Nineteen-year-old Melissa Matthews opened her eyes and tried to adjust them to the darkness that surrounded her. She immediately realized that she’d been stripped completely naked and tied to some kind of hard, cold contraption. Also, her hands and feet were tightly bound with a dark-colored ropelike material.
She attempted to call out for help and struggled to move her extremities; but, the more she tried to move, the tighter the ropelike material became around her ankles and wrists.
The last thing she remembered doing was taking her bike out for a late night ride, while listening to her favorite playlist on her portable pink MP3 player with the matching ear buds. She had just turned onto Oak Street when she saw someone or something lying in the street, causing her to slam on her brakes and come to a sudden stop just before she’d collided with it. Had the person or thing gotten up off of the ground? Everything had happened so fast that Melissa couldn’t quite remember anything past that particular moment.
“You’ve finally awakened, young one,” a gruff, evil-sounding, raspy voice stated from over near the left side of her exposed body.
Melissa quickly turned her head toward the voice and immediately, tears of pure terror began to stream down her face. She tried hard to scream at the top of her lungs, but the gag across her mouth muffled the sound completely.
A scaly, scratchy hand reached out and stroked the side of her face, causing her to shriek beneath the gag. Her entire body began to tremble uncontrollably with extreme fear. She closed her eyes and started to pray.
The creature laughed a loud, malevolent, wicked laugh and then slapped the young brunette across the face with such force that her bottom lip split open and began to bleed.
“Your meaningless rhetoric is futile! Your God cannot save you!” it roared.
In one swift movement, the creature closed in on her, sinking its long, razor-sharp fangs into the flesh at the base of her neck. Melissa let out a muffled cry before finally succumbing to death, the life literally drained out of her as her blood filled the creature’s mouth.
**
“I fear we may have a serial killer on our hands,” Detective Hartzman noted as he covered the sunken, pale face of the second blood-drained murder victim.
“Her name is Melissa Matthews,” Deputy Long said somberly. “She’s the youngest daughter of Pastor Matthews, a preacher at the Mountain Crest Baptist Church.”
He lowered his head, looking as if he, himself, was close to tears.
It had barely been a week since the first young woman had been slaughtered, and now, they had a second one. She had the exact same puncture marks on her neck and her body and had also been completely drained of blood. William knew that he was going to have to get to the bottom of things—and fast.
Members of the city council were already starting to point fingers at the vampire community and the last thing William needed was for the two entities to turn on one another—especially with the Mountain Crest Summer fair coming up next week.
He shook his head, knowing that, yet again, he would have to meet with Vincent Veldassare.
**
Ava hadn’t been able to get Chase out of her head ever since that electric, yet awkward kiss she’d shared with him the other night. A part of her was upset with him for running out on her at the bar, but the other part of her was actually hoping that he would be there when she and her dad arrived at the Veldassare residence.
Ava hadn’t mentioned her encounter with Chase at the bar last week to her father. She also wondered why her father seemed to think that the city council was convinced someone from the Mountain Crest community was committing these atrocious murders. What kind of maniac would drain all of the blood from someone’s body? And what kind of crazy suction contraption was this man using to suck all of the blood from these women? It was almost as if this deranged pervert thought he was some kind of vampire.
And was he storing the blood? Drinking it? Saving it, somewhere? These thoughts played over and over in Ava’s mind as she sat quietly in the passenger seat with her father. She glanced over at him and saw that he, too, seemed to be lost in his own thoughts. It hadn’t been easy to get her father to agree with letting her join him on this second excursion up the mountain to speak with the Lexus leader. Ava had had to imply that she could get the lead on the murder stories if she could just prove that she had an “in” about some of the pertinent details. However, she was starting to think that her dad was keeping something from her. She just had a feeling. She planned to find out what it was about these weird, yet fascinating Lexus dwellers that made her father so sure that they had something to do with the murders.
Inside the Veldassare residence, Ava and her father sat across from Evangeline and Vincent at a rectangular cherry wood table. Whoever these people were, they seemed to be pretty well-off moneywise. Everything in their large, dimly-lit home was expensive-looking and reminded Ava of artifacts and decor she’d seen in museums.
