Chapter One
MAKING HER WAY past a group of tourists who had joined together along Cathedral Street, Aria pretended not to notice the elderly woman who waved her hand in her direction, undoubtedly about to ask how to get to Edgar Allan Poe’s grave site or one of the many shops which dotted the road along the Inner Harbor.
She didn’t really mind the tourists; she herself had been one when she first came to Baltimore. She’d give anything to go back to the days when the artistic little shops, delightful smells, and eccentric characters of Inner Harbor, Little Italy, and the assorted other neighborhoods of the “Charm City” mesmerized her with their beauty. Baltimore had been her haven back then.
She thought she’d escaped all the ugliness of her childhood when she and her mother uprooted from Indiana and flew out to Baltimore, taking up residence in a small downtown apartment. She still lived in that apartment, but her mother would sleep forever in her silk-lined casket beneath the earth. Because of that, she ignored the tourists as she made her way toward the Enoch Pratt Free Library. She didn’t want to remember how, like them, she had once been too mesmerized by the city’s charm to see the danger lurking in its shadows.
“Aria, I have some more books that might help you with your research!” Curtis, the carrot-topped librarian’s aide, called out to her as she stepped through the front doors. Winding her way back to the table in the far corner of the room, she aimed a polite smile his way as he rushed to check out books for a woman standing at the counter. She barely managed to remove her black leather jacket and rest her bottom in the chair before Curtis appeared at her side with a stack of books.
“I’ve got it now,” he said, beaming while he deposited the books on the table in front of her. He had been trying for months to figure out why she was researching vampire lore so heavily.
“Shoot.”
“Well, the other day there was a drop of paint on your jeans. You’re an artist and you’re doing a vampire-themed collection.” He rocked restlessly from foot to foot with his arms crossed over his chest, the light of excitement and admiration shining in his pale green eyes.
“Very observant.” Aria nodded her head in approval. “But not entirely correct.”
“So you are an artist though, right?” He pulled out the chair next to her and sat, planting his elbows on the table so his hands could cradle his chin. Aria almost smiled at the way he watched her in fascination. He obviously had a crush on her, and that dampened her spirits immediately. It wasn’t that he wasn’t even remotely attractive or that he wasn’t at all her type. What disappointed her was the knowledge that once the summer rolled in and its sun darkened her skin, he would no longer want her.
“I’m an artist, yes.” She winced at her harsh tone, feeling like a jerk when she saw the hurt flutter through his eyes. She tried to smile sweetly to offset the bitterness that had erupted within her. “But that isn’t why I’m researching vampires.”
The light slowly left his eyes as they lowered to a book he had taken from the stack. He was holding onto it almost as if he didn’t want to part with it.
“What’s that?” Aria asked.
A soft redness diffused his cheeks as he glanced up, still holding onto the book. For a second, Aria thought his hands were shaking. “I, um, came across this and thought it was something that might interest you but . . .”
“But what?” Her curiosity grew at his discomfort. Without a word, he slid the book toward her.
Aria looked at the book with unveiled interest. She could tell by the binding and the smell of aged leather that it was incredibly old. As worn as it appeared, the book still retained a noble beauty. There was no title.
She opened it gently to find handwritten pages alternating between an elegant cursive script and printed entries which weren’t as neatly made, some in English and some in another language. “This is a diary.”
Curtis grinned sheepishly. “It was my great grandfather’s. He thought of himself as a great vampire hunter.” He circled his index finger around his temple. “Crazy old fool was what he was, but he researched vampires extensively too. I thought you’d like to read his research.” His eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he sat back in the chair. “You’re not trying to be a vampire hunter yourself, are you? You don’t really believe in them?”
“No, of course not,” Aria answered a little too quickly. She realized Curtis had picked up on it as his eyes narrowed suspiciously this time. Oh, why not lie? He’d never quit trying to figure out what she was up to if she didn’t tell him something, and the truth wasn’t an option. Aria purposely lowered her voice to give the illusion she was sharing a very private secret. “Can I trust you, Curtis?”
His head bobbed up and down eagerly.
“All right. My real name is Aria Michaels but I write under a pen name.”
“So you’re a writer.”
“Yes.”
“Two weeks ago I asked if you were a writer, and you said you weren’t.”
