1956: Texas

Two Forks, Texas was a long way from Hollywood.

Grace’s boss, up-and-coming director/producer Naomi Wei, had informed her the name of the town was “North Fork” back in the thirties. Why they changed the North to Two was anybody’s guess. Maybe so visitors would think they’d actually find someone to eat with in this deadsville burg.

Grace grinned to herself as she turned the two-tone, pink-and-cream Plymouth Fury off the minuscule main drag. The urge to floor the V-8 past the Dairy Queen was almost irresistible. Although Miss Wei had disappointed Grace by not buying a convertible, Grace had once pushed the boatlike car to an impressive 120 miles per hour.

Miss Wei might be eccentric, but she knew her horsepower.

The road Grace had turned into wasn’t as well paved as the two lane that cut through town. As sprays of gravel hit the custom white-walls, Grace’s employer stirred sleepily in the passenger seat. Because Miss Wei had been anxious to reach their destination, they’d gotten an earlier start than usual for them: at least an hour before dusk. Miss Wei had immediately sunk into a doze, bundled like Greta Garbo in her long powder blue silk scarf and her glamorous cat’s-eye sunglasses.

“Thank God,” she said now, tipping up the glasses to take in the lollipop red shards of sunset that were melting on the horizon.

Miss Wei was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a day person.

“We’re close,” Grace told her, as always enjoying the moment when her boss woke up. From their first encounter in the greasy spoon where Grace had been waitressing, she’d liked Miss Wei’s company—in large part because she was the sort of take-charge woman Grace wanted to be someday. “The cat at the Texaco said the Durand ranch is a mile west on the turnoff.”

“The cat?” Miss Wei repeated, her perfectly painted mouth pursing with her smile.

Grace never got over how youthful her employer looked—her face unlined, her figure trim—and never mind she claimed to be old enough to be Grace’s mother.

“Cat is what the kids say,” Grace informed her.

Miss Wei laughed softly. “As if you weren’t a kid yourself.”

Grace’s fingers tightened on the white steering wheel. At twenty-four and counting, she was hardly that. Sometimes she felt as if the sands in her hourglass were perpetually running out.

“Fine,” Miss Wei teased with her uncanny ability to read expressions. “You’re a woman of immense maturity and intelligence. Why else would I hire you?”

“Because I work for peanuts?”

“As I recall, I gave you a raise last week.”

Because she had, Grace smiled to herself. The increase in pay had been generous.

“I’m worth it,” she said blithely.

“You might be,” Miss Wei conceded in the same airy tone.

She seemed happy tonight, her short hair ruffling in the wind from the open window, her dark eyes sparkling for the challenge in front of them. Filmmaking might be difficult for women, but the “old boys” at the studios never intimidated her.

“You’re sure Mr. Durand is expecting us?” Grace asked.

“If he’s not, he should be,” Miss Wei answered, which wasn’t exactly a yes.

But it was too late to worry, because the Durand Ranch’s wooden gate arched over the road ahead like an image from a John Ford Western. The ground here was dusty. Flat as a pancake, too, with scruffy looking grass a herd of dieting cattle could have starved on. An oil derrick poked up in the distance, black as night against the still faintly rosy sky. Its presence suggested Mr. Durand could afford extra feed for his hungry cows.

“Longhorns,” Miss Wei said. “Christian raises Longhorn cattle. He’s one of the last holdouts.
They’re hardy,” she added when Grace lifted her brows at her. “Shorthorns and Herefords need too much pampering out here.”

“I didn’t know you were interested in ranching.”

“I’m not. But it pays to know your quarry.”

Slowing as they got closer—because who knew if this Texas boy kept shotguns—Grace pointed the car toward a low-slung adobe house.

“Try the barns,” Miss Wei corrected. “Unless I miss my guess, Christian is in that one over there.”

