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She didn’t remember falling asleep, but she did remember waking up while it was still dark outside. Something told her that she wasn’t actually asleep for long and that she had just barely fallen asleep before she was suddenly awake and feeling a cold sweat breaking out across her. There was something definitely wrong and every cell in her body was screaming out as she opened her eyes and suddenly bolted right up.
The shadowy figure that was standing in her room was horrifying enough and she knew she was going to open her mouth and scream at the top of her lungs but there was something oddly familiar about this presence.
She knew what she was looking at and that opening her mouth and screaming was only going to wake up Blake and draw attention. She wasn’t going to do that to her child. She wasn’t going to put him in danger right now and make things worse for either of them.
“You need to keep quiet,” Vincenzo said to her from the shadows of her room. “They’re out there, but they know better than to try and stop us. I don’t want them to think that you know I’m here.”
“What are you talking about?” she hissed at him.
“I just need you to keep quiet for a while.” Vincenzo moved silently across the room. No, that wasn’t correct. She watched him move and she realized that he wasn’t making a sound at all; that was the freakiest realization she had made yet.
It was like watching a movie on mute. As he moved, he reached the windows and lifted one of the blinds and looked across the street.
“That was smart thinking, packing your bag and getting ready for me. I forgot to tell you that. You’re much smarter than anyone that I’ve met before. I’m very grateful for it.”
“It’s not rocket science,” she said to him sternly, keeping her voice low.
She stood up and walked over toward him, still afraid to reach out and touch him or to even look at him for long.
He could sense her apprehension and he looked at her with a kind expression on his rather terrifying face. She suddenly realized he wasn’t as clean and perfect as he normally looked. The seam on the shoulder of his jacket was torn and there was something thick hanging on his clothes and in his hair. She looked at him and furrowed her brow, trying to figure out what he had been doing. He looked at his state and gave a little bit of a shrug, like it was nothing at all.
“Get stuck in a chimney coming over here?” she asked him, realizing that it was ash on him.
There was a moment when the flash hit her and she totally understood what she had just said and what the ash meant. She took a step back and tried to picture what he had done. The thought of him doing something dangerous and violent had never crossed her mind.
“Is that?” she trailed off, looking at the dust on him.
“Well, yes,” he said with a shrug. “You didn’t think that they were just going to politely leave you alone, did you?”
“I didn’t think that you were actually going to, well—” she trailed off again, trying to imagine what Vincenzo had done to them.
He looked at her and smiled in a way that was probably meant to be assuring, but it wasn’t. There was nothing about this situation that was going to assure her of anything other than the fact that she was insane and in trouble. She looked at him and knew he had probably put his life on the line for all of this.
“Listen,” he said, turning and facing her. “Regardless of what you think my past actions have said to you, I do have feelings for you, Shantal. I know you don’t believe me and I don’t really expect you to. However, I hope my actions from here on out will assure you it wasn’t wanton lust that brought us together and I’m more than willing to risk my immortal life for you and our child.
“But, right now, we have a clear window of opportunity while they’re sucking their thumbs and licking their wounds. I suggest we take it and get out of here.”
“Is there anything else that we need?” she asked him with a nervous expression on her face. She had never been on the run before and all she could think of was getting stuff for Blake. She hadn’t even taken the time to think about herself. She didn’t know what a person took on the run with them.
“We can get everything for us on the way,” he assured her, looking back out the window one last time. “I’ll grab the bag and I’ll make sure the way is clear. You grab Blake and I’m sure he’ll be much happier with his mother than he will be with his absentee father.”
He was very cavalier about the fact that he had been missing for his son’s gestation and his birth, but there was something about what he was doing right then that told Shantal he wouldn’t do it for anyone else. He wouldn’t risk his life for anyone who was willing to be less than absolutely valuable to him.
Grabbing Blake, she bundled him up and carried him as they left the apartment and she felt incredibly terrified to walk out the door. There was something horrifying and haunting about the world beyond her apartment and she didn’t like it. She didn’t want to leave.
It was like there was something terrifying waiting for her and she knew it was going to come for her the moment she blinked. It was like standing in a room where everything was rigged with some kind of buzzer or siren. All she wanted to do was be safe, already.
Vincenzo, however, wasn’t willing to let them sit still. He made his way through the hallway and looked down every corridor or path they came to and led her to the stairs. She was horrified of taking her son down the stairs, but she figured getting pinned or caught in an elevator with a bunch of vampires wasn’t ideal either.
When they made it to the lobby, she saw that William the doorman was missing and that made her extremely nervous, just thinking about what could have happened to him. She looked at the lobby and wondered if there were vampires in the building and if they were harming other people in an attempt to get to her.
Vincenzo hissed at her and tossed his head in the direction of the car he had prepared for them. When they reached the car parked at the curb, she couldn’t help but feel like the city was quieter and that there was nothing around them. There was something about the whole city being filled with darkness and silence as she waited for something to happen. She half expected the vampires to come flying down from the rooftops and charging at them.
The moment she thought of the idea, she was suddenly paranoid it was going to happen. Vincenzo opened the back door for Shantal and she saw that there was a very expensive and very nice car seat waiting for Blake. That made her wonder how long he’d had it and it made her feel a little better just thinking about the fact that he had worried about her.
