Chapter Four
“She’s fine now, Dad.”
Bride’s voice drifted to Dani, pulling her into the conscious world. “You’re talking to Dad?” she mumbled. Dani opened her eyes and tried to push herself to sit up. The room swam, tilting her from one side to the other.
“Whoa there.” Jamie was at her side pushing her down. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, missy.” She nodded to an IV pole with a red bag hanging from it. “You’re on your third transfusion.”
Instinctively, Dani rubbed her neck and remembered the excruciating pain. But again, like last night, her neck was smooth, without even a hint of a wound. “Third transfusion? I told those officers that a vampire bit me.”
Bride squeaked. “Okay, Dad. I’ll call you back later.” Bride disconnected the line and pulled her chair over to the side of the bed, making it scrape loudly against the floor as she did. “Rule one, don’t ever say that crap again.”
“Why?” Then Dani dropped her mouth an O. “Do you think the vampire will come after me again?”
“Wow. So that’s super crazy talk. Um, no, crazy pants. If Dad heard you say that, he would’ve been on the first plane down here and I don’t need him ruining our girls’ weekend.”
Jamie rolled her eyes at Bride. “The admitting doc thought that you were batshit crazy and wanted to order a psych consult.” Jamie tilted her head. “So no more vampire talk, m’kay?”
“When we finally got here you were out of your freaking mind, ranting and raving about a vampire attacking you.” Bride threw up her hands. “Bananas.”
“Kind of nutty,” Jamie added. “Luckily, your blood work came back before they admitted you to the psych ward.”
Dani opened her eyes wide. “They were actually going to send me to the psych ward?” She blew out a heavy breath. “Good thing they were able to see that I really was missing blood. At least my story was corroborated.”
Jamie stood and fluffed the pillow behind Dani’s head. “No, honey. They saw that you were anemic—very.”
“But—”
Jamie moved Dani’s bangs away from her eyes. “You just got off your period, right?”
She’d finished her cycle yesterday morning. She’d been happy that she didn’t have to stuff tampons in her carry-on bag. Nothing would’ve been worse than having her business showing up on the airport scanner. “Yeah, but that has nothing to do with anything.”
Bride leaned over and squeezed Dani’s hand. “It has everything to do with it.” She pulled out her phone. “It says here that the signs and symptoms of anemia are insomnia, difficulty concentrating, confusion, pale skin, and if you have a Vitamin B deficiency, too, you’ll also experience, a pins and needle feeling in your hands or feet, difficulty walking, and dementia.”
“Hey,” Dani said, glaring at her sister. “I do not have dementia.”
Jamie raised an eyebrow. “But what about the rest of that stuff?”
Dani frowned, wanting to argue her point. She had been bitten by a vampire. She remembered everything so clearly. But… She let out a sigh. “My feet felt like I was stepping on needles last night. I thought it was just from all the walking.”
“And?” Bride coaxed.
Dani blew out another heavy breath. “I couldn’t sleep, so I ran down to the store to get some sugar and cream for the coffee I was brewing.”
Jamie threw up her arms. “Are you freaking kidding me? You left the room in the middle of the night for f’ing cream?”
“And sugar,” Dani whispered
Jamie glared at her. “Confusion. We’ll chalk that stupid mess up to confusion.”
Dani sighed and turned to stare at the ceiling. “So I was anemic then?”
“Sorry that you didn’t really get attacked by a vampire, hon.” Bride rubbed her arm. “But maybe you were having a delusion about one of the books that you’d read?”
Dani closed her eyes, remembering, well not, remembering, but thinking about what happened. “The vampire who attacked me wasn’t a hero.” He’d been cute enough, but he’d lured and preyed on her.
Bride gave Dani’s arm a light squeeze. “Well, no more thinking about things that didn’t happen. You have about five minutes left on this transfusion, and then you can leave in a couple of hours.”
Dani opened her eyes. They began welling with tears. “I’m so sorry, guys. I didn’t mean to ruin our vacation.”
Bride gave her a sad look. “The doctor—who by the way is fine and single—said for you to take it easy for the rest of the day. But you can rejoin the girls’ trip tomorrow.”
Dani groaned. “Do I really have to?”
“Yeah, you have to rest tonight,” Jamie said.
“No. I mean, do I really have to rejoin the girl’s trip?”
“Why you little—” Bride pulled the pillow from under Dani’s head and smothered her with it.
