Black Heart (2 page)

“
No, I don’t. I got all I
want from you.”

The man shrugged and
moved
toward
the bars and pubs dotting Granville Street. Raylene glanced around.
Where did Deegan disappear to? She should leave and drive back to
Bennington Bay and her quiet life at her father’s sprawling
waterfront home. This was not something she did often. Last time
she’d come into town like this was a year ago. Why tonight of all
damned nights did she run into Deegan Black?

She inhaled. That brutish pig’s scent
covered her body. The stench was all the more reason to head back
to the South Shore and the comforts of home and a long, leisurely
bubble bath. She started to walk out of the alley, but curiosity
got the better of her. Venturing farther down the alley, Raylene
peeked around the corner. She wished to hell she hadn’t.

Deegan
pounded the woman from behind.
Slamming into her the way she had fantasized he would do to her.
This particular erotic dream haunted her. He pushed down the
woman’s sleeve and bit into her shoulder, and a moan of desire from
the unknown skank filled the alley. Raylene felt hot, angry tears
cluster in her eyes. Why did she punish herself this way? This was
all so—unclean. Filthy.

Deegan muttered low in his
throat. He hadn’
t turned around, but he
knew
she was there. How could he not? His senses were
as sharp as any Vampire she’d known. The wet sounds of his
continued copulation filled the alley and sickened her
soul.

“
Raylene. It must
be.”

He licked the
woman’
s
shoulder and sealed the bite when he finished, and then continued
his thrusts. His hands lifted, and he placed his palms against the
brick. Deegan moved faster as if he wanted the rutting sex over, or
so Raylene hoped. Her heart broke once again. How many times had
Deegan Black smashed it over the many, many decades? Just when
she’d pushed him from her heart and mind, he’d thrust himself back
in—literally.

“
Then enjoy, Deegan,” she
snapped.

Raylene turned and walked out of the
alley. When she was back on the street, she fled for her
car.

****

Deegan returned to his home in
Bennington Bay after his meaningless dalliance in the alley.
A fire roared in
the ornately carved oak fireplace in his study. He knocked back his
third glass of Black Bush. A lot of good it would do, since he
wouldn’t get drunk. Three or four bottles of his favorite liquor
would need to be consumed to give his blood a slight buzz.
Regardless, Bushmills was his brand of choice since 1608 when Sir
Thomas Phillipps was granted a license to distill by King James I.
Black Bush was his favorite Irish whiskey since it was created in
1934. Deegan always kept a couple of cases on hand.

He sank down into his leather wing chair,
and exhaustion covered and surrounded him like a thick fog.
“Ancient Vampire” described his classification in the Shadow World.
In 1364, he was a warrior priest in the ancient Celtic clan, Ó
Léanacháin. How ironic that Ó Léanacháin came from Leannan, meaning
lover. He was all that and more since he was a young lad. Priestly
vows be damned, not that any of his acquaintance kept the vows of
chastity. He had existed a long time, perhaps too long.

A small number of the Ancients grew weary
of never-ending immortal life and elected to be terminated. The
last one he knew of was an Egyptian who’d existed since the time of
Cleopatra. What was his name? Oh yes, Khons. The ceremony was all
very ritualistic. His heart and head removed. Being tossed into a
fire would’ve been as effective, but most Vampires did not wish to
take that route. The act was considered too pagan, too—common.
Being one of the younger Ancients, Deegan was invited to Khons’s
Mortuus Termination Ceremony, and out of respect, he attended.
Would he ever reach that point of no return? Tonight, it was bloody
tempting to contact the Bureau and be done with it all.

Responsibilities stayed his
hand.
He was
head of the Blackthorne Clan. He had a half-Vampire son, Tristan,
and a Quarter grandson, Lucius. The malt whiskey burned down his
throat, leaving a trail of comforting flame. Tristan was away right
now with his new mate in Ontario, packing up his fiancée's life so
she could move in with Tristan permanently. He was pleased his
Dhampyre son had found love again. Tristan’s late human wife died
of old age in 1939. Tristan deserved happiness and desire in his
life. Also Lucius, while visiting in the UK, had also found his
mate and soon would be traveling home in a matter of a few weeks.
He was pleased for him as well.

