Chapter One

            The first time I encountered my human, he was loading his underwear into a washer in a laundromat down a block from his apartment complex. He was wearing an old, faded T-shirt that sported a Union Jack on the front and a pair of blue jeans that had seen better days. It was evident from his outfit that he desperately needed to do laundry.

He had an unruly mop of wavy blond hair trimmed to the top of his neck and sparkling, thick-lashed gray eyes that flashed whenever he smiled. For a tall man—an inch or two about six feet—he had an effortless grace about him exhibited by athletes, especially swimmers. 

He reminded me of a courtier I knew once in King Louis XIV's court--the dauphin's mistress became too fond of him, so the poor courtier lost his head. It was a rather lovely head.

The human had wide shoulders and a muscled torso that tapered down to slim hips and a tight, rounded ass. All and all, he was an impressive specimen. 

His most arresting feature, however, was his face. He possessed the sharp cheekbones, square jaw, and Roman nose that a sculptor would kill for.  

And he had nice teeth. I was a sucker for nice teeth.

As though he could sense someone staring at him, he looked up from folding his clothes and scanned his surrounding areas. When he found nothing, he shrugged and went back to work. Not that he would have seen me, of course. Perched on the roof of a building across the street, I made sure that the shadows and tree limbs hid me from sight.

“He doesn’t look like your type,” a wry voice remarked behind me.

In reflex, my hand went to the Glock holstered on my hip. Once I recognized the voice, my body relaxed, and I released my breath. “Damn it, Quentin,” I muttered with annoyance. “I could have blown a hole through your stupid head.”

“Lucky for me, you didn’t. I’m quite fond of my stupid head,” he murmured, ambling over to where I was standing. He indicated my blond target with a slight nod. “He hasn’t shaved in days and looks like he shops at the Goodwill. You’ll have to get a tetanus shot after you bite him.”

“Not all of us can afford Armani,” I replied with an offended sniff. “And I have no intention of biting him.”

“It’s not just the Armani, my little finch. You can put a hobo in an Armani, and he would still look like a hobo.” He grinned. “And you do too want to bite him.”

I raised an eyebrow, but shifted my attention back to my target.  The mortal was flirting with a woman who was old enough to be his mother and carried her years on her wrinkled, haggard face. She giggled at something he said, swatted him playfully on the arm, and handed him a cup of what appeared to be fabric softener. 

“Good God, that woman must be at least fifty,” I remarked to Quentin. “Whatever happened to self-preservation and pride? Surely she doesn’t think she has a chance with him!"

“Maybe she wants to jump his bones, just as you obviously do,” Quentin retorted with a wicked gleam in his strange purple eyes. “I see the look of hunger in your eyes, ma cher.”

I threw him a look that would have petrified a lesser being. “You have got to be kidding me. Do you think I’d be stupid enough to get involved with a mortal? I have a reputation to protect!”

And that reputation was sacrosanct. Everyone in our community knew that I never dealt with the arrogant, self-serving meat-puppets unless I absolutely had to. 

Perhaps the reason was just something deeply instilled in me from childhood. I was born a vampire and had never been human. We eat them because they're inferior to us, end of story. 

Humans ate beef and pork, but they never took out their cows and pigs for walks, did they? In short, I avoided humans like the plague until it came time for me to feed.            

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” Quentin said with a trace of amusement. “I didn’t say to set up house with them. Bite them, have sex with them, erase their memories before anyone’s the wiser! You already do the other two, so why not add ‘screw’ to the list.”

Because the other two didn’t involve rolling around on satin sheets with them, giggling and tickling each other like fools, I answered silently. Out loud, I said, “Oh, gross, is that what you do?” When he only shrugged in response, I stared at him in disbelief. “But it just sounds so... sleazy. Like date-rape.”

“Oh come off it, Virgin Mary. Are you bucking for sainthood now?” he said with a snort of disgust. “You have fun, they have fun, and you don’t ever have to worry about them calling you afterward. Anyway, it would probably serve you well to give blondie over there a test drive.”

I slid him a wary glance. “Umm... why would you think that?”

“When was the last time you got laid?”

