Chapter Five

Exhausted from my twelve-hour shift, I slipped my front door key into the lock. I twisted it, hearing the lock click. I flung my apartment door open and walked in, shutting and locking the door behind me. My apartment was my pride and joy—the fact that I could finally afford a luxury apartment with clean white walls, hard wood floors, and large, clean windows that faced a park was truly a wonderful accomplishment. My feet ached in their white New Balance sneakers, and I was positive that my knees were about to give out. I needed food—real food, and not the microwaveable meals that I had been living off of, but I needed sleep more. I dropped my bag on the floor by the door, and then looked up to find the mysterious man from the inside of the blood bank, sitting on my couch.

I screamed. Faster than was visible, he bolted over to me, covering my mouth with one of his hands. He had been seated on my couch one second, and the next, he was pressed up against me. His skin was hot and dry. I had never felt someone feel so hot—it was like the desert sun, or a furnace glowed within his core. I wondered if something was wrong with him. That would explain the dark circles beneath his eyes.

Up close, he was attractive in a rugged way. His lips were masculine, yet pouty—I wanted to kiss them, make them flush from the friction of my own lips against his. His features were sharp—predatory. Everything about him betrayed the fact that there was an inner strength to him—something unusual. His skin smelled masculine—musky and spicy, clean. He hadn't shaved in a few days, leaving a healthy growth of stubble across his cheeks and chin. I wanted to rub my hands over it; I wanted to feel the grasp of it against my skin. It spiked in an attraction that I felt shocked me into silence.

“I’ll let you go if you promise not to scream,” he whispered, and I nodded, eyes wide. He didn’t release me yet, speaking to me in an undertone. “Just listen to me for ten minutes. If you don’t like what I have to say, I will leave and never bother you again.” We looked into each other’s eyes for a second before I nodded. He let me go, stepping back a short way.

“My name is Jared Hamilton,” he began. He kept his eyes on me, studying my reaction to everything that he said. “I am a vampire hunter. The being who is responsible for the sudden rise in blood-related illnesses and injuries in your Emergency Room is a rogue vampire whom I have been hunting for months.”

“Vampires,” I said. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” And yet, I realized, I believed him. He shook his head.

“Vampires and other supernatural beings are very real, Samantha,” he said. “You need to come to terms with this. You need to be aware enough to protect yourself because if I’m correct, then you have a very dangerous supernatural being very close to you while you work.”

“What are you talking about?”

“No matter how it may have looked, I did not drink that bag of blood,” Jared said. “My kind does not drink blood…but a rogue vampire would.” He looked at me with a significant expression.

“A rogue…?” I cocked my head to the side. I was not familiar with the term. The entirety of my knowledge of the supernatural came from the stories that my grandmother had told me when I had spent summers with her while growing up.

“When a vampire goes rogue, it means that he or she has departed from the rules and moral codes that are strictly enforced by the supernatural community. We have these rules in place in order to protect the human race, as you are, by nature, weak.”

“Oh, thanks,” I mumbled, crossing my arms over my chest. As if things couldn’t get any worse, I was weak.

“The particular rogue vampire that I am chasing is the last progeny of another, far older, and more dangerous rogue. I had tracked him as far as the blood bank at Linda Vista. The scent of his particular strain was heavy upon the blood bag. I would have been able to make an attempt to take him then…” I held out my hands.

“I know, I know…if I hadn’t come along and disrupted you. I apologize for being an unwitting human.” He grinned.

“In any case, the one who is plaguing your hospital has committed a trail of murders, dating back to the early eighties which I have been following in the hopes of making a capture.” He looked down at his hands then laced them together behind his back. He looked at me, studying my expression as he went on.

“At the present moment, I am unsure of which name the rogue is going by, but he has had many aliases in the past.” He was watching me closely. “Vampires can neither be photographed nor videotaped. I can only give a verbal description. He is very good-looking. Usually poses as a physician. He has an aquiline nose, and a square jaw, and looks as though he were of Scandinavian descent.” He had just described Mark to a t. The way that Jared was looking at me, I knew that he knew that I knew.

“What do you know?”

“What will you do if you find this rogue vampire?” my voice sounded hoarse. His face did not change as he said:

“I will kill him.”

“But…but what if you’re wrong?” I thought about how cold Mark’s hands were…but he had seemed so nice. Seemed being the operative word, there, Samantha.

“If I get close enough, I will be able to smell the blood of the vampire’s creator…all lineages of vampires have a scent,” Jared claimed.

“Wait? What are you? How can you do this?”

“I’m something special,” he said. “But you are as well.”

“What do you mean?” my heart was pounding as he stepped near to me again, leaning in and sniffing my neck.

