Dianne Duvall - Phantom Shadows

WHAT DO YOU FEEL WHEN YOU TOUCH ME? SHE ASKED.

You can feel my emotions? Right now?

No. I have to touch you to feel them.

So . . .

He could see her considering it, trying to remember every time he had touched her or she had touched him. At the network. In her car. At Davids. Trying to remember what she might have inadvertently revealed.

You might have mentioned it. Given me a little warning.

Such didnt occur to me.

More silence.

What do you feel when you touch me? she asked.

Bastiens attention dropped to her full lips as she licked them anxiously. Sometimes I feel your concern. Sometimes uncertainty. Clinical detachment. Fear the first time we met.

Well, our first meeting was rather . . . explosive.

That was putting it mildly.

What else?

He knew what she sought. Sometimes my gift tells me you feel what I feel myself every time I look at you. Or think of you. Or touch you.

Her soft, smooth neck moved with a swallow. Youre attracted to me.

Yes.

Im attracted to you.

I know.

What are we going to do about it?

Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

PHANTOM SHADOWS

IMMORTAL GUARDIANS

Dianne Duvall

ZEBRA BOOKS

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

For my family

The desire to commit violence rose up within Bastien, almost irresistible in its intensity. Was this how vampires felt, he wondered, when the virus that infected them wreaked havoc in their brains and eradicated their impulse control? Because right now he would like nothing more than to plant his fist in the face of the immortal who lounged beside him.

I hope you know what a sickeningly sappy grin youre wearing, Bastien muttered, his eyes on the students staggering about in front of the frat house across the street.

Bite me, Richart replied as he continued to text away on his cell.

Bastien sighed. The jackass wouldnt even offer up a good fight. Bastien had been baiting him for a couple of hours now in an attempt to relieve some of the frustration spawned by Seth requiring him to have an escort. A babysitter. A guard.

Fucking immortals, he muttered. They all wanted to kill him now that they knew he had slain one of their own almost two centuries ago. All of them but this one apparently.

Youre an immortal yourself, dumbass, the Frenchman reminded him.

Sometimes Bastien really missed the company of vampires.

Movement in the shadows north of the frat house caught his eye.

Speaking of which . . .

Bastien watched as two young couples, clearly in their cups, stumbled off the front porch and wove their way down the sidewalk. Pulsing music penetrated the houses closed windows, rumbling through the neighborhood and piercing Bastiens ears as silhouettes gyrated on the windows curtains. The foursome argued drunkenly over which path to take to the dorm, then chose one and started down it, completely unaware of the dark predators who mirrored their every movement.

Bastien opened his mouth to give Richart the heads-up, then closed it again when he realized Richart was already returning his cell phone to his back pocket. The two stood.

When Richart reached out to touch Bastiens shoulder, Bastien dodged the contact and stepped off the edge of the roof, dropping three stories to land with only a hint of sound on the sidewalk in front of the building.

Richart appeared out of thin air beside him half a second later. You risk discovery when you do such, he commented blandly as they set off in pursuit of the humans and their vampire shadows.

And you dont, teleporting?

Richart shrugged. If they see me, theyll think me a figment of their imagination, a trick of the eye or light. If they see you, theyll think youre a jumper or some student whos drunk off his ass and come over to investigate.

True. The point was moot, however, because humans couldnt spy them in the darkness. The moon was absent, cloaked in the heavy clouds that had rolled in around sunset. And the streetlights above them had been shattered, either by vampires wanting to escape notice while they observed their prey or by students with too much time on their hands.

Bastien tuned out the human couples inane conversation, the frat partys booming base, and the rumble of the occasional passing automobile, and zeroed in on the conversation of the vampires, inaudible to mortal ears.

The plan seemed to be to drain and dismember the men in front of the women, then torture the women, maybe keep them as toys from which the vampires could feed and extract screams for a few days until the vamps lost interest and sought new victims.

That plan changed when the men parted company from the women after a brief bout of sloppy kisses and ass-grabbing. The men staggered off down one sidewalk. The women tottered up another, their high heels clickety-clacking on the pavement.

The vampires hesitated, then followed the women.

Bastien looked at Richart. Do you want Beavis or Butthead?

Richart nodded to the blond vampire. Ill take Beavis.

The women passed in and out of pools of illumination as they walked beneath campus lights, then under the branches of ancient oak trees. They turned toward the brightly lit entrance of one of the dorms.

The vampires drew closer to their backs.

Richart touched Bastiens shoulder. The world around him went dark. A feeling of weightlessness engulfed him, not unlike that one sometimes experienced in an elevator. Then Bastien found himself standing a foot or so behind the vampires.

He frowned at Richart. Bastien may not have the aversion to teleporting that some immortals did, but he still liked to have a little warning first.

Two figures, moving so swiftly they blurred, suddenly darted around the corner of the building, swept up the women, and sped away.

What the hell? the brunet Bastien had labeled Butthead spouted.

Hey, those chicks are ours! Beavis shouted.

Bastien met Richarts glowing amber gaze. Ill take the newbies.

Beavis and Butthead spun around.

Richart nodded. Ill get rid of these two.

The vampires eyes began to glow as they bared descending fangs.

Bastien took off after the new vamps and their female victims, running so swiftly that humans would not even be able to follow the movement with their eyes.

The vampires took him from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to neighboring Durham, dodging this direction, then that, providing quite a chase.

Did they know an immortal hunted them? Or did they simply want to avoid a confrontation with the enraged vampires from whom they had snatched the women?

The vamps stopped in the deserted loading zone behind one of Duke Universitys buildings. Each clutched a woman. Neither human made a sound.

As Bastien halted a hairsbreadth away, he saw bite marks on both womens necks. Their hearts still beat, so neither had been drained. But the glands that had formed above the fangs the vampires had grown during their transformation had already delivered the chemical that acted like GHB, leaving the females sluggish and willing to accede to anything the vamps wanted to do to them. Tomorrow morning, if the women lived, they would have no memory of this.

The vampire closest to Bastien started violently when he realized they had company. He dropped the woman he held. We saw em first.

Bastien caught the womans blouse in a fist before she could hit the ground, then plunged his other fist into the vampires face.

Blood spurted and bone shattered as the vampire flew backward and hit the building with enough force to crack the brick and produce a cloud of sandy mortar.