Forever Valentine

by Bianca D’Arc

  “You’re allergic to silver?” The idea made Ian pause. Few humans were truly allergic to the precious substance.

  “My skin turns black and a sort of disgusting shade of green. It’s pretty gross, so I steer clear.”

  Curiouser and curiouser, Ian thought carefully to himself. The fair skin, the allergy to silver, preference for working the night shift…all these things suddenly made him suspicious. They brought to mind legends about how once in a very long while, a child might be born of a vampire and a mortal. It wasn’t common at all, but every few hundred years or so, such things did occur.

  The resulting children were often sickly, but usually survived into their thirties, and sometimes had children of their own. Demi-vampir, these oddities lived on the fringes of both worlds, often totally unaware of their connections to the supernatural unless they came into contact with a true vampire who was willing to clue them in.

  Perhaps Jena, or one of her ancestors more likely, was the product of such a union? Then her abilities and proclivities would make a lot more sense. Ian wondered if she could be one of these—the rarest of the rare.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ian sat through the rest of the interminable dinner date, calmly sipping his wine, presenting a tranquil façade to the world while inwardly, he seethed. Dick was really getting on his nerves. The unctuous doctor had more moves than an acrobat, and he tried every last one on Jena. But she was just a little too savvy. She verbally skirted around his glaring innuendo, and avoided his roving footsie with aplomb. Ian silently cheered her on from his ringside seat.

  When it came time to leave, he was right behind them. Oh, most people wouldn’t be aware he followed, but another supernatural being might just ferret him out—if they were really good.

  Ian watched from the bushes at the foot of Jena’s driveway as Dr. Octopus tried to charm his way inside her home. The little bastard would step through that door over Ian’s dead body, and no other way. But he would give Jena a chance to get rid of him in a more reasonable way first.

  Ian didn’t quite understand his own violent response to the other man, but he knew he was far from rational where Jena was concerned. Still, he would try to play by the rules, as long as Dr. Dick didn’t do anything to push Ian over the edge. He wanted so badly to pound the other man’s face into the ground, he knew he had to steer clear if at all possible. Contact between himself and the smaller mortal male could very well be deadly for Dr. Dickhead.

  Ian amused himself thinking up insulting variations of Dick’s name while he waited impatiently for Jena to finally send the jerk on his way. Hey, it was better than ripping the man’s face off. And far less troublesome.

  But what had the world come to when a fearsome, centuries-old vampire had to play schoolyard games in his mind to keep from brutally biting a man he didn’t like at all? Ian shook his head.

  It was because of Jena. Had to be. The woman was driving him crazy. It was as plain and simple as that. Before Jena had come into his life, he had been a mentally balanced, somewhat austere man. Since babysitting for the beautiful doctor, he’d become a salivating, slandering, just downright silly parody of himself.

  Ian grinned in triumph when the sniveling facsimile of a man finally turned away from Jena’s door in defeat. A silent pounding of his fist in the air was Ian’s victory dance. He watched Dick Schmidt back his pompous luxury car out of the driveway, and followed his progress down the dark street until he was out of sight.

  Only then did Ian make his way up to Jena’s door. It was partially open as he knocked, and Jena stood on the other side as if expecting him. Perhaps she was, he thought with an inward quake. Perhaps she was one of the precious few mortals who could detect his kind, even when he wished to remain hidden. Or perhaps—and this was even more frightening—she was the one woman in all the world, and all the centuries, who was destined just for him.

  “Will you invite me in?” Ian’s voice was pitched low, his tone somber.

  Jena knew the vampire had to be formally invited inside her dwelling. It was tradition, and these creatures thrived on tradition, if nothing else. But the question remained in her mind—should she? Should she invite the vampire into her home, breaching the sanctity of her only retreat?

  Could she trust Ian not to take advantage? Could she trust him not to kill her, if for some reason he took it into his mind that she was a threat to his people? That was the crux of the matter right there.

  Jena considered for a long moment before stepping back to make room for him to enter.

  “Please come in, Ian.”

  “You say that with such resignation. As if you’ve been expecting me.”

  Jena shrugged. “I knew from the moment I saw you in that restaurant, you would show up here sooner or later.”

  Ian sighed dramatically. “How the mighty have fallen. I’ve become predictable in my old age.”

  Jena chuckled as he swept past her into the small foyer of her house. He had a quirky sense of humor and it took her by surprise.

  “I’ll grant that you’re probably much older than me, but you give the appearance of being only a few years my senior. So the ‘old age’ thing just won’t work.”

  “Ah, the impertinence of youth.” His eyes sparkled with mischief. “But then what’s an immortal to do?”

  Jena ushered him into the small, heated greenhouse that was attached to the back of her home. It was a refuge in the sheltering greenery of her private backyard. She kept a small wine cooler in the room for when she needed to unwind after a long day—or night—at the hospital. There were also a multitude of candles just waiting to be lit around a small patio set with a table and two chairs.

  “Will you join me in a glass of Beaujolais Nouveau? Can your kind drink that?”

  Ian actually shivered. “It is a delicacy to me. The first wine…the closest thing to sunshine I will ever feel again.”

