
To Kill a Vampire

Book 1

By Rachel E Rice

Copyright by Rachel E Rice 2018

# Table of Contents

Copyright Page

To Kill a Vampire

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Historical Romance

Contemporary Romance

Erotic Romance

Stand Alone New Adult Romance
Author's Note:

If you haven't read the Soul of a Vampire books one two and three, they're on sale for a low price. The books should be read in order. Enjoy and sign up to my newsletter for coming attractions, cover reveals, and free giveaways. You can always contact me at rachelerice04@gmail.com and I promise you I will answer your emails. Please leave a review if you enjoyed the books and try my vampire box sets or bundles. You can find most of my books have 1st in a series free at most vendors. "Passion is a Great Love Story. Go to my website  for cover reveals and chapters before the books are published and you can sign up directly for the latest from Rachel E Rice.

Covers by James at: AEP Book Covers

For a Free first book in my latest Vampire Series I Am the Night go to your vendor of choice. Enjoy! Read both series in this bundle by Rachel E Rice

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# Copyright

Copyright (C) 2018 by Rachel E Rice

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. No reproduction of this book part or whole is permitted. This book should not be scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without the author's permission.

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# Chapter One

Dakota

My eyes are heavy, and the pillow my head is resting on is hard. My hands feel as if something is holding them down. I glance around the room. I don't recognize anything. Not the small bed with crisp white sheets binding me where I can't move my feet. I try to kick at the tucked sheets, but my legs feel as if they are weighted down by dumbbells.

This room is empty. Where is my bookcase which holds all my books? Where are my books? I need to read. Reading makes me happy. Reading takes me away into someone's mind besides my own. I feel different when I'm reading. I feel alive, and I don't worry about much. I don't think about the students who look at me as if I'm a freak for wanting to make A's.

This can't be school, I have to go to school, I tell myself. How am I to keep my grade point average up if I'm lying here, doing nothing and not studying?

I'm not at home. I'm not in school. Where am I?

And what am I doing in a room that looks like a jail cell? Not that I've ever seen the inside of one, but this could be one. Where are my parents? I know that I have parents and why would they leave me here?

This doesn't make sense. I shut my eyes tight hoping when I open them this will have been a dream. I take a long breath and open them, and nothing has changed except I hear a noise coming from somewhere and I don't know exactly where. It sounds like someone is stirring. Maybe now I can get some answers. I hear the shuffling of feet. However, I don't have the energy to raise up and see who's coming close to me.

All I remember was taking a shower in my restroom and waking up inside of this room. I yell because I need answers, but my voice is fragile and fades with each word. "Where am I? Where are my parents? I know you're there. Say something."

"You're in a hospital in the mental ward." It's the voice of a young man.

"What am I doing in this place?" I ask.

"You must have tried to kill yourself," the voice said. The sound is coming from somewhere in the next cell or room across from mine.

"But I wouldn't do that, would I?" I try hard to remember things and I can't. At this point, I can't remember my name.

"How the fuck should I know," the boy says to me. It jars me, and I try to sit up and see who's using that gross word. "I'm not a doctor. I'm here just like you. All I know about this place is that this is where they bring you if you tried to kill yourself. I tried the same thing but it didn't work, and here I am."

Maybe I'm dead, I thought. I don't know if I want to be around this boy. He sounds so cynical. But this place doesn't look like anything I've heard or read about if I were dead.

"I can't move," I said to the young critical voice coming from the other room.

"They probably heavily medicated you. The nurses will be in shortly to check on you, give you some food, watch you take a shower, and then they'll send you to be tested and then to counseling and then more pills until..."

Listening to him is painful, so I interrupt him because I can't stand to hear more. I'm still not convinced that I where he says I am. "Then can I go home?"

"How the fuck should I know? Like I said, I'm no doctor." The boy's voice cracked with a tone of annoyance. The kind of voice you hear when teenage boys are turning into men. One minute their voices are high and the next day you talk to them it has deepened.

"How long have you been in here?" I ask him.

A few moments of silence pass as if he's trying to remember but gives up and says, "I don't know." I hear the sadness in his voice, and I wonder if that's the fate that's waiting for me. Being in an institution long enough to forget the days and months and maybe years.

"How old are you and what's your name?" I ask him because I need more information to determine if this is real or in my imagination.

"I'm eighteen. My name is Elliot. That's all I can tell you. They don't want us to discuss our personal information with anyone." As I listened, I thought about how old I am. I'm eighteen and I will soon be nineteen. I will graduate from high school if I can get back there.

I'm his age, maybe older but my mother kept me back because she said I wasn't matured enough to start school and she couldn't bear to have me leave her so early. She homed schooled me and then sent me to elementary school. I remember some things now. I wondered how many more teens were in this place.

"Elliot, do you always follow the staff's and doctors' rules?"

"No. I don't follow anyone's rules. Maybe that's why I'm still in here."

"But it's more than that isn't it?"

"Yeah. I guess so. I tried to kill myself three times before and didn't succeed. I think they put me in this facility to prevent me from doing that again. But if you want to do something you'll find a way." His voice trails off as if he's still considering that option.

"What was wrong with you?" I asked him.

"Don't you mean what is wrong with me?" He pauses and then says, "Nothing is wrong with me," as if he's not sure if there's something wrong with him. "Except," he breathes out hard and pauses again as if he's thinking about why he should reveal to a stranger his innermost secret.

"I made the mistake of telling my parents that I was gay and that I was seeing visions at night. I said people were coming into my room at night. Big mistake. They took me for counseling."

"Oh," I said. My voice rises.

"I'm not gay, I just wanted to get their attention. The gay part didn't upset them, they took that calm enough. It was when I said I was seeing vampires that my parents freaked out. The vampires were coming into my room at night and sucking my blood especially that female. I can't remember her name, but she was beautiful and sexy. For a teenage boy, you know how that can be."

"No, I don't know," I said to him because honestly, I didn't have a clue.

His voice, conversational, as if he believed what he was saying and that I would understand since I was in the same place maybe for the same reason. But we weren't the same. I didn't try to kill myself because of vampires. And everyone who's sane knows that there are no such things as vampires. That convinced me that I wasn't dead and there is no way I should be here in this hospital at least not in a mental ward.

"I can see how that would unnerve them because there are no vampires," I said to Elliot. I was trying to do what his parents and counselors couldn't accomplish. Teenagers see things different from parents and adults. Our brains function differently and maybe if I told him that he would believe me, but he appeared confident that they did exist.

"That's what you think." He gave a small laugh. "They're all over. Everywhere. Even here in this hospital, and I want to get out of this place before they kill me."

"I thought you wanted to die?"

"I did. But when I was tested for schizophrenia and other things, the doctors said nothing was wrong with me, and they sent me home, and that's when I realized that I wasn't nuts and what was coming into my room at night was real. I tried to kill myself once more because I don't want to become one of those undead things. I would rather die." There was a brief silence. "And you, what's your story. What's your name and how old are you?"

"My name's Dakota, and I'm eighteen just like you. A senior in high school. But I'm turning nineteen in June. Mother held me back because of maturity issues, and I don't have a story. I can't remember any more than that, now. Maybe it will come back to me, but I don't remember trying to commit suicide."

"When we get out of here how about you and me hooking up and go to the movies or something," Elliot said. "But you can't tell the counselors because we aren't allowed to make connections in or out of this place. Don't tell your parents either."

And that's when I remembered that I didn't tell my parents what was going on with me. I didn't eat much or sleep well. Now I vaguely remember taking my mother's meds and waking up in here.

"I wasn't trying to kill myself, I was trying to sleep at night," I said. And like Elliot, I saw things too. There were some things familiar between us. People coming into my room at night and standing over my bed. I thought it was hallucinations because I couldn't sleep.

"Did you have bruises on your body and were you sleeping at night?" I asked Elliot.

"How could I sleep? I had bruises and cuts like I was cutting myself. I wasn't cutting myself, the vampires were doing that to extract blood and then sucking it from my arms, legs, and wrists. When the doctors examined me, I tried to tell them that I didn't cut myself that the vampires did that." If I were Elliot's parents, and he told me that far-fetched story, I would probably send him away, too. I could see why he was here but me, I didn't understand yet.

Looking up at the lights, I began to feel the medication wear off and feelings coming back to my hands and legs. And my memory returning slowly with the help of Elliot talking to me.

"I remember something now, Elliot. I think the same things were happening to me, but I had small bruises on my neck, but there was this handsome man who came to me at night. I thought it was a sexual dream. You know the kind when you are teens, and you don't know what's happening to your body. He told me that I had to do something and I can't remember what it was."

"Don't worry after you get out of here and stop with the medication everything will be clear. It happened to me. Because I hid my meds and didn't take them, I saw what was making a nightly visit. That time I caught the female vampire cutting me, and I ran to wake my parents, and they dismissed my accusations as delusions brought on by the medicine. I told them that I wasn't taking my medication. And that's when my mother began hiding the knives and razor blades. Isn't that stupid. If I wanted to get a knife or razor, I could easily get one without them knowing. All I wanted was for them to believe me and take me away where the vampires couldn't find me."

"When I get out of here and if you're out, we're going to find those vampires, and we're going to kill them," I said to Elliot. It was the only thing I could think of to say to calm him.

I didn't know why I said that, but it sounds as if it was something I could do. Not only was Elliot being tormented by vampires, I realized that I was being plagued by them as well to the point where we were willing to kill ourselves to get away from them. I had finally found a reason or excuse for my torment. But in the back of my mind, I thought the thing about vampires was an outrageous idea, but I had bought into it with the help of Elliot. He appeared convinced that they existed.

Maybe we were both mental cases.

It became clear to me and then I thought, we really have to kill some vampires if we are to live, whether it was true or not, we had to rid ourselves of our demons whether real or imaginary.

There was a long silence between us. I sat up in bed, put my feet on the cold hard floor and crouched down and rested my back against the bed and wrapped my arms around my legs. "What school do you attend?" I asked Elliot.

"Holy Cross."

"That's my school. Holy shit. Imagine that," I said and placed my hands over my mouth.

"There are a few more students here from Holy Cross. They're seeing things at night, and no one believes them. And they're trying to commit suicide just like us and probably for the same reasons, but they don't talk to me. They're in another ward. You and I are the only ones here for some reason. Those kids in the other wards follow the rules. Sometimes you have to break the rules to survive. You've made me want to survive, Dakota. Do you think we can really kill those vampires?"

I didn't have any answers yet. Elliot held on to my words as if they were gold.

"Yes. Do everything your parents and the doctors ask of you, and I'll see you at school. It's our last year. We can meet up and make plans." And I laid back and relaxed and waited. My blood had been tainted with the pills I had taken, maybe that's why the vampires left me alone, I soon realized. "Take your meds. That will keep the vampires at bay. They want pureblood."

"How do you know all these things?"

I hunched my shoulders, "I don't know. I just know."

"I think someone is coming. I have to go and talk to the counselor. Today my parents are coming for a visit, and I have to convince them that I'm not going to try to do anything to harm myself. Wish me luck."

Hearing a key open his door, I lay in that bed and tried to figure out how I knew about the medicine in the blood. Then remembered that I read about how medication which when taken can cause different reactions in some people, and because of my small, undernourished body, medicine will enter the bloodstream quickly.

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# Chapter Two

When I finally returned home after a two week's rest, I was behind in my classes, and my perfect grades became contaminated with two B's. I had no problem with that because I brought that on myself and I had only myself to blame.

Elliot must have gotten out because I didn't hear from him after a few days. I missed him for some reason. And that handsome vampire stopped making his nightly visit to my bedside because at the hospital I was heavily medicated.

The vampire or whatever that was would come to my home if he had nefarious intentions for me. With my visit to the mental hospital and the counselor, the doctors had me medicated for weeks with their prescriptions. I noticed that there were no more visits and somehow my theories were right. However, correlation doesn't mean causation. Taking medication had nothing to do with the vampires leaving me alone. But I was happy I could get to sleep at night and pleased for the rest I got from the medicine prescribed, but I wished the doctors were on the same page.

One doctor recommended medication, and another suggested that medicine wasn't necessary. So I took my wellbeing into my hands. After an appointment with the counselor with me talking about vampires, she gave me two different medications.

I would take the meds before going to sleep and like that, I would be knocked out and my bloodstream would be filled with toxins that appeared to ward off the vampire and would work like garlic. Some books I read said garlic is good. Maybe I should have worn a necklace of garlic but the stink would have made me nauseous, and I'm sure that would keep me awake. So I stuck with the meds which had me walking around calm like someone who had a permanent grin on their face.

My mother scurried around the house checking the bathroom whenever I took a shower and hiding sharp objects as if she thought that would deter me from doing something stupid like going into her medicine cabinet. She would hide the medication, and I had to ask her for it and a knife whenever I ate a juicy steak. Then she would watch me as if I was about to jump out of a window at any moment or find some other way to end it all, but that wasn't what I was trying to do. Not like Elliot.

I wanted a good night's rest. I tried to explain that to my mother, but she insisted that I see a doctor who could help me with my delusional sightings of vampires.

She found me in the bathroom lying cold that night, spread out on the floor, with earbuds listing to my favorite song. After they rushed me to the hospital, I explained to my mother and father that I just needed some sleep, but she didn't believe me, and she and my father rushed me to another hospital. I hadn't taken enough pills to kill myself, which should have told her it was an accident.

She blamed herself for my foolhardiness and lack of judgment. It was an extreme way to solve a simple problem of sleeping. The elimination of a vampire would be a more difficult matter to resolve.

While at the hospital they recommended me to a therapist and after I explained that it was people coming to my room and walking around my bed who kept me up at nights, the counselor recommended a mental hospital, and it was there I got the best sleep of my life.

After my mother felt she had done the right thing for me, and with her feeling guilty about who knows what, she brought me home.

I tried to explain to her that it wasn't her fault but mine. I could have confided in her earlier about my lack of sleep and worries over getting a scholarship to go to college in California, but I chose not to. Just like I chose not to mention the vampires. The counselor must have broken her oath and revealed that.

****

It was a mild, overcast day when I dressed and my mother drove me to school that morning. She had spoken about buying me a car but seeing a psychiatrist put that on hold. It had something to do with not having that covered on their insurance.

After two weeks away from school, I felt different and happy to get school over with and get on with my life.

But the moment I stepped out of the car and walked into school all eyes were following me. Teachers and students whispering to each other about what had happened. You tell one friend, and that's it the whole world knows. I stiffened up and went on with my day.

Finding that I had to defend myself from class to class, I looked them in the eyes and said, "What?" This went on for most of the day, but as the day came to a close, hardly anyone noticed me. I was determined to stay in school and face everyone, and when I graduated I was going to California, and I didn't have to look at my classmates or this small town anymore and have them whisper behind my back and look at me as if I committed murder.

On my way to my advance chemistry class, with my head down and clutching my books, I ran into Elliot. I didn't recognize him. His straight blond hair had grown long, and he had a small goatee. You could hardly see the goatee because of the fine blond hair on his chin. With his light hair and blue eyes, he looked at you, and you could swear he was reading your mind.

With Elliot's rail thin body and pale skin, he had the appearance of a dead man walking. His pants fell from his small waist, and he had to hold on to them to keep them from falling off.

"Can't you put a belt on those pants?" He had probably heard that before because he turned with his forehead furrowed and a piercing stare.

Our eyes met, "Oh shit. It's you, Dakota." His voice light and warm. "I thought I would never see you again," he said to me.

We hugged long as some students passed staring at us. We were indeed an odd couple. I was the class genius. He was the weirdest boy in the school who had a laugh that was nasal and loud. That is whenever he laughed, and that wasn't often. I had heard about him before I met him at the hospital, never thinking that I could befriend him at any time at Holy Cross.

It was a small school, but the gossip was, and I never thought I would find myself embracing this strange boy, but I was more than happy to see him.

"Do you have any more classes?" Elliot asked after breaking our embrace.

"No. I'm finished for the day."

"Good, because we need to talk," he said. He took my arm and led me through the hall and through a swarm of talkative girls who turned to watch us stroll out of the school chatting and laughing together. He held my hand and led me out the door, down the steps and outside. Then he stopped at the entrance to the parking lot. "Do you know why those students are watching us?"

"Maybe because they heard we were in a mental hospital?" I said as we wandered into the parking lot.

"No one knows about you, but the entire school knows that I've been there more times than I can count."

I stopped. "I think you're wrong. I told my friend Paige, and she's a known gossip. She can't help herself." Looking around, I asked, "Do you have a car?"

"Yes. It's over there." He pointed to a new black Jeep Wrangler, and we hurried over to it to get out of the drizzling rain. He hit a button and opened the door, and we climbed in.

"Like your car. It still has that new smell," I said as I dropped my backpack in the rear. "Where are we going?" The car started up, and he roared out of the student parking lot.

"To the Park. We can talk there without anyone hearing us or pointing at us. So distracting," Elliot said and flashed me a smile. He needed to smile more. It's engaging with his straight polished teeth. But now wasn't the time to tell him that. As he drove, I watched at him. He looked confident and mature. It suited him.

"I'm going to get in a run after I call my mother," I said to Elliot as my eyes roamed his face and then his arms. He had on a short tee shirt covering his wiry arms where I could see the razor marks. He wore them like a badge of courage.

"Does your mother monitor you?" Elliot asked.

I shrugged in his direction and said, "A tracker on my phone, but I disable it if I want. I don't want to worry her, and besides, I have nowhere to go. Only one friend, Paige," he glanced over to me. "And now you." I scanned his face to see if he agreed. He said nothing but smiled.

"After we jog, I need to show you something." I glance at him as he turned out of the parking lot and headed for the nearest park. He watched the road intently ahead, and he never turned his face in my direction because of the rain. I didn't know he was such a careful driver. It went against the notion of him wanting to die.

"The overcast sky makes me nervous. I notice that when it rains and gets dark early, I get a visit at night from my female vampire." He said that as if it's a family pet. A dog that wanders into his room at night and crawls into bed beside him. I wondered if he has a dog. Maybe not. I don't think he can have a dog and a vampire at the same time.

"That's strange because my vampire is a man," I said to Elliot.

"My vampire is a female, and she looks just like my therapist. When my parents are in the sessions with me, I tell them it's her. She's the one who visits me at night. Then everyone laughs. Everyone but me. That's how it's been going. Me telling them she's a vampire, the therapist laughs and suggests another stay in the hospital for another six months, and I come out paler and smaller and sickly than before I went in. But I'm turning eighteen in two days, and I can stop going to that therapist, and they can't make me."

Elliot turned and glanced in my direction because now it's not raining as hard. The sound of wipers scrubbing the window is all that we hear through the silence in the car.

He soon glances over at me as I watch the rain falling lightly. The sky darkened ahead as if a sign of what's to come. "How's it going with you?"

"Good. I'm good," I say.

"You don't sound like it's all that great." I turn and watch out at the homes as we pass and wonder what's going on in that neighborhood behind those walls. The wipers stop and start up again responding to small drops of rainwater on the glass.

Turning to Elliot, I admit something I didn't divulge before. "The only thing I had was my dreams and that vampire who visited me in my dreams."

"It wasn't a dream." His voice is low and dangerous. His forehead furrows.

"I think I liked the idea of him in my room. For some reason, I felt safe with him. He never tried to harm me. He just stood and looked down at me. But he doesn't come anymore since I've been taking my medication. I was thinking of stopping it all together."

Elliot came to an abrupt stop at a stop sign. "You can't do that." Horns began blaring. He started the car up and pulled into the park and stopped. "It was you who figured out that we had to take the meds to keep them at bay. So don't go and do something dumb. We're in this together now." I agreed and opened the door and hopped out of the car.

"I'll be back in a minute. It won't take long. Are you coming?" I said looking behind me.

"Only if we walk. I'm losing weight fast, and I know what's causing it, but I don't know what to do."

"Are you taking your medication?"

"I couldn't stand to walk around like a zombie, so I cut down on the strong meds." I turned to him.

"That's the only thing that will stop those vampires. You have to take the full dose. Since no one believes us, we have to save ourselves. Start retaking your meds as prescribed and when we get back to the car, I have a bottle of holy water in my backpack. You can have it. I can get more." Elliot smiled at me.

"Do you think the Holy water will work?" I nodded yes to him. "You really are serious about this. So you believe me."

"Yes, but I needed someone to remind me that this is serious, and we have to remind each other what's at stake. Our lives. We haven't started to live our lives. I want to fall in love and grow old with the man I love."

We ambled around the jogging track in the rain and ended up back where the car was parked. We clambered into the Jeep and drove off to get a pizza. After buying the pizza, we took it to Elliot's house.

"Where are your parents?" I asked looking around as he drove into his five-car garage that held more than four cars. I had never seen an array of expensive cars before. There were two BMW's and two sporty Mercedes and exotic cars I didn't know existed. He pulled his Wrangler next to a classic black BMW.

"They're away. I live in the basement, but when I turn eighteen, I'm getting my own place away from Seattle and away from here. I don't know where I'm going just far enough away. I'll probably enroll in college in California," he said as we climbed the stairs and then entered into the mudroom only to descend the stairs to a large room.

"This is where I hide out."

He dropped the pizza on the countertop. "I want to go to California," I said sitting down at the bar and looking around at the family pictures and the large television hanging on the wall.

"Why would you want to leave here? Your basement is almost as large as my parent's home."

"My parents are always going to Europe and leaving me alone, and as you can see, I don't have any friends. Well, maybe one." I give him a closed smile in agreement.

"Even though they think you will kill yourself, and find you dead when they return? I wish my parents would go someplace. They smother me with their love."

"I think they hope I do something quick because they get tired of picking me up from the mental ward. They said they were tired of their vacations being interrupted by my stunts. I tried talking to them, but no one believes there's a female vampire who visits me at night and cuts my arms and legs and sucks my blood. Look at me, Dakota." He turns his arms over, and his wrists are facing me, and some marks look like teeth imprints hidden deep inside the healed scars from a razor. "Do you think I want to look like this?" And he raises his shirt and pants leg. The bite marks are noticeable, and there's a line in the back of his legs.

Not knowing Elliot well enough, I couldn't give him an answer. I picked up a slice of pepperoni pizza and ate it. Drank a Mountain Dew and relaxed and talked with Elliot.

"I've seen you before that day in the ward."

"Where?"

"At our prom."

"Did you go alone?" I asked him.

"Pretty much. I stood in the corner watching everyone laughing and dancing."

"You were the one," I said pointing my finger at him. He shook his head saying yes. "You were the students and my friend Paige were discussing. I had forgotten that." I stared at him seeing him for the first time.

"What did they say about me?"

"That you were weird." They said much more, but I didn't want to ruin the night by telling him all that negative shit some teenagers discuss when their targets aren't listening. I didn't want to wipe that warm smile from his sad face.

It was the first time I had a chance to laugh about anything, too. Afterward, he drove me home, and that night I fell into a deep, restful sleep. The world could have come to an end, and I didn't give a care.

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# Chapter Three

I knew I was different from the time I could talk and walk. I had this weird feeling that I wasn't like my parents that my DNA was different from theirs, but I had nothing to substantiate my claim.

Asking my parents questions about how I looked and thought and my interest in dead things didn't make a difference because they knew. They knew much more than I did since they were my parents. My mother said, "Those are not questions to ask loving parents who nurtured you and protected you since birth."

All I wanted to know was if I had been adopted. I felt adopted. Not because my parents treated me different but because I looked different from my father. He had dark hair and dark eyes, and my mother had the same. Their body shapes different from mine. They were more buxom and heavy-set. I on the other hand as thin as a rail. Now that is no reason to suspect that I was adopted, but it was curious.

And my mother would say, "You're special." I knew that was a code word for something, and I didn't know what. From the stories told to me over the years, I was their only child. I had been born to them in my mother's change of life at the age of fifty. My mother and father tried to have children, and I came when they least expected or had all but given up on the task.

When I announced to them that I wanted to go away to college in California, they were heartbroken. My mother couldn't stand to see me go away and leave her. On my graduation from high school and prom night she sat down to talk with me, and I knew then I would get answers to questions that had plagued me throughout my life.

"I have so much to tell you," she said holding my hand as she sat on my bed. I stood nervously ready to bolt out of the room because I didn't want to hear anything about the birds and the bees as my father would say or anything that would mess up my night and confuse me for a lifetime. Maybe she thought that tonight was the best time and since I had turned eighteen, she had better give me some answers to my questions I had posed to her over the years.

"Look, mother, I already know." I cringed every time she tried to entertain the subject of sex. You just don't want to have your sixty eight-year-old mother tell you about sex on the night of the prom. She probably couldn't remember the last time she had sex, and besides, things had changed from the time she and my father had been young and got it on in the back seat of their car or a motel room. Now we go in groups to the prom if we go at all. The only thing that will be happening is a lot of drinking and getting sick.

"But you don't know about this. Your father and I won't be around to guide you, and we are getting old." I didn't want to hear that either on the night I would feel free and happy to get out of the house with some friends. I thought it would be easy growing up with older parents, but they were doting over me and watched me and had way too much time to devote to my upbringing.

"What I want to say is that you are special."

"I know that mom. You've told me that a thousand times." I turn away from her and roll my eyes. What eighteen years old wants to know that she's special? Special comes with lots of responsibility. That means that she's easy to break and must be held to a different standard than a plain old regular teenager. I had been protected all my life and told how special I was, and this was getting old, too old, too fast.

My mother stood and adjusted my dress, and that's when she saw the tattoo on my back and wrist. She pretended that she didn't notice it. She pretended that she didn't notice the pink streak I had sprayed on a strand of hair in the front covering my eye. A blind man would have seen that but she pretended that it wasn't there. And I pretended that it wasn't there also.

She was good at that, pretending, I mean. And for some reason, I got into that mode of pretense. What else could you do when you're sheltered? Your father or mother brings you to school when you're in elementary and perhaps middle school, but high school, and that's when they had crossed the line. But they nevertheless did just that, and they would have brought me to the prom if I hadn't put my foot down. I think they were exhausted from protecting their special child.

Turning to me and taking my hands once more, she said, "Look at you. You're so beautiful, and I want to see you as happy as you are now. But I don't want to alarm you because once I tell you this, it will change your life." I had never heard my mother's voice sound dire as it did at that moment. It was as if she was telling me that I was adopted and that I wasn't hers or my fathers. I suspected that, but I never wanted her to say those words.

She pulled me down as she sat me on the bed next to her. I wanted her to get to the point because I couldn't stand this any longer. My leg shook from nervousness. My girlfriend Paige and her friends would be arriving soon. I didn't want to be late because my father would meet them and give them a lecture about sex and say Fuck too many times and everyone would laugh at me and my last few weeks of school would suck big time when the gossip mongers got a hold to it.

