Heavenly Blood (Roseville Vampires, #2)

by Brighton Hill

  “Ah, that’s so cute,” she teased, shaking the box.

  His eyes drifted back to hers and he nodded. A half-smile lifted on his face. But as he passed her the gift, her hand grazed his. Oh, no! There was a cut on his finger—she could smell the blood.

  Suddenly, her body flinched. Her nostrils flared. Oh, God! Quickly, she turned away to hide her face. It was starting to change.

  “Are you okay?” his voice was laced with panic.

  “I’ll do it,” she responded hoarsely, her arms wrapped over her head with the box in hand. At once, she took off running away from Liam and the cheer squad through the trees toward the beach.

  Chapter Two

  That evening after she performed in the competition, not waiting to see if they won or not, Sabine returned home with a bag of live trout that she poured into their aquarium in the kitchen. As she watched the fish explore the glass walls and marbles that lined the bottom, she detected the faint scent of smoke in the mansion.

  In her bare feet, she walked up the dilapidated stairway toward her bedroom, the concrete cool on her toes. Where could that smell be coming from? She wondered as she looked up at the high wooden ceilings that dimmed in the evening light. The rundown oceanfront home was so quiet now. The silence sent a chill up Sabine’s spine. At once, she took her hand gun from her purse.

  Pushing her bedroom door open with a creek, she walked around a Jacuzzi and an old pink sofa and into her walk-in closet where she grabbed her bathing suit. Nervously she changed into the emerald green bikini and ran her long nails through her red hair as she sniffed the air. Emily, Savannah, and Jewel were going surfing after the competition with their brothers Andrew and Logan and her mother and father were out gallivanting around Lincoln Square, so she couldn’t imagine where the odor could be coming from.

  Her heart rate sped up. Hopefully there are no crystal meth addicts in the house lighting up, she thought. Maybe her mother let one of her dealers use the mansion. It would be terrible if her habit hadn’t gone that far. Had it? Her heart tightened at the thought.

  She considered what she should do if someone was in the house. Drug users could be dangerous especially the creepy ones of their kind. If it was a male, he could overpower her. He might do the unthinkable. A lump formed in her throat when she thought of what the last dealer, Harmonious, did to her when she broke up with him after dating for only a short time. He got obsessed with her and she had to run away and hide out for a while, but that was after the damage was already done. After everything that happened, he was the reason she bought the gun.

  Cautiously, she tiptoed through the house, checking each room soundlessly. Every time she looked behind a door, she held her breath. She kept seeing Harmonious’s angular face and red lips that reminded her of blood in her mind. He was in the Trident Court which gave him a lot of power. But it seemed as if nobody was there. And even though the smoke was stronger than ever, there were no signs of a fire.

  But then, she heard something in the backyard. Her breath caught in her throat. It sounded like someone was out there by the swimming pool. Her jaw tightened. Pulling the curtains back just slightly, she peaked out the window, but a palm tree blocked her view.

  She rushed back to her room and threw her clothes back on over her bathing suit. Anxiously, she hurried down the stairs and out the sliding glass doors. Something was not right. Not at all.

  And then she saw him! Adrenaline rushed through her body when she spotted the new next door neighbor, Scratch Morrison, cooking steaks on her decrepit barbeque that she thought was broken. Smoke rose from the meat. That scoundrel! At once, she put the gun back in her purse before he spotted her.

  Her eyebrows furrowed. As she walked up to him, she wanted to slap that smirk off his face. Her heart was pounding way too fast. She glared at him instead, glancing at his bare chest. He had a fluffy white towel wrapped around his waist. Her cheeks grew hot as she pretended not to notice his lean, cut body or the line of fine black hairs curling below his belly button down beneath his towel. When she looked down at his feet, she noticed his toes looked webbed. That shocked her. Only mers had webbed feet which they tried to hide from humans and this boy certainly wasn’t of her kind.

  It looked like he just got out of her swimming pool or maybe the ocean. His body smelled like salt and seaweed with the slightest hint of mint toothpaste, but there was another scent which smelled amazing, but she couldn’t figure out what it was. He had a little blood dripping from the corner of his mouth, giving her the impression that he was cooking his second round. Usually humans didn’t like their meat nearly raw and bloody. She thought only mers and wild animals preferred that.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded, her hands on her hips. Her mind raced to put together all the puzzle pieces.

  He brushed his wet dark hair off his forehead with his fingers and laughed. “Want some?” His voice was playful.

  “No thanks,” she responded angrily, shocked that he had the audacity to cook in her yard without permission. He didn’t have boundaries. Guys like him should die, she thought, agitated that she couldn’t figure him out.

  His devilishly handsome demeanor seemed confident and light. “Oh, that’s right. You’re on a diet.” He looked thoroughly amused as he wiped the blood off his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “I’m not on a diet,” she protested haughtily.

  “Good,” he smiled, showing his perfect white teeth. “I want as much of you as I can get when we do it.”

  Her chin jutted back. “Now that’s never going to happen,” she huffed, tucking a strand of her red hair behind her ear while her other hand sat firmly on her hip.