The barns were a collection of worn-looking plank buildings. Grace parked in the rutted dirt beside the one Miss Wei had waved her arm at. Grace was wearing flats for driving, but her soles still sank into the dry earth as she got out. The wide double doors of the barn stood open. Caged bulbs were strung along the rafters to light the big space inside, though Grace wouldn’t have said they lit it well. If someone was in there, she couldn’t pick them out from the shadows yet.

Miss Wei came around the front grill of the Fury and laid her cool hand on Grace’s sleeve.
“Just let me do the talking. Christian Durand . . . owes me his life, you could say.”

For some reason, this request increased Grace’s nervousness. She dried damp palms on her white pedal pushers, allowing her petite yet formidable employer to stride into the cavernous structure ahead of her. Grace followed more sedately and looked around.

Without question, this barn was a male domain. No cows resided between its walls, only a collection of automobiles of varying vintages and states of repair. Her mood improving, Grace spotted a 1950 Buick in the process of having its body “chopped” to reduce wind drag. The Harley-Davidson leaning on a hay bale also looked promising. Ever since Marlon Brando starred in The Wild One, motorcycles were big with kids.

Maybe her boss was onto something with this harebrained scheme.

“Christian,” Miss Wei called out. “It’s Naomi Wei. I’ve come to talk in person.”

Grace heard the clank of a wrench hitting the barn’s dirt floor.

She saw the man then, or his bottom half anyway. He was bent over the engine of a glossy all-black, two-seater, convertible Thunderbird. If the car hadn’t made Grace’s mouth water, the man in those Levi’s certainly would have. The metal-caged bulb above him shone a literal spotlight on his well formed behind. His legs were long and strong-looking, their finer qualities only heightened by the cowboy boots he was sporting.

He stretched farther into the engine, exposing two tantalizing dimples at the top of his hindquarters. Grace’s mouth did its best to go desert dry. Maybe he sensed her attention, because he spoke. His voice was dark and smooth, with just a hint of a Texas twang.

“Told you on the phone I wasn’t interested. All dozen times you called.”

“You never heard me out,” Miss Wei said.

Mr. Durand straightened, braced his arms on the side of the open hood, then slammed it down with a bang. Grace’s heart began to beat faster as she took in how broad his shoulders were. A snug-fitting and oddly spotless white T-shirt clung to his tapered back, making very clear the fact that he didn’t have an ounce of fat on him . . . exactly the way she liked her men, to be truthful. Despite Mr. Durand’s leanness, the muscles under that clean white cotton rippled with contained power. His hair was long enough to need tying back, and just as black and shiny as the finish on his car. His hair would have to be cut, of course; leading men couldn’t run around looking like Indian braves. For herself, however, Grace liked the ponytail.

As if to warn her how much she liked it, her panties dampened in a hot, quick rush—a tad embarrassing, she thought. If Mr. Durand looked this good from the front, she might be in trouble. No matter how handsome the actor, Grace prided herself on always behaving professionally.

“I’m not an actor,” he said, still not turning to her employer. “And if I were, I wouldn’t star in no damn flick called I Was a Teen-Age Vampire.”

“It’s bound to make heaps of money.”

“I don’t need money,” he snapped.

“You owe me, Christian.”

“I don’t owe you shit, Naomi.”

It wasn’t so much his language as his unabashed hostility that had Grace sucking in her breath.

The sound wasn’t loud, but Mr. Durand spun around like lightning on hearing it.
He was facing her then, and his eyes went wide. Grace’s heart slammed her ribs, but he seemed more shocked than she was. Knowing pretty well how she looked, she was used to men reacting to the sight of her. This man’s response took the cake from them all. His head jerked back like someone had popped a knuckle sandwich into his chin.

He bit out a word she thought meant shit in German.

“Well,” Miss Wei purred, her gaze shifting back and forth between them. “Isn’t this interesting?”

