A Vampire's Promise

by Carla Susan Smith

  Behaving this way is, I suspect, a coping mechanism for the brain. At least that’s what I told myself my own was doing. It was the multicar wreck happening all over again. I saw everything and felt nothing. Emotionally, I was frozen.

  Aleksei motioned with his head, and I followed his gaze, both of us watching Gabriel approach. He was still wearing the loose-fitting black pants, but I noticed he had wiped the blood from his mouth and chest.

  I watched him coming closer, I’m ashamed to say I still thought he was the most perfect male on the planet, even if the fury I could feel rolling ahead of him was also reflected in his face—brows pulled tightly together, eyes narrow slits, the mouth that I always found so quick to smile now refashioned in a harsh line that slashed his face.

  It took no time at all for him to cover the length of the long hallway, and I felt the fingers that held me flex slightly as Aleksei tensed. I took this as a sign that even the big guy was wary of Gabriel in his fury.

  My eyes locked onto Gabriel as he came to a stop a few feet from me. Returning my gaze, he slowly pulled back his lips, giving me the confirmation I needed that I wasn’t losing my mind. Fangs dropped from between his upper teeth, white, glistening, and very long. I wondered how it was I had never known they were there, and I began to shake like a sapling in a hurricane, praying Aleksei didn’t suddenly let go, because I didn’t think my legs would support me.

  Shifting his gaze over my head, Gabriel nailed Aleksei with a look that could have stripped flesh from bone. The big guy stood his ground and said nothing, but I suspect the look that passed between them was far more meaningful than any spoken words could be.

  I didn’t realize Katja had been invited to join our happy little trio until Gabriel turned and spoke to her. “You I will deal with later,” he snarled in a voice unlike anything I had heard before. Viciously cold and violently ruthless, it formed a hard ball in the pit of my stomach.

  “Why?” she snarled back, her own voice just as callous. “What does she have that you would put—a human—before me?”

  I had to hand it to Katja, if she was going down, it would be spitting and fighting all the way. Incredibly stupid, but the girl—vampire—had some balls taking on Gabriel. I guess she figured she had nothing left to lose. Having already screwed up royally, her best chance was to brawl her way out of the situation.

  A blur of movement made me suck in a breath, and the next thing I knew, Katja was halfway up the wall, with Gabriel’s hand at her throat. She struggled, punching ineffectually at his arm, and I saw fear—real fear—in her eyes.

  “Rowan is my Promise,” he growled in a voice I didn’t think would register as human. “She is bound to me in ways you cannot begin to understand. She is all that I desire, everything I need, and all that you can never be.”

  I began to shake; only I couldn’t say if my reaction was from horror or delight at this public declaration. But I wasn’t the only one affected. Katja was also trembling, but in her case it was easy to tell why. Screaming like a banshee, she redoubled her efforts to free herself from Gabriel’s hold. Lashing out with both hands and feet, she punched and kicked and twisted her body into a wild frenzy. Her hair whipped around her as she snapped and snarled. I gasped aloud as her fangs dropped and she tried to strike Gabriel’s hand, unsuccessfully. The hold around her neck tightened, temporarily cutting off her air supply.

  “Enough!” Gabriel boomed.

  His voice was a warning, and Aleksei smoothly moved to one side, taking me with him, as Katja flew past us. With what appeared to be no more effort than a mere flick of his wrist, Gabriel hurled her down the hall. Katja hit the far wall, crashing face-first to the floor.

  It’s a horrible thing to admit, but I felt absolutely no pity for her. She had brought this on herself. I suspected she’d known all along what Gabriel’s reaction would be but had seriously underestimated the depth of his rage. I don’t think she ever considered it might turn back on her. A serious miscalculation, and one that Vladimir had warned her of.