She wanted him to worry about her and she wanted him to worry about the two of them. It was nice to know he was genuinely thinking about them and that they weren’t just ghosts from his past. She watched him load the bag into the trunk as she buckled Blake into his car seat and quickly hopped into the passenger’s seat.
“We can drive all night,” he told her, but she looked at the clock and saw that it was three in the morning. His eyes followed hers to the central console and looked at the time as well. “It’s not long, but it’s enough to put some distance between us and them. You and Blake can stay in a hotel room and I’ll make sure those things don’t come after us.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but Vincenzo started up the car and headed for the street at full speed. Shantal turned around and looked behind them, seeing figures running as quickly as they could after the car, waving their arms and trying to stop them. She stared at them, wide eyed and full of terror, wondering what had gotten into them and what they could have possibly been thinking to chase after them like that. They were relentless.
The creatures that had chased after them were still back by the side of the street, shrieking and angrily waving their arms, giving up their futile pursuit and heading back to the sidewalk, as if they were going to regroup and think of another plan. She watched them and wondered exactly what their plan was right now.
She wanted to know if there was something they were going to do that was actually going to stop this, or if they were just running blind right now. Something told her they were going to be picking a fight with Vincenzo, but she needed to know. She needed to know that she wasn’t wasting her time with him.
Leaving her apartment behind her, she knew there was a lot she had left. There was a whole life there and potentially a lot of things that were going to make her wish she had been given an honest chance.
Why couldn’t Vincenzo have been a normal man? Why couldn’t he have been someone that was just a deadbeat father? She could have happily dealt with that and gone about her business. That seemed golden right now.
“What am I supposed to do now?” she asked him, shaking her head at the thought of how screwed up all of this was. There was no way that she was going to recover from any of this. She was going to be left with bombed-out remains of everything that she had to deal with.
“We’ll get out of here and put the city behind us,” Vincenzo said with absolute confidence, not understanding what she was saying to him. He might be hundreds of years old, but she was realizing he needed a lot of work in the reality department. She wasn’t going to be happy with this until she got some legitimate answers.
“What am I supposed to do about my job?” she pressed him. “What am I supposed to do about everything? Greta is going to show up tomorrow and she’s going to think I’m crazy. She’ll probably call the cops.”
“Don’t worry about that,” he said, shaking his head and checking the rearview mirror.
She didn’t care about what he had to say right now. She was mourning the life that was crumbling all around her. On the bright side, Blake was safe and that was all that mattered right now.
“Keep your eyes open at every intersection,” he said.
No, it wasn’t like he said it to her, but rather that he commanded it. For a moment, she thought to question him and ask him what he meant by that, but she suddenly remembered the men who had come running after them. She looked over her shoulder at Blake and watched behind them.
“This is so messed up,” she said to him, looking over at him and feeling like she had been thrown into some pale guy’s action movie against her will. She wanted to smack him upside the head and tell him to let her go, but she knew he wasn’t holding her here against her will. He was as much of a victim right now as she was.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her, sounding genuinely sincere in his apology. She found that odd. “None of this should have happened. There’s a rare chance that any vampire ever will reproduce, but you were the unlucky one to have it happen. I wouldn’t have done it to you, Shantal. I’m glad that it happened to you of all people, though. You’re the only person I’ve ever met who is strong enough to handle this situation.”
“We’re going to be discussing this at greater length in the future,” she said to him sharply, but at the time, while she was eyeballing everyone who was on the street and in cars behind them, it felt like a silly time to have this discussion. She could only think about how they were possibly surrounded.
“Fair enough,” he said, nodding to her. “Listen, it’s going to take a couple of hours to get out of the city, if we’re lucky. We’re going to have to be completely paranoid at every intersection we come to and if there’s anyone staring at us with dark eyes, you have to tell me, so that I can get us out of there. I know it’s tense, but until we leave the city, there’s nothing we can do about that.”
“Fine by me,” she said confidently. There was nothing that was going to please her more than keeping her child safe. She was going to make sure he was absolutely safe and completely fine.
It took more than a few hours to get out of New York City and by the time they were free of the concrete jungle she had once called home, she knew they only had a little while before they were going to have to pull off to the side of the road or find a hotel that they could hole up in for the rest of the day.
The only thing that made her feel comfortable was the fact that their pursuers were going to have to pull off and wait as well. If they were lucky, maybe a few of them would burn up along the way.
There was something about leaving New York that made her feel sad and as she looked behind them at subdivisions that seemed endless and sprawling, she found herself getting into the same habits, time and time again, watching for anyone or anything that might be coming for them.
It was the kind of paranoia she was afraid was going to seep inside her for the rest of her life.
On the interstate, they were really starting to put some distance behind them, heading south, and she didn’t ask him any questions. There was something about him that told her she shouldn’t be asking any questions; she should be totally comfortable with the fact that he seemed to know what he was doing with her. She was going to just trust that he had a plan and they were going to be safe with him.
She felt the fatigue of the night settling in on her and she could only think that there were not enough hours in the night for them to do this. She wanted to know if there was anything they would to be able to do that would put some serious distance between them and their pursuers.
Part of her wanted to go to the airport and get on a plane just at the break of day. They could fly forever, but there was always the risk that someone might open a window and kill Vincenzo if they did that.
