Part 48 (1/2)
”I have to go. I just came to get some things to stay with him at the hospital. If you give a d.a.m.n about him, you'll get your ungrateful a.s.s back here!”
The phone went dead in Jordan's hands. She felt someone at the door. Great. Good thing she'd never decided to be either a criminal or a cop. She'd left the door open to make her secret call.
Ragnor was standing there.
”I have to go back to Venice. Immediately. You may not have to destroy Jared. Cindy says he may be dying.”
”We'll go back to Venice,” he said, eyeing her coldly. ”But you shouldn't have called.
Phone calls can be traced.”
”They already knew I was in New Orleans.”
”And now they'll know we're warned about Jared.” He paused. ”There's another stop we have to make first.”
”Where?”
”Charleston.”
”Why?”
”Sean has spent the day tracing your Steven Moore. He made a really sudden appearance in Charleston. He'd also disappeared from his last job in New York.
Supposedly, he'd been injured and suffered amnesia on his way to recovery. Oddly enough, his family died at the same time. A close friend on the New York force met with a serious accident. No one remembered him very well.”
”What are you saying?”
”I'm saying that your fiance might have been a rather cunning vampire.”
She shook her head. ”No-that's impossible. You didn't know him. He was the kindest man, the most compa.s.sionate-”
”And maybe a d.a.m.ned good actor. Make yourself a cop. It's amazing how that could keep a lot of evidence from being found. And amazing how easy it would be to get rid of people who were getting too nosy. And how easy to restrain people when they were trying to escape.”
”You're wrong!”
”I'll be happy for you to prove me wrong.”
”How?”
He turned and started out of the room. She ran after him, grabbing his arm. She let it go quickly, having forgotten in the last few hours just how much power lay in his biceps. ”What are you planning?” she asked.
”We have to exhume Steven Moore.”
She gasped, backing away. ”He was burned! And you can't just dig him up-an exhumation order could take days ... weeks. More. And I have to get to Venice-”
”We'll be on a plane by midnight,” he told her.
”Then-”
”We'll be in Charleston in a matter of hours. And as soon as it's dusk-”
”You're going to dig him up yourself?” she asked incredulously. ”No, no, we can't. I'm telling you, he was burned. He's been buried a year. He's deep in the ground, in a sealed coffin.”
”I'm willing to bet your coffin is empty.”
”Steven was never evil! We'll be wasting time. You'll see-he's going to be in his coffin.”
”You're right; we'll see.”
”You won't be able to get him out of the ground-”
”I'll have help. Lucian and Sean will be with us.”
”And the three of you are going to sneak into a cemetery at night and dig up his coffin?”
”The four of us,” he said. ”You're coming too. I don't intend to let you out of my sight.”
They had entered a new age.
Maggie Canady arranged for their flight tickets on the way to the airport via her phone and when they arrived at the airport, they arranged for their transportation from Charleston to Rome and on to Venice. He never left Maggie alone with their toddler and their infant.
While waiting for last-minute arrangements to be made, Jordan had a few minutes alone with the two women.
”You still look sh.e.l.l-shocked,” Maggie told her.
”I am still sh.e.l.l-shocked. I read your husband's book. I knew something was going on, that strange things were happening, but I was looking for logical explanations. I thought there were killers loose-”
”There are killers loose,” Jade commented.
”But in legend and lore, all vampires are killers,” Jordan insisted.
”And most of us have killed,” Maggie murmured.
”But you're not a vampire anymore. I've never heard of a vampire being cured, in any legend, television show, movie, book, what have you.”
”There is a very old legend that if the tie between a mortal and a vampire is deep enough, a bloodletting can bring back mortality. In my instance ... this is too long and confusing a story to tell quickly. When I met Sean ... well, I think he lived before. We became involved here, in New Orleans, because an old enemy of mine was active and Sean was the cop on the case. I don't have all the answers; for us it worked.”
”Okay, you were a vampire, but now you're human. And Jade, you were human, but now you're a vampire. So you weren't Lucian's long-lost soul mate.”
Jade looked at Maggie. ”She sounds so skeptical. Doesn't this all sound perfectly normal to you?” ”I remember when you thought we were all insane,” Maggie said.
Jade shrugged. ”I came across a group of terrorists in Scotland, chewing up tourists.
They tried to finish off the survivors one by one, and there I met Lucian. I think he believes I lived before; I don't.”
”But you say that you are now a vampire,” Jordan reminded her.
”I was caught in the final episode with the creatures terrorizing the vaults and crypts of Scotland. With the depths of the tainting I received . . . well, it doesn't matter. Lucian had no desire to become mortal; he was well aware that the upheaval was happening, and he felt responsible to see that . .. that the world changed. He was responsible for his own kind, and to keep a balance and ...”