They would know that I never had sex and was still a virgin which wasn't as great as it was in my mother's time. I was looked on as a loser and geek who couldn't get a boyfriend, but I could get straight A's. I never did have a boyfriend in school, and I would have been a loser if I didn't hang with my friend, Paige, who was considered the slut of our graduating class and she wore that label like she had gotten an Olympian medal for ice skating.

Having a distinction as being a virgin didn't hold the same meaning it had years ago where a girl wanted to protect that unique part of her, and if I'm special, it's because I am still a virgin where ninety-nine percent of my graduating class wasn't. And the other one percent were known sexting addicts.

"Mom. Get to the point." I wore this bored sour look on my face. "Paige and my friends are coming, and I don't want dad to know."

"Yes. OK. I'm glad you said that. Dad is not your father." Did I need to know that now before I have to leave for the prom? And just like that I dismissed it and pretended that she never said that my father wasn't my father. I knew how to departmentalize, and now the only thing that was on my mind was the prom and drinking and coming home late and pretending I never heard that last part.

I stood and walked to the window and looked out praying that the stretch limo would come soon. I heard my mother say something. "Dakota, your father was a known vampire hunter. He came from a long line of vampire hunters. And he made me promise that I would give you his kit on your graduation night."

"Yeah, yeah mom whatever. Vampire hunter." I'm looking out the window and searching for that car and praying it would drive up soon. I turn to her and she has this old leather case. "Just put it there and I'll look into it when I have time. You know I have this internship at the hospital Monday, and I have to concentrate on that. I'll get around to it."

"Don't forget to go through it because it has important instructions from your father." Then I heard her for the first time.

"Did you say that I had another father?" She shook her head. "What happened to my real father?" I asked not paying attention just keeping her talking, so she doesn't tell me some dumb shit about sex. I wasn't really listening. As far as I was concerned the father she spoke about now wasn't a father.

I didn't know this man, but the man who brought me to soccer practice, the man who bought me musical instruments when I said I wanted to play in the band. The man who brought me to acting classes on Saturdays when I thought I wanted to be an actress and hugged me and comforted me when a boy turned me down when I said I liked him, now that was my father. And the one waiting to lecture my friends in his underwear, he's my real father.

The man who worried about me and stayed up with me when I was sick, this is the man I consider my father, and that's why I pretended what my mother said didn't happen.

When I saw that white limo turn the corner, I jumped up and down for more than one reason. "Mom they're here, and I have to get out before father goes out to the limo."

"I understand," she said. And I rushed out the door and down the stairs before my father could get out of his favorite chair.

--------

When my father realized that I had bounded down the stairs, zoomed past him, out the door, and sitting in the limo when he showed up at the foot of the steps, he stood to wave. Sweat beaded on my forehead and my breath had quickened. "Driver go." The driver pulled off with my father walking slow to the curb still waving.

When the limo's motor started up, and it launched forward down the street, my father turned with a disappointed sigh and climbed the stairs and closed the door.

He wasn't waving goodbye but for us to wait until he hobbled up to the car door to give us a lecture. At eighteen and nineteen we didn't want to hear any more speeches especially for someone who could have been our grandparent.

"That bad?" Paige said. She shrugged her shoulders and straightened out my blue dress which had been a little short, but too long for her, with not enough of my breast showing. "Why do you insist on covering up the things that make men want to look at you?" She tried to pull the front of my dress down, but my bra kept showing and she gave up after a few minutes.

"They have my face to look at."

"It's not the face that men are interested in and it's not your mind."

The girls and guys gazed over at me with an intense glare once they heard Paige. They knew my story, and they were pretending that they didn't notice anything unusual. Maybe Paige had threatened to tell their secrets if they weren't nice to me.

The conversation between six of them continued, and over their discussion, Paige asked, "What's wrong with you, Dakota?"

"I can't take this any longer."

"I'm glad you said that because now is the best time I can ask you. You know you're my best friend in all the world." I listened wondering where she was going with this conversation. "You know I don't get along with anyone, but you with all my peculiarities and I'm fussy, finicky, picky and demanding behavior about everything. But you overlook my shortcomings."

"Persnickety. Yes, I know you are."

"Ok now that we have that out of the way, could you share an apartment with me? I can't afford the rent alone and it's a wonderful apartment." She looked at me with a wide-eyed expression few could resist.

Paige had this little girl look where she wanted a puppy and could come up with all the reasons why her parents would buy her one. And once she got the puppy, then someone else would have to take care of it. That was Paige.

"I have to talk to my parents," I said to her over the clamor of music and chattering voices.

"You're eighteen and soon you'll be nineteen. You're at the age of consent. You don't have to ask your parents for you to move out. You tell them."

"But you know how they are. And you know how I am. I can't hurt them." Paige looked at me, and now she would make her argument.

"Do you want to be in your parent's house until you are old with them directing your life forever? You know they aren't going to let you go to California. You'll never meet that man who will take your virginity? Don't you want to marry someday?" I was just eighteen, and I didn't know if I wanted to marry. First I had to get the boyfriend first and then figure out the rest.

I raised an eyebrow because she had said that so loud that the others turned to look at me and stopped talking. When I shrugged at them, they turned back and continued their conversation no doubt about me.

Knowing some of what Paige had said was filled with the truth, I didn't want to face it now. I was trying to have a fun night, and things were coming at me from all sides. I thought this would be a stress-free night. My tests were over, and I had gotten letters of acceptance from schools from the north, south, and west. And I secured a position at this prestigious research hospital in Seattle. I knew I was on my way to getting my parents to give me their ok to go to Stanford. I wanted to get away from Seattle with all its depressive rain, and cold weather. I wanted to be where I could feel the sunshine on my face.

But I learned early on that life doesn't give everyone what they want, it gives you what you need.

"Can we talk about this later?" The limo was driving up to the school and it appeared that everyone had the same idea. Go as a group. In numbers, there is safety or a great way to get into trouble and blame it on someone besides yourself.

We entered the gym which had been decorated by the juniors and our parents in celebration of making it through four years of bliss or four years of hell it all depended on your experiences. If you weren't bullied, then you could consider yourself lucky, but many weren't as fortunate as I had been.

Paige grabbed my arm, come on let's dance. As we were dancing around the gym, I spotted a pale blond with dead looking hair and a reed-thin body. His eyes fixed on my face. My eyes lowered because he held that stare longer than I could. When the music paused, I asked Paige and a couple of guys who had joined us a question. "Why is that guy looking at me that way?"

"Elliot? He looks at everyone as if they're invisible. Elliot targets someone for whatever reason and stares at them," Paige said. "He probably isn't looking at you. I think he's high on something. You know he's been committed to a mental hospital in Minnesota a few times."

"I didn't know that," I said to Paige who never stopped from dancing and shaking her head forward with her long black dyed hair falling in layers covering her face. She looked like a girl from the Adams family except she had a ring in her nose and tattoos on her body. She showed these tattoos only to her friends and boys she went to bed with and I was her best friend.

"You wouldn't know the latest gossip around the school. You have your head in books all day. Life is passing you by, and when you wake up, it will have gone. You should date."

"Look around you," I said in my defense. "Would you date those losers? What about Elliot? He might be the best one out of our senior class, and he's in your words, weird and on drugs."

Paige smiled in agreement after she took a look at the guys we had to choose from here. "Would you give up your virginity to one of those nerds or jocks?"

"I already have," she said, and she danced away from me, and I gave my feet a rest for the night. When I did look in the corner where Elliot stood, there was an empty space against the wall in the back of the gym.

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# Chapter Four

The prom went great after my stint in the hospital and making up those grades I received during what I called my rest or as Paige would say, a vacation away from your parents.

Nothing unusual happened after the prom. Nothing ever happens with the kids in that school except most of them want to end it all. It was then I knew it was time to leave home and my parents satisfied that what happened to me was an accident sanctioned my freedom to become an adult.

But first I had to complete my summer internship at the hospital. Four other girls from across the US who had been selected to work in the lab. The wing of the hospital carried the name for the family who had donated loads of money to the research on blood disease and rare forms of diseases. Mieras was the name I think someone said.

Nervous waiting to hear from the selection committee, I focused on moving in with Paige. Taking my clothes and boxes of stuff my mother said I needed. Finally got the call from someone who had a compelling voice. It was like solid oak. Strong.

The voice didn't say much. "Miss Dakota Bain, you have been chosen as a lab assistant at our hospital. You will receive your instructions shortly by email. I suggest you read everything. Goodbye." Earlier I had been filled with anxiety and sleepless nights thinking that my little problem of being in a mental ward had knocked me out of the running and then I remembered the doctor telling me they sealed my records because of my age.

Then if I didn't have enough worries, I worried that I wasn't smart enough and whether I could handle the job.

After waiting for the email it came in, and I was overjoyed, and it was real. But I gave myself other things to worry about.

It wasn't the job that worried me. It was sitting in the same room with Dr. Ashton Mieras. Did I say, Mieras? Yes, the one who's funding this research and his family owns the hospital. I sat up straight and stared at the email. Rushing to my closet to decide on what to wear, I gave up in despair. I had nothing impressive, and I didn't want to wear what I wore to the interview. A white blouse and dark skirt. So I gave up and settled on a pair of dark pants and white shirt.

"What difference does it make, I'm going to work in a lab with rats? They'll have me walking around with one of those doctor coats anyway," I murmured to myself and closed the closet.

It had been a week, and still, I didn't see Dr. Mieras. But he finally made an appearance during a PowerPoint presentation on how to safely work with blood. It wasn't anything new to me and probably not to anyone else because we had done this before. But I wasn't exactly sure about what he wanted from us or me.

Dr. Mieras stood in the back of the room, and I watched as the female presenter kept eyeing the person in the white coat and smiling. It was a curious sexy nervous smile she wore on her heavily made-up face. So I turned around to see who was attracting her attention. The other girls turned also.

Standing in darkness in the partial dim lit room, a tall young man with a well-developed muscular body leaned against the door.

His dark hair and eyes seem to dance around the room taking in all the young women sitting in uncomfortable chairs. His eyes and look on his face absorbing every word of the presenter but especially the women sitting in the audience. Dr. Mieras stood up straight which showed how lean and handsome he appeared. He wore a small sexy thin smile.

When my eyes met his, that dazzling smile turned sour, and his brown eyes fixed on me. I couldn't read his expression, but it wasn't a warm one. His face switched to a cold hard look immediately upon locking eyes with me. His dark hair accentuated his pale skin. He leaned against the wall with his hands in the pockets of his white coat, and through the dimness of the room, and when a sliver of harsh light hit him, he remained a handsome and stunningly good-looking man in his late twenties.

My thought was he appeared to be too young to be a doctor with such a sterling reputation who had written scores of articles in peer review science journals and published books and articles on rare genetic disorders.

Earlier I turned to the Asian girl next to me and whispered, "Who is that?"

"The doctor who supervises the lab. Didn't you read the brochure?" She questioned and refused to answer any more question until the presentation.

I wanted to tell her no I hadn't. I had been busy. I had spent too much time trying to make sure I knew everything about the hospital and what's expected of me. And I had spent two weeks in a mental ward in Minnesota. And I had a prom and graduation after that.

After a long session with questions and answers, I waited for my assignment. "Tonight your assignments will be sent to your email accounts. Make sure you check it. It will designate the wing of the hospital you will be working in. Don't get there late and make sure you get your equipment and don't forget to cover your hair. Some of us have extremely long hair." She glanced at me when she said that. "And look for the time you'll be working late. If you don't have a car you will have to make arrangements with a car service, or you will have to let someone else take your spot," the nurse said when she hit a button turning off her computer.

I raised my hand, "How late?"

"Miss Bain, I wasn't aware that you couldn't work late. If I had known you weren't available those hours, I would have selected someone else. But Dr. Mieras insisted that I select you as the first choice."

"It's not a problem. I just needed to know to inform my roommate that I would be late."

"Just expect to work late that's all I know." And she turned dismissing my concerns.

When I walked out of the conference room into the light, my eyes settled on the handsome doctor standing at his office door, his hands placed in his pockets as before. His cold stare unsettled me. He didn't say a word as his eyes followed me. Where have I seen those eyes before? I questioned as I shivered with every nervous step I made.

I held my purse close to my body. My head lowered. I felt his cool eyes wander over me, first my hair, then my chest, and then my legs. In that few minutes, it was as if he had violated me just from a glance.

I felt as if he had an x-ray machine and I had just passed through it. We were dismissed to go home and prepare for tomorrow.

Outside the hospital, it was dark, and I waved for a taxi but got an Uber instead and stepped out minutes later at my apartment. It was a relatively new rental for Seattle, and the rent was reasonable especially since Seattle was the home to tech companies with new people coming and going year after year.

I hadn't looked at my contract and found out how much I was making. I assumed it wasn't much for someone out of high school and my father said that he would cover any expenses for as long as he could.

Paige had gotten a position in one of the local hospitals because she wanted to become a nurse and meet a doctor and marry and have children. Me I wanted a career. But little did I realize that I would soon have a career. One I didn't want or ask for.

I entered the elevator and stepped off on the fifth floor. Made a right turn and I placed the key into the lock and opened the door and entered the apartment. Good. I was safe behind the door when Paige came out of her room dressed. "I have this date with a guy from the hospital."

"What's his name?" I asked just in case something went wrong. I was always thinking ahead. Paige never thought for a second. She was one of those glass half full people and said I worry too much.

"Oh I don't know yet," she said to me combing her dark hair in the mirror.

"What do you mean you don't know yet?" I dropped my purse on the counter and turned to her.

"He hangs at this club, and I'm going there with a few girls and guys I met who graduated from the public high school. We've graduated, and I don't like hanging out with our friends from Holy Cross. We're grown now, and I don't have to hang out with them anymore. The public school kids have far more fun than we've ever had."

After taking off my low heels, I plop down in one of the chairs and glance at Paige with a raised eyebrow. She knows I don't approve of her choices but what can I say? She wasn't the one who took her mother's pills and ended up in an institution.

"The guy I'm going with is an intern," she said raking her hands through her hair as she gawked at herself in the mirror, and then slivering on another coat of red lipstick, "but I'm only going with him to meet this doctor I had my eye on. I have this plan where I bump into him and then go home with him. The intern is studying to be an anesthesiologist. He works at the same hospital, and he could tell you stories."

"Save the stories. I thought you said you had your eyes on a pediatric surgeon." Paige straightens her black blouse and tries to loosen up her black jeans that are too tight even for her to wear over her rail-thin body. At eighteen we both could use a home cooked meal instead of a diet of pizza and Mountain Dew.

"I changed my mind. The one I have my eyes on is a plastic surgeon. He would make more money, and he doesn't have to be away all the time. I like to fuck and when you get calls all times of the night from women with sick children that could be a bummer and screws up your sexual life."

"So I don't get it. You're hanging out with an anesthesiologist who isn't yet an anesthesiologist to catch a plastic surgeon?"

"They know all the doctors. Do you see where I'm going?"

"Not really." She shakes her hair one more time for fullness and darkens her eyes. She's pretty but looks like someone gave her two black eyes. Then she turns to me.

"Dakota, what are you going to do tonight? Why don't you come along?"

"I have to work long hours tomorrow. And I don't know when the email will come and I have to get it and then prepare for work."

"That seems like a lot when you're not getting paid for it."

"There are some things you have to do for free, but I am getting paid," I said to her. "I need this on my resume and the money to pay for my books and this rent remember."

"Still planning on going to Stanford. How will you afford it?"

"I'm hoping they offer me a paid scholarship for the first four years and I plan on working my ass off and have them offer me another one in their research lab. My parents have money saved for me to go to college, but I don't want to take all their money and put them in hock. Stanford is expensive. I've considered working. I'm going to ask if the research hospital needs me for more than three months. But I'm not crossing my fingers. I have a plan B."

I make this loud sigh and drop my head and bite my nails.

"What's wrong?"

"There's this drop-dead gorgeous doctor over the lab and he looks at me as if he hates me."

"He doesn't hate you," Paige says to me." He's afraid that you can see how much he wants to get into your pants."

"Please. Can we talk about something else?"

"What else is there to talk about at our age? Men, money, and fucking good-looking men. Now take me. I haven't been as lucky as you. I've been in more foster homes than you can shake a stick at and each time I had to fight off my so-called father. Foster father but he was supposed to be a father. Not wait until my unknowing and uncaring foster mother went to sleep or left me in their summer cabin with him. But then that's old news." She glanced at me looking at my wide eyes and sad expression. I wondered about Paige. Maybe she was looking for someone to love her. I wanted to hug her at that moment, but I knew she didn't like hugs.

But I did, and I needed one at that moment. Instead, we gazed at each other sensing each other's pain.

"Don't be so shocked. I never told you because I knew you would feel sorry for me. Don't feel sorry for me. It taught me about men and life. Something you were spared to your detriment. You have this notion that you will fall in love with a handsome Prince and he will sweep you off your feet and take you away, and you will live happily ever after. The difference in you and I is I'm going after my Prince good or bad, and I'm not waiting for him to come along someday."

"You have me wrong. I don't think I want to get married. I think there's something wrong with my mother. She's talking about my father not being my father. And how it's my duty to keep up my father's work as a vampire killer." Paige raised an eyebrow and smiled.

"No. Fucking get out of here? You with your blue eyes and he and your mother have dark hair and black eyes. Now go figure. It's possible that they're your parents but not likely. I don't think there's anything wrong with your mother. And as far as vampires are concerned, I believe in them."

I rolled my eyes because now I see the other side of Paige. Maybe she wasn't all there, but then perhaps she was. Who's to say?

I followed her around and became her friend because she made me laugh. I thought I knew her, but there were somethings I didn't know and didn't care to know. I wanted to pretend that she never said or implied that she had been molested. And now the vampire stuff. I wasn't completely sold on that idea even though I thought they were responsible for me not sleeping.

Paige had lived a life that I couldn't imagine, and here I was freaking out about my mother confessing that my loving father wasn't my father and that vampires existed. Both of which appeared foreign to me and a little crazy before I met Elliot, but still I wasn't convinced. I thought that it was delusional of me that I had seen someone in my bedroom at night. Maybe the meds I took to make me sleep had muddled my brain.

"I thought you had someplace to go," I said to Paige.

"I have a few more minutes." I stood and straightened Paige's hair. She shook her head, ran her fingers through it messing it up again.

Paige glanced over at me, patting her hair and said, "I like my hair messy. It makes me look sexy. Now tell me more about the vampire thing," she said reaching for a bottle of open wine and pouring herself a glass.

"I think my mother is insane. I hope she's not my birth mother." I put my hand to my mouth embarrassed at my words. "I never thought I would say that."

"I've been trying to find my birth mother, and you're giving away mothers," Paige said to me with a sad glance and sad eyes. And one that loves you. If she didn't love you, she wouldn't have warned you about vampires or told you that Mr. Bain isn't your father."

"But it's more to it than that. She said I come from people who hunt vampires and that vampires are all around us and that I could be in danger because I know how to kill them." I walked over and poured myself a drink. My second drink. I swallowed a half glass of red wine.

"I don't know shit about killing a vampire," I said to Paige. I poured another drink. "If they exist and I don't know if they exist, and I would bet they don't, then I think my mother is having a stroke." My words fell out of my mouth.

"People see things and talk crazy when they're on the verge of a stroke." I held Paige's hands hoping she would understand what I understood and help me by agreeing with me.

Exhaling, and then blowing out a large breath, Paige walked down the foyer to the door. "I need to go now. If you change your mind, it's the bar across the street from Memorial Hospital. You never know, if you hang out with me you may meet your Prince charming."

I followed her to the door, "I'm not looking for a Prince or anything. I have this problem or problems I need to solve, and until then I can't function." I opened the door for Paige. She stood glancing at me with one eyebrow up and one down.

"You're not gay are you?"

"No. But what's wrong with that?" I didn't follow her logic or asking me a question like that especially since I poured my heart out to her.

"Nothing. Just checking because if you are, I have a girlfriend that's looking for a partner." I shook my head wondering if she heard me at all.

"You'll have to look somewhere else, matchmaker." She smiled at me and strutted through the door wearing her signature black jeans, black blouse, and black leather jacket. Her hair this week dyed black as midnight and her face had an eerie look with her pale skin, bright red lipstick, and three small rings in her nose.

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# Chapter Five

After a conversation with Paige which left a lot for me to think about, I showered and climbed into bed. All night dreams haunted me. I dreamed of a handsome man watching over me, with dark eyes which troubled me and kept me awake at night and brought about my sleepless nights.

When I woke, I had the feeling that something was wrong. My feet hit the floor, and I glanced at my phone. For once I had slept soundly. Too sound and now I would be late, and I hadn't retrieved the email for my assignment.

I searched around for something to wear inside of a pile of unwashed clothes. Nothing there, so I rushed into Paige's room to borrow something from her closet. She had plenty of jeans and shirts. The problem is they were all black. But that didn't matter today. I need something quick and to take me through this evening.

How I missed my mother. I wished I could go back but the genie was out of the bottle, and there was no way of putting it back. I had become a woman, or so I thought of myself as one even if inside I didn't feel that way. On my own and I had to do everything for myself and yet I couldn't manage that without problems.

I had overslept, and I didn't realize that I had been that tired but I worked and studied until I had exhausted my body. And today or should I say tonight was no night to fuck things up especially since I had wanted this summer internship so much I would have killed for it.

The stipend given me by the hospital lab was fair, more than I expected, and it would pay for my portion of the rent, car service, and food. I figured I could save some of my pay for incidentals I would need once I enrolled in school.

My father had been putting money in my checking account because he didn't want me to go hungry which made him more endearing than I wanted to admit.

I popped a frozen waffle into the toaster, Paige had made coffee and gone to work not waking me thinking I was tired, and she had been right for once. Thank goodness for her concern. I scoffed down the waffle with butter and drank my coffee black. At a hundred and five pounds, I could exist on coffee and never get hungry. I just eat to live.

After dressing and eating my supper at the same time, I managed to get myself out after calling an Uber driver to pick me up. Even that would have to stop. I couldn't keep this up, taking a taxi to work. The train was in my future at early hours of the morning. Because Paige had different hours from me and her shift regularly changed I couldn't ride with her. She had a car. A piece of junk where the engine light blinked relentlessly sending me into a panic every time we rode on the interstate.

When I stepped into the taxi, I looked at my schedule again. Six in the afternoon until three in the morning. "Who gives a schedule like that to a young woman out of high school?" I know. Looking at the roster, I found the doctor who I was assigned to and who will oversee my work in the lab. I thought so because of the way he watched at me. He hated me and wanted to punish me. But for what?

"Dr. Mieres, you masochistic womanizer," I mumbled, and then placed my phone inside of my purse.

Mostly nervous, then horrified, and then outraged were my feelings about my assignment. Why would Mieres want me to work with him at night? I know, to punish me for something. He doesn't know me, I thought. When I looked at him, all I saw was hate in those beautiful dark eyes. I wished he had looked at me differently.

The thought of Dr. Mieras brought on a flood of warmth which coursed through me. It was a strange feeling. I should have felt cold with hatred for him, but I didn't. Since I've seen Dr. Mieres my thoughts are about sex. I had to tell myself it's your hormones fucking with you. But it was more than that. The attraction was more significant than I understood or wanted to understand.

Being close to him would prove challenging and more than my young body could tolerate.

As the car stopped and started in traffic, I closed my eye thinking of him. His brilliant brown eyes covered with dark soft lashes. I didn't know how he could see with those large and long black eyelashes. I would kill for a pair of lashes like his.

Everything about him was beautiful. His hair dark brown with curls. Thick eyebrows and a perfect square jawline. I could die now and never miss a day of life after having seen a face and body like his. Lean and muscular and that walk. It was as if he walked on air. A predatory step I had seen with animals during mating time.

My daydream came to an end when the driver stopped and pulled up to the entrance of the hospital. I paid him, and he gave me his card saying with an East Indian, mixed with an English accent, "If you need a cab to go home call me. I'll give you a cheap rate." I nodded at him and slipped the card into my purse thinking I would need it in the future.

Rushing into the hospital, I dressed in a white coat and covered my hair and walked to the lab. There wasn't anyone there. There was an assignment sheet on a desk. I logged into the computer and proceeded to input the information in and back it up on a flash drive as instructed.

I didn't have to turn around. I knew someone was standing near me. I felt Dr. Mieras presence before I spun on my stool. Wondering why I hadn't heard him come through the door, I stopped what I was doing and looked up.

That door squealed every time I opened it. Maybe he had another way of entering the room, I thought.

"Why are you here? I specifically informed the nurse that I didn't want you." I turned and met his eyes. He was more handsome close up than could be imagined, but that didn't stop me from being insulted as well as pissed at his words.

"If you don't want me then I can go home and come back tomorrow and work with a doctor who will work with me." I placed my head down because I didn't want him to see the tears welling in my eyes.

Then his voice lowered, but the tone remained the same. "You can stay for tonight, but stay out of my way. Log in the information from this research." And he dropped a paper near the computer. "Don't try to understand it because you can't." I looked up at him with disdain after controlling my emotions and my need to cry. Turning away from Mieras, I picked up the paper and read it.

Talking into the computer and not letting Dr. Mieras see my face, I said with the most forceful tone I could muster, "If you hired me, and I had to go through this extensive process then you know that I do understand what these computations mean."

I felt great about myself for speaking up. I didn't know where that came from, but I was relieved. I should have done that sooner and to some of my teachers in high school who knew far less than I did and they were teachers.

"I forgot," he said in a sharp voice. "I've been working long hours to get this important research done." He stared at me with those cold intense liquid brown eyes. Before he walked out of the lab to go to his office, he turned to me, "I'll see that you work with another doctor that's comparable to your personality."

"You mean you need someone who you can insult, and won't say anything after you've abused them with your rude, insensitive remarks. Someone submissive." I had tagged him. I've read books about men like him. He was the alpha male who needed to bark out orders without anyone questioning him especially a young woman.

But my father had taught me to stand up for myself even with those in authority.

And I turned to work on the assignment. I heard Mieras's shoes on the tile floor, and then the sound stopped, and I imagined him turning around. Then he said, "You'll receive your assignment tonight in your email." His voice dull and emotionless, but his face and body beautiful and strong. He stood upright his head tilted high and said to me, "I apologize if you misinterpreted my conduct."

I didn't look back at him. He had terrified me but I didn't let him know. He was playing cat and mouse with me, and I was the lab mouse in his experiment.