Dani didn’t struggle. She would’ve rather been smothered to death than spend another night walking up and down Bourbon Street. Too many people. Too much noise. Too many smells. Ugh. “Lord, take me now. I’m ready.”
****
Ramsey snapped his eyes open. His breaths burst from his chest, coming out fast and hard. Panic swept across him, consuming every molecule in his body. Then his vision adjusted to the darkness.
He remembered that he didn’t need to breathe and stopped heaving.
He focused on the art on his ceiling. It was a painting of him standing behind three children—girls. He wore a tan tunic. A niggling in the back of his mind told him that it had been his favorite and the only fancy shirt that he’d owned at the time. His hair was longer than he currently wore it and pulled back to the nape of his neck. He didn’t smile, but his look was proud and the way he’d gathered all girls into his arms showed how possessive he was of them.
His children.
The girls were of various ages, a few years apart from each other. Even though each was in a different stage of growth, a few things remained constant. Long, dark hair cascaded over their shoulders. The gold-brown eyes that they’d inherited from their mother twinkled with life and stared back at him. They wore matching multi-colored dresses. He couldn’t remember much from that time, but he’d remembered the joy on their faces when he’d brought the dresses home. He’d saved up for what had seemed like an eternity to buy them. They hadn’t been rich back then, not by any stretch, but he’d wanted the girls to feel the expensive fabric on their skin. The portrait seemed almost lifelike, commissioned by one of the best artists of the modern world.
He’d had a portrait the same as this one painted in every house that he had for the past thousand years. Around the same time that he’d began forgetting his girls’ faces.
The painting calmed the storm that raged within. Every night was the same. The seconds between sleeping and waking were claimed by the memories that he could never escape—his death.
Ramsey lifted an arm as if he could touch the ceiling. He couldn’t. He dropped his arm. The effort was futile anyway. He wouldn’t feel the soft skin of any of his children, but the hard, cold stone that made up his sleeping chamber.
A chime sounded. A green light blinked in the darkness, notifying him that he was being summoned on the intercom. He and Marcos didn’t need the intercom to communicate. It was just another gadget that Marcos wanted to try out.
Ramsey took one last look at his children, then turned to his side and hit the “speak” button. “Yes?”
“Did you sleep well, sir?” Marcos asked.
Marcos had been asking him that question every night for the past one-hundred and twenty-one years. And his answer had always been the same.
“Like the dead.”
Marcos chuckled, his voice deep and wise with age. “Well, when you decide to join the living, come upstairs. Your dinner is waiting.”
Ramsey turned to his back and threw an arm across his eyes. It was the same routine, three nights a week. He woke, then ate. Year after year. Decade after decade. Century after century.
Why hold on to a life that seemed to blur past him?
Ramsey rolled to the edge of the bed and sat up. His bare feet hit the floor. The coolness didn’t bother him. That was one of the perks at being a vampire. Extreme temperatures didn’t concern him at all. Even Marcos, with the small amount of vampiric blood running through his system found his sleeping chamber too cold to stay in very long.
He glanced at his chair, a recliner that Marcos had gotten him for Christmas some years ago. Also the same one that he and the woman were making love on during his vision. The woman, Danya, had straddled him there. The scene replayed in his head. Erotic.
Ramsey shook his head. That wasn’t a vision. It had to be nothing more than a fantasy. He would never let a stranger into the place where he was most vulnerable.
His cock reacted, standing to attention. He glanced down at it. “I really need to get laid.” How long has it been? He couldn’t remember. Ugh, too long. No wonder sex was on his brain.
He pushed to stand then made up his bed. It was nothing like getting into a nicely made bed after a long night. With that task completed he pulled on his pajama bottoms and strode to the three-foot, reinforced metal door. On the other side he closed it and punched in the security access code. The lock clicked into place.
Ramsey went up the narrow stairs that he’d carved himself. He stopped at the top landing. This time the door opened to the wine cellar, and as it did, pushed a shelf to the side. He entered the second set of codes and again the door closed and locked. He stepped aside and pushed the shelf back into place. To the naked eye he was in a normal wine cellar, a room that was included in the house plans. On the master plans there wasn’t any indication to the hidden room twenty-feet below the house’s surface.
The stairs in the wine cellar weren’t as crudely made or as narrow. When he got to the top he stepped into the kitchen. Marcos was at the stove with his back to him. Something sizzled in a pan. Steak. The aroma filled the air.
