been a sign of food, not even the crumbs Walter spoke of.
“You’re his friend,” she said. “You want to help him, don’t you?”
“Sure. He took care of me when I was sick. My heart, you know. Gives out sometimes. Don’t know what I’d do without Dory.”
Gwen decided to risk a more troubling question. “Did you see the bodies, Walter?”
The old man shuddered. “Heard about them. But he saw. Made it worse, next time he had one of his nasty spells.” He touched Gwen’s arm tentatively. “He ain’t bad. You see that. I never seen him take such an interest in another human being until he brought you here.”
Interest. Under normal circumstances, Gwen never would have interpreted Dorian’s behavior as anything but grudging tolerance. But she had only begun to glimpse what might be in Dorian’s soul. And she knew she had to keep digging until she discovered exactly what made him tick…and why he had aroused her curiosity in a way no one had done since Barry died.
“You’ll come back, won’t you?” Walter said, as he led Gwen out into the sunlight. “Do him good. I know it would.”
Gwen met the old man’s gaze. “Even if I didn’t have other reasons for coming back to the waterfront, I wouldn’t abandon him. He saved my life.”
“But it’s more than that, ain’t it?” Walter peered up at her with greater perception than his drawl and easygoing manner suggested. “Dory ain’t easy to like, but you like him anyway.”
Did she? Gwen looked away, testing her feelings as carefully as she might probe a sore tooth. Mitch and the other reporters thought she was too impulsive and emotional, like all women. But when it came to men…
Like him? Maybe. And if she were completely honest with herself, as she always tried to be, she would admit that she found Dorian Black strangely attractive. His looks had something to do with it, but it went deeper than that.
“You’re a crusader,” Mitch frequently told her. “That’ll be your downfall, Guinevere.”
She knew damned well that she couldn’t save the world. But she might save one tiny part of it.
“Don’t worry, Walter. I promise I’ll do what I can.”
Apparently satisfied, Walter retreated into the shadows, doubtless to nurse a bottle for the rest of the afternoon. At least Dorian Black didn’t seem to drink. Maybe he would have been better off if he did.
With a half shrug, Gwen set off to find the nearest police station.
DORIAN WATCHED HER walk away, careful to remain within the shelter of the warehouse door. She had a long, confident stride; the wool worsted suit, with its boxy jacket and pleated kneelength skirt, was plain and businesslike, but it didn’t disguise the curves of her figure or the bounce of her walk.
Gwen Murphy. He’d never heard her name before last night; even when he’d worked for Raoul, he hadn’t paid much attention to the newspapers. That hadn’t been his department. He’d done his job, dispassionately and efficiently, until the world he knew came crashing down around him.
It was about to fall apart all over again, the way it did every month at the dark of the moon. He’d begun to feel the first effects a few days ago: irritability, confusion, thoughts spinning out of control. And his emotions…they could be trusted least of all. He only had to remember how he’d turned on Gwen like an animal, fully prepared to drain her dry.
He shuddered, thinking of the bodies on the wharf. At least he was reasonably certain that the murders weren’t his doing. As far as he could remember, he hadn’t killed anyone since Raoul’s death.
No, that massacre was almost certainly the work of one of the warring factions that had formed after the clan had disintegrated. Though Dorian had deliberately removed himself from any involvement in strigoi affairs, he had no doubt that the level of violence committed by the city’s vampires against their own kind had increased in the past three months. Internecine bloodshed was no longer simply a matter of one clan leader keeping his subordinates and human employees in line. It had become a case of two well-matched coalitions vying for control of Raoul’s carefully built bootlegging operation and all the power that went with it.
Regardless of the reason for the killings, whoever was responsible for them had either been extraordinarily foolish or dangerously overzealous to have left the corpses drained of blood. Such unusual characteristics set the murders apart from the usual human mob hit—and attracted the attention of inquisitive humans like Miss Gwen Murphy.
Dorian turned away from the light. The fate of New York’s strigoi was no longer any of his concern. His own life had become a weary succession of nights spent hunting just enough to keep his body functioning, days crouched in his fetid den with nothing but the company of an old man who had no idea who or what he was. Only the instinct for survival, a vampire’s deepest and most powerful impulse, had kept him from letting his body fade into oblivion.
But now there was something else. Something he hadn’t expected. Something that had started when he’d seen the girl sinking beneath the river’s surface and had made the decision to save a human life.
Gwen Murphy. She should have meant nothing more to him than what humans called a “good deed,” an act that made not the slightest dent in the vast weight of guilt accumulated over three quarters of a century.
Dorian rubbed at his face, feeling the raw bones of his cheek and jaw. He still had no clear understanding of what had happened, what unfamiliar impulse had led him to bring her here and watch over her until she could take care of herself. It hadn’t been a simple hunger; he hadn’t even been thinking of feeding when he’d rescued her. Nor had it been the troubling attraction with which he found himself struggling now.
If Miss Murphy had collapsed into a hysterical heap on the boardwalk after he’d pulled her from the river, he might have dismissed her. Old habits were slow to die, and he had no more need for human companionship than he did for that of his own kind.
But Gwen hadn’t collapsed. She’d gamely accepted what had been done to her, and if it hadn’t been for her body’s very human weakness, she would have gone on as if nothing had happened.
That had made all the difference. Her courage had awakened Dorian’s emotions as nothing had done since he’d held a gun in his hand and put an end to an evil few mortals could comprehend. Her refusal to surrender to fear had reminded him of the only other woman who had been capable of touching his heart.
Dorian returned to his corner, carefully restacked the crates and sank down against the wall. Of course he’d realized his mistake as soon as she’d started to ask questions, to behave as if his heedless act had created some sort of bond between them. He had tried to get rid of her even before his vague admiration had begun to give way to a reaction far more insidious: a growing awareness of her piquant beauty, the scent of her skin, the allure of her femininity.
If the sensation had been only the natural hunger for her blood, he could have assuaged it quickly and sent Miss Murphy away none the wiser, as he had a thousand other humans. But he’d wanted her with a dangerous insanity that became more deadly when he’d recognized how easily he could hurt her, how thin was the line between physical lust and violence.
He didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want the responsibility for what she might feel if she looked