“Hang on,” Vincenzo said, breaking the silence after a while. She looked over at him and she saw that he was checking all of the rearview mirrors. She felt a cold chill trickle down her spine and she realized there was something definitely wrong right now. She looked over her shoulder and she knew instantly what was wrong and had captured his attention.
As if they had gone to the same henchmen bad-guy academy together, four motorcycles were coming up toward them, weaving in between cars on the interstate, all wearing leather jackets and jet black helmets. In fact, everything from their clothes to their helmets was clad in black so that they would seem even more vampire-like and menacing. She didn’t like the look of this and she didn’t know what it meant.
“We need to go faster,” she told him.
“We’re running out of time,” he told her nervously. It was the first time that he had exuded any kind of emotion other than confidence and cocky bravado through this entire event. It made her want to really freak out and start to panic.
Heeding her advice, he stepped on the pedal and their car started to go faster and faster, weaving in and out through cars on the interstate, trying their hardest to lose the motorcyclists that were coming up faster and faster behind them. Their street bikes looked like they were faster and they were going to catch up, and for the first time, Shantal wished she hadn’t gone with Vincenzo in the car and stayed at her apartment.
“We really need to go faster,” she said to him nervously, looking over her shoulder and seeing one of them rapidly coming up behind them. He was determined and was going to get them. There was a kind of predatory aura that clung to him and she knew there was something off about him. He was the kind of person who looked like he was going to do anything it took to get his prey.
She watched him and knew he was going to be their first and biggest concern. The others were reckless, but there was a kind of patience and nervousness to them. A couple of them kept looking over their shoulders at the lightening horizon.
They were coming fast and there was no way they were going to be able to outrun them. There was something about their motorcycles that told her they were faster and more dangerous than this car was ever going to be. The fact that they were outrunning them already was alarming and they were gaining on the car faster and faster.
The interstate was never this slow, but there was light traffic this morning and Shantal felt like they might actually have some kind of a chance if they could just get past a few more obstacles. A giant semi was going to be their first obstacle, well, more like slipping between two of them.
The light was coming up on the horizon and she knew they wouldn’t have much more time until there was going to be a beaming ball of sunlight coming up behind the city and that meant it was going to be time up for Vincenzo. She looked up at the sky and she saw that they were unfortunate enough to have a nearly cloudless sky, so there was no long distance chase. They had to end this soon.
“Hang on,” he called to her nervously as he pushed the pedal to the floor and headed between the two semis that were ahead of them. It made her nervous just thinking about going between two trucks, but there was nothing else they were going to be able to do. If they didn’t weave and get between them, there was no way they were ever going to be able to outrun the motorcyclist that was practically on top of them.
A minivan was making its move to get between the two trucks and she felt like their window was closing. Their gap was coming to an end and Vincenzo sped with all the little car had to offer. He swerved in front of the minivan and slipped in behind the two trucks.
There was a loud honk and the minivan swerved, hitting the nearest motorcyclist and she looked over her shoulder, trying to get a glimpse of the minivan as it slammed into the side of the pursuing vehicle. It vanished without a sound and they were already between the two semis as the minivan vanished behind the back of one of the trucks.
It was gone with the blink of an eye and she felt her heart pounding, knowing that there was no way that the motorcyclist, who was going around ninety miles per hour, could have survived that. He was gone for good.
“Oh my God,” she gasped, looking at the wreckage that was no doubt behind them and then decided to look away. There was nothing but open road in front of them and it was time for them to make their final move.
They were going to get between the trucks and hopefully that would mean the other three motorcyclists would be caught up by the Honda that was coming up to squeeze between the gap as well. She looked at the open road ahead of them and she knew that they were almost safe.
They could practically taste Vincenzoy, but something was sour in her stomach and there was something definitely off about it. They had just killed something. She didn’t know if Vincenzo and his kind were technically alive, but whatever that thing was, it was no more.
“Don’t get too excited,” he said, looking in the rearview mirror. “We’ve got two more making for the gap.”
The semis could tell that there was something strange happening and as two motorcyclists clad in black slipped in front of the Honda, which pounded its horn angrily. They honked their horns, blaring loudly at the motorcyclists that were not trapped between the two trailers.
“Hang on,” Vincenzo said.
Before she could actually hang on, she felt the car come to a halt and there was a loud bang on the back of the car as one of the motorcyclists vanished without a trace and the second flew over the top of the car, landing on the hood as Shantal screamed in horror at the sight of what was happening.
She looked at the man, rolling over and clawing at the hood, trying his hardest to get a hold of the hood of the car and as the person clawed at the hood of the car, she watched his legs vanish. She was screaming louder than she actually thought she was and she had no idea what happened.
She watched as a cloud of gray exploded on the front of the car and a helmet rolled off the hood, vanishing around the side as the car sped up and headed as quickly as it could from between the two trucks. Vincenzo flipped on the windshield wipers and tried his hardest to get rid of the ash that was covering the front of the car.
The windshield was tainted in a gray hue as the last motorcyclist gave up, deciding that there was no way that it was going to get through the two trucks and there was no way it was going to get Vincenzo or his child. She felt her heart racing, pounding as she looked behind them and watched the scene vanish into the distance.
