing monsters now, even in daylight?

As if sensing her reluctance, Slade let the matter drop. Without another word, they began walking again. After a few moments, Erin said, “How is the investigation progressing?”

It was his turn to shrug. “As well as can be expected.”

“What did the autopsy report show?”

Slade hesitated. “We can talk about that later.”

“I want to hear it now,” Erin said, mustering her courage. She braced her shoulders as if to prove to Slade she could handle whatever he had to say. “What was the exact cause of Megan’s death, Detective? I want to know.”

Again that odd hesitation. “There were marks on her neck.”

“Marks? You mean she was strangled?” That would explain why there was no blood that night, Erin thought.

Detective Slade stared straight ahead as they continued to walk. “Your sister wasn’t strangled,” he said.

“But I thought you said—”

“There were marks on her neck. Two puncture wounds. Almost all of Megan’s blood was drained from her body.”

Erin staggered to a stop. A wave of horror washed over her. Slade’s hand shot out and steadied her once more, but Erin was hardly aware of it. Instead, in her mind she saw an image of Megan’s body on the ground, the smile on her lips. Erin put a hand to her mouth as her stomach churned sickeningly. “My God,” she said. “What kind of person could do that? Especially to Megan. She was so young, so beautiful….” And now she was dead. Dear God, Erin wrote about this kind of stuff. It didn’t happen in real life. Not to Megan. Please not to Megan.

“How did he do it?’ she asked weakly.

“We don’t know for sure.”

“Why did he do it? What kind of monster would do such a thing?”

Slade said nothing, but Erin barely noticed. Her mind was racing with the implications. “What if it was because of me?” she whispered. “What if this happened because of my book?”

Slade was still holding her arm, and now his grip tightened. “You had nothing to do with this.”

Erin lifted her agonized gaze. “How can you be so sure? There are a lot of people out there who read my books. What if one of them decided to…”

“There are a lot of people out there,” Slade said evenly, “who have never read your books. And they kill, anyway.”

“But do they drain their victim’s blood?” Erin’s heart was beating so fast she felt light-headed. She swayed again, and Slade steadied her once more.

His mouth tightened as he gazed down at her. “We’ll get him, Erin. I promise you that. He won’t get away with this.”

“No, he won’t,” she agreed, the horror inside her turning to rage. “He won’t get away with this. I’ll see to that.”

“What do you mean?”

They stared at each other in silence. Mist shrouded them in an illusion of privacy, and once again Erin became conscious of how tall he was, how immense he looked in that long black coat. She hadn’t been aware of how far their walk had taken them, but as she looked around now, she realized the cemetery was long behind them. They stood in the gray afternoon, a myriad of desolate buildings surrounding them, and all Erin could think was how quiet everything seemed. How alone they were.

Behind his dark glasses, Slade continued to hold her gaze. Erin’s fingers began to tremble, so she forced her hands deep into the pockets of her coat.

“What did you mean you’ll see to it?” he repeated suspiciously. His voice was low and rough. She could see the hint of anger in the rigid set of his mouth, a mouth she knew could look at once cruel and sensuous….

Erin tilted her chin, denying her thoughts. “I mean I can help you find him. I knew my sister better than anyone else. If anyone can trace the last few days of her life, it would be me.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

He drew her up so close the frost of their breath mingled in the cold air. Their bodies were almost, but not quite, touching, yet Erin had no difficulty at all imagining the warmth of his skin next to hers. The hardness of his body against hers…

Dear God, she thought. What am I doing? What am I thinking?

Megan was gone, dead and buried. She was never coming back. How could Erin be having these feelings for a man she knew absolutely nothing about? A man who seemed to embody her deepest fears?

Guilt, as sharp as a dagger, stabbed through her.

“Think about it,” she insisted, willing the beat of her heart to slow. She tried to swallow away the sudden dryness in her throat. “Her friends would be more likely to talk to me than they would to the police. There’s no telling what I might learn. At any rate, I want to talk to them. I want to find out everything I can about my sister. I have to,” she finished, her voice giving away the desperation she felt. “I have to know why she died the way she did.”

