Victim Wanted You shivered when Dracula kissed Mina. You wish I'd come to your window, deep in the heart of night, and call you from your bed. I am all you imagine— tall, handsome, aristocratic, wealthy, irresistibly powerful, fatally sensual. I am a vampire. MEN SEEKING WOMEN, RN#675.

Taking my hand, Fiona let me out into the heavy purple night. Birds twittered in the lush vegetation crowding the terrace. Faraway, lightning flashed, and I glimpsed the turquoise water.

"Drink, my beautiful Morgan, my luscious vampire," she purred. "I've had dinner. You haven't."

Rain drummed on the terra cotta roof as her pulse thrummed through me. I loved doing it to her, and she loved my doing it. After my little kiss, Fiona sank down on a bench and stared out to sea. I looked down at her and tried again to catch her thoughts, but met the same stark wall of memories.

"Why can't I read your thoughts?"

"Because I know how to keep you from doing it. You're not the first of your kind I've known." She looked up at me then and I thought I saw tears sparkling in her eyes. Still holding my hand, she began to talk.

"I was born on this island. My father was a great man. Greater than Sir Brown-Hughes." She seasoned the Lord Mayor's name with venom. "My father owned the magic. He was the wiseman of my people."

"A witch doctor?" I shivered as thunder cracked like distant guns. Her eloquent shrug deepened my sense of doom. Another mortal/vampire love tragedy?

"He knew the herbs and the spells. My mother was an English school teacher." Her throaty laugh rang with bitterness. "She came to anglicize us. She was beautiful and he desired her. He called her to him and kept her for his own. But she hated him."

"I'm not surprised-"

"Says the pot of the kettle." She honored my outburst with a mocking glance.

"The other vampire I knew was a friend of my father."

"What was his name?" I felt unreal, like an actor speaking a part in a play not yet written.

"Xavier Giacomini. It was the name he used then."

"The name he always uses."

"You know him and you don't like him."

I nodded as the past washed over me like the waves prodding the shore. In my vivid vampire memory, I relived my meeting with Xavier. I saw an auburn-haired man on a black Spanish horse, our swords crossed on different sides of a revolution.

"A Frenchman." I wanted to ask if she'd been his lover but pride wouldn't let me.

"When she would have left Father," she continued with a warped sort of pride, "he had Xavier kill her."

"Dear God." I was shocked, but knelt and took her hands. "She was your mother. How can you-"

"Don't you dare judge me!" She shook off my hands. The look of fury melted, leaving her with the face of a wounded angel. "Father was blamed for her murder. He was tried by your English law." A sob broke from her. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

"I was fifteen when I watched the almighty Brown-Hughes condemn the man I loved best in all the world to hang." She fell on her knees and came into my arms like a child begging for comfort.

Horrified, I cradled her against me and kissed her midnight curls. "Don't cry, Fiona. It's all done and over."

"Not over," she leaned back in my arms. "It won't be over until Brown-Hughes is dead. Kill him for me."

"No!" Her nearness smothered me. Nausea swirled in my stomach. "I've no reason-"

"You're a vampire, for Christ's sake, you don't need a reason to kill!"

I scarcely knew I was moving until I saw her slide down the front of me. Wrapping her arms around my knees, she looked up at me with abject pleading while I gazed down at her in disbelief.

"No."

"Please, I'll do anything for you. Anything at all." The light of madness shone in her eyes as she climbed me. "I can do something for you. I can give you a day in the sun. You can see a sunrise, walk on the beach, swim in the ocean. Think of it. Sunlight on your skin."

I wanted to clamp my hands over my ears, but a sleepy wonder crept over me. "Impossible. I'd quite literally go up in smoke."

"It's not impossible. With the art of my father, I can give it to you. There are herbs which make you immune to the sun." She raised her hands in an oath. "I vow it."

How I wanted to believe her! What did the life of one man mean?

She sensed the moment her seduction succeeded. "You've killed hundreds of thousands." Her fingers delved under my hair to massage my throbbing temples.

"One life. One day. And there can be more."

Sick with dread and impossible hope, I nodded. In 1659, I'd sold my soul to the devil. Since then, I'd sent legions of souls to meet their maker. Fiona was right. I needed a kill and the thought of that ecstasy fired the craving. I disentangled myself from her. "Very well, Fiona. I'll be back before sunrise, and today I want to see it."

"And so you shall, Morgan." She handed me a hand drawn map.

