Vacation with a Vampire & Other Immortals by Maureen Child, MAGGIE SHAYNE Read Free Book Online Page A

at herself than she’d had before, and what she saw made her suck in a sharp breath that caused a stabbing pain in her sore chest.
    Her legs were mottled in vivid bruises that spanned the color spectrum from brilliant fuchsia to deep gray. They looked like contour maps of mountain ranges. There were scrapes, too, but mostly deep bruises. No wonder it hurt to walk. Lifting the waistband of the boxer shorts, she saw that the bruising included her hips and, as she twisted in her seat, her buttocks, as well. She looked as if she’d been beaten with a club.
    She held out her arms and saw that they, too, were badly bruised, then shuddered at the thought of what her face must look like. She needed to go find a mirror. He’d said there was a bathroom upstairs, hadn’t he?
    She would definitely pay it a visit before too much longer. But first, she was dying to get a look around the island, and his warnings about her being too weak to walk to the beach had fallen on deaf ears. She’d been alone at sea for eight weeks now. She thought she could handle a walk, even with bruises for company.
    So she set out, and it did hurt. Every step brought pain, and she supposed that was all the proof she needed that she wasn’t dead and this wasn’t the afterlife. Yet it did not erase from her mind the knowledge that there was something otherworldly going on here. Something about him, or this island.
    Or both.
    It really did hurt to walk. Maybe he’d been right, she thought, once she’d traipsed a few dozen yards into the palms. She did seem to be limping a bit more with every step. Still, she pressed on, walking very slowly along a well-worn footpath that twisted and writhed through the forest. And even as she traversed the trail, night began to give birth to the day. The sky paled slightly, and in the space of a heartbeat the hush around her was filled with bird calls as the forest came to raucous life.
    She smiled at their songs, their cries, their screeches, and wished she could identify them by their voices. Maybe if she were here long enough she could make a study of them.
    But, of course, she wouldn’t be here long at all. Diego had made that much perfectly clear, hadn’t he?
    Such a beautiful place to live, she thought. And then another thought followed on its heels. Such a beautiful place to die.
    She knew she should have felt at peace with that thought. Just as she had come to a peaceful acceptance of her own demise while she’d been at sea. Gradually she’d understood that this was just part of the journey. She’d accepted her own end, had started looking forward to seeing what was on the other side.
    Of course, that had been when she’d still thought he would be waiting for her there. Her Spanish angel, Diego.
    Now she no longer felt peaceful about it at all. In fact, thinking about her life ending filled her with an uncomfortable sense of foreboding. Of unease. Of near panic. What the hell had happened to her serenity?
    She emerged from the tree line onto an expanse of white sand that sloped ever so gently to the sea. Waves rolled in, broke and thinned until they were little more than froth on the sand, and then the sea sucked them back again. Over and over. A hypnotic, healing energy wafted over her, as if generated by the movements of those waves.
    Live in the moment, she reminded herself. Make the very most of every single moment. Just like you’ve been doing for the past two months. Just be in the moment, and don’t think too much about the future.
    Yes. That felt marginally better.
    She sank down onto the sand, drawing her knees to her chest and gazing outward toward the horizon. And she saw the blazing hint of fire that touched the sky at the very end of the sea—for just an instant, until it became a glowing curve. Then the edge of the giant dinner-plate sun, rising as if from the depths of the ocean itself.
    It was beautiful here, she thought, smiling. She really didn’t think she was going to want to