Dark Obsession. Amanda Stevens

What if one of them decided to…”

      “There are a lot of people out there,” Slade said evenly, “who have never read your books. And they kill, anyway.”

      “But do they drain their victim’s blood?” Erin’s heart was beating so fast she felt light-headed. She swayed again, and Slade steadied her once more.

      His mouth tightened as he gazed down at her. “We’ll get him, Erin. I promise you that. He won’t get away with this.”

      “No, he won’t,” she agreed, the horror inside her turning to rage. “He won’t get away with this. I’ll see to that.”

      “What do you mean?”

      They stared at each other in silence. Mist shrouded them in an illusion of privacy, and once again Erin became conscious of how tall he was, how immense he looked in that long black coat. She hadn’t been aware of how far their walk had taken them, but as she looked around now, she realized the cemetery was long behind them. They stood in the gray afternoon, a myriad of desolate buildings surrounding them, and all Erin could think was how quiet everything seemed. How alone they were.

      Behind his dark glasses, Slade continued to hold her gaze. Erin’s fingers began to tremble, so she forced her hands deep into the pockets of her coat.

      “What did you mean you’ll see to it?” he repeated suspiciously. His voice was low and rough. She could see the hint of anger in the rigid set of his mouth, a mouth she knew could look at once cruel and sensuous….

      Erin tilted her chin, denying her thoughts. “I mean I can help you find him. I knew my sister better than anyone else. If anyone can trace the last few days of her life, it would be me.”

      “Don’t be stupid.”

      He drew her up so close the frost of their breath mingled in the cold air. Their bodies were almost, but not quite, touching, yet Erin had no difficulty at all imagining the warmth of his skin next to hers. The hardness of his body against hers…

      Dear God, she thought. What am I doing? What am I thinking?

      Megan was gone, dead and buried. She was never coming back. How could Erin be having these feelings for a man she knew absolutely nothing about? A man who seemed to embody her deepest fears?

      Guilt, as sharp as a dagger, stabbed through her.

      “Think about it,” she insisted, willing the beat of her heart to slow. She tried to swallow away the sudden dryness in her throat. “Her friends would be more likely to talk to me than they would to the police. There’s no telling what I might learn. At any rate, I want to talk to them. I want to find out everything I can about my sister. I have to,” she finished, her voice giving away the desperation she felt. “I have to know why she died the way she did.”

      “Listen to me,” he said, his voice deep and dark and full of warning. “You have no idea what we’re dealing with here. You have no idea how much danger you could be in if you start talking to the wrong people, going to the wrong places. Stay out of it, Erin. Let me do my job.”

      “How can I be sure you’ll do your job?” Erin challenged, feeling her anger flare. His fingers warmed her arm through the fabric of her coat, made her skin burn with awareness, but she wouldn’t pull away. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how deeply his touch affected her.

      Slade smiled a thin, humorless smile. “So that’s it. You think you can do a better job than the police. You think you can find clues we wouldn’t uncover. You think you can play amateur detective and not get burned. Think again, Erin. Think long and hard before you do something you and I both might regret.”

      His hand fell away from her arm, but Erin’s skin still flamed from his touch. He gazed down at her for a moment longer, then he turned and headed back toward the cemetery, his long coat flapping in the wind.

      Erin took a deep breath, trying to quell the rapid throb of the pulse in her throat. She watched him disappear into the mist. The dark glasses, the scars, the grim facade. She wished she could see him just once, on her own terms, in broad daylight, with the sun pouring down on them and the shadows and mist that seemed to envelop him nothing more than a memory.

      He’s a policeman, she reminded herself. A cop. That alone explained her wariness. Erin could still remember clearly the detective who had investigated her mother’s disappearance. Cold, impersonal, with a rumpled demeanor and a bad disposition, he had looked at Erin and Megan as distastefully as if they’d been something he’d scraped off his shoe.

      Within days he’d stopped taking their aunt’s calls. He’d never called them back, never come by the apartment to give them any news. Erin remembered how helpless she’d felt, how at the mercy of that indifferent detective she’d been. What could an eight-year-old kid do about it, though?

      But Erin was no longer a child. She was twenty-six years old, and she knew better than to depend on anyone but herself for the answers she needed. What if her book had caused Megan’s death? What if some psycho had believed himself to be her demon lover? How could Erin live with the guilt, with not knowing for sure?

      No matter what Detective Slade said, Erin knew she couldn’t rest until Megan’s murderer had been brought to justice. It was the last thing, the only thing she could do for her sister. And for herself.

      Squaring her shoulders, Erin turned and started walking. She knew the limo that had driven her from the church still waited for her at the cemetery, but she couldn’t go back there now. She didn’t want to face Detective Slade, but more than that, she didn’t want to have to say goodbye to Megan again. Not after what she’d learned.

      * * *

      Someone called to Slade as he unlocked his car at the curb, and he paused, glancing over his shoulder. Dr. Traymore walked toward him, his face shielded by the brim of the felt hat he was wearing.

      “A lovely ceremony,” he commented, nodding his head toward the cemetery.

      “If you like funerals,” Slade said.

      “At my age they can be a very moving experience,” Traymore remarked. “However, this one was particularly disturbing to me. I hope the necessary precautions were taken with the body, Detective. The burial was quite hasty.”

      “Do you want a blow-by-blow account of the autopsy?” Slade returned angrily, remembering Erin’s questions. Had he told her too much? He was walking a fine line, he knew. He’d hoped that by revealing the nature of Megan’s death to Erin, it might frighten her into taking the first plane back to L.A., before it was too late. Unfortunately, he’d seen no indication of that from her earlier.

      Damn, now the old man was beginning to worry him, too. Slade suspected Traymore knew just enough to be dangerous. If he started poking his nose in the wrong places, started asking more questions…

      Dr. Traymore’s eyes grew even more grim as his gaze drifted back to the cemetery. “I pray you did the right thing, Detective,” he said slowly. “I pray you are who and what I think you are. Because if you’re not, there’s a very good chance that at midnight tonight Megan Ramsey will rise from her grave, starving for blood.”

      * * *

      Erin walked for hours in the rain and mist until finally exhaustion drove her toward home. A lighted window in a bookstore on the corner near the apartment caught her eye, and she stopped for a moment, staring at a display featuring her books. Almost ten years’ worth of work. A decade of her life dedicated to exorcising the demons from her past, and what had it gotten her?

      Not much, she reflected. Money, success, a small measure of satisfaction, to be sure. But she was still alone, still haunted by memories. The one serious relationship she’d ever had had begun for all the wrong reasons and had ended badly. Never again would she put herself in the position of needing someone, of depending on anyone other than herself. Never again would she freely give her trust.

      After all, Erin thought, grimacing, if you couldn’t trust your own