"Whatever," I mumbled. At that point, I didn't care. He appeared to be a heartless ass, and I wanted nothing to do with him as much as he wanted nothing to do with me. When I felt satisfied that he had left the room, I blew out a hard breath and got back to work. But I couldn't shake the feeling that he had torn something out of my heart, and I was unraveling, and I didn't like that negative emotion. I had fixated my youthful desires on him, and he had disappointed me with his insensitive behavior.

In my eighteen years, I had never felt torn apart inside. It was as if Mieras ripped my heart out. I liked that he was imposing and secure and all business, but that would have been fine if I didn't feel something profound for him. Something familiar. Something inconceivable. Something mind-blowing.

Watching at the young interns and nurses gaze at him as if there were no other men alive and they were ready to do anything to garner his attention, but for some reason, he had focused his attention directly on me. It wasn't the kind I wanted. It was the type of attention that occurs when a man is seeking to bend someone to his will, and it wasn't going to happen to me at least not now. It appeared he wanted to make my life miserable. Who could I tell? His family owned the hospital, and he donated to this lab. I would have to quit if it continued and I didn't want to do that. I needed to work here at this hospital.

What made me smile was thinking that tomorrow I would be assigned to another doctor. The night went fast because of all the work I had to do and then clean up the lab. I knew how to do that because of the advanced science classes I signed up for in high school.

Inhaling, I turned around to go to my locker to get my purse, and there he stood so close we could have bumped heads if I were six one. But I was only five feet five inches, and I had to look up at that tall, lean frame holding that beautiful face with his cold and aloof expression.

"How do you do that?"

Dryly he answered, "How do I do what?" he said walking to the computer and shutting it off.

"Walk without me hearing you."

"You were probably concentrating on something else." Then he paused, and warmth reached his eyes. "Would you have breakfast with me?" his voice light and the tone warm but calculating.

I had to question myself. What is this about? One minute he's sour and the next he's sweet. To me, that sounds strange and abusive. After all, I do think he's a masochist or dominant. He has all the signs of a dominant male, and at this point in my life, I can't handle one and especially one that is so handsome and older than myself who I would probably do anything he asked just to be in his arms.

"No. Thank you." I tried to be polite if only because of my teachings on how to treat others. "I have to get home. It's very late," I said coldly handing him what he had previously given me.

"Can I drive you home? What I mean is, I can have my driver take you home."

"No. I have someone to drive me." His face turned sour again. His forehead furrowed and a stayed look crossed his face as if he wasn't pleased with me once more. This hot and cold behavior on Mieras part was getting stale. If he couldn't get his way, then he changed back to his old self--handsome, dominant male. It was as if he was throwing a fit. As if no one ever said no to him. Maybe his parents should have told him that he couldn't get everything he wanted. And didn't he hear about catching more flies with honey and getting more out of someone by being nice?

He leaned on the counter and looked at me for a few seconds, "Are you telling me that you have a boyfriend?" Whoa. I didn't see that coming.

"Why would you assume that I have a boyfriend?" Somewhere inside me, I didn't want him to feel that way. I wanted him to think that I was available. My feelings were now conflicted. I despised him and loved him at the same time.

"Because a young woman like you..." he stopped in midsentence and his face and voice became more professional. At one moment I thought he was flirting with me but how could that be. I wasn't as attractive as some of the other girls and nurses vying for his attention and yet I had his full attention at two in the morning. Maybe that's when he turned into a man instead of the cold doctor standing in front of me.

His cold stared stayed with me and filled the silent room, and then he swiveled around quickly and exited the room without another word. And on leaving the lab, I passed his office and watched him through the window hunkered over his computer. He glanced up at me with those flurry of long lashes and quickly put his head down as if busy.

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# Chapter Six

When I arrived home at three am after calling my Uber buddy, I received a text message informing me to report to the same research room at the same time tomorrow. "What the fuck," I said when the cabbie pulled away dropping me in the middle of the night in the rain at the front of the building. I hurried into the building and headed for the elevator past a sleepy security guard reading a book. He looked like a student cramming for an exam.

As I rode the elevator to my floor, I thought about Ashton. I hoped the handsome doctor had assigned me to another scientist where I didn't have to travel at night and work in a lab alone. Another means to punish me.

Who needs the pressure of an attractive man with a tall, lean body and rippling muscles? Thinking of his alluring and powerful physique makes me want to fall into his arms every time I gaze into those penetrating shades of amber eyes. And I long to see his thick black lashes flickering when he talks to me. And who can resist that deep husky silky voice?

The elevator opened on my floor and because I was deep in thought, I didn't realize that I was standing in front of my apartment. I placed the key in still thinking about Dr. Ashton Mieras. I wished I could get him out of my head.

It appears he didn't like the type of woman who would cower, but maybe he's testing to see if I would take his shit. Even if he is the head of the lab and my boss, I would protest. You never know with men. It appears Paige knew them well. Maybe she could tell me something to help me get over Dr. Ashton Mieras. I wasn't aware of my surroundings as I dropped my jacket on the chair.

When I looked down my jacket lay next to another coat draped across the back of a chair. But it was a white coat with a name tag. It seems Paige was sleeping with her doctor and I was in a fight with mine.

I rushed into my room to get a little sleep. The early morning hours had my body clock fucked up. I had anticipated a better schedule even at the sacrifice of seeing my doctor. Did I say, my doctor? I had waded in on the deep end of the river. Thinking that Mieras was my doctor. I realize that I needed to work during the day if just to get away from him and get what little sunshine I could. The night schedule only reinforced my sleeplessness.

Deep down I smiled. I had been pleased with the assignment even if I didn't want to admit it because being around Dr. Mieras made me feel like a woman. The feeling of helplessness never controlled me before.

Stepping into the shower, I couldn't think about anyone or anything. Why was I consumed with the thought of that cold, heartless doctor? I felt pathetic about him controlling my emotions. Only for a second did I think he had a heart and yet I craved, I needed, and I desired that cold, heartless man.

I woke early if four o'clock in the afternoon is early. All night I could see his eyes watching at me in my dreams, and for the life of me, my brain was trying to figure out where I had seen those eyes before. I had finally stopped with the medication, and the withdrawals weren't as harsh as I had projected. Maybe I didn't realize I had withdrawal symptoms because of the distractions caused by Dr. Mieras.

My assignment was to start at six this afternoon. Two hours from now. Another rainy, drizzly day and my long wavy hair are in frizzy curls. I have to get to a warm, dry climate. California sunshine I'm thinking as I pat my hair down looking into the mirror after stepping out of the shower. "I need to go where the weather suits my hair," I whispered.

My door opened, and Paige stood before me in her blue suit white shirt looking very professional and very tired. Her hair held up in a ponytail. "I can't keep going like this. That doctor of mine is killing me." She dropped in a chair full of my dirty jeans. She wore a sad tired smile. Her mouth barely opened and her eyes closed when she laid her head back and crossed her arms hugging her waist.

"Don't fall asleep, at least not now," I said watching her head bob back and forth. She caught herself and her eyes snapped open.

"So how did it go with that rich dominant alpha male?"

"How did you know he's rich?" I said to her. "Probably still paying off student loans. That's why he isn't married."

"Just the way you described him before and he's rich, and he's not paying on any student debt. My Dr. Garret knows him. Dr. Mieras is known all around Seattle for his donations to charities to combat blood and genetic diseases. His family built that research hospital you're working in at the turn of the century. It's been torn down, rebuilt and new wings added. You should consider yourself lucky to be in his hospital."

"It belongs to his family. He's probably one of the spoiled rich distant relatives who couldn't make it anywhere else with his peculiar geeky ways," I said to her as I dropped on the bed. "And with that personality of his, he'll no doubt run everyone away from him."

"That's not what I hear. Doctors and nurses have been lining up to work in his lab, but he's selective. So consider yourself lucky, and if he writes you a recommendation letter, you are a shoo-in to get a full scholarship to any university of your choice. If he wants you to bend over and fuck you every way but Sunday, my advice is let him. Better yet, if he wants you to tie him up and whip his beautiful hard ass do that too. You know men who are rich and successful are strange and like that kind of thing. Some even want to bite your neck and pretend they're vampires. Let them if it means you can get something from them."

I couldn't help but laugh because Paige saw the world differently from what I had experienced. But she wasn't the one labeled for being in a mental ward. I was that girl.

"No I didn't know, and that's the advice you give me?" I said in a light voice. "Vampires? Really?"

"This is the real world, and yes there are vampires. They may not be like in the books and movies, but nonetheless, they do exist. And your doctor is probably one. They take you and suck you dry, and then they discard you. The thing you have to do is be a better vampire than them. You get what you want from these vampires, and you suck them dry and get the hell out. Make them love you and don't love them back. It's like putting a stake in their hearts."

I shook my head, my mouth opened wide and I glared at her. "You know Paige, you are scary. How can you connect the notion of vampires which are creatures of fiction with men who are real?"

"I guess I'm talented that way." I had hoped Paige would give me an insight into how to deal with Dr. Ashton Mieras but that wasn't coming today, so I ran her out of my room. I needed to dress in peace to make it to my job on time.

When I glanced at the clock, I knew I would be late, and I had forgotten to tell the Uber driver, who now had become a friend, to pick me up at a specific time. When I called him, he said he would be there as soon as he could and don't call anyone else.

Now "as soon as I can." This statement should have rung a few bells, but it didn't, and by the time he had arrived, and dropped me off in the front of the building, I was running into the hospital at full speed, past doctors, and nurses, leaving for the night, with the night shift coming on and I was an hour late.

The research lab was in the back of the hospital, and I didn't know how to access it but from the front entrance, which took another fifteen minutes more. Now I was another fifteen minutes late on top of the hour.

As I neared the lab trotting like a racehorse, I glanced over to Dr. Mieras's office, and he wasn't there. I exhaled. And felt a sense of relief as I neared the lab. Maybe he had a meeting. I could pretend that I had been here all along. I thought as I rushed into the lab and fired up the computer and read my assignment. Analyze some blood specimens and write a report. Inject the lab rats with a serum prepared in the fridge.

"I can do that," I whispered. "Maybe he won't know that I'm late." After injecting the white rats, I was almost home free, and it was late. I completed analyzing a specimen with the high powered microscope when a cold hand touched mine. I pulled my hand back out of surprise and of how cold the hand felt. Turning quickly, I glanced up.

"You're late. What do you think I should do to you?" his eyes changed colors and flickered with the warmth of cool light.

"What do you want to do to me?" I responded without realizing what I had said. His eyes lightened, and a soft glow covered them, and he slanted his head to the side, and he smiled, and this time I saw his perfect white teeth. That was a surprising relief. I breathed slowly and relaxed. "Dr. Mieras, I had a problem with my transportation."

"Call me Ashton." He leaned into me and looked over my shoulder. I became warm and trembled with arousal. How could any man elicit those responses, especially since he had been such a dick unless I had fallen for this gorgeous dominant dick? And he was all that and yet I wanted him inside of me. I wanted him to hold me in his arms and never let me go.

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# Chapter Seven

I didn't want to call him Ashton. I didn't want to call him anything but mine. The notion of calling him by his first name suggested that I was on his level and apparently I wasn't, and I couldn't be sure how he would react to me from one minute to another. I didn't need that confusion in my life. When in discussions and asking him a question, I avoided using his name. But it wasn't easy, and I made mistakes.

"Dr. Mieras..." he interrupted.

After he insisted that I call him Ashton, and I purposefully didn't, and he knew it, he stood up straight, and a cold look crossed his face and settled in his eyes. His steely glance enclosed me from my head down to my feet.

There wasn't any warmth about him, now. "When you complete your assignment, I want you to close up the lab and then go home. I have a date." He turned quickly on his heels like a dancer, smooth, effortless, and silent. He strutted back to his office and when I glanced around, one nurse who had been overly friendly to him and less to me, her eyes shot me an icy display of jealousy. For the last two days, she looked at me as if she could put a knife in my back.

I couldn't hear what they were saying, but she was laughing and glancing in my direction as Ashton placed his arm around her back, and then led her down the hall to the back entrance of the hospital.

It became difficult to function the entire night. Making several mistakes, thankfully I caught them before I had done damage to his experiment because it would have been an end to his work and an end to me.

Acknowledging I had missed my chances with Ashton, and since he had found someone who was willing and able and worldlier than me, and knew her way around men, I could kiss Ashton goodbye. But I wasn't ready to give in that easy. Men who are hard to get are easy to keep, and I wanted to keep him.

At two am I had completed my assignment and locked up the lab when I glanced around seeing a young man standing at the door. He wore a white coat and on his name tag I could see that he was an intern working the night shift. I opened the door, and he stood looking down at me.

"Hi, my name is David. Do you want to go to the cafeteria for breakfast? They serve all night. McDonald's of course." He extended his hand to shake mine. I looked around and I saw no reason why I couldn't. My driver worked the night shift, and he said he would make accommodations for me if I needed. I guess he would since I was a good customer.

I smiled with relief because someone knew I was up here and alone. "Yes. That would be great. I would love something to eat," I said to David. I couldn't remember the last time I had eaten and drank more than coffee and a muffin, which couldn't be good for me.

Closing the door behind me, I trotted along with David. A tall, lean rail-thin man in his late twenties who looked as if he could be my brother if I had a brother. We took the stairs up to the second floor and sat at one of the many unoccupied tables. We smiled at each other thankful for the company. Me with my biscuit and sausage and egg sandwich and he with a croissant and egg and our black coffee.

As I took one bite, I felt a presence and I glanced up and standing over our table was Ashton dressed in a dark suit and black shirt with no tie.

His body straight, his head raised, he appeared much taller than ever in his black suit and black shirt, his pale skin accentuated by the dark attire made him look more handsome than before even as he displayed his sour patent look. Damn but he is handsome, I thought when our eyes met. But they were glowing, and his brow had furrowed three times. Wow, he's pissed. How could he be angry with me? I had done everything he asked of me, and I didn't think he would be back after he told me to lock up.

"Dr. David. Don't you have emergency duty?" David glanced up as surprised as I had been at seeing Ashton. How could he move around and show up without anyone hearing him or seeing him? He had made a science out of appearing and disappearing like a magician.

David stood and lowered his eyes. "Yes, sir. But..."

"But nothing." Ashton's voice is heavy and stiff. "When I passed the emergency room, people were lying all around, and I find you here entertaining Dakota. She has to get home and get some sleep. You know that this lab is very important to this hospital and if you want the funding to keep coming in and you want to keep your job, then you had better take care of the patients who need you."

David glanced over at me his eyes lowered with an apologetic look, and he dashed down the stairs without saying another word. He knew the Alpha or superior male in this place. Then I glared up at Ashton. It was hard to see him as overbearing and dominant over that exciting, handsome exterior. But nevertheless, I had overlooked how cruel and self-serving he had been to the staff and me and instead choosing to see the handsome man in his black suit and black shirt with dark chest hair, and my heart skipping a beat whenever he was in my presence. But no more. This was beyond the pale. He had no right to speak to David the way he had.

"What do you have to say for yourself?" His stare is piercing me. His tone is burning through my skin.

"I have nothing to say. If you want to fire me for doing all that work and then eating, then do it, but for now, I need to eat." I took a bite of my food and looked down at my plate. And then drank a sip of my black coffee which was now cold. Then I met his stare.

"You don't care if I starve as long as you get the job done. I don't even get a break. You could have assigned another mentee with me, but you didn't because you don't want anyone to know how abusive you are. And you didn't have to embarrass David like that in front of me." My words felt good and cut through Ashton, and I felt pleased with myself for once. By the look in his disapproving eyes, chalk one up for me.

With little emotion, he said to me, "I'm taking you home."

"No, you're not. I can find my way home alone. I've been doing that at this ungodly hour for the last few days. Tomorrow is my day off, and I'm going to lie in bed and forget that I feel like quitting." And forget about getting into Stanford, but I can't forget you, I thought.

"I'm not taking no for an answer. You're coming with me. It's my responsibility to see that you get home safe. A young woman isn't safe traveling alone this time of night, and from now on since you work for me, I will provide you with transportation to and from work."

At that moment I stood and started walking away, and Ashton walked alongside of me. "Would it help if I apologized for my actions?"

"Not one bit," I said looking into his eyes and then looking away. I suddenly realized that I had stormed off in the wrong direction.

"The exit is down this hall. I'll show you." But it appeared that we had been walking for a few minutes and still not getting to the front entrance to the hospital where it was lit, and the nurses were at their desks.

Ashton touched my arm to lead me away, and I shivered not from his cold hands because at that time I couldn't tell if it was from the constant chill of the hospital temperature or him. But his touch had an awakening presence in my body. I became aroused. My breathing erratic as I tried to inhale. I felt lightheaded, and thankfully he opened the door, and the fresh Seattle air rushed across my face rousing me.

Looking around and then at him I realized this was the back entrance to the lab. I stood not saying a word as he walked to the limo and opened the door.

"Come. What are you afraid of? Don't tell me you're afraid of me. Not with your attitude." I had to prove him wrong. I wasn't afraid to get into the car with him, I was afraid of him. Afraid that I could fall in love if I weren't already. This went against all that Paige was trying to teach me. "Don't fall in love with a man you want. Act as if you don't want him and then when he doesn't understand why you wouldn't want him, then dump him." You will break him down, and then he's yours. That is if he doesn't do it to you first," she had said to me during one of our conversations about what men need.

At which point she said, "Men never know what they want. First, they want a submissive woman, and then they get angry when she does everything for them, and then they want a strong independent woman and then she's too independent. You could go crazy trying to please them," Paige said and then she gave up the conversation and was on to something else.

I thought she was more knowledgeable than me because of her time moving around from one home to another and the different people she had come into contact with. I had been a sheltered child thought to be unique.

If my father and mother could see me now. I was special because I was stupid enough to take this insanely handsome man's dare. He dared me to climb into his limo at three o'clock in the morning, and I fell for it.

Not realizing how tired I was the minute I sat back on those leather seats in his limo, and glanced at Ashton, I woke in a strange room in a strange bed.

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# Chapter Eight

"Where am I?" I whispered into the darkness. I didn't expect an answer, but I knew I wasn't alone. "Can you open the curtains?" I asked. I needed to see if sunshine had broken through the fog and rain. I was desperate for something to brighten my mood and confirm what I did know and what I didn't know.

The curtains opened slowly, and to my surprise it was night. Pitch dark and still raining. "Have I been here all night? What time is it?" I said sitting up then realizing I was naked. I pulled the covers up to my neck.

"All night and all day." The voice was soft and deep. Ashton stood against the backdrop of the Seattle skyline. I had never seen it this beautiful before with the lights illuminated across the city. Maybe because I had never notice or had been in a building this tall. Perhaps I was too focused on one thing--myself. I wanted to be a research scientist. I wanted to discover the cure for cancer. Anything to help mankind.

Looking at the tall handsome figure standing in the dim light, I knew that profile. Strong and confident sure of himself and his place in the world or so I thought.

"You passed out in my car, and I didn't want to wake you to get your address, and since I live alone, and it's only my house servant and me, I decided to bring you here. It wasn't far from the hospital of course."

"Of course," I said. But who carried me and..." I glanced down at my naked body. "Who undressed me?" my voice breaking showing my apparent vulnerability. I'm lying naked in a man's bed, and that man behaved as if he detested me. I feel rested, and nothing pains me, so I think I'm safe.

"I did of course." He stepped nearer to the bed and closer to me. I flinched. He saw it and stopped his approach. "As you know, I'm a doctor." His voice was warm and low with reserved passion.

"But you're not my doctor," I said in defiance of what he had done. "You had no right to undress me while I was out. I don't want you looking at me when I'm unconscious."

"I've seen many unconscious bodies. You weren't in a deep sleep. You were just tired. And I thought you needed rest and you couldn't sleep... well," he paused, "with those tight clothes binding your body." His voice even his tone smooth and convincing.

"I must have been really out for you to undress me and for me not know. Did you give me anything?" I saw Ashton raise his eyebrow as if I had insulted him. "I don't think I was molested," I said touching myself.

He slanted his head and laughed which made me angry. "Do you think I need to molest you or any woman? On any given day I could have had my choice of any woman I desire. I come into contact with all kinds of women every day from all walks of life. I've had queens and princesses through the ages of time invite me to their bedrooms. I've had married women want to give up their husbands and children for one night with me." He stopped and stared at me as if he had given away a secret. My eyes narrowed my mouth set ajar in disbelief.

What is he talking about? What's wrong with him? Maybe he's the one who should have been in a mental ward? Queens and Princesses? Through what age in time is he speaking about?

He stepped away from the light. When I blinked, he stood across from me and closer to the bed. Then he turned on the light next to the couch with a remote in his hand controlling the opening and closing of the curtains and turning on and off lights. "I prefer the dark myself," he said sitting down across from me.

"You're an arrogant bastard." He laughed at me again.

"I've been called many things but never a bastard. I know my father," he said his voice biting. Do you know yours?" And he headed for the door, opened it turned around to gaze at me one more time and left me thinking and brooding over his words.

Did I really know who my father had been? Before I moved into an apartment with Paige, my mother had said that my real father had been someone else. He had been a vampire hunter. I put that out of my mind until Ashton ignited a fire in my memory. Who wants to hear that your father may have been crazy or worse, he was actually a vampire hunter, and he spent his life away from me killing vampires.

If vampires existed which now I think not, but for others like Elliot, his mind told him there were vampires and he believes it.

As I was trying to wrap my mind around what Ashton said he strutted back into the room with a breakfast tray. "My maid cooked this for you. You look emaciated."

He sat the tray down on a table in the large bedroom. "I'm not hungry," I said with a stern voice. In truth, I didn't know when I wasn't hungry.

"I'm going to step out of the room and here's a robe." He reached into the closet and dropped a sheer white robe on the foot of the poster bed.

Examining it, I put my hand under it. "What do you expect me to do with that? I could walk around naked, and no one would notice the difference. This doesn't cover anything."

"They would notice," he smiled at me a second time with that heart-stopping grin.

"You have some fresh clothes hanging in the closet. When I return, I want you eating. If you choose to sit there naked, it won't bother me."

I mumbled a few words, "If you want this, you eat it," and he turned around and looked at me with his thick dark raised eyebrow as if he heard every word I said.

Climbing out of bed and placing the sheet around me instead of that see through whatever, I sat down at a small table looking out at the Seattle skyline wrapped securely in the layered white sheet covering my breasts and the rest of me. Ashton came back within seconds like a doctor would in a dressing room and sat in a chair across from me.

"You are the most maddening young woman I've ever met."

"And I bet you've met many." He glanced over at me, and his eyes went sad, and he lost his beautiful smile. Wiped off. Just like that, I had the power to wipe a smile off his handsome face, and I could put one on. Well, I'm getting somewhere. Maybe there was something to what Paige had said. But I'm sure dealing with Ashton wouldn't be easy.

He stared at me which sent shivers through my skin whenever he glared at me as if he could eat me.

"Yes. I've met my share of women. I've met more than you will ever know." His voice deep and erotic as he stared past me. He paused, and a long silence filled the room. "But I never met a woman who wasn't afraid of ..." He didn't continue. "Eat and dress, I'll have my driver take you home." His voice went cold and lifeless once more.

Just like that, he froze on me. His eyes were cold and calculating. There was a chill in his voice, and he stood hard and unfeeling over me as if I wasn't there or he could make me disappear if he wanted. And then he stood, and when I turned, he had vanished into the next room without saying a word.

****

I dressed, and his driver drove me home in silence. I didn't ask for Ashton, but I wanted to. I wanted to see Ashton's face and hear his voice before I left him. When I was with him, it was as if he provided protection for me. Not the kind of protection a father would provide, but the kind of protection a woman wants from a man she loves and the kind he gives for the woman he loves.

On Sunday I had to get some rest and read to keep up in the lab. Days and hours had passed, and it was only a few more hours before I had to return to work. Before I could see Ashton again. Before I could fill my nights with my dreams of him.

Now I lived to see a man who I couldn't decode and who I pissed off every minute I existed. How could I figure him out and keep up with him when my experiences with men had been limited? No brothers or siblings to have anything to compare to. And no boyfriends. Only one girlfriend to speak of and where was she? Usually, Paige would text me if I didn't come home at night.

Ashton's driver stopped his car, and he opened the door in front of the building. He nodded at me and held out his hand. I took it and stepped out of the car in front of my building as he watched me walk into the building. Then I heard the car start and the motor race into the traffic.

Returning to my apartment after leaving Ashton's beautiful apartment wasn't my idea of fun. I lay in my bed and wished I hadn't pushed him away. I wished I had been less confrontational, but then that wouldn't have been me. I had to change if I was ever going to get my doctor. I shook my head. "Forget him he's too difficult to deal with, too mature for me." I had forgotten my focus. Getting a scholarship to Stanford. I vowed to get my focus back.

I would write out my plan. Maybe I should take baby steps. A three-month plan. How to do this job and get the best recommendation letter from Dr. Mieras. No more thinking of him as Ashton. When I think of him that way it messes with my head, and I'm intellectualizing about a man. A man I want to love me and make love to me.

That's an excellent way to ruin everything. Go to bed with him and let him fuck me and take my virginity. That's a plan? I thought. Like that it would be easier on the both of us. The way it is now I'm screwing the experiments and who knows what Ashton has done?

I hit my head with my hand.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" I knew what was wrong. My hormones. Now all I think about is sex. I have sex on the brain since I've been close to that handsome, masculine man. The thought of him makes me ache for his body on mine. For intimacy. I closed my eyes wanting him. I thought I could hear his heartbeat, but it was my heart beating for him.

"Calm down. And get up and see if Paige is around," I murmured. Maybe she can help with my dilemma.

I hadn't seen Paige all weekend. When I stepped to the floor, I heard the vibration of my phone on the table next to my bed. I turned the light up and peered at my phone. It's a text from Paige. I was hoping it was from him. On a Sunday night I get a text saying:

Dakota, come to this address and get me. Hurry! Something bad has happened. I feel sick.

"Oh fuck. Do I need this?" Rushing to dress I know somethings wrong. Since when has Paige turned to me for anything? She acted as if she had it all together and didn't need anyone and especially me since I knew nothing about the world and nothing about men.

****

I've done some strange things in my few years on this earth, but the most bizarre is meeting my girlfriend at some private club late at night. And I knew it wouldn't be a club I would ever visit. I'm listening to my heels go click-clack on this cobblestone street. I glance around, and all I can see are doors and nothing that looks remotely like a club.

"Why the fuck am I dumb enough to go to this place alone?" I whispered checking around to see if I'm being followed. "No one in their right mind, or maybe a fool would come to a place like this at midnight Sunday when she has to be to work early Monday morning.

But Paige has never been the brightest crayon in the box, and now I'm proving that neither am I. And what the fuck could she want so bad that she had to go to this part of town?" I said looking to my left and then my right. If people were walking around it wouldn't be so bad, but the place was deserted. Nothing but old deserted warehouses.

