Chapter 10
Ten
All night, Claire hadn’t allowed herself to gawk at how ridiculously hot Tai looked in a tuxedo.
More than the average lean vampire, Tai was tall and long-limbed, and his tailor knew precisely how to flatter the clean lines of his frame.
His fingers were long too, which added a precise strength to his gestures.
She’d told him she would analyze platonically. She told herself the same thing. Then she called herself a liar.
The stage, connection and communication—these things were his element.
Claire knew it before he’d finished the first sentence of his speech.
She’d known it when Sandra began her introduction and, still seated beside her, Tai’s entire body seemed to hum with anticipating energy.
Now he had the microphone, slowly walking the stage to be sure everyone got equal eye contact, an equal connection with what he shared.
He broke down statistics and financial data, scientific breakthroughs for specific disorders his foundation had tackled, all in accessible terms filled with his passion.
His metallic eyes glinted under the stage lights as he told an individual story of hope and improved health.
Claire looked around the room and found almost everyone equally tuned in, even their table’s resident jerk, Dylan. Then she looked back to the stage, to Tai and his stupidly attractive hands, his smooth baritone voice filling the banquet room.
“So I’d like to conclude by thanking you again, all of you gathered here tonight,” he said.
“Your choice to join with us as donors is never taken for granted. I hope you can see from our report tonight how vital you are to so many people. We’re working toward new knowledge and hope, and we can’t do it without each of you.
Every dollar, every dime matters to the Josie Strong Foundation. Thank you so much.”
He exited the stage to a round of applause that was louder than mere politeness. He handed off the microphone to Sandra, who stood out of the spotlight at the foot of the stage stairs. Then he returned to his seat.
Claire wanted to tell him he was fantastic. She wanted to ask about his work, how and why he’d chosen it. But none of these things were appropriate conversation while he was still working, and the composed yet intense look in his eyes showed that he’d be in that zone as long as they were here.
When the house lights came back up, he turned in his chair to face her. “I don’t have to mingle all night, but I need a few minutes with three or four people. You’re welcome to come with me, or you’re welcome to mingle on your own. I promise we’ll be out of here before ten thirty.”
“Go to work,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I can fend for myself just fine.”
He nodded, pushed back from the table, and headed with purpose across the room. Darlene arched one eyebrow at her.
“What?” Claire said. “I’m not arm candy.”
The woman laughed, a full musical laugh that drew the eye of every human within hearing range though they couldn’t pick up every layer of her unmuted voice. “And you’re not dating.”
“We’re not, Darlene. We’re retrying friendship after a false start three years ago.” Why had she admitted that?
Darlene folded her arms across the bodice of her garnet-red dress and leaned back in her chair. “There’s a story here.”
“Maybe another time.”
“Fair enough. So tell me about yourself, Claire. What’s your story?”
Their conversation occupied her so fully, Claire never left the table. She calculated from Darlene’s various stories that the woman was at least sixty years old, though of course she looked thirty.
Then Tai’s scent, the familiar and comfortable blend of salt and acid by which vampires could recognize each other a quarter-mile apart, approached from the other side of the room.
Claire looked in that direction, and a pleasant chilly crackle of attraction zipped across her shoulders when she spotted him striding toward her with purpose.
It was just the tux. Right? Had to be.
Darlene chuckled. “Your platonic friend is quite the specimen, isn’t he?”
Claire rolled her eyes to hide the enthusiastic agreement that zinged through her whole body. “Darlene.”
Tai was laughing as he reached them. “That’s enough, Darlene.”
“If you say so.”
Claire didn’t second-guess this time when Tai offered his arm and she took it. Her free hand held both her clutch and her hem—an extra inch above her feet—as they headed for the doors.
“Thanks for coming,” Tai said.
“Thanks for asking me.”
“Not too boring for you?”
“Oh, not at all. I enjoyed getting to see…” She shrugged. No harm in admitting it. “You in your element. You know how to own a room, and unless I misread you completely, you also really love your work.”
He nodded with a low hum that sent the crackling chill across her shoulders and down the arm tucked into his. “It’s always felt natural to me, talking to people, bringing a vision to them and watching them catch it and run with it.”
