Sex and the Single Vampire Read Online Free PDF

didn’t recognize, but which sounded suspiciously like it was swearing, then froze and looked at the doorway. There was a soft noise from the upper level that sounded a whole lot like someone had just closed the back door.
    “Peste,”
the man snarled, whirling around to leap back on the table. His voice deepened until it felt like the richestvelvet brushing against my skin. “I command you to go now, without allowing the others to see you. You will forget everything you have seen here tonight.”
    “You know, I was married to an arrogant, domineering, tyrannical sort of man who thought he could control me. You can just take it as a given that the high-and-mighty act isn’t going to cut any ice with me.”
    The man banged his head on the table twice. I winced for him. The table sounded awfully solid.
    A faint echo of a voice reached me. I turned my back on the crazy man and rushed to the door. “Hello? Is there someone up there? Listen, I need some help down here. There’s a guy who needs a doctor and … uh … a policeman. Hello?”
    Hushed voices whispered to each other for a moment.
    “You know, there’s some really bad karma to be had from refusing to help someone when they’re injured,” I yelled up the stairs. “If you don’t want to come down here and help me restrain this guy, the least you can do is call for—”
    A hand wrapped itself around my mouth and pulled me backward against a warm, hard body.
    “Now listen carefully,” the man said in my ear, the silk of his voice doing all sorts of naughty things to me. “You will heed my words and do as I command.”
    It was the word
command
that did it. Ever since Timothy, I react badly to it. Without even the merest thought about the repercussions of my actions on an obviously insane and badly wounded man, I stomped my boot down on his bare foot and slammed my elbow back into his belly. He grunted in pain and doubled up as I lunged forward and raced up the stairs. I knew it was the sheerest folly to leave a lunatic with a bag full of expensive equipment, but I had no choice. Whoever he was waiting for, whoever had left without having the decency to help,clearly wasn’t going to call the police or medical aid. I leaped up the stairs, ignoring the pain in my leg and the stitch that instantly formed in my side as I ran down the hallway to the door. I had remembered seeing a callbox down the block. I’d call for help, then sneak back into the inn and keep an eye on the poor, handsome, utterly deranged man.
    It was raining—a cold, nasty, sleety type of rain—as I galloped awkwardly down the road to the call box. It took me three tries to dial 999, but at last I was connected with an emergency dispatcher. Two minutes later, having described where I was and what the problem was with the man, I headed back to the old inn at a slower pace, worried that my escape might have sent the poor man over the deep end.
    I crept into the hallway and stood with my back to a moldy wall, keeping an eye on the stairs to the basement. It seemed like it was an hour before the sound of a police car siren Dopplered against the building, but according to my watch it was only eight and a half minutes. I greeted the two policemen, explained quickly what I had seen, and followed them down the stairs to the now closed door. They switched on powerful flashlights and cautiously opened the door.
    The room was empty.
    Not only was the room empty, the table was gone, and the pool of blood on the floor had vanished. My bag and piece of chalk and flashlight were still there, but everything else was gone.
    “Wait a minute—I … There was … He was right here! How could he … And the blood, it was right there—that table must have weighed a ton! How could he have moved it so quickly?”
    “Madam,” said the smaller of the two policemen, shining his flashlight right on my face. I heard him gasp as Iturned away so I was in profile. “Madam,” he said again, his voice a bit shaky.