“My turn,” she whispered and nuzzled into his neck. She opened her mouth, and as her teeth touched his throat, Xander suddenly recoiled. He scrambled off of her, removing himself from her and leaving her suddenly, achingly empty.
“What the hell are you doing?” Xander yelled, almost falling off the corner of the bed.
“Don’t worry,” Allison said, sitting up and starting to crawl towards him. “I want this.”
“No!” Xander said, quickly standing up and backing away. “I don’t!”
Allison froze in the center of the bed, feeling embarrassed and exposed. She grabbed the sheets and wrapped them around herself. Before she could say anything, Xander continued:
“This is not for you, Allison,” he said. He paused for a long moment, then added, “At least not yet.”
“But why?” she asked, tears welling up in her eyes. “I want us to be together, and this is the best way.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Xander said. “This is not easy. This is not romantic. This is not what I want for you.”
Allison curled up deeper into the sheets, then rolled over on the bed, turning her back to him.
“I can’t lose you again,” she said softly, fighting back the tears. “And if you stay like this, and I continue to age, I will lose you again.” Then, she looked back at him. “And you’ll lose me.”
Xander stayed against the wall. He shook his head. “It’s too soon.”
Allison turned away again. “You may have thousands of years to wait, but I can’t.”
Xander suddenly understood. He nodded and walked over to the bed. Sitting down next to her, he put his hand on her shoulder. “Anton?”
Allison nodded. “It never hit me until just now. He lost track counting his age at a thousand years. If you live as long as him, I’ll be dead and gone for most of your life. And I don’t want to be away from you like that.”
Xander softly rubbed her shoulder. “You won’t. Trust me.”
Allison finally sat up and looked at Xander. He took her hands.
“As new as this is to you, it’s almost as new to me,” Xander said. “I love you, Allison, more than anything else in this world. But I don’t even know what all of this means. I know it was a shock today, meeting with Anton. And I’m not making excuses for him. But I don’t want to expose you to more of this until I know this is safe. I can’t be responsible for you turning into someone like him.”
“I won’t,” Allison said, leaning in and laying her head on his chest. “I promise.”
“You don’t know that.”
“But what if I die?”
“Don’t say that. You won’t.”
Allison looked up at him and said, “You don’t know that. You don’t know what’s out there for me. I know that if I die like this, I’ll just die. But if I have some of your blood in my system...”
A look of realization came across Xander’s face. “I understand now.”
She nodded.
Xander thought for a moment, then said, “I never thought of it that way.”
“I’m not even talking about being killed by a vampire, Xander,” Allison said. “What if I get shot on duty, or if I get hit by a bus. I don’t want to leave you.”
Xander smiled and touched her face. “Let me think about it.”
Allison continued, “Even if you don’t turn me by killing me, if I just have some of your blood in my system all the time, I could be safe from dying completely. Just let me feed on you now and then.”
Allison leaned in to kiss him, and Xander held up a finger to her lips, stopping her. “Not today,” he said. “I’m not sure I’m ready for that. But soon. I promise.”
Allison sighed and laid her head back on his chest. That was the most she could hope for at this point, she realized.
A moment later, Allison and Xander laid down on the sheets. The time for passion had passed, but they lay in an embrace until peaceful sleep came over them.
CHAPTER 20
Time seemed to jump ahead for Allison. She slept so deeply that she didn’t even remember Xander getting up and leaving as dawn threatened to break. She only regained consciousness as the sun’s rays were coming in low outside her window. She had checked her phone immediately after waking. No messages, but it was close to 4 o’clock. After getting over the initial shock from sleeping as long as she had, she rushed out of bed to get dressed. She wanted to stop by the police station before dark and pick up a few things.
When she did arrive at work, she sifted through new cases. Because Ed Saunders had been caught and killed, the missing persons cases he was associated with were being closed. Of course, Allison knew better.
It was no use digging through the old case files. She was on the lookout for new ones. And while brand new missing persons cases wouldn’t start cycling through the system for another week or so, she did a quick scan for some more suspicions.
Soon, she found it: another dead body. This one was hidden far better than the others had been. It only came in the night before, and there was a cursory investigation. However, one look at the information told Allison that it was the same killer.
There was a lot that was different about the case. The body was dumped in a different location, this time in the midst of the Cuyahoga River. The medical examiner was still working on it, but there appeared to be no evidence of blood in the body. The department might pass that off as the body bleeding out from its wounds before and after being dumped, and the body’s poor condition – a result of being fed on by fish and other scavengers on the riverbank – made a lot of information hard to identify. However, Allison was certain this was connected. She made sure to copy down all the relevant information so she could run it through Georgia to see if there was another one of those Kevin Bacon connections to Ed Saunders, or even Anton Leigh.
Though she only turned up one lead, it was a time-consuming task. While Allison had gotten to the station before dark, the sun had long since set by the time she left. It was after the business day, and this area of Cleveland cleared out quickly once rush hour started. Still, this wasn’t the first time Allison had left work late under the cover of night. Walking through a semi-deserted parking garage was nothing new, and it didn’t hurt that she had her sidearm with her. Allison knew how to take care of herself.
