Chapter 1
“Cameron, you have to come see this.” Rachel said in an excited whisper as she shook my shoulder.
I opened one eye and moaned softly to myself and flipped back over on the couch where I had crashed the night before, too drunk to make it past the living room. We had been celebrating my best friend Rachel’s engagement to her longtime boyfriend, Michael, but apparently we had celebrated a little bit too much if the headache I felt just hearing her whisper was any indication of my current situation.
“Stop talking... my head is falling off,” I murmured, burying my head under a throw pillow that did nothing to shield the unyielding sun peeking through the blinds of my living room.
“No seriously, Cameron, this is without a doubt the best moment of your life. Apparently God has answered your prayers and sent you a man!”
Hmmm, I thought wryly to myself; I didn’t know that I had been praying for a significant other. That was news to me. This whole time I thought my prayers focused on increasing my metabolism so that I could still eat ice cream without it all going to my thighs.
Apparently unfazed by my silence, Rachel was buzzing about trying to contain her excitement. At one point, I heard her whistling softly to herself as if she were admiring something, and I turned and opened both eyes to look at her. She was jumping up and down ecstatically now. I swear, my friend had the energy of a five-year-old. You wouldn’t know it, given that she dressed like an emo teenager in all black, with dark-red lipstick and a no-nonsense bob as a haircut. People assumed she was the serious one, but no. That role would go to me. I was a brunette too, but my hair was wavy and resembled a Disney princess, as one little girl had told me, and I had light blue eyes. My hair and eyes were my best features, in my opinion, given that I wasn’t a big fan of my curvy backside and almost non-existent breasts. I figured there had been a mistake made somewhere in my gene pool; I had so much going on regarding my rump, but nothing going on up top. It was a tragedy that made shopping trips uber-depressing. That’s why I wore baggy shorts and tank tops all the time; I couldn’t figure out what else could possibly fit when I was two sizes smaller on the top than I was on the bottom.
Determined to ignore my best friend and continue sleeping, I groggily said, “I don’t even like men anymore. They suck and have smelly feet.” My statement came out sounding like I was four. And I instantly felt silly. I couldn’t waste my energy thinking about a certain deadbeat ex-boyfriend who couldn’t kiss.
“Hey, not all men are like Preston,” Rachel said catching on easily to who I was referring to in my comment. She then tugged at my arm trying to get me off the couch.
“Yes they are, you just don’t know it yet,” I said pulling my arm back. Preston was my shiftless ex., and I wasn’t exactly mourning the end of our relationship. After all, it wasn’t as if he had been a prize. I had only dated him because he was just one of the hand-full of single men in town that was my age and hey, a girl has needs. He had dumped me unceremoniously one evening stating that I was too cold and aloof. He was right. I didn’t like emotional attachments. I ran from them.
As I turned my thoughts away from Preston, I realized that Rachel was stronger than I thought and had already pulled half my body off the couch. My shoulder hit the floor and I grimaced as I toppled completely off the couch hitting the thick area rug beneath me.
“Ouch!” I rubbed my shoulder and gave her a dark look.
“Shhh!!” She said walking over to the window and peering out at my front porch again. “He’s right there! Come look! Quick, quick, before he wakes up!”
“What?” I said confused still, rubbing at my eyes. “Is Preston’s brother out there? He’s always had a crush on me,” I said as I dragged myself up from the floor to a standing position and slowly made my way to where Rachel was standing. She was a ball of excited energy peering out my window.
I moved closer to her and looked to where she was pointing, “Look! Look! Right there!”
She hadn’t been making it up; there was a man lying face down on my porch. And he was a very big, very well-built man. From everything I could see, and I could see everything; he was built like a linebacker. His impossibly sculpted back muscles were a clear display of strength and power, caressed by golden tanned skin that looked as if it had been kissed by the sun. His arms were large and sinewy. His thighs were thick and muscular. And his behind was perfect. I hadn’t seen a more perfect behind since watching David Beckham play soccer one year. And this stranger’s hair, even from this distance, I could tell was dark like my own and thick and wavy as well. Although I had yet to see his face, it was as if Adonis had landed on my front porch and I thought briefly, given our town’s penchant for unusual visitors, maybe a God actually had.
“There’s a naked man on my front porch.” I said softly, shaking my head as if that would clear the image or wake me up from a dream. Clearly though, I wasn’t dreaming as the naked man was still there.
“Do you think he’s dead?” Rachel asked quietly. She then turned and looked at me and said, “I think we should poke him with a stick or something to make sure he’s okay.”
She walked toward my umbrella hanging on a hook next to the front door, grabbed it and was about to unlock the door when I grabbed her, stopping her exit.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I hissed at her, “It could be a trap. He could be a serial killer. You can’t just go out there on your own.”
“Then come with me,” Rachel said as if she was just asking me to go grocery shopping or asking me to do something else equally innocent and non-life threatening with her.