  Slowly she struggled to her feet, her left arm hanging at an unnatural angle and her right knee already ballooning to twice its normal size. Her eyes blazed with a cold fury, one aimed solely at me. With a cry of what could have been pain, she turned and scrambled away as if her life depended on it. I wasn’t so sure it didn’t. Neither Gabriel nor Aleksei made a move to stop her.

  “Tell me you didn’t know,” Gabriel growled, fixing his gaze on my newly acquired bodyguard.

  I couldn’t see the expression on Aleksei’s face, but I could feel the tension drain out of him.

  I watched Gabriel visibly relax, and he apologized. “I’m sorry, Aleksei. Of course Katja would not have confided in you . . . not about this.”

  “Not about anything that involved Rowan,” the big guy rumbled quietly above my head.

  For the next few moments, the only sound I could hear was my own breathing. My heart rate was beginning to slow, making it a little easier to suck in air.

  “Rowan?” Gabriel held out his hand to me, his voice returning to the silky whisper I loved. It swept away the fear inside me and allowed an all too familiar quiver to take its place. I hated myself for responding to him so easily.

  Aleksei loosened his hold on me, and thankfully, my knees locked into place and kept me standing. I was lost, completely and utterly defeated. The big Russian, who I was certain liked me a little, would not protect me. He couldn’t. Smarter than Katja, he was not about to cross Gabriel and certainly not for me. His loyalty would never be brought into question. Pushing off from him, I managed a wavering step forward. My knees held.

  “Rowan?”

  Gabriel’s hand was still outstretched as he waited for me to place my fingers in his palm so he could pull me to him and fold his arms around me. And I wanted him to—dear God, how I wanted him to!

  It took all I had to refuse him.

  Smoothing a hand over my hair, I tugged on the bottom of my shirt, pulling it down where it was rucked up. I turned my back on him deliberately, focusing on Aleksei, who had moved so he was now blocking my way past him.

  “If you don’t mind, Aleksei, I would really like to go home.” My voice was a pale shade of hysteria, and I didn’t know if I was breaking vampire protocol by addressing him directly in front of Gabriel.

  I didn’t much care.

  A part of me knew I should be grateful for his presence. If he hadn’t followed Katja, then I would be alone with Gabriel right now, and who could say what would happen. But all I could focus on was the fact that he was standing between me and the other end of the hall. His eyes flickered over my head, engaged in silent communication with Gabriel.

  “Come, I will take you home,” Aleksei said with a curt nod.

  That hadn’t been my intention. Right now I needed to put a whole lot of distance between myself and Gabriel—and anyone associated with this house.

  “If you could just get me to a phone, I can call a cab,” I said stiffly.

  Squaring my shoulders, I managed to take another half-dozen steps before my body decided its next stop was a ride on the Oblivion Express. My knees, which had been doing a fabulous job, gave way.

  It wasn’t Aleksei but Gabriel who caught me before I hit the ground. Holding me in his arms, he cradled me against him; as I came to a little, I realized I was pushing a clenched fist against his hard chest. Ignoring my effort, Gabriel simply pulled me closer, knowing that in his arms was exactly where I wanted to be.

  Involuntarily I turned my face into his neck, breathing in his scent as I felt the warmth of his skin beneath my hands. My body surged at the contact, betraying me again. How could I be so weak? How could I still hunger for him, be willing to give myself to him, when I knew what he was, had witnessed it with my own eyes?

  Vampire!

  Had Katja been correct in prophesying that I would think twice about inviting him into my bed once I knew the truth? I told myself he was a monster, the foulest and most reprehensible of predators. T
he very worst of nightmares come to life, and I was nothing but prey. But that was my head talking. My heart didn’t care.

  As if sensing my emotional uncertainty, Gabriel pressed his lips against my forehead, igniting an electrifying pulse that swept through me, destroying the last of my token resistance. I ached for him—sweet Jesus, how I ached for him!

  And he knew it.

  As he brushed his lips over mine, I felt the velvet softness of his mouth caressing me while a voice spoke in my head.

