Seduced by the Night

by Robin T. Popp

Genres: Romance; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

With a powerful, sensual style reminiscent of ChristineFeehan and Sherrilyn Kenyon, Robin T. Popp delivers a spellbindingromance between a man who hunts vampires and the woman who'scaptured his heart.

Release date: December 2, 2008

Publisher: Forever

Print pages: 360

Sample

Chapter 1

On an otherwise still and silent night, the faint noise and gentle breeze barely registered with Bethany Stavinoski, whose thoughts were focused elsewhere. On her way to the office, she walked another half a block along the deserted Washington D.C. sidewalk before it occurred to her that a woman alone at night should be more cautious—and alert.

Spinning around, she half expected a mugger or vagrant to leap at her. She felt both relieved and a bit foolish when the only other person in sight was a man leaning against the inside wall of a building’s doorway, half a block behind her. Strange, she thought. She hadn’t noticed him before. The feeble glow of a nearby streetlight only touched the outer half of him, leaving the rest swallowed by the darkened entryway. His features were unclear and a trick of the poor lighting gave his eyes a reddish glow. He wore a long black duster over equally dark clothes. With one leg bent at the knee so he could brace his foot against the wall, he smoked a cigarette, appearing both unhurried and extremely dangerous.

As she watched, he took the cigarette from his mouth to exhale and his lips lifted in a slight smile as he tipped his head in a subtle greeting. Afraid that her staring might be misconstrued as an invitation to approach, she turned and hurried away.

That’s right, sweet thing. Be very afraid. Dirk Adams watched the look of apprehension cross the young woman’s face just before she turned and walked off. He raised his hand, bringing the cigarette to his mouth, and took a long drag before slowly exhaling the smoke.

He waited until she disappeared around the corner before flicking the cigarette to the street, where he watched the tip flare briefly as it bounced and rolled away. It wasn’t even his; Dirk didn’t smoke—not anymore.

“Thanks for the loaner,” he said conversationally, turning to the creature he held pinned to the door by the neck. “But you know? They just don’t taste as good as they used to. Probably just as well. Those things’ll kill you.” He smiled at his own joke as he studied the creature, more monster now than the twenty-something man it used to be. “I don’t suppose that matters to you, though.”

“I’m . . . going . . . to . . . kill . . . you,” the creature choked out past the constriction of its throat, sounding harsh and wild. “You can’t . . . stop me.”

Sharp clawlike nails raked across Dirk’s hand and he winced at the pain. It hurt like a son of a bitch and he felt his anger rise, but didn’t loosen his grip. Instead, he let his lips curl back in a snarl.

The creature’s eyes widened in surprise, then it renewed its struggles. Dirk hesitated to do what had to be done, hoping to get some useful bit of information while there was a modicum of coherent thought left in his captive. “Where are Harris and Patterson? Where is the lair?”

“Go to hell,” it spat back.

“Right.” Dirk pulled a small dagger from its sheath beneath his duster and drove it into the vampire’s heart. “Save me a seat.”

Bethany anxiously glanced up and, seeing the familiar shape of the Van Horne Technologies building ahead, breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t a large building, only four stories in height, but it was home—more so than her apartment, lately. She’d worked there as a research biochemist for almost five years and enjoyed what she did. There was an inherent order to doing research that appealed to her. She liked her life neat, organized, and most important, uneventful.

She reached the door of the building and swiped her ID tag. The doors immediately opened and she crossed the lobby to the security desk, her footsteps ringing loudly in the silence. Bethany found it curious that the guard was not at his post, but assumed he was making his rounds. She signed the after-hours register, noticing her assistant’s signature on the line above, and couldn’t help worrying what havoc Stuart was wreaking in her absence. The thought sent her hurrying for the elevators.

Stepping inside, she pushed the button to the fourth floor, and as the elevator began its ascent, she thought about her latest project. It had her baffled, but she was determined to rise to the challenge even if it meant running a battery of timed tests that dragged her into the lab at all hours of the night.

She’d questioned Miles Van Horne about who had commissioned the project, but he’d remained stubbornly closemouthed. It wasn’t that she expected the CEO to divulge that information to just anyone, but she was not only the researcher in charge of the project, she was his . . . fiancée.

