The Vampire's Release, A Paranormal Romance (Undead in Brown County #4)

by Wright, S. J.

  “No. You don’t get it…”

  “Shut up!” I hurled the rest of the bottle against the wooden door and a resounding crack and shatter spread around us. I turned away from her. The urge to strike her was strong, splitting me apart inside. I wanted to get away, but I knew it would make the situation worse.

  “Your mother left you. Trevor used you and gave you up. Your father is dead. None of it was your fault, yet you constantly want to saddle yourself with this ridiculous notion of being unworthy. It’s fucking destroying you. Not just you. Everyone who cares about you. So just shut up. I may not know the depth of your pain. I may not have been with you through every single dramatic incident that has happened to you in your life, but I love you. And I want you to be happy.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “It’s not supposed to be.”

  What followed was a long silence during which Sarah gazed alternately between the fire, the spilled wine, the broken bottle and me. I saw the connection she was making internally. I felt the energy in the room shift from something dark and threatening to something gray and mournful. It was a slow drain coming from her. The hate was shifting into something else. Slowly and painfully.

  She began to cry in total silence. No sobs, no sniffling.

  Reluctantly, I left her to retrieve a broom and dustpan from the pantry. When I came back and handed it to her, she looked at me with tired eyes still full of tears.

  “You can clean this up. The whole thing. When you’re ready, come upstairs.”

  “You’re not going to help?”

  “No. This is your mess. And when you finish and you throw away all those broken pieces, I want you to think very hard about the brittle pieces of yourself that you need to toss out. When you clean this up, you come back to me as a whole person. I don’t want a shadow of what you could be.” I lifted her wet chin, still salty with tears and kissed her mouth very gently. “If you can do that, I will do whatever I can to keep us together. I want nothing more.”

  Then I turned and went up the stairs.

  CHAPTER 9 – Sarah

  I stood there for a very long time with the broom in my hand. The fire crackled pleasingly in the background. But I was rather lost. Whatever I had been expecting from my reunion with Michael, it was a far cry from what had actually happened.

  When had things started to go wrong? Probably the realization that no matter how happy I might be to see him again, we had no future together. It made the crackling fire seem menacing. It turned the chilled wine into a bitter truth serum that stole all the magic from the romantic scene in front of me.

  For years I had shoved people away from me who might bring me some happiness. Sure, there were one or two who offered nothing but pain. Trevor, for instance. But what about Kara? My best friend. And whether I wanted to really admit it or not, I had let distance grow between me and Katie. When I had asked about how things were going with her, it was always about her classes or whether she’d gotten all the textbooks she needed. How often had I asked about her personal life?

  He was right.

  With some hesitation, I placed the dust pan near the biggest pile of glass and began using the broom to push the shiny fragments up into the pan. They made musical little sounds when they touched the metal bottom of the pan.

  I saw something of myself in the broken glass and the spilled wine. It was true. There were parts of me that felt shattered and unusable. There were memories and words that had escaped and left stains in the hearts of people I never wanted to hurt.

  The broom began to move a little faster. Getting rid of this, I thought. A good idea. Take that shit to the trash, Sarah. There’s more to you than what’s broken. It didn’t sound like something I would say. But it really was me. None of the initial stuff was my fault. My Mom left. I didn’t leave her. She left me. Not my fault. My Dad was dead. He had cancer. I didn’t create his cancer. Not my fault.

  But those jaded, stinging words used on the people around me? Yeah, that was all me. That was the broken glass. But you can’t just pick it up. You have to make sure it doesn’t happen again. So it really was my mess to clean up. The big chunks of glass, the tiny little fragments, the wine that was making the floor sticky.

  I didn’t just pick it all up and throw it in the trash. I gathered up every piece of glass I could find by the sofa and near the door. There were a few scattered pieces in the kitchen and one on the rug in front of the hearth. I went outside into the frigid cold of a February evening in Indiana and buried the broken pieces of myself in the dirt in the woods.

