Sven waved me away from the counter. “Go make sure Vickie is asleep, and I will take care of the shop for the last hour.”
“Thanks. It’s insane, the stuff these people buy.”
He snorted in laughter and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Honey. These are the real ones. The ones during the day are the tourists. At night, the real boogie men come in to shop.”
Ah-ha
, I thought, and ran away from the crazy people with neverending wallets.
Peeking in on Vickie, I smiled at the sound of her soft snoring. My heart warmed a little and I breathed a little easier. So long as I heard that familiar sound, all was right with my world. I crept in and attempted to take her iPod. She rolled over and grumbled in her sleep.
Oh, well.
I crept back down the hall then stopped mid-creep. The refrigerator door stood open. Funny, I hadn’t noticed it when I came through the first time. Vickie must have had a late night yen for yogurt.
Pushing the door closed, I hit something.
Or some
one
, as it turned out.
The man looked like he had died last week. Sunken eyes glittered, surrounded by shadows so deep they looked like bruises. They glowed. Shit you not, his eyes
glowed,
like he wore glowsticks for contact lenses. The eerie blue shone out from the bruised waxy, white skin. His face seemed dried out somehow, pulling his skin tight across his prominent cheek bones. The pale white raisin skin left his lips pulled back in a grimace which showed teeth that had horribly distended canines. A knotted black mass of hair hung to the waist of it, dust and God knows what tangled in the gnarly mess. Either mud or dried blood clumped on its clothes, and either seemed equally likely.
He stunk. Like death. Like dog shit. Like dead dog shit.
All of this took less than a second to imprint on my mind as I shrieked and fell gracelessly to my ass. I scrambled in a crab walk as far as I could away, until my ass hit the far wall.
Two seconds into my encounter with whatever rummaged in the refrigerator, It hissed at me. It seemed wrong, somehow, to think of this creature as a
him
. It wasn’t a him.
It
was a nightmare.
I shrieked again in terror. Not that screaming did much good the first time, but it seemed to be the only thing I could think to do right then.
It came at me. I dove for the butcher block full of knives, but the Thing was faster. I found myself pinned to the counter. Before I could think, It had whirled me around and had me pinned to the wall, facing It.
So this is how I’m going to die.
I concentrated on breathing as the monster’s cold, slim fingers moved at my waist, fumbling at my jeans. Pinching my eyes closed, I breathed in the stink of the monster. The fingers slid a bit down my thigh, and I wondered if I was going to get raped before It ate me. Monsters never raped first then ate the victim in the movies. As my mind tried to figure this out, I half-noticed the hand found my key ring and attempted to remove it.
I shrieked for the third time, and the Thing spoke. “Open your bloody eyes.”
Huh.
The monster spoke. I tried to open my eyes.
Nope, can’t do it.
When I was a little girl, I was sure that so long as my eyes were closed and every part of my body hid under the blanket—no air even getting in—the monsters couldn’t get me. Some part of my childish belief came back now. If I didn’t open my eyes, it wasn’t happening.
“Open your eyes, dammit.”
Its voice sounded like rusty air, hardly any sound at all. Just a raspy sound barely forming words. I shivered at the lack of humanity in the sound and fear choked me. “I can’t.” I finally managed and was happy I still had a voice at all. When I spoke, I was hardly louder than the creature.
“Why the hell not? I can’t get it off. Take it off.”
Take it off
. Oh God, I
was
going to get raped before It ate me.
“Girl! Do you hear me? Take it off before, ohhh.” The last part came out a sigh. “Type O positive.”
Huh?
Lips nuzzled at my neck. The reek worsened and the nasty cloud of hair tickled my face. I choked on the rank, musty smell of him and whimpered. The door leading downstairs opened, and I finally managed to pry apart my eyelids. Sven barged into the room. “O-mi-God,
Vance
!”
The creature murmured into my neck. I wondered why Sven was calling for Mia’s friend when we had a situation, here. I flapped my arm at Sven. “Sven! Help! Run away! Get Vickie and run away! Help!” I wasn’t sure what I wanted.