Grace’s brain recovered enough to realize that Mr. Durand’s face was movie star gorgeous, which probably accounted for why her pulse was pounding like a jackhammer. Oh, he didn’t resemble James Dean or Marlon Brando, but he had their can’t-take-your-eyes-off-him charisma. She judged him about Dean’s age, early twenties or thereabouts, a little lined from working outdoors but still young enough to pass for eighteen. His coffee dark eyes smoldered with hypnotizing hints of gold. His lips were thin, it was true, but a girl could slice her heart on those high cheekbones. Even his arms were sexy, the muscles graceful as they hung loosely at his sides. And, by golly, he was tall—six feet and change, she was willing to bet. Neither the recently departed Dean nor the still-rising Brando could pretend that.

Best of all, from the toes of his cowboy boots to the dashing widow’s peak of his hair, Christian Durand screamed dangerous.

“You’re right, boss,” Grace said, before she could worry how it would sound. “Every red-blooded American female is guaranteed to sigh over him.”

* * *

Christian couldn’t wrench his attention from the woman who’d traipsed uninvited into his barn with Nim Wei. She was the spitting image of his Grace, lost to him for—Christ—nearly five centuries. This female was a little older, but every year had given her a blessing. Her face had character to go with its prettiness: a shadow to make her glow shine brighter, a stubbornness to her peach soft jaw.

Her tidy outfit of pedal pushers and crisp white blouse was ridiculous, of course, a girl playing dress-up as someone far more serious and less sensual than she was. Her figure was precisely the sweet temptation he remembered: a buxom, narrow-hipped torso set atop a pair of showgirl’s legs. This woman’s hair was shorter than Grace’s, waving only to her shoulders, though it was the same deep, dark red.

Movie actress hair, he supposed. Had to come in Technicolor.

Vampire that he was, with all the knee-jerk responses that went with that, he’d started hardening the instant he saw her. Hardening wasn’t the word for what he was doing now. Running his eyes up and down her very warm-blooded beauty had his prick screaming for mercy inside his jeans.

It didn’t care that she couldn’t be his lost beloved. It was chomping at the bit to burn down this barn with her. On the bare floor right in front of him sounded fine, with his pike shoved up her pussy as far as it would go. He winced as his cock struggled harder against his fly, but the erotic images wouldn’t stop. It had been too long since he’d cut loose with a woman. He had too little trouble imagining this one’s ankles around his ears.

“This is Grace,” Nim Wei said in that insinuating voice of hers. As distracted as he was, he marveled that he made out the words at all. “She’s my close personal assistant. If you agree to star in my movie, you’ll be seeing her everyday.”

The girl seemed startled by her employer’s promise, but she stuck out her hand gamely.

“Grace Michaels,” she said. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Durand.”

The name belatedly registered.

“Grace?” he repeated, abruptly hoarse. His normally cool palm turned fiery where she clasped it.

“Michaels. But please call me Grace if you like.”

He couldn’t release her hand. Her name was Grace, and her eyes were as clear and green as a peridot. All the times he’d stared into them rushed back like yesterday. He remembered these very fingers touching him with such kindness he feared he’d cry, remembered the way her spectral energy could tingle straight up his cock. The nerves there were tingling now—jangling, really, like a telephone ringing off the hook. Grace wasn’t a ghost anymore. She was as solid as the ground under him. Lord help him, if she brushed against him, his dick was going to erupt.

“Christian,” he said, having to push his name past the constriction inside his throat. “My name is Christian. Please call me that.”

“Christian,” she agreed nervously.

When she attempted to tug her hand back, his fangs punched down from his gums, reacting precisely as if she were prey fleeing. Her accelerated pulse was lub-dubbing in his ears, a siren song he wasn’t certain he could resist. Alarmed by his out-of-control responses, he let her go and stepped back.

Grace massaged her palm as if he’d hurt it.

“So?” Nim Wei said to him.

He looked at her, and he had no idea what she was asking. He wasn’t even certain what he felt. However it had happened, this seemed to be Grace, the same Grace who’d promised him forever and then abandoned him in his darkest hour. His face flashed hot and then icy. Did he hate her? Did he love her? Did he simply want to fuck her without stopping for the next ten years?

The painful surge of blood to his groin told him the answer to that was affirmative.