He laid back his head. And what of
himself? It is said a Vampire knows when he meets his mate. The
feelings, the need, and the love so intense it could overtake one’s
existence and thought. He would agree with that assessment, as he’d
certainly felt the Mate Bond with Tristan’s mother.

His thoughts drifted to 1850. Hannah Gray
was not the type of woman he usually found attractive. Though not a
classic beauty he was drawn to her nonetheless. Hannah found
herself pregnant almost immediately, which was unheard of. Vampires
are not supposed to procreate; they hadn’t for centuries. It shook
the very foundation of the Vampire world when he’d reported the
birth to the hierarchy of the Bureau. Tristan was the first
Dhampyre born in hundreds of years. The Bureau concluded Hannah
descended from an ancient bloodline that possessed the ability to
breed with Vampires. He took another swig and held it in his mouth
a few moments before he swallowed. Raynor Nightwood did not waste
any time wooing Hannah’s cousin, Laura, and getting her with child.
The Bureau stepped in saying they had to control the breeding
process. They kept it secret, or every damned Vampire would have
swept into his protective world and tried to breed with Hannah’s
family. The news got out eventually, but the Bureau told the
Vampires there were no other females of the line. A blatant lie and
a secret his Clan kept close.

Raylene
was a girl of sixteen when he
felt that unmistakable pull and connection. Hannah had been dead
four years. To feel the Mate Bond so soon after the demise of
another was unheard of. He dismissed the bond and refused to
acknowledge it. He had nothing if not inner strength, gut-wrenching
intestinal fortitude brought about by centuries of the dramatics of
living. He knew Raylene felt the Mate Bond as well. He sensed her
intense emotions almost from the first. He learned to ignore it. To
her credit, she never brought it up in all these years. Their
dealings were cool and perfunctory. He went on with his life and
had no problem finding a woman to warm his bed or warm his
blood.

He reached for the bottle and filled his
glass halfway. The reason he pretended he felt nothing? At first,
Deegan told himself it was the fact she was still a child in his
eyes. How do you go from being a beloved uncle figure to a lover?
Not even he was that debauched, at least not during this period in
his life. He was every inch the Victorian gentleman in 1880. The
real reason that haunted him to this day was—The
Concealment.

He threw back a generous mouthful and let
it blaze all the way down his throat. The Concealment was a form of
madness that affected select Vampires through the ages. Back in
medieval times, a number of Vampires believed the malady was passed
around like the plague. After all these centuries, the best and
brightest scientists within the Vampire world still could not
explain why it manifested itself in certain Vampires and with
different layers of intensity.

The fire hissed and snapped in the hearth
and was the only sound in the room. The condition appeared in his
friend Raynor for the first time in 1540. Raynor Von Nachtwald,
Norman knight of a Germanic father. It was how they met all those
centuries ago in Ireland. They became fast friends and soon, blood
brothers. He covered up Raynor’s sporadic killing sprees since the
sixteenth century. Luckily, Raynor had a lesser strain. His descent
into The Concealment occurred every couple of hundred
years.

Deegan leaned forward, his elbows resting
on his thighs. One rumor that still lingered in the Shadow World
suggested Jack the Ripper was a Vampire caught in a virulent attack
of The Concealment. Hence the fiend’s sudden disappearance,
assuming the Bureau had sanctioned his termination. It was an
interesting twist to Victorian English history, but Deegan did not
really believe the far-fetched tale.

T
he Bureau did not allow Concealment
Vampires to exist. It undermined the vow of “no harm to humans”. So
Deegan hid Raynor’s weakness. Until after one hundred and
eighty-three years he killed again, a matter of a few weeks ago.
Tristan was dragged into the mess and his mate as well. The secret
was becoming harder to keep.