  “Just you wait.” He stared at her with his sparkling black eyes that were much too intense for a normal boy. Then he slapped the nearly raw, bloody steaks on his plate.

  She tilted her chin up condescendingly motioning at his cheek. “In your dreams, scar face.” She shifted her focus to the sutured cut running across his perfect features. Had he just been in a fight before he came over? It looked like a knife wound.

  “Funny pet name for your boy toy,” he chuckled. “Leave your window open for me tonight.” He looked up at her bedroom window on the second story of her rundown house and walked away with his food and spatula, bouncing to some sort of private jig in his mind.

  As he hopped over the fence, his towel caught on the edge and tore off revealing a tight bare butt. He grabbed the towel confidently with his free hand and threw it over his shoulder as he strutted through the back door of his prime luxury mansion that looked more like a modern castle than a house.

  Sabine gasped. He must have been swimming naked in her pool or maybe it was in the ocean, but still. Of all the nerve! Who the hell did he think he was? Trespassing was against the law. Her mind reeled with ways to get him back, but all she could think about was his naked body. And that pissed her off even more.

  With her enhanced mer vision, Sabine looked up at the windows of Scratch’s three story house and saw the hauntingly beautiful faces of his siblings staring down at her. Something about their cold, empty expressions seemed ominous to her, but she couldn’t figure out why exactly she felt that way.

  Trying to brush off her fury, she hurried back into the house and put her purse and gun on the coffee table next to her Jacuzzi. Stepping out of the bedroom, she locked the door behind her. Her anger was still ever present as she made her way back outside and down the stone stairs past a hedge of tropical flowers and some palm trees, and then out of her backyard onto the sand.

  When she looked back at some other windows of the castle on another floor, she thought she saw Jackson rush past one window to the next in super speed. First, he was watching her from a far window and then a split second later he was looking through another window across the room. That wasn’t even possible. Had she imagined that? Humans aren’t that fast.

  In bewilderment, she threw off her clothes onto the sandy beach, her heart still racing in her chest. At once
, she ran through the waves and dove into the ocean. Nothing made sense. Had she really seen what she thought she saw? She would have to keep an eye on that boy. Maybe he wasn’t just the thug that he seemed. Maybe he was something else entirely.

  The tropical water was cool and sensual on her skin. It felt so good rushing over the gills on the sides of her torso that on land were carefully hidden under an undetectable flap of skin. In some ways it was almost as pleasurable as sex. The ocean was the perfect temperature. The water moving over her webbed toes caused tingling sensations to rush through her body. She was glad, as a mer convert, that her legs didn’t turn into a fish tail as they did for ancient mers. In the sea, her mind started to calm.

  She swam under water out to the coral reefs where she watched the tropical fish swim through the holes in the pink barrier. So many vibrant colors and intriguing shapes. The sea grass was so long and lush. She loved to observe the sea anemones, starfish, and seahorses. After sometime, she swam over to the rock beds and leaned against a boulder with her head just out of the water as she watched the dimming horizon.

  A large black seal climbed up on the rocks some distance behind her. For some time, it stared at the sky too. But then, it started to watch her. When she noticed it, her body shuddered slightly. Animals didn’t usually act like that.

  Brushing away her discomfort, she tried to ignore the beast and forced herself to think about Laurent which was easy and natural to her. Her mind focused on his electric blue eyes. His refined manners. His enchanting voice. If only she could have helped him. If only he would have let her. She started imagining his naked chest against hers, his hands running down her back.

  But, behind her, there was an eerie moaning sound like a wale that startled her out of her thoughts. Then she heard a splash. Turning quickly, she noticed the seal dove back into the ocean and was gone. Her body tensed as she looked out searching the surface for it, but it never showed. Her heart ached.

  As night fell, she began to swim back to shore across the black water. It was nearly silent out except for the sounds of waves rolling on the white sand. The stars were bright overhead in the dark sky. Their reflections sparkled on the water like millions of tiny diamonds. The sight was splendorous.

  When she got to the shore, the sand bit at her ankles as she gathered shells for a necklace she was making. It was easy for her to see in the night. She noticed her clothes were moved. They were across the beach folded in a pile on the stone stairs. With a few pretty shells and a crystal stone in her hand, she ran over the stretch in the dark and grabbed her things. Her teeth clenched at their new scent. The clothes smelled like Scratch.

  The lights were on in her family’s house. Her siblings must have returned. She rushed inside, the concrete floor, rough on her feet. Logan and Andrew were playing their guitars on cushions upon the ground singing about some cute girls at their college. Emily, Savannah, and Jewel were lounging in the living room Jacuzzi talking about a school of tiger sharks they saw in the ocean. And their mother and father, Jane and Steve, were eating at the outdated bar that tilted to one side in its gradual collapse.

  “How was the water?” Jane asked. Her long chestnut hair was in wild disarray, but her blue silk dress lay nicely on her thin body. She looked edgy and nervous again. Her nails were bitten down.