“Listen to me,” he said, his voice deep and dark and full of warning. “You have no idea what we’re dealing with here. You have no idea how much danger you could be in if you start talking to the wrong people, going to the wrong places. Stay out of it, Erin. Let me do my job.”

“How can I be sure you’ll do your job?” Erin challenged, feeling her anger flare. His fingers warmed her arm through the fabric of her coat, made her skin burn with awareness, but she wouldn’t pull away. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how deeply his touch affected her.

Slade smiled a thin, humorless smile. “So that’s it. You think you can do a better job than the police. You think you can find clues we wouldn’t uncover. You think you can play amateur detective and not get burned. Think again, Erin. Think long and hard before you do something you and I both might regret.”

His hand fell away from her arm, but Erin’s skin still flamed from his touch. He gazed down at her for a moment longer, then he turned and headed back toward the cemetery, his long coat flapping in the wind.

Erin took a deep breath, trying to quell the rapid throb of the pulse in her throat. She watched him disappear into the mist. The dark glasses, the scars, the grim facade. She wished she could see him just once, on her own terms, in broad daylight, with the sun pouring down on them and the shadows and mist that seemed to envelop him nothing more than a memory.

He’s a policeman, she reminded herself. A cop. That alone explained her wariness. Erin could still remember clearly the detective who had investigated her mother’s disappearance. Cold, impersonal, with a rumpled demeanor and a bad disposition, he had looked at Erin and Megan as distastefully as if they’d been something he’d scraped off his shoe.

Within days he’d stopped taking their aunt’s calls. He’d never called them back, never come by the apartment to give them any news. Erin remembered how helpless she’d felt, how at the mercy of that indifferent detective she’d been. What could an eight-year-old kid do about it, though?

But Erin was no longer a child. She was twenty-six years old, and she knew better than to depend on anyone but herself for the answers she needed. What if her book had caused Megan’s death? What if some psycho had believed himself to be her demon lover? How could Erin live with the guilt, with not knowing for sure?

No matter what Detective Slade said, Erin knew she couldn’t rest until Megan’s murderer had been brought to justice. It was the last thing, the only thing she could do for her sister. And for herself.

Squaring her shoulders, Erin turned and started walking. She knew the limo that had driven her from the church still waited for her at the cemetery, but she couldn’t go back there now. She didn’t want to face Detective Slade, but more than that, she didn’t want to have to say goodbye to Megan again. Not after what she’d learned.

* * *

Someone called to Slade as he unlocked his car at the curb, and he paused, glancing over his shoulder. Dr. Traymore walked toward him, his face shielded by the brim of the felt hat he was wearing.

“A lovely ceremony,” he commented, nodding his head toward the cemetery.

“If you like funerals,” Slade said.

“At my age they can be a very moving experience,” Traymore remarked. “However, this one was particularly disturbing to me. I hope the necessary precautions were taken with the body, Detective. The burial was quite hasty.”

“Do you want a blow-by-blow account of the autopsy?” Slade returned angrily, remembering Erin’s questions. Had he told her too much? He was walking a fine line, he knew. He’d hoped that by revealing the nature of Megan’s death to Erin, it might frighten her into taking the first plane back to L.A., before it was too late. Unfortunately, he’d seen no indication of that from her earlier.

Damn, now the old man was beginning to worry him, too. Slade suspected Traymore knew just enough to be dangerous. If he started poking his nose in the wrong places, started asking more questions…

Dr. Traymore’s eyes grew even more grim as his gaze drifted back to the cemetery. “I pray you did the right thing, Detective,” he said slowly. “I pray you are who and what I think you are. Because if you’re not, there’s a very good chance that at midnight tonight Megan Ramsey will rise from her grave, starving for blood.”

* * *

Erin walked for hours in the rain and mist until finally exhaustion drove her toward home. A lighted window in a bookstore on the corner near the apartment caught her eye, and she stopped for a moment, staring at a display featuring her books. Almost ten years’ worth of work. A decade of her life dedicated to exorcising the demons from her past, and what had it gotten her?

Not much, she reflected. Money, success, a small measure of satisfaction, to be sure. But she was still alone, still haunted by memories. The one serious relationship she’d ever had had begun for all the wrong reasons and had ended badly. Never again would she put herself in the position of needing someone, of depending on anyone other than herself. Never again would she freely give her trust.

