Tempted by a Vampire (Immortal Hearts of San Francisco Book 1)

by Susan Griscom

  We all backed off and let the wolf slump to the floor. We hadn’t killed him. But he was injured to the point where he would be limping for a few weeks.

  “Magdalena was never yours, you slimeball,” I said, taking pleasure in using Vanessa’s childish term. “Do you think I’m ignorant of your ways? You never claimed her in the way of the wolf and you never will. Get the fuck out of here before I call the rest of my family in here to finish you off.”

  Kellen slowly transformed back into a man, then, one leg at a time, he stood.

  I picked up his torn clothing and threw the pile of rags at him. “Cover yourself. You look pathetic.”

  He caught the rags and turned toward the door. He took one last look back at Magdalena, defeat clear in his eyes, then walked out of the club.

  Magdalena came running at me, threw her arms around me and buried her face into my chest. “You okay?” I asked, stroking her head.

  She looked up at me. I wiped away the wetness on her cheeks with my thumbs. “Yes. Are you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She looked at my shoulder. “He bit you.”

  “I’ll live.” I tugged the neck of my t-shirt down to reveal the now nearly healed wound and she gasped. “We heal quickly.”

  “I was so scared for you.”

  “No more scared for me than I was for you, my love.”

  “I love you, you know.”

  I nodded. “I know.”

  “Mags! Move away! Are you crazy? He’s, he’s…they’re all vampires!”

  Magdalena turned toward her friend. “Yes, I know. And Kellen is a werewolf.”

  “But, how? You knew?”

  “Not until tonight. About Kellen that is. It’s okay, Vanessa. Cian won’t hurt us.”

  “We won’t hurt you, Vanessa,” I said using a little compulsion. She needed to calm down or we’d never be able to fix what just happened. “Take a seat.”

  Magdalena kissed me lightly on the lips and said, “Thank you.”

  “You and Ari should go upstairs to the office and wait. Don’t come back down for at least five minutes.” She gave me a puzzled look. “Unless you want to forget everything that happened here tonight.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Okay.” She nodded in understanding. Then she turned to her friends, Vanessa and Tanner, who both stood, frozen in shock, mouths gaping, along with the rest of the humans in the club. “I’ll be right back,” Magdalena whispered and walked up the steps to the office with Ari to wait until we’d cleaned up the mess that the young, jealous werewolf had caused.

  “Come on. Time to go back on stage. The Lost Boys have some work to do.”

  It took a few minutes to get everyone settled down and quieted. I pulled a chair up and sat as though I were about to sing a soft ballad, but instead, I put the guitar down.

  “I want everyone to look up here.” I’d never tried to compel an entire room of people before. But I had my brothers to help. We all held the trance and managed to capture the undivided attention of every human in the room. It didn’t take as long as I’d anticipated with the help of the other three vampires. We were already in the middle of a song by the time Magdalena and Ari came back. I’d practically been holding my breath waiting for the two of them to return. It was difficult to concentrate on anything with Magdalena out of my sight.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Magdalena

  I was well into the second month of my new job and loving it. I found it very exciting most of the time, though today my enthusiasm was only half there. I was exhausted from all the nights spent with Cian, and as I examined my ashen complexion, I knew vitamins and protein were not helping my anemic appearance. We were going to need to do something to fix that. If I continued to only give fifty percent to my job, I wouldn’t last long in this fast-paced industry, and Josh was relentless. Always needing to be the first at every crime scene.

  Getting an inside look into a murder was not only thrilling but very enlightening. Though it was difficult at times when some extraordinary, unexplainable event would take place and I had to wonder exactly what had happened, thinking about Cian and his family and all the other supernatural beings that might be lurking in the city. Speculations and hypotheses that the news and the authorities often surmised shocked me. They had no idea. I would never divulge what Cian and his brothers were, and I knew they were never responsible for any of the crimes, but Cian had told me there were other vampires in the city, most not as nice as he and his brothers. I was getting pretty good at contributing some of my own theories to many of the unexplained events. Sometimes receiving a rolled eye from Josh.

