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“All right,” she said. “I can’t force you.” But I sure as hell can wear you down, Dorian Black. Because I owe you. I pay my debts.
And if you can help me find the murderers…
She shook off the unworthy thought and flung her coat over her shoulders. “I’ll go now,” she said. “But if I can do anything for you, anything at all…” She suddenly remembered that her cards were gone, along with her pocketbook, doubtless stolen by the young hooligans. She didn’t even have a nickel for a telephone call.
Well, at least she was alive and fully capable of walking now that the sickness had passed. She could ankle it to the nearest police station and call from there.
She looked at Dorian, struck by a powerful urge to stroke the wayward hair out of his face. He wouldn’t welcome such familiarity. Maybe he was even regretting pulling her out of the river.
“Listen,” she said. “I’d like to come back sometime. Maybe I can’t completely repay what you’ve done for me—”
“I don’t want your charity.”
“Couldn’t you at least accept a haircut? I’m a mean one with the shears.”
His eyes were still clouded, dull with exhaustion and that strange paralysis she’d so often seen in Barry before his death. He didn’t meet her gaze.
“Don’t come back,” he said.
Gwen puffed out her cheeks. Sometimes it doesn’t do any good to argue, Dad had told her more than once. Learn to let it go, Gwen. Learn to be patient. Sometimes patience is what a reporter needs most.
And patience was a virtue she still hadn’t quite mastered. But she was willing to give it the old college try. For Dorian’s sake.
“Okay,” she said. “How do I get out of this place?”
“I’ll show you.”
The voice belonged to the other man she’d heard speaking when she’d woken up. He came out of the shadows, an old gentleman with clothing every bit as worn as Dorian’s. His face was seamed with deep wrinkles, his nose had been broken in several places, and his eyes were filled with that sort of peculiar sweet-tempered innocence that blessed a certain type of inebriate.
“Name’s Walter,” he said, tipping a moth-eaten fedora. “Walter Brenner. We don’t have too many ladies visit us. Wouldn’t want you to think we’re lacking in manners.”
“How do you do, Walter,” Gwen said, offering her hand. “I’m Gwen Murphy.”
“So I heard.” His palm was dry and papery. “Had a bit of a dip in the river, did you?”
“A regular soaking.” She walked with him out of the warehouse. “I’m lucky Mr. Black happened to be there.”
He ducked his head conspiratorially. “Dorian ain’t always like that, you know, so short-tempered and all. It’s just this mood…comes on him regular, every few weeks, like. Best to leave him alone until it passes.”
“I understand. Have you known Dorian long?”
“’Bout as long as he’s been on the waterfront. Three months, I figure.”
“Do you know anything about his past?”
“He’s been through something awful, Miss Gwen. Don’t know what it is. He won’t talk.”
“He’s never mentioned the War?”
“Nope. Could be that’s it, but I worry about him. He don’t go out, except at night. Holes up here during the day like one of our rats. And he hardly eats. He brings stuff for me, but he don’t touch nothin’ but crumbs.”
Gwen remembered the bleakness of Dorian’s “room.” There hadn’t been a sign of food, not even the crumbs Walter spoke of.
“You’re his friend,” she said. “You want to help him, don’t you?”
“Sure. He took care of me when I was sick. My heart, you know. Gives out sometimes. Don’t know what I’d do without Dory.”
Gwen decided to risk a more troubling question. “Did you see the bodies, Walter?”
The old man shuddered. “Heard about them. But he saw. Made it worse, next time he had one of his nasty spells.” He touched Gwen’s arm tentatively. “He ain’t bad. You see that. I never seen him take such an interest in another human being until he brought you here.”
Interest. Under normal circumstances, Gwen never would have interpreted Dorian’s behavior as anything but grudging tolerance. But she had only begun to glimpse what might be in Dorian’s soul. And she knew she had to keep digging until she discovered exactly what made him tick…and why he had aroused her curiosity in a way no one had done since Barry died.
“You’ll come back, won’t you?” Walter said, as he led Gwen out into the sunlight. “Do him good. I know it would.”
Gwen met the old man’s gaze. “Even if I didn’t have other reasons for coming back to the waterfront, I wouldn’t abandon him. He saved my life.”
“But it’s more than that, ain’t it?” Walter peered up at her with greater perception than his drawl and easygoing manner suggested. “Dory ain’t easy to like, but you like him anyway.”
Did she? Gwen looked away, testing her feelings as carefully as she might probe a sore tooth. Mitch and the other reporters thought she was too impulsive and emotional, like all women. But when it came to men…
Like him? Maybe. And if she were completely honest with herself, as she always tried to be, she would admit that she found Dorian Black strangely attractive. His looks had something to do with it, but it went deeper than that.