However, as good as her instincts were, and as good as she was at defending herself, Allison was unprepared for an unconventional attack from above.
Allison had reached her car and popped the trunk. Just as she was sliding her tote bag into the trunk, a huge body wrapped in a dark coat fell from the ceiling onto the car.
Allison screamed and scrambled backwards. She quickly reached to her belt and drew her gun. The figure in front of her landed on the trunk itself, but the tote bag was on top of the latch, so the trunk lid simply bounced back up, knocking the figure backwards onto the top of her car. She heard an inhuman scream and a thud as the body rolled to the passenger’s side and landed on the pavement.
“Hands up!” Allison yelled, but the figure did not stand. She could hear it slowly moving across the ground. And she could hear it breathing... wheezing and sniveling, like a rabid dog.
“Show yourself!” she yelled. “Or I’ll start shooting!”
More sniveling and scraping on the ground.
“I know what you are,” Allison said through her teeth. “You know I know what you are. And you know I’ll start shooting before I arrest you.”
The sniveling and scraping stopped. Allison slowly moved to the right, keeping her eye on the shadows by the car. She felt a wetness on her upper lip and reached up with her free hand, touching it. She pulled her hand back and saw her fingers coated in deep crimson.
Bastard gave me a bloody nose, she thought and moved more to the right. She could now see the shape within the shadow, but she didn’t have the best shot. The more she moved to the right, the more it cowered into the shadow of her car.
Allison considered movi
ng more to the side for a good shot, but thought better of it. She didn’t want to risk hitting a tire or sending a bullet through her radiator. If she needed to make a quick getaway, this car was going to be her best bet.
So she fired. No more warning. Not for vampires, at least. Allison shot directly into the shadow, and she heard the bullet strike home with a soft thud. A moment later, the inhuman scream came again, and the shadow seemed to melt into the very air. It moved impossibly fast, darting back and forth before coming face-to-face with her. Before she could fire again, the Thing had clamped one bony hand around her weapon. The other latched around her throat with incredible strength.
Allison tried to scream, but her throat was too restricted. She tried to fire the gun, but the Thing’s hand squeezed it so hard the gun slipped out. A sharp pop came from her wrist, and pain seized up her arm.
The Thing brought its face close to hers. It was a mad face, not as pathetic as the things that had once attacked her in The Sieve’s lair. This one was not human. It was not a Feeder. This was a full-fledged vampire, if its speed, strength, and invulnerability were to be believed.
But it was different than Xander, obviously. It looked slightly rotten, its skin pale and mottled. Huge fangs sprouted from its mouth in a deathly comical grin.
Then the Thing noticed the blood on her upper lip. It’s eyes glazed over, and she could feel it start to shake. The thing smacked its lips, and its tongue started to flash around in its mouth like an uncontrolled fire hose.
“Just...” the Thing started to say, almost incomprehensible through its massive teeth and darting tongue. “Just a taste...”
It then pulled her close to its face, and as if kissing her, the Thing licked the blood from beneath her nostril.
Almost immediately, its face contorted, and it screamed again. Its grip loosened on both her hand and her neck, and Allison took her chance. She pushed away and fell backwards. As she landed, she saw the Thing doubled over on the pavement, coughing and vomiting, convulsing wildly.
Allison had no idea what caused this reaction, but she didn’t question it. Her hands wildly searched in her pockets for anything that might work as a weapon. Digging through her jacket pockets, she tossed out tissues, a box of Tic-Tacs, loose change, and other items.
Then her hand found something. In her inner jacket pocket, she found two long sticks: pencils she had taken with her from work.
I hope this works, she thought and yanked them both from her pocket. Then, with a pencil in each hand, the sharp business end pointing towards the vomiting thing in front of her, Allison charged. She screamed like a banshee, catching the Thing off-guard. It looked up in surprise only a moment before Allison crashed into him, jamming one pencil into its neck and the other dead center in its left eye.
The thing screamed again, even louder than before. It fell to the ground, and Allison tucked so she would roll right over it and landed against her car’s back bumper. She turned to see the Thing writhing on the ground, black blood spewing from its wounds. Allison recoiled in horror.
Then she realized what she had to do. Allison turned around and reached into the trunk of the car. She found a road flare and popped off the top. Striking the surface against the sandpaper cap, the road flare roared to life, spitting out a red-hot tongue of fire.
Allison tossed the road flare at the writhing Thing on the pavement, and it immediately burst into flames, like a seasoned fire log tossed in a fireplace. Black, acrid smoke billowed up from it, and the screams from within grew even louder.
Allison did not wait for the Thing to completely die. There might be more of them. Instead, she slammed her trunk lid and scrambled into the car to drive away.