  I saw Cian almost every night. I only stayed at his place on Friday and Saturday nights, though. The rest of the time, I came home, since I needed to be up for work early during the week. Cian stayed with me those nights but left hours before the sun rose. Though he had assured me that he never succumbed to bloodlust anymore because he had me and refused to drink from anyone else. But his brothers still did. I had my own ideas of what a vampire did at night, and I was positive that I didn’t want to know what Cian’s brothers were up to. Though I tried to think of positive things, like maybe they stole blood from hospitals. But that wouldn’t be cool either, and I hadn’t heard of any blood banks and hospitals being broken into. I supposed it was just as Cian had claimed. That his brothers fed from humans, only taking what they needed to survive and then compelling the victims to forget. But I knew in my heart that was still wrong.

  I began to question my sanity. Why did I go along with it all? Why did I continue to see him? Was he compelling me? He’d said he never would, and I had to believe him. My feelings for him were strong and growing stronger every day. Just as the psychic reader Tessa had proclaimed, I had fallen. Fallen deeply in love with a vampire.

  I was sitting at my small desk behind the cubicle walls at work, perusing the Internet when Josh walked up behind me.

  “Grab your purse. We have a hot one.”

  I turned around quickly to ask what was up, but Josh had already left my area and was heading out the door. If I didn’t hurry, I doubted he would wait. As I followed him into the elevator, catching the door just moments before it closed all the way, I took in my mentor standing beside me, studying his notebook. His dark blue shirt was a wrinkled mess, and his dark hair was tousled in disarray as if he’d just gotten out of bed in a hurry, which he probably had, considering how he hadn’t even waited for me to respond before taking off.

  “They discovered a woman’s body in the Presidio,” Josh said, rubbing his day old stubble. Another clue that he’d hurried into work this morning. He was usually well groomed and clean-shaven.

  “Oh, no.”

  “Well, on the grounds of the Presidio. But right now, that’s all I know.”

  When we arrived at the Presidio, they were lifting the body off one of the park benches and placing her into a black zip-up body bag. Her face, covered in blood and claw marks was practically unrecognizable. If she didn’t have a driver’s license on her, identifying her would be tough. More blood dripped from her neck and arms onto the ground. After they had lifted her into an ambulance, we overheard one of the deputies say that the woman had been left sitting upright on the bench as though she’d been alive and just resting.

  “How long has she been dead?” Josh asked one of the officers.

  The cop gave Josh a sour look. “You know I can’t divulge anything yet, Josh.”

  “Come on, Detective, you owe me. Besides, you know it’s going to be all over the media with false assumptions in about thirty minutes from now if you don’t give me something. Give me some facts so I can let the people know the truth.”

  The officer tucked his notebook inside his uniform breast pocket and glanced around the area. “Okay. But this can’t get out for at least another hour. Understand? We need to notify her family first, and I’m heading over there now. I need at least one hour before this hits the air. Do I have your word?”

  “You got it.” Jo
sh nodded and pulled out his own pad.

  “She’s been here for a few days, apparently. From what the coroner said, anyway. Her neck was broken.”

  “Anything else unusual?”

  “Yeah. There were multiple bite marks on various places of her body,” the deputy said.

  Bite marks? My mind instantly thought of Cian and his band. They couldn’t have done this. He swore to me that they never killed. But then, there was also Kellen. As angry as I’m sure he was, being beaten by four vampires, I could just imagine what he might be capable of. He certainly wasn’t the man I thought I knew and loved.

  “Who was she?” Josh asked.

  “We’re gonna hold that information until the family has been notified. That’s all I can tell you right now. Excuse me,” the detective said and stepped away toward another group of cops.

  “What do you think?” I asked Josh.

