"C"mon, Tony. What are we supposed to think? One of you guys comes down here from the monitoring booth, shuts down the table, and whatever, right after the kid gets a big tip." The old man lifted his chin. "It ain"t right."

"What did the woman look like?" Tony waited, knowing the cameras were now on him. If there was something shaky going on, then he had to solidify the family"s trust in him by going to handle it directly. Maybe he would run back those digital images. He could show the boys in the room the thing that had triggered his reaction, and they would see him now down on the floor.

But both men looked puzzled for a moment.

"You saw the broad from the monitors," old Stan challenged, running his thick fingers through his snow-white hair.

"She was fine," the dealer said, keeping his voice low and his eyes darting around like a trapped rabbit"s. "You know, man, the money type. Five ten, skin flawless. Designer black dress on. Diamond earrings, the real s.h.i.t, not no CZs. Single gold bangle with some real weight. Legs that go on for miles, stilettos making her a.s.s even hotter when she walks. Beautiful set of t.i.ts, V-neck serving it all up, but not in a hoochie type of way. But she didn"t remind me of a pro, at least not the ones around here I"ve seen. She had a real cla.s.sy vibe, man, like she wasn"t from around here-belonged in f.u.c.king Vegas or Monaco, or off some runway in Paris, but not down at the d.a.m.ned Jersey sh.o.r.e... like she had money to play with. Seemed like she was bored as h.e.l.l, too, if you feel me. Hey, if she stole it, y"all can have it back-but I didn"t steal it."

"The kid is only twenty-six, Tony. He didn"t steal from the drawer; that I witnessed with my own eyes. He"s not lying, the broad was old money."

The desperation in the young man"s voice and fear in his eyes told him what he needed to know. One-there hadn"t been a theft. Two-there was a woman at that table. But then why hadn"t she shown up on the monitors? That was the part that made him question his sanity. Unnerved, he let the two men waiting on his judgment off the hook.

"All right. Keep the chips, but point out which way she went. I have some questions for her."

"s.h.i.t, you shut my table down and I"ll walk you to her over by the poker tables." The young dealer seemed unconvinced that his life was no longer in jeopardy. Stan nodded and he quickly came around the edge of his table. "I don"t want no problems, man, no bulls.h.i.t whatsoever. Aw"ight. So, I"ma take you to her, you can ask her yourself whether or not she gave me the tip. Cool? Then you guys will have that on tape and I don"t have to worry about getting into my car in the parking lot, right?"

"That"ll work," Tony said calmly as the young dealer came to his side, looked around, and then shook his hand.

"There she go," he said, beginning to walk. "Can"t miss her... ain"t nothing like her in this joint."

Tony stared behind the kid for a moment before he began walking. Again, he hadn"t lied. Sensuality personified oozed from her very being. The way her graceful hand took up a card and added it to her fan, the way her mesmerizing eyes studied them and the dealer, sent the temperature of the entire casino up a notch. Her face was gorgeous, and that added to the unbelievable curves she owned made her a knockout, drop-dead, to-die-for beauty. Not since Meghan had he been so drawn to a woman. A roll in the hay with a pro was one thing, simply a matter of releasing the primal-something he"d indulged in when he had more drinks than advisable. But this woman...

Then, as though sensing his approach, she looked up and stared at him. There was no question she was staring at him-it was more than a visual recognition, he felt it. He watched her fold her hand, rake in the winnings, and stand, leaving the game.

She"d sensed someone staring at her, but until the crowd parted a bit, she wasn"t sure of where the energy pull was coming from. She spotted the young dealer, whose entire aura radiated stress and flight-or-fight hormone that was palpable. Yes, he"d been the one staring at her, but there was a darker presence, a more sensual, mysterious creature behind the kid. The moment she saw the source, she froze.

His dark brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail; she wondered if it was held by a dark leather thong or a simple rubber band. She briefly closed her eyes, no longer than a slow blink, perceiving as much as she could about him in seconds. Leather held his hair. Broad shoulders filled out his black leather jacket and concealed a gun. She could taste the metallic change in the air and smell the gunpowder in the clip. He wore a black t-shirt beneath the b.u.t.ter soft leather, black slacks, black slip-on Cole Haans. No jewelry, just a fine gold watch made by Rolex. A pair of intense, dark eyes pierced her, asking questions in a thunder of human thoughts. A strong jaw was set hard, but his mouth was still beautiful, not a tight line of anger. His athletic body moved through the crowd with the stealth of a cat... he was hunting her... interesting. Yet there was no guile aimed at her to be found in his presence, but this was a man of mysteries.