"Any cab driver will know how to get you here. Follow this path, meet me at the house of my father. It's abandoned now, but it's only right that I should reward you there."

"You never doubted that I would do as you asked." I stood back from her, avoiding her touch. She answered me with a tender smile.

* * *

The excitement of the kill electrified my steps as I walked across the beach toward her. It had been too easy. As it always was. Robed in gauzy white like some ancient priestess, Fiona sat on the damp sand. The air around her wore the same piquant fragrance I'd smelled the first night we arrived.

"You're wearing too much perfume," I said.

She laid a hand over her heart and smiled up at me as if I were a heavenly messenger. "It is done. I feel it." The dress unfurled like a flag of truce as she rose. "My Lucifer," she held out her arms. "My golden angel of death. Come and let me kiss you."

I cast an apprehensive glance at the silver-streaked sky. "Fiona, there's not much time."

"There's plenty of time for you to kiss me." Red nail pointing at the chugging artery. "In a few seconds, the sun will lose its power over you."

Her eyes were unnaturally bright. She spoke with studied cadence. There was another smell behind the reek of burnt herbs. Some man-made wonder flowed in her.

"Bitch!" Anger flashed through me. If I touched her, I'd kill her. "I'm tired of your games."

She caught my arm as I turned to run for cover. "You smell the drug, don't you?" She pouted her full lips and looked at me through her lashes. "It's for both of us. A little something called ecstasy."

"Ecstasy?" I'd always wanted to sample the aphrodisiac of the 90's.

"Makes you hot as a firecracker." She looked like she might explode in my hands.

I glanced at the sky. The faint light hurt my eyes, tingled my skin like a thousand needles. "I'm going to be a cinder in about five minutes."

She reached into the pocket of her robe and produced a small brown bottle.

"Drink this."

"Damn, I can't drink anything-"

"But blood. Well, the herbs are mixed in blood. My blood."

"What's in it?"

"I'm not telling." She bounced the bottle on her palm. "I like controlling a man not even the Dark Prince of vampires can command."

"So you know Lucien?" Had Giacomini told her? I felt a little stab of jealousy.

"I know of Lucien. Now drink." Fiona never ceased to amaze me.

The bottle touched my lips. Sickly sweet like burnt sugar, the blood coated my tongue, but I drank. It oozed down my esophagus, fell like a rock into my stomach. Down on my knees in the sand, I gagged, but could not relieve myself of the agony. Curled into a fetal ball, I cried out as a stifling blackness settled over me. It took a minute for me to realize I hadn't gone blind, but that she had covered me with a blanket.

She knelt beside me, whispering comfort and patting me while I kicked and screamed like a child dosed with castor oil. "It'll pass in a few minutes."

The heat was painful-anguish layered on agony. And I knew then that she had tricked me. I was going to die. I lurched to my feet, throwing off the blanket and stumbling. Suddenly, I was looking straight into the flamboyance of a tropical sunrise. In the wonder of it all, I forgot the pain and I think I started to cry. I felt arms go around me and heard her whispering to me, but I was oblivious to anything except the golden half moon rising out of the silvery expanse of the ocean.

We were both crying, and I asked her, "Did Xavier cry?"

And she said, "I don't know," as she pulled me down and took off my shoes.

I stared at the sun, dreading the worst, hoping for the best. She led me into the sea and I saw the full splendor laid out before me. In the bubbling surf, we shed our clothes and watched them wash away. Laughing and clinging to each other like prisoners escaped from bedlam, we plunged into the sea. We swam far out from shore and, buoyed by the waves, made turbulent love. We let the sea carry us to shore and walked along the beach. Holding hands.

Later, in the full glare of a noonday sun, we lay on the bleached sand. My head rested on her lap and she leaned down to kiss my eyelids.

"You're starting to look like a lobster. We better get in out of the sun."

The sun was hot and my skin tingled but I was loathe to seek the shade. I opened my eyes and squinted up at her. She was a goddess to me. "Mad dogs and Englishmen."

At the hotel we rented scooters and rode into town to explore the quaint island shops. We danced reggae barefoot in the sand. Under the shade of a tiki hut, Fiona drank rumrunners and told me dirty jokes. We laughed feverishly like people under the shadow of war. But my day as a mortal man was slipping through my grasp. I felt each inch as the sun set lower and my spirits dropped. I caught Fiona's eyes across the checkered table cloth and she nodded with understanding.