As soon as he closed the door behind him, Mewlissa, a stray cat that Marcos had taken in, wound her way around Ramsey’s legs and purred. The cat knew that he wouldn’t pet it while people watched, but she persisted anyway. Ramsey nudged her out of the way with a foot. Shoo. If I pet you now everyone will know that I have a heart.
Nadine, one of his human blood donors, sat perched on a tall stool and rested her elbows on the island. She was small for her age and could easily pass as a teenager. She’d dyed her short hair black and styled it so that the ends poked up into spikes. A silver ring hung from her nose, and both cheeks were dotted with silver studs and another ring went through the top of her lip.
She’d often talked about her other body piercings, but Ramsey blocked it out. He didn’t want to know how many piercings she had or where. She was a kid. Everyone had their vices. Nadine’s happened to be body mutilation.
She’d been watching Marcos longingly, but turned to Ramsey. She had on red contacts tonight that covered even the whites of her eyes. Everything about her screamed “Leave me alone.”
“Hey, Dracula,” she said with a lighthearted snicker.
How many times had he told her not to call him that? He didn’t give her the satisfaction of answering. The daggers that he stared at her conveyed everything that he would’ve said.
She pursed her lips to stop a laugh then turned back to watch Marcos. “You said that you would be done before he woke up.” She pouted. “I’m starving.”
Marcos didn’t turn around to address her, but held up his hand and waved a spatula in the air. “Perfection takes time, my dear. Go. It’ll be ready when you return.”
She huffed and pointed at him. “I better have a glass of wine, mac and cheese, and a loaded baked potato waiting for me, too.”
Marcos chuckled. “Nice try. But you aren’t twenty-one yet.”
“I will be in two more months!”
“And in two months you shall have our finest bottle of wine.”
If Ramsey weren’t in a terrible mood he would’ve found their exchange comical.
Nadine wasn’t the only human regular that he fed from. He had three in total: Nadine, Celine, and Krista, but Nadine was the only one that lived in his house. He kept three in rotation, feeding from them once a week. Over the years he’d managed to find a steady flow of humans that didn’t mind being a blood donor—for the right price.
Marcos had brought Nadine into the fold two years ago. He’d found her sleeping on the street, and something about the petite girl with punk rock hair had tugged at his heartstrings. She’d been living with them for six months before Ramsey had realized that Marcos had moved her into one of the upstairs bedrooms.
“Angelina called for you again,” Marco told him. “She would like to see you.”
He hadn’t heard from Angelina in ages, and now all of a sudden, his ex was pestering Marcos, using him to relay messages. She wanted something. That’s the only time that she found him useful.
Ramsey scrubbed a hand down his face. “I don’t want to talk to her,” he growled.
“I know. I know. I just thought I would pass the message along,” Marcos sang.
Nadine slid off the stool and gave Ramsey a once over. “Well, you certainly are doing that brooding thing pretty good. What’s up with you? Bad dream?”
“I don’t dream.” He made his way across the kitchen.
Nadine swiped a tall glass of orange juice from the counter. “I like dreaming. That’s the only place that I can be a kick-ass ninja.”
Ramsey smirked. “Are you larger in size in your dreams?”
She followed behind him. “Hell, yeah.”
“I have news,” Marcos called out as Ramsey was about to walk over the threshold and into the family room.
“News about what?”
“About the lady from last night. Miss Danya Evans.”
Ramsey stopped. Nadine rammed into his back. “Hey! I would like to keep my face intact, thank you very much.”
“And?” Ramsey asked without turning around. Nadine grumbled about how running into him was like hitting a brick wall.
“She made a full recovery and was discharged from the hospital a few hours ago.”
“You really should apologize to her.” Nadine rubbed her nose. “You shouldn’t take blood without asking. That’s the difference between you and them.”
Ramsey looked over his shoulder at Marcos. “Must you tell her everything?”
Marcos shrugged. “I need at least one person to gossip with.”
He wanted to remind Marcos how old he was, but that was probably futile. Ramsey glanced down at Nadine. She beamed. “You can confide in me, too, Ramsey. We can talk about your problems. I could even give you advice about women.”
He rolled his eyes and continued to the family room where Nadine would stretch out on the couch and he would drink from her wrist as she watched one of her shows. “The day that I confide in a girl a fraction of my age, would be a very sad day indeed.”