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As it went into voice mail, the operator disconnected, saying, "I'm sorry. There's no one there to accept charges."
"Wait," Tess said, worry niggling at her. "Will you try it again?" "One moment."
Tess waited anxiously as the phone began ringing again at the clinic. No answer.
"I'm sorry," the operator said again, disconnecting the call.
"I don't understand," Tess murmured, more to herself. "Can you tell me what time it is?"
"It's ten-thirteen A.M."
Nora wouldn't break for lunch until noon, and she never called in sick, so why wasn't she picking up the call? Something must be wrong.
"Would you like to try another number?"
"Yes, I would."
Tess gave the operator Nora's land line, then, when that call came up empty, she gave her Nora's cell. As each call rang unanswered, Tess's heart sank deeper in her chest. Everything felt wrong to her. Very wrong.
With dread pounding through her, Tess hung up the pay phone and began walking for the nearest subway station. She didn't have the dollar-twenty-five fare it would cost to ride to the North End, but a grandmotherly woman on the street took pity on her and gave her a handful of loose change.
The trip home seemed to take forever, each stranger's face on the train seeming to stare at her as if they knew she didn't belong there among them. As if they could sense that she had been changed somehow, no longer a part of the normal world. No longer a part of their human world.>"I'm not going to hurt you. I promise."
An image slammed into the front of her consciousness as he said the words. In her mind, Tess was suddenly transported to her clinic storeroom, crouching down over a badly injured man who'd somehow found his way inside after a vicious fight on the streets Halloween night. He was a stranger to her then, but not now.
It was Dante's face she saw, bloodstained and grimy, his hair dripping wet as it spiked down over his brow. His lips moved, speaking the same words she heard him speak now: I'm not going to hurt you... I promise...
She had an abrupt but very distinct memory of strong hands gripping her by the arms, holding her in place. Of Dante's lips peeling back from his teeth--revealing huge white fangs that came toward her throat.
"I didn't know you," Dante was saying now, as if he could track her thoughts with his mind. "I was weakened and seriously wounded. I would only have taken what I needed from you and left you alone. There would have been no pain for you, no distress. I had no idea what I had done until I saw your mark --"
"You bit me... you... Oh, God, you drank my blood that night? How... why am I only now remembering this?"
His stark features softened somewhat, as if in remorse. "I erased your memory. I tried to explain things to you, but the situation was too far out of hand. We struggled, and you injected me with a sedative. By the time I came to, it was almost dawn and there was no time for talking. I thought it best for you that you didn't remember. Then I saw the mark on your hand, and I knew there could be no taking back any of what I'd done to you." Tess didn't need to look down at her right hand to know the mark he spoke of. The small birthmark had always been curious to her, a teardrop poised over the bowl of a crescent moon. But it didn't make any more sense to her now than it ever had.
"Not many women have the mark, Tess. Only a rare few. You're a Breedmate. If one of my kind takes your blood into his body, or gives you his, a bond is forged. It is unbreakable."
"And you... did this to me?"
Another memory swamped her now, a further remembrance of blood and darkness. Tess recalled waking from a shadowy dream, her mouth filled with a roaring force of energy, of life. She had been starved, and Dante fed her. From his wrist and then, later, from a vein he had opened for her in his neck.
"Oh, my God," she whispered. "What have you done to me?"
"I saved your life by giving you my blood. Just as you saved mine with yours."
"You gave me no choice, either time," she gasped. "What am I now? Have you turned me into the same kind of monster that you are?"
"No. That's not the way it works. You will never become a vampire. But if you continue to feed from me as my mate, you can live for a very long time. As long as I will. Longer, perhaps."
"I don't believe this. I refuse to believe this!"
Tess pivoted for the swinging doors of the infirmary and pushed against the panels. They didn't budge. She pushed again, putting all of her strength into it. Nothing. It was as though they were fused on their hinges, completely immobile.
"Let me out of here," she told Dante, suspecting that it was his will alone that kept the doors from opening for her. "Goddamn you, Dante. Let me go!"
As soon as the door gave the slightest bit, Tess pushed it open and bolted through at a dead run. She had no idea where she was going and didn't care, so long as it put distance between herself and Dante, the man she only thought she knew. The man she actually believed she was in love with. The monster who had betrayed her more deeply than anyone in her tormented past.
Sick with fear and angered at her own stupidity, Tess choked back the tears that stung her eyes. She ran harder, knowing that Dante was certain to catch up to her. She just had to find a way out of the place. Running up to a bank of elevators, she pressed the call button and prayed the doors would open. Seconds ticked by... too many for her to risk waiting.