  He shrugged. “Could be some sort of cult, making a statement or a sacrifice. Or maybe she was inflicted with those bites prior to someone breaking her neck. Hard to tell at this point since we didn’t get a close-up of the body or the bite marks. Those extremists do tend to make an appearance this time of year, though I’ve never heard of any actual killing before. We’re most likely dealing with some sicko who thought it would be funny to emulate fictional vampires or werewolves. Hard to tell which one without seeing the marks.” He laughed, but I didn’t join in.

  I swallowed what felt like a mound of sand lodged between my tonsils. Now that I knew the supernatural world really existed, wasn’t just fiction, and was all around us in our everyday lives, I didn’t know what to think about this murder.

  Josh stood in front of Rex and his camera, recapping everything we’d learned about the murder so far. I stood by, watching. Josh was a pro, and the camera loved him, even as disheveled as he was today. Someday that would be me.

  “I’m going to call this in and tell them to air it in an hour,” Josh said when he was all finished. He headed toward a cluster of trees by another bench.

  I walked in the other direction, pulled my own phone out of my purse, and dialed the number that Cian had given me. I just needed to hear his voice, then I’d feel better. It rang several times and went to voicemail. I disconnected the call without saying anything. I wasn’t sure how my voice would come across in a message, and I didn’t want to alarm him. The time on my phone read 11:33 a.m. He was most likely sleeping. The crazy hours we kept to accommodate each other’s lifestyles were murder on us both.

  Josh walked up to me. “We might as well get out of here. They’re too tight-lipped. We won’t find out anything more from them today. Let’s go have some lunch.”

  “Lunch? After visiting a murder scene?” My stomach rolled with disgust. I didn’t think I’d be able to eat anything for at least a day or two.

  “Come on, we didn’t see anything that gory. Just a little blood.”

  A little blood. I shouldn’t be upset about seeing a little blood, but I was pretty shaken up. I’d never seen a dead body before.

  “Was that your first?”

  I nodded.

  “You’ll get used to it. Let’s go.”

  Josh and I headed to some small dive for lunch.

  “All the locals go here. You’ll love it,” he promised.

  When I caught sight of the joggers and all the people fishing off the pier as we got out of the car, I worried that this local dive, as Josh had called it, would be either a fruit juice bar or a place where all they served were dishes as hideous as raw octopus and mussels. Not something my stomach would be able to handle after seeing that woman’s body. I was pleasantly surprised when we entered the National Park of Chrissy Fields, set beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. The view of the bridge from underneath was amazing. It was so intimidating and large from this angle. I handed Josh my phone.

  “What’s this for?”

  “Take my picture with the bridge behind me.”

  “Really? You want to play tourist?”

  I grinned and he snapped the picture, handing me the phone. “Here you go, Mags.” The shortening of my name was inevitable as soon as I told anyone it was Magdalena. Josh had called me Mags ever since he first looked at my resume. Even though I had introduced myself as Maggie. Cian was the only one who hadn’t shortened my name. Oh, every once in a while he would call me Maggie, but for the most part, I was Magdalena to him.

  I took the phone from Josh. The picture he’d just taken was surreal as I gazed upon my giant head against the entire span of the bridge behind me. My eyes instantly went to the first tower where Cian had taken me, the first time he’d drunk my blood. The orgasmic memory made my heart skip a beat. We’d had several of those moments since, but that first one…well, you never forget your first time.

  “Pretty nice view, huh?” Josh said, jolting me from my reminiscence. “You should have that new boyfriend of yours take you on a tour of the city. You said he’s lived here for a while, right? He should know all the local hangouts.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Cian

  Music permeated the entire mansion, as if someone had turned every speaker of the intercom system on high. Lovely, classical music filled my ears and my mind. I closed my eyes and let the trill of the violin sooth my dark soul. Oh, the memories that came flooding back. I played a lot of rock music these days, but I was a two-hundred-year-old vampire and a sucker for a Tchaikovsky violin Concerto. Lane must have put it on and not realized he had it floating throughout the entire mansion. The blinds were up, which meant I’d slept the entire day after leaving Magdalena.