“I held a meeting with the residents here in Lexus,” Vincent explained. “I assure you that no one here had anything to do with these unfortunate, gruesome murders. We would never dream of harming anyone from Mountain Crest. Not in a million years.”
He sounded quite sincere and his dark, magnetic eyes exuded candor and truthfulness. Ava felt as if she’d believe anything that came out of the enigmatic older man’s mouth.
Just then, Chase entered the room. Immediately, Ava felt a shiver deep within her core. Once again, her body reacted to his presence in a way she could not control. Her pulse began to race and she immediately felt her cheeks growing warm. All of the anger and frustration she’d felt toward him was smothered by feelings of attraction – as if something was actually joining the two.
The moment he saw Ava, his eyes softened and he looked directly at her. Ava wanted to glare at him—to show him how insulted she’d felt by his abrupt exit at the bar the other night, but try as she might, she couldn’t force a scowl or a frown to form upon her face—not while his eyes were locked onto her own.
“Ms. Hartzman, so nice to see you again. Please, may I speak with you in the other room?” he asked calmly.
Ava felt as if she was in a trance. Almost as if hypnotized, she rose from her seat and followed him into the next room, never even noticing the look of concern on her father’s face.
As Chase shut the door behind them, he turned to face Ava and saw her standing with her arms folded across her breasts.
“Listen, Ava, I, uh…wanted to apologize for my abrupt departure the other night,” he explained. “It’s just that I—I’ve never felt such a strong attraction to someone as I feel with you and it—it took me by surprise when you kissed me like that.”
“What do you mean?” Ava snapped back at him, pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes. As long as she didn’t look him directly in the face, she seemed somehow able to keep her mind focused on her anger.
In spite of himself, Chase found her irritated scowl extremely sexy. What was it about this passionate, entrancing human woman that drew him like no other woman he’d ever met before? Why did he feel so unable to control himself whenever she was around?
“I, um…,” he sighed, looking directly into her eyes as he spoke. “I shouldn’t have run out like that. I’m sorry.”
Passion sparked within his deep blue eyes as he stared at her and Ava’s irate attitude softened almost instantaneously. She no longer felt the need to be angry with him.
He moved in closer to her and reached out to touch her face. As his right hand caressed the side of her cheek, a sensation that began at her face travelled all the way to her core in an instant. He lifted her chin with his fingers and locked his eyes with hers.
“Let me make it up to you,” he said softly, his voice barely more a deep whisper. “The Mountain Crest Summer Fair begins this coming weekend. Be my date on Friday night.”
It was more of a command than it was a request, but for some reason beyond her comprehension, the assertiveness of his demand actually turned her on. There was no way she could have said no even if she’d wanted to.
At that moment, the door behind them opened, surprising them both.
“Come on, Ava. I’ve got to get back to the precinct,” William said sternly. He was speaking to his daughter, but his stare was focused intently on Chase.
Ava followed her father out of the room, glancing back at Chase one more time before walking out of the front door.
**
“I know you’re hiding something from me about the residents of the Lexus community. There has to be some reason why the members of the city council suspect that one of them has something to do with these murders. Apparently the Veldassares have money. What do they do for a living?”
Her father remained silent.
“Dad?! Talk to me! I’m not a little girl anymore! This investigation is just as important to me as it is to you! I am writing a story on this case for the Mountain Crest Journal. Don’t you think I deserve to know the details?” Ava knew she was stretching the truth a bit by telling him she was already writing the article, but she felt she had the right to know what was going on up at Lexus.
Her father sighed as he pulled up in front of his daughter’s small, one-story brick house and turned to face her with an expression of timidity.
“Ava, there are things that I shielded you from while you were growing up here in Mountain Crest—things that I felt I was protecting you from. But, you’re right. You’re not a little girl anymore and you do deserve to know all of details about this case. I’ve got to get back down to the station right now, but I promise we’ll finish this conversation later, okay?”
Ava was not happy with his reply, knowing that “later” would likely never come. She let out an angry huff and left the car, walking stiffly up the narrow cement walkway to her front door.