Chapter Eleven
This is my world. Go home.
Dani was frozen in her spot. Fear coursed through her. Her legs shook uncontrollably. The cell phone she clutched in her hand became slippery with her sweat. Bile was on the back of her throat. Her mind screamed to run—flee, but she couldn’t move. Fear paralyzed her.
The wreckage of cars was all around her. Fenders, doors, glass and other parts that she couldn’t distinguish littered the street. The truck she was sure had hit them blocked the road. If anyone wanted to come this way, they couldn’t. The other vampires had left it abandoned. The passenger and driver’s side doors stood open. Ramsey’s once beautiful car was a complete mess. The car that his had slammed against had an alarm blaring the most annoying sound.
Ramsey and the other two were gone. They’d left in a blur, while she stood dumbfounded.
Police sirens sounded in the distance, effectively pulling her from the daze.
Should she stay to give her statement?
What would she say?
Officer, this guy that I had a one-night stand with is a vampire. Yes, sir, the same one that attacked me the other night. Well, some other vampires slammed into us with their truck, and they fought and caused all this damage. Oh me? He left me and told me to go home.
And how well did she expect that conversation to go over?
Not well at all. Instead of spending the night in the hospital she could expect to spend it in a jail cell.
This is my world. Go home.
Her heart ached at hearing those words. She couldn’t have done anything to help, to fight. She was just a human.
The police sirens grew louder. Common sense jerked her into action. She ran to the car and snatched her purse through the busted-out front window. She didn’t know where she was or what direction the hotel was, but that didn’t stop her from running. Dani took off down the residential street. She ran for what seemed like two miles until she made it to a commercial street. No one was out this late at night, and the shops and business had long since closed. But was only there did she allow herself to rest long enough to pull up a map on her phone and calculate how far away she was from the hotel. Too far to walk—alone and knowing that vampires existed.
The first cab that came barreling down the street Dani jumped to the curb and waved her arms. It pulled over, and she rushed to get in. Ten minutes later she was in front of her hotel. Five minutes later she was slipping into bed next to Bride. Two minutes later she was silently crying herself to sleep.
****
Ramsey could’ve killed Antonio and Nicoli as soon as they were safely away from Dani, but Angelina would’ve sent more of her fledglings after him … or Dani. He followed them, running at top speed for fifteen minutes. He took in the route they followed, knowing that he would have to take the same route home. They slowed when they made it to Baton Rouge. He kicked himself. Angelina had been right in his backyard all this time, and he hadn’t known it.
They stopped in front of a sprawling mansion. The high brick gate was for privacy purposes. It wouldn’t keep out any vampires that wanted to get in. That’s what the wards were for. The magical incantations licked at his skin, tasting and brimming. Nicoli and Antonio stepped forward. They looked back at him while he stayed in place.
“I can’t get past the wards.”
They exchanged glances.
He gave them a shrug.
The door opened, and she stepped onto the porch. It was still twenty feet away, but he saw her clearly.
Angelina. The woman he had once loved more than life itself. She was still beautiful—strikingly so.
In appearance she looked the same age as he was, possibly mid-twenties in human years. Her dark hair, shiny and full, fell straight to the middle of her back. There was no curl or wave to it, but it fit nicely with her olive-colored skin, small features, and petite frame.
He remembered the first day he’d seen her. She still looked like the delicate flower that he’d fallen head over heels for. At fourteen summers, still a child in today’s age, but a grown woman back then, she’d sauntered boldly into his father’s bakery and let her intentions toward him be known. He’d been fifteen summers, but he’d thought to wait a few more years in order to save more money to properly care for a family. With Angelina in his ear, he’d quickly scratched his initial plan and taken her as his wife. They’d married and had their first child, Melliandra, a little while after.
She waved him to her. “The wards won’t affect family. Never family.”
Either she was telling the truth or his skin would boil and melt away leaving him in unimaginable pain. Angelina was a sadistic bitch, and he didn’t put anything past her. He took a step forward, and nothing happened. Angelina welcomed him with open arms. Arms that he had once longed to be in. Before she could wrap him into an embrace he took her hands in his and held them down. She stiffened as he leaned in and gave her a kiss on both cheeks.
“Ramsey.” Her voice was soft and sweet, yet he knew better.
“Angelina, still pretty as ever.”
She raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Just pretty?”
She let go of his hands and lifted the sides of her dress and turned in a circle, showing herself off. She was striking in a strapless blue gown with a plunging neckline. “This gown was made by one of the finest designers in the fashion industry. This dress will be on next year’s runway in Milan.”
Even after all these years she cared about the most senseless things. He appeased her by pretending to take in the detail of the dress. “Stunning.”
