A Fire in the Blood

  “You could be right.”

  “I know I am. Maybe Luke . . .”

  “No! Luke’s a great guy and all that. He might even turn out to be a great hunter when he’s had more experience. But he’s no match for a seven-hundred-year-old vampire. You know I’m right, don’t you?”

  Jilly’s sigh of resignation was audible. “Try to get some sleep. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Sleep, Tessa thought after disconnecting the call. She wasn’t sure she would ever sleep again.

  * * *

  Tessa woke late in the morning. Feeling as if she’d hardly slept at all, she staggered into the kitchen and plugged in the coffeemaker, then went through the apartment and turned off the lights. It had been childish, perhaps, leaving all the lights burning, but, childish or not, there was no way she was going to sleep in the dark.

  Last night had been a night she would never forget. After all, how many women discovered the man they were dating was a vampire?

  And on Halloween, no less.

  Vampire.

  The word repeated itself in her mind as she showered and dressed. While she fixed breakfast. While she rinsed the dishes.

  Vampire.

  She had seen movies depicting the undead, read books, been attacked twice, and yet she really knew very little about what being a vampire entailed other than the obvious—they didn’t grow old, they drank blood to survive, they were hard to kill.

  She thought about Andrei—how could she not? He had held her in his arms. He had kissed her. He had tasted her blood.

  Try as she might, she couldn’t decide how she felt about him now. Logically, she knew she should hate him, avoid him. She should feel disgust because he had kissed her. Because she had eagerly and willingly kissed him back.

  Why didn’t she?

  Because he was tall, dark, and handsome?

  Because he made her feel beautiful, desirable?

  Determined to banish him from her mind, she grabbed her earbuds, pumped up the volume, and plunged into housecleaning with a vengeance. Dishes, laundry, dusting, vacuuming. She even washed the windows and scrubbed the toilet, two jobs she loathed.

  As long as she was busy, she managed to keep Andrei out of her thoughts, but the minute she started fixing dinner, his handsome face popped into her mind, his eyes dark and filled with mystery, his smile sensual. Damn the man!

  She jumped when the phone rang, afraid it might be him.

  Hoping it might be him.

  She breathed a sigh of relief—or was it disappointment? —when she heard Jilly’s voice. “Tess?”

  “Hi.”

  “You okay, girl? You sound, I don’t know, kind of disappointed.”

  “No. No, I was just . . . just going quietly insane. How are you?”

  “I’m a nervous wreck. I asked Luke to spend the night last night because I was afraid to be home alone. Silly, I know, but . . .”

  “Not any sillier than me, sleeping with all the lights on.”

  Jilly laughed softly. “We’re a pair, aren’t we? Has he called you?”

  “No.”

  “What are you going to do if he wants another date?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t want to see him again, do you?”

  Tessa bit down on her lower lip. Seeing him could be dangerous. It might even be fatal, but . . .

  “Tess?”

  “Jilly, I know I shouldn’t see him again, but I’ve never felt this way about anybody else.”

  “Think about what you’re saying! He’s a vampire, for crying out loud. You’ve got to end it now, while you still can.”

  “You’re right. I know you’re right. Anyway, he didn’t say anything about seeing me again.”

  “You’ll let me know if he calls, promise?”

  “I promise. I’ll see you Monday.”

  “I hope so,” Jilly said. And ended the call.

  Tessa sat at the table a moment, then went to her desk and fired up her laptop. A Google search turned up over forty thousand hits. According to Wikipedia, vampires were mythical creatures. Such entities—called by a variety of names—were known to have been recorded in almost every culture, going back as far as the ancient Greeks and Romans. Their tales of demons and spirits were thought to be the basis for modern-day vampires, although Bram Stoker was given credit for creating the quintessential vampire in his immortal character Count Dracula, the indisputable inspiration for numerous books, films, and TV shows.