The word rolled around awkwardly in her mind and she tried to view the very recent change in their status from a strictly analytical perspective. She had been dating Miles for almost a year now and although she’d considered it unwise to date the boss, he had been charmingly persistent.

Miles was quite a bit older than she and their physical relationship was more PG-13 than R, but that seemed to suit them both. They never mixed business with their personal lives and she thought it unlikely that she’d find anyone else as supportive of her research and the crazy work schedule she kept. Add to the equation Miles’s wealth and status and the end result was that she could do a whole lot worse.

She’d made the right decision in accepting his proposal, she told herself, running her thumb over the band of the two-carat, emerald-cut diamond solitaire perched on her ring finger. All in all, theirs was the perfect relationship. So when he’d suggested they get married, why had she hesitated?

A soft voice whispered the answer in the back of her head and she silently scoffed at herself. Love? Please. She was far too realistic to believe in that fairy tale. The score of disastrous relationships before Miles flickered through her mind. No, this was a good, practical match.

As the elevator stopped, Bethany forced herself to mentally switch gears and glanced at her watch. Damn. She was running late and knowing Stuart, he’d started without her. She wondered, not for the first time, if she should talk to Miles about the man. Maybe if Miles understood how incompetent Stuart really was, he’d . . . he’d what? Fire Stuart? Bethany sighed. She didn’t want to be responsible for someone losing his or her job.

Resigned to working with the man for now, she opened the door to her office and saw the light on in the lab beyond—Stuart hard at work, no doubt. Yeah, that was a laugh. Please don’t let him have started the next phase of the experiment, she silently prayed.

She stashed her purse in her desk drawer, grabbed her lab coat off the nearby rack, and shrugging into it, hurried through the connecting doorway.

“Stuart—?” She came to an abrupt halt and felt her heart lurch.

Beakers lay shattered on the countertop while reagents ran off the edge, dripping onto the floor where puddles already formed. Stands that had held flasks and tubing in place now lay strewn about in broken pieces. Everything was ruined—all of her hard work, flushed down the proverbial toilet.

And Stuart was conspicuously absent.

She walked farther into the room to assess the damage. “Stuart. Damn it! Where the hell are you?”

She felt anger burning inside and fought to control it. Had he done this? There was no question that the man hated her. He’d practically accused her of sleeping her way to the department manager position. This destruction was yet another childish act of professional jealousy. Well, this time, he’d gone too far.

Hurrying back to her office, she grabbed the phone and dialed the front desk. There was no answer so she hung up, her irritation growing to include the absent guard as she next punched in Miles’s cell number. He picked up on the second ring but she didn’t give him time to say a word, launching immediately into her tirade.

“Everything is ruined, absolutely ruined. I can’t believe he’d do such a thing—”

“Who?”

“Stuart! He destroyed everything. All of my work on this project is now strewn across the floor. I still have my notes, of course, but now I have to start all over. Is this his idea of working together? How could he—?”

“Bethany!” Miles’s raised voice stemmed the flow of angry words. “Slow down and tell me what’s going on. Are you all right?”

She took a deep breath, trying to bring herself under control, and then, speaking more slowly, told him what she’d found.

“Are you positive Stuart did this?” he asked when she finished.

“Yes . . . no,” she admitted reluctantly. “But who else could it have been?”

“We’ll find out, okay?” Without waiting for her response, he continued. “I’m on my way. Don’t touch anything. I’ll be there shortly and then we’ll decide if we need to call the authorities or not. If Stuart is responsible, he’ll be dealt with. Just in case whoever did this is still around, though, I’d feel better if you called Frank to come wait with you.”

She felt another stab of annoyance at the mention of the missing guard. “I tried. He’s not at his desk.”

“He’s probably making his rounds. Go down to the lobby and see if he’s back, but first call me back on your cell phone. I want to be in touch with you the entire time.”

Bethany hung up, grabbed her cell phone from her purse, and headed for the elevator. She knew the phone wouldn’t work once the doors closed, so she waited until after she reached the ground floor to place the call. Though she’d grown accustomed to the silence of the office after hours, now the quiet took on an ominous quality.

“Okay, I’m downstairs,” she told Miles when he answered. She crossed to the front desk and looked around. “Frank’s still not here.” Frustrated, she headed to the far corridor, thinking he might be in the men’s room. She’d just passed the open door to the conference room when something she saw caused her to stop and take a closer look.