“Christian?” Nim Wei said, her lithe little arms folded. “Are you going to help me make this flick or not?”

She doesn’t know, he thought. Not who Grace was. Not what she means to me. All she knows is that her assistant has my cylinders running hot.

Grace couldn’t have remembered Nim Wei, either, or she wouldn’t have been trotting after her like a faithful Girl Friday. Hell, the prissy sweater she’d tied around her shoulders was the same shade of powder blue as Nim Wei’s scarf. The witch of Florence was Grace’s god-damned mentor, as if Nim Wei weren’t responsible for half the trouble that befell them both back then.

All of which boiled down to Grace not remembering him.

He stared into her wide green eyes, his immortal heart contracting in his chest with an emotion very much like terror. She wasn’t putting on an act. He saw no recognition in her expression. She was flushed; attracted, unless he was mistaken, and embarrassed because of it, but only in the way—how had she put it?—any red-blooded American girl might be.

He didn’t understand what it meant. Had she been reincarnated like that crazy Bridey Murphy from the bestselling book? Could people come back looking just as they had before?

Without realizing it, he’d folded his arms in an echo of Nim Wei’s posture. He caught a flash from Grace’s mind of how he looked with his biceps bulging in the white T-shirt. That definitely didn’t help his blood pressure. When Grace extended her hand to touch his bare forearm, her fingers were trembling.

“We’d both consider it a favor if you’d agree,” she said. “Miss Wei needs an ace in the hole to break out of making ‘B’ movies.”

“And you think I’d be your ace.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Grace breathed, her enthusiasm momentarily teen-ager like. “I know you’re inexperienced, but we could coach you. A person’s presence is what matters for most films. Acting is something plenty of folks can learn.”

“And you could coach me,” he said.

Grace shot an uncertain glance at her boss before turning back to him. “We both could. Or we could hire someone. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

Despite feeling more discomposed than he had in four centuries, despite loving the peaceful life he’d built for himself out here, Christian sensed a rare canary-eating grin rising up in him. Love Grace or loathe her, he couldn’t hate the prospect of having her at his beck and call.

As the grin spread across his face, threatening to bare his fangs, Grace tensed warily back from him.

“You coach me,” he said firmly, “and we might have a deal.”

“She’d be delighted to!” Nim Wei exclaimed before Grace could speak. “Now why don’t we drive to that two-bit town of yours and all have a drink on it.”

How much he disliked her answering for Grace dismayed him. After all this time, and certainly considering the way Grace had broken her promises, he shouldn’t have felt protective. His shoulders began to ache with the tension gathering there.

“Would you excuse us, Grace?” he said, his gaze locked firmly on Nim Wei’s, where he suspected it was safer. He noticed idly that the bitch queen had cut her hair. Because the black locks didn’t or wouldn’t curl, the feathery cut was boyish, giving the vampiress a disconcertingly modern look. Modern or not, he bet she was as dangerous as ever. “Your boss and I have a thing or two to sort out.”

He took his old nemesis by her deceptively slender elbow, pulling her to the shadowed privacy of his work bench—far enough that Grace’s human ears wouldn’t hear. He wasn’t consciously showing off his strength, but he knew he’d done so when Nim Wei rubbed her arm.

“Someone’s been eating their spinach,” she observed dryly.

“You’re not the only master vampire here.” He’d lowered his voice in order not to sound petulant. Nim Wei smiled smugly anyway. They both knew physical strength was probably the only arena where he could match her—maybe the least important in an age that had advanced so far beyond hand-to-hand combat. Christian was relatively new to his elder status. Nim Wei had been queen among their kind for millennia. Add to that her mystic bent, and he doubted her drawing his long-lost lover into her orbit was a coincidence. Why Nim Wei had drawn Grace was a better question. She’d always been able to sense and pluck the strands of Fate for her convenience, including when she wasn’t aware of it.

Not inclined to help her become aware, he shielded his thoughts from her.

“You shouldn’t be offering that girl on a platter like she’s your possession.”