  I had a sudden urge and got out of bed to retrieve my violin. I hadn’t played it in years, and now I had an itch to let the bow flow over the strings. Maybe I’d bring it out at the club this coming Saturday. It was always a nice touch to spice up some good rock songs with a violin. We hadn’t done it in years. I couldn’t remember why.

  “Lane!” I yelled, but my excitement halted at the frightening sight, standing in the doorway to my room.

  “Bonjour, Cian.” Jewels’ beguiling French accent floated across the room and hit me in my gut.

  “Jewels.” Her name was the only thing I could utter, the despicable sight of her rendering me speechless.

  “That’s all you have to say? After all this time, my sweet? No, ‘Jewels, it’s lovely to see you’ or ‘I’ve missed you, where have you been all these years?’” she said, derision coating her tone.

  “Nothing so positive comes to mind,” I said, finding my voice, and not in the mood to play her disgusting games.

  “Ah. I see you’ve grown some balls over the years.” She laughed and skated across the floor toward me.

  “How did you get in here?” I asked. I hadn’t invited her in.

  “Well, I’ve missed you…and your brother, and I don’t need an invitation to enter the home of my children.” She skimmed her long, well manicured blood-red fingernails down the side of my face. “Look at this fabulous house you and Lane have. I never doubted your ability to make it without me.”

  “What do you want, Jewels?”

  “Well, I was hoping that we—you, Lane, and I—might reenact the little rendezvous we had that long-ago night on the boat. For old time’s sake, of course.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Cian, what the hell is going on with the mus—?” Lane’s words were cut off by the sight of Jewels, as I knew they would be.

  “Lane, mon vilain.” She glided over the five large steps to him and kissed him on the lips. He just stood there. “You were always the more eager of the two, you naughty man. Do you remember how you used to beg for more?”

  “Get away from him,” I barked. “I’ll ask you again. How did you get in here?”

  “Cian.” She turned back to face me, leaving Lane for the moment. “You should know better than anyone how simple it is for a vampire to enter a room without being noticed. I’ve seen you hovering just inside
that sweet young woman’s room, watching her sleep. How pathetic you’ve become. I said to myself, ‘Poor, lonely, Cian. He has needs.’ Now, I ask you, who better to tend those needs than moi?”

  She’d been there those nights I’d watched Magdalena?

  “Did you like the artwork? I had it done years ago. But when your pretty little female came into my gallery, I knew she had to have it. To be fully immersed in your world, she’d want to have a family portrait.”

  She went to the bottle of scotch on the table and poured herself a generous portion.

  “Surprised, Cian? Yes, I’ve been here in the city for over a hundred years. I left briefly after that dreaded earthquake in the early part of the twentieth century. And then they had another one, what, almost thirty years ago, or there about.” She flipped her hand in the air in an, it-doesn’t-matter-fashion. “If memory serves.”

  She’d been watching us since the beginning. She’d been there when I’d first spoken to Magdalena in the club that night.

  “You leave her out of this.”

  “Her? The human? Seriously, Cian. You’re a vampire. You should never be concerned about a human female. They are here for our pleasure, non?”

  “No.” I shook my head.

  “Tsk, tsk. I should not have left you for so long. A mother should stay with her children, oui? Then you would be true vampire. I have failed in this respect.” She shook her head and then placed her hand on her forehead as if she were truly sorry she’d left us. Then, within seconds, she was centimeters from me, hands squeezing my neck as she shoved me back against the wall. Her once beautiful face was contorted and ugly, fangs protruding from beneath her upper lip. The realization that this was the monster who’d made us monsters made me sick, and if I could, I’d have ended it all at that moment. But she was older, stronger.

  “You are not to argue with me,” she growled. “I am your maker. Your maman so to speak.”