Kiss of the Vampire

by Terry Spear

  “You haven’t already forgotten me? After all we meant to each other?”

  He sounded so arrogant. She’d been so wrapped up in him, she hadn’t realized how wrong he was for her. And for his information, if anyone had forgotten anyone it was he who had forgotten her. Many a night, she’d lain in her bed wishing he would comfort her. She’d fantasized about him taking her away so she wouldn’t have to live with her awful foster sister and attend the high school she hated.

  “I tried to get in touch with you,” she said.

  “Ah, well, at the best of times it is difficult.”

  She glanced back at him.

  He touched the water dripping off the wall.

  “You’re not supposed to touch the rocks. If everyone does that, it ruins the formations.”

  “Always by the book, eh, Caitlin?”

  “You could have tried to contact me. Email, or call, or something.”

  “I don’t use computers. Don’t like them. As for phones, I told you, I don’t care for them either.”

  “Do you know how to write?”

  He smiled. “Takes too much time.”

  “You could have had a secretary or someone send a note.”

  “It wouldn’t have been personal enough.”

  They walked outside of the cave.

  “It would have been better than nothing.” She gave him her best glare.

  He bowed his head, and she wondered if he came from the same country initially as Levka and his friends. She always thought it was a quaint way he had of acknowledging her with a gentlemanly bow of his head, kind of like the Japanese do, except Vlad and the Texans cocked their heads more to the side and not as formally.

  A chill shivered down her skin. He was eerily like Levka and the others. Was that why Levka and his friends had caught her attention because they were so much like Vlad?

  She still couldn’t believe Vlad had followed her here. “How’d you know I was going to be here?”

  “I called your old home and was transferred to your foster parents’ place. They gave me your cruise route. This was the first place I could catch up to you.”

  “And the cave?”

  “I contacted the ship to see if you were planning any excursions. This was the first on your list. If you hadn’t left the ship, I would have joined you there. How’s your foster sister treating you?”

  She didn’t know why she felt the need to lie, but she said, “Fine. She’s up ahead with another tour group. Their bus just left.”

  “Why wouldn’t she be with you? In fact, you seem to be all alone.”

  “My friends hadn’t made arrangements to come ashore. But we’ll be going together on the next shore excursion,” she said, defending being by herself. Why? He hadn’t tried to be with her any time before the trip. Maybe if he had, she wouldn’t have felt so out of place. If he’d still been her boyfriend…

  She shook her head.

  Levka was the one she wanted to be with now. Yet, he would return to Texas, and she’d be left behind in Florida. If Vlad truly intended to continue to be her friend, he was at least living in the same city. Until he had to go away for business. Constant business.

  Caitlin climbed onto the bus. When she sat beside a girl from her high school, the girl suddenly moved to another seat and Vlad took her place. “So polite. Someone from your new high school?”

  “Yes.” But the girl had never been friendly, which was probably why she left the seat so quickly.

  “Did everyone enjoy the Hato Cave?” the tour guide asked.

  Most everyone said yes.

  Vlad reached for Caitlin’s hand, and this time she let him take it. She wasn’t one to hold grudges, though she still didn’t trust he wouldn’t leave her again without word.

  “Next stop will be the rum factory,” the tour guide said.

  The rum factory was just a big metal building and inside an exhibit room of sorts was used to “explain” the process of producing rum. Photos of the process lined the walls, and small throwaway cups of rum samples were offered to the passengers on a tray. She thought she’d actually get to see the rum makers making the rum. A waste of money.

  By the time they returned to the ship, Caitlin was dying to get away from Vlad and see Levka again. She hadn’t ever felt that Vlad was pushy before, but then she’d changed some, grown up some maybe, since the accident. But now she felt him smothering and oppressive. She couldn’t move an inch without him beside her, touching her, as if he were afraid he’d lose her again.

  She humpfed under her breath. He should have thought of that before he gave her a year of the silent treatment.

