Up in a Blaze (12 page)

Cassie cocked her head to the side as she thought about this. “Okay, but if you’re all vampires, why did we go out to lunch today? I saw you eating regular food. Don’t vampires live off of blood?”

Walter spoke up from the other side of the room. “Cassie, a lot depends on how old the vampire is and what they’ve grown accustomed to. The older vampires generally don’t eat a lot of regular food, and all vampires require blood in order to exist. But the younger ones are able to eat regular food quite often, as well as ingest blood to survive.”

Cassie looked over to Donte, who had been quiet the entire time. “Show me.”

She watched as he did the same thing Betty had just done. With his mouth open and lips drawn back, she watched as long, sharp fangs slid down from his gums. His eyes turned the same black-tinged in red as Betty’s, but his entire face had contorted also. When she looked at his face, she couldn’t help but gasp. She was staring at the face of a predator.

Cassie jerked backwards in an attempt to put some space between them, but Betty’s hand shot out to stop her. “Hey, remember, he’s still the same Donte you met a couple of days ago.” Cassie’s eyes jerked over to his face, her heart rate calming down as she realized his face was back to normal.

“
Cariño
,” he called out softly as he reached over and took hold of her hand. “I would never hurt you,
amorcito
.” He quickly stood then kneeled directly in front of her. Still holding her hand, he gently brushed his thumb over her pulse point on her wrist. “I can hear your heart pounding,
cariño
, but you have nothing to fear. We have existed and blended in with humans for decades. We do not harm humans, we protect them. I promise I will protect you with my life.” He inched closer to her, and she unconsciously leaned toward him. “I am a very old vampire who has searched for too many years for my mate. Vampires only get one shot at a mate. While we can have relationships just like humans can, we have one predestined mate who we search for our entire lives. Some of us are never lucky enough to find her.” He stopped and looked down at their joined hands. “I had all but given up on finding you,
cariño
. Remember when I walked into your hospital room, you caught me staring at you and you were offended. I wasn’t staring at you because of your injuries. I was dumbfounded that after searching for over two centuries, I finally found you.” He paused again for a second, his next words coming out as a whisper. “It was then that it hit me how close I had come to losing you before we had even met. If Gregory had succeeded, chances are good we might have never met.”

He placed his head in her lap, as he brought their joined hands together. “Please don’t shut me out,
cariño
. If you need time to become accustomed to us, this is something I understand and will certainly give you, but please don’t shut me out. Don’t shut us out. You are among friends here, not only because you are Betty’s friend, but because they are my family. As my mate, each of them would protect you with their life, just as I would protect them with my own.”

Cassie reached out and ran her fingers through his hair. “Okay, let’s say I believe you. What comes next? Because I gotta tell ya, if you tell me you want to drink my blood, we are going to have a problem.”

“No,
cariño
, we don’t go around biting humans. With all the technology out there, it would be damn difficult not to be discovered. We use blood banks and bagged blood.”

Cassie looked over to her friend Betty. “How long? How long have you been like this?” Because she was fairly sure she wasn’t like this back in California. Surely Betty would have been able to stop Gregory the night he had attacked her and her son if she had been a vampire, right?

Sissy spoke from beside Walter. “Betty was dying when we arrived in California after Gregory attacked her. I just couldn’t let my sister die, especially when I had the means of saving her. With the help of the local vampires, we moved her to a private facility and I turned her myself.” Sissy turned to glance at her sister. “I just couldn’t lose her. She had no idea about vampires either, Cassie.” Sissy’s attention went back to Cassie. “Even though Walter turned me years ago, we keep to ourselves and rarely ever trust humans with our secret. Most of the time we only tell humans if it is our mate. Then, of course, it becomes necessary.”

“Oookkay,” Cassie spoke slowly. “So you are all vampires and you’re telling me this because Donte thinks I am his mate?”