  Jena was touched by his unexpectedly poetic words as she bent to retrieve a fresh bottle from her private stock in the wine cooler. When she straightened from her task, Ian was already seated, and several of the nearest candles were lit.

  “You move fast,” she nodded toward the flickering tapers.

  “When the need arises.” Ian bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement.

  Smiling, Jena set the wine bottle before him, along with a cork screw. “Will you do the honors?”

  “Gladly.”

  Ian made short work of the wrapper and cork, allowing the wine to breathe a bit while Jena reached behind her for a pair of crystal glasses. He really had impeccable manners, like something right out of the pages of history. But then, that’s essentially what he was. He had lived in gentler times and had the manners to prove it.

  Jena could not let herself forget that regardless how polite he was now, Ian was a cold-blooded killer. Not only had he embraced the darker side of existence when he became a vampire, but the work he did as an enforcer for the vampire hierarchy only honed his deadly skills. It was his job to hunt down rogues among his kind, dispense justice, and protect the secrecy of their existence from all mortals.

  She guessed he had also dealt with other kinds of supernatural beings throughout his many years on earth. Intrigued, she tried to imagine just a little bit of what he had lived through in his centuries. The things he must have seen. The places he must have lived. It boggled the mind.

  “I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that.” Ian’s voice floated from out of the night. The candles were for her benefit, she knew. Vampires could see quite well in the dark.

  “Like what?” She tried to be nonchalant, but it was clear she’d been caught staring.

  Ian poured the wine calmly. “Like you’re wondering just what horrible things I’ve done over the centuries.”

  Damn. “So are you a mind reader as well as a vampire?” Jena lifted the glass and tried to brazen it out.

  “Sometimes. Though it’s more my skill at reading facial expressions and body language than anything psychic.
And you’re wonderfully easy to read, Jena.” He toasted her with his glass.

  “So much for a woman’s air of mystery.”

  Ian drank a small sip from his glass and appeared to truly savor it. The look on his face was that of a man who had touched the sublime. Jena knew the Beaujolais was good. It came from Atticus’ vineyard, after all. Atticus was a vampire who had spent centuries perfecting his vines and his wine making craft.

  “Oh, your mystique is intact, doctor. Never fear.” Ian cradled the glass as if it held the most precious thing in the universe. And for him, perhaps it did.

  Jena’s newly changed friends had told her just a bit about the vampire’s relationship to wine and how alcohol somehow reacted with their body chemistry to heal them. It was about the only thing they could ingest without becoming ill, and it held an almost mystical significance to them. It was their one last link to the sun.

  Her friends wouldn’t tell her much more, but just knowing of the existence of vampires in the world fascinated Jena. It amazed her to think her newly-turned friends would live on long after she was dead. They would remember her and perhaps in that way, she would leave just a little of herself behind.

  Depressing thoughts bothered her more and more often these days. Part of it was seeing her friends’ happiness and wondering how she might find just a small portion of the same before her short time on earth was up.

  They sat quietly for a while in companionable silence while the night wore on. Jena thought of the miserable date she’d just ended and the rotten luck she had with men and with Valentine’s Day in particular. She’d never had a successful date on a Valentine’s Day and thought the holiday was vastly overrated. Jena sighed as she sipped her wine.

  “This whole Valentine’s thing is for suckers.”

  Ian chuckled as he poured more wine for them both.

  “I knew a man once who guarded Valentine in Rome, a thousand years before I was born. Valentine was a humble priest when the emperor outlawed marriage among his young soldiers. Seems he thought single men made better soldiers with no one at home to worry about. Valentine was imprisoned and killed for the crime of marrying off youngsters who had every reason in the world not to marry. Romantic fool that he was, he claimed the only true reason to wed was love.”

  “You’re talking about Saint Valentine?” Again Jena was fascinated by the idea that this man had walked the earth for centuries and had known others who were even more ancient.

  Ian nodded. “Legend has it he wrote the first Valentine note to the daughter of his jailer, a blind girl who befriended him. When she opened his note, God granted her a miracle and she could suddenly see. He’d signed the note simply, ‘Your Valentine’.”

  “That’s such a beautiful story.”

  “My friend often said Valentine would have been tickled to see what’s become of his name and his legend. He was a pious man for all that he enjoyed seeing young love in bloom.”

  “When did he live?"

  Ian shrugged. “Oh, somewhere around 270 A.D., I think.”

  Jena was stunned by the idea. “Just how old are you, Ian?” Her whispered words reached out through the darkness.

  Ian dreaded the question. At no time since his conversion had he felt the weight of his years more acutely than when sitting across from this young, vital woman. But yet, something inside him longed to be open with her, when he hadn’t talked of his past with anyone in decades…perhaps centuries.

  “Not quite that old, Jena. I was born in 1232, or thereabouts. Back then, the common folk didn’t keep such rigorous track of the years as we do now.” He waited, but Jena was silent, which surprised him. She didn’t ask questions about his life, she merely waited, as if prepared to accept whatever he chose to share. Somehow that made it easier. “The Crusades were mostly over by then, but I only realize that now, by virtue of being able to look back at what seemed so important to me at the time, through the lens of history. Even though I knew it was foolhardy, I trained as a knight and followed King Louis—the ninth one—to lay siege to Tunis. Got sick as a dog from some gut rot that was going around.” Ian sipped at his wine, remembering. “Louis actually died from it. To this day, I still think it was sabotage, but we couldn’t prove anything.”