  Levka stood at the booth where passengers checked back in, a strict security measure to make sure people who didn’t belong onboard didn’t slip in and that passengers who had left the ship were accounted for.

  At once her spirit was uplifted when she saw him, and she smiled.

  He wore a broad absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder smile, but when he saw Vlad checking in behind her, his look turned dark.

  Grabbing her hand, Levka pulled her down the hall and away from the check-in counter. “Levka, I wanted you to meet—”

  “Don’t tell me. That’s Vlad,” Levka said, his voice nearly a growl.

  “You know him?”

  Levka was silent, and Caitlin looked up at him. “Levka, do you know him?”

  Chapter 12

  How could Levka tell Caitlin that the vampire, Vlad, wanted her permanently for his own? How could he warn her when he himself wanted her in the same way?

  And no, he didn’t personally know the guy. But he was one of Levka’s kind. The gold tinge around his black eyes, invisible to the mortal eye, proved beyond a doubt he was one of the ones turned nine-hundred years ago during the plague that infected some and left others untouched.

  The hint of gold was a warning to others, Levka and his kind were ancients and had lived for so many years that others of their kind normally revered them. Except for the ancients who had been older in human years when they’d turned. Most of them still felt the “younger” ones like Levka and his friends were too rebellious.

  “Levka,” Caitlin said, trying to pull him to a stop. “What’s the matter? You’re running my legs off.”

  “I’m sorry.” But he was afraid he didn’t sound like it at all. Brusque, determined, worried was more like it. He hurried her to his stateroom. He had to let the others know the situation he was in. No way would he let the other vampire have her. Had Vlad gotten permission from his league to make her his?

  Levka wouldn’t allow it.

  The others were gone when Levka walked into his stateroom with Caitlin. “I’m not sure how to tell you about any of this,” he said.

  “Can I use your bathroom?” she asked.

  He raised his brows.

  She smiled. “I don’t like to use public restrooms.”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  As soon as she walked into the bathroom and closed the door, Ruric entered their stateroom. “Did you get her?”

  Levka waved his hand at the bathroom.

  Ruric nodded.

  Then Stasio and Arman opened the door to the suite. “You won’t believe who’s here now,” Stasio said, his blue eyes hard, his lips thinned.

  “Vlad,” Levka said.

  “Vlad? Who is he?” Arman asked. “Oh, the guy that was seeing Caitlin?”

  “Who were you talking about?” Levka asked.

  “The tracker or whoever he is. The guy who followed us here from Atlanta,” Arman said, sounding exasperated.

  Caitlin walked out of the bathroom, and everyone looked at her.

  Ruric said privately to his friends, “What’s going on, Levka?”

  “I have to tell her.”

  “It looks like we’re going to a funeral,” Caitlin said. “Who died?”

  “She’s a live one.” Ruric sat on the end of one of the beds.

  “Have a seat, will you, Caitlin?” Levka motioned to the flo
ral sofa.

  “You can’t tell her what we are,” Arman warned.

  Stasio pulled the desk chair around, facing the others, and sat. “History repeats itself.”

  “Maybe this time the future will be better,” Ruric said.

  Arman sat down on the other bed, but didn’t say another word.

  “You said you knew we were different, Caitlin,” Levka began. “How did you know this?”

  She shifted on the sofa to get comfortable. “You have long hair and often wear it in ponytails. All of you. Sure, some guys your age do, but it just kind of struck me as odd. On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t so much that, but that I’d known Vlad before this, and he was like you guys.”

  Everyone exchanged glances.

  “It’s like that.” She waved her hand at them. “You speak to each other without saying a word, like you’re one.”

  “Like the Borg.” Ruric leaned forward on the bed. “You know, Star Trek. The cyborgs had a collective consciousness.”

  “In the here and now,” Stasio said to Ruric.

