Bitten & Smitten

by Michelle Rowen

“Why?”

  “There’s something you need to know,” she said gravely. “Thierry plans to end his life; he’s weary of living. There’s nothing in it for him anymore. Six hundred years is a long time.”

  “I know that already. But why did he ask you to come?”

  “He knows I have an excellent head for business. He asked me to look after the clubs he owns, to either run them myself or sell them to another who will keep them open. He didn’t want his employees or clientele not to have a place to count on being here. I agreed, because I feel a sense of responsibility to him. I sired him, after all, and he was my husband at one time. I’m also searching for direction in my own life now. I, too, am weary, but not ready yet for it all to end. I don’t know if I’ll ever be. This seemed like the perfect answer.”

  “But you didn’t say anything to try to talk Thierry out of what he wanted to do?”

  She paused. “No. It’s his decision. I don’t think anything I could have said would have swayed him otherwise.”

  “I need to talk to him. I need to know where he went.”

  No one said anything.

  Anxiety filled me, spreading evenly through every part of my body. “He’s gone to do it tonight, hasn’t he? Where? Where did he go?”

  They all glanced at one another.

  George shook his head. “Sorry, he didn’t say.”

  I exhaled and it sounded shuddery and hopeless.

  “I can’t deal with this. After everything that’s happened, I can’t lose him. I just can’t.”

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Veronique. She smiled at me, and there was more warmth in her perfect features than I’d seen before. Or maybe I just hadn’t been looking hard enough. “If there is one thing I’ve learned after all of my many years, it’s this: when the world has gone mad and you feel the most lost—that is when you must trust your heart to lead you where you need to go.”

  I blinked at her through my tears. “That is the lamest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  It may have been lame, but I knew it was the truth. The one thing I’d trusted during all that had happened to me was what my heart told me, be it right or wrong, and at that moment my heart was telling me it wasn’t too late.

  “There is a reason why those as old as I do not sire fledglings.”

  I closed my eyes. Thierry had said that sires and fledglings have a bond, sometimes heightened by age. Okay, he wasn’t my real sire, but goddamn it, this had to work. I cleared my mind. I focused. It was like being at Missy’s wedding again searching out the other vampires. A Spidey-sense.

  But there was nothing. Nothing.

  Nothing.

  And then…

  I opened my eyes.

  “I think I know where he is. I need somebody to give me a lift. Right now. There’s no time to waste.”

  Barry stepped forward. “My car’s out back. Amy and I were going to leave now, anyhow. We’ll drive you anywhere you want to go.”

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. “Thanks. You’re growing on me. A little.”

  “The feeling’s mutual.”

  Amy and Barry went to the black door to leave. I turned to the others.

  “Thanks, guys. For everything. Wish me luck.”

  Quinn grabbed my wrist. His eyes were sad, but he was trying to smile. “Good luck. I mean it.”

  I kissed him, just a quick kiss, but I meant every bit of it. I wanted him to know how much he meant to me. If things had been different, then who could say? But they weren’t. I wanted to be with Thierry. And I had to stop him from what he was planning on doing. I blew another kiss to the others as I backed away toward the door; then I turned around and followed Amy and Barry out to the car.

  I directed them to the Bloor Viaduct—the bridge where Thierry and I had first met. Where the hunters had chased me. The Don River raced underneath, cold and dark and foreboding.

  I got out and slammed the car door. I quickly scanned the bridge. I couldn’t see him, but I knew he was there.

  “Should we wait?” Amy asked.

  “No. I’ll be fine. You guys go.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.” I turned away, then glanced back. “Thanks, guys. Sorry I’ve been such a bitch.”

  “You can’t help what you are,” Barry said, and then the little bugger winked at me. “Good luck. Bring the master home in one piece.”

  I nodded and watched them drive away; then I turned to focus my attention on the bridge, scanning the length of it.

  For a moment I thought that I’d made a mistake. He wasn’t here at all. I’d put all my eggs in one basket and I was wrong. He was lost to me forever.

  But then I saw him. Halfway down, past the protective bars and on a suspension beam, just standing there surveying the night that surrounded him. He didn’t look at me as I approached, but he must have known that I was there.

  “Thierry!” I called to him.

  I saw he had a wooden stake in his hand. So he was serious this time. This was it. If I couldn’t find a way to stop him, he was going to do it, once and for all. End a life that had spanned more than six centuries. Seemed like an event that the papers and the six o’clock news should cover. An event of great importance. But how did they know? He’d just be another jumper. Nobody to lose any sleep over.

  He glanced at me and shook his head. “You shouldn’t have come.”