  Vampires could turn into mist, scale tall buildings like a spider, read minds, control the weather, move faster than the eye could follow. They didn’t age, were never sick. And how cool would that be, she thought absently, never to have to worry about growing old and helpless.

  The idea that she found anything about being a vampire appealing brought her up short. No one wanted to get old. No one looked forward to dying, but it was a fact of life. You were born, you grew up. If you were lucky, you lived a good long life, and then, to put it poetically, you “went the way of all the earth.”

  With a shake of her head, Tessa shut down her laptop. She had been scared before she started reading about vampires. Now she was just depressed.

  Thinking to cheer herself up, she whipped up a hot fudge sundae and found her favorite comedy on Netflix.

  She was just dozing off when someone knocked at the door.

  Something—a tingle in the air, a sudden change in the atmosphere—told her Andrei was waiting outside.

  She froze, hardly daring to breathe. If she didn’t answer, maybe he’d think she wasn’t home and go away.

  Several seconds passed.

  And then, just when she was certain he’d gone, he knocked again.

  “I know you’re home, Tessa,” he said. “I can hear the rapid beat of your heart.”

  Scowling, she added “exceptional hearing” to the long list of vampire traits.

  She took a deep breath in an effort to calm her racing heart. Then, her hand visibly shaking, she opened the door.

  He looked as handsome, as desirable, as always. Damn him.

  “Can we talk?”

  Tessa took a step backward. “What is there to say?”

  “Hey, it’s your life. If you don’t want my help, fine.”

  She chewed on a corner of her lower lip. Then, hoping she wasn’t making a big mistake, she gestured for him to come inside. She didn’t close the door.

  “Worried about your reputation?” he asked dryly.

  “Worried about my life,” she retorted.

  He grinned inwardly, thinking an open door was no protection at all.

  “So,” she said, perching on the edge of the sofa, “what did you want to talk about?”

  “Can’t you guess? I warned you before to stay inside after dark. It’s still good advice. Unlike older vampires, fledglings can’t go out in the sun. All the vampires who’ve been after you have been newly turned.”

  “If my blood is so wonderful, why are they trying so hard to kill me? I mean, no me, no blood.”

  “Because they haven’t yet learned to control their hunger. Once fledglings start to feed, most are no longer rational.”

  “Maybe I should bottle my blood,” she muttered. “I could probably make a small fortune.”

  “Or a large one,” he said, amused by her wry sense of humor. “For fledglings the chance to enhance their power is too tempting to deny. It’s a matter of survival when so many are destroyed by older vampires. As far as I can tell, your blood doesn’t seem to hold the same allure for any of the ancient ones, and that’s a good thing.”

  “How so?”

  “Because I’m not the only one who can walk in the daylight.” Reaching inside his jacket, Andrei withdrew four short, sharp, wooden stakes and offered them to her. “You might want to keep these handy. . . .” He paused when she recoiled. “You got a problem with these?”

  She looked up at him, her face pale. “I just don’t think I could drive one of those into someone’s hear
t.”

  “No? You’d be surprised by what you can do when the necessity arises.”

  “Isn’t it . . . messy?”

  “No. That’s only in the movies.”

  “Don’t I need a . . . a mallet or something?”

  Andrei shook his head. “Vampires are powerful, but our flesh is as vulnerable as yours.” He dropped the stakes on the coffee table. “Any wooden stake will do, but those made of hickory or oak are the best. These are hickory.”

  Tessa stared at them as if he had dropped a quartet of rattlesnakes on the table.

  “There are only a few effective ways to destroy a vampire—a wooden stake in the heart, fire, or beheading.”

  Tessa blinked at him, unable to believe she was having this conversation with Andrei. A little voice in the back of her mind whispered, Vampire. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I don’t want anything to happen to you, and since you’ve made it pretty clear you don’t want me around, I want you to know how to protect yourself.”

  “What about garlic? And silver?”

  “Garlic stinks,” he said, shrugging. “Pure silver burns, but it won’t deter a hungry vampire.”