Frank was in the corner, lying with his legs bent at an angle too awkward to be natural. He didn’t appear to be breathing. “Oh, God.”

“Bethany, what is it?” Miles’s concerned voice sounded in her ear.

She fought to overcome her squeamishness long enough to bend over the guard’s body and place her fingers against his throat. “I found Frank.”

“Good. Tell him to get his ass back to the desk where he belongs.”

“I can’t. He’s dead.”

Dirk hauled the body of the dead vampire from the back of his SUV and slung it over his shoulder. He didn’t have to carry it far, only about ten yards to the “dump” pile. He threw it on top of the bodies already there and then studied the sight. Six vampire corpses—and he’d been responsible for bringing in four of them. The numbers bothered him because he knew that tomorrow there’d be more. It almost seemed that lately, Harris and Patterson, the two dominant or Prime vampires, had been engaging in some orgiastic feed-fest.

Dirk gritted his teeth and searched the pockets of the latest victim, looking for some form of ID.

His hand closed around the vampire’s wallet and pulled it out. In among the credit cards and driver’s license was a photo of the man beside an attractive young woman and a little girl. Dirk shoved the wallet into the pocket of his duster and glanced toward the back of the mansion he called home. The admiral would be making another anonymous donation to a grieving family.

With one final task remaining, Dirk returned to the SUV and retrieved the rolled blanket in the backseat. Holding it carefully, he placed his hand against one end. There was a brief hum of energy and then a pommel hit his palm. He wrapped his fingers around it and pulled the long, gleaming sword from the scabbard inside the blanket, then placed the blanket and scabbard back in the car as he held up the sword, admiring how the blade glinted in the moonlight. It was the Death Rider sword, used to slay vampires, and only a changeling—half vampire, half human—could wield it and command its full power. There were only two changelings in the entire D.C. area, hell, in the entire United States. Dirk was one of them. As he held the sword, the pommel grew warm in his hand and the ruby eyes of the vampire’s head etched in the side gleamed a bright red.

He went to stand before the pile of bodies and not for the first time wondered what would happen if he pulled the dagger out of a vampire’s heart. Would the body rise again? His cell phone picked that moment to start buzzing and he glanced at the caller ID before answering it. “Yes, Admiral?”

“John Boehler called. There’s been another killing. He thought we’d want to take a look. I saw you drive by the house—are you almost done?”

“Yeah. I’ll be right there.” Dirk put away the phone and stared at the sight before him. Tomorrow, the sun would turn the pile of corpses into a stone mass that the first stiff wind would then reduce to dust. There was only one final task to perform.

Raising the sword high, he brought it down in one swift, smooth stroke. There was no blood as the head hit the ground with the muted thud that Dirk had grown accustomed to. With a grim countenance, he tossed the head back on the pile and cleaned the blade of his sword on the dead man’s clothes.

There were moments when he liked being a Night Slayer—this was not one of them.

Elsewhere in the city, Kent Patterson wiped the blood from his mouth as his meal slumped to the ground, already forgotten. Patterson had fed until he could consume no more, yet the hunger would not abate. It clawed at him until anger and irritation rode him relentlessly. He silently berated himself for not going out with Harris tonight. He would have enjoyed a good hunt.

The silent admission caused him to sigh. It was probably just as well that he remained at the lair. Lately, he and Harris hadn’t been seeing eye to eye on things, and that troubled him. He considered tasting one of the other humans chained to the wall, their fear a cloying scent in the otherwise rancid atmosphere of his lair, but a sound from the outer chamber distracted him.

His converts had returned and Patterson was eager for the prize they’d brought him. Patterson, ever resourceful, had a plan—one that included personal wealth and power. The success of this plan, however, depended on having a biochemist; one who would do work for him, either willingly or coerced, it made no difference to Patterson.

Stepping through the door, he gazed upon the frightened young man in a white lab coat, held suspended by his arms between the two underlings. Patterson suspected they retained their grip on the young man more to support him than to keep him from bolting. The irony here was that it was not the young man who should be the most frightened.

“What the hell is this?” Patterson bellowed, causing the two lesser vampires to stumble back.

“It . . . it’s the biochemist you wanted,” the braver of the two responded.