Then it came to me. A man. Only Paige would travel all the way out here to see a man. And where did she leave her car? And I'm stupid for looking for her. But what could I do? When your best friend says come and pick me up I don't feel well, you drop everything and go see about her. I should have listened to the Uber driver and not my heart.

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# Chapter Nine

"Dakota, you don't want to get out here, especially here. Look around it's deserted. Do you see anyone?" I glanced around, and there were no lights, and the fog lay over the cab like a tent.

"You should go back home before you make a serious mistake. One you may not be able to take back. You could lose your life." My Uber driver friend warned me, but my stubbornness and my lack of fear which visits the youth dismissed it.

Before I stepped out of the cab, I tried paying him, but he shook his head handing the money back and said, "I don't want to be responsible. This is blood money." He shoved it into my hand, and I dropped it into my purse. If I'm not killed or raped, I could use the extra dollars, I thought.

He continued driving to get me closer to the buildings before he dropped me off at this corner filled with warehouses and shipping containers. Then I heard his engine start up and he zoomed around the buildings out of sight.

I had been warned so what did I expect him to do? Risk his life for Paige? He didn't know her. If he had known Paige, he probably would have risked his life, too. She was kind and giving but unpredictable. When it came to men, she was predictable always looking for love but acting as if she wasn't.

But did I listen to the Uber driver? Of course not. I'm almost twenty, well not quite, and I can handle myself, and I like to take chances. And I love that misguided girl looking for love in all the wrong places, I thought to myself.

I'm trying not to be that scared nineteen year old who's afraid to flirt around with that handsome doctor. If I can brave this, I can do what's necessary to get what I want. I won't let Ashton Mieras run me off that job and ruin my chances of working for the summer and getting that on my resume.

I need his recommendation to get into Stanford and if I have to fuck him to get what I want, then I will, even if I have to initiate it. I might enjoy him better than he would enjoy fucking a virgin." Now I was thinking like Paige and a fool. "Let's hope he wants me as much as I want him," I mumbled to myself as I search around, pulling at handles, looking for the right door.

Then I heard the fog horn of ships and smelled the sea air. I'm not far from the port, I thought. It's possible I could be at the port. With the fog so thick, I could be anywhere. I moved from one door to the next feeling my way around with my hands. If only there were some moonlight. Then I remembered my pin light on my keychain.

Reaching inside my purse, I touched my house keys and turned on the light. I could see a door handle if nothing else. I can't say it made me feel safe. Nothing would but being in my own bed. My hands crawled along the metal walls.

How crazy am I for doing this in all this damn rain and fog? I exhaled moving forward when I wanted to turn back. I pull my hoodie over my head because I'm soaked, and I don't have a sense of direction, and I'm alone in an unfamiliar dark place. It's like being in a fun house at a park on Halloween night alone.

I'm stumbling around in heels when I should have worn sneakers. I'm wondering where the fuck am I. Gazing around I can't see anything that looks like a club. Just one container after the next. I step in the directions of the instructions I received from Paige's text, as I look up and back to the text with only a pen light trying to make out a red metal building.

Then I hear this low strong, sexy voice, "Are you lost?" I shiver, and I don't want to turn around. It sounds like Ashton but what is he doing on a dock and far from the hospital.

My fear has taken a hold on me, and my thinking is confused and off the charts.

"I glance around slowly expecting to see him because his voice sounds as if he is behind me, but I don't see anyone. "How the fuck am I to see anything when it's so damn dark in this place. And where the fuck is Paige? I'm going to kill her when I see her," I mummer. My heart is beating twice as fast, and if I were older, I would die of a heart attack.

If I had known that I was going to be walking on cobblestone and dodging metal objects, I would have worn boots. I had nothing to protect myself. And then I remembered my mother giving me a leather bound case, and I laughed and threw it into a box with the rest of the things I planned on donating to the Salvation Army. But where does it say that what's in that leather case would have protected me from being killed out here?

How is that kit to protect me here? There are no vampires for me to kill around here, I rationalized.

I could have used it for protection. If I remembered correctly, she said that there was a stake, hammer, holy water and something for lighting a fire and cutting someone's head off. The sharp objects like a stake and a heavy object like a hammer could be put to good use but holy water? Well about now I'm thirsty, and my mouth is dry from fear. I could use a drink of it, and if I stay any longer, I may need something to light a fire.

Entertaining my mind was all I could do at this point. I had given up and ready to call a cab. Maybe I should call my mother first, I thought. Perhaps she should know where to find my body. I thought that this would send her over the edge. Knowing her only child could die at any time. So I decided against calling her. But something wasn't right with my mother. If I make it out of this, I have to check on my mother, I thought. That was on my mind and Paige who has me in this hellish place with voices talking to me, and me talking to myself, will reap my wrath once I see her.

I suck in a large breath, in and out, and continue stomping along as I peer at the containers looking for a red one, until I come to the right door. It's sitting away from the rest. The only one that dark blood red color. I bang on the opening, and no one comes to the door to open it. I hit again and again. I hear nothing. Eventually, someone gets around to opening the door but I'm soaked from the rain and smelling like a small dog running away, and I probably look like one too.

A large stocky man a barrel chest with a body that looked like he had been molded in clay and put into a fire looked down at me. His skin dry and his hair like straw. He peered at me with cold blue eyes from two small slits that appeared to be where his eyes set. I knew I should have run away the minute he opened the door, but where was I going, and then there was the case of finding Paige?

"I'm looking for Paige," I said trying to hide the tremor in my voice but not doing well. Not well at all. The hard looking man didn't answer he just turned and showed me a long corridor and extended his hand in that direction.

The place was a vast dimly lit room, and for the first time I heard the sound of music, laughter, and voices and the smell of cigarette smoke and I figured I was in the right place. I hobbled down the dark hall in the direction of sounds in my high heels and tight jeans. I probably picked up a little weight when I wasn't noticing. And these were the only clean pair of pants I owned. I don't know what I did with the clothes Ashton gave me. I didn't feel right taking them, so I dressed in my old things.

Inching my way down the corridor frightened me because the place looked creepy with the high ceilings and the dim lights. The way this place appeared, I knew I wasn't dressed for running. If I had known I would have to go to a place like this, I would have put on my jogging shoes and stretch pants. Too late now.

Placing my hands on the doorknob, it opened without my help and standing over me was another pale person with dead skin and dead hair but this one was thin as if he never got a chance to eat his fill of food. The only thing I could see is he ate just enough to live if you consider his state of being alive.

"I'm looking for Paige." He pointed to his left, and quickly I caught her eye. I'm not sure how she saw me, and how I spotted her in this dim lit room but our eyes locked on each other and I headed in her direction.

When I neared the table where she sat surrounded by young men and women smoking and kissing, and some dancing to low music, I could see her sitting comfortably on someone's lap. And he had his arms around her waist and his nose under her long hair kissing her neck. Her long dark hair covered his face.

"Do you know what it took to find you? Not to mention having to get out of bed at one o'clock in the morning. What do you have to say?" I stood before her with my hands on my hip looking like a prison guard.

"Thank you," she said in that small voice which always had me feeling sorry for her.

I reached for her arm, "Now let's go. The only cab we can get around here is Uber and god knows what kind of driver we'll get at this time of the night. We'll probably have to fight for our lives just to get home."

"We can't go now," she said gazing up at me with eyes where the makeup had run and it looked like black ink had stained her face. There were large dark purple circles and Paige's eyes were sunken in. She had never looked unhealthy as she does now. She usually looks vibrant and attractive, but she looked like something had drained the blood from her without giving her something to replenish it.

"What do you mean we can't go? You look terrible, Paige. What have you been doing?"

"Nothing. I've been here with my date," Paige said slurring her words as if she had been smoking something. The place was filled with smoke, and I couldn't tell what it was and I didn't want to.

"We've been invited to a party," she said looking at me with closed eyes.

"A party?" I yelled at her, and the people sitting on the sofa behind me stopped what they were doing and glared at me. "I planned on going to sleep, get up early, and read some of those manuals that Dr. Mieras assigned me. If I can't keep up then I know it's all over for me." As I'm pouring my heart out to Paige, she's acting as if I don't exist. The only thing she's concentrating on is the man who's nuzzling her neck. I hear the slurping and kissing sounds originating from his constant licking.

"Are you on drugs," I shout. The others in the room paired off in corners turn and hissed at me. I lean back. I can't see them well, but I know a hiss when I hear one.

Annoyed as hell because I got out of my bed at an ungodly night and when I thought it was an emergency it isn't. "I'm leaving, and you two should get a bed." I narrowed my eyes at them, but they didn't notice. When I turn and take a few steps, Paige rises from the guy's lap, and I hear a hissing sound, and his eyes glare at me as if I'm doing something that's causing him distress.

When Paige catches up with me, I'm halfway through the door into the hall. "Come on Dakota, you're going to enjoy the party, and there's this handsome guy. I've been telling him about you."

"Don't you get it? I came to get you, and I'm not here to go to any parties. And why haven't you mentioned him to me before? I never once heard you say that you wanted me to meet anyone." I pull at her small arm and she pulls back. She looks frail, but she has strength in her arms more than I have.

"He's a doctor, and after that thing with you and Dr. Ashton Mieras, I didn't want to say anything. Remember you said you never wanted to see a doctor again." I walk away from her, and she trots behind me. "He said that he could hire you so you could get your recommendation for school." I stop.

"If you had come home sometimes maybe to clean up and dress then I would have told you that things are ok with us." I take Paige's hand, "You need a bath. What have you been doing?" I'm not sure how I stand with Ashton, but I had to say something to get Paige out of here. I look to her and I can tell her mind is somewhere else. I know she's not going to listen to me. But I tried.

"You have to go with me, Dakota. I promised the doctor. He's over the hospital and my jobs on the line. Then my guy will take us home. Please."

I glance over at him, and yet I can't see anything but tattoos on his hands and piercing. How could he be a doctor? I'm thinking. Paige likes that kind of man, but I don't.

"If this man you want me to meet is full of tattoos, then that's it for me, and I'm out of there."

"This one is nice and he'll make you forget about Dr. Mieras."

"OK. So you convinced me."

"Wait at the door, Dakota. I'll be there shortly. Why don't you get into the limo out front and wait for me? I'll be there shortly."

I should have known better. I didn't see a limo when I searched around looking for this place. I didn't see any cars. I didn't want to leave Paige alone with this group, and I thought if I went along with her and got her out of here, just maybe I could get her to go home with me.

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# Chapter Ten

I found the door and walked out into the mist and through the damp fog. To my surprise there parked across from the entrance to that dreadful club set a black limo like a large bird of prey hovering, with its motor humming. The limo long and sleek looking as if it was waiting for its next victim. But in this case me and yet I strode up to the car unafraid because I didn't know enough to be afraid. And because I trusted Paige and that was another mistake, I would make.

A strange pale blond with white hair, clean shaven, as if he couldn't grow a beard to save his life stepped out wearing a black suit. His grey eyes bore into me. I should have been afraid however for some strange reason, I wasn't. Looking at me, he opened the door, and I watched him, and I climbed into the car with dark windows.

When he entered the car he pulled out, and I yelled, "What's going on? I'm waiting for Paige. You know Paige." I thought everyone knew Paige.

He didn't say a word. He peered at me in the rear window and careened in and out of traffic at high speed as I tried to question him. "Where are you taking me? You know this is kidnapping. I could have you arrested." I tried all the tactics I had heard of on television when you think you're being abducted. Now was too late to cry out. I had climbed into that darken car driven by a man who would scare any adult male let alone a young woman.

But I had gone of my own free will and at the insistence of a dear friend, Paige, who promised me that she would be right out. After a half hour of pleading and sometimes scream for the driver to stop and let me out, He pulled the car up to a pair of black iron gates and stopped. By that time I had calmed down because what was the use anyway, I was committed to this ride, and I had to ride it to the end and hopefully, it wouldn't be my last ride.

I glanced around at the property if only to look for a way out. There were other limos parked in the circular driveway. Good, I thought. There are witnesses. Things don't happen when there are others around. At least I'm not alone, I thought when I saw a carload of young women exit the limo and laughing. They must have needed women at this party desperately to try kidnapping me. The girls I spotted didn't mind at all. I relaxed, sat back, and straightened my shirt. Tucked a pair of stray hairs behind my ear. I was trying to look on the bright side, but there were no bright sides to my predicament. None I could see at this point.

The driver opened the door and I stepped out. Looking to the front and side at the large paved circular driveway, and up at the enormous old mansion that had been refurbished to look new. There were guards stationed around the home and at various entrances. They had no guns that I could see, and they wore black, but even I knew they weren't there as greeters. The kind you see at Walmart. They were young with dark hair and pale skin. It never occurred to me that their skin wasn't the result of the dreary overcast weather.

They stood stiff, and their faces were without emotion as if they were programmed like robots. I passed one, and his only reaction was a twist of his nose as if he smelled something strange. I raised my arm casually, checking, thinking I hadn't used deodorant. I didn't notice anything different except I may have gone overboard with the shower jell.

After seeing what looked like a team of these dark-haired pale looking guys at every perimeter of the mansion, I concluded that there wasn't anywhere I could run to get out of that place. If the first group didn't catch me, the second group of men would.

I plodded forward to the front door with the driver at my side. When I turned around to walk back to the limo to get my purse. I realized that I had left it in the taxi, not the limo. I hadn't missed it until now because I held my iPhone in my hand as if it was an extension of my arm. It was my life line, and no one could pry it out of my hand at least not until I was dead.

Looking at it there were no calls or text messages. I slid it into my jacket because I didn't want anyone to take it from me.

Riding around with that strange man, all I could think about was an escape route, and that wouldn't be possible until the car stopped. Well, it had stopped. With weak legs and shallow breath, I turned in a circle as the guards watched me with curiosity knowing that what I would try would be futile. I decided to approach the door and get this over with so I could go home.

The door opened without anyone knocking or ringing the bell. When it opened the driver mysteriously disappeared from view. I didn't hear him leave. I didn't hear his footsteps before. He was as silent as a crypt full of the dead.

Someone knew I had approached, even though no one called the person who opened the door. Standing before me a well-dressed man with a smile on his face. As I walked into the house, all eyes turned to me. They were the faces of the most attractive people, but all had one thing in common. They had this pale skin, and they were dressed in the most luxurious black clothing. They were paired off too, the men sitting with women. The women were dancing with men. If a man had pale skin, he danced with a woman youthful warm alive looking. And so it was with women. It looked like the dead with the living.

I inched into the room and gazed around. My eyes were taking in everything I could. I wanted to remember what I had seen to report this to the authorities in case it became necessary. That's if I make it out of here alive.

This place was out of a dream with the high ceilings and sparkling chandeliers, but the chandeliers had no bright lights but were dimly lit. The area reminded me of a funeral parlor with the floor to ceiling hunter green velvet drapes and ornate furniture.

As my eyes moved upward and to the stairs, walking down the stairs a beautiful, handsome magnificent specimen of a man strode slowly down with his dark eyes roving over me from head to toe. At one point before he reached the bottom step, he stopped and smiled. It was something about his smile that reminded me of Ashton. The same mouth and even teeth with the two incisors slightly protruding as if they wore braces, but for some reason, their incisors appeared to reject the braces.

He moved as if he floated on air. Holding out his hand and showing a broad, gracious smile, he stepped before me and said, "My name is Morgan, and you are Dakota. Paige told me all about you, and I'm not disappointed."

"I hoped she didn't tell you too much. And she's wrong if she said I was looking for a date. I have a friend."

"Paige loves to talk," he said walking me around the room and introducing me to the other beautiful people, "Dakota these are my dear friends. This is Dakota everyone." They turned in my direction and slightly bowed their heads and returned to their partners.

The room filled with beautiful people who looked as if they rarely smiled and had little humor, and they appear to need the nearest tanning booth or a visit to the desert. That would be the only way to bring some color to their cheeks and smiles on their faces. The younger women and men sitting and chatting appeared to be under some kind of spell. When the pale ones smiled, they also did. When the pale ones turned to look at me, they did as well.

The introductions went on until he led me to a dining room and sat me next to him. The others followed and sat in assigned settings, but no one ate from the wonderfully cooked food served by handsome waiters and beautiful waitresses.

It was as if the people were on a movie set and the food was part of the decor, and not allowed to eat it, and the people were hired as background extras. They murmured to each other, looked up occasionally in my direction, and then went back to their conversations while wearing the most charming non-threatening smiles.

"I didn't come to stay or eat. I thought Paige would be with me. She said that you were having a party."

"But this is a party, and you are the guest of honor," Morgan said gesturing with his right hand.

"It's not my birthday, and I can't think of another special reason why a person I've never met would want to give me a party."

"You can't?" He had this strange, serious look on his face. And then I noticed the resemblance.

"Do you know Ashton Mieras?"

"Of course." But he never bothered to explain how he knew him. I finally took a bite of a carrot out of nervousness, and when I did, the many eyes at the table flicked in my direction as if I was a monkey in a cage and they were intrigued by the eating and chewing of food.

Then I made the mistake of cutting a thick slice of bread because I didn't want to eat that much. I know I should have used my fingers but I was in the company of refined people and my mother taught me not to use my fingers if I could help it.

That was a mistake, and I cut myself. A trickle of blood fell, and everyone sitting at the table turned quickly, and before I could wipe my hand on the beautiful white antique napkin, Morgan grabbed my finger and placed it in his mouth and smiled at me.

It was a strange thing to do, but I knew that wealthy men were different, but I didn't know how different. A gesture like that was all too personal for me, and besides, I could get a disease like that. Open wounds would absorb anything and the next thing I know I could be dead or worse.

There I was sitting at the table with all these beautiful, well-bred individuals and the most handsome of them was sucking my finger and appeared to enjoy every minute of it. I pulled my finger from his mouth and said, "It's dangerous to do that with blood."

"Yes, I know." He raised his hand, and a servant brought in something in a bottle.

Glancing at it, I said, "What is that you're putting on my finger?"

Looking at me with his amber eyes he said, "I'm a doctor. Your cut will heal in a matter of seconds, and there will be no infection from that knife or my bodily fluids."

"You are a doctor?" Paige had finally come through, but I wasn't interested in him. "Could you tell me something about Ashton Mieras?" He stood up as if he didn't approve of the question. His face changed, and then he smiled and took my hand.

Facing him, he said to me, "I don't like to talk about another man when I'm in the presence of a lovely young woman. Come, my driver will take you home. I think you have to be someplace tomorrow and you should get your rest." The way he looked at me as if he could devour me was unsettling and downright erotic. I had seen that look in Ashton's eyes. But Morgan's look was a look of promise. And it scared the hell out of me.

He escorted me through the crowd of onlookers as they appeared to measure me with their glances. We walked through several rooms and then to the massive foyer with black and white tile flooring and to the outside where the limo pulled up to the front door.

Morgan reached for my hand, and I felt the strange, eerie coolness I had experienced with Ashton. He brushed my hair aside, lingering, glancing down at my neck and then he kissed my cheek. "I hope this isn't too forward and presumptuous on my part."

"Of course it is. I would prefer you ask me next time." But he didn't look the type who would ask for anything. He was a taker.

"I'll try to remember." It occurred to me that he had plans to see me in the future. But I didn't think it would come soon. I gave him a quick smile. Deep down I was flattered, but I didn't know enough at that time to be anything but flattered, but I should have been frightened out of my mind.

Nevertheless, I felt light headed and walking on air. Morgan unfailing attention sent me soaring into the clouds and gave me the confidence I needed. His simple kiss felt as if it was traveling through my body like electricity jolting me to life. I felt a possibility that he could be the one. The one who would take my mind off of Ashton so I could go about my work.

"Would you have dinner tomorrow, with me?"

"I'm afraid not. I have to see my parents tomorrow. It's been a long time," I said to him as he opened the door to the car.

"I didn't know your parents were still alive." And a groundswell moved from his forehead down to his smile and his smile left, and his eyes stared past me.

As I eased down into the seat in the limo, I said, "I guess Paige didn't tell you everything about me." His eyes wavered to me, and he smiled back as if his smile was automatic when he pretends to listen. He closed the door, and I watched him wave at me and then the driver.

When I finally arrived home after sitting in silence in the back of that limo, I needed to give Paige a piece of my mind. Traveling up in the elevator I reached my floor. Opening the door, I spotted Paige sauntering around in her panties and a tee top. She had a glass of grape juice and bread in her hand.

"What are you doing, Paige?"

"Eating."

"That's not what I'm talking about. You sent me to a stranger's house, and you had no thoughts of coming with me." I had my hands on my hips and tried to give my best impression of being pissed with her. "Didn't it ever occur to you that something could have happened to me?"

Paige glanced at me as if she didn't have a clue and said, "He's a doctor, what are you crying about and he's good looking. He works at and owns the hospital where I'm employed. If that doctor had looked at me the way he gazed at your picture, I would have fucked him in a fast minute. He asked me if I could set him up with you once I showed him your picture. You're the only girlfriend I had, and you looked like the perfect person for him."

"I hope you didn't show him that picture of me in my short shorts with my cheeks showing?" She tightened her mouth and shook her head. I took that as yes. "Listen to me, Paige," I grabbed her hands, and they were cold, "I don't need to be set up with anyone. Are you sick?"

"Sick? I never felt better. Look at you, Dakota. You're wound so tight, you could break at any moment, like an old watch. I was doing you a favor. You've never been fucked and looking at Dr. Morgan, you could do worse. Much worse. Like sit around and wait for your Ashton to ask you out."

"For your information, he has already asked me out and Morgan too."

"See what I mean. Now you have two men wanting to fuck you into Sunday."

"You are disgusting, Paige. Totally outrageous." I raised my hand.

"I hope so. I never want to lose that part of me." As she turned to walk to the kitchenette, I noticed something because she had twirled her long hair on top of her head in a ball.

"What is that on your neck?" She placed her hand across it. "Let me see." I pulled her hand back and peered at her closely and said, "That looks like two bite marks. You need to put something on it. They could get infected. You need to see a doctor because you're eating a lot and you're losing weight."

Paige swung around to face me, her voice distant and hard. "How can you tell? You weigh all of a hundred pounds if that." She sat at the table, and I watched her sway as if weak.

"That's nothing. The guy I'm dating likes to bite me around my neck," she said looking up at me with cold, dull eyes. "He says it's love bites and when I've had something to drink, I don't feel it at all when he sucks on my neck."

"That looks like more than love bites. It looks like someone sunk their teeth into your neck." She placed her fingers on it again covering it with her hand. Standing I walk to her and pried her hand away and taking a better look. "Those marks are fresh, and they're turning blue. When you go to work, have someone look at them."

Then she glanced at me, staring passed me as if in a trance reminding me of the women I had seen earlier and she said, "I like when he makes love to me and bites my neck. It makes the sex so much more exciting and brings me to orgasm quickly. I thought I could never have an orgasm until I met him."

"But you have all your life to have an orgasm."

"Look Dakota. You don't understand. When you've been molested and moved from home to home and molested each time by someone who is supposed to protect you, you shut down and can't feel anything. And since I've met Christian, I can feel again. When he touches my body, it comes alive, and I enjoy sex."

There stood between us a long silence. Paige didn't talk anymore because she thought I didn't want to hear her chatter on about sex. She felt I preferred silence, so she stayed silent. And that had been a relief to me at that moment.

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# Chapter Eleven

"Sex isn't everything," I said to her. But with Paige, sex could be everything and a way to validate that someone loved her.

I guess I didn't understand. I hadn't experienced what Paige went through, looking for love, and not knowing exactly what love is. I knew that love shouldn't be painful. And looking at her body with bruises and bite marks something agonizing was going on in her relationship.

Standing and moving around then leaning on the counter facing away from Paige, I looked out the window and said, "I'm going to get some rest. I only have a few hours after traipsing all over Seattle looking for you and doing a scenic tour of the Seattle docks, I think I deserve a rest." Talking but thinking about Ashton, I turned around without looking at Paige and walked into the living area and then to my room.

Once again I woke too late with nothing clean. I opened the closet door and stood there wondering what I could get away with. The only thing hanging in my closet was a flowered summer dress with spaghetti straps my mother bought me when I was in the ninth grade. So I pulled that beach dress off the hanger, threw it over my head, and grabbed a black old worn leather jacket that had seen too many winters and thrift shops, pulled up a pair of winter boots, dressed, and rushed into my waiting Uber cab.

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"I need to be to work like yesterday," I said talking to Thomas, my Uber driver as I leaned forward. He pulled immediately into the traffic driving a little too fast for me. "You can slow down. I don't need to get there at the expense of my life."

"I didn't think you cared about your life," he said talking through the Hindu music playing in his car. That night I had him drop me at the shipyard.

He glanced into the rear mirror as if he was busy, but I knew him well enough by now to see that he was more annoyed with me than busy. He was too sweet to say ugly things, or not show up when he had promised that he would drive me to work whenever I called.

"We have to stop meeting like this," he said with a small grin. "I'm waiting for you, and you jumping out before we get a chance to get acquainted, leaves me wanting to know more about you."

"We're not friends. You're my cab driver. You know my name, and I don't know yours. He points to his license. I try to pronounce it. What's your birth name? Pronounce it for me."

"Abhinav."

I gave up and said, "We have a business arrangement, Thomas. Remember. That's all." I had pulled that name out of the air. A simple name I could remember.

"Ok, I'll answer to Thomas if that makes you happy. I like an American name. It's good for business, and since I'm your driver, it sounds professional."

"I can't afford to keep you as my driver. This might be our last business arrangement together. You're too expensive."

"That's because, Dakota, you have me waiting for you all the time, and you call me at all times of the night, and by the way, I'm happy to see you alive."

"And speaking of that, you left me on the docks."

"Like you said, "We're just friends. And you looked like you could handle yourself."

"I'm glad you have so much confidence in me." Thomas stops his cab at the front entrance, but I'm in a hurry. "No, go around to the entrance around the corner. Follow the signs it says research lab." And that was the end of our conversation because he pulled up to the back entrance and after paying him, I scurried out. Then I remembered that I left my small purse with my phone in his cab.

Turning around he had the window down and leaned near the window holding my purse in his hand with a smile on his face, I snatched my bag from him and smiled and rushed away.

This time I took the back entrance where I could cut off some of the time. Looking around to see if I was alone, I saw a black luxury BMW parked near the entrance. I rang the bell, and the door opened, and I met the sharp gaze of Ashton Mieras looking down at me.

