“Yes,” she said through gritted teeth, “I can handle being his wife and your whore. Is that the answer you wanted? Is that the one that excites you?”
His hand slid up the inside of her thigh. “Perhaps.”
Nicole closed her eyes and breathed, trying to will the space between her legs to stop throbbing. But there was no point. She felt wet and hot and itchy. She wanted to crawl out of her skin and into his. It would be better when she was in her husband’s arms. This would fade. It had to. What she had with Dominic was real; with August it was a sick sort of magic that had drawn her into its web.
“Would you like me to go in with you?” he asked as he turned the ignition off.
“I’ll manage.”
August popped the trunk and took her bags out. “I’ll leave you the rental car.”
Nicole got her luggage to the door in two trips and rang the bell.
When Dominic opened the door, Nicole was determined she would run from the vampire as long as it took for him to give up and let her go.
That dimple. Oh, God how she’d missed that dimple. All she wanted to do was fling herself at him and fuck like rabbits for the next three years without stopping—and find a way to erase August’s imprint from her body and her mind.
But they could fuck on the run. This had to end now.
“I didn’t expect you so soon,” he said.
“Aunt Norah’s cousin arrived last night to help, so I came back.”
Dominic helped her bring her bags inside, then his arms were around her, his mouth nibbling at her throat, fingers sliding underneath pants and panties.
“Wait.” She gasped for air as she pushed him off her. “We can’t do that right now.”
“We can’t? Did the long exposure to Norah’s kids scare you off sex? Too risky?” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, and in spite of everything, she laughed.
She took his hand. “No, I need you to come with me. I’ve got something important to tell you.”
Dominic was game for anything. He let her drag him to the rental car and shove him into the passenger seat.
“What happened to the Lexus?”
“I’ll explain later.” She checked her mirrors before pulling out and drove straight to her parents’ house.
“What is all this about?”
“You’ll find out. I need to tell my parents, too.”
If she told all three of them the truth, about August, about what he’d done to her—maybe an edited version—about what he’d done to them, surely one of them would be able to break through the thrall to remember the vampire and see the truth. Then she and Dominic could run.
“Lois and Raymond? Oh God, are you pregnant?”
“No. Just wait, so I can talk to everyone at once.”
It took several knocks at her parents’ house before her dad answered. “Nicole, honey, what a pleasant surprise.” It wouldn’t be pleasant for long.
“I need to talk to you and Mom.”
“Sure, sure. Come on in. We just finished breakfast. Have you eaten? You want me to scramble you some eggs? I’ve got some bacon and biscuits still hot on the stove.”
“No, thanks.” Who could eat eggs at a time like this?
When everyone was gathered in the living room, the plan began to feel less solid.
She paced while her mother sipped tea from a lilac cup with hibiscus hand-painted on the side. Her brows drew tight together in her forehead.
“Good lord, Nicole, whatever it is, spill it. Did someone die?”
Oh, lots of people died. “I may as well say it.”
Her dad lit a pipe—an old nervous habit.
“Ray, you know I hate when you do that,” her mother said, scooting to the other end of the couch.
Dominic sat in the easy chair, looking anything but easy, his muscles rigid and coiled like a panther waiting to pounce on prey, or like prey ready to run for its life.
“I was gone for two months,” Nicole said. Maybe start with something easy.
“Just now?” Dominic asked, bewildered. “You’ve been gone a few days.”
“No, before. Mom, Dad… you know when.”
“You mean that period you didn’t call me?” Lois said a bit snippily.
“Yes! This will be hard to believe, but I was kidnapped by a man, by a… a vampire.” Oh God, that sounded insane.
All three of them burst out laughing.
“I mean it. Dominic don’t you remember? August made you think you didn’t love me, drove us apart. He’s erased your memory on a couple of other occasions, too.” Her husband was finding the joke less funny. “Mom, Dad, he brought me here to see you and erase your memory of my absence. But mom shot him with the pistol. Three bullets. Then he got right up like it was nothing.”