  You are a Vampire’s Promise . . . given by word . . . accepted by deed . . . bound by ritual to keep safe that which has been surrendered . . .

  Surrendered? What had been surrendered—and by whom?

  I wanted answers, but my brain decided it needed more time to deal with this unexpected ripple in my reality. A ripple it could deal with far more efficiently without my conscious help. Before I realized what was happening, my ticket had been punched and I was rolling out the station heading for La-La Land.

  Oh good. Perhaps the answers were waiting for me there.

  To be continued . . .

  CHAPTER 1

  There are some people who will tell you that if you fall in a dream it’s a bad thing. I’m not talking about a fall because you’ve twisted your knee or turned your ankle. I mean taking a dive off a high-rise building, or stepping into an open elevator shaft on the twenty-fifth floor. The kind of descent that pretty much guarantees if you do reach the bottom, you’re not going to walk away. Hell, you’re not even going to get up. And when you step over that ledge you’re filled with absolute terror, because there’s no way you can change the outcome.

  And these people, whoever they are, will tell you that if you actually do reach the bottom in your dream, then in the waking world, you’re dead.

  Really? How the fuck would anyone know?

  I’ve had a few nightmares where I’ve fallen, and it’s a truly horrible sensation. I always wake up just as I’m going into free fall, with my stomach now behind my rib cage and my heart in my throat. I feel helpless and panicky all at the same time, and my limbs tremble as I try to catch my breath. But I’ve never reached bottom.

  At least not yet.

  I can’t say for sure that I was dreaming about falling, but I woke in the grip of the same kind of anxiety. Soaked in perspiration, my heart was pounding so hard I had to have internal bruising. Tendrils of hair stuck to my neck and cheek, and the hand I held against my mouth was shaking so hard I almost slapped myself. But at least I wasn’t dead.

  I wasn’t alone either.

  Sitting bolt upright in my bed, I took in a wild gasp of air, and stared at the wicker chair in the corner. Whatever I thought I saw was now gone, leaving behind an empty seat. The only immediate threat to my safety would be getting my foot tangled in the bed covers spilling on the floor.

  I shook my head, which, given the sudden pounding behind my eyes, was a bad idea. Lying back down, I put an arm over my eyes. This had to be the worst hangover ever, easily a hundred times more awful than the one following the puke-fest my best friend Laycee put me through when I turned twenty-one. That particular episode had been bad enough to serve as a dire warning on the pitfalls of drinking tequila, especially when there was a worm in the bottle. Apparently I hadn’t heeded my own advice. So much for good intentions. I’d gotten so drunk, I couldn’t even remember drinking!

  My tongue felt thick and fuzzy, and the nasty taste in my mouth said there was a good possibility I might have licked the living room carpet at some point. I swallowed, a tentative action that had my throat screaming and seemed to confirm the carpet-licking theory. Whatever I’d done, it was way worse than anything that had happened the night I celebrated my legal status.

  Raising my arm, I opened my eyes a fraction and focused on the square of pale light dancing across the ceiling. It stretched almost to the far wall, which meant the sun was heading for the horizon, and I’d been asleep for most of the day. Of course that might not be so long, depending on when I’d actually made it to bed.

  In an effort to minimize the sloshing of my brain against the inside of my skull, I checked the clock on the bedside table. The bright red display read 5:05, and the small dot in the upper corner said it was definitely p.m. Yep, I’d slept all day, which only partially explained why I felt like shit. The rest of the blame was going squarely on the shoulders of Jose Cuervo and whoever he’d brought with him.

  Dear God, please don’t let me have done anything embarrassing, but if I did, don’t let it be posted on Facebook.

  The haze fogging my brain started to lift, and in its wake I was bombarded with a series of weird, fragmented images. Any hope of being allowed to recall the events of the last twenty-four hours in a manageable dose was blown right out the water. Taking a page from the sink-or-swim school of accountability, I got shoved in the deep end as everything came rushing back. Ignoring the pain in my head, I bolted for the bathroom.

