What kind of stupid, love struck fool have you turned into
26
I’d forgotten how different the States smelled during my travels.
The sentiment was strange, but everywhere seemed to smell different, and America had its own odd, familiar scent. The air in Creswell was a specifically delightful, fresh breeze after living in old cities for so many years. While ancient architecture was beautiful beyond description, Prague, Paris, and many of the other European cities I’d been to over the years possessed a stale scent—human odors having seeped into their very existence for centuries.
Creswell was different. While our downtown area was highly populated with many skyscrapers painted against the fabric of the sky, we also had a lot of trees. Numerous luscious parks dotted the city’s blocks, and the nearly fifteen square urban miles were completely surrounded by forested areas, with only two highways in and out on both sides of town. Thanks to the help of those oxygen producing pals, and the many environmentally conscious immortals who controlled our community, Creswell’s air lacked smoke or pollution, and instead smelled crisp and invigorating.
Taking in a big huff at the airport doors, I was hit by more. Nostalgia smacked me across the face, the pang of something sharp like defeat settling between my ribs.
A squeal rang out, and Jayleen knocked the bitter feeling away, replacing it with a crushing hug—well, maybe crushing to a normal person, but she’d hardly staggered me. I returned her embrace, hugging her little body too tight to be normal, even while holding back. What can I say? I got excited.
Squirming out of my grip, Jayleen rubbed her arms and complained, “Jesus Christ, you’ve gotten strong.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m sorry. I’ve been…” I thought up a quick and dumb excuse. “Pumping a lot of iron, you know?”
Jayleen pinched at my thin arms. “Really? Because you’re as skinny as ever.”
“Right. It’s all strength, no muscle.” I saved my second sorry excuse with a positive, cheek-burning smile.
That only made her more suspicious as she narrowed her eyes on my lips. I realized I’d made a major oversight. I had fucking fangs, and they weren’t small like they used to be. Closing my mouth, I did my best to conceal my outrageous vampire fangs under a closed smile.
A gruff voice yelled from the lane of traffic meandering through the pickup area, “Don’t leave your vehicle unattended! Let’s keep it moving!”
Jumping into action, Jayleen tugged me toward her old ass Honda Accord—the same one she’d had before I’d left—and we hopped in. Excitedly, she listened to me recount my adventures on the drive to her apartment, all the while updating me on hers.
She’d started going to school again and volunteered at an animal hospital in her off time. She was finally doing all the things she’d wanted to do with her life, and it sounded like she’d started as soon as I’d left Creswell. All she’d needed was for me to stop holding her back.
Hopefully, I wouldn’t ruin that by staying with her again.
Throughout our relatively short drive, Jayleen also took to staring at me rather than the road, which I strongly urged her to stop doing. At least some things hadn’t changed—she was still a shitty driver.
Once we were safely inside her little two-bedroom abode, Jayleen was hot on my heels, hardly a footfall away. From right over my shoulder, she mentioned, “I cleaned out the guest bedroom so that you’d have it all to yourself.”
Ignoring her lingering proximity, I took my time to admire the emotions displayed within her apartment. Green plants flourished in every nook and cranny, a testament to how nurturing Jayleen could be. The small couch still had a stain from the time she’d brought home a blind foster cat that we had a hell of a time potty training, and incense permeated the walls themselves, its smell nostalgic to Jayleen’s place, but a bit pungent for my olfactory now. Even if I had to plug my nose until I adjusted to the smell, I’d definitely be happy in her home. No doubt being there would at least help me get back on my feet—emotionally, that is.
“Hey, Leanne.” Jayleen was in my face and nearly poking me in the cheek. “Can I ask you, what’s with your teeth?”
I touched a finger to my fangs and then came up with one of my now constant stupid excuses. “It’s cosplay. Haven’t you ever heard of cosplay, where people dress up as fictional characters?”
Before I could retreat from her curious fingers, Jayleen was jamming one into my mouth and pushing on a fang—hard. I jumped, my surprise only forcing her finger harder against my tooth.
“Owe!” we both screeched and recoiled at the same time.
The succulent taste of her blood dripped onto my tongue, evoking the realization that I wasn’t the only one hurt by her intrusion.
Her taste, as faint as it was, sent delightful shivers down my spine, making me absolutely loathe how good she tasted. That was my best friend, and I was already imagining the heady feeling I could get from drinking that sweet blood of hers. Physically shaking the thought loose from my head, I took Jayleen’s bleeding finger in my hand and pressed on it until it stopped bleeding.
“Cosplay my ass,” she bickered, a suspicious brow darkening her already brown eyes. “Those things are cemented in there. Besides, no Leanne I know would ever do something as geeky as cosplay!”
I let her go. The bleeding from her tiny wound ceased, but now her blood was on my hand, and I could smell it. The smell was pervasive, even for such a tiny dribble.
