Claimed by a Vampire. Rachel Lee
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two months ago. I found out he was cheating on me.” Her voice broke and then steadied. Clearly it still hurt like hell to remember the discovery. “And frankly, I didn’t like some of his friends. The cheating was the last straw.” She shook her head. “Anyway, his friends were … well … it’s hard to explain. I’m pretty sure they were doing some drugs, which I didn’t like, but their behavior grated on me. Cynical, antisocial and determined to break rules for the sake of breaking them. Arrested development.” She sighed. “And they seemed to be rubbing off on Tommy. He wasn’t like that at first, Creed. Truly he wasn’t. But after we’d been together about four or five months, he started bringing them home with him from the club where he had a gig.”
“I believe you,” he said gently.
“He changed.” Her voice broke again. “I blamed his friends, but maybe I didn’t really know him. Could somebody really change that much just because of friends? But he seemed to be getting more like them as time passed.”
“Did he start wearing that star necklace more often?”
She frowned faintly. “I don’t know. He started wearing his necklaces under his shirt so I wouldn’t see them. It made me mad that he still wore them when he knew I didn’t like some of them, but it made me mad at myself, too, for objecting to the stupid things. I mean, I must have seemed like such a bitch, picking on his jewelry.”
Creed sat, rubbing his chin slowly, lost in thought. There could definitely be a link, he thought, but how much of one he couldn’t be sure. The gateway, if they’d opened one, would have been where she lived before, not where she lived now. He definitely needed to kick this around with Jude, but for the moment he didn’t want to add to Yvonne’s worries, so he asked no more questions.
Yvonne, however, broke into his thoughts with a question of her own.
“You said your relative was attacked?”
“My great-granddaughter. She was nearly killed.”
She hesitated, then said, “That’s mind-blowing.”
“What is?”
“You don’t look anywhere near old enough to have a great-granddaughter.”
“I told you I was married once, and had daughters.”
“I know, but … Sorry, none of my business.”
“I was married, I had four daughters and a son. And then some damn vampire decided she wanted me, changed me and I was never able to go back to them.”
The corners of her mouth drew down. “They couldn’t accept you?”
“I wouldn’t ask them to. And certainly not in the state I was in at first. So I watched from afar, watched them grow old and die.”
“I’m so sorry! I can’t imagine the pain.”
He closed his eyes again, this time to blind himself to her sympathy. He hadn’t expected that. “It was a long time ago,” he said finally. “A very long time ago.”
“Feelings,” she said quietly, “have their own calendar. They don’t vanish simply because the months and years turn over.”
His eyes snapped open. “No. They don’t. But they visit less often, though they remain every bit as strong.”
She nodded. “I know. I lost my mother five years ago. Not that long in terms of pain, even when you don’t especially like them. I can only imagine what it must have been like to stay away when they were still there.”
He felt utterly flabbergasted. First she accepted that he was a vampire as if he hadn’t just bent all the rules of her known reality, and now she was expressing sympathy rather than fear or revulsion. “You are quite … unusual.”
“Why? Because I’m not running in screaming terror?”
“Because you believe what I told you and now you’re expressing sympathy.”
“Your eyes,” she said simply. “The way they changed. How could I not believe? I felt something already. Something different. You moved so fast and then your eyes changed. There’s no other explanation than that you’re telling me the truth.”
“I am. But I still would have expected some difficulty.”
“You mean I should get upset, scream, deny, whatever?” She shrugged. “Maybe most people would. I’m weird. I’ve always been weird. And I like unusual people. You certainly qualify as the most unusual person I’ve ever met.”
One corner of his mouth drew up. “So you think of me as a person? I’m not even a human anymore.”
“You’re still a person.” She leaned back and tucked her legs up beneath her on the couch. “I write about all kinds of fantastic beings. Some come from tradition, myth and fairy tales, others I make up. But I’ve never followed the current trend for vampires and werewolves.” She half smiled. “You’re giving me ideas for a story.”
“About vampires?”
“Maybe. You’re not at all what I would have expected.”
“Meaning?”
“Vampire as St. George.”
Finally he laughed and allowed himself to relax. Things might change at any instant as she truly absorbed what he’d told her, but for the moment he was willing to enjoy himself. At least as much as he could when her scent was driving him nuts. “I’m no saint, and certainly not a dragon-slayer.”
“Just don’t tell me there are dragons.”
“I haven’t met one, so I can’t say for sure.”
A smile flickered across her face. “True. Having just made the acquaintance of a couple of vampires I guess there’s no way to be sure that there aren’t any dragons, or elves, or trolls.”
She was definitely taking this entirely too well. A new and different tension began to creep through him, apart from the tension of self-control. None of her reactions seemed quite normal. The resistance had passed too quickly. The acceptance bordered on the extreme. Most people fought so hard to keep their beliefs about reality intact that they could literally erase from their minds anything that didn’t fit. He knew that effect intimately, as he’d seen it in action more than once, and more often than not took advantage of it. Denial was a basic trait of human nature. It actually helped vampires to survive.
Vampires and other things he would not mention, not today. Yvonne was dealing with enough. Or not dealing as the case might be. He honestly wondered which it was.
Her face had grown thoughtful, and he tensed again, waiting to hear her thoughts. He couldn’t help feeling that her easy acceptance of what he had told her was nothing but a ticking time bomb that might go off at any moment.
But then she looked up at him with a crooked smile. “I could use a little more proof, I think.”
“Proof that I’m a vampire?”
“Yes. Part of me recognizes that you moved far too fast for a human, that your eyes change in a way I’ve never seen any human’s do. But another part of me is seriously balking.”
“I’m honestly surprised that you aren’t terrified, given the stories everyone tells about us.”
She gave a little shake of her head. “You’ve been kind to me in the extreme. I tend to judge people by their actions even more than their words. I’m not afraid of you.”
“Maybe you should be.”
Her eyes widened a bit, and for the first time he saw a hint of fear that had nothing to do with what was going on in her apartment. Yes, it was better if she kept a distance, but his chest tightened anyway.
“Are you threatening me or warning me?” she asked.
In an instant he hovered