Nim Wei’s perfect black eyebrows rose. “Nonsense. Grace adores me. And rightly so. I saved her from a fate worse than death—or almost. You’ve no idea what indignities human waitresses put up with. Besides, don’t you want me offering her to you?”

Christian ordered his fingers to release the edge of the work table, where they were threatening to crush the wood to sawdust. It was an effort to speak coolly. “If I wanted her, I wouldn’t need your help.”

Nim Wei’s smile exposed a quicksilver flash of fang. “Don’t be so sure. Grace already idolizes me. Imagine if I bit her. I doubt even your red-blooded manliness could override my thrall.”

His hand blurred up to grip her neck so swiftly that his better judgment took a moment to catch up. He might as well have throttled a statue. Unruffled by his attack, Nim Wei’s marble white fingers stroked the bones of his wrist.

“Temper, temper,” she scolded as he eased his hold and let go. “Really, Christian, this is a wonderful opportunity I’m offering you. A bit of a challenge to ameliorate your boredom.”
“I’m not bored.”

“A little birdie told me you resigned from X-Section.”

“Senator McCarthy’s witch hunts soured me on spying. Let the humans search under their beds for Communists.”

She nodded knowingly. “You want your own life, one you can shape without answering to anyone. I remember being that age.”

Christian glanced past his maker. Grace was hunkered down beside his Harley, her fingers trailing curiously along the chrome tailpipe. Hers was a human posture: slightly awkward and off balance, but it seemed beautiful all the same. Her hair glowed like blood where the uncertain light touched it. His ribs tightened with discomfort. Could she be the symbol of what he wanted? A future such as mortals dreamed of when they reached adulthood? He snorted at the ludicrous concept. He was 496. He was never going to have two-point-five children and a rancher in the suburbs.

“I gave you this existence,” Nim Wei reminded him. “Without me, even the worms who ate you would be dust by now.”

“You seem to forget the less than idyllic circumstances of my change, the way you helped my father destroy my life until I had nowhere else to turn.”

“You’re the one who craved the sort of vengeance only an upyr could mete out. Got it, too, as I recall. In any case, if I worried about every vampire who harbored a grudge against me, I’d never ask for favors.”

“God forbid,” he muttered.

Nim Wei slapped his upper arm, the sting a bit too sharp to be friendly. “However little you like to acknowledge it, you’re my get: a city vampire. Moldering out here among the cows won’t ever be enough for you.”

“I like the quiet.”

“Please. You can be quiet when you’re dead. You know as well as I do the question isn’t how many years we can live, it’s how many we want to. Time has weight, Christian. I can see yours weighing on you.”

“And this is your answer? To make some idiot movie about vampires?”

She shrugged, a fey gold amusement glinting out from under her downswept lashes. “It’s entertaining to hide among the humans, to beat them at their own games.”

“Some victory that is when you’re making up the rules.”

“I’m only cheating a little.”

“If one of your subjects wanted to do this, you’d never permit it.”

“Maybe I need to express myself.”

She threw this off like it was a joke, but he didn’t doubt it was true. Though she excelled at hiding her true nature from mortal eyes, she’d always had a flamboyant streak. Considering the newly prosperous humans around her were so busy “expressing” themselves by buying yellow refrigerators and green bathtubs, why should she be immune?

“Come on,” she said coaxingly. “It can’t hurt to share a drink with the two of us. Grace is quite adorable when she’s tipsy. Makes her cheeks all yummy and pink.”

The growl that trickled from his throat was as dark as it was unplanned. Normally, he gave nothing of his interior life away. Laughing, Nim Wei poked his chest with a pink-frosted fingernail.

“Take your motorcycle,” she advised. “Grace will love watching your big strong thighs straddle that. Especially if you have one of those biker jackets with the zippers all over it.”

She turned away before he could form his curse into words.

“Grace,” she called. “Start the car. Christian has agreed to hear out our pitch."

© 2010 by Emma Holly. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute this work in any manner or medium without written permission of the author.