  Somewhere between crossing the threshold of my bedroom and falling to my knees before the porcelain goddess, my cerebral cortex exploded into a B-horror movie nightmare. Kind of like Twilight on steroids, but without the generous budget or teenage cast. As I bent over the toilet, it took a little while for my brain to remember I’d already expelled the contents of my stomach several hours before. If I continued to dry-heave, I was going to rupture something.

  Slowly I got to my feet and gripped the edge of the bathroom sink with both hands. The face looking back at me in the mirror almost had me falling down again.

  Jesus H. Christ—was that me?

  I’d aged ten years overnight. Forget about getting wasted on wormy tequila; I looked like I needed a hospital bed. And a machine that gave a reassuring beep so I would know I was still alive. My face was drained of all color. Even my sun-kissed freckles looked washed out. Dark circles ringed my eyes, and there was something white and crusty caked in the corner of my mouth.

  The woman in the mirror stared back at me with accusing eyes. How could you not have known? she demanded in a shrill voice.

  I wasn’t ill, and I most definitely was not hung over. It was much worse than that. Panic now threaded through me. Like a wisp of smoke that turns into a flame that becomes a fire, it threatened to run out of control. I took a step back, hitting my heel on the base of the bathtub. A shower seemed like a good idea. Pulling back the curtain, I stepped into the tub and used both hands to turn the faucet on. With my face upturned, I let the water wash over me, sluicing away my panic. A numbness took its place, and leaning my forehead against the fiberglass wall, I gave my aching body over to the shower’s pulsating spray. It wasn’t until I tasted salt on my lips that I realized I was crying. I didn’t fight it. Instead I shut down what remained of my rational thought process and let the tears flow. God knows I was overdue for a sob fest.

  I have no idea how long I remained standing in the bathtub. I wasn’t consciously aware that the water temperature had changed from warm to freezing until the sound of my chattering teeth forced common sense to prevail. I was pretty sure that, in all the years of its existence, this was the first time the hot water tank had ever been emptied. Wearily, I turned the faucet off and stepped out of the tub.

  I was naked. I didn’t remember taking off my underwear, but obviously I had because my bra and panties lay in a wet pile in the bottom of the tub. Just as well, really, because my fingers were now so cold I doubt I could have managed the intricacies involved in unhooking a bra. I wrapped a towel around me, tucking the end between my breasts. Dealing with my hair was going to take more effort than I currently possessed, so I simply ignored it. If I couldn’t comb the tangles out later, then I’d cut them out. Satisfied with my problem-solving skills, I shambled back to my bedroom.

  I was in shock. I knew this because my body’s physical response was eerily reminiscent of my reaction on hearing my dad had died. The state trooper who’d been with me at the time had told me I was in shock. I had all the symptoms typical of a traumatized condit
ion. Chills, erratic breathing, clammy skin. Who was I to argue with a state trooper?

  My core temperature, already lowered by the cold shower, fell a little further, and I began to shake as if I was having a seizure. Curling up in a ball, I hugged my knees to my chest, and waited for the spasms to pass.

  My boyfriend is a vampire.

  Oh . . . fuck . . .

  Carla Smith—Biography

  Carla owes her love of literature to her mother, who, after catching her pre-teen daughter reading by flashlight beneath the bed covers, calmly replaced the romance book she had “borrowed” with one that was far less risqué and much more appropriate. Carla was encouraged to include different genres in her reading tastes, and romance—paranormal romance, in particular—has always been her first love.

  Born and raised in England, she now makes her home in South Carolina, where she lives with her wonderfully supportive husband, awesome son, and a canine critique group (if tails aren’t wagging, then the story isn’t working). When not writing, she can usually be found in the kitchen trying out any recipe that calls for rhubarb, working on her latest tapestry project, or playing catch-up with her reading list.

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  Copyright © 2014 by Carla Susan Smith

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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  First Electronic Edition: June 2014