Lois put her teacup on the coffee table, her hand unsteady, while Raymond took another long drag from the pipe tobacco.
Dominic appeared frozen in predator-prey confusion. Attack or run?
“There were three bullets missing from the pistol the last time I cleaned it. We keep it loaded,” her dad said.
Nicole smiled in spite of the tension. Yes. This could work.
“Don’t be ridiculous. This is all a bad joke,” her mother said. “Listen to what she’s saying… memories erased and manipulated, shooting a vampire. It’s nonsense.” She turned to Nicole, putting on her stern-mom face. “You stop right this instant. The joke isn’t funny, Nicole.”
“It’s not a joke. You have to remember. Try to remember. Please. My life, my freedom, depends on this.”
She was sure a spark would come to one of them. How could they be reminded of something so dramatic and not be able to call forth the memory? It couldn’t be gone. It had to be in there someplace. She just had to unlock it, trigger it somehow. All it would take was for one of them to start remembering, then the others would fall like dominoes.
“That’s enough!” her dad said, his face growing red. “I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing, but that’s enough, Goddammit!”
“Dominic?” She turned to her husband, sure he’d come to her aid. This was the man who loved her more than life, the man she shared everything with. He had to remember.
“I’m worried about you, Nicole. How long have you had these delusions?”
Once Dominic had made the suggestion of delusion, it was as if a mini hysteria settled over the room. The idea clamped onto each of their brains, unwilling to let go.
Lois stood and edged toward Nicole, her arms outstretched as if she expected her daughter to bolt at any moment. “Let me make you a nice cup of tea.”
“Mom, I don’t want tea. This is serious. You have to remember.”
Her parents exchanged worried glances, as if they had this all figured out. Our poor little girl is crazy. They didn’t have to say it aloud. Insanity was scary, but it was real. There were methods in place to deal with it. Vampires and mind control? Not so much.
She’d been worried about how she’d skirt around some of the more X-rated details of her time with August. That had been a wasted worry.
“Call Dr. Cronan,” Raymond said. “He helped you a lot when you had that depression.”
Lois nodded, now filled with purpose. “Good idea.”
“I’m not crazy. Dominic, you live with me. Tell them I’m not crazy.”
Dominic took her hand and looked at her as if she were new to him. “I just want you to get better, sweetheart. We’ll help you. You’ll see someone. Maybe they’ll write you a prescription. I know this is scary, but we can get through it together.”
Her mother was already dialing the phone.
Am I crazy? The idea stole into her mind for one terrifying moment. She’d been so busy dealing with the enormity of it all, that she hadn’t considered any other options. What if it was true? What if she had somehow snapped one day? Uncle Chuck used to see shiny, glowing butterflies in his toilet. They had always said nice things about everyone. It had been harmless. It wasn’t as if th
e butterflies asked him to murder people. No one thought there was a need to medicate it. It was just a weird family quirk.
This was about as far as one could get from imaginary butterflies. Had his illness passed through the family? Did her father carry a gene that had expressed itself with excited fervor in her?
Nicole reviewed the facts as her dad poured her a cup of tea. Dominic sat next to her holding her hand while her mother spoke in hushed tones over the phone to Dr. Cronan.
An ancient vampire with a curse that somehow and for some inexplicable reason only she could cure. Delusions of grandeur? His bite hurt like hell then somehow… didn’t hurt anymore. Oh, there was the initial pinch, but somehow the experience gave way instead to arousal and pleasure. He’d kept her in a cellar for two months, had killed people in front of her, and yet her body wanted him now and none of it mattered. Vampire bond or average ballpark insanity? He’d manipulated the minds of those she loved… and suddenly her family’s version of events sounded more likely.