Vincenzo was driving as fast as he could, now racing against something other than the motorcyclists. She didn’t understand if these people had died or if there was something more to vampires, but she was definitely shaken and terrified by what it all meant.
Everything she had heard about vampires, especially from Vincenzo, she had taken with a grain of salt, but that man had just turned into dust. That wasn’t normal and that wasn’t what people did. She began to panic and realize that she was in way over her head.
“We’re in trouble,” he said after a moment, breathing heavily and squinting as he looked up toward the sky. She didn’t know what he was talking about and then suddenly she remembered the sunlight. There was going to be bright light shining all over this area in the next couple of minutes and it was only going to get brighter and brighter. She didn’t know what they were going to do. She didn’t know how they were going to handle it.
The thought of him bursting into ash in the car was horrifying and she knew there was no way she was going to be able to protect Blake from it. There was no way she was going to stop him from breathing in all of that ash.
Maybe that wasn’t the most important thing to be thinking about right now.
“What do you need?” she asked him, looking around. Maybe there was something they could block out the windows with. She didn’t know how piercing the sunlight was going to be to him or how it was going to affect him. Was it any kind of sunlight or was it direct sunlight? So long as they kept the sunlight behind them, maybe they would be just fine.
But they were traveling south.
It was going to come in right through the side of the window, hitting Vincenzo first. He winced already, snapping and hissing at the sight of the sun that was just starting to crest on the horizon, a sliver of blinding white that felt like it was never going to come. It felt like they had been trapped here and there was no escape from the suffocating and strangling darkness of the night, but now it was infinitely worse. This was going to kill the one man she had a hope of being saved by. She didn’t know what he’d done, but he’d definitely killed a lot of those things last night. He was still thick with the gray film of ash that covered him.
She looked at him and noticed that his skin was starting to smoke and steam, his pale complexion turning a red that was going to get worse and worse as the sunlight got more prevalent. She quickly took off her jacket and wrapped it around his head, hiding him from the sunlight and giving him a hood.
“Turn off at the nearest exit,” she said to him, knowing that there had to be some kind of a hotel or motel that they would be able to hide out at for a few hours. She wondered if those motorcyclists, clad in black, would be able to follow them or operate during the daylight. She didn’t think so. It would be too risky. She had seen the cyclists looking behind them at the sunlight when they got onto the interstate. That was the look of fear and terror.
Vincenzo didn’t argue. They got off the interstate at the nearest exit and luckily, there was a sign indicating that there would be a hotel for them. She wasn’t surprised. Practically every exit on the interstate had a hotel or someplace for travelers to rest their weary eyes. Vincenzo’s hands were red and smoking by the time they pulled into the shade of another building and she got out to go pay for the rooms and get their key cards.
She looked at Vincenzo who was hunkered down and waiting for her to return, terrified of getting out. When she got the keys and returned to the car, he was in the passenger’s seat, hiding underneath a mountain of clothing. There was no way he was getting out of that seat.
“Pull around back,” he advised and she did just that.
He walked down the hallway of the hotel, smoking and smoldering a little; his hands looked like they were coated in dry ice and his face was smoking as well. It was a strange sight and they cultivated a few looks from the housekeeping staff who stared at them, looking confused and troubled. They weren’t used to seeing something like this. She didn’t blame them. Truthfully, it was still very hard for Shantal to get used to it.
She set Blake down in the corner, awake and hungry. As she fed him, Vincenzo went into the bathroom and preceded to do whatever vampires did when they were smoldering and burning. She could hear him cursing and mumbling through the door. By the time he was finished with his little task, Blake was fast asleep and she was rocking him gently in the chair.
She was almost afraid to ask what he had been doing in there, but there was a look on his face that suggested he would be more than willing to tell her. She felt a cold shiver run down her spine. She was in the same room as a vampire.
That was going to take some getting used to.
“Why are they after us?” she asked him, whispering so that she wouldn’t wake up Blake, but she was fairly certain that if a semi crashed through the wall right now, he wouldn’t even flinch. He was the hardest sleeper she’d ever met. He was so strong at sleeping that it genuinely worried her. Sometimes, she thought he had slipped into a coma.
“Lots of reasons,” Vincenzo said blankly. “It takes a very old vampire to have a child and it’s a rather rare occurrence. The moment a child is born, those who can sense it are eager to extinguish it.”
“Why is that?” she asked him.
“Rivalry, mostly,” he said with a shrug. “Immortal beings tend to get bitter and angry toward each other and they refuse to play nicely. They’re always looking to one up each other. For a vampire to have a child, though, is a rare moment and the child is mostly hunted down and sought to be killed because it has the best of both worlds.
“You see, Blake will be born with the immortality and the skills of a vampire, but he’ll have none of the negative drawbacks. There’s a whole community of immortal sons and daughters of vampires, living in seclusion, a practical paradise for them. It’s the kind of life that thousands would be hungry for and those who don’t have the luxury of it are envious of it.”
“So my son is going to live forever?” she asked him, skeptical of things that sounded too good to be true.
“There’s a catch of course,” he said with a smile, clearly reading her mind and playing with her. She didn’t like feeling like she was being played with and she almost felt like she should be shouting at him. “You must have had a vision at some point during the pregnancy. You did, didn’t you?”