As he neared her, it all became so clear-he was the honest man she"d saved earlier by feeding on the a.s.sa.s.sin. The irony made her smile.

"Excuse me, Miss, may I have a word with you?"

She turned and regarded the near breathless dealer and then the man that stood behind him.

She nodded, already knowing what the problem was. "I had hoped it wouldn"t come to this," she said, looking past the dealer into the eyes of pure intrigue. "I was bored, gave him a large tip of my own volition. He didn"t steal anything from your casino." She flashed a purse full of chips worth close to fifty thousand dollars. "Look, I have more." She pulled out another five grand and handed it to the dealer. "Just so you gentlemen who watch transactions can be clear that I did tip the man."

"See, see what I mean, Tony!" The dealer held the chips out to Tony to take, still nervous.

"You"re straight, you can go back to your table and open up," Tony said quietly, not looking at the dealer, his eyes transfixed on her. "Buy you a drink?"

She gave him a half-smile. "Mind if we get out of here and go somewhere less frenetic? This place is giving me a headache."

"Great minds think alike. I"m Tony."

"Pleased to meet you, Antonio. I am Odette."

"How did you know my full name was Antonio and not just plain Anthony?"

"Because you are a complicated man and Anthony is way too simplistic for you."

"How about that drink... somewhere out of here?"

"I would adore a Vodka martini."

He nodded. "My favorite."

"Good," she murmured. "

Tres bon."

Fat Joe took the phone away from his ear slowly, every man in the booth watching Tony leave the casino alone after money had again changed hands. "They just found Donny all f.u.c.ked up in his room over at the Trump. Can"t figure out what the f.u.c.k happened to him. Wasn"t an ounce of blood in "im."

"That s.h.i.t is crazy," Lou said, standing. "Tony had to know Donny was gonna do "im tonight... "cuz look at the segment of floor activity he was checking out before he got all weird on us."

Fat Joe came around the desks, moving his heft swiftly to lean in and see where Lou pointed. Other henchmen in the room joined in.

"Look at that s.h.i.t. I don"t understand it, but somehow he must have either erased the person"s image or somethin". The dealer looks nervous, five large goes across the table. The dealer asks old Stan something, and then our boy shuts down his monitors, goes downstairs, right. He has a little talk, the dealer walks with him away from the black jack area over toward poker, they put more cash in the dealer"s hand and he leaves."

"So, the black kid is working undercover with him and they got old Stan to turn a blind eye, you think?" Fat Joe stood up straight, outrage making his face turn red.

"Yeah, and helping himself to a little pocket lining just like the other feds... but how he got to Donny, that"s what I wanna know."

Fat Joe looked at Lou. "Does that matter how they did it? They tried to infiltrate us, are stealing money from us-even if it is a punk a.s.s amount, and they killed a good man. The boss said to be sure that crazy b.a.s.t.a.r.d Tony got put down hard tonight. We can"t have undercover cops thinking they can violate us like that. So, it"s good he"s off the premises. Saves us the trouble of having to ask him to go for a little ride."

"I"ll round up the fellas," Lou said with a slight smile.

The place where he"d taken her was a dive, but it was quiet. The short walk away from the casino district had allowed her thoughts to gather along with her impressions of him. Pain so deep and so profound cloaked him and she"d almost reached out to touch him to try to dispel it.

"You"re an honest man," she said, once the bartender had taken their drink orders. "n.o.ble."

"No man is without sin," he replied, staring into her eyes. "Sin stains n.o.bility."

"I didn"t say you were without sin, I said you were an honest man. To kill those who have brutalized those you love is an honest emotion."

Her words made him draw back and a frown replaced his once serene expression. "You need to talk to me-quickly."

She smiled. "I am not your nemesis, nor your enemy." She released a sigh as their drinks came, knowing she"d never be able to sip hers without a bit of blood mixer. "There was a man in the hotel, over at the Trump Taj Mahal... Donny, I think his name was."

"Was?" Tony leaned in to her and grabbed her arm.

"Was," she said flatly. "He knew who you were; they all do, I suppose, if they sent him to kill you."

"He"s dead?" Tony slowly let go of her arm and then cautiously downed half his martini. "How do you know all of this?"

"Because I eliminated him."

Incredulous, he simply stared at her for a moment. "You work for them and you"ve now set me up?"

She shook her head no. "Have the rest of your martini. I don"t work for anyone, haven"t in years. He was an a.s.shole, a very bad man, the type I despise, so..."

"Then how do you know all of this-like how you knew my name?" Tony"s voice was a low, threatening rumble.

