by Eve Paludan
She laughed in delight.
“You don’t need my permission to do what makes you happy.” I moved a dark curl of hair from where it had blown over one eye. “Why do you write vampire romances?”
Her eyes searched mine. “So I won’t forget the moments. So I can relive them: the pleasure, the hope, the joy, even the scary parts. I want to know everything in the supernatural world, Fang. And I want to write it all down. It fills my soul.”
“That’s a lot of soul searching.”
“It’s more like soul finding. Vampirism is not just my obsession. It’s my passion. And unlike most vampires, I love what I am.”
“I love what I am, too.” Especially with you.
“Would you ever wish for some other life?”
“No. But I would change some things if I could.”
“Like what?”
I stopped walking so she did, too.
“Since I became a vampire, I’ve rarely heard the sound of a woman’s laughter. I’d like to hear more laughter like tonight. Yours, especially.”
“I like your laugh, too.” She smiled shyly.
I squeezed her hand a bit and we resumed wading. After a big wave splashed halfway up our clothing, Justine glanced at me with a bright smile. “Does the sea make you feel things?”
“Yeah. Even though I didn’t grow up with it, it makes me feel like a part of something greater than myself.”
“Me, too.”
As we walked, she asked more questions and I gave her answers. It was as if she had a character checklist in her head. But I spoke freely and trusted her not to reduce me to a stereotype in her book.
When we came to the fence where the public beach ended and my enclave’s private beach began, I let go of her hand. “Do you want to go back to my house yet?”
“No, I want to go for a swim.” Before I could blink, she was a blur, shedding her clothes, tucking them under rocks and running into the churning surf.
“Justine, come back! The water’s rough tonight.”
“Come on in, Fang.”
She started swimming out, so I shed my clothes, too, and hid them in the same place.
I ran out after her, gasping as the waves smashed over my head and I lost my footing. I swam, laboring, until I realized I didn’t need to breathe. Having not swum for some time, somehow, my body remembered how to do it and I caught up to her in the waves, matching her stroke for stroke.
“Where are we going?”
“To a little island. I noticed it when Sam and I flew past it. I want to show you how amazing it is.”
I followed her through the cold chop. Sure enough, around the edge of a cove was a small island about the size of a king-size bed. When we got to the rock, I climbed up first and gave her a hand up. “This is what you wanted to show me?”
“It was bigger when I flew over it.”
“The tide is high. Luckily, there’s still something above water.”
She spun around in a circle and pointed toward land. “Okay, now look!”
I saw the shoreline with all of its twinkling lights in beach-facing houses and the cherry-red taillights of backed-up traffic on the PCH. The few stars above us were almost washed out by the light of the moon.
“It is gorgeous,” I said. “Thanks for showing me. Next time, though, I’ll rent a boat. I don’t want to have to claw us out of a shark’s belly.”
“Sharks can’t kill us.”
“Let’s not tempt fate by daring it.”
She plopped herself down on a sandy spot. “I brought you out here so we could have the whole world to ourselves. So we can be us. Without anything to mess it up.”
I put my hands on my hips. “I like it better when it’s my idea to be spontaneous.”
“I hate to tell you this, Fang, but you’re not spontaneous. You’re a plotter and I’m a pantser.”
“Say what?”
“It’s writer’s lingo. It means I write by the seat of my pants. I impulsively go off on tangents in my books and in life. But you plan everything. I bet you even make nerdy to-do lists.”
I laughed. “Shut up!”
“Am I right?”
“Yessss.”
She looked beautiful lying there naked. She wasn’t shy either. “Got any pantser ideas yet?”
I didn’t need to look down at myself. “I think I feel one coming on.”
“Come closer. I need visuals.”
“You’re a writer. Use your imagination.”
“I’m also a woman.”
“I noticed.” When I lay down by her, I knew it was all right to make love to her, that nothing bad was going to happen to us now. We were right for each other and the timing was right, too.
I took my time and kissed her lips, her eyelids, her cheeks and her neck, even the vampire tattoo that she hated. She arched her back and offered up such glorious parts that I wanted to discover them all. Slowly.
As I touched her and kissed her, she inhaled and then sighed so deeply and slowly that I realized she was matching the ebb and flow of the sea. God, I was lost—lost in that resonating matched sighs of her and the tide. No human woman had ever made those sounds.
And then, when I knew she wanted me to, I went lower and lower until her hands were entangled in my wet hair, holding me there to the vulnerable parts of her flesh in a please don’t stop way that I understood.
I stroked her everywhere while I took her with my tongue. She was writhing under me, her fingers twining like living vines in my hair, pulling me in. How soft her white, cold skin and tender flesh felt under my lips. So very soft.
She finally cried my name to the wind and went still. Then, she opened her eyes and looked up at the night sky.
I moved up and kissed her mouth.
“Is that how I taste?” she asked huskily.
“Uh-huh. Like a sugary sea.”
She sat up straight. “Oh, shut up! You just said that because you know I’m going to write it down.”