“No way. We’re staying here and calling the police.”
“Awww,” Rachel protested, already giving me her favorite pouty expression, which I studiously ignored as I walked away, chewing on my nail, trying to come up with how to deal with the nudist.
“What a stupid reason to call the police, and you know who’s going to show up; Ronnie. Blah.” She made another face and this time I had to agree with her.
Ronnie was the sheriff in the small town where we lived. He was the quintessential, stereotypical small town police officer. He spent most of his time sitting in his squad car pretending to shoot things and then riding about town harassing anyone unlucky enough to be in the right place at the wrong time. Most of us townies tried to avoid him, but when I said small town, it wasn’t an exaggeration. It was nearly impossible to avoid anyone here in Graunville; there was one stoplight, one library, one hospital, and one bank. So there was no getting away from Ronnie and his ridiculous immature antics. He was only twenty-four after all, so I tried to cut him some slack.
I lived on the outskirts of Graunville, about five miles away from my nearest neighbor. My father and mother had left me this home when they had moved to a warmer climate. Last time I heard, they were sipping margaritas in Sarasota having the best of times. I had no desire to leave. I was a country girl at heart, and I loved living in what I felt was almost a storybook of a house. It was idyllic; no noise, no neighbors, no problems, and no unexpected visitors... well, at least until now.
I directed my attention back to my immediate problem. Ronnie would probably shoot the guy and ask questions later. I wasn’t going to call him.
“How do you think he got here?” I said to Rachel, who was now blatantly staring at the guy’s butt.
“Look!” She said pointing, not even acknowledging my question, like a little kid at a zoo who sees a giraffe in person for the first time, “He has the cutest tattoo on his butt!”
I peered closer, feeling a little like a perv as my cheeks grew warm in embarrassment. I tried to act like I was a woman of the world, but truth be told, I was a little bit of a prude. I actually easily embarrassed. I tried but failed to keep my eyes away from his backside as I looked in the direction of his bare butt.
On it was a medium-sized tattoo, about the size of a fist. I couldn’t make it out from a distance, and then I moved closer. It was a circle with a flying creature in the middle. As I stared, I became aware that the guy was waking up. He started shifting, stirring in his sleep, and I hurriedly shut the blinds.
“Ok, that was close,” I admitted when my breathing was back to normal. I guess I had been hyperventilating and didn’t know it.
“Frightening? I was hoping that he would get up so that we could see the goods,” Rachel said.
I gave her an amused look and said that I was calling her husband-to-be as soon as the naked man was no longer on my porch.
“No fair and no fun.”
“That’s me,” I said with false cheerfulness, and she playfully slugged me on the shoulder.
“So what do you think we should do?”
“Sit here and wait until he goes away.” I said going back to my couch and sitting down heavily. Rachel followed me and said, “We can’t sit here indefinitely. Where do you think he’s from? How did he even get out here?”
“I don’t know. Do you think we should ask him?” I said sarcastically, and Rachel hit me with a pillow.
“Do you think he’s another one of them?” She asked suddenly, and I felt a headache start to form. I knew what she was talking about, even if I didn’t want to admit it. And if the marking on his flesh was any indication, yes, he was one of them, but I wasn’t willing to say it out loud.
Here was the strange thing about our town; we attracted interesting visitors, to say the least; visitors of the paranormal variety. Just as Roswell was rumored to attract aliens, well, our little town, Graunville, attracted werewolves, vampires, Sasquatch and I swear I’ve seen a unicorn or two. We townies weren’t sure if the beings flocked here because it was a safe haven of some kind, or if it was because we were very good at keeping secrets. You see, we townies had a secret of our own, if you were born here, you could “see” the creatures for what they were, so no one else outside of our town knew they existed or could see them. A prime example was the unicorns I saw every now and then, to an outsider a unicorn would look simply like a horse.
Did I mention that was also the reason my parents moved? They were determined to live a normal existence and were, frankly, tired of all the freaks and surprises, they said. I had responded that, from what I saw on the news, Florida had its own share of freaks and surprises, just of the human kind, but they had still moved.
As a result, growing up with a school teacher who was part werewolf or going to school with a girl who was a vampire wasn’t that big of a deal. It was just a way of life. Nevertheless, they normally showed up with clothes on. This was the first naked one, unless he was just a random dude wandering through the woods, but that was too much of a coincidence for me. Not to mention, there was that tattoo on him. It reminded me of something, something other worldly, but I couldn’t quite come up with what.
“What do you think he is?” Rachel said.
I shrugged, “With any hope; he’s just a drunk human. But there’s only one way to find out... ”
I looked at her; she looked at me and resigned; we both went toward the door.
“Ready?”
“We might as well.”
“Here’s hoping he’s not a vampire,” Rachel said, “Their personalities are always off-putting; it’s no wonder they’re loners who hang out in coffins.”