  “So you were still…human then.”

  Ian’s eyes challenged her. “Mortal, you mean? Oh, yes, very much so. I didn’t run into Dom until a year or two later. 1271 was the year I followed Marco Polo and his father to China.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Ian chuckled. Somehow it felt right to be telling her these things that he hadn’t thought of in decades. “Afraid not. I was part of their traveling party. After the failed siege at Tunis, I went to Rome to seek the wisdom of a priest I’d met in my travels who lived there in service to the Pope. He knew the Polos and suggested to them that I might be handy to have along as added protection, I guess. Father Augustus counseled me to meditate on the long journey. He told me I would find my answer in the East. Or that’s what he claimed God had told him. He was a funny old man that way, but back in those days I was inclined to believe when a holy man told me God spoke to him on a regular basis.” Ian shrugged. “Regardless, off I went on the Silk Road to China. And there I met Domitian, the vampire who gave me the blessing and curse of immortality.”

  “But why?”

  Ian sighed heavily. “Who’s to say? Perhaps he was lonely. Dom had traveled the earth since before the time of Christ. He’s the one who knew Valentine. He once told me he’d been a Praetorian Guard during the reign of at least three Caesars. We had Rome in common, though the Rome I knew was much different from the city in which he’d been born.”

  Ian put his half-full glass on the table, his gaze meeting hers. “As to why he changed me? Treachery. Pure and simple. There were factions that didn’t want the Polos to succeed in their business venture, both rivals from their own land and isolationists and political maneuverers in the lands through which we traveled. Some were more violent than others, and as a knight, it was my job to organize a defense and repulse any attacks. It’s what got me killed—or as close as I’ve come in my long life.

  “I’d already become friends with Dom. We met him on the Road and he invited us to stay at his compound while we rested for the next leg of the journey. We’d been staying with him for a few days when the attack came—raiders from the East trying to stop us before we could make it through to the Khan—but we repulsed them. I was gravely wounded in the fighting, though, and taken within Dom’s private home to be treated, but I was too far gone. When Dom saw me, he decided to save me in his own way and made me what I am.”

  “He gave you his blood.” Her tone was solemn, her eyes filled with compassion that was almost his undoing. Ian couldn’t believe he’d told her so much of the past he usually kept well buried. He sighed and picked up the glass once more, twirling it by the stem between his agitated fingers.

  “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to dwell on things better left forgotten,” he said after a significant pause.

  “What happened to Dom?” Her soft voice tempted him.

  “I don’t know, actually. He taught me all I needed to know about my new life. When the Polos continued on their way, I stayed with Dom in his compound. I stayed there for quite a while, in fact, until Dom decided to pick up stakes and move on. When he left, I did too, though traveling was a lot tougher in those days for our kind.”

  “I bet.” Jena chuckled just slightly as she sipped at her wine. “I’m glad he saved you, Ian.” Her tender tone nearly stopped his heart.

  Ian paused, considering his words before speaking. “There are times I wished he’d let me die over the years, but just now, being here with you, it all seems worthwhile.”

  Jena blushed, her vital young blood heating her cheeks and making him salivate in anticipation. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

  “I say that only to you, Jena, because it’s true.” He reached across the small table to grasp her hand, stilling
her nervous movements.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Jena thought absently how different this little tête-à-tête with Ian was when compared to the disastrous date she’d had earlier that night with Dick. For one thing, when Ian grasped her hand, her tummy clenched in anticipation and excitement instead of dread.

  Ian was a man well out of her league and much too dangerous to her heart. How could she even entertain the idea of flirting with him when there was no way she could survive any closer encounter with him without badly bruising—if not breaking—her fragile, mortal heart?

  She knew it was highly unlikely Ian would magically discover she was the one woman in all the world meant just for him. Sure, just that had happened to a few of her closest friends recently, but what were the odds of Jena being yet another match for one of these amazing vampire studs? Not likely. Not likely at all.

  Still, just looking into Ian’s eyes was a pleasure she would remember all her life. When he left, she would pull out the memory of this night and warm herself with the echoes of the fire she saw in his burning gaze. His hand tightened on hers and her nerves erupted with sensation. He was getting too close. It was time to pull back in the name of self-preservation.

  “Don’t think you’re going to sweet talk your way into a blood donation, Ian. I’ve been bitten once, and that was enough.”

  Ian sat back, breaking the contact and pulling his hand away from hers. She missed his touch immediately. His gaze was still hot though, burning over her skin as he considered her.

  “Sebastian told me about it, you know.”

  Oh, God. Jena took a sip of her wine, hoping to cool the flush of embarrassment she knew must be staining her cheeks.

  “You mean you guys bite and tell? Have you no shame?” She hoped he would go with the humor and drop the subject, but somehow she suspected he wouldn’t let her off that easy.