Kiss of the Vampire (The Vanderlind Realm Book 2)

Kiss of the Vampire

GAYLA TWIST

Copyright © 2014 Adrianne Ambrose

All rights reserved.

ISBN:

ISBN-13:

DEDICATION

As always, to my darling Q.

Chapter 1

Haley

“Come on. There’s something cool I want to show you,” the man said. He was handsome with shaggy brown hair and a chiseled jaw. But there was a hint of seediness about him that I couldn’t put my finger on. It wasn’t just the fact that he needed a shave. Maybe it was his thinly veiled eagerness to lure the young woman down an unlit alley.

“What is it?” the girl asked. She didn’t look much older than I was, maybe twenty-one or twenty-two. It was obviously from the way she was teetering on her sky-high heels that she’d had a few drinks too many.

The seedy guy shook his head. “I can’t describe it,” he said. “I’ll have to show you.”

“Nah, that’s okay,” she told him, glancing around the dark, deserted street. “I really just want to catch up with my friends.”

“Come on, Denise. Don’t worry about it,” he said, waving off the idea like it was no big deal. “I’ll give you a ride. But I want you to check this one thing out first. It’s so cool.”

“You know, I appreciate it, but no thanks. I’m just going to head back to the bar,” she said, obviously feeling uncomfortable, yet still trying not to hurt his feelings.

The veneer of nice-guy the man had been wearing began to crack. The ingratiating smile he had pasted to his face started to melt. “What’s the matter?” he asked, wavering between angry and wounded. “Don’t you trust me?”

“No, it’s not that,” the woman assured him. She was starting to get nervous. I could almost feel her heartbeat quicken in her chest. “It’s just…” She floundered around for a good excuse. “I don’t want to put you out.”

“It’s no problem,” the man assured her, renewing his oily smile. “Happy to do it. I kind of consider it my civic responsibility to see that you get home safely.”

A laugh sputtered from my lips. I couldn’t suppress it. The guy was just such a creep. And he really knew how to play on a female’s need to be nice. I’d spent the first seventeen years of my life thinking that I had to be nice to guys. That turned out to be absolutely untrue, but I didn’t realize it at the time. I thought that if I was sweet, and kind, and understanding to a guy then he would be sweet, and kind, and understanding to me.  Nice was the way I thought I had to behave because girls are supposed to be nice. But I didn’t feel that way anymore.

Part of my metamorphosis was that I was a vampire. When most the guys on the planet become potential prey, it really changes the way you feel about them. But it also had a lot to do with all the books I’d been reading. Being too nice to the last guy I had dated — and also being a bit of a dormant — had ended with me crashing through the windshield of my car and doing a face plant into a tree. And if it wasn’t for the fact that a vampire happened to be following me at that moment, that would have been the end of me.

Since I was now an immortal, I decided that I didn’t want to be a doormat for eternity. So I started reading a lot of self-help books about men. And women, and relationships, and anything else I could find at the library about human behavior. Not being able to go out in the daylight left me with a lot of time on my hands for reading. Luckily the library stayed open late on Thursday nights.

Quite a bit of the advice I found was contradictory, and some of it was obviously complete crap, but there was a good amount of it that made a lot of sense. It was stuff I wished I’d had known as a mortal. But it was probably good information to have anyway. I was going to be around for awhile. If pressed to distill all the self-help book advice down to a song lyric, it would be this: Girls give boys too many chances.

Both humans had heard me laugh. I could tell by the way they jerked their heads around and scanned the street. “Hello?” the young woman said. She was obviously growing more sober by the minute and trying to decide if she was more afraid of the seedy man in front of her or the unknown person chuckling in the shadows.

“Come on,” the guy said, holding his hand out to her. “There are a lot of weirdoes in this neighborhood. But don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”

I couldn’t help but smile from where I hid. I was hungry. Starving, in fact. I only fed off of scumbags and I hadn’t been able to find a good candidate for prey in a couple days. Where were all the bad men hiding?

As it was, I had been waiting for half the night for a pervert exactly like my new friend. It was obvious to me that he was trying to lure the young woman to an isolated location. And she was just a little too drunk and a little too worried about hurting his feelings to say no.