"When are you going to learn that you can't keep coming here late? I guess I made the wrong choice when I hired you. I thought because you didn't have a boyfriend that you wouldn't act like all the other nineteen-year-olds." I walked passed him as he stood with the door opened giving me a lecture. Why doesn't he fire me? I didn't want that, and I tried my best not to get fired, but I kept doing these stupid things. And I knew better.

"I'm almost twenty," I said under my breath walking into the lab.

Because he didn't tell me I was fired at that moment, I pushed passed him as if I didn't hear a word he said, but I understood everything.

"I wanted you to work with me because you were the brightest student I've met and I thought you were reliable and more matured." I slapped my purse into the drawer and reached for a lab coat.

"And Miss Bain, I thought I could mentor you, and you would enhance my research efforts to find an answer to this problem." He threw the paper down in front of me, turned, and marched away.

Putting on my lab coat, I sat down hard trying to show my displeasure with him. I opened the folder after taking a breath of relief at not being fired on the spot.

As I read the paper, I realized that this was something he believed in. His research focused on discovering a rare disorder in DNA where exposure to sunlight will destroy the skin cells. In other words any exposure to the sun, ultraviolet light will kill an individual with this rare form of the disease. I read that they call these individuals Moon People.

Was this good-looking man stricken with this gene? Is that why he has shutters on his window to prevent light from coming into his apartment, and he works only at night?

Then that would account for all his curtains drawn, and the darkness he moves around in. I've never seen him during the daylight hours. I took a deep breath because I had begun to think that he was the vampire Elliot spoke about. I let out a loud sigh.

Could he be a vampire? It sounded unbelievable, but at some point, I believed Elliot. Could these Moon People be the original vampires? Hell no. I glanced at Ashton's office, and he wasn't in there. I prayed he didn't come back into the lab.

But before I could look around somehow, he was standing in the back of the lab working at his desk keying something into the computer program.

I glanced to the side hoping he didn't see me watching at him, hoping he had gotten everything off his chest. I could tell he was angry this time. Angry because this research was clearly essential and he thought I could help him. He trusted me, and I let him down with my childish behavior of being forever late.

I was sure there were more competent mentees, and they were far brighter than me, but for some reason, he didn't want to fire me. He had every right in the world. Some of the other interns had been let go on the first day, and I managed to hold on to this position even as I became habitually late, arrogant, and stubborn. Did he refuse to fire me and send me home to get a job at Starbucks for the same reason I didn't want to be away from him--because I was attracted to him in the worse way? Or was it as he had said that I was the brightest intern he had met.

Being near him made me feel so much better about life. Even as he was being hard on me, I could see in his eyes the tenderness of his gaze, and the need for someone he could share ideas with. He was my first love and why did I have to fall in love with an outward cold matured man like him? I wondered. And then I remembered Morgan.

When I looked up again to see Ashton, he had disappeared, and I watched at him standing on the outside of the lab shouting at an intern.

By the pained look on the young doctor's face, Ashton had taken his anger out on one of the male interns. When he saw me watching at him, he returned to where I was sitting at the computer and leaned over me to see if I had done everything to his specification.

He made me nervous stalking around. I said stalking because I neither saw him nor heard him coming or going. He just showed up behind me or next to me. I couldn't focus when I knew he would be there when I didn't expect.

Glancing up at him I shuddered and spoke out of surprise. "Do you know a Dr. Morgan?" I asked because I was nervous and couldn't think of anything else.

His eyes shot to me. I could feel the intensity of them as if I had asked about a known serial killer and I had plans to date him. His mouth tightened, and his teeth gritted. He turned to me.

"You should never ask about him again." His voice cold and irregular filled with anxiety.

"Why?"

When I heard a sigh coming from across the room, I looked in that direction to see him with his back to me facing the wall staring aimlessly at nothing. I put my head down and gazed at a blank screen on the computer.

"Don't ask me why." His voice near and he standing over me once more. He swiveled me around and pulled me from my seat, leaving me trembling in his arms. Looking into his sharp amber eyes, he stared at me. Then I felt the warmth not from his body but from his look. He said nothing and walked close to me pulling me closer to him.

"If you don't want me to kiss you then tell me now because I'm going to kiss you as you've never been kissed before."

My eyes locked on his and there was a pleading in my eyes and a begging for him to kiss me and bring our bodies closer. I heard his moaning in my ear. I listened to his erratic breathing in my ear. I didn't know if it was my voice or his I was hearing. I felt everything.

The hardness of his muscular body pulsating against my need as he placed his tongue in my open mouth. His tongue mingling in my mouth as he sucked it hard and long. The feeling of his embrace seized me as he brought me close to him. I felt his hardness when our bodies clashed together.

I felt his pulsating rhythm thumping against my leg. I moved my hips into his. The movement of our bodies broke when he lifted me on the counter where the experiments had been performed. He wrapped his hands around my legs and pulled them closer as he braced against me on the hard granite counter top.

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Slanting into to me he said, "Kiss me. Love me. Surrender yourself to me." I knew how to kiss him. I knew how to love him, but I didn't know or understand how to surrender to him.

My sheer dress rolled up my thighs, and he quickly pulled at my panties with my arms wrapped around his neck. His head lowered close to my breasts as he looked into my eyes when he pulled my panties down past my knees.

"I'm going to make love to you," he said, our eyes locking, his lips on mine. "Tell me now if you don't want this."

Breathlessly I said, "I want this. I need this. I want you so much." I had surrendered myself. All that I was and had, I was giving it to him now on a hard counter in a lab. It may not have been the best place for a young woman to surrender herself to the man she waited for all her life, but I wasn't thinking about that hard counter. It felt like a bed of soft Downey feathers because I was in love.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner that you wanted me?" How could I say that to him when I didn't think he liked me no less tolerated me?

I may have been able to approach a younger guy, but I didn't think I had the sophistication to make a move on Ashton.

Paige would have but not me. I was still in that school of thought of my mother's generation where you don't make a move unless the man initiates it, and then you play hard to get. That would get me nothing but a virgin and unmarried at the age of forty, and there are statistics on forty-year-old virgins, I thought, as I buried my tongue deep into his mouth and unzipped his pants.

He placed his large finger gently into my opening as he kissed me. I watched his eyes change expressions as if what he was attempting was excruciating. It was more difficult for me, I thought. I was tight, and maybe by inserting his finger, he felt that would make my opening more responsive to his penis. But he grimaced not wanting to hurt me, and I tightened my grip on his back when he explored my soft tissue.

"Relax," he said as if he was a doctor giving me an exam. His finger cold and hard.

"I am relaxed," I said as he met my lips. His kiss became more intense the further he probed into me, making me wet for him, and needing more.

"That's better," he said exhaling and moaning into my mouth. When hardly any of his digits had entered my tight opening, as if a lightning bolt had hit him, he pulled his finger out of me and sprang backward and away from me as he stood with a disturbing glare focused on me. A look that made me feel as if I was the one doing something wrong.

I thought my first encounter with the man I wanted to take my virginity would be earth-shattering, but instead, I felt as if my being a virgin had some unimaginable consequences.

"You're a virgin," he said his voice taking the sound of a man who discovers his wife has been unfaithful. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"It wasn't like it was on the application," I said. "You didn't have boxes to tick off asking if I was a virgin. I didn't know it mattered to you." I screamed at him pulling down my dress, tugging up my panties, and trying to cover all that he had felt and seen. Couldn't he see that the Genie was out of the bottle and his angry unresponsiveness couldn't put it back?

I'm sitting on the counter in the dim light of the lab aroused and argued about my virginity. What a bummer. I didn't know it would be this difficult to give my virginity away. No one would believe such a thing and especially not Paige which brought her to mind in the most crucial time in my life. I had hoped the man of my dreams would make my dreams come true and take me and he's standing there indignant because I didn't disclose to him that I 'm a virgin.

He turned his back to me and then twisted around and said nothing but stared in my direction and then in a huff, he left me sitting there with my virginity in tack but feeling like a fool. I watched as he disappeared into his office where he had a restroom. No doubt to wash off my smell from his finger and body.

As I gracelessly climbed off the counter, pulling my thin dress down, feeling embarrassed, it dawned on me. "Why the fuck am I apologizing for being a virgin. He should count his stars that he was able to even come across a woman that he can claim as his own. Those women falling over him and hoping he fucks them have had more men than he will ever see or know about. Maybe he doesn't care. Obviously, I'm not what he wants.

"If that's what he wants, then I will show him. "That's his loss," I murmured. "One man's trash is another man's treasure. I bet Morgan would kill to have this virgin," I said as I strolled weak into the restroom and straightened myself up. Looking into the mirror, I wore this sad look. My feelings had welled inside of me, and I was feeling sorry for myself. I took a good look in the mirror. My long hair wild. My clothes are disheveled.

I had learned early on if you feel sorry for yourself, you will never get up and accomplish anything. The problem now is how do I work for a man who has seen my weaknesses? A man I'm insanely in love with who wants nothing to do with me as long as I'm a virgin. I stood looking into the mirror and then I had enough with my self-pity and walked back with my head held high and sat in front of the computer and stared at it. There was no way I could do anything tonight.

And then I saw what brought me an understanding of Ashton. At least I thought I understood. Leaving Ashton's office a smiling nurse from Pediatrics. He turned to see if I was looking and I put my head down pretending I was logging in the findings from his experiments.

According to the time stamp, Ashton works seven days a week from sundown to sunrise. Who can work like that? I questioned.

When I thought he was heading my way to apologize, he opened the door and stood and glared at me. Then he stepped through with the door closing behind him and said, "Close up the lab, and I'll have my driver take you home."

"You will not. I can get home on my own," I said in my best confrontational voice.

"Very well. I have a date." His tone matter-of-factly. His voice lacked any warmth. His tone appeared to mock me and what I thought we had or was going to have. He fucked that up with his unfeeling and uncaring demeanor.

At this point, I didn't give a flying fuck any more and if he wanted me, which I doubt because no man runs to another woman and deliberately lets you see him if he intends to have a relationship with you.

So once again I crossed him off my list of potential lovers and potential husbands. Not that I had more than him on my list. Maybe Morgan should be added.

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# Chapter Twelve

I called my Uber friend to pick me up after I watched Ashton leave the research area and climb into his BMW alone. Peeping out of the small window I stared at his car pulling out of his parking space and turning in the direction to the entrance of the hospital. Still feeling disappointed, I knew where I could go to feel better. I had to go home and eat my mother's cooking and listen to my father rail about the world and how the prices are rising, and he can't make it on his pension and social security.

"You're early tonight, Dakota. I had to pick up another client, but I called him to say I wasn't available. I'm losing money dealing with you, Dakota," Thomas said when I climbed into the back seat of the car. He turned around watching at me for a second.

"I can tell you like me even if I drive you crazy. We understand each other." I leaned my elbow on the rest and lay my head on my fist. "You're all business, I know," I said to Thomas when I looked at his dark eyes in the mirror as he pulled out of the driveway. "That's what you want me to believe. All business."

I laughed a little because nothing could be further from the truth. Thomas told me his problems as he drove me to and from work and I listened. I'm a good listener most times.

He said that he's an East Indian from Mumbai and found himself in Seattle because of the regime change. He had lived in different parts of Europe before migrating to the US on a temporary visa. Unable to work in his profession, he turned to Uber for an income until he could get a job in technology and apply for citizenship.

"What are you going to do if you can't drive me around any longer and I have to take the train?" I asked him.

"Maybe get a life," he said pulling off into traffic.

"Take me to my parent's home." Thomas knew all about my family and me. My father helped him get on for Uber after seeing him walking in the rain one night. It was then he suggested that he could work for them, so he called a friend, and that friend hired him. Now he has his own car and his hours are his own.

"Do you expect me to pick you up or wait for you?" He asked after he made the turn off the highway. He knew the answer. He just wanted me to tell him.

"No, Thomas. I don't want you to wait. You do have to make a living. My father will bring me back to my apartment." I glanced at him in the mirror, and I heard a sigh, and a disappointed looked crossed his face. "If it makes you feel better, I'll need you this week. After that, I don't know." I saw a smile on his face, and then I said, "I'll probably have to take the train if Dr. Mieras doesn't fire me first. You work mostly at night, and he will probably assign me to someone else. I want to work with another doctor," I said.

As I Watched silently out the car window, at the rain-soaked streets, the cab traveled slowly through the old neighborhood I had grown up in. I ached to see the area with the thought of those days as a young girl. It hadn't been that long since I moved out. Something in me longed to go back but I couldn't. I was grown now and on my own. The Genie couldn't get back into the bottle even if I wanted to. I had been turned down by a man I desired and I wanted to climb into my bed in my parent's home and stay there but I couldn't.

When I glanced up from my thoughts, we were passing my high school, and in a minute we would be pulling into the driveway of my parent's home. I let out a sigh and then a small laugh.

"What happened with you and the doctor?" Thomas asked interrupting my thoughts.

"What do you mean? He's a busy man." I tried to act as if it wasn't anything personal that had occurred between us, but my voice must have betrayed me.

"I mean when you spoke of him before tonight, there was something in your voice that was soft and caring."

"Oh him. He's not interested in a nineteen-year-olds. He wants someone more matured. Oh, I forgot I had a birthday. I'm twenty now."

"How could you forget that, Dakota? And what man doesn't want a twenty-year-old woman who's beautiful and smart?"

"Dr. Ashton Mieras."

"Now where have I heard that name before?" Thomas said looking in the rearview mirror his eyes narrow, and his mind focused.

"I know. I read about Mieras. He's a prominent research scientist." His eyes were blinking, and his hand moved over his chin. "Yes, I know now. The blood doctor they called him. He's known around the world, and he has a brother. I can't recall what the brother's name is. How old is Dr. Mieras?"

"Twenty-five, I think. No more than twenty-seven. How did you know about Ashton?" I asked Thomas.

"He once had a clinic operating in India. His family has been studying blood-borne diseases and genetic disorders since the English controlled all of India. I have a scrapbook belonging to my father of newspaper clippings of his work. Some say Dr. Mieras took advantage of the poor and extracted their blood for his own use to make himself wealthy. Others say it was to extend his life."

"But what use could he have for blood?"

"To sell it, to drink it," Thomas said to me looking at me in the rearview mirror expecting a reaction which he got.

"Be serious, Thomas."

"I'm serious. There are tales in my country about men who drink blood to live, and it prolongs their lives. They are called the Immortals, and you never see them during the day."

"In my country, we have tales too, and they called them Dracula or Vampires. And that's all they are, tales. Fiction. And what's more, that couldn't be my doctor. Must have been his father or grandfather."

"Perhaps," Thomas said not at all convinced.

The car came to an abrupt stop. "Now how much this time?" He parked in front of my parent's home near the front door. I was ready to run from his tales of vampires. I seem to be running into that notion of bloodsucking immortals lately, or I'm just noticing it more often now.

"I can't afford you, Thomas." I handed him twenty dollars. "I know." In fact, that cab ride was cheap.

But he took the money and said, "See you tomorrow." He didn't give me any change.

Stepping out of the cab, I stood and glanced at the house and neighborhood I called home. I wanted to go back but I couldn't. It was just to visit now. I was all grown and fell in love with a man who doesn't love me, and he doesn't even want what I was offering--my virginity. It's a bad feeling when you want to give something away, and no one wants it. That was all I had and my devotion to him, and yet, that wasn't enough.

In serious need of a cry and a hug, I held it in, and walked up the steps and rang the bell. I had my key, but I didn't want to startle anyone.

My mother came to the door, dressed for bed, in a gown and heavy robe. She could tell something was wrong. Where else do you go when you need someone--home?

"Come in, baby. I'm glad you came. I hoped it would be sooner. You've been gone for months." And she gave me a hug as if she thought I would disappear before her eyes.

We walked into the room past the dining area and to the back where father sat watching late night television and was having a conversation with the news people. Ever since I can remember he talked to the TV. He turned to see me and rose from his chair and greeted me and then went back to the news programs he had seen earlier.

Standing for a few and looking at me hug my father she said, "There's something I want you to see. I forgot to give you this scrapbook." She turned and started walking in the direction of my room.

"You didn't forget to give me that satchel filled with knives and things," I said with a snarky tone to my voice.

She glanced at me, "I knew you would need it someday, but I thought I would have more time to tell you about your birth father and why I let you think that John was your real father."

"Does he know?"

"Yes. Come." My mother took my hand and led me into my room. She opened a chest and pulled out a scrapbook with pictures and newspaper clippings of a young man thin and handsome with a beard. He stood six feet. I smiled, but my birth father's face showed the look of a man in pain. He didn't smile in any of the images. Picture after picture traveling from different countries, he wore that same pained expression. His blue eyes sad in each photograph either standing in the middle of people. Then the headlines gripped me.

Renowned Dr. Overbridge once thought dead resurfaces in India. He stated to the reporter that he was on the verge of a huge discovery. That there were indeed vampires and he would be the one to wipe them from the face of the earth. Immortals have no right to prey on the indefensible poor who are mortals and to bleed them dry.

I glance up at my mother. "Really? What does that mean?"

"Your father had a theory that immortals were preying on humans and he had to put a stop to it before all humanity was wiped from the face of the earth, and worse yet, for humans to be kept like cattle to feed the vampires."

"But we know vampires don't exist," I said shifting nervously on the bed waiting for her to confirm that there is no such thing as a vampire.

"Do we really? With his outbursts and determined to unmasked them, the government locked him away for his own safety. He was a brilliant man, but now he's dead. He died at the hands of this man whom your father had declared as one of the immortals."

My mother pulled an old picture from a scrapbook. It was the picture of a handsome, youthful man. "Look at him and don't forget that face. He's the one who your father said would come for you and kill you. You're the only one who could destroy him."

I couldn't hide the shock and distress that covered my face. My expression said it all. I put my hands to my mouth and let out a hard breath.

"What is it, Dakota?"

"I work for this man in the research department. The research is about blood."

"He's dangerous. You have to leave and leave soon."

"I don't understand. Dr. Mieras is a young man. In this picture, he could resemble anyone. There's another Dr. who resembles the one in this picture."

To that my mother said, "You have to find the right one and kill him."

"You can't be serious, mother. Kill a man I..." I couldn't tell her I had been intimate with him or that the other doctor is interested in me.

Ashton had kissed me and held me in a tender embrace. His mouth tenderly caressed me. He didn't want me dead. He just didn't want me to be a virgin. Nothing made any sense. There was nothing that fit and this wasn't the way it should have been.

I should have married that man and had his children and socialized with his friends. But he had no friends that I knew of. He had many women desiring him, waiting for him to pay attention to them, but it was me he appeared to want, and now he doesn't want me at all.

Did he know who my father was? How could he? Even I was afraid of the answer. Not unless he was the doctor in that photo and not his father who I thought and wanted it to be. Maybe he did want me dead but needed me close to him. But for what reason?

"Here, take this scrapbook and study it, and read all about this man who killed your father and if you expect to live and have children, then you will have to kill that vampire."

Looking at her tormented face, I knew she had to be serious. Did she believe what she was saying because she was ill? I put my arms around her and as she shook with terror and I tried to comfort her. I had gone to my mother for reassurance and to discuss the man I so much wanted and who had discarded me because I was what most men wanted, but not him.

"Mom you should see a doctor. When was the last time you had a checkup?" I could think of no other reason for this kind of conversation about killing vampires other than my mother was seriously ill with a brain tumor.

"Last week. I saw the doctor last week. There's nothing wrong with me," she whispered. I'm probably healthier than you. Look at you, thin as a rail. I've cooked your favorite meal. I'll warm it for you." She held my hand and then she trotted in the direction of the kitchen to prepare my fajitas before I could protest. It was too late to eat.

I lay on the bed after my mother left the room and I fell asleep. I dreamed of Ashton and my father. I dreamed of a man I would have wanted to know--my birth father. He sounds interesting, but he too was probably a bit off his rocker.

And I dreamed of a man who I wanted to love me and have me love him--Ashton. These were two different men, yet I wanted the same thing--their love.

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# Chapter Thirteen

My adopted father, the only father I knew who loved me dearly, drove me to my apartment. When I woke in my bed after a restful sleep, with no more nightmares and dreams of a man who remained in the fog of my mind and didn't visit me anymore I felt renewed.

I had grown up, and I was a big girl now, and I didn't need any dreams to make me happy. I had to make my own life with its uncertainties and perils along the way. I could no longer depend on the safety of my parents' home.

When I opened my bedroom door, I expected to see Paige, and once again she hadn't come home. But this time I wouldn't go rushing off in the dead of night to rescue her or go off to some stranger's gated community because Paige wanted to introduce me to a doctor. I didn't need a doctor or lawyer to be happy. All I needed was a chance to go to college and build a life for myself out of the cold and rain and splash a little sunshine on my face.

I woke an hour later still in my sundress my mother was surprised to see me wearing because I didn't even wear it when I was in the ninth grade because I felt the students would laugh at me along with all the other outrageous clothes I wore, which my mother had sewn, and I had been her model. Not knowing better. But I know better now.

Discarding my dress with the other unwashed mess, I rushed into the shower. While there with the warm water flowing, I could think and nothing was more pressing than to think about Ashton and what had happened between us. I would need to resign. When stepping out of the shower, I reached for a towel with my eyes closed and the shower door opened.

My hand is flailing in front of me, I knew that I had put the towel on the door handle, but it wasn't there. Then a hand extended with a towel and the person behind the hand said, "Here."

I flinched, and said, "What do you want? What are you doing here? I'm naked."

"Yes, I know. I've seen you naked before."

"Not like this," I said with a hoarse voice. I didn't want to be reminded of that unfortunate occurrence. Nor did I want to see him again. I wanted to pretend that this wasn't a part of my life anymore especially after tonight.

"Shouldn't you be on a date?"

"It was just a dinner date," he said with animated pleasure. "Why, are you jealous?" He slanted his head to the side and downward holding my eyes with his.

"Of you and another woman? Of course not. I'm more matured than that. I know if a man rejects me it's because I'm not what turns him on. Maybe her large breasts caught your eyes and something else. As you can see I'm not that endowed." He walked closer to me. We stood looking at each other. Needing each other. If it wasn't need on his part why was he here?

"Yes your breasts are quite small," he said glancing at me, with a raise of his lip into a small closed smile but his eyes shown a soft sexy glare.

"How did you get in?"

"You left the door unlocked." I didn't think about it because at the time I may have.

"You should go. In the time we saw each other hours before, I didn't run out and suddenly become un-virgin if that is a word which I doubt." And I saw a small smile on his handsome face, and then it turned into a broad smile with laughter.

"You asked me why I came. I came to apologize to you for what I did to you."

"If you are talking about the finger fuck, I think I can survive. And don't beat yourself up over anything because it was consensual. But I have a problem with you leaving me for that nurse."

"She's someone I knew in Europe, and when she immigrated to the US she needed to work, and I gave her a job that's all." I reached for a robe because he thought it necessary to make these lengthy explanations with me standing in a towel and naked underneath. I had no power other than to ask him to leave but I was interested in what kind of explanation he would give me for his behavior.

"I should have known better. You were my intern, and I'm your supervisor..." I stopped him.

"You were my supervisor. I'm handing in my letter of resignation and don't worry about how it looks. You have hundreds of young women who are not virgins who will gladly take my spot."

"You can't go."

"I can and I will." He pulled me into his arms.

"Can't you see that I haven't been myself from the minute I laid eyes on you? I've wanted to take you in my arms and hold you like this, but I didn't dare let myself do it. I didn't think that a young woman like you would want a man like myself." What is he talking about? I'm thinking. How could I not want someone like him? He's what women dreams are made of.

"I made a mistake. Can you forgive me?" He said. "I need you in the worse way. I promise you that I will never treat you the way I've been doing. Just give me another chance to make it up to you." He sounds like an average man who wants to fuck a woman. Begging and pleading. But was he normal or something worse?

"I know nothing about you, Ashton. Before it didn't matter, but now that I've had a chance to think and clear my head, I want to know more about you. Your life, your family. I need to know those things before I fall completely and irreversibly in love with you." He raised an eyebrow.

"You love me?" Ashton asked that question as if it was a remote chance that I could ever love him, ever.

"Didn't you know it? Couldn't you see it on my face? Didn't you see how all those women looked at me? They knew that I was in love with you because they had seen that look on their faces in the mirror. How could you not see it too?"

"Because I was trying to push you away from me. I thought you were too young to be with me. But I thought of you all the time. I longed for you to want me."

"I'm only a few years younger than you." I reminded him. His expression stilled and became somber. He strode to the bed and sat on the corner. Reaching for me, he brought me to his lap, and I sat there with him cradling me in his arms.

Then he placed me on my back opened the robe and I lay there with the towel wrapped around me, and I waited until he had quickly removed his shirt and slacks and shoes. He stood before me naked. His powerful muscular chest leaned over me. I saw a large faded tattoo across his arms. I couldn't make out what kind of symbol it was.

"What's that?" I asked as I smoothed my hand along his hard muscles. "You need to go to a tanning room. You are so pale and cold. Your body is cold."

"And you aren't," he said leaning over me, his eyes penetrating me as he looked at my breasts and mouth. His amber eyes are piercing my blue eyes as if he could see into me. Seeing something I didn't know was there--me. The other me. He narrowed his vision, and his face changed.

"What is it, Ashton?'

"I thought I saw someone I had met a long time ago. Someone who had your eyes. But he's dead." His eyes returned to me. His mind returned to the moment. "Kiss me." Talking about the dead in the same voice as demanding a kiss disturbed me, but I forgot that in a minute when his lips touched my nipples causing them to harden and crest to volcanic peaks.

As his demands on my body grew, I placed my arms around his neck, and he leaned his mouth to mine, and his kiss was more powerful and electrifying that it had been before. We were in a bed now, and I wasn't sitting on a cold granite counter. The sensation from the counter mirrored his body, and in my bed, I felt his cold hard body press against mine, and I shivered. He placed the comforter around me to give me warmth as he began to arouse me with his kisses.

As Ashton lay over me, his firm cold manhood laid firmly on my leg. His intense lovemaking of kissing my breasts, with his hands stimulating my thighs, I felt my skin tremble. His mouth moved from my lips to kissing my neck. And back to my breasts, and all I could feel was the heat that stirred inside me. With waves of passion throbbing through me, raising my temperature until I no longer felt the chill of his body pressing against mine, I held him tightly.

I pushed the comforter away because of the stifling scorching heat rising from my body. I loved every moment he had me beneath him.

He passed his lips over mine and then his tongue inserted into my closed lips and when his tongue entered into my mouth his penis entered my opening. When his hips crashed into my hips, he had entered me and taken what he didn't want before. I grabbed his back and dug my nails into his skin, and it was as if it didn't affect him. I clawed and scratched from the pain, and I should have drawn blood, but none appeared.

