Fangs bared, Dimitri Falco whirled around and hurled himself at the man standing at the bottom of the porch steps.
After slamming the door, Vicki ran to the window, but she could make out little of what was happening. Both Antonio and Falco were clad in black, making it difficult to separate one from the other. The rain blurred her vision. Thunder shook the earth.
Lightning ripped through the lowering clouds. A short distance away, a tree went up in flames.
Needing to see what was happening, Vicki ran out onto the porch. She stopped at the edge, one hand wrapping around the post as she watched the battle below.
It was a strangely silent and graceful battle. Fangs flashed in the darkness, as blindingly white as the lightning that rent the skies.
Vicki pressed a hand to her heart, wishing she could see what was going on, praying that Antonio would emerge victorious, though she knew the odds were slim that he would survive a battle against an angry vampire. As the battle raged, they moved away from the porch toward the street, making it more difficult for her to see what was happening.
She shuddered, remembering bits and pieces of what she had read on-line— that vampires had the strength of twenty men, that they could change shape, that they could only be destroyed by driving a stake through their heart, burning them to ash, or cutting off their head.
Somehow, she doubted Antonio had a wooden stake or a hatchet stuck in his back pocket, so unless Falco was struck by lightning, there seemed little hope that Antonio would destroy him.
Her fingernails dug into the post as the battle grew more intense. There was a sudden silence as the rain stopped. The thunder grew quiet in the skies, and it was as if the whole earth were holding its breath.
Into the stillness came a high-pitched keening cry more horrible than anything Vicki had ever heard in her life.
There was a flurry of indiscernible motion near the street, and then, in the blink of an eye, the fight was over and only one man remained, indistinct in the darkness. He stood there a moment, his back toward her, staring into the distance, and then slowly sank to the ground, his body sprawled on the walkway, his head and face covered by the folds of a long black coat.
Holding her breath, Vicki backed toward the door. She stepped over the threshold and into the safety of her house, her gaze never leaving the dark shape sprawled on the sidewalk at the foot of the steps.
Was it Falco? Or Antonio?
She watched for what seemed like an eternity before the man on the pavement moved.
Overhead, the moon pushed its way through the clouds.
On the street, the man sat up, brushing his coat aside, revealing a head of thick black hair. With a sigh of relief, Vicki ran out the front door and down the stairs.
"Antonio!" Grabbing him by the arm, she pulled him to his feet, her gaze darting right and left. "Hurry, before he comes back."
Staggering, he followed her up the stairs and into the warm haven of her home.
She quickly closed and locked the door, then turned to help him out of his wet coat.
"You're bleeding!" she exclaimed. In the light cast by the lamps, she could see that there was blood on the front of his shirt. He had a wicked-looking cut on his left forearm, another on his cheek, and still another on his neck. And he looked pale, so very pale.
"You're not going to faint, are you? Here, sit down. Maybe we should go to the hospital.
That gash on your arm looks like it needs stitching."
With a shake of his head, he sank down on her sofa. "No need."
"No need? It's almost to the bone. Did he have a knife?"
A faint smile tugged at Antonio's lips. "No, just his teeth."
Frowning, Vicki went into the kitchen. She filled a bowl with warm, salted water, pulled a couple of clean dish towels from a drawer, then went into the bathroom for a tube of first aid cream before returning to the living room.
Antonio was sitting where she had left him, his head resting against the back of the sofa, his eyes closed. For one horrible moment, she thought he was dead. From where she stood, it didn't look like he was breathing.
"Antonio?" She hurried to the couch and sat beside him. "Oh, Lord, Antonio, please don't be dead."
His eyelids fluttered open. "Undead," he murmured with a wry grin.
"What?"
"Nothing. Do not worry about me, my sweet one."
"But, you're hurt, bleeding." She placed the bowl, towels, and cream on the table beside the sofa. "Let me help you out of your… " She stared at his arm. It had stopped bleeding. What had been a nasty gash almost to the bone only moments ago was now no more than a wide scratch on his arm. The cut on his cheek had disappeared. The one on his neck was closing, fading, gone.
Vicki looked up to find him watching her, his expression impassive.
She sat back on her heels while her mind tried to make sense of what she was seeing.
She tried to tell herself it was nothing out of the ordinary, that some people just healed faster than others. But cuts as deep as the one in his forearm didn't heal in a matter of minutes.
She clasped her hands in her lap, willing them to stop trembling. "What?" she asked in a voice that sounded nothing like her own. "What are you?"
Chapter 17
"I'm a vampire hunter."
Bobbie Sue stared at Tom Duncan, then rolled her eyes. "If you don't want to tell me what you do for a living, that's fine," she said coolly. "You don't have to make up some outrageous lie."
"It's not a lie," Duncan said.
"But there's no such thing as vampires," Bobbie Sue said. "Everyone knows that."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course. They're just make believe, like Frankenstein's monster and werewolves and aliens from outer space."
Duncan lifted his wineglass and took a long drink, wondering if he had just ruined his chances of seeing Bobbie Sue again. They were sitting at a cozy table in a dark corner of the Wayside Grill, getting to know each other over dinner. Bobbie Sue had told him about her life. She was twenty-two, the youngest of three children. She had been born and raised in Pear Blossom Creek. After graduation, she had moved to Nashville, where she had fallen in love with a Marine. When he was killed in a plane crash, she had returned home. She worked at Ozzie's Diner at night and went to beauty school during the day.
She stared at him over the rim of her glass. "Aren't they? Just make believe?"
"I wish they were."
Her eyes widened. "Is that why you're here? You're looking for a vampire?"
He nodded.
"I don't believe you."