“No,” Patterson said, his voice sounding deceptively calm. “This is not the biochemist I wanted. This biochemist is a man.” He raised an eyebrow as he looked first at one underling and then the other as if daring them to refute the obvious truth. “Where is the woman?” If it was possible for the two vampires to grow paler, they did.

“We went to the lab as instructed, but he was the only one there.”

“Then. You. Failed.” Patterson spit out the words, making sure the converts fully appreciated the extent of his displeasure. Their hold on the prisoner grew tentative as if they would leave him there and return immediately to the lab. Imbeciles. “You can’t go back now. Your incompetence has put me in a difficult situation. I’ll have to find another way to get what I want.” He turned to go back into his chamber.

“What do we do with this one?”

Without turning, Patterson waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “I don’t care. Drain him if you like.”

“Wait!”

Patterson stopped and looked back at the young man who was either braver or more foolish than Patterson had expected. “You wish to say something?”

The young man swallowed visibly and took a deep breath. “You want Bethany Stavinoski, right? I can help you get her.”

Chapter 2

Dirk nodded to the uniformed officer guarding the entrance to Van Horne Technologies as he walked past the man. He took in the expensive tiled floors, the opulent reception station, the high-tech security desk, the vaulted ceiling, and the expensive artwork hanging on the walls. Everything reeked of money and nearly untouchable sophistication, with no thought to real functionality or security.

A place like this would be child’s play to breach and nearly impossible to defend. That’s how Dirk viewed everything—in military terms. Ten years as a Navy SEAL followed by six months of hunting vampires did that to a man.

“There’s John,” Admiral Charles Winslow said, leading his small group across the foyer to the security desk where the detective stood waiting for them.

Besides the admiral and Dirk, there was Mac and Lanie Knight. Dirk had known Mac for years, having first met him in boot camp and then later serving in the SEALs with him. Their paths had split a year and a half ago, following an ambush that took the lives of half their unit and left Mac’s femur shattered when a sniper’s bullet hit his leg. That was when Mac left the Navy and, after months of rehab, started flying private charters, which is how he’d met his wife.

A librarian by day and EMT/firefighter by night, Lanie had hired Mac to fly her to South America as soon as she learned of her father’s death. Dr. Weber had been working at one of the government’s research facilities and had supposedly died after being attacked by a wild animal.

“Charles, glad you could come.” Detective John Boehler’s words broke Dirk from his thoughts and he watched the detective shake hands with the admiral. “The body’s back here.”

He led them down a corridor to the right and stopped at the first doorway, taking them into what appeared to be a conference room.

With his overdeveloped senses, Dirk picked up the smell of blood immediately and looked past the long dark conference table and chairs to the body lying at the far end of the room. The crime scene investigators had already taped the outline and presumably collected all the evidence they could, in hopes of finding the murderer, but Dirk knew they never would. That was no reflection on the Metropolitan police department. They simply didn’t understand what they were looking for.

The deceased appeared to be in his mid-fifties, with dark hair heavily streaked with gray. Dirk thought the man would have been about five feet ten in height and had the wider girth that comes from years of bodybuilding. In other words, a hard man to bring down, had he been fighting humans.

Lanie removed a glove from her pocket and pulled it on. Then, kneeling beside the body, she stretched out a hand to touch it, stopping short to glance up at John. “Is it okay?”

John nodded. “Yeah, we’re done.”

Lanie gripped the guard’s head and twisted it to the side, exposing the neck. “There.” She pointed to the puncture wounds. Against the unnaturally pale color of the skin, the two dark holes stood out in stark contrast, each approximately the size of a cotton swab and filled with partially congealed blood.

“Is this the only victim?” Dirk asked the detective. It didn’t make sense to him that a vampire would go to the trouble of breaking into a corporate building to feed off one guard when there were other food sources more easily available out on the streets.

“It’s the only body we found,” John replied. Dirk wasn’t the only one to notice his choice of words, because Mac pinned the detective with a questioning look. “Meaning?”

John shrugged. “Meaning we have a missing research assistant. According to the security log, he signed in a couple of hours ago, but he’s not in the building. What’s more, the lab he works in looks like it’s been torn apart and we found a small amount of blood on the floor. Everything points to an abduction, but what I don’t have is a motive or suspects.”

