He bowed, and offered his elbow. “Will you accompany me?”
His eyes were anything but cold, as they had been when they’d
met…in 1593. The meaning of
the emotion she saw in his eyes hit her then: he had sought her for over four hundred years. Kendra literally staggered at the
thought, and took his arm to keep from falling.
Alexander’s strength was the only thing that moved the awkward
trio smoothly across the front of the auditorium to the nearest exit. No one was in sight when they reached
the alley that ran along the side of the convention center. A Cadillac limousine pulled up the
moment Alexander stepped under the light of a streetlamp. The trunk opened soundlessly. Alex pinched Matt’s neck. The spy collapsed. Alex folded him into the trunk a
bit more gently than Kendra would have liked.
“Wait,” Kendra said, as Alex moved to close the trunk. “He has a remote in the right front
pocket of his trousers.”
Reflexively, she ran a finger under the silver necklace, as if it were
uncomfortable.
Alex’s eyes flew to Kendra’s neck. His expression tightened, and he reached toward Matt’s
pocket. “A remote--” he began to
ask.
Just then the exit door they’d come through banged open, and
two goons in black suits burst into the alley. As soon as they caught sight of Alexander they drew small
machine guns from beneath their jackets.
Her brain had barely acknowledged the scene, before Kendra was
in the back seat. Alex, already
next to her, said calmly, “Drive, Samuel,” and the car moved smoothly
away. Through the rear window
Kendra saw one goon force the other’s arm down. She guessed that American Missile had instructed them not to
kill her. Goon one raised his
wrist toward his mouth.
“They are reporting our escape.”
“Yes, I can hear him,” Alexander said softly.
“We will be followed.”
“It is not the humans who will come that concern me.”
“What do you me--aah!” Kendra grunted with pain. Her cry was cut off as the ring of fire
around her neck swamped all the nerves above it. She clawed at her neck.
“Kendra!” Alex called out. He stilled her hands and grabbed the necklace, but jerked
back. “Silver,” he snarled.
“Shall I stop, sir?” asked the driver.
“No! Keep driving
please, Samuel,” Alex said, sounding frantic.
Kendra, who had resumed her futile attempt to tear the
necklace off, stopped one hand long enough to point at the back of their seat.
Alexander turned his questioning, distraught eyes from the
seat to hers. She could see that
he was desperate to end her pain.
After a few seconds that felt like hours, he understood Kendra’s
repeated jabs toward the trunk.
“The trunk!” he growled, and punched through the seat.
Kendra heard a howl of pain from the trunk, then silence. Her agony stopped. Feeling and motility returned to her
face in what felt like a shower of needles.
“Thank you,” she said, still a bit stiff.
Alexander wiped his hand on something in the trunk and
withdrew his arm. The sleeve of
his jacket was streaked with blood.
“Is he--?” Kendra didn’t want to finish the sentence, didn’t
want any of it to be real. How had
she become the target of industrial…hell, of inter-species intrigue?
Alexander nodded once curtly.
Kendra sighed and leaned back against the seat. For the first time in a week, she was
free from the threat of imminent and excruciating pain. Alex peered at her. He seemed nervous and concerned. Why couldn’t she have a handsome living
man concerned about her well-being?
She thought of Matt when he had seemed like Shaggy and amended her wish—a
living man who was not a sociopath.
“Samuel, please take us to the nearest jeweler still open for
business.”
“Yes, sir, but the others--”
“I am aware of that, Samuel. Ms. Tanagawa, however, must be freed from the electronic
shackle American Missile has locked around her neck.”
Samuel looked back at them in the rearview mirror, and seemed
ready to say more, but Alex cut him off.
“She must also be untraceable, at least by the humans.”
Samuel nodded.
They were on the highway, headed east. He pulled the limousine into a squealing illegal u-turn at
the next opportunity, and sped back toward Stamford.
“Kendra,” Alex said, and took her hands in his cold ones. She shivered at his touch. His small smile was both understanding
and rueful. He pressed a button on
the armrest. Not knowing what to
expect Kendra shifted nervously until the seat behind and under her warmed,
filling her with a glowing invitation to relax. She smiled. Alex
did too, but she saw the determination that showed in his eyes.
“Tell me,” she said, and took his cold hand in hers. The chill contact bothered her less as
the rest of her warmed.
“We almost certainly do not have much time together. The other vampires want you--”
“Why?”
“You were right about our numbers in 1593. We were in the middle of a
three-hundred year population slump.
I researched it after you left me--”
She opened her mouth to apologize, but he held up one hand to
silence her. “I think we will have
time to get that thing off your neck, but they will almost certainly take you
as we leave the jeweler. Permit me
to tell you what I can in the time we have left.” He looked at her in silent apology for his gruffness. Kendra nodded for him to continue.
“As I said,” Alex continued, “after you left me, I researched
my kind. We were more vulnerable
during those three-hundred years than we had been since before the fall of
Babylon. It is the vampires’ fear
that American Missile intends to use your time travel technology--”
“But how did you know that I jumped back to your time, I mean
when we met?”
Alexander smiled and withdrew a slim leather case portfolio
from his jacket. Almost
reverently, he held it open for her.
It was the note she had painted to him.
“It was evident that you had never used a quill.” He smiled crookedly.
“I am sorry if I ruined your desk.”
“Ruined? No, you
enhanced it. Every time I write, I
see that ring of ink and smile.”
There it was again--that tinge of passion or obsession in his
voice. Evidently he really had
been besotted with her for four hundred years. “Alex,” she opened her mouth to warn him about the
tremendous difference in their feelings for each other, when it dawned on her
that she didn’t even know what he liked to be called. “May I call you ‘Alex’?”
He smiled broadly.
“You may call me anything you like, but don’t call me late for dinner.” His Groucho Marx impression was
impeccable.
Sounding a bit shocked, Samuel guffawed in the front seat.