  After mopping up the spilled wine, I went into the little half-bathroom next to the kitchen and looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes were a little bloodshot. My nose was still red from crying and some of the mascara I’d applied earlier was smudged. I wasn’t perfect. I would never be.

  I wet down a corner of the fancy guest towel hanging near the sink and wiped away the makeup. This was just me. This was imperfect Sarah, who couldn’t ride a horse, couldn’t make her mother love her, and couldn’t make her father stay alive. But I couldn’t stop the thought that maybe it wasn’t my job to do those things.

  Maybe I was supposed to be an innkeeper in Indiana who was in love with a vampire. And he had said that he loved me. Michael. Mysterious, glorious Michael. An immortal being that felt things deeply and contained his thirst in an effort to maintain some simple hold on his humanity.

  And this wonderful creature was waiting for me.

  Something familiar moved through me. Desire. Need. Longing. I pulled my sweater over my head. My hair crackled with static. I moved my fingers through it restlessly and unbuttoned my jeans. One leg was sticky with wine that had seeped through the denim. When I examined the stains under the light, it no longer looked like blood. It was no longer a threat.

  In the mirror, my mouth and chin looked like that of a little girl. But there was a woman fully grown beaming out from my blue eyes. Someone who had moved through great trials and come out of that yawning cave called loss with her heart intact but buried under a sea of bitterness. It would be a hell of a struggle to turn it all over like dirt in the garden, to bring what was under the dying leaves back to the top. Like plowing a field in the spring.

  I moved up the stairs like a ghost, feeling earthy and brazen. Michael was standing by the window, his eyes trained on the doorway. I could barely look away from his face, but there was so much more to him than that strong sloping jaw and those glittering silver eyes. He wore a white V-neck t-shirt that exposed the gorgeous muscles in his biceps. The curves of them beguiled me. The lines of his collarbones spread out like the wings of an eagle, giving a solid base to a set of arms that had the power to crush a block of concrete.

  The bed looked as if it had been slept in already. When I moved to straighten the sheets and blanket, he shot forward and took my wrist. His hand felt strangely hot against me. It made me want to devour him.

  “No. The bed doesn’t matter.”

  He stroked the point at my wrist where my pulse was easy to see. The motion seemed to coincide with the rather insistent throbbing going on in other parts of my body. My throat was alternately aching and tingling, and I wondered briefly if I might be a little ill. There was a speck of denial still left inside me, burned at the edges and sour with previous regrets.

  The way his fingertips held my face was the gentlest touch I’d ever received in my life. His thick eyebrows dipped in a gesture that seemed steeped in humility. I knew then that he truly saw me as beautiful and worthy of whatever price he might have to pay to keep me. It was a sobering moment for me, but one that I could cling to for the rest of my days.

  Neither would I forget the ways in which we made love. How many times? I hardly knew afterwards. Perhaps six times? Not including the times on the floor or in the bathroom. We ended up in the bathroom with me on the counter, my head thrown back and my knees gripping his naked hips.

  The golden boards of the pine ceiling faded in and out of my v
ision. I felt Michael’s body come to a slow halt. I had already had several orgasms, which was unheard of for me. He had just finished his third. His palms slid up my back, through my hair and tilted my face towards him.

  A lazy smile graced his mouth. “You’re phenomenally beautiful.”

  I returned his smile. “And you wear me out.” I was completely exhausted and he seemed to know it. Without another word, he brought the comforter from the bed, wrapped me up in it and carried me downstairs. The smile never left his face. It filled me with warmth to see him so happy.

  He laid me carefully on the sofa in front of the dying fire and tucked the comforter closer around me. I felt his lips move against my hair before sleep finally overcame me, and the words were like silk drifting around me, shimmering and bright, welcoming me into the world of dreams.

  “I love you, Sarah Wood.”

  CHAPTER 10 – Alex

  “Get your fucking hands off me!”