“What kind of research was he doing?” Dirk asked.

“I don’t know,” John admitted, leading them out of the conference room. “This is a small-scale biochemical research facility. Let’s go upstairs,” he suggested. “You can take a look at the lab and meet the CEO and department manager. I’ll introduce you.”

The police were not obligated to show them anything and it was only because of John that they were allowed into what would otherwise be a restricted site.

“Miles Van Horne, of the Van Hornes, owns this place,” John explained, leading them to the elevators. They stepped into the waiting car and he pressed the button for the fourth floor. “The department manager, Bethany Stavinoski, is his fiancée.” He sighed. “She’s involved in this somehow. Not only did she find the guard, but it’s her lab and research that were destroyed and the guy missing is her assistant.”

When the elevator stopped, they followed the detective down the hallway past several closed doors until they reached one standing open. This time, when Dirk stepped into the room, the blood scent was not as easy to detect—first, because there wasn’t as much, and second, because the smell of chemical reagents filled the air, masking the odor. Nevertheless, he moved past the lab tables to the very back of the room, Mac close by his side.

“There.” Dirk pointed at the bloodstains on the floor and the top of the counter. The small droplets were more in keeping with a cut from broken glass than from a mortal wound.

Dirk did a slow visual inspection of the destruction inside the lab. “Sloppy,” he commented softly, for Mac’s ears only, not referring to the debris but rather the method of attack.

“Definitely wasn’t Harris or Patterson,” Mac agreed. “They would have been in and out a lot cleaner than this.”

“Agreed, but they must be involved. The lesser vamps couldn’t have planned this by themselves.” Dirk moved about the room, studying the broken glassware and equipment. “Be nice to know what type of research was being done here.”

“Mac? Dirk?” Lanie called to them from the front of the lab and the two men went to join her. She stood slightly behind the admiral and John, who were talking to a distinguished-looking man in a business suit. He appeared to be older, about the admiral’s age. The woman standing beside him wore a white lab coat but Dirk couldn’t see her face with the detective’s body blocking his view.

At a break in the conversation, the admiral motioned the two men forward. “Mac Knight and Dirk Adams, this is Miles Van Horne and his fiancée, Bethany Stavinoski.”

“Mr. Van Horne; Ms. Stavinoski.” Mac shook hands with both of them and then moved to one side so Dirk could step forward.

Dirk held out his hand to the man first and thought Van Horne’s stance reeked with a confidence born of having an excess of money. Old childhood resentments stirred and he had to resist the almost uncontrollable urge to squeeze the man’s hand just a little harder than necessary when they shook. Next, he turned to meet the fiancée and felt the impact of recognition hit him as their hands touched and a jolt of awareness shot through him.

Bethany stared at the man before her and the rest of the room faded. She was almost positive that she’d seen him before and tried hard to remember where. Almost as if he knew she was trying to guess, he smiled—a slight lifting of his lips—and in her mind, she was suddenly back on the darkened street, staring at that same smile.

He wore the same black duster, dark, collarless shirt, black jeans, and boots. With piercing blue eyes and sandy blond hair that looked like it hadn’t been cut in a while, there was a James Dean wildness to his appearance.

“Bethany?” Miles’s voice cut into her thoughts and she turned to him guiltily.

“I’m sorry?” She was horrified to realize that, for a moment, she’d forgotten that he was there.

“Admiral Winslow asked if you knew why anyone might wish to harm Stuart?”

“No, I’m afraid I don’t. As I told Detective Boehler, Stuart and I weren’t that close. He didn’t confide in me.”

The admiral nodded and turned to discuss something with the detective, allowing her a chance to study him. He was about the same age as Miles, putting him in his mid-to-late fifties. His gray hair, combed straight back, and darker-colored, neatly trimmed beard and mustache gave him a Sean Connery appearance. She couldn’t hear what he was saying to the detective, but soon lost interest in trying to listen when the feeling of being watched distracted her.

“What type of work were you doing here?” Dirk asked her, his voice filled with a natural male assurance that caused her to focus more on the man than the question.

“I was trying to produce a synthetic duplicate of a plant extract.” His intense scrutiny unnerved her and she had to work to focus her thoughts. “I’m told it’s a plant found only in the thick. . .