“The night of it,” she said, nodding. She knew there was no hiding from him and it wasn’t worth it to try and be coy or play games. This was the point where directness was crucial. “I dreamed of people in the shadows and a church.”
“That’s because there’s something that you’re going to have to do,” he said to her with an assured voice. “They’re going to be able to track him, to pick up his scent anywhere he goes for the rest of his life. Right now, while he’s a child, we have to take him to the oldest church and having him touched with holy water. The moment that water touches him, they won’t be able to track him or harm him again. He’ll be beyond their reach.”
She didn’t understand that and it felt like it was a bunch of superstitious mumbo jumbo, but she supposed she wasn’t really in any kind of a position to contradict or call him out on it. After all, she was sitting here, talking to a vampire.
There was no way any of this was going to make any sense to her. She was just going to have to have faith that he knew what he was talking about and that this was going to work.
Looking over at Blake while he was fast asleep, she wondered if they were going to be able to make it. Where was the oldest church in America? Vincenzo claimed to be around for such a long time that he had to obviously know where that was. He had to know that there was some special location for all of this.
She wondered if he was going to get her there without incident. Were they done following them or were they still in trouble? All of these questions were driving her insane as he walked back into the bathroom and looked at his reflection.
Suddenly, she realized he didn’t have a reflection. He was watching the smoke drift up into the air off his skin and he was trying to smother it with the tip of his finger. She could only imagine how difficult that was. She smiled at the thought of it. It was ridiculous to watch. There was something charming about the fact that he was going to try and find a way to fix this.
She liked watching him in the bathroom, having him here with her. She remembered why she had fallen for him in the first place and how she had become attached to him. He was a charming man with the kind of personality that made people gravitate toward him.
Why he had decided to draw the attention of a young woman who was living a normal life without anything spectacular happening to her was beyond Shantal’s understanding. But it felt good to have him here. He had strangely been the most devastating force in her life and the hero she hadn’t been expecting to come riding in to save her.
Of course, it was easy to forgive him when she had Blake here to think about as well. Without Blake in her life, she didn’t know what she would be doing. She would be devastated and alone. She watched him and smiled at him.
“What are you looking at?” he asked her with a suspicious tone in his voice, like he was going to believe a word that came out of her mouth.
She smiled and shook her head. He could read her mind and she wasn’t going to waste the words. He chuckled and shook his head. There was something wonderfully playful about him.
“How long until sunset?” she asked him, changing the topic so that he wasn’t going to get too bold.
“I have no idea,” he said with a shrug. “But if those freaks show up again, I’ll be waiting for them.”
“How exactly do you think that you’re going to be able to hold off all of them alone?”
“The older the vampire, the harder he is to kill,” he said with a shrug. “All of these little things are nothing more than fresh vampires, hoping to get some credit and renown for killing an immortal. They’re less than a few decades old. They’re no match for someone like me.”
“How many of them are there?” She was wondering how long they were going to have to fight through hordes of vampires to get to the end of this.
“A hundred, maybe,” he shrugged, coming out of the bathroom and dropping down into a chair near Blake and watched him, smiling with glee and delight at the sight of his son. There was something inside of him that was building up with true happiness at the sight of their son. She liked to see him so happy toward Blake.
There was something scared inside of her, worried that he wasn’t going to be interested in their child. She wanted him to like their child at the very least, but that was beyond her. It’s not like she could command it.
Wait, he said that there were a hundred!
“Excuse me?” she asked him. “You don’t think that you’re going to get a little overwhelmed by a hundred vampires?”
“A little more,” he shrugged. “To kill a truly old vampire, you have to stick something straight into his heart, but as the years progress and decades turn into centuries, our bones start getting harder and harder, making it more difficult to kill us.
“These young fools are all flash and style, with absolutely no substance. They waste their time watching kung fu movies when they should be reading up on vampire lore. But, I’m not going to complain about it now.”
She supposed this was going to have to be what would keep her satisfied with the curiosity that was surrounding vampires and what their lives were like.
It wasn’t like she was going to understand any of this or get to the bottom of it any time soon. She was a human and he was something immortal and mythical. He was something that shouldn’t exist. She wasn’t going to start shooting holes in what reality should and shouldn’t be right now.
“Why me?” she asked him after a moment, watching him as he stared at their child with supreme fascination on his features.
He was a handsome man and it was hard for her to get over just how handsome he was. She wondered if that had something to do with being a vampire or if it had everything to do with the fact that he had been handsome from the very beginning. She didn’t know which would be the truth, but she knew that she was curious about why he’d chosen her.
“Excuse me?” he asked, looking up from their child and staring at her for a moment.
“Why did I get pregnant with Blake?”
She was practical about this. She knew that there had to be rules or laws about it. It either had to do with some kind of benchmark that he’d passed in the world of vampires or he had just become something truly spectacular in the world of vampires.
Maybe it was the fact that he had slept with enough women that he finally hit the point where he popped out a child. She didn’t know, but there had to be some reason why he was responsible for getting her pregnant right then in his life. He looked at her with his dark eyes, pondering the question and thinking about what he was going to say to her. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know.
“You’re not going to believe it if I tell you,” he said bluntly, looking at her with all the seriousness in the world.