Donte tugged lightly on her hand to get her attention. “I don’t just think you’re my mate,
cariño
, I know you are. You may not be ready to fully accept this, but hopefully after we get this mess taken care of with Gregory, you will.”

Cassie turned back to Betty. “You’ve known all along, haven’t you? You’ve known about the mate thing all along, that’s why you started asking me what I thought of him yesterday.”

Betty nodded her head. “Yes, we didn’t want to throw this at you the minute you arrived yesterday, but yes, I knew.”

Cassie turned her eyes down to Donte, still kneeling in front of her. “How did you know I was your mate when you first walked into that hospital? Don’t tell me it was my looks, because I know what I looked like with dried blood still in my hair and bruises covering half my face.”

“Your scent,” Donte replied quietly, as he inhaled deeply as if to prove the point.

Cassie narrowed her eyes at him. “If you are trying to say I have some kind of odor, I don’t think I appreciate—” Donte cut her off before she had a chance to finish her little tirade.

He brushed a kiss along the knuckles of the hand he was holding with a chuckle. “No, cariño. It’s not like that. Yes, I could smell the dried blood when I first entered.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m a vampire, it’s just part of who I am, but I also scented orange blossoms with a hint of vanilla, and it was all I could do not to walk over and bury my nose in the crook of your neck.”

Cassie looked over to Susan, who was relaxing against Nathaniel. She wasn’t even sure when he arrived in the room, but the two of them looked comfortable snuggling on the couch. “So, Susan and Nathaniel are mates, correct?”

“Yes,” Susan replied as she nodded her head, her hand automatically reaching to stroke her extended belly.

“So, vampires can procreate? I thought that wasn’t possible?”

Nathaniel reached over and stroked his mate’s belly also then replied, “As long as the female is human, then yes, we can procreate. It is difficult to do, which is probably for the best to help keep our numbers low, but as you can see it is possible.”

“Cassie, we will be more than happy to answer any questions you have. And you have my word, you are completely safe. You’re probably more safe here than anywhere else. But the reason we’re telling you this now is because as vampires, when we have physical contact with a human, it is possible to read their mind.” When her eyes got wide and her heart picked up its beat, Walter quickly assured her. “We don’t do it very often. Most of the time we only do it if a human happens to see something he or she shouldn’t, we have the ability to make them forget. But I am telling you all of this because part of the mind thing includes dreamland. Remember when Samuel and Donte showed up in your dream a little while ago? That wasn’t you, it was them. Betty realized you were having a dream that probably included Gregory judging from the distressed sounds you were making, and both men jumped into your dream to see if they could help. Samuel is a vampire, but he also knows magic, and right now he is our best chance for breaking the spell Gregory is holding over you.” Walter stopped and sighed heavily. “He also showed fangs to Gregory, we will see whether that was a good idea or not.”

Cassie started blushing from her roots down, as realization hit her. She glared down to Donte. “Today hasn’t been the first time you’ve been in my dreams, has it?”

For a big bad vampire, Donte looked a bit sheepish. “No,
cariño
, I’m sorry, I have no excuse other than after the first time I saw Gregory harassing you, I wanted to be there in case you needed backup. I didn’t know exactly what we were up against, and needed to be able to give Walter as many details as I could.” When her eyes got wide, he knew what she was thinking. In a whisper he added, “Only details about Gregory, darlin’, nothing more, I assure you. The rest is for you and I only.” He gave her a sexy smile, and she felt herself melting under his gaze.

Cassie broke eye contact with Donte and glanced around the room. “Okay, so what now?”

Walter cleared his throat as he took a step toward her. “Samuel would like to break the spell, but we need your agreement.” He looked a bit pensive, but continued, “As a rule, we don’t just go around messing in humans minds. But there are times, like now, where the situation warrants it. Still, we like to have permission if possible.” He stopped and sighed, suddenly looking like he hadn’t slept in a week. “Look, I know we’re throwing a lot at you, and you probably have another five hundred questions. And it’s completely understandable, but let’s focus on one problem for the time being, then any one of us will be happy to answer your questions.”