There was no scar on her throat that would indicate being bitten by something. Conveniently he could heal her of the scars his bite would otherwise leave. There was no physical evidence to suggest anything she’d experienced had happened. All the gifts August had bought her were… conveniently at his house. They’d… conveniently… driven a rental car that had been paid for in her name. Then he’d what? Turned into a bat and flown away? He’d just… gone like a scene change in a movie. She hadn’t seen him leave. She’d assumed he’d used some super-fast vampire travel. Didn’t this all feel more like a dream than the real world? Or delusion—the waking dream?
In a dream, one doesn’t know they’re dreaming. It’s awake and live reality until morning. Delusions are the same, except sometimes morning never comes.
Nicole drank the tea and tried to hold onto reality. Whatever it was. It had happened. It had to have happened. Didn’t it? But what about Uncle Chuck? He’d always sworn up and down his talking, glowing butterflies were real. It didn’t matter how bizarre the story was, he’d believed it with every ounce of his being.
Like she believed in August.
But what about when they’d all been together? She couldn’t have hallucinated going to her parents’ house, and the gunshots, and…
“What about the missing bullets?” she blurted, sounding more like a lunatic with each passing second. “The bullets are missing. How could they be missing? Dad, you aren’t careless with your guns. You know how many bullets they have in them.”
It was a sort of physical evidence—the one thing that lined up with her story.
“I don’t know, honey. Dr. Cronan will be able to help us understand more how this works,” her dad said as if he was trying to calm a mad woman. And clearly he thought he was.
***
Nicole was kept in Dr. Cronan’s office for hours. Her parents and Dominic had been allowed to join the session.
Slate-gray eyes—shiny like polished glass—watched her from behind bifocals. There were crinkles at the corners of his eyes and smile lines in his face that suggested he liked a good joke. But he didn’t seem to find vampires funny.
“Just relax, Nicole, and try to remember. What did you do with the bullets from the gun?” The doctor spoke to her in that way you do with crazy people, like they’re small children just learning to grasp the cadence of speech—when one can drift on a sea of the sound itself and lose track of the fact that words have meaning, and you have to listen for that, too.
“I’ve told you. I didn’t do anything with the bullets. August and I came over. My parents panicked. Mom shot him. He fed from me and then erased their memories.”
She was so tired, she was long past caring how all this sounded. All she had to hold onto was: this horror show had to be true… or else she was insane. Being insane wasn’t an option. Before she’d wanted to escape August, now she tried to drag him ever closer in her consciousness to make him more real, more solid. Because she couldn’t be mad. She couldn’t.
Dr. Cronan was like an Etch-a-Sketch, trying to shake out evidence of skepticism, to be a blank tablet, to gain her trust, to make her say more things that would incriminate her, make her appear more unstable so he could gleefully make a diagnosis.
If I was crazy, I wouldn’t know that, would I? Could the delusional have sparks of insight? Could they be so aware of those around them?
“When he fed, where did he bite you?”
Nicole pulled back her sleeve to show her bare arm.
“And did he leave a scar?”
“Does it look like he left one?” Did they think she was now imagining ugly bite marks that she wore strategic clothing to cover? “I told you already. He did something to me with his blood. I heal fast now. Supernaturally fast. Cut me. You’ll see. Cut me with something.”
The doctor wrote furiously in his notebook. That was apparently the wrong thing to say. She could only imagine what he was writing. Desires to inflict self-harm by proxy. Danger to self and others.
“I’ll show you!” Nicole grabbed a letter opener out of the pencil cup on his desk and raised it in the air. She squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for impact. Why hadn’t she thought of this before? They would see, in front of their own eyes how she could heal. Then they’d have to believe her. What other explanation could be offered for the ability to close wounds like that?
“Ow!” Nicole’s eyes shot open as someone grabbed her wrists, wrenching them behind her back, pushing her to the ground on her knees. The letter opener dropped uselessly out of her hand as she turned her head to the side to find her husband of all people. She struggled against him.
