7
The bond between sires and the young vampires they create is sacred and should be respected.
—From The Guide for the Newly Undead
“Gah! How do you do that?” I yelped, turning to find Gabriel standing in all his noir glory just behind me. “Why didn’t I sense you or smell you or whatever?”
“I move faster than your young senses can detect,” he said, opening the door and welcoming me with a wave of his arm. “You will become more attuned to me in time.”
I chose not to respond to that, striding into the slate-blue foyer with my shoulders squared. He followed, hovering on the edge of touching me. His fingers glided millimeters from my arms, leading me through to the den.
“I fixed your car,” he said, tossing the keys from a jade dish on the little maple end table.
I palmed them and eyed him speculatively. “You fixed my car?”
“I have walked the earth for more than a century. I managed to pick up some skills along the way,” he said, before reluctantly adding, “and one of them is finding skilled mechanics.”
I smirked, leaning against the wall. “You almost had me there.”
“I supervised,” he insisted. He was adorable when he was all flustered and indignant. “That car was a death trap—”
“It’s a classic.”
“A classic with shot brakes, a fuel line that had been gnawed by rodents, and a carburetor that had been rebuilt using duct tape,” he said. “I don’t know what any of that means, but my mechanic said he couldn’t determine what made your car break down because it would have been much easier to look for what didn’t.”
“OK, so I’ve been a little lax in the automotive-repair department,” I said defensively. “And I shouldn’t have let a high-school student rebuild my carburetor. But that doesn’t mean you need to do things like this for me. It makes me feel obligated.”
“That wasn’t my intention. I liked feeling that I was doing something kind for you, Jane. I haven’t felt the urge to do something like that for a woman in a long time. And I thought you would appreciate the restoration of your vehicular independence far more than posies and poetry.”
I smiled, and, encouraged, Gabriel took a step toward me.
“Thanks. I mean, it’s not exactly a sonnet, but that’s really—wait. No,” I said, warding him off. “I’m still pissed at you, seriously pissed. That girl at my house, Andrea. You had no right to do that. Did it even occur to you that you had no right to do that?”
Unimpressed with my outburst, he replied, “You needed someone experienced to help you through your first live feeding.”
I jabbed a finger into his chest, backing him into his living room. “So why didn’t you just send over a hooker? Hell, why didn’t you videotape it? You could have sold it to Vampire Girls Gone Wild.”
He smiled that “pitiful creature, you amuse me” smile. “Jane, your innocence is one of the many things that make you so interesting. It wounds me that you would even think that.”
“First of all, I’m not that innocent. I shoplifted Bonnie Bell lip gloss from the Woolworth’s when I was eight. So there. And second, why are you so interested in who and what I eat?” I demanded, again with the jabbing. “And if you use that ‘I’m your sire’ crap, you will be using your vampire strength to pull a size-nine sneaker out of your ass.”
“Though it’s an entertaining mental image, that was truly vulgar,” he said. “Now, sit, please.”
I flopped back on a cozy tooled-leather couch the color of old wine. A toasty fire licked the hearth despite the midsummer heat. Even in my snit, I enjoyed bathing my face in the warm light. I hadn’t had a chance to appreciate Gabriel’s fine parlor while I was zipping toward freedom. It was just as welcoming and well decorated as the bedroom. Polished, honey-colored wood floors, a thick navy and maroon rug, deep cushy sofas and chairs. This was definitely a wine-and-cheese sort of room.
Watching my mood mellow to just south of truly pissed, Gabriel smiled, his canines gleaming in the firelight. He sat near but not next to me, giving me just enough room to feel comfortable but definitely aware that he could reach out for me at any moment. “So, how was your day?”
“It has been busy,” I admitted. “I drank some fake blood for breakfast, talked to my dead aunt, tried—and failed—to come out to my parents, discovered an unfortunate aversion to solid food, got stabbed repeatedly by my best friend, tested the various ways I can’t die, went to the grocery store, fed from a human—which was something I said I’d never do. You know, normal, everyday stuff.” I laughed far too shrilly. I was starting to sound drunk again. Great.
“Don’t worry about your parents,” he said. “They sounded very kind when I spoke to them on the phone. You’ll find a way to tell them, eventually. I could talk to them for you, if you’d like.”
“Thanks, but I don’t think that would help,” I said. “They don’t seem to remember things when you talk to them. But there is the tiny issue of my mother wanting you to come over for Sunday dinner.”
“She remembered me?” Gabriel’s gray eyes widened.
“You underestimate the mental acuity of the mother of a single woman.” I nodded sagely. “She remembers the vague impression of an available man.”
“Unusual,” he admitted.
“It’s a biological imperative.” I grinned. “Doing that mind-wipe thing over the phone is pretty impressive, by the way.”