Cassie looked up at Samuel. He stood at least six and a half feet tall. His long legs were encased in a pair of tight fitting jeans and he had an equally tight fitting button down western style shirt on. He continued eyeing Betty, which Cassie had noticed him doing every time she glanced over in his direction. Could her best friend have possibly met her mate also? Only time would tell, but for now she needed to concentrate on what they were going to be doing to get rid of Gregory once and for all.

“Okay, what exactly do you have in mind for getting rid of Gregory?”

Donte looked up at her from where he was still kneeling on the floor in front of her. Slowly, gently, he raised his hand up to her face and caressed her cheek with his fingertips. “I’ll be with you the entire way,
cariño
, you have nothing to fear.”

But fear of the unknown was already starting to seep into her eyes. “Okay, you all are starting to scare me. Just tell me, what needs to be done,” she said in a quivering voice.

Donte looked up to Samuel for help in explaining what they were going to do. “Ms. Vicors, I can assure you what I am going to attempt should be completely painless to you, but I will need to be in your head, in your thoughts. I’ll have Donte there as well, for your protection.”

Donte’s thumb gently rubbing against her pulse point drew her attention back to him. “I’ll be there every step of the way,
cariño
, you have nothing to fear.”

Cassie glanced around at everyone in the room. She still wasn’t totally convinced they were all vampires, but she’d been given enough evidence to know they weren’t normal either. She’d figure that puzzle out later. For now, having a complete stranger messing around in her head with her thought processes scared the shit out of her, but so did the fact that Gregory was being nothing but persistent and becoming more and more aggressive with each dream he appeared in. She looked over to her best friend, Betty, and knew there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do to keep her and her young son safe. That included never letting Gregory find them.

She inhaled a shaky breath and gave a tight smile to Donte. “Okay, let’s do this.”

Samuel looked around the room. “I think this may work better if she didn’t have an audience.”

Walter nodded and shooed everyone except Betty, Samuel, Cassie, and Donte out of the room. Betty looked over to her friend, gently placing her hand on Cassie’s arm. “Are you going to be okay? I’ll stay if you want me to.”

Cassie glanced down to Donte. Despite only knowing him for a few days, and despite just finding out he obviously was something other than human, she trusted him. He had yet to make her feel uncomfortable.

She clasped Donte’s hand a bit tighter. “No, I’ll be fine, Betty. Donte will be here with me.” Cassie watched as Betty stood, and narrowed her eyes at Samuel. Cassie would bet big money that Samuel had just been issued a warning. If the look on her face was anything to go by, it was something like, “Hurt my friend and you’ll be sorry.”

Betty’s look didn’t seem to faze Samuel in the least. He winked at her and shot her a grin as she passed him. “Your friend is safe, sweetheart, I swear.”

Once everyone had cleared the room, Samuel turned his attention to Cassie. He raised his hand in the direction of the couch over on the other side of the room. “Let’s move over to the couch. You’ll be more comfortable and Donte can sit next to you.”

Donte stood in one fluid motion, making her green with envy that she took a bit longer and hers included a couple of heart felt groans of pain along the way. Donte sat down first on the end, then helped Cassie carefully slide down beside him. He immediately wrapped his arm around her shoulders, bringing her up against his side. Samuel pulled a straight back chair over and sat down right in front of them.

“Okay, Cassie, I know you’re not going to want to do this, but I need for you to go back to when Gregory attacked you. That’s when we believe he placed the spell over you.” He stopped and studied her for a moment before continuing, “Since you obviously feel much more at ease with Donte, I’m going to let the two of you go back to that point, and I’ll follow along behind.” He reached down and patted her leg. “Neither Donte nor I will let any harm come to you, this I promise. I know the physical blows which came from the original attack are going to hurt all over again, but I need to get to the beginning of this to see what we are up against.”