Sven caught the monster by the shoulder and pulled him back like he weighed nothing. Then again, to Sven, maybe the monster didn’t. “Dude! Everyone thought you died!” Sven hugged the monster thing.
Okay, I fell asleep because the store was so slow, and I am having a dream. A very weird dream.
“Can’t you smell her?” The thing asked, trying to get to me. I jumped on the countertop and backed up to the cupboard doors, one foot sliding into the sink.
“What?” Sven reached up and grabbed the key ring off the belt loop of my jeans. He pulled the Thing to the fridge and unlocked the drawer that held all of the blood. “Dude, why didn’t you just rip the friggin’ drawer out?”
The Thing dug its teeth into the bag, gulping frantically.When the bag was emptied, the Thing threw it in the garbage and gracefully wiped his face on his arm. “I did not want to ruin Mia’s pretty kitchen. Gimme another bag.”
I stared at the creature.
Is it just me or is It looking more human?
Yes, the face was fuller and a rosy color tinged the monster’s skin. Even Its hair glistened more. The monster’s lips filled out into sensual curves. Long, curling lashes framed heavily-lidded eyes and enhanced a graceful brow. The Thing in the kitchen transformed in less than five minutes from dead looking monster to Greek rockstar god.
Somehow the transformation made the Thing more terrifying and less real all at once, which somehow worked out as a mood changer for me. I found myself making a transformation of my own—from terrified blubbering idiot to pissed off—in less time than it took the Thing to finish the second bag.
I jumped off the counter. With a butcher knife in one hand and a steak knife in the other, I lunged at the Thing.
Sven pulled at my arm. “What are you doing? Janie!”
I whirled on him, shaking my knife in front of me automatically, now in Sven’s huge face. “What the hell is that thing?”
Before I could blink, I was on my back, steak knife arm coming up automatically and hitting something. As I got the wind back that had been knocked out of me, I realized that the knife was stuck
in
the creature. I tried to gather my wits and catch up on what was going on. My hand had been in a fist, knife pointed down, so when I fell, I drove it home into the hollow between the Thing’s neck and collarbone. Now, I looked into Its eyes. The monster’s body pinned me to the floor. Its very firm, very healthy body. A shiver that was not entirely fear slid like velvet down my spine. The creature smirked above me, his blue eyes knowing. He shifted his weight, making his more intimate parts brush mine, and caught the knife just as I released it. Tugging it out, blood gushed to the site and poured onto me.
Nauseated and slightly dizzy, I heard It say as my eyes closed, “I am a vampire, love, what else?”
CHAPTER Two
Rolling over on the sleek sheets, I buried my face deeper into the soft, silken pillow.
Mm, mm.
Something smelled really good, like steak and soap. My stomach growled at the thought, and I considered getting up to get something to eat, but I discarded the notion since I was deliciously comfortable. Stretching, I encountered something even softer than the sheets. Curling my fingers and furrowing my brow, I tried to identify it without opening my eyes. Whatever I touched slid through my fingers like water, but wasn’t wet. Maybe I was still dreaming.
I remembered something about a dream. Monsters in the refrigerator. I chuckled. Maybe I should take up writing, with an imagination like that.I opened my eyes and blinked. A face lay on the pillow next to mine in the bed, forehead nearly touching my own.
And reality, or unreality as the case may be, came crashing back.
Breathing hard, I took in his restored features closely. A long, slender and sculpted face with flawless creamy white skin stared back at me. His sharp-boned jaw saved him from appearing feminine. His eyes glittered at me, an unrelenting sky blue. True blue, my grandmother would have called them. His face spoke of perhaps German ancestry, but the hair made me think Black Irish.
Speaking of the hair, the jet black silkiness put my own to shame. My fingers tingled with the memory of how that hair slid through them. As a matter of fact, black hair spread across a good portion of Mia’s bed, like some big, living blanket. He reminded me of a rock star. I froze in place, not even sure I was breathing. Apparently, neither was it. “Breathe, Janie. Just breathe.”
