Tall, Dark & Hungry(47)

According to his mother, only someone whose mind he could not read would make a good life mate; a husband and wife should never be able to intrude on each other's thoughts. Those should be shared willingly, Marguerite said, not poached like chickens from a henhouse. Bastien couldn't read Terri's thoughts. But she did share them freely.

A pleased sigh slid from his lips, and Bastien grinned to himself. Her openness and honesty were what he liked best about Terri. Her passion for life, not to mention the passion she'd revealed in his arms, was priceless. He'd lived long enough to know that such open caring and passion were a rare find nowadays. Most people allowed fear to deaden their feelings and responses. Terri wasn't one of them. She was full of life, she was beautifully and vitally… dead?

He stopped short in the living room entrance and gaped at the sight of Terri lying silent and still on the floor. Her body was splayed like a rag doll tossed to the ground, her luscious chestnut hair a pool around her head.

Two telltale red dots marked her lovely, slender throat.





Chapter Nine

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"Oh, my handsome manly vampire. Achoo!" That high falsetto voice—not to mention the sneeze—drew Bastien's attention to the two men standing several feet away from Terri's prone body. Vincent and… Chris? He thought it was the editor but couldn't be sure. The man had a sheet draped over his head and caught beneath his chin in Little Red Riding Hood style. Judging from that, and from the really bad imitation of a female voice the editor was affecting, Bastien would guess he was supposed to be a woman. For some reason.

"How my heart beats for y—achoo!—you, Dracula. You stir my fire, my desire." Chris let the page he was reading drop to his side with disgust. "Who wrote this drivel?" he asked.

"A playwright," Vincent sniffed. "A professional playwright."

"Well, I'm a pro—achoo!—professional editor. And I—achoo I—wouldn't publish this poppycock."

"You just don't understand camp," Vincent snapped. "Haven't you ever heard of a little play—later made into a major motion picture—called the Rocky Horror Picture Show?"

"That was good camp," Chris informed him, then rubbed his nose. "This—achoo!—is drivel. God, I wish the drugstore guy would get here with those—achoo!—allergy pills."

"Believe me, so do I," Vincent said. He spotted Bastien in the entry and smiled. "Cousin! So you finally decided to join the living, did you?"

"Yes." His gaze shifted back to Terri, who blinked her eyes open, sat up to glance over at him, then scrambled to her feet.

"Good morning," she said brightly. "Did you sleep well?"

Nodding, Bastien moved purposely forward. His curiosity was killing him. Terri's eyes widened in surprise when he paused in front of her, wiped one of the red spots off her neck, and pressed it to his tongue.

"Sauce?" he asked with disbelief. A couple of drops of sauce were what had nearly caused him the vampire equivalent of a heart attack? He'd thought—

"Ketchup, actually." Terri gave a laugh as she wiped off the rest. "We were helping Vincent with his lines. I was Lucy, and Chris is Mina." She glanced toward the editor, who sneezed violently three times in a row. She then leaned forward to tell Bastien in hushed tones, "He's allergic to the flowers. I suggested he go to his room until we can get the pictures done and the flowers out, but he says it won't help."

"I did when they first arrived," the editor complained. "But there are so many—achoo!—that the pollen is all through the apartment. Achoo! It wasn't much better than being out here." He removed the sheet from around his head and shoulders, and sank onto the couch with a groan.

Bastien slowly turned, only now noticing the flowers that filled the living room and made it look like a bloody flower shop… or a mortuary. He didn't know how he had missed them on first glance, except that the sight of Terri lying prone on the floor had so overset him, he hadn't noticed anything else.

"I made breakfast," Terri announced, drawing Bastien's attention. "Omelets. I left some of the mix in the fridge for when you got up. Would you like some?"

Bastien took in her bright eyes and hopeful smile, and found a smile of his own claiming his lips. "Lovely."

"Good. It'll just be a minute," she assured him cheerfully, then turned on her heel and left.

Bastien hesitated, then followed. He had meant she was lovely, not that an omelet for breakfast would be lovely. But that was okay. He'd eat the omelet if she'd gone to the trouble of making enough for him. It actually sounded good anyway. An omelet. Made with Terri's own two hands.