  I climbed up on the cement barrier and crawled out to meet him through the opening in the metal bars he’d made last week. There was a time when being this high up would have paralyzed me. I wouldn’t have been able to function—scared of falling, scared of dying. But the first time I’d been chased out there was for fear of my own life, and this time it was out of fear for his. My fear of heights seemed to vanish in times of great stress.

  Finally I was standing, balanced on a metal slat a little more than an arm’s length away from him. His eyes didn’t look silver now, it was too dark. They were expressionless, dark pools that matched the water so far below us.

  “Nice view,” I said.

  “Leave here, Sarah. You can’t stop me.”

  “Who said I wanted to stop you?”

  “Pardon me?” He looked surprised.

  “I said that I didn’t come here to stop you.”

  “That is a surprise, Sarah. But you have never stopped surprising me since we first met. So tell me, why, then, are you here if you did not have it in your industrious mind to stop me?”

  I pulled Peter’s well-used stake out from the back of my powder blue sweatpants. I’d put it there for safekeeping. Definitely not a comfortable thing to carry around, especially when sitting in the back of Barry’s car—but you do what you have to do.

  I blinked at him. “I’ve come here to join you.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to kill myself, too.”

  “Please, Sarah, be serious. I am in no mood for your jokes.”

  I shook my head. “Neither am I. I’m through with jokes. I’m serious. Deadly serious.”

  I now had his full attention. “You can’t do this.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re young and beautiful. You have a long and exciting life before you. There’s so much you have yet to experience. You can’t end it all tonight.”

  I shrugged and studied my stake. “I’m not happy. I thought being a vampire might be sort of cool. Well, it’s not. I thought there was a cure. There isn’t. I fought against the image of being a bloodthirsty, murdering monster. Well, let’s see, I just killed Peter. I’m a little parched, and I just happen to drink blood now.”

  He stared at me. “And for this you wish to join me in my watery grave?”

  “No.” I blinked back tears. I was trying to hold it together, really I was. But it was getting harder, the longer I was out there. “What I’m trying to say is that being a vampire sucks. This has been the worst week of my life. And now I know there’s no out. No magic pill that’s going to make it all bette
r. Being a vampire is hard enough with you being around, Thierry. I don’t want to face it without you.”

  “Sarah—”

  “Shut up. Just let me finish. Dammit. You could have turned your back on me last week and let the hunters have me. It would have caused you a lot less grief. But you didn’t. You helped me.”

  “Of course I did.”

  “You’re still talking.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I thought you were a jerk. A real pompous, know-it-all asshole. I believe I expressed that sentiment to you several times.”

  He opened his mouth to reply, then shut it. Good for him. He was learning.

  “But the whole time, I knew I was falling for you. And it wasn’t just the gorgeous exterior, the power, the money, although I won’t say those things aren’t nice perks. It was you. I could see you underneath it all, and I liked what I saw. I liked it a lot. But then your bloody wife shows up out of the blue. I didn’t know what to think. And then you froze me out. Made me feel like you didn’t think I was anything more than a potential fling. Actually, I think those were your exact words.”

  He looked away. “She reminded me of what my plans were. I wanted to keep you from being hurt further.”

  “Yeah, now I know that. But then I thought she was everything I could never be. Gorgeous and powerful, with a vast history with you. How was I supposed to compete with that?”

  “So you began dating Quinn,” he said bitterly.

  “Quinn and I were never dating. I just said that because I wanted to hurt you back. But who knows? Maybe in a different place, a different time, a different life, we might be together. But not now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, stupid, I’m a little bit crazy about you.”

  He blinked those dark, dark eyes at me. “Perhaps you’re just a little bit crazy.”

  “That’s a definite possibility. But here’s the thing, Thierry. I think I love you. I don’t care if you don’t feel the same way about me. It’s the truth. I love you. And if that means nothing to you, if you’re just going to jump off this bridge because you feel that there’s nothing in this life to keep you here, then go for it. Just know I’m going to be right behind you.”

  Silence fell as I ran out of things to say. Tears streaked down my face. There it was. Everything I was feeling was out in the open. I love him. I hadn’t even realized it myself until I heard myself say it. A crush? Yeah. Infatuation? Definitely. But love? No wonder I couldn’t be happy with Quinn, even though I cared so much for him, so deeply it hurt.

  But I loved Thierry.

  “Sarah—” His voice, choked with his own emotion, caught on the wind that had just picked up. A storm was brewing. The first major snowstorm of the year. I could taste it in the air, sense it was coming with every fiber of my being. Plus, I’d heard about it on Barry’s car radio on the way over. We were expecting twenty inches of cold white stuff between now and tomorrow.