  The lack of fresh blood was beginning to get to Katie. Despite her mother’s suggestion, I didn’t like the idea of taking her to the island. I didn’t want to be that far away if things went bad for Sarah and she needed me. Michael may have returned to the farm, but I still felt responsible somehow.

  The raven-haired female in my grip slipped away for an instant in the woods, but catching her again wasn’t hard. She was a little slippery after falling into the mud a few times since we left the house.

  “No, I will not take my hands off you. You need to understand that I will not be letting you out of my sight for a very long time. Unless I kill you soon, which I wouldn’t rule out at this point.”

  She went quiet and stopped trying to dart away from me. I knew better than to assume it was my words of warning that put a stop to her protest, and as I became more aware of our surroundings I realized that we had passed beyond the containment border. Katie was as still as a doe, her head up and eyes locked on the dead trees before us.

  I didn’t see the redhead until she spoke.

  “He doesn’t seem very angelic, Meekah.”

  There were two females--old vampires who looked like sophisticated young women, out of place among the desolate frozen landscape. The redhead, I knew without a doubt, was the biggest threat. And a stranger. Meekah I had met before, but only briefly. She carried herself with confidence, her dark skin blending beatifically with the gray tree trunks around her.

  Both looked at me doubtfully and then at Katie.

  The redhead smiled like a snake. “So how was the homecoming, Kate?”

  “A little annoying.”

  I tightened my grip on Katie’s arm. “What do you want?”

  Meekah moved towards us gracefully. Her unusual accent was a mix of a dozen dialects and not unpleasant to hear. “We will be taking Katie from you, Alex.”

  The warning bells that had been a mild, delicate music in my head began to shriek. “What makes you think I’m going to let you do that?” Every nerve in my body was hyper alert. There was real danger in the air. I had a feeling these two were not in the habit of making casual threats.

  “Alex, perhaps you are not aware, but you are not the only immortal to have been mistakenly ‘saved’ by vampires. There is another very much like you.”

  I didn’t miss the warmth that crossed Meekah’s face before the next movement in the forest caught my eye from above us. The surprise they had in store for me was another vampire. Or perhaps much more than a vampire.

  He landed before me in a deep crouch, poised for battle. Bearing the countenance of a predator, his gray eyes were cautious as he watched me. He was clothed in all black, so it was hard to judge how powerful his body might be. His long hair was blood red, not a natural tone at all. I could not determine much about his heritage other than an obvious European strain. He was as pale as we all were, but there was also a kind of stiffness in his features that reminded me of a corpse.

  Whatever or whoever he was, he made me uncomfortable. Perhaps he sensed my hesitation. He relaxed slightly, standing a little straighter and glancing quickly over at Meekah.

  “Introduce us, my love.” The voice was low and guttural. He sounded like an injured animal.

  “William,” Meekah purred. “This is Alexander. The one we have been talking about.”

  “Well met.” He then turned his eyes on Katie.

  The tension increased exponentially. But this was not directed towards me. William circled Katie slowly, seeming to have forgotten me entirely. His strange eyes narrowed dangerously as he studied her. There was a noticeable shift in Meekah’s profile when she realized to whom he had shifted his attention. Something savage distorted her features into a jealously dark mask.

  “You are a descendent of an old friend of mine,” he said.

  I struggled to make sense of this claim. He continued his appraisal of Katie, even extending a gnarled white hand to touch a lock of her ebony hair. He closed his eyes and drew in the scent of her, his mouth curling upward in a sick little smile at the end of his inhalation.

  “How delicious you are, my dear.”

  “How do you know who I am?” Katie asked slowly, her gaze rapt and fully focused on the intruder. It alarmed me for some reason. I didn’t want her to look at him for too long. It seemed like a trap.

  Amanda stood patiently nearby with her back against one of the trees, watching us all. She reminded me of a cat—observant and intentionally unattached to the drama unfolding in front of her. But she had to have some reason for being there.