Never before had she hated his strength. Those muscles that she’d slid her tongue across so many starry nights and rainy days after indulging in strawberries and champagne. Those muscles that made her feel so safe, so protected… being used against her.
“Get off me! I can show you! I can prove my story’s true! I can prove this is real! Why won’t you let me show you?”
His overpowering body pressed in on hers, moving into a stifling backward hug, holding her arms in, keeping her legs from thrashing. It was like he’d transformed into an octopus, growing six additional arms to more easily contain her movement.
“Oh, baby, how did I not see this? I’m so sorry I didn’t spot the signs,” Dominic said.
Oh fuck. Of course. Because stabbing yourself with a letter opener was crazy. Anybody would think that, but it was physical proof. Couldn’t they step back from all this and see the logic in her behavior?
“I’m afraid this changes things. I’d like to bring her in for observation. Just for a few days. We’ll get her stabilized on something, see how she does on it, and when she’s not a danger to herself, she can go home. You’ll find the class of drugs we have now is first rate. Much more effective than the earlier generations of anti-psychotics. She should be back to her normal life in no time.”
This had Nicole struggling again, clawing at Dominic until there were bloody trails going down his arm. “You can’t let them do this to me. You can’t let them drug me. Those drugs are dangerous, and there’s nothing wrong with me! I’m not crazy! If I’m so crazy, how have I gone for months without you suspecting anything was off?”
Her eyes lit at the sight of the blood moving down her husband’s arm. Of course. She didn’t need a letter opener. If she could get her fingernails to her own arm… She struggled and strained, kicking and bucking against him until he went off balance and released her for a split second. It was enough.
She hissed as she dug her fingernails through her flesh, and the blood started to flow. “Look, look at this! Look at my arm. Watch this!”
They were too slow, because they felt sorry for her, didn’t believe her. She healed before they saw. If they had seen, in the melee would they have believed their eyes?
“Honey, that’s Dominic’s blood,” her mother said, gently.
Part of it was Dominic’s blood. Part of it was her blood. She’
d healed too fast for them to see the wounds she’d inflicted.
If she were able to view this overhead, she’d see everybody’s point. Her hair in a wild and scraggled tangle, makeup and clothes in disarray, screaming, eyes bulging. But can’t a sane person lose it in such conditions? When people don’t believe the truth? When they refuse to be shown proof?
Being kept in a room for hours, drilled over and over by people who don’t believe your story. Anybody would become agitated. Anyone would look like this. Like yesterday’s mental patient. Maybe everybody in the nut house was perfectly sane, driven to exasperation by this sick, cloying patronization.
When she realized how futile fighting against Dominic’s strength was, particularly with so many others there to hold her down, she stopped and glared up at Dr. Cronan, gathering cold calm around her. “If you lock me up, he will hunt you, and he will kill you.”
Her bravery deflated and her eyes widened when she saw the straitjacket, and her struggling resumed.
“Settle, now… easy, Nicole. We don’t use these much anymore. We need to transport you safely to the hospital, and I’d prefer not to give you drugs yet. We’ll wait until you’re admitted, until you’re settled, then we’ll figure out the best course of treatment.”
“No, No, No, No, No, No, NO!” Her screams hurt her own ears. The panic built higher and higher, and there was no power short of a horse tranquilizer that would shut it down.
It took both her dad and Dominic to get her into the straitjacket while her mother stood to the side, clenching wadded tissues in her hands, playing the helpless, drooping flower.
How could they do this? Her dad and her husband… the two most important men in her life. The ones who had loved her, cared for her, protected her, shoving her into a straitjacket without mercy.
“I fucking hate you both! I hate you! I should have stayed with him. I sacrificed everything to come back to you, Dominic, everything. I gave myself to him, for you. For no reason! You miserable bastard!” She could barely believe the words tumbling out of her mouth. And of course they sounded like nonsense to assholes who couldn’t fucking listen. Who couldn’t hear.