“You’re a crusader,” Mitch frequently told her. “That’ll be your downfall, Guinevere.”
She knew damned well that she couldn’t save the world. But she might save one tiny part of it.
“Don’t worry, Walter. I promise I’ll do what I can.”
Apparently satisfied, Walter retreated into the shadows, doubtless to nurse a bottle for the rest of the afternoon. At least Dorian Black didn’t seem to drink. Maybe he would have been better off if he did.
With a half shrug, Gwen set off to find the nearest police station.
DORIAN WATCHED HER walk away, careful to remain within the shelter of the warehouse door. She had a long, confident stride; the wool worsted suit, with its boxy jacket and pleated kneelength skirt, was plain and businesslike, but it didn’t disguise the curves of her figure or the bounce of her walk.
Gwen Murphy. He’d never heard her name before last night; even when he’d worked for Raoul, he hadn’t paid much attention to the newspapers. That hadn’t been his department. He’d done his job, dispassionately and efficiently, until the world he knew came crashing down around him.
It was about to fall apart all over again, the way it did every month at the dark of the moon. He’d begun to feel the first effects a few days ago: irritability, confusion, thoughts spinning out of control. And his emotions…they could be trusted least of all. He only had to remember how he’d turned on Gwen like an animal, fully prepared to drain her dry.
He shuddered, thinking of the bodies on the wharf. At least he was reasonably certain that the murders weren’t his doing. As far as he could remember, he hadn’t killed anyone since Raoul’s death.
No, that massacre was almost certainly the work of one of the warring factions that had formed after the clan had disintegrated. Though Dorian had deliberately removed himself from any involvement in strigoi affairs, he had no doubt that the level of violence committed by the city’s vampires against their own kind had increased in the past three months. Internecine bloodshed was no longer simply a matter of one clan leader keeping his subordinates and human employees in line. It had become a case of two well-matched coalitions vying for control of Raoul’s carefully built bootlegging operation and all the power that went with it.
Regardless of the reason for the killings, whoever was responsible for them had either been extraordinarily foolish or dangerously overzealous to have left the corpses drained of blood. Such unusual characteristics set the murders apart from the usual human mob hit—and attracted the attention of inquisitive humans like Miss Gwen Murphy.
Dorian turned away from the light. The fate of New York’s strigoi was no longer any of his concern. His own life had become a weary succession of nights spent hunting just enough to keep his body functioning, days crouched in his fetid den with nothing but the company of an old man who had no idea who or what he was. Only the instinct for survival, a vampire’s deepest and most powerful impulse, had kept him from letting his body fade into oblivion.
But now there was something else. Something he hadn’t expected. Something that had started when he’d seen the girl sinking beneath the river’s surface and had made the decision to save a human life.
Gwen Murphy. She should have meant nothing more to him than what humans called a “good deed,” an act that made not the slightest dent in the vast weight of guilt accumulated over three quarters of a century.
Dorian rubbed at his face, feeling the raw bones of his cheek and jaw. He still had no clear understanding of what had happened, what unfamiliar impulse had led him to bring her here and watch over her until she could take care of herself. It hadn’t been a simple hunger; he hadn’t even been thinking of feeding when he’d rescued her. Nor had it been the troubling attraction with which he found himself struggling now.
If Miss Murphy had collapsed into a hysterical heap on the boardwalk after he’d pulled her from the river, he might have dismissed her. Old habits were slow to die, and he had no more need for human companionship than he did for that of his own kind.
But Gwen hadn’t collapsed. She’d gamely accepted what had been done to her, and if it hadn’t been for her body’s very human weakness, she would have gone on as if nothing had happened.
That had made all the difference. Her courage had awakened Dorian’s emotions as nothing had done since he’d held a gun in his hand and put an end to an evil few mortals could comprehend. Her refusal to surrender to fear had reminded him of the only other woman who had been capable of touching his heart.
Dorian returned to his corner, carefully restacked the crates and sank down against the wall. Of course he’d realized his mistake as soon as she’d started to ask questions, to behave as if his heedless act had created some sort of bond between them. He had tried to get rid of her even before his vague admiration had begun to give way to a reaction far more insidious: a growing awareness of her piquant beauty, the scent of her skin, the allure of her femininity.
If the sensation had been only the natural hunger for her blood, he could have assuaged it quickly and sent Miss Murphy away none the wiser, as he had a thousand other humans. But he’d wanted her with a dangerous insanity that became more deadly when he’d recognized how easily he could hurt her, how thin was the line between physical lust and violence.
He didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want the responsibility for what she might feel if she looked beyond her noble determination to help him and discovered that he desired her, even in the most human sense of the word.
Their relationship would never advance so far. There would be no relationship, no feelings, no joining in any sense of the word. If she came back…
“Penny for your thoughts.”
Walter ambled into the room and crouched next to Dorian, a half-empty whiskey bottle dangling from his hand. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “I can guess. She’s quite a peach, ain’t she?”
Dorian sighed. There wasn’t any point in reasoning with Walter. For all his easy nature, he was as irrational as any other human. In fact, he was worse than most. He saw everything through a prism of optimism and goodwill.
“She is an unusual woman,” Dorian admitted, resigned to an awkward conversation. “I would like to think that she won’t venture here again without a proper escort.”
“Ha,” Walter snorted. “You don’t know women, Dory. Though I never could understand how a man like you could turn out so ignorant of the fair sex.” He scratched his shoulder. “You’d better get used to the fact that she’s taken a shine to you.”
“I doubt that her interest will be of long duration.”
“Saving someone’s life tends to make a body grateful.”
“I made it clear that I don’t desire her gratitude.”
“You just can’t tell someone what to feel, Dory. Did you ever consider she might do you some good?”
“I would hardly wish to save her life only to ruin it.”
“Your problem is that you don’t have any faith in yourself. Just because you have a problem don’t mean it ain’t fixable. Maybe all you need’s a little encouragement.”
“I get plenty of that from you.”
“It ain’t enough. She’s the type you’d listen to. She’s brave and smart. I’m just an ignorant old man.”
And as harmless as a scorpion, Dorian thought. “Perhaps I won’t be here when she comes back.”
Walter got to his feet. “Oh, you’ll be here. You got nowhere else to go.” He took a swig from the bottle, offered it to Dorian as he always did, and shrugged when Dorian refused. His walk was a little unsteady as he returned to his own dark corner.
A muffled silence fell in the warehouse. It was empty now except for Dorian and Walter; other men came and went, but most felt uneasy in Dorian’s presence even when he was perfectly sane. They moved on after a few weeks, leaving him to his welcome solitude.
Solitude he could only pray Gwen Murphy would never break again.
THE CITY ROOM WAS busy when Gwen arrived, as it was at almost any time of day. Reporters at their desks shouted into telephone receivers or punched at typewriters, pencils tucked behind their ears. Eager copy boys rushed back and forth doing errands and carrying messages for their superiors. Mr. Spellman, red in the face, was gesticulating at an assistant editor behind the glass walls of his office.
It was all comfortingly familiar. No one had noticed her arrival. Mitch wasn’t at his desk, but then again, he seldom was. He preferred legwork to the labor of composition. Gwen waved at one of the friendlier reporters and left the city room for the small office to which she and the less privileged employees were relegated.
Lavinia was filing her nails, watching the melée across the hall with a vaguely amused expression on her long face. She caught sight of Gwen and waggled her fingers. Gwen wound her way between the desks to Lavinia’s quiet corner and fell into a chair.
“What is it, honey?” Lavinia said, subjecting Gwen to a pointed inspection. “You look like something the cat dragged in.”
Gwen laughed. “That’s exactly what I feel like.”
And that was putting it mildly. She could still taste river water and feel it in her hair, in spite of a quick bath and change of clothes. In the taxi back to the office she’d gotten the shakes, finally realizing how close she’d come to death.
“That bad, huh?” Lavinia said. She offered Gwen a cigarette. “Take this, honey. It’ll make you feel better.”
“Thanks, Vinnie, but you know I don’t smoke.”
“Pity.” Lavinia lit her own cigarette and took a drag. “Where have you been all day? I was beginning to worry.”
“You know I went down to the waterfront—”
“In spite of Spellman’s lecture about sticking to your own beat.”
“The society pages are your bailiwick, not mine.”
“You mean they aren’t good enough for you. No, I’m not scolding. It’s boring as hell, even for an old lady like me.”
Gwen planted her elbow on the desk and leaned her chin in her palm. “No one does it better than you, Vinnie.”
“Sure.” The older woman stubbed out her cigarette. “So how did it all come out?”
“My contact didn’t show.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“I might have found another lead, though.”
“Do tell.”
Gwen’s shoulders prickled. She hadn’t really stopped thinking about Dorian Black since she’d left the warehouse. “We’ll see how it pans out.”
“You mean you don’t want to talk about it.”
“Don’t take it personally, Vinnie. It’s Hewitt I don’t trust.”
“You still think you can scoop him?”
“Even if it kills me.”