“I lied.” Aria smiled sweetly and bit back her annoyance. She was about to have some fun. “I write erotica. When you do that for a living, you have to be careful who you tell. There are so many men out there who get all excited over the things I write they try to find me. I have to be very careful. You understand, don’t you, Curtis?”
He nodded, and Aria fought the urge to laugh as his fingers flexed awkwardly and little beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. He looked more anxious than a virgin in a strip club. “So you’re writing eh-erotic stories about vampires.”
“Possibly. That’s why I’m doing all this research.”
“Oh.” He quickly scooted out of his seat and turned in the direction of the checkout counter where someone was waiting. “I hope my great-grandfather’s journal gives you some ideas.” His face reddened as if just realizing the implication of what he’d said and he nearly ran into the next table.
“Definitely a virgin,” Aria said to herself and laughed softly. It was strangely amusing whenever she came across the rare twenty-something male who had yet to get laid.
She took inventory of the stack of books in front of her, but her interest was still captured by the diary. So Curtis’s great grand-pops had wanted to be a vampire hunter, eh? It couldn’t hurt to learn from the old man, whom she figured wasn’t really crazy at all. Or maybe he was, but if so, she was right there with him. For three months she had been obsessed with learning everything she could about vampires, training herself for the battle yet to come. For three months she had seen her mother’s lifeless face over and over again in her mind. She couldn’t forget the image of those open, glossed-over eyes staring at the ceiling, her pale white body lying on the cold metal slab in the morgue.
Those two perfect round holes in her neck.
Mary Ayers had been killed by a vampire, her body sucked completely dry of blood. The police could convince themselves there was some other explanation yet to be found, but Aria knew what she’d seen. There had been fang marks on her mother’s neck, and she was going to catch the killer. She was going to learn everything there was to know about his kind, and when the time was right, she would hunt down the vampire who’d killed her mother and left her body sprawled across the lawn at Druid Hill Park. Then she would send the monster right back to hell where he belonged.
She just didn’t know how she was going to do it yet, so she continued to research. She read encyclopedias, magazine articles, and books. It didn’t bother her that most of her research was comprised of fictional material. Aria had always believed there was some truth to fiction.
She found that all writers of vampire lore believed in very similar ideas. Vampires did have weaknesses. Fire, sunlight, holy water, and bleeding-out seemed to be the most widely believed causes of death. Some authors also favored crosses and garlic. It was highly debatable whether or not a vampire could morph into a bat or another type of animal, and while some believed they could fly, others just believed they could jump incredibly high and far, giving the illusion of flight
.
But of all she read, one fact remained consistent: They were incredibly pale, gaunt, fanged creatures with an insatiable thirst for human blood, and they possibly possessed the ability to read minds. It would be hard to bring one down, but she was sure it could be done.
Aria read the pages of the journal Curtis had given her, discovering a great deal about his great-grandfather. According to the diary, a vampire by the name of Eron had crept into Alfred Dunn’s bedroom at night and forewarned him he was going to execute his son for his sins. The following morning, Alfred’s twenty-year-old son Patrick was found dead in an alley. That was when Alfred Dunn became a vampire hunter. He searched all of Ireland for the vampire named Eron, but he couldn’t find him. He found others, but he didn’t kill them. He wanted Eron.
He studied, researched and hunted night and day. The search led him to America, and eventually Maryland.
Aria found the diary portions harder to understand once Alfred reached Baltimore in 1969. His beautiful script had turned into rash scribbles, his once elegant words and phrasing turned into an erratic scrawl, as though his mind were racing faster than he could find words to describe his thoughts and observations.
He made several notes about vampires, listing their known hangouts, names of vampires he’d interviewed or heard of, dates of sightings. Lists of names were long and scattered throughout the pages, not in any logical order. Aria scanned a page of them.
Addison, Bethany, Gregario, Jonathan Deville, Olden, Katerina, Palo, Lionel, Demarcus, Niles, Robert Savant, Seta, Carson, Rialto . . .
Rialto.
Aria halted at the name as images plowed into her. She and a large, golden-skinned man with dark, wavy hair cascading down to his shoulder blades wrapped around each other amid a tangle of white cotton sheets. Her sheets, from her very own bed in her downtown apartment. The window to the balcony was open, and she could feel the wind blowing through it, cooling the droplets of sweat clinging to her naked body as the man moved in and out of her. She could smell nighttime air, fresh linen, and the man’s spicy scent. Their sweat fused together and produced a scent of its own, coconut and spicy earth. It was the most delicious scent she had ever breathed in. And the pleasure she felt as he slid in and out of her was more intense and gratifying than anything she had ever experienced. She could barely contain herself as he continued the sweet torture, changing his rhythm from fast to slow, teasing her over and over again, prolonging her ecstasy until she screamed out his name.