“Try me,” she said with a shrug. “I just found out that the father of my child is a vampire and that there’s a horde of vampires chasing us around to kill my immortal child. I think I’m open to the idea of having something strange shoved down my throat.”
“Fine,” he said, clearing his throat. “The books I’ve read all say the same thing. It says that when you find someone that you truly love, like a truly infinite love, the kind of love that sculpts heroic deeds and changes the way you see the world, that’s when a vampire will give up his child.
“It’s said that the love is so powerful and so pure, there is nothing that can stop the two from having something so incredible that they give birth to an immortal child. They say that this person, the one they find that offers them true love, is their soul mate and the person they’re destined to be with.” He waited for a moment while that fact sunk in to her.
She stared at him, not sure if he was having her on or if she was supposed to believe that. She truly wanted to believe it and she thought she might actually do so for once in her life. She thought there was a good chance that she truly did, but it scared her.
She had spent the last nine months hating Vincenzo and vowing to kill him if she ever saw him. But now that she knew he was being hunted by an army of vampires and trying his hardest to keep them away from her, it was a little difficult to truly hate him. She wanted to be forgiving, but at the same time, that hate was deeply engrained in her.
She was going to need something drastic that actually knocked her out of the rut her life had become. She was going to need to find out if she truly loved him or not.
“I suppose,” she said, clearing her throat, “I should thank you for saving our lives.”
“It’s not like I had much of a choice,” he said with a smile on his lips, sensing what she was thinking.
She hated that he had the ability to see exactly what she was thinking. He grinned at her and she knew he was savoring what he was seeing in her mind.
“You really hate me,” he said with a chuckle. “I hope you realize that I was doing it to save your life. I didn’t know how close they were to getting on top of me, but I can tell you right now they were extremely close. They would kill everyone in your building if it meant getting to me.”
“Why?” she asked him bluntly. She didn’t understand why they were all after him. She wanted to know what made him such a dangerous vampire or such a hated vampire to say the least. What was it that made them all want to kill him and string him up for the world to see and witness. She wasn’t sure she was going to like the answer, but she figured she deserved a little bit of an answer.
“Nope,” he said with a grin on his lips. “I’m not going to tell you that.”
“Why not?” she asked him, suddenly very frustrated with the man she was staying with.
“Because it’s a long story and you’re not in the mood,” he said with a shrug. “I’m not going to pour out my life story to a woman who has absolutely no interest in hearing it other than to weigh my innocence or my guilt. My life is not going to be what makes you decide whether you’re going to forgive me or not. My actions are going to have to do that for you.”
“I hate you,” she said bluntly. “There’s nothing to think about.”
“Besides the fact that I saved your life and the life of my son,” he said bluntly back at her. “Besides the fact that I risked everything to come back and see you and save you. Besides the fact that I nearly burned myself to death in an attempt to get you to safety? Besides the fact that I’m intending to make sure that every last cent of my considerable wealth goes to making sure that you and my son are taken care of? Is that the kind of stuff that you’re not going to think about?
“Because right now, all I can think about is the fact that any other vampire would have taken their child and left you to die. I care about you and have since the moment we spent that night together and I intended to make sure that you were safe.
“So, before you start throwing around how much you hate me and how you’re the queen of the world, maybe you should at least show a little gratitude and get off my back about the fact that I didn’t have a chance to leave you a love letter when I was drawing away an army of blood thirsty demons from killing you and our unborn child.”
She looked at him, her blood pounding through her veins and her heart slamming against her chest. She could feel the rage rippling up through her and she didn’t even remember when she’d gotten to her feet in anger, but there she stood, glaring at him with all the rage she could muster.
She knew she wanted to unleash every last inch of it on him. She wanted to tell him everything she had inside of her mind, but she knew he could hear it already so there was no need to waste the words.
“That’s right,” he said, rising to his feet as well. “Let it all out. Let it all out about how you were scared and how you thought I was taking advantage of you like every other douche in your life, but I wasn’t. I was doing the best I could to save you and I’m glad that I did, because right now, we can clear this up once and for all.
“You want to kill me? Then go ahead and stick something in my chest, as hard as you can, right between the ribs and make it count. End me once and for all, or be woman enough to admit that you were wrong and be willing to start again fresh.”
“You are such an asshole,” she snapped at him.
“Careful, there’s tender ears present,” he said with all seriousness and that drove her even crazier. She didn’t know if she was in love with this man or if she genuinely wanted to kill him, but she didn’t know that whatever was just happening between them, the hatred and the stubbornness, it was going to have to end.
Something was going to have to change and she was afraid of what it was going to be.
“Come on,” he said to her, egging her on. “Kill me and take your chances out there alone. You could probably make it to the church before they get a hold of you and you could probably end all of this. All you have to do is kill me.”
“You know I’m not going to do that,” she growled at him.
“Because you’re a good person,” he said to her. “Because you’re the kind of person that makes me wish I had stayed every second that I missed with you and that I could have kept you safe better than this. I know I did the right thing, but it still sucked, Shantal. I’m sorry for what happened, but I’m willing to spend the rest of my life making it up to you. I promise it.”
“I still hate you,” she said to him with all seriousness. There was no way she was going to be able to so easily forgive a man who had ruined her life. There was no way she was going to be able to give it all up and just wash her hands clean of what had happened. She was going to have to deal with all of this one day, but she figured that right now wasn’t that day.