“Hey, Denise,” I called, stepping out from where I had been concealing myself in the dark of a doorway.

She turned to look at me and then frowned a little, trying to place my face.

“Everyone’s waiting for you back at the bar,” I told her. “They’re getting ready to go.” I had no idea if anyone was waiting for her, but it sounded good and would provide her with the excuse she needed.

“Really?” She gave me a stunned look. I could see why the seedy man had targeted her, she was obviously not that fast on the take.

“Yes,” I said, stepping forward and grabbing her by the arm. “You should go find them right now.” I gave her a little shove in the direction of the bar where she’d been drinking. My stomach growled. I could smell her scent under a fog of cheap perfume.

“Awe, come on,” the man whined. “I was just being friendly. Denise,” he called after her. “You’re not going to leave me hanging. Are you?”

“Um.” Denise was hovering with indecision. I could tell she wanted to go back to her friends, but she also felt obligated to the guy for some reason. He’d probably bought her a couple of drinks. That was another pervy-guy trick; create an obligation.

“Denise,” I said in a low voice, fixing her with my eyes. “You need to go back to your friends. And you need to smarten up. Tomorrow morning you are going to sign up for a women’s self-defense class. And you’re going to stop giving guys so many chances. You have no obligation to this man. Isn’t it obvious that he’s trying to lure you down that alley so he can force himself on you?”

She blinked at me several times, absorbing my words. “You’re right,” she said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Okay, good,” I said. “Now head back to the bar. You’re too drunk to drive.”

“That’s okay,” Denise said as she tottered off. “We came in Vicki’s car.”

“Hey,” the man snarled as he strode up to me. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Don’t worry about her,” I told him. I let my jacket fall open and flashed him an engaging smile. “Wouldn’t you rather show me your cool thing?”

The man’s eyes bulged for a moment. I was wearing a skin tight red dress that revealed a healthy amount of curves. “Yeah. Sure,” he said, not even bothering to try to pretend like he wasn’t staring at my boobs. “Come on. It’s this way.”

I looped my hand through his arm and smiled at him some more. “I can’t wait to see it.” We started walking down the alley together, my stomach rumbling so loudly that I wondered if he could hear it.

The guy was half a foot taller than me and obviously not a weakling. I could feel the bulging of his bicep, even under his thick winter coat. I could sense his heart beating in his chest. It was strong and healthy. I could barely keep myself from drooling.

“It’s very brave of you to come down here with me,” the man said as we got further into the alley and away from the road. He chuckled a little to himself. “Aren’t you at least a little nervous?”

“I’m feeling reckless,” I said, peering at him out of the corner of my eye. “Now where’s this cool thing that you keep talking about?”

“I’ve got it right here,” he said, abruptly shoving me against the wall. “It’s in my pants.” With one hand he pinned me against the bricks of a shuttered building and with the other he fumbled at his zipper. “Don’t even think about screaming or I’ll snap your neck.”

It was my turn to laugh, which pulled him up short. “What’s so funny?” he demanded.

“Oh, it’s just what you said about screaming. It turns out I was thinking the exact same thing.” I easily wrenched his hand off of me and slammed him into the wall, forcing his head over to one side and exposing his neck.

“What the ffu… yih!” The man released a small yelp as I plunged my fangs into his flesh.

“Oh,” I moaned as his blood filled my mouth. “Oh yes. That’s so good.”

There were a lot of things I hated about being a vampire, but there were also a few things that I loved. For example, I loved that I didn’t have to be afraid to walk down a dark alley with a strange man. In fact, I was excited to walk down a dark alley with a strange man. It meant he was probably going to try to get his rocks off by getting physical with me, which meant I could get physical with him. I was sure the guy’s idea of a good time had something to do with his crotch. But my idea of fun involved plunging my fangs into his jugular vein and letting his red blood flow. I loved the taste of human blood. That still sounded like a weird thing for me to admit — I hadn’t been a vampire for that long — but it was true. Blood was more delicious than anything I had ever tasted back when I was a mortal.