Rialto.
Aria wiped away the sheen of sweat which had spread across her forehead and willed her heart to quit racing. “And I thought Curtis needed to get laid,” she murmured to herself, surprised by the intensity of her daydream. She could still smell the man’s lingering scent, and she was wet from the desire surging through her.
She’d been having dreams of the same man for months, though she struggled to remember everything that happened in them. All she could remember was making love to him. Sometimes it was slow and sweet, sometimes fast and wild . . . but she couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that there was something vital she was forgetting.
A sick thought crept into her mind, and she stared at the name in horror. If it was written in Alfred Dunn’s journal, it was because the name belonged to a vampire. But surely she wasn’t dreaming about having sex with that Rialto. The man in her dreams was too dark and muscular to be a vampire, and never, not even in a dream, could she defile her mother’s memory by sleeping with the same kind of monster that killed her.
PAINT SPLATTERS across canvas. Red. Black. Gray mixed with blue. A little girl with dark, flowing hair and pale golden skin stands in the middle of a circle of children, crying as they taunt her. Zebra girl. Half-breed. The words pelt her like stones.
The girl now kisses a blond, tanned man, both of them young, barely seventeen. She believes his vows of love and surrenders her body to him willingly. Pink and yellow paint on canvas, the strokes light and airy.
Crimson slashes splatter across the pink, and the young man’s face now appears red and angry as he hurls the same words from her childhood at her, striking at her with the back of his hand. Her skin has darkened with the summer sun, beautiful and exotic. Mocha cream.
Another slosh of red paint. A cross burns in a yard. The young woman cries in front of it. Her emerald eyes shine through her tears. Beyond the burning cross, a body is removed from a small blue house. A white sheet covers its face, but a dark brown hand hangs off the side of the stretcher. Her father’s hand. Black paint on canvas. The brush strokes are hard and angry.
Baltimore. The brush strokes soften, but still only the dark colors adorn the canvas. Black, gray, the darkest of blues and purples. A pale blond woman lies on a metal slab, her blank eyes staring at the ceiling. Two holes lie in her neck. The vampire hunter stares at them, balling her fists in anger, vowing to find the one who did this to her mother.
Red paint splatters across the canvas. The vampire hunter sits in a library, her head bowed over a leather book, a diary of sorts. She reads his name and she remembers his touch . . .
The world turns dark and cold, blue twilight creeps through the branches hanging overhead as he finds himself standing in the silvery forest he’s come to know as the dream realm. The blind witch is there before him. “Protect her,” she says to him, “for you will die without her and so will this world.”
Rialto jolted awake, his heart pounding furiously. She was close. He knew this now more than ever. She was right here in Baltimore, most likely still sitting at the library reading that journal.
He crossed the hotel room and entered the bathroom, stepping into the shower to clean away the sweat drenching his body. Even with the water streaming over his face, he could still smell her sweet scent. Coconut. Sweet and tropical. Perfection.
Snap out of it, he cautioned himself. She was trying to avenge a loved one’s death by becoming a vampire hunter, going by the so-called evidence she’d found in the morgue and information written in a diary. She believed vampires to be cruel killers, yet she made love to him in her dreams. The dichotomy didn’t matter. She could prove to be very dangerous.
And she had a journal with information about him and possibly more of his kind. It simply could not be allowed. Vampires survived by remaining beneath the radar, never allowing their pictures to be taken, changing their names each decade or moving often. They never allowed documentation of their existence. Rialto had to know what was in the journal and how the woman had come to possess it.
He turned off the water and stepped out of the stall. A vampire did not kill the woman’s mother, but she would get herself killed trying to find a murdering vampire who didn’t even exist. And according to the old witch in his dream, he couldn’t allow that to happen.
Although common sense told him to stay far away from this vengeful woman, he feared the old witch’s predictions far more than he feared the huntress. The witch had come to him with warnings before, and he’d found that not listening to her caused great suffering.
With a cold shiver, one last remnant from his dream, crawling up his spine, he quickly dressed in black and left his hotel room to find the woman.