Hell if I could remember the details, but it was sometime in this century with a silver-eyed French smoothie who possessed the cleverest tongue that I had ever known. It’s a little hazy now, but I seem to recall plenty of liquor and silk scarves. I narrowed my eyes at Quentin. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

“Testy, testy.” He shook his elegant finger in front of my face. “All I’m saying is that pent-up passion is bad for you. You keep all that stuff bottled up, and before you know it, you’re dancing around naked, swishing around some human’s entrails like you’re Ed Gein in a burlesque show.”

I smacked his muscled stomach with the back of my hand. “Thanks for the image.”         

He laughed. “You’re too serious, Yanmei, that’s your problem.” He put an arm around my shoulders and kissed me fondly on the cheek. “Anyway, aren’t you supposed to be at Tyger’s Lounge or something? I seem to recall the Queen giving you a specific order to watch the place.”

“I was just on my way there, actually.” It wasn’t a lie. I really was on my way there until I spotted the blond studmuffin and got distracted... an hour ago.

“Tyger should really drop his habit of pissing off the Queen.”

I nodded in agreement. Tyger Norris, a three-hundred-year-old half-breed who was a nobleman in eighteenth-century England, owned a nightclub in the Gaslamp District. 

The Queen suspected that some of the vamp-wannabes who hung out at his place were actual vampires playing bloodsucking games with the humans, so she ordered me to keep an eye on the place. I joked about burning it all down, so she didn’t have to worry about it anymore. She didn't laugh. She said it would only bring the police to our door, and the community couldn’t afford a bunch of cops asking questions.         

“Callidora thinks he’s bringing too much attention to himself and to us,” I said with a sigh. “Imagine a genuine, honest-to-goodness vampire, owning a club with a vamp motif and real vampires pretending to be humans pretending to be vampires as bartenders and servers." 

Quentin whistled. "Wrap your mind around that." 

"The Queen says she abhors it, but she must tolerate it for some reason. Otherwise, she would have ordered Tyger’s execution by now.”

“I think she has a crush on him, personally.” Quentin glanced at the Blancpain watch on his wrist. The watch, he just had to tell me, cost him thirty thousand euros. “Well, I gotta take down a ghoul in La Jolla. Some idiot half-breed attempted to turn his lover, failed, and voila! A ghoul.”

“You gonna take down the lover, too?"

Quentin's face momentarily darkened. "No. Haven't you heard? We don't kill the offenders anymore, just their ghouls."

I shuddered. Callidora put a strict moratorium on creating fanglings almost two hundred years ago. Each turning needed special dispensation from the council. But now there's this. If we didn't punish the offenders, they would just make more fanglings. Too many things could go wrong during the Rebirth, and when they did, we got ghouls. Shit. “Take care of yourself.”          

He chucked me on the chin. “You, too.” He regarded me thoughtfully for a moment, then added, “But you should heed my advice, kid. Have sex with this human, get him out of your system, and get on with your life. I don’t like the way you’re looking at him. You worry me, boo.”

“Shut up, Quentin.”           

“Why moon over someone like a fool when you could do something about it? It just ain’t healthy. Believe me, I know,” he said with a wink. “Anyway, I’ll see you around.”

I waved my hand dismissively. “Yeah, yeah.”

He laughed and leaped off the roof. Moments later, I heard the sound of a motorcycle engine revving up. I watched Quentin go until I could no longer see the lights of his motorcycle.

 

***

            

 I followed the human home. I didn’t intend to, really. I just found myself doing it without my own conscious permission. 

He had left the laundromat lugging his draw-string laundry bag on his back, and soon I was trailing him like I would any other prey, leaping and scaling the buildings above his head. He stopped in front of a newish apartment building where he inserted his key into the heavy metal gate and let himself in.

A few minutes later, I watched him enter an apartment with a balcony. I leaped for it and landed next to a surfboard. It was a nice balcony where one could see the city lights and the beach, which was just a few blocks away. 