I sucked in air. It knew my name. Screaming seemed out of the question. I had seen twice how fast this thing moved. By the time I got out “eek,” it could have me pinned…again.
Good point, Janie!
It had me pinned twice already and had not eaten me. Maybe It wasn’t going to. I stared at It, and It stared back.
This
so
was not happening.
Breathe in, breathe out.
I chanted the words in my head and tried to get my train of thought back on track.
So, this is a vampire. Supposedly
. I didn’t believe in vampires, so maybe I had gone insane. Made sense, really. Stress from the divorce…newly a single mom. Maybe I had cracked under the pressure.
Having come up with a believable reason why I was in bed with a vampire helped.
So, I’m insane
. What next? Did I need to tell someone, so they could lock me up or whatever? They still keep crazy people somewhere, don’t they? I remembered reading a book in which they put the crazy person away—maybe something about a cannibal?—so they
must
still do that.
Well, I couldn’t just keep lying here in bed staring at the vampire. Speaking of which, he probably was really there. He just wasn’t a vampire. That part was probably the hallucination. So, since he was here and I needed to let someone know so they could put me away, why not tell him? “I am so sorry, sir. I didn’t get your name.”
“Vansickle Stuart Masterson, First Duke of Monterey, and a string of other titles, not to mention names, throughout the ages, descended from the Stuarts of historic merit. You can call me Vance.”
That made sense since it did not make sense. More proof, as if I needed it, that I had officially gone mad. “Mr. Vance, I have apparently gone insane. I’m not really sure what happens next, but I am pretty sure, since I am running around waving steak knives, that I should be put away and given some sort of medication now.” There, that sounded reasonable. I wasn’t sure if I should have added some sort of title. He was a first duke…
wait, we’re in Ohio.
Screw that title crap. He was in America now, he could live like we did and we didn’t do royalty. Well, except Princess Di and her kids. Well, I guess we did Fergie, but only because she lost weight, and we gave kudos to anyone who loses weight, even the Subway guy. Wait, back to staring at the creepy guy who couldn’t be there. Vance laughed. He covered his face with one hand and laughed
very
hard.
I stared at him and waited.
After a moment, he rolled closer to me. I suppose he finally realized I was not going to join him in his mirth. He cupped my face in his hands. I shivered and tried to lay very still. I wanted to hit him with something, but then I would be criminally insane rather than just a run of the mill whack job. And I figured they would be nicer to me when they put me away if I wasn’t a criminal.
“Little one, you are not crazy.”
I clamped my teeth at this point. I don’t really like being condescended to, but, hey, I am the crazy person, so I let him continue uninterrupted.
“Every so often, in life, we find that things are not as we thought them to be. When you were a child, you believed in things that were not there. Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy…all things you thought were real. Then as an adult you found they were fictional. You had to rearrange your world around that knowledge. Other things you believed, like the monster under the bed and vampires and witches, you assumed also to be make-believe. Maybe, though, the world is bigger than you thought. Maybe there are things that are real and fantastic all at once. Does this make you insane? Are you to doubt that which is right in front of you, merely because you were told it could not be?”
“You are
not
real. I mean, I am sure
you
are real, since you are touching me, but you aren’t really a vampire. There aren’t vampires.” I knew there weren’t, had been repeatedly told it was impossible.
Not moving or even seeming to breathe he stared back at me with eyes gone a glittering cobalt. I gazed back, captured by his intense regard. Finally, I glanced down at his mouth. His lips stretched back in a semblance of a smile. The canines descended to sharp points and pushed gently at his lower lip.
I trembled.
This isn’t real.
He pulled my hair. Hard enough to hurt. “Ouch!”
“This is real. I am as real as you. Welcome to the world of the night.”
“Dude, what are you doing? Can’t I leave you alone for two minutes?”
Sven leaned on the door frame and continued, “Honey, Vickie slept through all your screaming and stabbing. Thank God for iPod, you know what I’m saying?”
“Vickie—” I tried to get up and realized Vance still had a hold of my head.