"If I told you, you"d never believe me."

"Try me. You just told me you killed a man and know way too much about me for comfort."

She searched his face, seeing kind eyes behind their angry veneer, seeing where the pain began and what had chased him into the arms of fate.

"They took your wife"s life," she murmured. "Your partner"s and his wife. The baby." Odette shook her head and then shivered. "Beasts. Humans can be animals-I"ve died at their hands, had that which was precious taken from me. You and I are not so different."

"Lady, stop talking in riddles," he said, now grabbing her arm again as he roughly set down his gla.s.s.

"You aren"t ready for the truth... ask yourself, didn"t you find it strange that you couldn"t see me on the monitors? The moment I saw you pushing the young dealer in my direction, with you dressed in security staff black, I figured that the technology had betrayed me."

"What the f.u.c.k is going on, lady?"

She inclined her head toward the mirror behind the bar, motioning toward it with her chin. "I don"t show up in reflections, mirrored surfaces, or even in photographs. I don"t exist, but I do exist. I don"t appear dangerous, but I"m deadly. And I"m so much older than you think. But I"m not evil, although everything you"ve been taught says that I am... even though some like me definitely are. You and I are the same, rogues, an enigma, cloaked in pain and invisible to most others. We cull the herds, you and I, in our own way; we keep the beasts away from the innocent. Be careful tonight-it"s getting late, I need to go."

His hand had fallen away from her arm as his jaw went slack. He didn"t offer protest as he stared in the mirror and she stood and walked away, too stunned to immediately gather himself. By the time his body and mind caught up to each other, allowing him to toss a twenty on the bar and dash out the door to find her, she was gone.

But a black Escalade careened over the curb, its door opened before he could draw his weapon, and beefy hands had him. Duct tape went over his mouth; nylon cuffed his wrists as the vehicle sped to a deserted section of beach. Hardened eyes told him Odette hadn"t lied. How could he have been so stupid!

His shoulder collided with the ground, the searing pain racing through his skeleton. A pair of dead, young eyes stared at him, open, gla.s.sy... the kid was only twenty-six. h.e.l.l, he was only thirty-seven. Struggling just made the men around him laugh. Trying to speak made them draw their weapons.

"Take the tape off and lemme hear what this sonofab.i.t.c.h has to say," Lou growled, leveling a nine millimeter toward Tony"s face. "We"ve known you were a cop for months."

Another henchman ripped off the tape. Tony took a huge inhale, and then began shouting, spittle flying.

"f.u.c.k you!" he yelled out, trying to sit up. "You kill my pregnant wife and think I"m not coming for you? You kill my partner and think there"d be no retribution?" Chest heaving, death eminent, he refused to beg them, wanted them to know that he"d take this grudge with him to h.e.l.l and back. "I"ll haunt you motherf.u.c.kers! This ain"t over!"

The men around him laughed and shook their heads.

"Sorry, I ain"t superst.i.tious," one said.

"Yeah, me neither," Lou said, shrugging his shoulders and poking out his barrel chest. "But sorry about the wife, little b.i.t.c.h wasn"t supposed to be at the house when it blew. Our bad."

"I"ll kill you!" Tony shouted.

"Yeah, we"re so scared," Lou said, and then squeezed the trigger twice.

The back of his head exploded in pain and colors for a second and then everything went dark. There was no light, no sound; he could no longer feel the sand or the wind. The chill of the night air was gone. He"d failed. It was so quick, a blink of time. He was floating and weeping inside his shattered mind. Pressure at his throat made his muscles twitch. Something tightened around him and then became light, making him feel like he was flying away. Time stood still and yet he could feel its pa.s.sage. Water now pelted his body, his forehead rested against something soft. He opened his eyes slowly to a dark angel, the shower spray blurring his vision.

b.u.t.ter-cream-soft hands traced his back; cinnamon-hued b.r.e.a.s.t.s cushioned his chest as his knees buckled. A warm mouth sought his in a tender kiss. He had to be in heaven, because he"d just left h.e.l.l on the beach. Everything was now surreal. His stomach churned and then pain soon gripped him, making him stagger backward to claw the wall, his wail an agonized echo that bounced off the tiles.

"I tried but got there too late to save the boy, that young dealer. They are animals," a familiar voice murmured. "You must eat to regain your strength, and then heal today... tonight we will work together."

Frantic, he looked around at the exquisite marble and gold fixtures, and then his gaze settled on Odette. "Where am I?"

"At my home, far away from them."

"You saved me?" he panted. "The last thing I remember is Lou unloaded two slugs into the back of my head." Tony"s hand gingerly touched his skull and then when he felt no wound, panicked.