  “All of you can speak telepathically. All of you can perform hypnosis,” Caitlin continued. “You all have Russian-sounding names.”

  Levka smiled. “You can speak telepathically, and you wear your hair in a ponytail sometimes.”

  “I’m not explaining myself properly. You’re just different. Mystical, intriguing, interesting. I don’t know how.”

  Levka watched the emotion play across her face, the exasperation, the desire to be part of a group, to belong. “Caitlin, you’re right, we’re different.”

  She sat very still, waiting to hear the truth.

  “You’re different, too. You have the ability to telecommunicate when very few people can do that.”

  “But look at all of you. There must be many more. We just haven’t reached them yet.”

  “You said once there were others with Vlad. That they said they were friends of his, but he didn’t like that they’d arrived, and he seemed jealous of you.”

  Her eyes gazed into his as if she were trying to absorb everything he said. “Yes.”

  “Sometimes people like us with telepathic abilities have a compulsion to find a mate who has the same kind of gift.”

  Her mouth parted slightly.

  “What I’m saying is he wants you, and he will more than likely try any method he can to get you to agree to be his mate.”

  “You mean to be his wife?”

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head. “My foster parents wouldn’t go along with it. They want me to finish high school first and then my parents left me enough money so that I can enroll in college.”

  “Caitlin, it’s a compulsion. He’ll feel compelled to have you.”

  “Like a stalker?”

  Levka looked at his friends who remained deathly quiet. “Something like that.”

  “He didn’t have anything to do with me for a year, so I don’t think that’s an issue.”

  “When he learns of me, it will be.”

  Caitlin opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.

  “Do you understand?” Levka asked.

  She shook her head, but he guessed she got an inkling of what he was saying, except she wanted him to spell it out for her.

  “What I’m saying is—”

  “What he’s saying,” Ruric interrupted Levka, “is that Levka worships you like you were a goddess.”

  She folded her arms and smiled. “Right.”

  “It cannot be helped,” Stasio said. “It’s as Levka says. When we meet the right girl, we have a devil of a time fighting the urge to make her ours.”

  “Then why fight it?” she asked, her voice tinged with amusement.

  “It’s really very complicated.” Levka sat down on the couch beside her. “You know we can use hypnotism and telepathic communication. We seek companions that we can’t control. You are that for me.”

  “Why not for Stasio, or Ruric, or Arman?”

  “They’re special cases,” Levka said, with a sardonic smile.

  “Alas, it is true.” Stasio held his hand over his heart. “Had we been able to steal your heart, we would have tried, but Levka made it clear he desired your company above all others. We would never try to break this friendship.”

  “But Vlad,” Ruric said, “will be furious when he finds Levka is interested in you.”

  “But I live in Florida and you in Texas.” She took Levka’s hand. “Long distance relationships never work out.”

  This was not working as Levka intended, yet he knew he could not tell her the whole truth. “I have no ties to Texas that cannot be broken.”

  “Us either,” Ruric agreed. “Florida is as good a place to live as any other.”

  “You would move to be near me?”

  “Yes, but our moving to Florida will not make Vlad go away,” Levka warned.

  “You would move to be near me,” she repeated under her breath. “But I couldn’t ask you to do this for me.”

  Levka kissed her hand. “I wouldn’t want it any other way. The problem is Vlad.”

  She frowned. “He didn’t have anything to do with me for a year. There’s no problem there as far as I’m concerned.”

  “He’ll be sweet and polite to all of us, unlike your foster sister and her friends. Vlad will act the perfect gentleman, but he still will want you and will make every attempt to get his way.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “Tell him you’ve agreed to be mine.”

  Arman let out his breath.

  “Your girlfriend?” she asked Levka.

  “My mate.” Levka had gone and done it now. Though it wasn’t exactly binding because she didn’t really know what she was agreeing to. “You say our names sound Russia. They are. In the old country, we call the one we choose to marry our mate. It’s just our way. If you said you were my girlfriend, it wouldn’t have the same meaning.”