After all, Erin thought, grimacing, if you couldn’t trust your own mother, who could you trust?

She glanced back at her books in the window. The cover of Demon Lover leapt out at her. The picture of the vampire seemed just a little too realistic tonight, perhaps because of what she’d learned about Megan’s death. The long white fangs gleamed in the subdued light from the window, and his eyes—dark, mesmerizing, soul-stealing eyes—held her in thrall. And for some reason, Erin thought of the dark figure she’d seen at the cemetery.

Had he been real?

Or had the same imagination that had created the vampire she was looking at now conjured up the dark, menacing figure that had beckoned to her, that had whispered to her soul?

What kind of mind would give birth to such a creature? she thought in disgust. What kind of person would be obsessed by such darkness? What kind of woman would be drawn to the thing that frightened her the most?

Erin tried to shake off the gloom her thoughts brought on, but the wind blowing through the trees carried a faint whisper to her ears, making her wonder again if she could truly distinguish between fantasy and reality.

Erin. We’ve been waiting for you, Erin.

Water puddled on the streets and reflected long, wavering beams of light against the pavement. Dead leaves rattled along the sidewalk in front of her, and as Erin hurried toward the apartment, she pulled her coat more tightly around her, trying to protect herself from the coming night.

But the darkness seeped through the woolen fabric. It oozed through her skin and slivered into her soul. It made her wonder if she would ever be warm again.

The hair at the back of her neck prickled as she glanced over her shoulder. How deserted the streets seemed suddenly. It was barely twilight, but the rain made it seem much later. Gloom hung over the city like a London fog. Erin could feel its oppressive weight bearing down on her shoulders as if invisible hands were holding her back. She hurried her steps, but the apartment seemed to get farther and farther away.

Someone was watching her. She couldn’t shake the feeling. Someone was watching her from the darkness, waiting for the chance to—

A dark figure stepped from a doorway and blocked her path. Erin gasped, tried to move around him, but he moved with her. Don’t panic, she cautioned herself. Don’t make any sudden moves.

She’d lived in the city all her life. It wasn’t the first time she’d been accosted on the street, but there was something particularly frightening about the way this man stood in front of her, smiling down at her as if he knew her deepest, darkest secrets. And for one impossible, irrational moment, she thought the cover of Demon Lover had come to life before her very eyes.

We’ve been waiting for you, Erin.

He hadn’t spoken aloud, but Erin could have sworn she heard his exact thoughts. He was tall, impossibly thin, with long black hair pulled back into a ponytail. His skin was dark and swarthy, with the look of the Mediterranean, and his eyes were jet black.

As her heart pounded inside her chest, Erin thought briefly that he was the most handsome man she’d ever seen. It wasn’t…human to be so perfect, and suddenly an image of Detective Slade’s scarred hands swept into her mind.

The man in front of her frowned. He made a low growling sound in his throat that sent shivers of dread racing up and down Erin’s spine. He no longer looked handsome or perfect or even like a man, for that matter. He looked cold. Evil. Bestial. Like a vampire. Erin reached for her cross, then discovered it was no longer there.

The black gaze followed her hand to her throat as if anticipating the emptiness she would find there. Then slowly his eyes moved back up to her face, lingering on her lips. He smiled, his white teeth gleaming in the reflected light. No fangs, she noticed in fleeting relief, but in the next moment, Erin thought of the man at the cemetery. The menacing figure that had beckoned her to follow him into darkness. The man who would have seen her drop the silver cross into Megan’s grave.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

“Don’t you know?” he said.

“What do you want?” she demanded.

“Don’t you know?”

His voice seemed to echo from a deep, dark well. His smile deepened when he saw her shiver. His eyes taunted her as he reached out and caressed her barren neck with one fingertip, tracing the invisible line of the cross. Erin shrank from his icy touch. Her stomach recoiled from the feel of his flesh against hers, and she thought her heart would thrash its way out of her chest.

She took a faltering step back from him. When he made no move toward her, she kept backing away until she felt the curb against her feet. Then she turned and dashed into the street.

A car screamed to a halt just inches from hitting her, and a horn blasted in her ears, but Erin didn’t stop. She raced across the street and only then, safely on the other side, did she dare to look back.