“I do what I can. I’ve never tried it on a mother before. I’ll have to concentrate harder next time.”
“Exactly how often do you plan on mind-wiping my mother?”
“I suppose that all depends on you.” He chuckled, reaching out to wind a coil of my hair around his finger. “I’m glad you came by. I was hoping to see you tonight, but I understood that you probably needed some space. I wanted to call you, but I find myself feeling…awkward when it comes to you.”
“‘Awkward’ is the word du jour,” I agreed. “So, I make you nervous?”
“Not quite nervous,” he said. “Just unsettled.”
I wriggled my eyebrows and inched a little closer to him. “Unsettled, that’s even better.”
I reached for his hand and pressed it into mine. “Look, the life I had before I met you, it wasn’t much, but I could handle it. I could have lived that way forever. And now it turns out that I will live forever, only it’s a life I am completely unprepared for. I’ve never been without a plan, OK? I’ve never been without a purpose or a goal or a reason to get up in the morning. And now, I don’t even get up in the morning. I’m not going to lie, I’m terrified.”
Gabriel stared at me with an intensity that was unnerving and, well, mesmerizing. In my compulsive need to fill the verbal void that followed, all of the questions I’d been dying to ask spilled from my lips. After the whole “you sent a random stranger to my house” thing, I figured I was owed some answers.
“What do you do all day—night? Do you have a job? How is it that I’ve lived in the Hollow all of my life and I’ve never even heard of you? Do you feed from live—do we call them ‘victims’? Do you feed from Andrea? Or do you drink artificial blood? And where do we get those blackout curtains?”
He mulled over my diatribe(s) and at long last said, “I know you have questions.”
I smiled, thrilled to be the smug one for a change. “Yes, that’s why I just asked them.”
He made a noise I can only describe as a nasal reminder to watch the snarking. “All right, then, I do not have a job. I live off the profits of various investments I’ve made over the years. I devote my time to my own interests. As a vampire, I’ve made an effort to stay out of the public eye. I’ve taken extensive measures with local officials to make sure traffic and public interest are steered away from my property. But it seems wise for vampires to reconnect now that humans are adjusting to our presence. And there are certain things I miss about human society.”
“Appletinis?”
He scowled, but there was no real heat in it.
“Well, you were at Shenanigans.” I shrugged.
He snickered. “You are not a dull girl.”
“Thank you.”
He was smiling at me, so I thought it would be a good time to ask. “Is your relationship with Andrea part of your ‘reconnection’ with human society?”
“I do not have a relationship with Andrea,” he said. “I met her a little more than a year after she moved to Half-Moon Hollow. I introduced her to some acquaintances of mine. I admire and respect Andrea. She’s a friend. But we agreed that I would no longer feed from her in order to prevent…confusion.”
It was like Melrose Place, with fangs.
“I do occasionally feed from consenting donors,” he said. “I also drink the occasional bottle of artificial or donated blood. I prefer donated blood. And you can get blackout curtains at Bed, Bath and Beyond.”
I could have stopped there, but I was enjoying my power trip.
“Who made you into a vampire?” I asked.
His expression was as bland as bread pudding. “That’s a discussion for another time.”
“How many vampires have you made?”
“Three, including you,” he said.
“What happened to the other two?”
“That’s a discussion for another time.”
I scowled. “Do you practice being enigmatic, or does it come naturally?”
“It comes naturally,” he said. He sprang from his seat, offering his outstretched hand. “Come with me.”
He led me outside onto the porch, where we stood, soaking in the night sounds. He stood behind me, cupping his fingers over my eyes. His lips hovered near my ear. “You are the night.”
“I am the night,” I repeated.
“You are the night.”
I cocked my head, sending him a questioning look. “I am the night?”
“Jane!”
“Why is it that when you say my name, it sounds like a curse word?” I asked, turning toward him.
He sighed and pushed me back to face the yard. “Please stop talking.”
I giggled, bumping the back of my head into his chin. He was doing that hair-smelling thing again, which I didn’t dignify with a response. I turned to face him, finding myself nose-to-nose with my sire. He had that irritated look Mrs. Truman used to get when I passed notes in third-grade math. I giggled again, which was becoming an annoying habit.
“I’m sorry, I have a hard time with this vampire Yoda routine. I don’t sit around listening to one hand clapping for my inner-selfness. I have never read a single Chicken Soup for the Soul book, and, God willing, I’ll never have to. I look at the big picture. If I don’t like it, I change it, or I’m paralyzed by the fear of change, which is more often than not. It’s the one area where I’m sort of complicated.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” he said, turning me back to his darkened yard. “You’re more and more complicated with every word that comes out of your mouth. It’s time to see the picture in small pieces, Jane. Every blade of grass. The croaking of every frog. The scent of honeysuckle. Let each of these elements wash over you until you can see the whole of the landscape before you without opening your eyes. Feel the heartbeat of every animal that skitters across the dirt. Focus on the flow of its blood, the pulse of it through its veins. Don’t settle for the prey that’s closest to you or the easiest to catch, find the right animal. The size and speed you need. Focus every fiber of your considerable musculature on that creature, and throw your body into action.”