"Again, not tomorrow, my love," she said. "But there will be many other days in the sun for us." She smiled and her eyes filled with tears. "Your nose is sunburned."

Emotion rose in me so strong that I doubted I'd ever loved anyone before Fiona. Isabeau had become a ghost of my yesterdays.

"Let's go home," she said.

"I never want to go home." I couldn't look at her as I said, "You gave me something today." I traced the pattern of the tablecloth with my finger. Words choked me. Finally, I gathered the nerve to look into her eyes. "Something I'd thought never-"

"Again and again, Morgan, together. I'll give you anything in my power to give. And I do have power. My father's only bequest."

"The tickets. You can't afford-" I waved my hand at our surrounding. "I'll pay you-"

She squeezed my hand. "I know you're willing to pay me back. Now, let's go home. I want to. I want you."

The lobby clock read five past nine. Outside was darkness thick as a storm cloud. The day was beginning to assume the feel of a dream. Night was closing in on me, and I was near panic. In the elevator, she held me close.

As she led me down the hall, I had the peculiar sensation that I was being taken back to prison. But I could hear the keys jingling at her waist and that only added to my desperation. Afraid, suddenly, I cast sideways glances at her.

She closed the door behind her and leaned her bare tanned shoulder against it. Barring any escape. "I want to know how he died."

"There's not much to tell." My eyes wandered the room. No escape. "He was asleep in bed with his wife. I descended on him and sucked him dry. Then I disposed of the body." I didn't tell her that I'd slipped into Heather's bedroom and watched her sleeping. Nor that I'd bent and kissed her softly on the mouth.

"Did he know he was going to die? Did he see you?" Her voice was gritty with pain.

I collapsed on the bed, my back to her. "He died in his sleep."

"Damn, Morgan." She flung herself at me. The bedsprings groaned as she landed behind me. The heat of her anger burned my back. The bed jumped as she pounded the mattress with her fists. "Damn you to hell. I wanted him to suffer like my father suffered. Knowing he was going to die!"

I lost control, whirled to face her. "You want to talk about hell, Fiona?"

I locked her eyes to mine and smiled because she couldn't break free.

"You've manufactured your own hell! You wallow in it. Hour to hour. Day after day."

"Shut the fuck up!" she screamed, tossing her head in an agony of denial, furious that she couldn't look away. "Stop it!"

With her fists and her teeth, she came at me. I caught her wrists and held her while she lunged at me like a rabid dog. Black eyes glowed with hatred but they couldn't break free. She fell, kicking, twisting like a mad thing.

Finally, she sank into utter stillness. "I didn't want it to be like this," she said at last.

"Leave it be," I said.

She closed her eyes, exhaled a sad, slow breath. "Let me go."

I'd already let her go, but I freed her gaze and her hands. She threw her long legs over my head and stood. "Take your clothes off."

Evening blushed her nakedness. I watched in the mirror as Fiona dropped to her knees in front of me. Slowly, she forced my knees apart. I didn't want her mouth on me. But, in some sick way, after the sunlight, I felt I still owed her something. My hips jerked as she licked and nibbled at me, then swallowed the length of my shaft. Her hands skillfully followed her mouth until I was swollen, hurting for satisfaction. She left me like that and stood above me, cradling my face between her palms. "Morgan, my own, you will now finish this for me once and for all."

I blinked at her, afraid for the first time in centuries.

"Yes," she pulled me to my feet, into a desperate embrace. "Now, before tonight is gone, you will kill them all. You will wipe every trace of Brown-Hughes' cursed seed from the earth."

I stumbled back as if she'd struck me. Several times during the day, I'd supped on the wine in Fiona's veins. I was drunk, dazed. My addled wits swam with slow understanding. I covered my face with my hands and doubled over laughing. What a fool I'd been. Fiona had drugged me-repeatedly! That I hadn't smelled the drug was amazing, but Fiona had her ways.

"Stop laughing like a goddamned hyena!" she screeched.

I heard her quick threatening advance. With mercurial grace, I straightened and glared at her. Self-righteous anger blazed in my eyes. "Don't touch me."

She halted in her tracks. Her face softened. Her tone became wheedling. "Darlin', don't be mad at me. Remember today. We are so good together."

"You drugged me. I don't know how-"

"Herbs from nature's garden." She spoke with a religious conviction that turned me to stone. "My father was a great man."

"You're sick."

She pecked a kiss to my sunburned nose. "Hundreds of thousands of victims? There are only three of them. When they're dead, my father's shade can rest."