The man was gone, dissolved like smoke into the night. Had he been real?

She could still feel his icy finger on her skin. He’d been real, all right. The streets of New York were filled with crazies like him. He’d wanted nothing more than to frighten her. Erin supposed she should feel lucky. At least she still had her purse. And her life.

Another breeze gusted through the trees overhead, and for a moment, she thought she heard the sound of male laughter in the wind. She ran through the twilight, her heels clicking against the pavement.

Erin took the steps of the apartment building two at a time, dragged open the door and fled inside. At the top of the stairs, her numb fingers fumbled with the key to Megan’s apartment. With a muttered, “Damn,” she tugged off her glove with her teeth and tried the key again. Downstairs, she heard the front door open and close softly, then someone stepped into the corridor.

Erin’s heart jumped into her throat. Dear God, he had followed her home. Frantically she jiggled the key in the lock. “Come on,” she urged, casting a terrified glance over her shoulder. She could hear his footsteps on the stairs now, heard the telltale squeak as he reached the middle of the steps. Then the steps moved upward, toward the landing, where Erin stood trapped.

Her hands were shaking so badly she dropped the key. She heard it thump against the worn carpet, but in the murky light, she couldn’t see it. With a gasping oath, she dropped to her knees and ran her palms along the dirty floor until she felt the cool metal against her flesh. She jumped up and jammed the key into the lock so brutally she thought for a moment she might have bent it.

Then the key turned smoothly, and she could have wept with relief. But just as she pushed the door open, a cold hand closed over hers.

CHAPTER FOUR

A scream rose in Erin’s throat, but before panic had time to set in, she whirled, swinging her purse with all her might at the man’s head. The weighted leather connected with his right temple, and he swore viciously. Erin tried to strike again, but this time he was ready for her. His hand reached out and snared her wrist. She cried out as the purse—her only weapon—went flying from her hand.

“Damn it, stop struggling before I have to hurt you,” he ordered. It took a second for Erin to realize that the voice wasn’t the one she’d just heard on the street, but one that was more familiar. Maybe even more frightening. She shivered as she gazed up at Detective Slade’s stoic demeanor. “If I’d been the murderer,” he said, “you’d be dead by now.”

“Oh, yeah?” she said, rising to his bait, the adrenaline still kicking through her veins. “Then how come you’re the one who’s bleeding?”

His hand went to his temple. He touched the spot gingerly, then lowered his hand and gazed at the red smear on his fingertips. “Damn,” he muttered.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” Erin said. “But you shouldn’t have sneaked up on me like that. I thought you were…someone else.”

One brow rose over the dark glasses. “Like who?”

“Like the creep I just saw on the street,” she said uncomfortably. “I thought he might be trying to mug me or…”

“Or worse?” he supplied coldly. “Where was this man?”

“At the corner, near the bookstore. I think he just wanted to scare me,” Erin said hastily, trying to take the edge off her fear. “He didn’t hurt me or anything.” But she shivered anyway, remembering the man’s frozen touch. She hugged her arms to herself as she gazed at Slade. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve been trying to call you,” Slade said. “I was worried when you didn’t come back to the cemetery. Where’ve you been?”

“Walking.”

“All this time?”

His liquid voice flowed over her, cold and dark and oddly coercive.

“I didn’t feel like coming back here after the funeral,” she said defensively. In fact, she might have been glad to see him if he didn’t seem so unapproachable, so formidable. “You needn’t have been worried about me. I can take care of myself,” she assured him.

“Can you?”

There was something in his tone—a faint challenge?—that made Erin grow even more uneasy. She glanced around the darkened hallway. There was no one about. No one had even come out to investigate the commotion. She was completely alone with a man that made her tremble, with a man that made her think of moonlight and madness. Of secrets and whispers and promises that could only be told in the dead of night.

She looked at him, telling herself she couldn’t be feeling this pull, this strange attraction, for a man who seemed to embody her deepest fears…and her darkest nightmares. What kind of woman would be drawn to the thing that frightened her the most?

“He could come after you, you know.”

Her gaze shot back to his. For a moment she’d thought he was talking about the man on the street, then she said, “You mean the murderer? Why would he come after me?”