  “It was serene as usual.” Sabine smiled lightly and kissed her mother and father on the cheeks. “I just swam over by the coral reefs.”

  Her father, a handsome one with long strawberry blond hair, grunted without looking up from his dinner plate. He took it personally that his wife was dependent on drugs. His pay was cut back at the lounge where he sang. And he was bitter that the kids got to go to school and recreate while he had to support everyone.

  “We just got a delivery of new clothes and jewels from the family stock,” Jane said excitedly. Her eyes were bulging a little and she kept rubbing her nose. “Too bad we can’t sell the precious stones.” It bothered her that they didn’t own their own things. They were allowances from the Trident Court.

  And those were the trust fund rules and until Jane decided to break her habit, the finances wouldn’t cover their expenses. Everyone in the family knew that if Jane didn’t get her fix, she would lose control and in one of her overwhelming outbursts, she could put everyone under suspicion. They were afraid of careful scrutiny from humans. It was better to give her what she wanted and wait until she was ready to quit.

  Until that day, a lot of their money would continue to go into supporting her habit. They were lucky that the family trust paid the exorbitant property taxes for the house so it didn’t foreclose.

  Sabine hated that Jane was using crystal. It was self-destructive. And it didn’t only affect her—it affected everyone who loved her. A part of Sabine wanted to throw her out of the house. It wasn’t fair how she was destroying their lives.

  But then, she thought about her weaknesses and decided she wasn’t any better. Her hatred for the girls who loved Laurent was as destructive as a drug addiction. Probably, her habits were even worse.

  “Where were you guys?” Sabine asked Logan and Andrew.

  Logan looked up from his guitar. “After we got home from school, we met the girls for surfing and then we went to the caves for dinner.”

  “Oh, I thought that was where you were, but my mind was distracted too much to think it through.”

  Logan and Andrew were similar in appearance in some ways. Like everyone else in the family, they had tropical blue eyes and were tall and fit. And though the textures varied, they both had long, shiny brown hair. The most distinguishing difference in their appearances was that Logan was more muscular than Andrew who was lither. Logan’s face was rounder than Andrew’s whose shape was more oval in structure. And by all standards each one of them was extremely good looking.

  Sabine climbed into the Jacuzzi and chatted with her sisters for a short while about the cheerleading competition. They came in third place. Hollywood High won and Boyton Beach High came in second. Once she was bored with that conversation, she headed up the dilapidated stairs to her bedroom. Remembering what Scratch said, she locked her bedroom windows and closed the sheer curtains. He probably wasn’t serious when he told her to leave the window open, but still, she didn’t want to take any chances.

  It was hot in the room with the windows closed, so she sponged herself off for hours in the bedroom bathtub where she usually slept. Even though the mansion was falling apart, it still offered many luxuries like large Jacuzzis in most of the rooms and big windows with ocean views.

  Some of her body parts must have dosed off. She was in that liquid dreamy state. But at midnight she heard a tap on the window. Her adrenaline rushed while her cheeks grew hot. She shook her legs awake and got out of the tub.

  Hesitantly, she pulled the drapes taking in a deep breath. As she looked out into the blackness of the night, it was difficult for her to exhale as her body tensed up. Nobody was there. Her hands tightened on the window ledge.

  To calm herself, she got her e-reader and turned on her reading light as she climbed back in her makeshift bed. She tried to force herself to make sense of the words on the small screen, but the romance of Wuthering Heights wasn’t catching her attention as it usually did. Her mind kept drifting to other thoughts. Weariness overtook her.

  She dosed off again, but this time it was her head that was asleep. Her dreams were haunting. The curtains in her dark bedroom fluttered lightly in the night breeze. Who opened the window? As she looked over groggily, she noticed Scratch crawling through the opening.

  Her breath deepened. Her heart began to race. Gracefully, he walked over to her. He was standing over her tub now. She didn’t know if she was awake or dreaming. Her emotions were nearly overwhelming. She felt powerless to his machinations.

  Calmly, he gazed at her with his obsidian eyes. The energy connection felt entrancing. To her surprise, he smiled knowingly and lifted her into his arms. What was he thinking? His body felt cold as death
, smooth and rubbery, but she was attracted to him. She found herself unable to resist his advances as he kissed her forehead, her cheek, her neck.

  Suddenly, she awoke in anger. How could she dream about this horrible guy? Fury rose up within her.

  Her skin was too dry. She ran the water in the hot tub and let the cool liquid wash away her rage. Who the hell does he think he is?

  When she got out of the tub, she didn’t bother to dry off or put on a bra, but rather simply threw on a silky dress and knotted some shells in her wet un-brushed hair. Life sucks. Everyone sucks. Soon she would plan a reprieve to California where she could spy on Laurent, so much more fulfilling than trying to read his and everyone else’s minds around him from across the country.

  With that decision, she rushed to school before the others woke to prepare for Emily’s surprise. She was on a detour that she found ludicrous. She couldn’t believe Emily was so into Liam. He was utterly average and normal. She liked him—she really did. A part of her wished she could be attracted to someone predictable and secure like that, but she was not.