She gave him a smile that used to make him bend to her will every time she turned it his way.
“As much as I would love to admire you until the end of time, I cannot.” He glanced at the sky. “Our time is short. Is there a reason why you sent these hounds to summon me?”
She pouted. “You haven’t returned any of my calls.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Angelina, what do you want from me?”
She dropped the pout and changed her expression to sad. She always was a good actress. “I haven’t seen you in a while, and I can’t visit you. The last time you spoke to me you forbade me from coming into New Orleans.”
“You murdered ten people in one night,” he pointed out.
“But I was hungry,” she whined.
Angelina had spent months begging him to change her into a vampire. While he hated what he’d become, she saw only power, beauty, and immortality. “No” had always been his answer. Their children needed their mother, and he needed her help to raise and watch over them during the daylight hours. In one of her many attempts to get him to change her, Angelina had taken a vial of strychnine, a potent poison. She’d come to him with one foot in the grave, telling him that if he didn’t turn her she would die and her death would be on him. He’d still loved her then. Not giving into her begging and holding his beautiful wife in his arms, rocking her as she faded before his eyes was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. He hadn’t given in. That time.
She hadn’t died that night. Angelina favored self-preservation above all else. She hadn’t taken the entire vial of poison, just enough to make her ill. The next day she’d been almost back to her normal self. Angry because she wasn’t a vampire and angry because she was growing older.
Angelina’s change had come some months later, on her twenty-fifth birthday. But unfortunately, by then the side-effects of the poison had been irreversible. His vampiric blood hadn’t been enough to fix the eroded networks of her brain. Unlike in popular myths, vampirism didn’t cure everything.
“Angelina.”
She stepped closer and lifted to her toes to use her nose to graze his neck. It didn’t have the same effect as it once did. “What did you used to call me?”
He didn’t have time for any of this. “Angelina. What do you want?”
She let out a sigh and turned away from him in a flourish of sequence and fabric. Overly dramatic. “You don’t love me anymore, do you?”
“Angelina,” he said again, this time softer.
“I want us to be a family again. Me, you, Marcos. We’re all that we have left.”
“Marcos is a big boy. He understands why Mommy and Daddy aren’t together anymore.”
She pouted. “We’re still married.”
“We’re only married because if we complete the paperwork now, it would be strange to the modern-day courts that two people are requesting a divorce two thousand years later. We aren’t husband and wife.” He shook his head. “We haven’t been for a very long time.”
She tapped him lightly on the chest. “You’re still upset with me. Forgive me.”
He stepped to stand next to her, making sure that they didn’t touch. “I forgave you a long time ago.” And he meant it. He’d known right away that she would never be the wife that he’d expected, but he’d hoped that she would be the mother that his children deserved. She never fell comfortably into either role.
“Marcos doesn’t sound so good. He’s so old now.” She shuddered and stuck out her tongue. “I thought that he would’ve wanted to be changed by now.”
“You asked him again? I told you to leave him alone.”
“He’s my grandson, too. I get a say in his upbringing.”
“Angelina, he’s over a hundred years old. He can make his own decisions.”
She turned to lean her butt against the railing. “Well, I knew that if he changed his mind you wouldn’t be the one to turn him. I would have to.”
“Is that why you’re in Louisiana?”
She nodded. “I wanted to be close just in case he needed me.” She let her eyes roam up and down his body. “And just in case that you changed your mind about us.”
He started down the steps. “Go home.”
“No.”
He turned around. “Leave Marcos alone. If you turn him without his permission I will kill you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m an Original, too. I’m not so easily killed.”
“No, you aren’t. I’m an Original. I’m your sire, and you’re my acolyte.”
She straightened her shoulders, anger flashing in her eyes.
“And if you send your flunkies to my city again, I will kill them before they get a word out of their mouths. Threaten what is mine again, and I will kill you.”
She clenched her jaw shut. Angelina was a crazy bitch, but she was a crazy bitch who wanted to stay alive.
Ramsey trotted down the front porch and down the sidewalk. Antonio and Nicoli stood by the side, waiting direction from Angelina. She wouldn’t have the guts to order them to attack him. Not here and not where she was in easy reach. She knew that when he finished with them he would turn on her.
“Your bitch smelled nice,” Nicoli whispered as he walked by.
Ramsey took one step to back-up, fisted his hand in Nicoli’s hair and tore his head from his shoulders. Antonio didn’t have time to defend his friend. “Come near what’s mine again and this will be your fate, too.”
Ramsey strolled down the walk-way with Nicoli’s head hanging from his hand. He would set fire to it later. As he crossed over the wards he heard the thump of Nicoli’s body hitting the ground.