I plastered myself against the wall next to the sliding doors. I observed as he dropped his keys on the counter, his laundry bag on the carpeted floor, and his tall, lean body on an old, but perfectly serviceable velvet sofa that he had probably inherited from his mother or a maiden aunt. With a sigh, he leaned against the cushions, turned on the TV with remote control, and stretched out his legs on an antique coffee table. He closed his eyes.

A mobile phone by his foot trilled, and his eyes snapped open. I dashed back to my hiding place and peeked as he straightened up from the sofa to answer the phone.       

“Hello?” he said groggily. “Oh, hey.” His posture became rigid and a cautious expression entered his eyes. “Of course I didn’t forget your... Carrie, I’m sorry... but I was... I’ve been trying to finish the boards for Jim’s new...  I know, Carrie. I said I’d... Oh, come on, don’t do this again... No, let’s talk about... damn it!“        

He looked at the screen, then chucked the phone on a pile of magazines on the floor. Exhaling harshly, he rubbed one hand over his face, then dragged it through his already unruly hair. Waves of sadness emanated from his body, accompanied by a hint of anger. 

My own chest tightened in response, but I breathed right through it. Empathy wasn’t one of my powers, and I had never been prone to psychoanalyzing myself.

He bolted from the couch and headed for the sliding door. I darted behind a giant potted plant and kept my eye on him as he pushed the door and strode towards the railing to brace his arms on it. 

A strangled cry of frustration came out of him, and he slammed his fist against the bar. My eyes filled with tears and they spilled down my cheeks without my permission. I realized with horror that I could feel what he was feeling... that bitter stab of rejection imbued with vulnerability and despair. I couldn’t understand it, and it scared the shit out of me.

Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. This mortal’s pain, his disappointment, was making it hard for me to breathe. For some reason, I was emotionally—and to some extent, physically—connected to this human, and I had to find out why. Unable to control my body anymore, I found myself drifting towards him and slipping my arms around his waist.

I pressed my face against the warmth of his back and inhaled his clean, masculine scent. He smelled of Ivory soap and Tide. If I could, I would just breathe in his entire essence so he could live inside my body where he would be safe and warm and never get hurt ever again.

He stilled in my arms before he whirled around to face me. Surprise lifted his eyebrows and widened his eyes. "Whoa, who the bloody hell are you? Have you been there all along?"

“I’m here to take care of you." I reached up and put my index finger over his lips. When he tried to turn his head away, I caught his chin in my hand and brought his eyes back to me. “Don’t worry, lover. Everything is going to be just fine.”

“How did you get in?”

“I climbed down from the roof." I stood on the tips of my toes so I could touch my lips to his. “So I could get close to you.” I held his face between my hands and pulled him to me so I could look into his eyes. “You’ll let me take care of you, won’t you, baby?”

The fear and uncertainty disappeared from his gaze, replaced by placid acceptance. “Yes.”

Even after all these years, it still exhilarated me that I could turn my power on with such ease.  With a little smile, some soothing noise, perhaps a harmless suggestion implanted in the target’s mind, he was putty in my hands. 

I ignored the twinge of doubt, that little voice that told me that what I was doing was wrong, and stomped on it until I couldn’t hear it anymore. I could make him forget his pain, even if it was just for a little while, and maybe the heaviness I felt in my heart could go away, too.

I took his hand and led him toward the sliding door, then stopped just outside of it. “Will you invite me in?” I rifled in his brain for his name. “Sebastian?” 

The sobriquet tasted like the sweetest, most delectable confection in my mouth. Seconds after I said it, I could still hear it echoing in my ears. Sebastian. Musical.           

“Yes,” he said. “Please come in.”

I smiled and placed my hands on his granite-hard chest, giving him a little push to the open door, and he moved with me, backing obediently into his apartment. We stopped when the backs of his legs hit the sofa, and I pushed him again, toppling him over. I pounced on him like a cat seeking affection and rubbed my face against the front of his shirt. He was so warm and smelled so good.

“I like you,” I murmured against his lips, tracing his jawline with the tip of my finger.  I was dizzy—no, drunk—with the nearness of him. His presence alone was intoxicating, like the finest French wine. I pressed my breasts against his chest, indulging myself with the feeling of my curves molding to his hardness. “Shall I tell you how much?”

