I Want You To Want Me. Kathy Love

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      Vittorio sat in the bar for how long, he didn’t know. Then he wandered back to Ren’s house, taking the long way, the darker, dangerous streets away from the relative safety and lights of Bourbon Street.

      Several shady-looking characters approached him, one asking for a cigarette, another asking for money, the third drunk, and itching for a fight. None of them worried Vittorio. This is where he’d spent much of his time when he’d lived here. Trying to help these people. And trying to save himself.

      But all his efforts hadn’t done an ounce of good. How hadn’t he realized what was going on?

      He unlocked the large barnlike doors that led into Ren’s house. The courtyard was dimly lit and silent. The air was heavy and still, humidity hanging in the air like an entity unto itself.

      Even as he told himself not to look, his eyes moved right to the windows of the lower apartment. Erika’s apartment was dark. Hardly a surprise, it had to be after 3 a.m. She’d said she kept odd hours too, but he doubted they were as late as his. Most mortals’ weren’t.

      Despite the horrible things he’d discovered tonight, he still found himself longing to see Erika. Was he mad? He couldn’t risk being a part of her life. Or rather making her a part of his. What he’d learned tonight was enough to ram home that fact.

      Julianne. She of all the women was proof he had to be careful. He hadn’t been anything more to her than a sympathetic listener—someone to listen to her, period. She’d been a good girl, not part of the darkness he usually surrounded himself with. She was out of her element in the Big Easy. Shy, quiet and not suited to the wild bawdiness of Bourbon Street. But she’d come here and was determined to stay because of her love for a musician who worked at one of the many bars on Bourbon.

      She hadn’t been happy here. But her boyfriend hadn’t struck Vittorio as the type to settle down into a mundane, domestic life. So to have him, she had to stay in his world.

      Maybe she had really killed herself. Although she hadn’t struck Vittorio as that type either. But he really didn’t know. And somehow, awful as it was, her taking her own life was a better alternative to the one he’d come up with.

      That women were being killed just because they knew him.

      He dropped down on one of the wrought iron benches nestled among the overgrown magnolias and ferns and other lush greenery. Maybe he was wrong about everything. Twenty-one women dying was hardly a huge number when you factored in the number of years he’d been alive, and the lives they’d led. Maybe the deaths had been, if not natural, at least not abnormal.

      He crossed his arms across his chest and closed his eyes, feeling every bit his two hundred-plus years. Sometimes he thought it would be almost lovely to have a natural death. Hell, he’d thought that a lot during his first years of vampirism.

      Just then the still night air was filled with a brief shriek as loud and skin-crawling as what he imagined Julianne’s cry to her death had been. Vittorio shot upright, all muscles tense, all senses alert, any feelings of weariness gone.

      But it wasn’t Julianne.

      Erika!

      Chapter 6

      The horrible cry seemed to come from her apartment, but the acoustics of the enclosed courtyard made it hard to be certain. And now all was quiet again. Not even a hint of sound from Bourbon Street reached his ears.

      Vittorio rose slowly, listening intently. He took careful steps across the flagstones, edging closer to the apartments.

      Just as he reached the first step leading up to the glassed-in porch, another scream slashed through the silence. Vittorio leapt up the stairs and shoved open the old door, the hinges squeaking in protest, although the sound hardly registered as it was drowned out by another cry. Keening, broken and absolutely terrified.

      Now there was no doubt from where the screams came. They echoed out of Erika’s apartment like the haunted shrieks of a banshee.

      A corresponding fear welled up inside him. What was happening to her? He tried the handle of her door. The knob refused to budge. He absently noted that it hadn’t been tampered with, but he knew there were creatures out there who didn’t need to break a window or a lock to enter a building.

      Another horror-filled screech sliced through the darkness. Vittorio didn’t hesitate. He concentrated, then he faded, becoming no more tangible than the shadows surrounding him.

      He rematerialized on the other side of the locked door, trying to get his bearings. He’d not fed for days—not an unusual thing for him. He could go long periods without stealing the human life force that he needed to survive. But the lack of sustenance made using his preternatural abilities more difficult. And more than a little disorienting.

      He swayed slightly, as he tried to focus on something, anything, in the dark room to ground him. But before he could find anything, a shadow darted past his feet, pure black and low to the ground. He stumbled backward, more surprised than unnerved.

      The pitch-black shadow skittered around the sofa, then leapt up and perched on the back of a large chair. Gold eyes peered through the dark, only to disappear, then slowly reappear, regarding Vittorio with an almost disdainful boredom.

      It only took Vittorio a few moments to realize he was being stared down by a cat. He released a pent-up breath, amazed he had been so easily startled by the creature.

      Another scream filled the air, reminding him of why he was really so rattled. The cry was close, deafening in its proximity.

      Vittorio stepped farther into the room, focusing all his attention on locating Erika—and whatever was terrifying her so.

      He spotted her on the sofa, her form barely visible. Her shout tapered down to small whimpers, the frightened sound no less disturbing.

      “Erika?” he said quietly, rounding the sofa, moving guardedly, watching for any other movement aside from the cat. But as he got closer, he realized Erika was huddled alone among the jumbled sofa cushions, her body curled into itself. Looking small and helpless.

      He reached over to the end table and switched on the lamp. Soft yellow light pushed away some of the darkness. He leaned over her, seeing her eyes were wide open, staring unfocused, straight ahead.

      “Erika?”

      “Go away,” she moaned, pulling her knees tighter to her chest.

      He straightened, unsure what to do. He supposed he was the last person she would want to help her. But the paleness of her face, and the clear horror in her stormy gray eyes made it impossible for him to leave.

      “Are you hurt?”

      She didn’t respond, her glassy stare still focused somewhere past him.

      “Erika?” He pressed a hesitant hand to her shoulder. She jerked under the gentle touch.

      “Oh God,” she wailed. “Please СКАЧАТЬ