While I wasn’t concerned about biting into Jayleen—because I wasn’t a wild animal with no control over myself—it was still abhorrent how tempting her blood was to me. It’d be so harmless to lick it off. It wouldn’t send me into some spiral or anything like that; it’d just be a nice treat.
Before I could give in, I rinsed her blood off into the metal kitchen sink. Focusing on the stream of water before me, I mentioned, “Let it go. It’s a new hobby, not something you should tease me about.”
Her heart rate elevated, the sound of it and her movements right by my side again. Instincts setting in, I whipped around to her, fearing whatever kind of reckless behavior her abrupt pulse spike may have been indicative of. Her eyes went wide, my arm stinging as the knife in her hands dropped to the ground with a metallic clang.
“I’m sorry! That’s not what I meant to do!” she gasped.
Blood pooled at the cut on my arm, but it’d healed so fast that it didn’t drip.
Jayleen’s dread morphed to curiosity in an instant, her hand swiping at my nonexistent cut to reveal a woundless arm. Her jaw dropped.
Snatching her hand, I thrust in under the running water—hoping and praying she hadn’t gotten my blood in her cut.
“Don’t you ever do that again,” I disciplined her like a very angry parent who’d witnessed their child do something exceedingly dangerous.
“Wha-What—Why?”
“My blood is very dangerous. Do not touch it under any circumstance, understood?” I huffed, emotions surfacing through my very brittle shell.
Jayleen’s hand was washed clean, and I couldn’t find any sign of envenomation in her skin where she’d hit my tooth. I heaved a sigh of relief, the knowledge Jayleen had been that close to being poisoned heavy on my chest.
When I dropped her hand, Jayleen retracted against the countertop, sliding down the cabinets until she was seated at my feet. Pulling her knees against her chest, Jayleen’s wide eyes stared across the empty kitchen. I sat beside her and tucked my head into my hands, feeling the need to hide from her.
Bewilderment clouded Jayleen’s tone. “What did I just see? Did you heal in the blink of an eye? And the fangs, and the strength. And that illness before you left. The bite on your neck. Is this real? Are you serious?”
“Jayleen”—I decided to speak candidly; whether or not that’d be a mistake was yet to be foreseen—“I may have left out a couple bits of my story.”
“The guy you were with. Was he like this, too?”
“He is the same guy who bit me that night I was kidnapped. It might have been a joke back then, but that whole vampire thing ended up being real. Riftan turned me into an immortal after you and I spoke that day when I was sick. If he hadn’t, I would have died from the bite.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jayleen shouted, her tone a stark difference from how quiet she’d began. “He was that bastard you talked about biting you and leaving you on the park bench? And you fell for him? You were in love with that son of a bitch? After everything he put you through, he still wouldn’t give you his heart? And then still you fell for him? Who even are you? What kind of stupid, romantic, love-struck fool have you turned into?”
My cheeks hurt because I couldn’t contain my smile, even if I wanted to hide my fangs from her. “I love how you care about that more than the fact that I’m a real-life monster.”
She reached out and touched my cheek, a loving gesture that turned my insides with reminiscence. “Nothing could ever make me think you were a monster. That man, however, is the monster.”
I wished I could sympathize with her, but Riftan could hardly qualify as my story’s villain. After everything, he was still my hero.
Wrapping her arms around me, Jayleen pulled me in until I could tuck my head into her chest and listen to her slow, mortal heart pound away. It wasn’t like Riftan’s but its effects were similar, soothing my ache. Being in her arms reminded me of the days when one of us would go through a traumatic break up or school exam and hold each other until things felt better. We may have both changed since those days—in so, so many ways—but that feeling, wrapped up in each other’s empathy, would never change.
Living with Jayleen was an adjustment for both of us.
I hadn’t lived with a mortal since turning, and obviously, Jayleen had never lived with an immortal. There were several times when she made me breakfast, and I had to remind her I didn’t eat the same stuff anymore. Not only that, but I had to hide in my room with the window open until the smell of cooking food was gone because I hated it—especially in her tiny apartment that so easily soaked up smells. There was also the strange agreement we’d had to make, in which I needed to store blood bags in the fridge—which was clearly an odd concept for Jayleen. As far as my living meals went though, they never came home with me.
Jayleen knew full well the necessity of my feeding, and she knew that it meant killing a human being. At first, she was wary, asking me, “You seriously take someone’s life like that?”
“Well, yes.” I’d promised to be truthful with her since she’d found out about my condition. “But to be fair, I only ever kill very bad people…”
“Are there really so many readily accessible bad people?”
“Definitely. I was also skeptical at first, but I promise you I’ve never killed anyone who didn’t deserve it. And I have to feed to stay under control. It’s the lesser of the two evils. Especially while living with you, I want to make sure I’m well fed. I’m not going to potentially risk your safety.”