When I was first turned into a vampire, I simply thought I was going nuts. It wouldn’t have been that bizarre of a thing for me to do. My mom was pretty looney-tunes. She’d been that way ever since I could remember. When I started craving blood, after miraculously surviving a bad car crash, I figured I was just getting my period and needed a steak. But I found I was much happier sucking all of the red juice out of a slab of meat, rather than slapping it on a grill.

Then Dorian Vanderlind gave me the news. He’d come across me just after I’d flown through the window of my car and smashed into a tree. My head had a big dent in it and I was hemorrhaging blood. Rather than letting me die by the side of the road, he decided to make me his progeny. It was kind of a cool thing for him to do, but also a little presumptive. My life hadn’t been all that wonderful when I was a mortal. I really wasn’t sure how I felt about the prospect of living forever.

Conclusion? Don’t text and drive. You never know when a tree might leap out in front of you.

Dorian had offered to mentor me through the transition from mortal to vampire. I was kind of his responsibility, seeing that he was my maker. And I desperately wanted to go with him, leaving my life in Tiburon, Ohio far behind. But things were more complicated than that. At first I felt no connection to Dorian at all. He was just this weird, super-hot guy who wouldn’t leave me alone. But then he kissed me. It was a kiss that had left me shaken to my core. In those few moments when his lips were pressing against mine, everything changed. Everything I thought I knew about love was shattered.

Dorian owned me, heart and soul. I would have done anything to be with him. But he didn’t want me, not even a little bit. That’s why, when he offered to be my mentor, I turned him down. I couldn’t spend night and day by his side, wanting him so desperately and knowing that he didn’t feel the same way.

So I had to find something to focus on besides my aching heart. I had to keep moving or I would crumple into a ball and let the sun burn me to a crisp. I had a score to settle with a few of the lovely students at Tiburon High School, so I decided to make that my focus. I knew that as a vampire I was facing a life span that had no expiration date. But I couldn’t even begin to think about my limitless future until I’d addressed my recent past.

As usual, I was on my own. It was painful, but I was used to having to take care of myself. Being bounced around the foster care system for a large portion of my life had taught me to be resourceful.

As a vampire, I knew I needed human blood to survive. Sucking the juice out of a steak and running down stray dogs just wasn’t doing it for me. But I didn’t know exactly how to get human blood. It didn’t feel right to just chomp an innocent person on the neck and then tossed them aside once I’d had my fill. So I came up with a short-term plan that would give me the time I needed to come up with a real plan. I would only drink from people who needed to learn a good life lesson. Like my seedy friend in the alley. He needed to learn some manners when it came to women.

I suddenly realized that they man’s blood pressure was rapidly dropping. I’d been feeding on him too long. If I didn’t stop immediately, I would drain him dry. Retracting my fangs, I hung onto the front of his coat and smacked him on the cheek a few times. “Hey, buddy,” I said, trying to roust him from the stupor that had overcome him with a sudden loss of blood. “Wake up. Are you with me?”

His eyes flickered, but just barely.

Crap
! I thought to myself. I’d overdone it again. He was going to die. I knew better than to drink all I wanted from a mortal. But once I started feeding, it was just so hard to stop. Quickly, I opened my wrist with my fangs and held the wound up to his mouth.

“Drink this,” I told him.” He turned his head away, but I pressed my wrist against his lips. I could tell he was swallowing at least some of my blood because soon he was able to hold his head up on his own and the bite mark on his neck started to scab over.

“Okay,” I said, yanking my arm away. “Easy action.” I steadied the man on his feet and he was able to stand on his own. Grabbing him by both shoulders I said, “Listen to me.” His eyes were just two bloodshot slits, but he was looking in my direction. I stared intensely at him, focusing all of my energy, and said, “You are never going to take advantage of another woman again as long as you live. You are deeply ashamed of your behavior and you will spend the rest of your life trying to make up for it by protecting women.” An idea popped in my head. “In fact, you are going to go back to school to become a social worker. You are going to educate men that taking sexual advantage of a woman is a crime.” I gave him a little shake. “You got that?”