I laughed because it was true.
She playfully smacked me on the butt. “Your turn.”
“My turn?” I laughed wickedly. “I don’t think so. Your ‘turn’ is far from over, my pretty.”
She smiled and lay back for more. Then she screamed, “Owww!” and knocked me aside to pull a crab off her butt cheek.
I burst into laughter. “I’m sorry I’m laughing—I can’t help it.”
She jumped up, but chuckled. “Look! The tide’s rising even more and we’ve got an army of crabs bearing down on us.”
I jumped up, too, and cupped my man jewels. “Don’t panic, I’m still intact.”
She giggle-snorted out her words. “Look, the little buggers are all around us. They’re coming for us, Fang!”
“Owww!” One of them pinched my little toe. I hopped on one foot, trying to shake it off. “We’re powerful vampires, but a thousand little crabs are gonna own us.”
She laughed even harder as another crab pinched my little toe on my other foot—I gasped in pain and leaped. In midair, I kicked my heels together to get rid of both crabs.
“It’s not funny,” I said.
“Yes, it is.” Now, she was laughing so hard she could hardly talk. “Fang, I’m dying! You look like you’re on Riverdance!”
“Oh, you’ll pay for that! Come on, you!”
We climbed over the rough rocks and went back down into the sea. We swam toward shore, racing each other and laughing like lunatics until a powerful riptide caught us.
As strong as vampires are, the sea is stronger. We had to swim in a long angle to the shoreline to escape the riptide. Luckily, vampires can’t drown. We walked a long way to retrieve our clothes and put them on.
By now, it was raining, a steady pounding that kicked up puffs of sand and got us even sandier and colder.
Laughing, we ran like blurs back to my house. I keyed in the door code and we tumbled in the door, laughing and wet. She looked like a mermaid with her hair hanging in dark, tangled ropes and seaw
eed perched on her head like a crown. I pulled it off and she laughed and pulled some out of my hair, too.
We took a hot shower together, washing each other tenderly. When we got out of the shower, I was out of body wash and our skin was steaming. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen and even though we hadn’t known each other for long, we had been through tough things together that counted more than any elapsed time.
“I’m thirsty,” she said shyly.
“Be right back.”
While she got in bed, I went to get us a blood nightcap from the fridge. It would be fortification for what would be a full night of lovemaking.
I was only gone a couple of minutes. When I re-entered my bedroom with our drinks, she was on her cell phone and to my utter dismay, she was crying. Her copious tears left tracks down her face.
Puzzled, I said her name softly.
She held up an index finger for me not to interrupt.
I nodded and put our drinks on my nightstand. I crawled into bed with her and covered us up, as if that could protect her—and us—from the horrible news that she was apparently getting.
I listened to her accept the news that her sister—her twin sister—was critically injured and that she needed to come to Hawaii. She wrote down a few notes in her spiral writer’s notebook and showed me, so I, too, could know what had happened.
A shark had attacked her sister off the coast of Maui. A week ago, a surfing lesson had turned into a fight for her sister’s life when she had put herself between a tiger shark and one of her young students, saving his life but almost losing her own. One kidney had been chewed up so badly that they had had to remove it. The other was weakened and she was on dialysis, waiting for a donor. Due to their estrangement, her sister hadn’t wanted the hospital to call her, but the bottom line was, she needed a kidney. Fast.
I felt very sad for Justine as she wrote down all of the phone numbers and hospital name and room number. Doctors’ names and prognoses and risk factors. Her sister, Celine, was in the ICU. Not expected to live long unless…
When Justine finally hung up, she looked at me with new tears in her eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Fang. When you went to the kitchen, I saw that I had all these voicemails from a hospital in Hawaii where my sister lives. I had to call back.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“Yes, I do. This was going to be the night that made you and me into an us.”
I brushed her tears away. “It already has, Justine. Until the phone call, this was the happiest night of my life.”
“Mine, too. I want our night back the way it was. I want Celine back the way she was, too. I don’t know what to do, Fang!”
I comforted Justine as best I could.
“It’s my fault for being so cavalier about sharks tonight.”
“That was just a coincidence remark.” I handed her a goblet of blood.
We drank in silence.
“My twin sister is going to die and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
I tried to think of what to do. “Let me make a call, Justine.”
“What?”
“Just what I said.” I called Samantha Moon. In front of Justine, I told Sam the dire situation and asked if she knew anyone who could help.
She did.
Chapter 22
The last of the red sky was receding into the Pacific Ocean.
One minute, I was holding Justine in front of me to watch the green flash. The next, we were in my SUV, heading for Cal State Fullerton.
“Did you call Celine’s nurse and tell her you’re coming?” I asked.
“Yes. I even got to talk to Celine for a minute, but I doubt she believed me. She’s seen me as a vampire and she was terrified.”
“Come now. We’re not that frightening.”
“We are to someone who thinks she needs to wear a silver cross and a garlic necklace. She did everything to protect herself but hire a vampire slayer.”
“That’s pathetic. She’s your sister.”