  His gaze, so intense, unnerved her. Was he waiting for her to say more? What more was there to say, except, “Thank you for the information. And the advice.” She swallowed the urge to invite him to stay.

  Andrei nodded curtly. “Take care of yourself,” he murmured.

  He was almost out the door when she called, “Andrei, wait.”

  He turned, one brow arched in question.

  “Remember the fortune-teller? The one spreading those rumors about me?”

  He nodded. “Madame Murga?”

  “I looked her up on the Internet. I thought if I could find her I could ask her to stop talking about me. She died a few weeks ago.”

  Andrei grunted softly. “Natural causes?”

  “I guess so. It said she passed away in her sleep.”

  “Somehow I doubt that. Be on your guard, Tessa,” he warned again, and left without another word.

  Tessa stared at the wooden stakes. Taking a deep breath, she picked one up. It was solid, heavier than it looked. Andrei had said she would be surprised by what she could do if necessary. She tried to imagine driving that short piece of wood into Andrei’s heart. Swallowing the bile that rose in her throat, she dropped the stake as if it was on fire.

  She shut the door, shot the dead bolt home, then collapsed on the sofa, wondering how her once mundane life had gotten so amazingly complicated.

  And so dangerous.

  * * *

  Feeling the need for solace, Tessa rose early in the morning and went to church. And while she found the music soothing, concentrating on the sermon was impossible.

  What was there about her blood that was any different from anyone else’s? There was nothing remarkable about her parents. They were just ordinary Americans. Her father had a little Cherokee blood, her mother was English and German. Certainly nothing out of the ordinary there. To her knowledge, there were no witches in her family, no Druids. Or elves. “Or orcs,” she muttered.

  Maybe she needed to have a blood test . . . she dismissed the idea as soon as it occurred to her. She didn’t like doctors or needles. And what were the odds—if there was something supernaturally weird about her blood—that a doctor would be able to diagnose it?

  From out of the past, the words of the gypsy woman echoed in her mind. “I see a man,” the fortune-teller had said. “He is old. Very old. He will come into your life in a moment of danger. He will watch over you and protect you. He will bring you death. And life.”

  Andrei had brought death to those who attacked her.

  “And life,” Tessa muttered on her way home from church. “What the heck does that mean? And why was Madame Murga spreading rumors about my blood in the first place?” What had she hoped to gain?

  * * *

  “Tess, you’re not making any sense.” Jilly said, injecting a note of patience in her voice. “Slow down and start over. When did you see a gypsy? And why on earth didn’t you take me with you?”

  Tessa took a deep breath, her hand tightening on her cell phone. Thinking about Madame Murga on the way home from church had freaked her out. And when that happened, what was a girl to do but call her best friend and vent? “I saw the gypsy ten years ago.”

  “Ten years?” Jilly’s frown was obvious in her voice. “You went to see a gypsy when you were, what? Fifteen? Wow, I never would have thought that.”

  “It wasn’t my idea, believe me. My cousin Lisa talked me into it. She was only thirteen at the time, but she was fascinated by the occult.”

  “So, this gypsy told you an old man would come into your life and bring death and life? And you think she meant Andrei?”

  “She said he’d come into my life in a moment of danger and that he would protect me. Doesn’t that sound like Andrei?”

  “Well, yeah, in away, I guess it does.”

  “In a way? In a way? Jilly, he saved my life twice.”

  “So, you really believe that a gypsy foretold Andrei coming into your life?”

  “I don’t know. I always thought fortune-tellers were fakes, you know?”

  “So, maybe this one was for real.”

  “She said he would bring death, which he did. I just have this freaky feeling about what the ‘life’ part might mean.”

  “Maybe she just meant that he’d save your life?”

  “Maybe.”

  “But you’re not convinced?”

  “I don’t know,” Tessa admitted, reluctant to mention the fortune-teller’s most recent prediction. “Maybe I’m just overreacting.”