I felt this was not the moment to tell Gabriel that was exactly what Yoda would have said (in a slightly less grammatically sound manner), so I focused on the night sounds. It was like a combination of night vision and a thermal camera, all shifting colors and pulsing warmth. I shut out the coldblooded creatures, the frogs and snakes, because my culinary courage does not run that far. I could feel coyotes, and deep in the trees I saw a deer, an eight-pointer. But given my recent steps in his hooves, I wasn’t planning to hunt him anytime soon.
As if he sensed my interest, the buck raised his head and met my gaze. It felt as if I could reach out and stroke his coat. I raised my hand, and the buck started, disappearing with a flash of white tail through the trees.
“All of my life, I’ve wanted to be more interesting than I am, special,” I said, turning to Gabriel and, I’m sure, grinning like an idiot. “And now it seems I’ve got ‘special’ out the ying-yang. I don’t know if I can handle it.”
He made his inscrutable face. “I’ve been a vampire for a long time, and I’ve never heard it described it quite like that.”
“I do have a way with words,” I admitted. “Why did this happen to me? How is this possible? Where do we come from?”
“I would never have thought of you as an existentialist, Jane,” he said.
I arched an eyebrow at him. “No one likes a smart-ass, Gabriel.”
“For your sake, I hope that’s not true,” he said, to which I responded with a smack on the arm. “No one knows where we come from. The ancient Greeks, Middle Eastern cultures, the earliest people of Malaysia, they all wrote of creatures that stole the blood from humans as they slept. The romantic theory seems to be that Lilith, the first wife that God created for Adam, refused to submit to her husband, particularly in their…evening activities. So, as punishment, she was sent away from the garden to live in darkness. She became the first vampire and had her revenge by feeding off Adam’s children and turning his descendants into creatures like her. Vampirism is thought to be her vengeance passed down through the generations.”
“Trivia monologue. You are so the man for me,” I marveled.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing,” I said, smiling insipidly and thanking the perverse vampire gods that his super hearing hadn’t picked that up. “Do you believe that?”
The twist in his lips showed that he might have heard what I said but was choosing to ignore it. “The truth is, there may be no single origin of vampires. The way we change may have evolved, over time, like humans but never with them.”
I crossed my arms. “OK, lightning round. Real or fake: Werewolves?”
“Real.”
“Demons?”
“Very real.”
“Sasquatch?’
“Real, but he’s actually a were-ape.”
I decided to explore that later. “Aliens?”
“I don’t know.”
“Witches?”
“Real.” He shrugged. “Some work real magic, and others are deluded children in black makeup and ill-fitting clothes.”
“Good to know,” I said soberly. “Wait, what about zombies? I couldn’t even get through the preview for Dawn of the Dead without covering my eyes.”
“You don’t want to know.”
I made a small distressed sound. He chuckled, something I noticed was becoming more frequent.
“I know Dracula was a real person, but is he still, you know, around?” I asked.
“No one knows for sure. He’s a bit like our Elvis. Lots of vampires have claimed to see him, but there’s never been documented proof. You ask a lot of questions.”
“I’m a librarian. The learning curve is steep,” I said, ever so sassily jutting my chin forward.
“You’re going to be an interesting person to know, Jane Jameson,” he said, leaning forward and brushing his mouth across mine.
Sparks. Hell, fireworks. The Fourth of July was exploding in my head as he slipped his hands under my jaw and pinned me with his mouth. When he pulled away from me, my hands were wound in his hair, my lips bruised and tingling pleasantly.
“I enjoy your height,” he said, pressing me against the porch railing. With my butt precariously balanced on the rail, I had to wind my feet around his calves to keep from tumbling over. “Back in my day, I never courted an exceptionally tall woman. But it makes for some interesting possibilities.”
“There’s that word again, ‘interesting,’” I said before kissing him again. I tangled my fingers in his pullover. He tasted like the best share of my trick-or-treating candy, the mini Three Musketeers and Almond Joys. And for most of my life, I’d been gnawing on those stupid orange-wrapped peanut taffy things.
I sighed and wrapped my arms around his neck, enjoying the sensation of Gabriel planting a few more soft, nibbling kisses along the edge of my jaw. Feeling bold, I traced the line of his bottom lip with my tongue and bit down on it gently.
He pulled away and grinned down at me. “Very interesting.”