He didn’t answer but continued to stare at me. In the light of his living room, I could see that his eyes weren’t just gray, but had intriguing flecks of blue and green in them.  Gazing into them, I was almost sure I could see the other half of my soul.

I scoffed, cursing myself for my silly, sentimental thoughts. They were just eyes, that’s all. I traced the sharp angles of his face and the bridge of his nose with the ends of my fingers, like a blind woman trying to memorize his features. I bent my head and slowly dragged the tip of my tongue across his lower lip. He did not even blink.           

“I wish you could talk to me, Sebastian,” I whispered, plunging my hand into his soft, silky hair. “I wish you could tell me about yourself. I wish you could tell me about your family and what it was like when you were growing up. I wish you could tell me about your dreams.” 

I had no idea why I would want to know these things about him. I could look inside his head, but I wanted him to tell me. I kissed the tip of his nose. “But you would have to be awake for that, wouldn’t you? And if you were, you’d be frightened of me and tell me to go away.”

What was I doing to this poor man? He wasn’t my toy, wasn’t mine to play with or manipulate. When I hunted to feed, I mesmerized my victims only for a moment and took from them what I needed. Afterward, I erased their memories of the event, so they could go on with the rest of their lives.

But this... I didn’t know what this was, but it was something I had never done before. 

What was it about this particular human that made me want to possess him and make him my own? What was it about him that made me want to take him inside my body and never let him go?

Had I gone mad? I'd known some vampires who went crazy after reaching their five hundredth mark. They realized that they'd been alive for too long and just didn't know what to do with themselves anymore. That was usually when I stepped in and put them out of their misery. I was fifteen hundred years over that mark. Would the Queen send Quentin to do the same to me?

I kissed Sebastian again and moaned against the soft fullness of his lips. Maybe I was just lonely. Lately, I’ve been in a weird funk that I just couldn’t shake. 

 The other day, as I sat in my windowless room having just woken up from a fitful sleep, I wondered why it had never occurred to me to settle down with a full-blooded male and bore his children. As I was born a vampire, my reproductive organs were fully functional, unlike those who were sired. If I mated with another natural-born vampire, I could have children.

I laid awake on my bed for the rest of the daylight hours as I mentally tortured myself for reasons why I never sought a mate. Why had I never attempted to keep a companion for more than a month in my two thousand years? 

My friend Fiona told me it was because I had never fallen in love. Love? Who could choose one person and love him faithfully when one could potentially live forever? And what if a vampire were to fall in love with a human? Humans were fragile and unpredictably delicate.  

The only way I could keep a mortal with me was to turn him, and that was one thing I never wanted to do. I have executed too many half-breeds who found themselves unable to cope with being immortal and went insane because of it.

I returned my attention to the human male lying beneath me and affectionately caressed the strong column of his throat, lowering my head to lick his Adam’s apple. My fangs began to descend from my gums in my excitement to taste his blood. 

I needed to feel his pulse, his life force on my tongue, but at the last second, I backed off. I couldn't do it. I wanted his cooperation. He must look into my eyes and say, “Yes.” That, of course, was something that may never happen if I didn’t put him under a spell.

I grasped him by the neck of his T-shirt and pulled him up with me, propping him against the cushions of his sofa.  As I sat astride him, I showered his eyes, nose, and jaw with kisses. I gazed into his eyes and knew I could never see him again. This was the one human who could become my undoing if I weren’t careful. He could be the end of me.

I shut my own eyes and touched my forehead to his. This could never happen again. I could never hold him like this again and feel his body against mine. I clutched his head to my breasts and buried my hair in his clean-smelling hair. 

“Goodbye, Sebastian,” I whispered into his ear. “Be happy. Live well.”

I reluctantly drew myself away from him and stood up from the sofa. After putting a blanket over him, I kissed his eyes closed, pressed another kiss on his mouth, and ordered him to sleep. When his soft snores began to fill the room, I exited through the sliding glass door and closed it behind me.

When I landed on the ground three stories down, I straightened up with a renewed sense of purpose. After all, when a woman fell in love and had her heart broken all in one night, there was really one thing she could do to shake it off: kick some ass.