  The old one, William, addressed Katie’s question with another queer smile and attempted to explain.

  “A very long time ago, I came to this place and met a Pawnee tribesman. I was going to devour him, you see. I was quite hungry at the time.”

  If Katie felt any revulsion, she suppressed it well. Her expression was reserved and cool as she watched the old one slowly make his way from one side of her to the other. He ignored me completely. Perhaps I should have felt offended, but I wanted to hear this story from him. I’d known only a little of what had occurred when the containment zone had been created. It was unlikely that anything in Jonathan Wood’s journal would be as compelling as this, coming from the mouth of the creature that necessitated the containment in the first place.

  “He was quite diplomatic,” William said casually. “He asked me if there was anything I would change about my circumstances if I could. The only thing at that time that was causing a problem was other vampires chasing me to try to get some of my blood to increase their own powers.”

  “How inconvenient.” I replied.

  “Exactly, Alexander. Exactly.” He graced me with a perfunctory nod and turned back to Katie. “He was willing to make a deal. He claimed to have the powers of a witch. I was skeptical, of course. I’ve known many witches and he didn’t resemble any that I had seen.”

  “He was a Pawnee holy man.” Interrupting with a finger in the air, Meekah eyed William with caution. “He was no witch.”

  “Whatever.” Katie said. “So what was the deal?”

  “Patience, lovely girl.” He told her softly. I could have sworn that she wilted a little bit under his scrutiny. “I’m coming to it. So my new friend made me an offer. He said that he would create a kind of ‘safe zone’ for me if I promised to never attack any of his people.”

  “His people? That’s not very specific, is it?”

  The look William turned on me might have turned a human to stone. Luckily, I was tougher than a human. Tougher than most vampires as well.

  “The Pawnee,” he answered coldly. “If I agreed to his treaty, I could only take blood from the whites.”

  “So he created the zone to protect you.”

  “Yes. But he added a little rule that I didn’t agree to.” Anger suffused his hardened face, transforming it into a hideous mask of hate. Katie took a half step back from him. “I could only leave with his permission.”

  “So you’re the one who started it all.” Katie murmured.

&nb
sp; William gave her a curt nod. “Moon Chanter thought he had me cornered. He brought me white victims. But it was his blood that I really wanted. Eventually, he slipped up. One night he miscalculated his steps and I caught him.” Another smile turned up the corners of his cruel mouth. “I drained him completely. His blood was exquisite.”

  A tremor went through Katie. Maybe in that one moment, she saw the reality of what might become of her as one of the undead. Perhaps she was fearful of the way he looked. Perhaps the horror of the vampire’s thirst was making itself plain. But she was very much afraid, whatever the cause. Her slim body, covered in mud-caked designer clothing closed the gap between us. She pressed herself against my side but kept her gaze locked on William.

  I glanced down at her.

  “I want to go home.”

  Meekah shook her head. “That’s not going to happen, Kate.”

  The redhead came forward then, her sparkling eyes filling me with a sense of doom.

  “What did I tell you?” she asked Katie, leaning forward in a menacing stance. “I told you there was no going back. You’re done with all that. You’re a killer now. You’re no better than any of us.”

  “I am better.” The response was heavy with hesitation.

  “She doesn’t have to go with you,” I said. “I’m going to keep an eye on her.”

  Amanda rolled her eyes at me. “You have no power over us, Alex. You can’t go against William.”

  “He doesn’t need to.”

  All of us turned at once. Standing at the tree line with his two most powerful allies at his side was Michael. There was definitely something different about him. There was something different about the three of them. Victoria and Jones kept their eyes focused on William, but Michael nodded to me deferentially before he addressed the others.

  I nodded back. Michael knew these vampires, and I was willing to follow his lead. What I didn’t know was what he intended to do about Katie. Amanda was right. She couldn’t go back home, but what would she do out on her own?