  He took a step toward me and I tried to move a step closer to him, but my foot slipped and, with a surprised scream and scrambling at the empty air—I fell.

  Thierry dropped his stake and caught my wrist, holding me dangling high over the Don River. I looked up at him frantically.

  “Pull me up!”

  He cocked his head to one side. “But I thought you wanted to jump?”

  “I’ve changed my mind! Pull me up!”

  “What about the other things you said? That you love me? Have you also changed your mind about that?”

  I gulped, looked down, then back to his face. “No. I love you. I do!”

  “Then perhaps I shall pull you up.”

  “Stop being a jerk and do it right now!”

  He smiled. He was strong enough to hold me this way all night if he wanted. “You do need to work on your manners. But very well, Sarah.” He braced himself against the bridge to haul me up, but a gust of wind bit him before he was fully secure. He wobbled a bit, casting a worried look down at me. Then he lost his footing and slipped off the side of the bridge.

  “Oh, shit!” I yelled as we made our second plunge together into the ice-cold, dark water.

  Chapter 27

  Three weeks later I was reclining on a beach in Puerto Vallarta. My big, floppy hat and dark sunglasses were firmly in place. I’d packed four bikinis. I was presently wearing the red one. Looked pretty good against my white skin. I hadn’t bothered with a tan. The sun was way too annoyingly bright for that, and I just couldn’t be bothered with the messy self-tanning creams. And don’t even start with me about tanning salons. Not going to happen.

  I sighed contentedly as I watched the red sun leisurely slip beneath the horizon. Mexico was so beautiful. I felt the cool sand between my toes and listened to the ocean lap softly at the shore.

  The beach was mostly deserted at this time of the evening. Most vacationers were inside eating dinner or starting their drinking binges, since, after all, tins was an all-inclusive resort. But they also served out on the beach at this time of the day if you requested it. A bit begrudgingly, but they did have a policy of the customer always being right.

  I hadn’t planned on going there. After everything that had happened, it hadn’t exactly felt right just to pick up and go on vacation. But I needed to get away. Clear my mind. Get over the drama, the sadness, the pain. I figured that I deserved it.

  The waiter gingerly made his way over with the drink tray balanced in his hands. He smiled politely and handed me a tequila sunrise. I took an enthusiastic sip.

  “Delicious. Muchas gracias.”

  “De nada. And your cranberry juice, sir?”

  Thierry reached out to take the drink from him. “Gracias.”

  “Hope you’re both having a wonderful vacation,” the waiter said.

  “Oh, we certainly are.” I smiled at Thierry. We clinked glasses as the waiter wandered away.

  “What shall we toast to?” I asked him.

  He met my eyes and smiled back at me. “To new beginnings.”

  We drank to that, and I snuggled against his fully clothed body. I hadn’t convinced him to go the swimsuit route yet, but just give me time.

  Amy and Barry were still on their extended honeymoon in Niagara Falls. Thierry had shut down the club for a few weeks and given everyone—well, Barry, George, and the new waiter—time off with pay. The place was up for sale, since the location was well known by the hunters who had ended up escaping. Thierry was looking into some property for a brand-new vampire club in the Beaches area of Toronto. Very chic.

  Quinn was happy that Thierry and I were together. Or, at least, that’s what he said. In private he told me that one day he’d win me back. Which was kind of funny, since he’d never really had me in the first place. I just nodded and told him he should find someone else in the meantime. I didn’t know he’d take that advice to heart. To get over me, he’d launched into a passionate romance with Veronique. He’d even learned to speak some French, at least the dirty words, anyhow. Believe it or not, they were coming down to Mexico to join us for the weekend. Weren’t we just the happy little family?

  Yeah, things were good. I gazed at Thierry as he watched the multicolored horizon, and then he met my eyes. I was doing my very best to keep him happy to be alive. And so far I’d received no complaints, thank you very much.

  I took another sip of my drink as I watched the rest of the sunset. Maybe after all was said and done, vampires actually could be the stars of fairy tales and get the chance to live happily ever after. Who knows?

  Then again, maybe that was just the tequila talking.

  About the Author

  Michelle Rowen was born in Toronto, Ontario. As a child she decided that when she grew up she would become a flight attendant, a jewel thief, or a writer. One out of three ain’t bad. She is a self-confessed bibliophile, the proud owner of an evil cat named Nikita, Reality TV junkie, and has an unhealthy relationship with anything to do with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She’d love to hear from you! Visit Mich
elle’s Web site at www.michellerowen.com.