With his eyes closed he pushed deep into me and then I felt the moisture that lubricated us and I became aroused as he broke through restraining his body so he couldn't bear his weight down on me. "Don't hold back. I'm not easy to break," I murmured into his ear. I felt his body relax over mine. It was instinctive as we both seem to relax as if we had known each other before.

"But you don't understand. I can't control myself around you." That meant nothing to me. I was being satisfied, and I wanted him to be the same without restrictions.

"If I get carried away," he said breathing hard and watching me, "I warn you that it could happen, don't judge me please, it's just that I need you. It's just because I love you, Dakota. I love you more than life." At the time it must have been easy for him to say that to me.

It wasn't hard for me to say, "I love you too, Ashton." Because I did. I never felt the rush of emotion that I was experiencing. Never. A calmness flowed over me and settled through my body as I reached my orgasm. A weight had been removed off of me in more ways than one.

I was no longer a virgin, and the man I desired took that and now he would know that this was something he didn't have to fear and I would be his. I claimed him. He didn't have to claim me. I would be exclusive to him.

But that was short-sighted on my part. As Ashton reached the summit of his climax, he gnashed around with his face buried in the bed. I tried to pretend that it was part of the way he handled his arousal, but it appeared to be something different and unusual for a man. His moaning and thrashing over me seemed unfamiliar to me like something a wild beast would do with his mate.

At any moment I thought he would call for handcuffs to restrain him, but he didn't, and as he reached the peak of his orgasm, he calmed down. His buried head on the side of my neck rose, and I noticed blood trickling down his lips.

Touching my shoulder, I slowly brought two fingers up. It was blood indeed. "I'm sorry, Dakota. I should have warned you."

"Warned me about what? What is it you should have said to me?" At that moment I became alarmed. What more should I have known about Ashton that I didn't take time to discover?

When he fell to the side and lay on his back, there was a drop of blood on the sheets, too. He took the top coat and covered me. "What is wrong with you? Haven't you seen blood on a woman before? If we're going to date, then there will be many occasions where I will have my period. The only time when that's not happening is when I'm pregnant, but I don't plan on that for years."

He lay on his back looking to the ceiling as if counting the blades on the fan or his mind had left the room and taken him with it. I pushed at his shoulder. "What is it, Ashton? What did you need to tell me?"

"That I'm a... and you shouldn't be around me."

"You are a what? You haven't said anything. What are you?" I'm leaning over him now and dragging my nail up and down and across his chest trying to get his skin to bump, but it doesn't. I did notice one thing and that he kept a constant hard-on. Maybe that was what he wanted to tell me but couldn't bring himself to say that he was a sex addict or one of those people who needed sex all the time.

"Are you a nymphomaniac?" I questioned. His eyes grew wide open and his brow furrowed. He had that expression of people who had seen a lot and been everywhere. A way they looked at the world as if they knew too much.

"I think that would be a word to describe a woman who wants to engage in sex all the time. She has an insatiable urge to have sex, and I don't think you qualify as one."

"This conversation is not about me but you."

Hoping on top of his chest, he pushed me gently to the side. I said with a playful voice, "Give me time, I might become one."

"Go and take a shower. You have blood all over you?"

"What's the big deal? You handle blood all the time."

"Not fresh blood." I crossed over him and stepped onto the floor. I left my mark across his stomach. It was the blood he had helped create. When I turned to laugh at him, he shuddered at the blood on his chest. Then I strode into the shower.

I stayed only for a few minutes, but when I stepped on the cold floor, I said, "Bring me a towel, Ashton. It's in that closet near the bed. Don't mind the dirty clothes, I'll get around to it. Ashton. Ashton where are you?"

Walking out of the restroom and into my bedroom, he was gone, and the sheets were stripped from the bed and on to the floor. "What the fuck? Not again."

At that moment I didn't know how to feel. I knew when a man leaves you and you don't ask him to go that can't be too good. Maybe I needed this to wake me up to the reality of relationships and this man. I thought I had found the man of my dreams. I had plans for those few hours of us being together and especially when he said that he loved me. But more experienced women than me have been made fools of when they have fallen for the wrong man, and now I knew that Ashton was the wrong man for me.

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# Chapter Fourteen

Ashton Mieras had been born in Spain around the time of the Bourbon rule in the eighteenth century. His birth came about because his mother had an affair with an Austrian Prince who had been imprisoned and locked away for being one of the Moon people. The ones who walk at night.

After realizing that he could escape his chains, he found Ashton's mother who had been promised to an old aristocrat. She thought she would live out her life never experiencing love of any kind until he showed in her room in the dark of night and made love to her.

Enthralled with the Prince, she fell in love with him, and on giving birth to one son she then gave birth to another son, she named Ashton and having him taken from her she became distraught. She would have had more children by this man of the darkness, but the townspeople discovered where he lived and fearing that he could have more offspring, they crept into his castle and put a stake into his heart.

Given his mother's maiden name of Mieras, Ashton and his brother had been removed from her and given to a nun. The nun gladly took Ashton to her order and sent his brother to another order in the Americas where his identity had been concealed.

To save Ashton the nun brought him with her for safekeeping where no one knew about him, and she hoped he would grow up in the nunnery where she could help him.

Knowing he would be put to death because of what he was and who he was, she would bring him to his mother so she could breastfeed him. The nuns at the convent took him in without question, and with milk from his mother, there was never a problem. But then they began to notice something peculiar. He suddenly started refusing his mother's milk and not eating. As he became a toddler, he preferred the blood of newly butchered animals.

The nun who had brought him to the convent confessed to her knowledge of what he was, and she was put under severe penalties after admitting that she couldn't bring herself to kill the child.

And so he grew but his thirst for blood grew with him, and soon he became intolerable to the community around him. The nuns had to eventually leave him to the forest where he would survive or die. But instead, he hunted the animals of the forest for his food and developed a taste for animal blood and not human blood. But as he found his way to the towns and cities, he began to hunt and realized that human blood gave him the strength and vitality he needed. As he grew into manhood, he noticed that he remained a certain age. In his twenties. He stayed forever young.

"What is the matter, Dr. Mieras?"

"Only the nightmares that have haunted me all my life. I think of my mother and father, and then of all the individuals I've killed so that I could survive throughout the centuries," Ashton said to his servant. He sat up after waking from his sleep. Soon I will have the answer I've been seeking all these years." His servant glanced at him not knowing his mind.

"My research has been fruitful since I've met Dakota and had her as my assistant. She has a brilliant mind, and it won't be long before I am like any human but better. She's been beneficial to me, and now I think I've found the one woman who will help me discover a cure to my affliction and who I can love. And who loves me. One who will bare my children. These are different times from my father. I will be able to be with my children and their mother without being hunted by anyone."

His servant held out his velvet robe, and Ashton slid his arms through the sleeves and tied the sash around him. He sighed and walked to look out into the night. "I'm getting close. Soon I will solve the puzzle where I can walk during the daylight hours. I've been working on this for years. My life is about to change. I will have a wife soon and have all the things I've wanted most of my existence." Ashton smiled overjoyed at his accomplishments.

"Do you think that young woman of yours will accept that you are...?"

"Say it. You don't have to be afraid to say it in my presence. You have been with me for years and your father before you and his father before him. We are like family."

"If you say so, Mr. Mieras."

"It's time to start calling me Ashton. Soon I will be almost like you. I will be able to bask in the sunlight like all men if I choose to do that."

"Very well, Ashton, what are you eating today?"

"Did you make sure that I have a large quantity of deer blood because I can't hunt and conduct the experiments? There is only so many hours in the day or should I say night."

"You spend too many hours in the quest to walk during the day. Why not tell that woman what you are. She probably won't believe you, and you won't have lost anything."

"I will have lost everything if she knows who I am too soon, and I will have to tell her that I was the one who killed her father."

"You don't have to tell her the truth. Just don't say anything."

"One day she will discover the truth, and it might be Morgan who will reveal it to her. She asked me about him, and I glossed over her questioned. But it will come up. He's here in Seattle. I should have known his whereabouts, but I was too busy working. I hoped he wouldn't come into my territory. He has his spies out, and he knows why and what I'm trying to do and he knows that I'm in love and he wants to stop me. If I solve the problem of walking during the day, I can control him because I will have the time to seek out his crypt and those of his wives and servants."

"How could he know about Dakota and that you want to marry her, or your search for his resting place?"

"He doesn't know that I would never harm him because he's my brother. I just want him to leave me to have a life with a human. Every vampire is different. Some are born to kill like men, and some have compassion. Because you're human, you don't have any idea about the feelings and desires of vampires. Some of us love only once, and some of us like my brother Morgan are notorious for discarding women mortal and immortal, at will."

"You have to be to the lab in an hour. It's time to groom yourself, sir."

"What do you think about this beard I've grown? It took a week, but I'm proud of it," Ashton said as his hand smoothed across his beard, up and down his face. "Not bad. Makes me look..."

"Different," his servant said.

"I need to look different for Dakota. I left her home abruptly, and she's a young female and probably won't understand, and she's." Ashton cut the conversation.

He didn't want to reveal his private experience with Dakota and blood. "She might think that I wasn't serious when I said that I love her. But I love her to the point that I can't think of anything else and that if I don't have her, I'd sooner put a stake into my heart and be rid of this long, painful life I've endured all these years without her."

Then Ashton glanced at his servant, "Where can I get some roses? Young women like roses?"

"Nothing has changed in two hundred years. Women love roses, and they like boxes of candy and something from Tiffany's too."

Ashton gazed down, his face blank as if searching for an answer to a test. "What is this Tiffany you speak of?"

"In all these hundreds of years, you've never given a woman a ring?" He shook his head no. "You have been in a lab so long that you don't take time to watch television or date." Ashton looked at his servant with a smile. "Well, it's time I wake up and visit the twenty-first century. I'm on the breakthrough of the most important discovery in the world of vampires, and I want to be ready to break the news to Dakota."

"Be careful, Ashton. If it gets into the wrong hands, mankind will suffer, and from what I've heard about your brother, if he gets access to this knowledge, he will use it to destroy humans."

"I don't want to think about Morgan. I want to think about Dakota. Where can I buy her something at Tiffany's?"

"I can arrange to have it delivered to her tomorrow. What do you want, a diamond bracelet, diamond earrings?"

"A diamond engagement ring. Solitaire. A large one." And Ashton's smile rose wide. "Now take me to work and stop at a florist and let me buy my love a dozen roses. Do you think she would want more?"

"A dozen seems sufficient, sir."

"Call me Ashton."

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When Ashton stopped at the florist to buy red roses, Dakota was writing a resignation letter and leaving it on his desk.

After placing the letter carefully, Dakota stepped outside and into a waiting car with Paige and a friend.

I knew I didn't want to write that letter, but I had no choice. I needed to work, and I needed the recommendation letter, but now all that was gone. There was no getting around this, I couldn't bear to be in Ashton's presence after what he did. It was never a great idea to work with someone who's your supervisor as well as a lover. It's a well-known unwritten law. The circumstances wouldn't make for the best relationship, but deep down I wasn't ready to give up on him entirely.

I needed to get his attention. In the letter, I asked for a transfer to another part of the hospital, another department and another scientist where I didn't have to be reminded of him every day.

As I ambled through the door, my legs felt heavy and with a heart full of anxiety, wondering how he would take my declaration. After placing the letter on his desk, I wanted to turn around and go back and rip it up or throw it in the shredder.

I have a mental picture of it and of him finding it. He would either fly into a rage and fire me or ball it up and throw it into the trash and go on with his life. I didn't know if I could handle the last scenario.

Strolling out of his office, I questioned if I had acted irrationally. And the answer came back, it wasn't me who was unfeeling and difficult, it was him, and if he had been different in dealing with me then maybe I would have stayed.

The minute I climbed into the car with Paige and her friend, I knew I had made a mistake. I had my hand clutching the door handle. I didn't want to release it because the notion to run back and tear up that letter kept crossing my mind and more so after watching Paige, but too late.

It was around Ten pm when a text came in and we were on our way to the gated community for a party.

A party Morgan had invited me to. I gladly accepted his invitation to have something to do and keep Ashton off my mind. I needed a little fun in my life, and with Paige and her friends, I thought I would get that fun I craved. Looking around at her friends I knew I had made another mistake. They acted as if I wasn't there as they hunched together drinking liquor in the limo and laughing and celebrating as if it was New Year's Eve. I wished I was as happy as them.

"Cheer up," you're not going to a funeral. No one died," Paige said as her boyfriend handed her a drink he poured earlier. "Do you see your face? Who would want to date a girl with a look like yours?" Paige said to me using her fingers to push up the side of my mouth. I swatted her hand away.

"I'm just going out to have something to do. I'm not looking for a date."

"Are you sure? Dr. Morgan seems to be excited that I got you to come along." I glanced at Paige. She didn't look healthy and her eyes had changed colors. They stayed red all the time, and I couldn't tell what color her irises were.

"You need to see a doctor. You don't look well," I said to Paige.

"I am seeing a doctor. The party is full of doctors. Milan is a doctor aren't you, Milan?" Milan, Paige's friend, leaned over with a half-dazed droopy eyed expression and gazed at me with deep sunken black eyes. He and Paige could have been twins. They had the same emaciated, pale look. I could see I was going nowhere with the two of them and it appeared as if they were concerned with one thing and that was getting to the nearest bed for sex.

Reluctantly I fired up my iPhone. I had planned on not touching it, but I wanted to know who was calling, since I received very few calls, and since I received fewer calls than most girls my age, therefore, it had to be my mother or Ashton. I didn't want to admit that I was looking for Ashton's calls.

I listened to my calls, and one came in. "Dakota," his voice dry and devoid of emotion. "Where are you now?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Because you were supposed to be working until three am, and I find this letter. Do you want an assignment with another doctor? Is that what you want?" I took minutes to answer. I had to think about what I needed to say. I didn't want to cave in too early. But then I did answer him.

"Yes. That's exactly what I want." I was expressing my thoughts, but I didn't want it to come out the way it did.

"Who's with you? I heard voices."

"You did hear voices. Are you jealous?" He didn't answer. He took longer to respond. So I said, "It's my friend Paige and a few of her friends from the hospital."

"Which hospital, and where are you going? Maybe I can meet you there."

"We're going to a party at Dr. Morgan's home, and no you can't meet me there."

"Dakota turn around. Don't go there. Do you hear me? Don't do that. You don't know what you're doing."

"Goodbye, you and Ashton have no right to tell me what to do." I pushed the red button and sat back with a smile on my face. I felt good that I had rejected him before he had a chance to reject me. It felt good for once not needing Ashton. I sat back, exhaled loudly with a smile on my face, and enjoyed the scenery.

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# Chapter Fifteen

Driving into Dr. Morgan's estate was uneventful and somewhat boring, it was like last time, cars parked, dim lighting, guards surrounding the perimeter of the house.

"Don't you just love this," Paige said turning in her seat to meet my eyes. "See, we're going to party with all these handsome men and jealous women. I'm going to flirt, and maybe we'll have an orgy."

"I thought this was a casual party. Not too many people just this carload." I stared curious out the window at the cars passing us and wished I hadn't gone along with them and especially after Ashton had warned me. I seem to be making the wrong moves, and I wondered what else I had screwed up in my life. Oh well, I was young, and I had a lot of time to make mistakes. Hopefully, this one night wouldn't cost me anything but a bad night out.

Paige turned to her friend Carlos who was equally handsome with his dark skin, dark curly hair, and dark eyes. But on his face, he wore a creepy hungry look that said he loved women. He loved them a lot. The way he pawed over Paige and held her hand and fondling her breasts and I didn't want to see the rest, so I turned my head and looked out the window.

If I didn't know Paige and her choice of men, I would say he was a gigolo in his other life. But Paige was a social climber, and somewhere his family probably had money and access to it otherwise she wouldn't have dated him. Her motto is you only go that way once. Meaning you're just young once, and you have to get it when you're young, and when your breasts are hard.

At first, I had been happy to discover that she had lost the first pale strange guy with the tattoos who hung out sucking on her neck, in that club on the Seattle docks. But looking at Carlos, he appeared to be worse than him, and he seemed over possessive and controlling of Paige. Whenever she turned to listen and engage in a conversation with the guys in the limo, Carlos would catch her face in his hands and bring her face to his and then he would bite her on her shoulder, and she would obey him. The sight of that drove me insane. I couldn't stand watching that display of master and slave.

Men with money gave Paige the confidence and security even if she couldn't touch the money. Being around men with money was all she needed, and she would follow them into hell if it meant she had a chance to bag one of those sexy hungry young rich dudes. And from my point of view, she was following this dark Latin lover into hell.

"Where are we?" Paige asked Carlos when the car came to a sudden stop.

"Don't you know?" I said to her. She should know. Paige had been the one who convinced me to go to this party. "Remember this is the place that the limo took me the other night when you said you would meet me there and you didn't. Remember?" My voice turned impatient and sour.

"Oh yeah," she said as she stepped out of the car. "I was out of it, and I didn't remember much that night. That's why I didn't get there." Turning to Carlos, Paige said, "This is the Dr. Morgan who's on the board of our hospital, Right Carlos?" Paige voice was slow and slurred as if she had drunk a bottle of whiskey.

"Yes, that's right. Now let's get there before the party is over. Remember the orgy. I'd like to take you and fuck your brains out and then watch you make love to your friend," Carlos said glancing at me with thick eyebrows and flashing his dark eyes at me.

"That will never happen," I said glaring at him.

He grabbed Paige's hand and said, "Maybe my friends. I'd like them to have a taste of you too." Paige grinned as if she had lost her mind.

I turned to look at Paige and sauntered up to the door, and as before, it opened before anyone had a chance to ring the bell.

This time there was a completely different crowd. Not that I would remember the faces from last week, but I recognized that the entire group resembled each other. Their faces pale yet attractive, and they looked as if they all came from the same gene pool and they were of different ages. All blond and tall with piercing blue or grey eyes.

Tonight the house was filled with a younger crowd, and the girls were young as if they came from central casting. They were a mixture of blonds and brunettes and redheads or would be blonds, but they were no ingenues. They wore a look that they had been around and knew the score, or thought they knew. But mixed into that group were five young girls about my age who looked like me before Ashton took my virginity. A wide-eyed, excited look. A look of being sheltered and now they wanted to break free. Not like Paige. She broke free years ago and much too soon.

Paige and I were the only ones dressed in jeans and a tee. Because of the mist and chilly weather, we had on our leather jackets which provided some measure of warmth.

All the girls glanced at us as we walked passed them. Then they whispered to themselves as they held their drinks tightly in their hands. "Why didn't you tell me, Paige, that it was dress up night? I would have worn a dress." I was just having a conversation because I had few dresses and none for a black tie occasion.

"It's not that kind of party." I turned at the voice I recognized, and it was Dr. Morgan. The handsome and mysterious Dr. Morgan with a low throaty husky voice the kind that seduces women. But it was a natural voice to him. His voice held an accent as if he spent most of his time in England.

He wore a black silk shirt and black pants. Not a typical doctor's attire. He took my hand and led me away from Paige and Carlos. I glanced back to see Paige shrug her shoulders. I didn't want to be left alone with him. But Paige didn't catch the hint. She smiled and waved at me as Morgan led me to his garden patio.

"I thought you might want to see my estate." He kept walking and holding my hand. I kept looking down because his hand felt like a cold piece of ice. I tried not to appear as if I didn't want to be alone with him, but I didn't. Not because I was afraid of him, but because, he made me nervous. Men who are exceptionally handsome always made me nervous when they showed me too much attention. I never knew why it just happened that way. And this one had the coldness of Ashton and the same eyes that penetrated me and closed the distance between us.

"Your hands are shaking. Are you cold? Do you want to go back inside?"

"No. I'm OK." But I should have said hell no. I'm afraid of you. But I didn't because I wanted to please him. He had this soft way of talking that didn't elicit an angry response from me as Ashton had done.

Ashton ran cold and then hot, and I never knew how to accept him. But Morgan was all gentleman and had a relaxed manner about him.

"Here sit down and tell me about yourself," Morgan said as his eyes searched my face probing my expression for my thoughts. He held his hand out for me to sit on a concrete bench in front of one of the many fountains on his property.

I didn't know what to tell him. I couldn't say much because up until now I thought my father was my father and now I've discovered that he's not and my father is some man who hunts vampires, and he's dead. There was no way I could tell anyone that but Paige and she never sits long enough for me to say anything to her.

"I'm twenty. I just had a birthday, and I work at Seattle Memorial Hospital in the research lab. When I'm not sticking things into rats to check if they are diabetic or not, then I'm looking at slides and trying to find a cure for a genetic disease. Not in that order. But now I've resigned, and I'm looking for a new position. I need a recommendation letter to get into Stanford. Would you consider giving me one?"

"She doesn't need a letter or anything from you, Morgan." I turned to face Ashton standing behind us with the moon casting a glow on his intense, attractive face. And with his slight beard, he appeared more sexy and desirous than I remembered.

"Let Dakota decide that for herself," Morgan said to Ashton.

"She's coming with me." Ashton extended his hand. I didn't know what to do. I didn't hear him walk up and wondered how he pulled off that feat. I never hear him he's just there.

"What are you doing here and how did you find me?"

"Tell her, Morgan."

"Well if you must know, Dakota, this is my younger brother." I wasn't shocked that they were brothers, but I was shocked that Ashton was standing there and he had a chance before to tell me, and he refused to do so.

After I didn't place my hand in his and taking long to digest what was happening, Ashton reached for my hand and pulled me quickly to my feet. "I just got here. I can't leave now. Paige and her friends are here, and I don't want to desert her. I was enjoying your brother's conversation. He listens to me." I faced Ashton.

"That's not all he does. Tell her, Morgan. Tell her what you are."

Morgan stood with me in between and said, "You first little brother. I bet you haven't told her. You want me to do your dirty work, and to reveal to Dakota what you're too coward to say."

"He's a dangerous man, Dakota. Well, that's a misrepresentation of him. He's not really a man." I glanced up at Morgan. He raised an eyebrow and shrugged.

"Are you a woman yet?" Morgan asked. I narrowed my gaze, and then I got it. He asked if I had lost my virginity.

"Don't ask her that," Ashton said as he pushed me gently out of the way and stepped in to face Morgan.

Morgan turned to me, "She's priceless. And naive. But I think I want to keep her, brother."

"What does he mean, keep me?" I glanced at Ashton. If anyone said that they wanted to keep me I had hoped it would be Ashton."

"She isn't yours. She belongs to me," Ashton said to Morgan.

"Wait a minute, Ashton. I think you and Dr. Morgan has taken this too far and I'm leaving," I said to Ashton and then turning to Morgan. "I had a great time. A little short but nevertheless it was interesting, but I have to get some rest."

"You can't leave until we settle the matter of who you belong to."

"I belong to myself, and now I'm leaving." I turned and before I could take a step both Morgan and Ashton were standing in my way.

"Stand to the side, Dakota," Ashton said to me turning his face in my direction When Ashton twisted to take my hand, a blow came quick and powerful to his right jaw. The cracking sound loud like a tree had been struck by lightning. The beating was brutal as it landed on the side of Ashton's face sending him flying into the air. He was on his feet in a second as if it didn't faze him. He shook his jaw and cupped it and smiled. Ashton had all of his teeth. Anyone else would have lost two or more teeth in that encounter.

"That can't be all you have. You're not much older than me, but you hit like an old man." And before Ashton could get the last word out, Morgan hit him, and he sailed through the air and landed a few feet near a pool house.

"Don't hurt Ashton, Morgan," I shouted running in Ashton's direction.

Ashton rose and stood tall. "He can't hurt me. He's not trying to hurt me. He's just angry at me because I'm going to discover the serum he's been killing for and because he knows you're mine."

"Tell her the truth, Ashton, and see if she adores you after she has heard all there is to know about all those years of mayhem you perpetrated on mankind to look for a cure so vampires can walk during the day."

"And you. I've tried to make amends for what I've done. What have you done besides line up bodies in your morgue? All those young women and men who don't have families to complain that they went missing."

"Unlike you, I've never pretended that I was something I'm not. I'm what I am, a vampire who takes advantage of humans and I drink their blood. But you are the worst kind of vampire. You seduce young human females and never marry them. You tell Dakota you love her and when she gets old, you will walk away from her."

"I leave because I can't bear to see them suffer in their old age. But I will grow old with Dakota, and we will have children." I watch and listen to this conversation hardly believing what I hear.

"But why don't you just make them like you?"

"I'm trying to reverse that. I want to grow old and die with Dakota. I want to live like a human, walk into the sunlight with the woman I love," Ashton said turning in my direction. Through the dimness with a sliver of light from the moon, I could see the sincerity of his amber eyes breaking through the darkness. Then I saw his face hardened and turn chalk white. I watched his expression change, and his incisors extended, and a growl from deep in his chest echoed in the air as if he stood in a valley and the reverberation from a sound could be heard for miles.

I didn't see Ashton rush and throw a resounding punch which landed on Morgan's mouth and then a flurry to Morgan's chest. It was too quick, and I covered my face not knowing what would happen to Ashton. I didn't see the surprise expression from Morgan, but I heard the growl and whoosh of air coming from Morgan's direction, and I knew that the blow Ashton threw had connected.

Morgan didn't move, he looked down at his chest and up at Ashton and smiled. The power of that blow had to have done some damage, but Morgan laughed it off. And his laughter grew louder and louder as he stared at Ashton and then me.

"Who's the old man now?" Morgan said. "Drinking animal blood is making you soft. Why don't you come in and have a pint of human blood or take some from Dakota. It will be your last time getting close to her. Take advantage of the offer. I won't make it again," he said his voice final and traced with laughter.

"What is he talking about, Ashton?" my voice shaky. I rushed to Ashton and he pushed me aside to protect me as his eyes never wandered away from Morgan. He didn't know his strength, and I flew across the patio and landed inside a bush which thankfully broke my fall.

"We don't have to fight dear brother. Mother wouldn't have like that. Remember how she tried to separate us as babies. You were her favorite, so she sent me far away to protect you from me. But she isn't here to protect you. I've hated you since I could remember. She cried when they took you away but never me. I want to be rid of you and my nightmares. I intend to end everything tonight and take the human you love."

I knew Ashton was in trouble and that Morgan intended to kill Ashton and take me. If I had a choice, it would surely be the vampire I fell in love with. I had to help him. I stood and rushed behind the large bush and pulled my phone from my small purse hanging across my body. I turned it on and thank goodness it was working.

"Police. I'm a neighbor and a concerned citizen. There is a wild party at the mansion next to my home. I hear women screaming and running nude." It probably wasn't too far from the truth. "It's a gated community, and you may have to break the gates down but there is an orgy going on with women under age, and two men are fighting on the lawn out back. I can see them now. They look as if they are going to kill each other."