****
“So we have some time to eat breakfast before we leave for the airport,” Jamie was saying.
Dani pretended to listen, but everything Jamie and Bride talked about had gone in one ear and right out the other. They’d been up for the past hour packing and deciding how best to spend their last few hours in New Orleans.
“Should we go back to Drenda’s, Dani?” Bride asked.
“Um, there will probably be a long line. We wouldn’t have time to wait.”
“Call Ramsey again,” Jamie said. “He can put us on the list or something.”
Dani shook her head. “I-I can’t.”
“And why not?” Bride asked suspiciously. “Is he married or something?”
Jamie whirled to face her and pointed a finger. “If he’s married I will beat you where you stand.”
“No, no. He’s not married.” Ramsey wouldn’t be up while the sun was out. She’d tried to tell them the truth before, and they didn’t believe her. And why would they? Who in their right minds would believe that vampires existed? “I still didn’t get his phone number.”
Bride frowned. “How could you not have his number by now?”
Dani lifted a shoulder. “It just never came up.” In fact, she couldn’t remember him having a phone on him.
“Okay, so new plan,” Bride said as she rolled up a sundress and stuffed it into her bag. “We grab something to eat, then swing by Ramsey’s house so that you two can exchange phone numbers.”
Jamie nodded. “I’m with Bride on this one. I know this is supposed to be a New Orleans fling, but you don’t let someone as fine as Ramsey slip through your fingers.”
Dani zipped up her bag. “I don’t know. Going by his house and asking for his number is a little too presumptuous.”
Ramsey hadn’t said, “Come by tomorrow” or “Go back to the hotel and I’ll call you later.” No, he’d said, “This is my world. Go home.”
“He didn’t ask me for my number,” Dani added.
“Did you ask him for his?” Jamie asked.
Dani shook her head. She’d been too busy trying not to piss herself while a vampire moaned and salivated all over her neck. “It never came up.”
“From the way you look this morning I’m guessing that you two were focused on other things,” Jamie said with a waggle of her eyebrows.
Bride snapped her fingers and twirled her hips to a silent beat. “Bow-chick-a-wow-wow.”
Dani had known exactly how she looked. Bad. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying. She’d hardly slept an hour, and her face was puffy on one side, probably from the car wreck.
“I could stand to see him one more time,” Jamie said. “Plus, I’m nosy. I want to see what his house looks like.”
She couldn’t have them snooping around and asking questions about why he couldn’t say goodbye to them. Especially when she didn’t know for sure if he wanted to say goodbye to her even if he could. “Now hold on. I don’t need an audience. You guys go to breakfast, and I’ll run by his house and give him my phone number.”
“But—” Bride said.
Dani put up a hand up, stopping her sister. “No, Bride. I’m a big girl. I can do this on my own.”
“Dani’s right. She can meet us at the airport.
Bride pouted. “But I really wanted to meet him and see his house.”
Jamie nudged Bride. “Dani texted us his address last night,” she whispered. “We can look it up on Google Earth.”
Bride opened her mouth into an O and pulled out her cell phone. Dani rolled her eyes and slung her bag over her shoulder. “I’ll see you guys in a little bit.”
“Uh-huh,” Bride said as she typed into her phone.
“Sure.” Jamie scooted next to Bride to look over her shoulder.
Dani let the bellboy hail her a cab to Ramsey’s house. She rode down the street that they’d been on last night. The cars were gone. No signs of the struggle were left in the quiet residential neighborhood. They passed a jogger, who pushed a stroller. An older couple walked a dog. Kids washed a car in the driveway. It all seemed so normal. Hours before there had been a vampire throw-down. It was so surreal.
The cab pulled up to his driveway. The gates were closed. “Ma’am, do you know the gate code?”
“No. Um, is there a call button on the intercom?”
He pressed the button.
A few minutes later, “Hello?” It was a woman’s voice.
A housekeeper?
The cabbie looked back at her. “Are you going to answer her?”
“Oh!” Dani scooted to the window and rolled it down. “Um, I’m here to see Ramsey.” She kicked herself right after the words left her mouth. She couldn’t have said something else or let the woman know that she knew about Ramsey’s secret vampire thing?
“He’s not home at the moment. Who shall I say stopped by?”
“Um, Dani. I mean Danya Evans.”
“Danya Evans. I’ll be sure to let him know that you visited.”
“Um, okay. I was going to give him my…” Wait. She remembered the name from last night. “A-are you Nadine?”
“Yeah, do I know you?”
How stupid was she? He didn’t want her. This was the same woman that the vampires had mistaken her for last night.
“Never mind. You don’t have to tell him anything. Thanks.” She rolled up the window and moved away. “Airport please,” she told the driver.