  “It sounds strange to me,” Caitlin said.

  “It’s just a term, but it will mean something to him.”

  She shook her head. “Sounds unreal. So if I do this, he’ll leave me alone?”

  Levka took a deep breath. “I doubt it.”

  “Then what good will it do?”

  “It will show we’ve made a commitment to each other, and that you’re not alone and available.”

  “Okay, so I have a question for you.”

  But could he answer it? “Yes?”

  “Arman said there’s a tracker following you. What’s that all about?”

  Levka glanced at his friends, but none seemed willing to help him out. “We’re with a telepathic guild in Dallas.”

  Caitlin’s eyes widened. Arman closed his eyes and rubbed his temple. Stasio and Ruric grinned. They’d be sure to give him a hard time about being the teller of tall tales from Texas later.

  “Only a very select few can be in this guild. We’re not supposed to use our telepathic gift to help mortals…others. But I heard the girls screaming, and I had to help them.”

  “Why wouldn’t the guild want you to help others?”

  “If people learned we were different, they’d use us as guinea pigs, experiment on us, write us up in their scientific journals. Our life would no longer be our own.”

  “Sure, sure, I can see that.” She tucked a curl behind her ear. “But why have a guild then?”

  “It’s kind of a watchdog organization to ensure our kind don’t give us away.”

  “Oh. So you saved the girls and…”

  “Got injured. The league warned us not to get involved in things like that, but I couldn’t hear the girls’ screams and do nothing. Now the league has sent someone to force us to appear before them.”

  Caitlin sat up taller. “You mean, you came on the cruise because you’re on the run from the telepathic police?”

  “Sort of like that. They usually cool down after a while and everything’s fine.” Though he still worried the vampire they sent after them might b
e an assassin.

  “But they’ve sent a tracker after you. Do you know what he looks like?”

  Levka shook his head. “He can sense our telepathic communication though, so we need to try and not use it.” He could with his friends, but Caitlin had no way to privately send her messages. If the tracker heard her, who would he assume she was speaking to?

  “Can I be a member of the guild?” Caitlin’s face brightened. “I’m an honor student in high school. Maybe I’d be able to make some more friends like you.”

  “A member of the telepathic guild,” Ruric mused.

  “The vampire guild rather,” Stasio responded.

  “Someday, maybe,” Levka said. “For now, we have two problems…Vlad and the tracker.”

  “And Dylan.” Caitlin tugged on Levka’s hand. “Come on, mate of mine. I’m hungry. The lunch on the island didn’t fill me up.”

  “Formal dining or buffet?”

  “Formal. I don’t even care if Dylan’s there.”

  He wouldn’t be, Levka could count on that. But he still wasn’t sure he could pull off pretending to be Caitlin’s intended mate without marking her. And that was another issue.

  ***

  When they took their seats at dinnertime, Levka and his friends suddenly looked toward the entrance to the formal dining room. Caitlin turned to see what had garnered their attention. Vlad.

  Dressed in a black tux, his narrowed eyes the same color, Vlad considered Levka in a challenging and sinister way as he strolled toward them, his walk confident.

  Without invitation, Vlad took Dylan’s seat.

  Caitlin cleared her throat and introduced everyone at the table. Alicia was even more put out that Dylan hadn’t joined them. Vlad seemed to take an immediate dislike to Levka and his friends. She didn’t like his attitude one bit. She could see he would never let her have any friends if she had remained his girlfriend, whereas Levka did not seem to feel threatened over her friendship with others. He was protective, but not smothering.

  Levka took Caitlin’s hand and kissed it so tenderly, her heartbeat quickened. Ruric smiled. Stasio hid a grin and cut into his veal. Arman glanced at Vlad to see his reaction. Vlad’s face darkened. Lynne and Alicia talked about Dylan’s strange behavior and ignored the rest of them.