I couldn't see, but I heard the blows traded between Ashton and Morgan. It was like thunder echoing as if announcing a wild, destructive storm in a valley.

Of course, they said they would send a squad out immediately. Then I called Thomas.

"Thomas. I need you to come to the mansion on the edge of town." I gave him the address.

"I'm busy. This is my day off," he said mildly annoyed.

"What could you be busy doing?"

"I'm with my girlfriend."

"I didn't know you had one."

"I don't tell you everything, and I have a life, and it doesn't revolve around picking you up and taking you to work and since you've been working for that strange doctor..."

"Now is not the time to give me a lecture, Thomas. It's life and death. Park away from the entrance and wait. I have to find my friend and get her out of that place. How long will it take you?" I asked. There was no way I was going to take no for an answer. I couldn't have threatened him, but I wouldn't do that to a friend.

"I'm getting in the car now. You owe me big time." And he hung up the phone. I didn't wait to see if Ashton had won the battle between the brothers, but I was confident that he would because he didn't have to worry about me and then I heard the Police sirens.

It would take time for them to get through that iron-gate and I ran into the house from another entrance and saw what could have been my future. Young women and men were being chased by hungry vampires throughout the house. But where was Paige? I tore up the stairs screaming her name. "Paige. Paige," I shouted.

And that's when I opened one door, and Carlos was lying naked with a woman vampire, her teeth bearing down on his neck I stood in shock, and she was feeding on him as he was copulating with her. I stood over him as the vampire woman never took notice of me. "Where is she? Where's Paige?"

Dazed and inebriated he glanced up and said in a weary voice, "I saw a man grab her and take her out."

"And you did nothing?" Then the vampire bitch turned to me and hissed, and Carlos said, "Get out of here while you can. I'm too weak to run."

I turned and headed for the door, down the stairs, and out the same door, I came in. But the place was clear of all manner of vampires and the only ones left were young women walking in a confused daze. I hid behind a large bush as a patrol car passed with sirens blaring. I heard through the confusion someone call for an ambulance.

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# Chapter Sixteen

Crouching down behind hedges, and climbing over tall bushes and a fence, and ducking security, I made my way to where Thomas was parked. Running and jumping into the front seat, Thomas turned to me with a sour look. "You can't sit up here. I'm officially working, Dakota."

"Then get unofficial and get me out of this place." He raced off down the paved road, and when we were clear and away from the mansion, Thomas glanced my way.

"What the fuck was that?"

"Since when do you talk like me, Thomas?"

"Since I met you and what makes me any different? I use curse words too when I'm upset, and you have me upset. You have managed to place me in the middle of a war between vampires," I cut my eyes in his direction, "and yes I said it. I found newspaper clippings from Mumbai. No one wanted to admit that there were indeed vampires in India. But we have them, also. It was their main hunting grounds with all the poor and weak on the streets. They would sell their blood and then let that doctor, Morgan Mieras, use their bodies. And when you mentioned Ashton Mieras, I knew he was his brother." Thomas paused to calm down breathing deeply.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked, and his face turned to me with eyes large with fright. His hands were clutching the steering wheel as if he was having quiet hysterics.

"Because I didn't expect to be this shit deep in a vampire feud. It can't be good for us. And especially you."

"Why would they want to fight over me?"

"It's the age-old question, and there's only one answer. You're a female, and you're human. They prize human females to impregnate where they can bring a different kind of vampire into the world. Those who can walk during the day. And one brother hates the other and wants to make him pay for something unknown to us. If my guess is correct, Morgan is the ruthless one."

"Well, that makes me feel better." But not that much better, I thought.

"I wouldn't be so happy just yet. Ashton is a blood sucking demon like his brother and the minute he gets the chance he will convert you into one of those walking dead."

"You've been watching too much television, Thomas. I need you to help me find Paige. Keep your opinions to yourself."

"I'm doing no such thing. I came to the US for peace, and since I've known you I've had none, and now you have awakened all the old nightmares I have had to endure in India. Hoping I could live to be old and not have to die at the hands of those vampire brothers. The more I get close to you, the less likely I am to live." He turned and pulled out into the morning traffic.

"Don't be afraid, Thomas. I'll protect you." I didn't know where that came from, but it was as if something came over me. A type of strength and declaration of my own power.

"How can you help me, you can't help yourself?"

"I don't need that from you now. Can't you be positive?" He glanced at me for a second and sucked his teeth. I know who the evil one is and it's Morgan Mieras." I turned to him as he looked away from the slick, rainy road. "I'm going to kill that vampire."

"How do you expect to do that, Miss Vampire killer?" He said with a voice laced with mocking humor.

"Before I can do anything I have to find Paige. I know she needs me. I can't leave her out there alone."

"I don't know Paige, and I don't want to risk my life looking for your friend. She should have known better than to cohabitate with those kinds of people. I mean demons." Looking at Thomas as he described the vampires, I knew he was afraid. Extremely afraid. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands as if he expected the car to careen down an embankment any moment. I should have been, but I thought Ashton wouldn't let anything happen to my friends and me.

"Drop me by the hospital where she works," I said to him. It's that large hospital on Main Street in the downtown area."

"I know that one. You mean Morgan is the head of that hospital. I've heard stories about it. People get into my cab and say they wouldn't go there unless they were trying to commit suicide. I took it as being afraid of doctors." Thomas rambled on and on and then glanced over to me as he neared the turn to the hospital. "What makes you think she's there?"

"It was something Ashton said about Morgan and something Paige mentioned. I think Morgan could be holding her captive in his hospital. He hides his victims in morgues, and his victims are young women who come from dysfunctional homes. That fits Paige. Many of them runaways," I said going over what I remembered. I turned to look at Thomas.

The drive took fifteen minutes from the time Thomas picked me up outside of Morgan's mansion. He stopped in front of the hospital. I hopped out and leaned into the lowered window in the passenger's seat. "Don't go anywhere and park over there." I pointed to the roadway leading to outside parking. This early in the morning, the parking lot was empty. Only the emergency ward would be partially full.

"Where do I have to go? It's my day off, and you've interfered with my love life, and I have nothing better to do, and on empty. No gas," Thomas said with a touch of nervousness and sarcasm in his voice. He looked around and in the side mirrors, and rearview mirror as if he thought someone would jump into the car from out the shadows.

I didn't want to tell him, he wouldn't see the vampires, or hear them coming.

Strolling into the hospital and looking around, I walked up to the nurses' station. Because it was early in the morning, three or four am, the nurse on duty was half asleep or not used to the night hours. Looking down she quickly raised her head as I approached. "I'm looking for Paige Hamilton."

"Is she a patient?" I glanced at the name of the nurse. Paige had mentioned a woman in her late twenties. Most of the nurses weren't old. That was something that alarmed me but not at that moment. I had to find Paige.

"Of course not. She works here. Look at the duty log." The nurse strolled to her computer, and I saw her looking at me and then the computer screen.

"Yes, I see where she's on vacation."

"How could she be on vacation? I'm her roommate she would have said something to me."

"Does she tell you everything? Did she tell you she was dating Dr. Morgan Mieras?" Her voice was confrontational.

"And how do you know that?" I said looking into her dead grey eyes.

"There is little that doesn't make it past through the nurses' station without me knowing." By the look in her eyes, there was jealousy and danger written on her smooth forehead, pale skin, and the way she twisted her mouth.

"Look I don't have time to waste, can I see her office?"

"You aren't allowed to see anything. This is a private hospital and unless Dr. Mieras OKs it, you're out of luck." My eyes turned to the side watching a figure emerge from the dark, and he stood behind the nurse. Another tall, lean, pale young man.

"It's Okay. Dakota can see Paige's office." Another one stepped out of the shadows. This place is filled with them. But I recognized the voice.

At that moment I thought about my vampire kit that had lain in my closet full of dust. I didn't bother to look at it because when would I ever need something to kill vampires. Because conventional wisdom said that vampires don't exist. That's because humans had never seen a vampire, and if they had, they wouldn't have known what one looked like, but I had seen them, and I had fallen in love with one, and now I wanted to kill one and preferably the one standing before me.

"I don't think I want the tour. I'll come back tomorrow when she's around," I said to Morgan. He smiled at me in a sexy mocking way. Showing his perfect white teeth as he extended his incisors slightly over his bottom lip.

"But didn't my nurses tell you that she's on vacation. I took her to my summer home."

"You have a summer home? I couldn't tell by the look of your skin." He put his arm around my shoulder and turned me around facing the dim lit hallway that led to Paige's office.

Once he had me away from nurse Dred and her assistant, he stopped smiling. "Come with me young woman, and he pushed me into Paige's office. Then he stood in front of me. Slanting his head and smiling. "I can see why my brother is taken with you. You smell delicious," he said as if he had taken a whiff of his favorite dessert.

"It must be my perfume. I'm wearing lilacs." He lost his smile which made him look like any attractive, desirable man. But once he dropped the smile, his true nature showed through. His eyes telegraphed that he was dead serious.

"Paige is with me now. You can go about your business and forget her." I had my back to Paige's desk and my hands on it. My heart was racing because I saw something in his eyes that I didn't see in Ashton's. Someone who could kill me without thinking about it. Usually, I wouldn't shy away from an argument, but these weren't normal times, and he wasn't an ordinary man.

You could list him under serial killer. And they have no preferences when it comes to women or men. And this one was the most dangerous of killers. He couldn't be killed in a normal way. If I get out of this, I will carry my vampire kit with me, I promised myself.

"What happened to Ashton?"

"I thought you would ask about him sooner. But young women are fickle. But then you are the one I have to thank for saving him. That was quick thinking. Calling the police. I would have cut his head off in seconds, but then I would have to kill every human in the house and all those policemen. Then I would have to answer to my covenant. Not about Ashton, but about the slaughter of humans who could call attention to us."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you won't be around when Ashton wakes tomorrow night."

"Where am I going," I asked not wanting to know the answer.

"With me. You have but one choice. You have to submit to me and come with me, or you can die with that brother of mine. But you will be mine no matter what. I can leave you human and have you as my host when I want sweet blood, or you can become one of my concubines as will become the fate of your dear friend Paige."

He glared at me smiling as if he was looking at a big juicy steak and ready to take a bite of it. I trembled and moved away from him and like a cat he crept slowly in my direction, and I put my hand on a pencil. No one has pencils anymore. No one but Paige.

Gripping the pencil in my hand, I waited until he was facing me with his fangs extended. "What is your answer? Will you come with me willingly? Or will you force me to..."

"This is my answer." I raised the pencil and trying for his heart would have been a mistake because I didn't know if the pencil was long enough and hard enough to penetrate it. I brought it down with a quick stroke and ran. I heard his scream, and I knew I had done some damage to his body, if not his ego.

I ran past the nurse who headed in my direction and didn't stop me. I scuttled through the doors and passed the cameras in the security room and out the door. I stood breathless looking around for Thomas.

"Where the fuck are you, Thomas?" And when I looked to my left, he was coming up the driveway. He stopped, and I jumped in. "Drive, Thomas. Drive like your life depends on it. Take me to Memorial Hospital.

"Another hospital?" I had been too frightened to say anything because I didn't want to alarm Thomas because he could react in too many ways, from kicking me out of the car or running and hiding. I didn't want to take any chances.

"That's the only place I'm safe for now." Thomas drove into the traffic fast. It was a good thing there were few cars at that time of the morning.

We got to Ashton's hospital, and as Thomas came to a stop, I said, "Wait for me."

"Who's going to pick up this tab? A car takes gas."

Turning back and walking fast I said, "Dr. Mieras. He's good for it."

When I headed for the lab and to see Ashton, one of the nurses stopped me. "Where are you going?"

"I have to see Ashton."

"That's Dr. Mieras to you."

"I don't give a fuck," I said clattering down the hall with her following me. She raised her eyebrow.

"I told him not to hire you. You're trouble, and you're not what you claim to be."

Pushing her aside, I said, "Who is? You certainly aren't." And I dashed in the direction of the lab and opened the door to his office. When I turned around the nurse stood with her hands crossed behind her blocking the door. "Where is he?"

"He's home, and he's ill. He won't be coming here tonight." I shoved her aside once more and hurried to the entrance of the hospital and to Thomas's car. Hopping in, I closed the door. "We have to go." I was breathing hard from all the gymnastics.

"I was just getting something to eat. You can't be running around with nothing in your stomach. And you haven't slept. I know because I haven't."

"Just take me to Ashton's apartment, and you can go home. I'll get something there to eat."

"Ok. But I hope you know what you're doing, Dakota. If something happens to you, I'm not coming to the rescue." I hoped he didn't mean that.

"It's important that I locate Paige. She would expect her friend to help save her life. And I'm her friend like you're my friend."

"Are we now? I thought we had a business arrangement." I glanced at him. "Those are your words not mine," he said with a shrug.

"We're almost there. Keep your phone by your side when you sleep. One more thing I need you to do." He glanced at me with narrow eyes. "This should be easy. Go to my apartment and get a leather-bound satchel out of the closet. It's on the top shelf." I dropped the key on the seat next to him.

"What else? How much more do I have to do? When that vampire discovers that I'm helping you, he will kill me. Or I will be his slave."

"Think of it like this, you will never grow old. You will always be that handsome man and have an insatiable appetite for sex."

"That's only in the movies," Thomas said looking down at the instrument panel. "Dakota, I have to have some money for gas. I can't go on like this." He stopped at the apartment building, and I reached into my purse and pulled out twenty dollars and gave it to him before I rushed out of the cab. It was all I had.

Thomas glared at me, but he didn't say a word. Then he creased his forehead when he opened the crumpled twenty dollar bill and said, "This isn't India." And he headed north to the service station we passed earlier.

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# Chapter Seventeen

When I climbed out of Thomas's cab and rushed into Ashton's apartment building, sweat dripped down my forehead and into my eyes as I tried to calm and breath regular. Then I realized what had occurred. I had plunged a pencil into Morgan's chest, and I hoped it pierced his heart. Jogging past security and to the elevators with a guard running behind me, I managed to get into an elevator and zoom up to the penthouse.

I probably wouldn't have been able to hijack the elevator if the building and apartment had more than one owner and I hadn't been introduced to security the other day. They probably chased me to make sure I signed in.

Stepping out of the elevator breathless, I came face to face with Ashton's servant. "I have to see Ashton. Do you know who I am?"

"Yes, I'm acquainted with you, Ms. Bain. You were here recently, and Mr. Mieras spoke of you. He never talks of women, but he spoke of you, and that means something." I didn't know what it meant. It could have meant many things, but I was yet to discover why other than he was as enamored with me, as I had been with him. Right now at this minute, I didn't know how I felt about any of this.

My emotions were teetering between love and hate. But never indifference.

"Where is Ashton?"

"I'm not at liberty to say."

"Can you tell me if he's alright? When I left him, he was in a battle for his life." His eyes lit up as if he weren't aware that I knew Ashton's secret. "I know what he is. I know he's a vampire. That's all I know and what I've heard in books. I don't know anything else."

"Some of the stories are true. Daylight is breaking, and Dr. Mieras is in his chambers now." He walked away from me. "Do you need something?"

"I could use a shower and something to eat." He directed me to the room I had slept in before, and I stripped down and climbed into the shower. This time I found the clothing Ashton had provided for me, and I was relieved to have them. After a long shower, I fell across the bed and for the first time since I left my parent's home I felt safe. As safe as one can be sleeping in a vampire's bed with one nearby.

Maybe hours had passed, and I didn't know how long I had been lying across the bed. My eyes were not yet opened when I felt a presence. "You look beautiful sleeping there."

Moving around the large bed, startled, and with my eyes, I said, "Are you alright?" I put my hand to my mouth. He stepped forward looking down at me.

"Of course I am. It's hard to kill a vampire." He had been truthful and acknowledged that he was indeed a vampire now. I felt relieved that this was out in the open. But what next, I wondered?

"Could you turn on the light, I'd like to see your face when I talk to you." He flicked on a light near the bed, and I smiled when I looked into his eyes and handsome face. What a handsome man he is. I bet he had the choice of women then and now and he chose me. I didn't know if that made me feel better or worse.

Ashton sat on the edge of the bed next to me. I turned on my side to face him. "What do you want, Dakota?"

"To go to Stanford." I wanted to say to him, but I chose the next best answer.

"What if that can't be possible? What if that dream can't be realized?"

"Then I want to die." He slanted his head to the side, narrowed his eyes looking at me as if I were a spoiled child who couldn't take no for an answer.

"Die? You want to die."

"It's an expression. Don't take that literally," I said sitting up and pushing the pillow behind my head. I felt light-headed, and I knew why. I hadn't eaten in hours or maybe a day. I didn't know when.

"You look as if you're hungry. You have to eat to keep up your strength." He walked to the door and summoned his servant. Quickly he brought in fruit, bread, and yogurt.

"Normally I don't eat breakfast."

"It's not breakfast. It's the middle of the night. I think you lost some time."

"I can't afford to lose time. My friend Paige is being held by your brother." I reached to him.

"If she's with him there's nothing I can do. She must have gone to him freely."

"What do you mean? You have to help me. You brought me into this," I said clutching his robe.

He glanced at me and said, "You were born into this, my love. I tried to protect you and keep you out of this war."

"By hiring me as your assistant? You must have known my family's history."

Reluctantly he admitted, "I did know your family's history. I met your father once. He was the one who asked me to protect you from my brother."

"Yes, I know, in India."

"I knew that you would someday discover who you are and your powers."

"Powers to do what? Run and hide from a vampire like your brother. He's bent on possessing me. He gave me a choice. Go with him, or he will take Paige and do gods knows what to her."

"If he has her you are too late. And I can do nothing to help her." Ashton's voice seemed to rise and fall aching with pain. "Morgan conducts hunting parties once a year on his island off the coast. He invites humans, and they think they're going to hunt animals, when in fact, they're the ones being hunted. They're kept there like cattle and used for their blood."

"And you knew this had been going on and never did anything to stop them?" His eyes lowered as if ashamed that he should have done something. But then he glared at me with bright severe eyes.

"It was more important to discover the antidote to the venom in a vampires' fangs. And to discover how I can walk during the day to be with you. To have you love me. Morgan and the others had been my last consideration. With that discovery, I could prevent him from harming more humans."

"And while you're experimenting, the world of humans will be tainted and destroyed by an out of control vampire."

"One that you know how to kill," he said to me. I glared up at him. "I could never kill my brother and don't ask me to."

"I don't know how to kill him either. You expect me to do something you are unwilling to do?"

"The answer is in that book. The one your father sent to your mother and she gave to you."

"You know this? You know all about my father's work?"

"Yes. Dr. Overbridge. He was the one who killed my father, and my father's throne went to the eldest, Morgan. Morgan has been looking for you, and I have been guarding you against him. He has this sick fantasy that if he possesses you, it will make up for his abandonment by our mother in favor of me and the destruction of our father by your father's hand."

He reached for my hair and brought me to him. He smelled my hair.

"What a lovely face, no makeup. You look much younger now that I've had a chance to look at you."

"I'm twenty and no thanks to you that I made it." He didn't listen to the harsh and accusatory words coming out of my mouth.

He passed his hand across my neck. No blemishes, beautiful." It was as if Ashton was in a trance as he looked down at me.

"Yes, yes I know, and it's better to eat you, said the big bad wolf." He came out of his trance when he heard those words and smiled at me.

Leaning into me his lips met mine and as before it was magic. The softness of his kiss had me in his trance. I couldn't think or hear any sounds around me. All I felt was the coolness of his hands when they met my breasts, as he passed over my nipples with a light touch, and when his tongue mingled in my mouth and met my warm tongue.

He pulled me to him and on top of him where I gazed into his eyes and my breasts leaned on his hard hairless chest. He wrapped his hands around my body and the tingle of his fingers as he slid them down my back shot arousal through me. Trailing one finger along my spine brought about the most stimulating urge. He turned me on my back and braced himself over me.

"Tell me you love me."

"You first," I said. My youth showed in those few words. Here Ashton was more than a century old vampire who had been everywhere and seen it all, and I'm saying something so pathetic, so juvenile.

"I love you, Dakota. Can't you tell?"

"I wish I could. I want to believe you."

"How can I convince you?"

"Now. All I want you to do is to make passionate love to me. Make me feel as if this is the first time and the last you will ever love a woman again." In other words, I wanted him to lie to me.

With one hand positioned under me, Ashton reached for his manhood and thrust it into my warm wet opening. Our eyes closed at the same time. I was in a dream. Having a good-looking, handsome man make love to me. He kissed me as he thrust hard into me. "Did I hurt you? It's been a long time since I felt your insides."

"Only a few days," I said as I met his hips and he pushed into me, and I moaned into his mouth.

"Is that all? A few days felt like an eternity. I want you every day. Every night. I want you with me."

"You are sleeping during the day."

"It doesn't matter. I want you around me. I want to marry you."

When he said that I was biting his lips and I stopped moving and watched at him until he opened his eyes.

"Do you know what you're saying? How can you marry me?"

"We can be married. It's in our laws. We can marry mortals. It's encouraged in our communities."

"You have communities."

"They are closed to the outside world."

"But I don't want to hide out and away from humans. If I marry you, you will have to exist among them. You do that now. What would be different?"

He didn't say a word. He didn't answer me as if there was a secret. He wanted me to live among the vampires and not among my kind. That didn't seem rational especially since my father had killed his father.

"Just love me for now," he said. "We can figure something out later." And I opened my legs and let him into me. Into my body, into my heart, into my soul, all of me.

We lay together. Bound together.

When I woke, I was lying in his arms. He turned over to me. "I like watching you sleep. I wanted to have you all night, but your human body couldn't survive my ravenous desires. I have been without love and sex for a hundred years, and you have awakened my body and my cravings for companionship once more.

"I have a confession," he said. The seriousness of his face made me think that perhaps he had fed on me when I was sleeping, but I knew he would never do something like that without permission.

"I was once married."

"And where is she now?"

"Dead."

"You didn't kill her did you, because I could never be with a vampire that could kill?" I can't believe I had taken the news of him being a vampire so casually when only a few weeks ago I thought something had to be wrong with him.

My mother was telling me these fanciful stories about vampires and made me think that she had a stroke or worse, Alzheimer's. At least that's what I thought. But my mother wasn't out of her mind. I may be, lying here with a vampire, and falling in love with him.

"I can't lie to you." He stopped as if to think if he should admit something to me. "I have killed, but no more. It was because I gave into my desire for blood. But I learned to control that along with my desire for sex."

I pulled away from him, and he brought me back into his arms. "Don't ever go away from me," he said his voice soft and strong. "My wife died. Of natural causes at the age of Ninety. She had a good life, but then that was a hundred years ago. I wished I had loved her the way I love you. I wished I had met you generations before. I feel that when you die, I will want to die too. Because of you, I will choose a mortal life and die when the time comes," he said leaning over me.

Lying still and looking up at him, I saw the sadness and tenderness in his eyes when he spoke of his wife and me. Anyone else I would have been jealous of but not that woman.

"In all that time, did you love anyone else?" My phone beeped, and then a text came in. We both glanced at it.

"I have to respond. I'm looking for a job. But before then I have to find Paige. I've had enough rest, and I hope I can get to her before it's too late." I reached over and picked up my phone. It was Thomas texting me.

Found your vampire kit. What do you want me to do with it?

Thomas

Bring it to me.

Where are you?

Ashton's

OK. Bring money.

I hit a button and checked my email. No job offers. Not yet. I glanced at Ashton and said, "I have to go. I'm going out to find Paige. I have to know if it's not too late for her."

Moving away from him I stood on the cold marble floor. I rushed to the shower. I had become the queen of the one minute shower and stepped out. When I turned, Ashton stood near me naked. "I have to go, Ashton. I can't stay here with you."

"Wait an hour until twilight. I have to go with you. Morgan is too dangerous for you to go find him alone."

"That's the disadvantage of being a vampire. We humans can move during day and night. I can find her and kill that brother of yours because I don't intend on being his wife or whatever he wants me for."

"To have children. That's the key. His children will walk in day and night. And so will mine but I will treat them as children and he will not."

"Is that why you seduced me to give birth to your vampire children."

"That and because I love you. I don't want to be without you." I thought looking at him he had chosen the wrong human to fall in love with because having children was the last thought on my mind. I wanted to go to college first.

I had dressed, and I knew Ashton wouldn't be able to follow me. I stood looking at him. "I don't have any money. I need some money." The way he glanced at me, I thought he would tell me no because he had asked that I don't go.

"In the drawer, you will find all you need. Take what you want. I don't have time to spend it, and I have more. Much more." I opened the drawer and rows of five hundred dollar bills, hundred dollar bills, old and new, some as old as a hundred years. I glanced down at the money. It was enough to pay for four years at Stanford maybe more.

"I'll pay you back."

"For what? What's mine is yours." I glanced at him with a raised eyebrow. Was this permanent?

"You know you can't go back to your apartment. You will have to stay with me." I wondered what my mother and father would say. I could hear them now, "You're shacking up with a man?" No. A vampire. That would really have them over the edge.

"When I wake, I want you home by sundown, young lady."

"You sound like my father. I guess you could be my father if you didn't have that young face and body." I grinned.

"I'm old enough to be your great, great, great grandfather."

"Oooh, that's downright disgusting. I leaned over and kissed him.

Then I stuffed the hundreds into my purse, and Ashton grabbed me into his arms and glanced at me. "Be careful," he said.

I rushed past him and out of the apartment and out of the building into the daylight. It felt good with the sun peeking through the clouds streaming a little light on my face. I couldn't imagine what it felt like all these years to never have walked in the sun. Gone to a beach with the one you love. Or to be in love with someone you want.

My feelings for Ashton was indeed love. He had everything I could want in a man if he was a man but he's a vampire, and I love him just the same.

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# Chapter Eighteen

"Did you get some money?" I opened my purse and showed Thomas. He slowed the car to gawk at the mound of hundreds I dropped into my bag. Then he accelerated as if he had gotten a boost.

"What do you think? Now take me where I can rent a boat."

"Don't tell me we're going to relax now and have a little fun. I've never been on a boat." I glanced at Thomas. He settled into this friendship thing fast.

"I hope you don't get seasick because it wouldn't be nice if we both got sick." I didn't want to tell him my plans yet.

"Tell me you know how to steer a boat," Thomas said. "Tell me it's not your first time doing this." My eyes wavered in his direction, and I shot him a closed smile.

"It can't be hard. Just like driving a car."

"I've never seen you drive a car."

"I know how I just couldn't afford one until now. You're looking at the future Mrs. Mieras."