She was satisfied with that, almost flattered, like I was doing something heroic by merely keeping myself full on the blood of other living mortals. Still, I kept my feeding habits outside of her apartment. But more than just my eating behavior affected our situation.
I had to tell Jayleen multiple times that I could hear every little detail of what she was doing in her bedroom across the hall, including when she brought guys home after a night out. She had to learn to not light candles or incense when I was home, and she had to be careful of my blood—or any of my fluids, really—as well as her own.
After a few weeks, life with Jayleen smoothed out. We found our balance, living two separate lives under the same roof, and got along like we used to. With her help, I was slowly stitching up my broken heart.
Some days, the thread I used to stitch wasn’t strong enough, and even Jayleen couldn’t stop the hurting. Those days made me feel like hunkering down in my bed with a bottle of merlot and crying myself back to sleep. Rather than wallow, I’d seek distraction from those moments in Creswell’s vibrant immortal underground, a haven of clubs, cafes, and bars catering exclusively to immortals, away from mortal nuisances. Some were blatantly closed to the “public,” while others had mortal fronts and served vampires in the back.
Despite my aversion to befriending other immortals, I’d found these establishments were essential places to acquire underground information and pre-packaged blood. I also understood the importance of networking, so on the nights when I needed to stay busy, I put on my friendly face and played buddy-buddy with the immortals in Creswell. My hope was that one day, in a time of need, the underground connections I’d made would prove beneficial.
That meant I often found myself playing human with Jayleen during the day and frolicking among the immortals at night, carefully avoiding the cold confines of my lonely bed. The sacrifice was sleep, but that was okay; I could subsist without sleep for as long as I needed to if it meant finding a place where I belonged. I had nothing but time to search—an eternity, in fact—and I wasn’t sure if that was a blessing or a curse.
In a plush velvet booth that looped around toward the center of Lilith Night Club, I found myself tailoring my personality to please the small gathering of immortals who sat with me. Over both shoulders, I had a man bragging about his last decade, talking up the accomplishments like he was the most important immortal who’d ever lived. At the end of the booth, a girl stirred her drink, bored of their egocentrism and probably wanting to go on about her own ventures.
Turk and Isaiah, the two men talking at me, were relatively young—for immortals—but they spoke as if they’d been around for millennia. I’d come to the observation that vampires got more narcissistic the older they got, but these two men were proving me wrong.
Riftan had defied that statistic, too, but in the other direction. Sure, he didn’t care about many people outside of his circle, but he cared hard for those within it. Rarely did Riftan talk about himself—only sometimes he did gloat—but narcissism was not something I associated with his character. Maybe I was simply pandering to an egotistical crowd. After all, I most commonly found them alone in clubs and bars.
Turk, the man to my right, had been going on about his company’s development in neurological technologies; the conversation nearly became white noise as I zoned out. My gaze raked through the crowd, searching for any escape from the monotony. I probably could have spotted a mouse scurrying between the dozens of club goers—at least that would offer some form of excitement. As if that very thought had come true, the crowd on the dance floor parted, a thin walkway forming between moving bodies. What emerged was, however, not a little mouse. Alternatively, a very striking feminine form, gilded in a black velvet dress and draped in long brunette waves, appeared. Despite her petite stature, she did not have to push through the crowd. In fact, neither did the two bodyguards at her sides. This woman’s aura demanded its space from every immortal it graced.
The split on the dancefloor opened straight to our booth, carving an obvious path for the woman. I tensed, feeling her aura bear down on me and unfamiliar with what it meant. The immortals at my table, however, did seem familiar with it. They exchanged weighted glances with each other, their boasts suddenly silenced.
Before she’d come to a stop in front of us, the woman addressed both the men beside me with a haughty, clipped remark. “Turk, Isaiah, it’s nice to see the both of you again.”
Turk scooted away, the spot where he’d cozied up to me now open, and my skin relished the cold of his absence.
The girl at the end dismissed her attentiveness to her drink and leaned over the table, posturing toward the brunette before us. Not waiting for her own introduction from the woman, the girl spoke through a playful tone, “Hey Rosy. We missed you the other night. I thought you said you were going to join us this time?”
Rosycompletely ignored the girl at my table, keeping a steady look on me. “You must be Leanne. It’s nice to finally meet you.”
Turk dismissed himself, slightly bowing toward the brunette and offering her a generous farewell. After that, he was basically running from her.
The woman motioned with a gold-decked hand at the remaining two immortals who sat with me. She pointed her chin toward the exit, demanding them to get lost, only offering the girl at the table, “I’ll call you about getting together later, Carla.” Taking the hint, they both fled like Turk had done.
My stomach dropped, puzzle pieces falling into place. Shit, I am in so much trouble.
As she slid into Isaiah’s place next to me, I cringed away, tensely offering my first words to this woman with the foreboding aura. “What do you want with me, Rosaline?”