"I perceived that you wanted to live more than anything else, in order to avenge this travesty of justice."

"I did, but... but how?" He stepped out of the walk-in shower, b.u.mping into the gla.s.s and staggering to the far side of the s.p.a.cious bathroom. "I heard the shots, felt the impact, pa.s.sed out. How in the f.u.c.k don"t I have a huge hole in my head!" He looked around, noticing something was missing. "Where"s the mirror? Where"s the G.o.dd.a.m.ned mirror, Odette!"

"I don"t have any in the mansion," she said calmly, turning off the water and covering her nudity with a large, white Turkish towel. "They upset me."

"Why! What"s going on?"

She tossed him a towel and watched him grab it swiftly. "I"m sorry, it was the only way to save you. But once you eat, you"ll understand all."

"Eat? Eat! Are you insane?" He wound the towel around his waist and struggled to stand without the aid of the double sink. "I"m not hungry, I"m about to lose my mind. My brains just got blown out, but I"m not dead, this ain"t a hospital, and I don"t know why I"m even alive." Pain doubled him over again.

"You"re not. Eat," she whispered, offering him her wrist.

He seemed confused, and then became horrified as her French manicured finger broke the skin and fangs filled his mouth at the first sight of her blood.

Tears stung his eyes but the scent of blood saturated the bathroom, drawing him to her beyond his control. He closed his eyes as he took her arm and brought it to his lips, her fingers threading through his hair, petting him as he greedily suckled, colors staining the inside of his lids, pleasure careening through his system until he could stand it no more. He threw his head back and released a moan. Her embrace opened the floodgate on years of hurt along with a torrent of tears.

Sobs of remorse choked him, a tender mouth swallowed them away. Velvet tresses were in his fist, his fingers wending their way through dripping curls. Hands so graceful, so soft removed pain from his aura with each gentle caress until towels fell away and skin burned against skin. This woman had saved him, had pulled his essence of existence away from the blackness. He had another chance to complete the mission he"d begun. Her story exploded inside his mind and he wept for her as his story entered her and she wept for him, their honesty becoming raw pa.s.sion that slammed against the walls and melted down to body-slicked heat on the towel-strewn floor.

The storm of emotions and pleasure was so swift that it left them both breathless. He stared down at her, tracing the edge of her beautiful brows and then cradled her cheek.

"Why did you come back for me?" he murmured, still out of breath.

"Because you were a keeper. I found you after a very long search. A n.o.bleman... and it has been centuries since I"d found someone worth saving." A gentle smile eased out of hiding on her face. "Plus, I so badly wanted a Vodka martini."

He paused to catch his breath, his mind laboring under the new knowledge it had just received. "What they did to you was unforgivable."

"I became what I am, much like you did tonight," she murmured, touching his cheek, her smile fading. "Someone cared enough about me to give me another chance and I loved him for that... and for whom he was."

He understood what Odette was telling him, he loved Meghan that way. But it was becoming so difficult to hold onto the memory or to nurse it to life.

"Imagine after more than two hundred years... the memories fade and all you have left is the pain." Her stare was so hypnotic, so open, and for all that she was and all that she had done, she possessed serenity.

"I have to finish this, tomorrow night, then I can move on."

"I know you have to redress what happened to you," she said quietly, briefly closing her eyes. "Just as one day I"ll route out the rest of those in the coven that partic.i.p.ated in the coup against Alfonse."

"I know," he murmured, moving against her slowly and now appreciating the unhurried pleasure of their union. She was a beautiful woman, but there was something beyond that, something still so genuine inside her very being. It had been so long since he"d witnessed that or had allowed himself to experience the possibility it existed beyond Meghan. The fact that he felt the way he did almost seemed like a betrayal.

"It"s not a betrayal," Odette murmured, brushing his mouth with hers. "They would have wanted us to go on, to thrive, and not merely survive. If we exist tortured, then the others have also won."

A gasp escaped him as Odette"s slick sheath tightened around him. He studied her face as he loved her slowly, kissing her throat, then her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, paying delicate homage to her erect Hershey nipples with tiny suckles until she moaned. Satiny legs encircled his waist as she arched and offered him her throat. The strike into her jugular was swift but tender, her gasp sending a shudder through him that made him cry out.

The night wore on, their lovemaking an anthem, to survival, to renewal, that took them from the floor of the vast bathroom to the sprawl of her king-sized bed. He watched semi-dazed as the steel door to the bas.e.m.e.nt sanctuary closed and pure darkness surrounded them, but yet he could still see.