Thomas slowed his car and pulled off the interstate and brought the car to an abrupt stop. He glared at me and stood silent. "I want you out of here now. Forget the gas money, forget our friendship, and forget you know me because you have lost your mind. When a woman proudly announces that she's going to marry a man after knowing him barely a week, I can understand that. We have arranged marriages in my country but when she says that she's going to marry a vampire that's a complete horse of a different color. He's not human anymore, Dakota. Get that into your young mind."

"I know. Maybe I'm not into humans. Maybe I'm into something different. Who says you have to marry a human when there are other choices in the world. Now drive." Thomas reluctantly pulled into traffic. "Take off that emergency flashing sign. We don't want to get pulled over. And drive a little faster. My mother drives faster than you."

After reaching the speed limit, Thomas didn't talk to me he glanced over a few times and headed to the marina. As we neared the place to rent a boat, he said, "Marrying a vampire is a choice few people are willing to make. Who marries a dead person anyway?"

"He's not dead. Technically he would be considered dead, but I've been around some men who watch television all day, sleep, play video games and do nothing else. My father came to mind. "Wouldn't you think they're dead? Ashton works very hard at night and sleeps during the day, and he's trying to discover a cure for vampires and humans who have been infected by vampires."

"There would be no need for a cure if he and his kind hadn't spread that disease. People are dying in their sleep, and the doctors in charge are overlooking the cause because they don't want to see what's in front of them. They don't want to believe that vampires exist. They would blame it on bats. That's what happened in my country until your birth father pointed that out and that's why Morgan Mieras killed him.

****

Thomas reluctantly drove me to a marina where I rented a boat for a week. It didn't take much to convince the owner, and he agreed to ferry us to Morgan's island north of Seattle. The captain agreed to wait on the boat while we hiked on the other part of the island. We wouldn't tell him what our real intentions were because of the apparent problems.

We hadn't planned this well because it was evening when we reached the island and swam to the shore. I had carefully packed my vampire kit and with the assurance of a child who didn't know her limitations. I proceeded with Thomas who was nervous the entire time. He was probably the only one who made sense. And he did know how to swim even if he tried to pretend he didn't.

"We aren't equipped to do this," he said jumping into the water. I leaped after him from the boat. We were both strong swimmers and reached the bank quickly. Changing into dry clothes we carried in a watertight bag, I looked around trying to gauge where we were.

"I have all the equipment I need. I'm ready for whatever comes my way, and Ashton promised me that when he wakes, he will be here to protect me."

"What happens if he's late? And what about me?"

"That's why you're here and have my back."

"I have no one's back. I don't know why I'm here."

"Revenge. What about all the young children that perished in your country at the hands of Morgan Mieras." Thomas stopped protesting and depressing me with his talk. I was on the verge of turning back thinking about the enormity of the task ahead, and I didn't need Thomas squeamish behavior. I had to find Paige and let her know that someone cared about her. That I cared.

"We have to get to the house before nightfall. That's when they wake."

"Where's the map?"

"What map?"

"GPS, I don't care. Something to tell us where the house is located," Thomas said glaring at me. We were trudging through high grass and mud, and then I stopped. "I was in a hurry and keen on finding Paige and killing Morgan that I forgot to get the location from Ashton."

"So you don't know if we are on the right side of the island or not?"

"Something like that?"

"I thought you were a scholar."

"I am, but not a navigational scholar."

"And you lack the ability to think," he said in a sarcastic tone.

"Let's not get nasty, Thomas. If we're at each other's throats, then we could get killed in this..." I looked around, and all I saw was trees and high grass. "Jungle."

"We don't have to worry about being at each other's throats. When the sun sets, the vampires will be at our throats."

"If it makes you feel better, and we haven't found the house by twilight, then we'll turn back and stay on the boat until the sunrises. Before then Ashton should be here to help us."

"Or to kill me or make you one like him." I rolled my eyes at him and continued stomping through the grass and walking over rocks. I strode quickly ahead of Thomas because of his bitching. But I could understand. I was too stupid and young to know that I was in serious trouble because of the time. Experience and being frightened about what lurks out in this vast world had Thomas hysterical with fright and made more sense than me.

As we trudged along with me leading the way, make believing I knew where we were going, I didn't have a clue, but I didn't want Thomas to think that I couldn't handle this. After all, I had gotten him in this shit, and we were knee deep in it. When I looked down it wasn't shit we were knee deep in it was thick dark mud which made our trek more difficult and slow.

"The sun is going down. I think we should get back to the boat," Thomas said to me. "Which way." I stood looking around. I didn't pay attention to where we had come from. I turned around in a circle.

"Don't tell me. You don't know," Thomas said to me.

"I was too busy answering your questions, and we were talking. I'm not the only one on this outing."

"Is that what you call this, an outing? It's a fucking death march."

"Stop hollering, Thomas. Someone will hear you. The only ones likely to hear us, if they haven't already are those vampires and after this, I would welcome someone to put me out of my misery."

"Don't talk like that, Thomas. I'll get you out of here." I put my arms around him, and we glanced at each other with fear in our eyes. We saw the sunset and the darkness surround us.

"Isn't it strange that there are no animals? It's a wooded area. You would think you would hear bugs of some kind and birds. There are birds everywhere. But here there are no birds," he said his voice unsteady.

I stopped walking and listened. "You're right. There are no sounds of birds or wolves or anything,"

"That's because that family you're marrying into have killed whatever is alive on this island." And in the silence, we heard a burst of screaming of young women coming in our direction. The sounds they made were eerie and heart-stopping. They were calling out for their mothers and praying.

It was as if they were being chased and they were. The sound of stomping and shouting were at a high pitched level like doves crying. These were the cries of young women, and it was more than two from the sound of the beating of the bushes facing us.

"Hide, Thomas. Something is chasing them. We don't need to be trampled." We both rushed for a tree and because of the adrenaline pumping from fright, we each found a tree and climbed it without any trouble.

When we looked down, ten women were rushing through the bushes in what looked more like sleeping gowns. We couldn't see what was chasing them and we almost climbed down but then it because clear who was pursuing them.

Swirling about a black cloud behind them and standing in a clearing looking handsome and deadly stood Morgan. He glanced around his head in the air as if searching for a scent and then rushed behind that group of young women. He was on a hunt. The most deadly of animals. More deadly than any man because he was more than a man he was an immortal who couldn't be killed in the usual way.

When we thought he had gone, we climbed down.

I searched for my satchel. Maybe I could do what no one else managed to do. Perhaps I could do a little damage as I had done with a pencil. Before I saw Morgan place his hand over his heart and grimace. He was stilling feeling the plunge of that pencil.

Looking down I saw my shoulder bag setting behind the tree. I had thought about myself and not what could free us from this hell we found ourselves thrust into. I glanced over to Thomas, and he had cowered behind a group of leaves.

Morgan wasn't interested in us. Not yet. He behaved as if we weren't around. Maybe the wind wasn't sending my scent in his direction, or he didn't think we were a threat to him, or perhaps the thought of fresh blood aroused his predatory instincts. Nevertheless, I wasn't sure how long we could hold on.

When my eyes wandered in Thomas's direction, we heard a chilling scream and then nothing. This went on every few minutes with the sound of a different girl in a distance until there existed an unnatural silence. The silence of death held us in one spot. We grabbed each other. We were afraid to move but we needed to in order to survive the night.

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# Chapter Nineteen

The smell of fresh blood and the putrid stink of old blood filled the air, and the overcast skies threatened rain. It was a threat I welcomed. We stepped weak legged into the marsh far from the ocean where the tall grass and bloodstained water pooled. Turning to see what was underfoot my boot caught on something. Bending to remove it I jumped back. Then I saw something that made me want to vomit.

We were treading through a killing ground. Two bodies lay at my feet. Their eyes were open as they lay partially nude, their beautiful gowns ripped and gashes that look a lot like long claws shown its signs on the females' breasts to their midsection. And on their necks, large puncture marks appeared to be pounded into them over and over.

Thomas stood startled with his hands to his mouth unable to speak, or he couldn't find the word for what he saw.

Whoever or whatever fed on them had an insatiable appetite because everywhere there appeared to be marks of large incisors. The one body at Thomas's feet was chalk white and shriveled and drained of every ounce of blood.

This wasn't the act of turning these women into vampires. Maybe they didn't need any. It was the act of uncontrolled greed.

Everywhere we strode the look and smell of death surrounded us. We were stepping on one body after the next. When Thomas saw the girls and the realization that it was only time before we were next, and the picture in his mind of him lying with his throat torn apart, he began running, and I dashed after him.

"Stop Thomas. They can hear you. Don't run." He must have been tired, and in one second he stopped where he stood. His chest was heaving up and down. His skin pale from sweat.

Running through the tall grass, I heard the sound of water at a distance. "If we can get to the ocean maybe we can have a chance to swim away."

"At night?"

"What is wrong now? You can swim, Thomas."

"I can swim but not in the ocean at night. It's a completely different thing. During the day I can see if something is approaching but at night, and you don't know how far we would have to swim to get back to the boat."

We stood still listening for sounds not hearing anything moving. "Are they toying with us? Are the vampires treating us like mice and they're the cats?" We stood huddled together in the chilly night shivering, not from cold, but from the heat of fear.

"I don't know. Morgan knows I'm here and for some reason, he allowed the others to have the women, and he's keeping me to himself. He saw me hiding in the tree. I know he did. I'm not sure if he knows anyone is with me. If he gets me then maybe you can get word to Ashton if he takes me away."

Thomas glared at me. "He probably smelled me. But I don't know why he didn't take both of us."

"He doesn't want me. And maybe he thinks it wouldn't be good for his image if he let you see how he treats your friends." Thomas tried to make light of the situation, but he was quaking as he held on to me.

"If we can last until the morning, maybe I can swim to the boat. You should be able to do that, right? Hide someplace until I bring back a dinghy.

"It's on the other side of the island, Dakota. You're not leaving me here alone. There must be another way out of here?" He looked around at the mountains, rocks, trees, vegetation, and marshland.

"If there is then tell me where, Thomas?" I turned to the left and then the right. "This is an island. There is no way off this place. We have to get to the other side where the boat is anchored." I pulled his reluctant hand and began walking in the opposite direction.

"It will take forever," Thomas said his breath shallow.

"Do we have a choice?"

After walking for an hour, tramping through marshes and high grass we were back where we started.

"We've been walking in a circle, Dakota," Thomas said. His voice rising a pitch.

"With the rain and the clouds I can't see the stars. Stop whining Thomas and keep your voice down. I should be complaining. The good thing..."

He cut me off, "There is nothing good about this. We're wet and full of mud, and we could die. What is good about that?"

"I was saying, the good thing is the sun will rise in a few hours, and we can see. The vampires will be sleeping."

"If we can last those two hours." And then we heard the scream of a girl and then silence. The shrill of her small voice unnerved me. I panicked and grabbed Thomas, and we hugged each other and looked around but gathered our courage and kept trudging along with weeping and cries coming from somewhere behind us.

"Promise me, Dakota, that you will kill me if they get me and I turn into one of those creatures. I'm a vegan. I don't eat meat and anything that has blood in it." He shivered at the idea of consuming human blood.

"It won't come to that." I didn't know what I was saying, but I said it none the less because Thomas thought I could indeed kill a vampire. He thought I had all the answers and I had better if we plan to survive this.

"I'm tired," Thomas said to me.

"If you can stand sleeping in this marsh..."

"Don't ask me."

"We have no choice, Thomas," I whispered to him, too mindful that someone knew our every move and was probably hearing our conversation. "If we're lying among the dead, maybe they can't smell us." I pulled Thomas down into the damp high grass reeking of bloody bodies. We lay together in the bleak and black overcast sky praying for light.

I didn't know how long we had been lying on the wet bloodstained grass, but it wasn't long enough. How could anyone sleep when every breath we inhale smelled of rotting bodies?

The heavy sky was dark with clouds, but there was a sliver of moonlight cutting through a thin haze and landing on me. Thomas was sleeping with his head on my shoulder and my head packed with mud from the fields, lay on a pile of thick grass.

The stench of death walled us in, and I woke. I can't breathe, and if I open my mouth, I'm taking in the putrid rotting smell. I can't go back to sleep. We have to leave this place. For one it's not healthy and another, I'm a night person.

That was something I didn't realize until I had to work for Ashton.

"Ashton," I whispered his name. He should realize by now that I'm not coming back. Why hasn't he come for me? He must know that something has happened to me. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking. I've accepted that he's a vampire, and at my age, I'm not easy to get along with, but I wouldn't desert him the way he has abandoned me.

What's the point of being in love with a vampire if he can't protect you from the other soul fucking, blood-sucking vampires?

Turning and twisting my shoulder was difficult. I glance over at Thomas sleeping soundly. How can he do that lying in mud almost covering his face? I pushed Thomas off, and his body goes splash into the murky blood-stained water. "Wake up," I whisper. I push him a second time. "Don't let him be dead," I murmur. No one can sleep that hard. I breathe hard, and anxiety flows through me thinking about the possibilities of being alone out here.

"He's not dead, but he will be." The voice coming from someone standing over me is shallow but menacing.

I jerked my head to the side, and I'm afraid to raise my eyes. I cringed and hunched my body into a fetal position. I was scared. I've never been this afraid of anything but who wouldn't with vampires floating around and feeding on young innocent girls. Who am I to think that I'm special? Maybe Morgan sent him to bring me back. If I hadn't fallen asleep, I wouldn't be here, and that thing wouldn't be ready to kill me and Thomas.

I glance down at black shoes, and I follow up to the face. It's over. I'm dead and thank god Thomas is sleeping at least he won't be aware of what is coming next.

I blink twice. In the sliver of the moonlight, I recognize that white blond hair. "Elliot?" I recognize the face, but it appeared more mature than when I last saw him. Now he's wearing the look of a matured man. His features are hard his eyes focused, and his body is muscular. He's all in black, and his eyes are deep set with dark circles. He's not as thin as he once were. "Elliot." I call his name again because he doesn't appear to know his name. "Elliot, I haven't seen you since we graduated. "How the fuck are you my friend?"

His head turned in a quick jerky manner. He stared down and then up and out into the marsh as if he thought I was talking to someone else.

"It's me, Elliot. Dakota. You know the one that was in the mental hospital with you. The one you told your deep dark secrets to. That you knew that vampires were visiting you at night and cutting and sucking your blood. Remember, Elliot." He scratched his head and slanted it to the right. His forehead creased and then smoothed.

"You were right, Elliot. I'm living proof that they exist. We can go back and tell everyone. Vampires do exist."

I stood without Elliot's help with Thomas still asleep near me. Once I faced Elliot, he hissed at me. I moved back. I had invaded his personal space, and he didn't like that. I get it. I get like that sometimes, but something was wrong with Elliot and with all the excitement and scary shit it didn't dawn on me what was wrong with him.

"Morgan said that I could feed on anyone alive on this island except Dakota. You belong to him. He has plans for you." His voice sounded cold and impersonal. Not like the quirky, warm Elliot in high school.

"Don't you know me, Elliot? What's wrong with you?" I moved to touch him, and he leaned away. I'd run away from me too. Mud in my hair laced with blood and the stink.

Then Elliot crouched on the ground over Thomas. "What are you doing, Elliot?"

"Can't you see? If I can't feed on you, I have to find someone else." I touched his shoulder, and he turned his head almost around and nipped at my fingers like a young dog looking for attention. His eyes changed colors, and he acted like a dog who was disturbed during his meal.

"You're one of them. What happened, Elliot?"

Still crouching, over Thomas, he was determined to feed on him. I needed to keep him talking to distract him, and maybe just maybe, Thomas would wake up and run or do something. Lately, he's been useless.

"Dakota? Dakota." Elliot called my name and looked up at me trying to remember me. "Dakota, I fell asleep one night and didn't take my meds. I was tired of the medication and fighting to remain human. For what? For my parents to place me in the hospital each time they what to go to Europe because they didn't want to be bothered with me. I gave up, and when that female vampire visited me in the hospital, I gave in."

"You were in the hospital when that happened?"

"Morgan's hospital. It was his hospital where I surrendered my body and soul. The female vampire wasn't bad. She turned me, and now I'm her slave, and she lets me feed on humans when she's finished with them."

"That's disgusting, Elliot. Look at you pale and like a zombie and a vampire." As I was talking, Thomas unknowingly opened his eyes and turned to face Elliot." Elliot's fangs descended from his mouth, and he leaned into Thomas.

"Don't do that, Elliot. Don't." I had reached inside my shoulder bag for a silver chain to throw at him. I didn't want to hurt him, but I would if he made one more move at Thomas. The silver would disfigure him, but it wasn't enough to kill him.

Elliot was the last one I wanted to kill. I want to kill that female vampire who did this to him and Morgan. "Get away from him. I don't want to hurt you, Elliot, you've been hurt enough, and you have more problems now since you've become one of them."

He stood and I saw a tear fall on his cheek. "You would hurt me, Dakota?"

"I don't want to hurt you, but you were trying to feed on Thomas, and I can't let you do that. He's my friend too."

"I'm trying to become the vampire Elizabeth's expects. She says I'm too young and all I want to do is play and have sex. She was the first woman to make love to me." She seduced him and turned him into a vampire and that's all he knows. He wants love, and he thinks he will get it from her.

When I turn to Thomas, he had crept up and out of the bog and was hiding behind a tree. "I can feed on the animals in the forest up that mountain. But Elizabeth won't respect me unless I kill for my food."

"You can't do that, Elliot. You don't have the heart for it.'

"If I don't, she will chain me in her tower, and when the sun rises, I will be dead."

"Not if I kill that vampire first."

"Then what will become of me?"

"You will work for the man I love. He's a vampire, and I can talk to him. He'll hire you with a recommendation from me. But first, you have to help me get out of here."

"Up to the northeast is a mountain and valley," Elliot said. "The waterfall will lead down to a river, and it will flow into the ocean. There is a small boat there on the other side of this island. I thought I could get away, but it was too late for me. But first, you have to climb that mountain before twilight tomorrow. If you don't, Elizabeth will send out her slaves to get you and return you to Morgan. He turned her, and she's his slave the way I'm hers. I don't think she wants Morgan to have you."

"That makes two of us." I was still tired, but that wouldn't stop me from getting off that island of death.

I hugged Elliot before I left and found Thomas hiding behind a tree. "What did you have to talk to that thing about?"

"He's not a thing. He's my friend."

"Well he's not my friend and the way he looked at me, I've seen a better glance at the zoo during feeding time from lions."

As we slogged along stumbling over large rocks, I didn't dare to tell him that we had to climb a mountain before twilight tomorrow. "I didn't know you worked at the zoo."

"I've had many careers in my life. A chef, a doctor..."

"What kind of doctor."

"A veterinarian."

We tromped through the tall grass as the sun was rising. Elliot had obviously gone where ever it was that vampires go. I made one mistake. I didn't ask him where they rested during the day. Now Thomas and I needed food and water. If we could scale that mountain and get to the other side, there would be fresh water and maybe fish.

"Where are we going, Dakota." Now he would ask me. "Don't worry I know where we're going."

"Yes I know, but I'd like to know too." He stood still looking at me after raising his voice. The sweat beaded on his forehead as the sun broke through the clouds. We were warm from walking through that dense grassland.

"If you must know this, we have to get to that mountain."

"And then what?" he questioned not making a step in the direction of that mountain. I hesitated because I didn't want him freaking out."

"Then we climb it and get to the other side before twilight."

"How are we going to do that?"

"I don't know. We have to do it and do it before the sun goes down. There's a skiff waiting for us. We can use it to get to our boat and get the hell off this cursed island."

"What about Paige?" I had no answers, but I knew that if I died there was no way I could help her.

"How do we know that vampire friend of yours isn't baiting us?"

"We don't know. We have to go on faith."

"Fuck faith and fuck that mountain. Why don't we hunt them the way they're hunting us and then kill those vampires? Don't you know something about killing them?" I looked at him. I didn't have a clue. My time was spent at the research lab trying to get Ashton to notice me and then falling in love with him and being overwhelmed at the thought of him being a vampire, and now with Paige missing, I didn't know what to say to Thomas.

Then I remembered the book.

"What I know is in a book, and I haven't had time to read it. I left it on the boat and now this." I started slogging through the mud. Thomas had the good sense to follow me. "We're wasting time talking. I don't know how long it's going to take to get up there and over it." We stood at the base of the mountain and looked up.

"I've never climbed a mountain before. Look at that thing. Tallgrass, trees everywhere, and rocks. I could lose my footing and tumble down with a broken neck," Thomas said to me.

"Would you rather have a broken neck, or lay in that marsh with your throat torn apart by some blood-sucking demon and your intestines strewn around for the crows and seagulls to pick at them?"

Watching the look on Thomas's face, I knew I had painted the right picture to get him going. It was a picture that I had seen myself. I had imagined one just like that. Only I didn't think I had the strength to decide on whether I could become the bride of a vampire or worse his concubine or death.

But before I would allow Morgan to turn me into one of his cold, unfeeling bloodthirsty concubines, I'd rather die fighting and I know I would have a chance and he wouldn't want me once he knew that I would fight him. He would probably have me running for my life with the rest of the young women, and I never could get a chance to marry Ashton. Why am I thinking of marrying Ashton? Isn't he one of them? And where is he?

I had occupied my thoughts with Ashton, and we had climbed halfway up the mountain, but it was taking too long. "I have to stop, Thomas. I need a rest." Thomas was happy that I suggested the rest.

Not knowing the time, it wasn't looking good. We weren't half-way up, and it appeared to be as if it was five or six in the evening. When the sun set, we would be in trouble because the island lay further east than west. And this side of the island posed a problem as well.

"I thought you'd never rest. I sit in a car over fourteen hours a day and drive around. I'm exhausted." He crouched on his hind legs and watched at me. "What's the matter now, Dakota?"

"I have good news and bad news."

"Don't start with that childish crap. Tell me. I'm a big boy."

"We're not going to make it." He shot up and turned in a circle and then stopped. "What do you mean we're not going to make it? We still have sunlight," he said raising his voice and pointing upward.

"Take a good look."

"I don't know what I'm looking at. The fog and rain and every fucking thing have me confused." Thomas's voice is whiny.

I understand his position. I would be freaking out if I hadn't led him into this mess and since I did, I have to take the lead and show courage. If I'm to get him to follow me, I can't show that I'm afraid. But inside, my voice is screaming "someone help me. If you can hear me, Ashton, come and get us?"

Composing myself, I walk to Thomas, and we automatically hug. I whisper into his ear, "There are caves around. We can spend the night in one of those caves and maybe find food."

"Suppose there are vampires in those caves. The only food supply is us."

"Then we get a limb and break it off and use the sharp end and take a rock and plunge the limb into their chest. See, that's easy. They won't wake as long as there's sunlight around."

"You've got it all figured out. Now how can we find that cave you're talking about?"

"Don't be so negative, Thomas."

"It's in my genes. So sue me." And he tramped up and then gazed around. "I think there's one over there in that valley where there's water." He dashed through the thick trees and high grass, and I took off after him. Then he stopped at the slop and pointed down. "There it is at the base of that river. There's a waterfall. Not a big one, but it has fresh water, and where there is fresh water, there's fish. Sushi tonight." And he broke into a broad smile. It was great seeing him smile again.

Thomas ran and slid down the hill. "Be careful. You could fall." And he did. Thomas tumbled down and rolled over and over. When he landed at the base of that hill and at the mouth of the river, he wasn't moving.

I scurried after him, and when I turned him over, I could see he was still breathing but in shock. His eyes opened slowly. "You are a nuisance to yourself and me. Don't ask to come with me anymore," I said to him.

Breathless and smiling he said, "Fuck you, Dakota. I think I sprang something. Just leave me. I can't go on."

"You sound like a character out of one of those old movies. I really should leave you but I won't. Stay here. I'll be back soon."

"If I'm not asking too much, Dakota, try to make it back before the sunsets?"

"Don't worry. I'm going to find something that can help you stand. And I'll check out that cave before I bring you there."

"You're not afraid?" I was scared shitless. But what could I do now? I had someone who couldn't walk, and we were hungry and needed fresh water and a place to hide for one more night of hell.

I made the trek down to the river and there to my right behind a waterfall a cave. I sucked in a large breath, but first I lay down on my stomach and cupped a handful of water. I would have to get Thomas to this stream, so the first thing on the agenda was a walking stick. How was I going to find one strong enough where he could put his weight on without it breaking? That was problem number one. And we needed food. Problem number two.

Lying face down near the stream, I drank more water, and then I discarded my clothes and dropped them into the water. It was cold, but I couldn't think about that. Hungry and staying alive eclipsed being cold. I waded into the water and swam, and then I caught a fish. The fish were swimming around me in large schools. With schools that large there couldn't have been many predators to eliminate their numbers. I could reach out and grab a small fish swimming by.

Things were beginning to look promising. I brought the fish to the surface and to the bank of the stream and crouched down to gather my clothing when I felt the sound of loud breathing behind me. It was some kind of large animal, and I closed my eyes because I wanted it to be over quickly. My life didn't flash before my eyes. I didn't think about Ashton, I didn't think about anything or anyone. When nothing happened, I opened my eyes, and in the clear water, I saw the image of something that left me startled.

"Don't run. I'm not going to attack you," the voiced said.

"How is it you can talk?"

"I'm not what I appear to be."

"No shit," I said.

He paused, "I'm a shifter." I crouched behind a rock. The only living being who had seen me naked since I had grown up was Ashton Mieras--if you considered him a living person. I'm sure Thomas would give me an argument on that.

The End of Book One

To Kill a Vampire

By Rachel E Rice

To see more of her books click on Rachel E Rice

Book two and Book three coming soon!

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Below you will find a list of some of my books. Enjoy!

New Books by Rachel E Rice

Paranormal Romance

Soul of A Vampire books 123

I Am the Night books 123

The Insatiable Werewolf Series 12 books in series

Star Splitter (SF Romance) books 123

To Kill a Vampire books 123 coming soon

You can find these books as singles and box sets

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# Historical Romance

The Captain and The Virgin #1

The Pirate and The Captain's Lady #2

The Captain's Revenge...#3

Seduced By An Earl #1

The Naked Countess #2

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# Contemporary Romance

Obsession: Warm Bodies, Cold Hearts #1

(Obsession Series) Naked Obsession # 2

Burning Obsession # 3

Science Fiction

The Well 1

The Well 2

The Well 3

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# Erotic Romance

Blackstone Series The Incredible Mr. Black #1

Blackstone Series Temptation In Black #2

Blackstone Series Submission To Black #3

Black Tie Affair (Blackstone #4

Mourning Becomes Black # 5

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# Stand Alone New Adult Romance

Finding Summer

One Desire
