A Girls Guide to Vampires(84)

"Oh, no," Roxy assured him. Her face was pale, her eyes wary as he took her chin in his hand and stared into her eyes. "Honest, Christian. I would never tell anyone your secret."

He looked at her a bit longer, then released her chin and swept his hand toward the stairs in an elegant gesture. "As neither of you wish to see any more of the dungeon, we can return to the upper floors and continue the tour."

I wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of there and throw myself into Raphael's arms, but the memory of Christian's anguish was strong. I gave Roxy a feeble smile in answer to her questioning look as I shook off the clinging sense of nightmare, heading up the stairs toward the bright glow of reality.





Chapter Thirteen





"So, what does it feel like when you're drinking someone's blood?" Roxy asked.

Christian glanced in the rearview mirror and gave me such a woebegone look I couldn't help laughing. It was the first time I'd laughed all evening, and it felt a bit stiff and unsure in his presence, but I gave myself full marks for being able to laugh with a man who I'd just discovered had a lifespan that could be ticked off in centuries rather than decades.

"Do blood clots get stuck in your teeth? What if someone's anemic; are you hungry again an hour later? Has anyone ever bitten you? If you run out of blood, do you shrivel up like a really old orange?"

"Roxy!"

"OK, here's an easy one. How come you can eat and drink when other Dark Ones can't?"

"What makes you think I can?" Christian asked, his eyes on the dark road ahead.

"We saw you!"

He glanced at her.

"At the hotel," Roxy added. "You had dinner with us, remember? And you were in the bar earlier. We saw you drinking then… didn't we?"

His eyes met mine in the mirror.

"With your sleight-of-hand abilities, you ought to be the one giving the magic show, not Dominic," I said.

He smiled.

Roxy finally figured it out. "Well, that's just not fair! If I'd realized you were only putting on a show, I'd have known right away who you were. OK, on to the next question—"

"I have no idea if you can do any of those handy mind-control things that the heroes in your books do, Christian, but if you can, I'd appreciate it if you gave Roxy the mental command to shut up."

He laughed.

"Can I help it if I have a bunch of questions?" Roxy asked with an infuriated look back at me. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime situation here and I'm not going to waste it! Besides, you got to ask all the questions when we were seeing the castle; now it's my turn."

"Questions about the origin of the Conspirators' Gallery are not quite as offensive as asking someone what they pick out of their teeth. Stop being so rude."

"You don't mind me asking you personal questions, do you?" she asked him.

Christian gave her a look that said yes, he did mind, but she ignored it. "See? He doesn't mind. Now, about this eternal damnation you suffer—"

"Oh, for God's sake—Roxy, lay off him!" She turned around in the seat to level me another glare before turning back to pout out the window, but both glare and pout left me unfazed. I watched the back of Christian's head as we drove the few miles back to the hotel. It was difficult reconciling the friendly, amusing Christian I'd grown to like with the tormented immortal who viewed me as his only means to salvation.

And it left me feeling guiltier than ever.

I leaned back against the soft leather seat and closed my eyes, thinking back over all the times his mind had touched mine, trying to adjust my mental picture of him with the emotional one his mind had left me. It was him I felt approaching the bar the first night. It was his hunger that filled me when he bent to kiss my hand, not Raphael's as he stood watching us. It was his desperate need that scared me the night Raphael came to my room. And it was his wordless scream of anguish that ripped through the night when I gave myself to Raphael. Christian was wrong about me, I knew he was. But how was I supposed to make him understand that?

I let my body relax into the seat, trying to clear my mind of everything but what I wanted to do, following Miranda's rules regarding meditation. I stretched and reached with my mind.

Christian ?

Immediately he was there, his thoughts warm and reassuring. Or they would have been except that I felt anything but reassured with the ease he invaded my head. Beloved? You call to me?

Oh, no! What had I done? What if only his Beloved was supposed to be able to communicate with him mentally? My mind scurried around trying to remember what I had read from Christian's books about mental communication between a Beloved and her Dark One. What if only a Beloved was supposed to be able to communicate mentally with him? I thought I remembered reading he could talk to others that way, but what if I was wrong? My hash was really fried if that was so. I resisted the temptation to see if he was looking at me in the mirror, deciding that as of that moment, all mental communication with Christian was verboten.