She stood on the tips of her toes and pressed her lips softly against his and she knew these were the lips she had been longing for in the late night, tossing and turning as she slept and praying she would have another chance to kiss them again.
These were the lips that had ached and pained her from the moment she had realized he had left her. When cold tears ran down her cheeks in the middle of the night from all the heartache and the loss, this was what was keeping her going. Her bitter and empty hope had been everything that had kept her going and there was nothing she hated more right now than knowing she had been in love and hurt by a good man.
She hated that it was fate and the events of her life had caught them off guard and stolen them from each other. It was something she refused to accept and as she cupped his face, their lips still locked together, she knew she was never going to let him go again. She was never going to let these lips vanish from her life and she was going to make sure he knew that.
As their lips locked and her hands slipped around his chest, pulling him close to her, she remembered the feeling of his body, like his whole body had been engrained into her memory, imprinted for safe keeping and to hold onto when he wasn’t around. She didn’t know how to explain it, but everything she had inside of her was begging for more from him.
She knew there would never be a day she didn’t want to have him around. There was never going to be a day she didn’t think about all the time she wanted to have him with her. Their lips locked together and their bodies hugged together, tightly embraced with passion and lust spilling over onto each other.
She parted her lips and felt his tongue, the familiar taste and power of it was everything she had been dreaming of and wanting. This was what she had craved and hungered for when she had been apart from him.
She hadn’t dated a single guy.
His presence in her mind had been so potent that she knew she was never going to want to be with another guy for the rest of her life. She had hated him so boldly and so passionately there was no room for love or interest with anyone else.
All she had inside of her was a fiery heart that vowed to have its revenge and she knew she was going to try and take it for everything that she needed. There was no way he was ever going to escape from her and she was going to make certain that all of that passion and hatred was going to be taken away from her and transformed. She wanted to be given new life.
His hands ran over her body and she felt him pulling at her clothes. She glanced down and made certain Blake was fast asleep and facing away from them. Vincenzo noticed her unease and motioned toward the bathroom. Part of her was nervous about it, but she knew they were safe.
Vincenzo would know long before anyone arrived if they were in danger or not. There was no way anyone was going to sneak up on them. She wanted to make sure that Blake would be safe, though.
Guiding her into the bathroom, she smiled at him as she dropped her shirt and stood in front of him with her bra on. She had just barely been cleared for sex and when her doctor had told her, she had laughed her heart out. There was nothing farther from her mind.
The hours at the gym she had taken when Greta was just getting used to Blake had paid off and when she stood in front of him, she felt defeated, but she felt better than she had once upon a time.
“Listen to me,” he said to her with all seriousness in his voice. “I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen an ocean of women across a desert of time, farther and longer than you can imagine. I know beauty and you have true beauty, Shantal.”
She blushed at that and as he leaned in and kissed her, she wasn’t so afraid of all of it. She let all of her worries and anxiety melt away and she knew she was going to be cared for and tenderly loved by this man. There was nothing she had to be afraid of. As he kissed her and caressed her body, she wanted more and more from him, knowing that she could have everything that she ever desired again.
This was the magical moment when she knew she was luckier than any other woman in the world. This was the second chance she had secretly desired since his departure. Underneath all of that rage and hatred, she knew she wanted him and was hungry for him.
Reaching down, she could feel the heat and warmth of his cock through his pants and knew it would be the only part of him smoldering and smoking with how hot and powerful it was. She took a deep breath and pictured it in her mind, a long shaft of marble that was more than she could ever desire.
As she stroked it, she could feel how hard it was and she craved it. She wanted more and more of it and there was no hiding from it. She couldn’t run away from these emotions and she couldn’t hide from them. She wanted it more and more with every sensation that rippled through her fingers. This was all she wanted and she knew there was only one thing to do. She had to take it and she had to own it. This was hers and she was never going to give it up again.
Dropping to her knees, she pulled down his pants and looked at his long cock as it fell free, sticking out at her and she remembered how long and thick it was. It was the most potent and powerful thing she could ever remember and she was ready to take it for herself again.
Sticking out her tongue, she placed it gently on the tip of his cock and circled it, looking up at him as he reacted to the powerful sensation rippling through him. She knew he wanted more from her and that this was the great feeling he was hungry for.
As she licked him, she stroked his cock, making sure it was getting the full attention it deserved. She wanted to keep giving it to him and as she wrapped her lips around his shaft, she felt it inside of her mouth and loved every second of it.
She didn’t know she could crave something like this, but as she slowly began to work her head back and forth, licking his cock, she knew he was going to love this and she was going to love it too. It was a strange feeling, but the thought of giving him delight and euphoria was something deeply erotic to her.
She wanted to keep giving it to him. She reached up and cupped his balls in her hands, fondling them and holding them. She felt powerful with them in her hand as she played with them and gauged his reaction. He was liking it and she was going to keep giving it to him.
She started going faster and faster as she could hear him moaning and whispering about how great it was. She wanted them to be quiet and make sure Blake wasn’t going to wake up during it. But, she couldn’t help herself. She wanted him to keep going for it and keep liking it.
She wanted him to beg for more and never want another woman, for the rest of his immortal life, to ever wrap her lips around his cock again. She watched him as he tossed back his head and moaned, unleashing everything he had into the back of her mouth.