“I agree. That’s what I told her, too.”
“Vampires are beautiful. Especially you.”
“Thank you, but it’s obvious that you have a type. I resemble Sam. She’s your type, ergo, I’m your type.”
I groaned. “Let’s not forget that you pursued me. You chose me.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“Stop comparing yourself to Sam.”
“It’s hard not to.”
“You’re overthinking things.”
“Probably, but please just tell me this: Did you once have a thing for Sam?”
I didn’t look at her. “She’s with Kingsley.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
At a traffic backup I said, “Sam and I have a long platonic history, and respectful boundaries. Kingsley is my closest guy friend. I would never do anything to hurt either of them.”
She wrung her hands in her lap. “I’m sorry I said that about Sam. I love her to death. My mind is just going in a million directions.”
“Pantser,” I said lightly.
“Plotter.”
I reached over and held her hand because I knew she needed that.
“Do you even know this guy that Sam is sending us to?”
“No, but I trust Sam.”
“With everything?”
“Yes.” I added, “Don’t let jealousy ruin your friendship. Because she wouldn’t.” I let go of her hand and lifted my right arm. “Come here.”
After that, we didn’t talk. She just cuddled up to me while I drove.
It took forever to get there. I had mixed feelings about that because I wished I could extend our time together. But Celine’s life was burning away.
We went to the third floor of the Cal State Fullerton Library to see Sam’s friend, the occult librarian who was also an alchemist. We wandered around in circles until we saw a sign that read: Occult Room.
Funny thing, I thought we’d passed this wall before, and there hadn’t been an opening in it. But now, there was. Just as Sam had warned us, it was difficult to find. It had to be an optical illusion. However, nothing could have convinced me that a door hadn’t just suddenly appeared out of thin air. But it had.
Archibald Maximus, the alchemist, sat across a counter from us. A man with bright green eyes and a pointy beard, he reminded me of Ian Somerhalder from Vampire Diaries.
I introduced us.
Maximus glanced from me to her. “Friends of Sam’s are welcome here—she explained the situation. Justine wants to turn mortal so she can give her identical twin a kidney?”
“That’s right,” Justine said.
Maximus blinked his bright eyes that seemed to glow with an inner light. “Justine, you know that you could just make your sister into a vampire, right?”
“She loathes what I am—there’s no way she would agree to become a vampire, not even to save her own life.”
“But you enjoy being a vampire?”
“I love it. But if Celine died and I could have done something to save her, but didn’t, I would never forgive myself.”
He nodded. “When are they expecting you to come and prep for the transplant?”
“Every day, she gets weaker, so the sooner, the better. Day after tomorrow at the latest.”
“I didn’t know it was so soon.” I already felt a terrified pang that she was leaving, but swallowed any protests that might have kept her with me if I’d voiced them. I asked Maximus, “Can you really turn her mortal?”
“Yes. But I’ll need to work almost all night. So make yourselves comfortable and don’t come into my lab. I’ll come out when it’s ready.”
“You have a lab here?” I asked.
“A good one, too.” His bright eyes measured me.
“Did you have a question for me?”
“Yes, Fang. I have just enough materials to make two vampires into two mortals. Do you want me to change you, too, so you and Justine can be together? As mortals?”
His offer caught me by surprise, but no matter how I felt about Justine, I couldn’t lose the life that I’d built as a vampire.
I turned to Justine. “I want to stay a vampire. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Even if you’d said yes, I wouldn’t let you give up what you are.”
“You’re going to be a great mortal. Go save your sis and do sisterly things in the sun.”
She nodded.
I looked at Maximus. “Thanks for the incredible offer, but I’m going to pass. What else did you want to ask?”
“May I take some of your blood?”
I hesitated. “Sure, but what are you going to do with it?”
“Make Justine a stronger mortal, so the kidney won’t fail.”
“Sam said you were a genius alchemist.”
“I am.” He went in the back and came out with a vacutainer and glass vials. He filled up five of them with my dark-maroon blood.
Maximus said, “I’m going into my lab for a few hours. Sit tight out here and leave the occult books alone. Just think of each one as a Pandora’s box.”
I nodded. “Got it. We’ll just sit here and chill till you’re done.”
“Mr. Maximus?” Justine asked as he was turning away.
“Yes?” He turned back toward us.
“Before you make the cure or whatever you call it, there are two things you might need to know.”
“Yes?”
“For the last few days, I’ve been drinking the blood of a witch.”
His eyebrows cocked up just a hair. “Which witch?”
“Does it matter?”
“I don’t need to know her name. Only if she practices white magic or black magic.”
“White magic,” I informed him.
Maximus nodded. “I’ll make sure to add a special ingredient to the alchemy process. What’s the other thing you wanted to tell me?”
“I’m the kind of vampire who can fly.”
Maximus looked crestfallen. “In that case, I’m short one ingredient.”
Justine cried, “I have to change back to a mortal or my sister will die!”
“Can I help you get the ingredient?” I asked.
“I doubt it.”