The horrible actuality that Raynor passed
on this malady to his Dhampyre children, Raylene and Julian, also
haunted Deegan’s thoughts. He did not want to love a woman who
might go mad and kill. That truly was at the crux of his pushing
Raylene aside. A reason she knew nothing about. He was a coward and
could not abide watching the woman he loved destroyed in front of
him. For it would devastate him utterly.

Chapter Two

Raylene stayed in the whirlpool
tub as long as she could stand it, adding more hot water when
needed. Her skin
became as wrinkled as a Shar Pei’s, but she didn’t care.
Scrubbing herself with bleach should have been an option, anything
to get that pig’s scent off her. She wiped away a solitary tear.
Damn him. Deegan Black made her cry. She waited until she got home
to the privacy of the bathroom before she let the tears flow. Even
in a darkened alley engaged in skanky sex, Deegan Black was
gorgeous. That six foot-two lean musculature appealed, and so did
the chin-length wavy, raven-black hair and those mesmerizing
silver-gray eyes and the closely cropped goatee. His pale,
luminescent skin was eminently touchable, and after all these years
he still looked like a dashing Irish pirate. Always wore that
damned hooped gold earring as long as she could
remember.

When did she first start to
have feelings for him? Well, she
always loved him, even with a child-like
idolization one would have for a favorite uncle. Yes, she called
him Uncle Deegan until puberty hit her with a sledgehammer. Then it
all changed. No other boy or man meant anything to her. Only
Deegan. He must have sensed her change in emotions for he’d shut
down and was no longer the warm, affectionate man she’d adored.
Deegan did not come around as often. He avoided her even to this
day.

Drying
herself with fluffy bath towels, she
then dressed in her standard relaxing outfit of black leggings and
an oversized Boston Red Sox t-shirt. She walked through the house,
which was so quiet. The time had to be past two in the morning. Her
older brother, Julian, was away visiting friends in a clan in
Toronto. She would bet dollars to doughnuts her father was in his
private library.

Raylene poked her head into the darkened
room.

“
Daddy?”

A large shadow moved in the corner. Muted
illumination from a stained glass shaded lamp filled the
room.

Raynor Nightwood. Even here in
this present age
, he appeared every inch the brawny, medieval knight. His
shoulders were very broad and his body packed with solid muscle.
His golden-brown hair was the exact shade of hers. It flowed past
his shoulders, and his goatee was perhaps a shade or two darker. He
always looked the same as long as she could remember. These last
years there was a stark weariness in his eyes that was
heartbreaking to observe. Raynor was drinking, something he did for
hours sitting alone in the dark. A lump formed in her throat. She
sat on the floor at his feet, laying her head against his muscular
leg, something she never tired of doing since she was a little
girl.

Her father’s large hand touched her hair,
stroking it gently.

“
You went to the city, mein
herz? Dare I ask about it?”

Raylene exhaled. “I’d rather you didn’t.
Daddy—what can you tell me about finding a mate? How do you know
when you do?”

Raynor was quiet for a few moments. “The
Mate Bond is all consuming. You think of nothing but that other
person, and you want no one else. Intense physical and emotional
feelings. A heart-breaking yearning.”

“
Is that how you felt about
Mother?”

“
No. Your mother and I were not
mates,” his deep gravelly voice replied.

Raylene’
s head lifted off his leg in
shock. “What? I don’t understand—”

Raynor tenderly laid her head against him
and continued stroking her hair.

“
I married your mother because I
wanted children, and she was cousin to Hannah who gave Deegan a
son. We were not happy those first few years, but I grew to love
your mother as intensely as if she were a chosen mate. I am proof
that you can fall in love without the Mate Bond.”

“
Is
that why you can be with other
women
—
”

This was none of her business. The
situation was so awkward, but she wanted desperately to understand
the feelings and emotions that had ruled her life for
decades.