By the time she was standing, he was starting to recover. The expression on his face was dazed and confused, but she knew she could get him back up and ready in no time. He was a mythical and immortal creature. As she worked his cock, stroking it and bringing it back to life, she pulled down her pants and her thong and turned around for him to take her from behind.
She was ready to have him fuck her doggy style and she was eager for it. They were going to have to wait for something more intimate. This was about heat and passion. This was about getting what was caught up inside of them out of their system once and for all.
As his cock began to swell more and more, she looked into the mirror and saw only herself. She knew that she had seen finer days and that she was tired and exhausted looking, but she was going to make sure there were many more, better days for him to remember her by in the future. She would look like a goddess to him when this was all settled.
She felt the tip of his cock pressing against the threshold of her pussy and she began to moan and squirm. She had been begging for this for months now and she knew she was never going to get it from another man. She was never going to have this kind of pleasure or feel anything like this inside of her again. She wanted to make sure it lasted and that she could enjoy it for the rest of her days.
He pushed inside of her, deeper and deeper, expanding her pussy to fit the head of his cock. She moaned and screamed, clutching the sink as she begged for more of it. She remembered he could read her thoughts and she wondered what he was thinking right now, what he was reading from her as she begged for more in the depths of her pussy.
Whether he could hear her thoughts over his own euphoria or not, he pushed deeper and deeper inside of her until she was practically begging for him to go in more. He pushed all the way to the depths of her and she gasped, feeling him pushing hard against her.
When he began to pull out, she felt his hands reaching around and clamping down on her breast, holding her close to him and picking up the pace. He began to drive in harder and faster for her and she loved every second of it. She felt like everything inside of her was getting reorganized and rearranged by him.
She felt like her whole body had been neglected since he had last touched her and she was finally getting the treatment she had hungered for. She wanted more and more from him and he kept giving it to her.
She was gasping and shaking, holding fast against the sink as she began to feel the glowing light deep inside of her, building and building. She could feel the orgasm coming for her and she was ready for it. Oh god, it had been so long and it had been so good when she had it last time that she wanted more and more of it. She never wanted to go back to the way things used to be or the way she might have lived.
She wanted him inside of her from this day on and she wanted to have orgasms with his hard cock inside of her. She begged him for more, gasping and pleading as his enormous cock kept plunging back inside of her harder and deeper than she could have imagined. This was everything she had ever wanted and everything she was going to have for the rest of her life.
When it finally hit her, it was with the force of an atomic bomb and she felt like she was weak all of a sudden, like there was no way she was ever going to be able to stand. He held her tight and unleashed everything he had left inside of her and she was glad they both hit the same point at the same time.
There was something romantic about it to her and as she collapsed into his arms, he carried her to the bed. Every place he touched her on her body felt too excited and too sensitive for him to be holding her. She wanted to push him away and drive him back, but she loved it too much.
She loved the feeling of his arms around her and she loved the idea that she was going to be able to have him for the rest of her life. She smiled at him as he placed her on the bed effortlessly and looked at her with his dark eyes full of passion and love.
She felt like he was really looking at her and that no one had ever seen her with those eyes before in her life. She felt like she was the luckiest woman alive and that there was no one out there who was going to experience what she had just experienced from him.
“I missed you,” he said to her and there was something in his voice that made her think it was the most honest thing her ears had ever heard. She stared at him and wasn’t sure what she was going to say to that. What could she say to that?
“I think I missed you too,” she said honestly, knowing he would find out about the truth sooner or later. “I spent so much time hating you that I couldn’t think of anything other than hating you. There was so much rage inside of me I think it was true love that had gotten spoiled and started to decay inside of me. There was no escaping it and it just hurt too much. I just wanted you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said with a face that was void of any kind of joy or emotion.
She looked at him and felt sorry she had turned this on him and that tried to be so hateful and mean to him. She felt bad that she had turned everything against him and that she had been the villain of his story when he was looking for the lover he had probably been dreaming about for so long.
She had dangerously treated him like a villain when he was truly trying to be a hero and she thought about all the things she had let run through her mind when she had been near him. She thought about all the evil and vicious things she had thought about him when she first saw him in the street.
She thought about how horrible it must have been for him to hear those things and to know that all of his good deeds were gone and she was never going to want to hear about anything he’d done or waste another moment of her life with him from that moment onward.
She thought about how badly she must have hurt him and how it must have driven him insane. She thought about all the pain and all the sorrow that must have been inside of him. She was responsible for that and she was the one who had hurt him.
It was in that moment that she realized something. The first thing that she realized was that he was hearing all of this and he could tell everything that was going on inside of her head and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.
The other thing she realized was that while he could hear all of this and tell what she was thinking, he never once interrupted her and he never once tried to change her thoughts. Instead, she was left to reason it all out and come to the conclusions she needed to without him constantly meddling and adding his two cents.
But more importantly than that, she realized in that moment that something needed to happen, because she was a house divided and she was a soul that couldn’t take the turmoil of being split all the time and she was going to have to make a decision.
She was going to have to come to terms with something in her soul and she knew it was going to be hard to accept. The truth was, she was going to have to forgive him, because she was in love with him.
*