"You are mine.” I felt my stomach clench in fear, but then, he kissed me. It was a kiss that had the ability to transfer all of the heat from his body into mine. I felt like I was on fire. It was as though all of the air had been sucked out of the room, or that something momentous had occurred to make the entire fabric of the world shift. It went on for ages, until I stepped back, looking at him. His eyes were smoldering. He nuzzled my neck with his nose, mumbling something beneath his breath.

“What did you say?” I asked, feeling out of breath.

“When this is done, I will tell you.” He stepped away from me his face was filled with regret and sorrow. I felt confused. But I also wanted more.

I stepped forward, pulling him back toward me. He answered, kissing me and it was like this was supposed to be. I ran my hands up and under his shirt, feeling the heat radiating from his skin. He pulled back, looking me in the eyes as he pulled my shirt up and over my head. I bit my lip, feeling the strength of my desire for him. He looked hesitant, but followed my lead as I pulled his shirt off.

He was well-muscled, and they rippled beneath the tanned skin. I stepped out of the pale blue pants of my scrubs, enjoying the sensation of being touched, feeling his hot skin, pressed up against mine.

“What are you?” I whispered.

“A monster,” he replied with an ironic grin. To my surprise, his eyes shifted. They went from the human-like brown to a bright, glowing green. They were almost reptilian, with irises like slits crossing through them. I startled, gasping in surprise, my hand covering my mouth. “Are you frightened, Samantha?” I paused for a moment, considering before I shook my head.

“No,” I said, and then brought him back to me. I kissed the tender skin beneath his ear, reaching with my teeth and biting the lobe of his ear. He growled; it was a low, deep rumble. It sounded…strangely animal, and I wondered again what he was. I was fumbling at the zipper to his jeans, and he picked me up, carrying me into the bedroom. I wrapped my arms and legs around his torso, letting him carry me as I trailed kisses along his neck. He threw me down on the bed. Removing his pants and then his boxers, he watched, eyes in a slow burn as I removed my underwear.

I let the straps of my bra slide down my arms, freeing my breasts from the cups. I let it fall to the floor beside the bed before peeling off my panties. He looked at me solemnly, and I could hardly bear it, being looked at like that—like I was something mysterious, yet precious at the same time. I was surprised that such animal, reptilian eyes could still convey such emotion. It seemed so far-fetched. I launched myself at him, pulling him close.

“I want you,” I whispered in his ear. “I want you now.” And then he was kissing me passionately, our mouths open, and he entered me, slowly at first, and I moaned delectably. I arched my back, pressing into him. As he began to move against me, inside of me, I felt like I was on fire, being consumed, immolated entirely.

“More,” I begged, “more.”

I was curled up beside Jared, my head resting on his collarbone. My exhaustion was complete, and I was just beginning to drift off. I had decided that I would be appropriately shocked over my impulsive actions later. Right now, I felt warm and satiated. He sighed, his breath blowing my hair across my forehead. He placed a warm hand in the dip between my ribcage and my pelvic bone.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered against my hair.

“For what?”

“What I am asking of you,” he replied. “I’m using you as bait for a rogue vampire…it feels wrong.”

“I would have willingly agreed to help you, either way,” I said. “I’m a doctor, and I believe that protecting and saving lives is the most important thing. By helping you stop the rogue, I am helping to save the potential lives that he would take in the future.”

“This is true,” he said, and I could feel the words as they echoed throughout his body, thrumming against his sternum. “How do you want to proceed?” I thought about that for a moment, the cogs of my brain whirring as an idea formed and gelled in my mind.

“I have plans with Mark,” I said. “We can use it as a trap…if he really is the one that you are looking for, I can make a signal to you, or lead him somewhere that you are waiting. From there, you should be able to take him, right?”

“Is there a coffee shop somewhere around—”

“The hospital coffee shop has a stairwell outside of it,” I replied confidently.

“Perfect. I’ll wait there. Do you think you can lure him there?”

“I can try,” I replied, thinking about the Hippocratic Oath that I took. “I just…”

“What?”

“I took an oath…to protect life.”

“Human life, Samantha,” he said. I shook my head, sitting up.

“Any living thing,” I replied. “Even if that living thing has harmed other lives. Every life is precious, Jared. Each one has meaning and importance. Promise me you won’t kill him.”

“I can’t do that,” he said.

“Can’t you take him for justice?” I asked. “Isn’t there like a supernatural prison, or something?”

“In a case like this,” he began with a grim face, “where a vampire has killed multiple humans and other vampires, that the only justice is execution.” I nodded, thinking about that. I couldn’t fully bring myself to support this; I needed to hear Mark’s side of the story first before I could fully commit one way or the other. I would talk to him, I decided, during the supposed date. Then, if it came down to helping Jared, I would lure Mark into the trap.