“And you don’t get nervous.”
“You mean stage fright? I still don’t really get what that is.”
This man had too many talents to count. “I could tell. In fact you seemed to be enjoying it.”
“In general, I find speaking or performing of any kind really fun. Obviously when I’m representing Josie Strong, the health of so many people at stake, that’s not fun. It’s…important. It matters. And I’m privileged to be part of it.”
“I’d love to know how you found them, or how they found you, or however that all happened.”
He was quiet a moment. They passed out the double glass doors into the spring night, which had cooled after sunset.
They walked the blacktop lot, through tiny petals fallen from the dogwood and myrtle trees, all the way to Tai’s car, and he stayed quiet.
He opened her door, and she slid in, still not over the luxurious feel of this gown, its folds against her legs.
Tai crossed to the driver’s side and sat behind the wheel before he spoke again.
“It’s sort of complicated,” he said. “A story for another night.”
Right, because they were barely friends at the moment. Claire pushed away the sting. She shouldn’t feel such a need to know him, not this soon. She took time to latch onto people. Always had.
He glanced at her as he began driving, and the hint of tension between his eyes reminded her she’d never responded, that maybe he thought she was annoyed with the door he’d kept closed.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Totally fair.”
“Thanks.”
They talked sporadically on the way home, were nearly to their highway exit when all lanes of traffic hit a complete stop in front of them.
“What…?” Tai muttered, craning his neck to see past their lane.
“Probably a fender bender,” Claire said.
“Yeah. Sorry for the delay getting you home.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. I don’t have to sleep tonight. You?”
“I sleep on Mondays.”
“Hey, me too! Mondays are quietest at work, easiest to disengage my brain and save anything complicated for tomorrow.”
“That makes sense,” he said, and her lack of tension at mentioning the bar… Well, maybe she was moving on. Maybe a grudge ought to die after three years.
Their car hadn’t moved a single foot, but odors reached them now, oily and wrong and…
BLOOD.
Whoa. Something was bad ahead. Claire rolled her window down and sniffed, trying to get a better sense of potential danger or harm to nearby humans.
A siren approached, and farther ahead, at least one emergency vehicle had already stopped, lights washing the night in rotating red.
Her heart gave a hard thump as voices reached her from several cars ahead.
“Oh my gosh, it’s at least four cars.”
“I hope everybody’s alive.”
They might need help. As a vampire, she might be able to do something the humans couldn’t.
No idea what exactly, but she threw open her door, kicked off her pumps, and ran down the gravel shoulder in her bare feet, hitching up her gown as she darted toward the awful odors and voices—cries, shouts that hit her like an assault.
“My daughter’s inside!”
“They can’t get out!”
“We’ll get them out just as soon as possible, sir.”
Without yet being able to see the scene, Claire’s senses knew a hundred things at once.
This wasn’t a fender bender. It was a pileup, oil and gasoline spilled, a whole lot of torn metal.
The damage to the vehicles was total. She begged the universe or God or whomever might be listening and able to do something— Don’t let the humans be hurt as badly as the cars.
But she knew from the scent and the sound that people were hurt.
People were bleeding. The blood was so thick in the air—to a vampire, at least—she could taste it in the back of her throat, and it tasted all wrong.
Not chilled for sustenance but fresh, warm.
Everything within Claire recoiled from that taste.
It was morally wrong. Repulsive. Predatory.
She would never want this taste in her mouth for as long as she lived.
Her senses knew something else too. Tai ran beside her toward the fray.
Darting at full speed, they reached the scene in less than a minute. Claire lurched to a stop. Where to begin…?
The accident must have occurred in moments, vehicles moving at the full legal speed.
Four cars were flipped, roofs smashed inward.
One was half-crushed by the wheel of the sixth vehicle, a massive pickup truck with tires that could easily have rolled over the entire car but had managed only to pin the people inside.
A baby wailed. A few humans wandered around the cars, dazed, bleeding from superficial cuts on their faces and arms.
Two ambulances had arrived from the other side of the highway and were parked on the median, lights flashing so bright Claire couldn’t look in that direction. A few gurneys held people, but several more were empty.
“Oh, Tai,” she said.
“Come on,” he said.