"If there's one thing I've learned, it's how to let go. Don't do this. It's water under the bridge. It can't touch you now, if you don't let it." I was lying, obsessive-compulsive, and I was telling her to let go.

"It's a matter of duty-to my Father," she coaxed. "The blood, the glory of the kill, it's what being a vampire is all about. Why do you hesitate? It is your nature. I ask nothing that is unnatural for you."

"I'm a vampire not a hired killer." I shook my head. "It won't work, Fiona. I won't slaughter innocents in their beds."

"Yes, you will." She was so beautiful, tempting as Eve with her apple, but her voice was hard with determination. "If you want to see the sun again."

I couldn't kill Heather, her little brother and her mother. Could I?

Sick at heart, I stared at Fiona across an eternity of lonesome nights. Brilliant, sun-glazed images played through my mind as I remembered sunlight on my face. "You fight dirty."

On a tropical breeze, she floated to the door, stopped to blow me a counterfeit kiss. "I'll wait for you in the bar," she said. "Don't be long, my love."

I flopped on the bed and stared at the black ocean framed in the terrace doors. The knock at the door startled me out of my thoughts. I sensed beyond the door a tall man with long straight hair of a Native American. When I opened the door, he smiled at me and said, "Ah, Lamia. You're why Fiona came back."

Lamia, vampire. He knew me. From his thoughts, I read his identity. But this was impossible. "Who are you?" I asked, stunned.

"Fiona's father, as you read." The witch doctor laid a hand on my shoulder.

"And you are the instrument of her revenge. I think we should talk."

We went back into the room. He stopped and studied me as if I were merely an object to be identified. "It's the eyes. The eyes give your secret away. How can mortals look at you and fail to recognize that you're not human."

This was a powerful man. I felt somewhat subdued. "She said you were hanged."

With a heavy sigh, he sat and patted the bed beside him. "I'll tell you the truth. Fiona is my niece, but I raised her as a father."

Again, I saw the copper child playing on white sand. "Her mother wasn't an English school teacher."

"Is that what she told you?" He chuckled. "Her mother is my sister, an Arawak like me. Her father was English. You killed him last night."

A bitter smile twisted my mouth, but I didn't speak.

"Fiona is Brown-Hughes' love child," he said. "He paid for her education, provided for her basic needs, but wouldn't acknowledge her. That little girl had it hard, watching her half-sister through the windows of the Governor's mansion and envying the life denied her by an accident of birth. Hatred warped Fiona. Hatred has driven her mad."

"And they say the British are given to understatement." I laughed.

He frowned disapprovingly, as if I, too, might be mad. "I've come to relieve you of your duty. I'm going to take Fiona away."

The door burst open and Fiona swept into the room like a dark wind. "Why are you still here-" she broke off to stare at the father who hadn't died.

"Welcome home, Child." He rose with terrible grace. "I'm just having a chat with your vampire. Congratulations. You always accomplish what you set out to do. You vowed you'd find another one to kill your father."

Fiona drew a terrified breath and froze, but her black eyes darted to me as she commanded, "Kill him, Morgan."

I moved. Neither of them saw me until I had come from behind and wrapped her in a powerful embrace. She realized immediately that I had defected and screamed, "He can send us both to the electric chair." My arms tightened as she struggled. His eyes met mine and he nodded solemnly, as if he had read my mind.

Calm as the night, her uncle walked past us. "Goodbye, Fiona."

I turned her into my arms like the lover she'd been. She tried to avert her eyes, but I caught her chin and made her look at me. "You enchanted me, you know. I was totally under your control," I whispered. "Now, I must enchant you."

Her eyelids slowly drifted closed and she lay her head back, inviting my kiss. I was gentle with her, loving her to death. A sadness mingled with the bliss of the kill. There was still the matter of sunny days lost. Blind with wonder, I waltzed her back, as if we were dancing to the music of the night, until we reached the parapet. Below, the ocean sighed and sang. Under the moon, I took her last heartbeat.

I lifted her into my arms and leaped over the railing. Down we plunged, into the sea, her white dress floating above us. When I surfaced, I saw him in a little boat rocking on the surf. I swam alongside and he lifted Fiona's body from my arms.

"She must rest with her ancestors. It is our way," he said.

Our eyes met.

"Thank you."

Tears stung my eyes as I looked at her crumpled, white beauty.

"No more sunny days."

I felt his hand on my shoulder. Our eyes met. He smiled. "It ain't necessarily so."