CHAPTER 21
Anton Leigh woke up much later than usual. He considered that odd but not necessarily a cause for alarm. After all, his Feeders were not always the most responsible people to work with. That made them appealing at times, but it was a source of endless frustration. He knew he would have to discipline them for letting him miss the sunset.
“Jennifer?” Anton called out as he rose from his basement and started to walk upstairs. She was usually the first to wake him, as she was his favorite. He expected the other two to just wander away one of these days, but he was sure Jennifer would be with him for a long time.
Anton opened the door from the basement and walked through the kitchen of the house. It was silent, again uncharacteristic of his Feeders. This is when he first started to get worried. His heightened senses could detect no movement in the house.
When Anton came around the corner into the sitting room, he saw why. There on the sofa, he saw Jennifer’s body. On the chair next to the sofa, he saw her head.
“Oh, Jennifer,” he said, sadly, kneeling next to her face. Her eyes were slack, and her mouth was half-open, a trickle of blood running down her chin. “Why did you have to kill her?”
“You know why,” a voice came from the corner.
Anton stood up, tears in his eyes. “She was my favorite,” he said.
“You talked to Xander Reese and Allison Pratt,” the figure said from the shadows.
“I didn’t tell them anything, I swear,” Anton said.
“Yes,” the figure said. “You did.”
Anton started to back away. “Nothing they’d figure out,” he said.
“You and your riddles, Amun,” the figure said. “You just can’t help yourself.”
Anton did not know what else to say. He knew what would come next. He also knew that with his more than two thousand years of life on this earth, he had never been very good in a fight. Not against someone like this.
Maybe that was why Anton didn’t even bother to fight back when the figure leapt from the shadows and tore his neck open.
CHAPTER 22
When Allison was half-way home, she looked up in the sky to see a dark figure darting to and fro in the clouds, coming straight at her. She knew immediately that it was Xander. Soon, the shadow in the air followed her car and matched her speed, all the way to the parking lot outside her apartment.
Even before she could get out of her car, Xander landed two feet from her and took her in his arms.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I think I killed it.”
“Was it a Feeder again?”
“No,” Allison said. “This was a vampire. But he wasn’t like you. He looked bad... rotten. Like a monster."
“A newborn,” Xander said. “Newborns look like that until their flesh develops and reacts to the blood. They are like the walking dead. Once the thirst is quenched, the body becomes... well, normal.”
“That’s why he tried to feed,” Allison said.
Xander then pulled her in front of him, examining her neck. He didn’t see the blood on her lip because Allison had wiped it off on the ride home. “He didn’t bit you, did he?”
“No,” she said. “I got a bloody nose, and he tried to lick it off.”
Xander smiled a bit. “He didn’t like it, did he?”
“No,” she said. “That’s how I escaped. It made him violently sick.”
Xander nodded. “That’s because I’ve marked you. Every time I feed on you, a little bit of me enters your system. Vampires don’t like the taste of their own kind, and this makes you taste bad to them. For a newborn with the Thirst, it can have a really bad effect.”
“How did you know to come find me?” Allison asked.
“I could feel it. I knew you were in danger, but I couldn’t get there fast enough,” Xander said. “But you’re safe now.”
“I’m not sure,” Allison said. “I heard on the scanner coming over here that there were at least five other attacks on people like this at the same time. Something just attacked these people and killed them out in the open.”
“Killed them? Or fed on them?”
“The dispatcher didn’t go into that level of detail, Xander,” Allison said. “But they were being called possible homicides.”
&
nbsp; “Do you know who they were?”
“No,” Allison said. However, she was able to describe the people to him based on the police calls, as well as where they happened. By the time Allison got to the description of the final victim, she saw a look of fear on Xander’s face.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I can’t be sure until we can identify the victims, but they all sound like people I’ve marked,” he replied.
“You marked?” Allison asked. She felt a twinge of jealousy well up inside her as she realized Xander had been feeding on others. Of course, this made sense, considering he never took enough from her that she would become his Feeder. Still, that wasn’t important right now. What was important was what Xander said next:
“Someone is coming after me.”
“And me, too,” Allison replied.
CHAPTER 23
Allison knew that it was actually warmer tonight than it had been the night before, but the air seemed colder to her. As she clung to Xander’s muscular shoulders, dipping and diving through the autumn night air, her cheeks felt the sting of the cold. It may have been a degree or two warmer than before, but the night was more bitter because it was more dangerous.
She and Xander were heading into uncharted territory for their relationship, and that’s saying a lot considering they had already been through an entire lifetime of adjustments over the past year. As lonely as she had felt after Xander had died, and as confused as she felt when he came back into her life as a vampire, it did not compare to the emptiness she felt with the knowledge that someone wanted them both dead.
Being a cop, she had gotten used to people wanted her dead. That was a hazard of the job. However, most people who wished her ill will – or Xander, when he was still alive and her partner on the force – were predictable. They were those she had sent to jail, or their families. However, these people never acted on their desperate emotions. It was just too damn hard to follow through with the direct assassination of a police detective, especially if they were behind bars.
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