  “Well, who could blame you?” Jilly said. “It isn’t every day you almost fall in love with a vampire. That’s bound to shake up your equilibrium. Have you seen him lately?”

  “He was here last night. He left four stakes on my coffee table.”

  “That’s an odd gift,” Jilly said, laughing. “Most guys bring flowers, not dinner.”

  “Wooden stakes, Jilly, so I could defend myself if I’m attacked again, since he won’t be around anymore.”

  “Oh.” Jilly’s concern came through loud and clear.

  “Thanks for letting me bend your ear.”

  “No problem. That’s what friends are for. Try not to worry, Tess. Just stay away from Dinescu, be sure to stay inside after dark, and I’m sure you’ll be all right. Oh! And keep your windows closed and your door locked!”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Do you want to come over and spend the evening with me and Luke?”

  “Thanks for the offer, but I’m sure the two of you would rather be alone. Don’t worry about me. I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to do my hair and my nails and just veg out on the sofa. I’ll see you at lunch tomorrow.”

  “All right. Night, Tess. Call me if you need me.”

  After ending the call, Tessa stared at her phone. Maybe she should have gone over to Jilly’s for a while. Spending time with her and Luke would help take her mind off vampires and other things she didn’t want to think about, like her attraction to Andrei and how much she missed him, even though she’d seen him just yesterday. His visit had been brief and not particularly pleasant. Even when they weren’t together, he was always in her mind. When she was with him, she felt . . . alive.

  She thought of her visit to Madame Murga again.

  “He will bring you death,” the fortune-teller had predicted . “And life.”

  Chapter Nine

  Katerina Glinin paced the floor, her long skirts whispering in her wake. She glanced occasionally at the young male vampire who huddled on the stone flagging in front of the hearth, his arms folded over his head. As if that would save him.

  She paused in front of him. “Ilia, look at me.”

  He did as bidden though obviously reluctant to meet her eyes.

  Like a snake facing a rabbit, her gaze trapped his. “Tell me more abou
t this woman whose blood enhances the strength of fledglings.”

  “I don’t know any more, I swear it. All I know is what I’ve heard. Rumors, that’s all. I’ve never seen her.”

  “Who told you these rumors?”

  “Friends of mine. They told me they were going after her. I never heard from them again.”

  “Do you think she killed them?”

  He snorted his disdain. “A mortal female?”

  “Where does this mortal live?”

  “Cutter’s Corner. My friend didn’t tell me her name when he called me.”

  “You may go.”

  He was gone before she finished speaking.

  Brow furrowed, Katerina resumed her pacing. She had not been to America in decades. Perhaps it was time to visit again.

  She smiled faintly, wondering if Andrei still made his home there.

  Andrei. She had known many men, loved a few, used others only to cast them aside when they ceased to amuse her.

  But Andrei Dinescu was the only man she had ever married.

  Katerina chuckled softly. According to the vows they had exchanged, he was still her husband.

  “To have and to hold,” she murmured, thinking how surprised he would be to see her after such a long time. “Until death do us part.”

  Chapter Ten

  Andrei prowled the dark streets, his thoughts as black as the night. He had found a woman like no other, a woman who made him feel alive again. Young again. And she wanted nothing to do with him. Not that he could blame her. Being a vampire, he had little to offer her. Certainly nothing she wanted. Or needed.

  But he couldn’t get Tessa out of his mind. It had been a week since he had last seen her—the longest week of his life.

  Almost before he realized what he was doing, he was in front of her apartment building. Was she home?

  He opened his senses, searching for her, felt a surge of relief when he had assured himself that she was safely inside.

  A thought took him to the landing in front of her door. The strong, steady beat of her heart called to him, as did the warm, sweet scent of her blood. The fragrance of her hair, her skin. The memory of holding her in his arms. The alluring heat of her kisses.

  “Tessa.” Her name whispered past his lips. He wanted her, wanted her as he had never wanted another woman. Even more compelling was his soul-deep need for her, a longing unlike any he had ever known.