“I’ll be fine. I’m strong as a fucking ox, Addy! I can control myself now, you’ll see. I was fine on the plane, at the airport after we landed. I thought five times about draining the taxi driver, and I restrained myself. In case you haven’t figured it out by now, it’s possible I’m not like other vampires. I mean, look at Dane, for fuck’s sake…”
“Dane is a terrible example to use for comparison,” I said.
“Look, Addy, there’s only one thing that causes me to lose control.”
“And what’s that?”
He reached down and swooped me up in his arms.
“Let me show you,” he growled, carrying me to the bedroom.
NINETEEN
THE COLLECTOR
Paranoia was beginning to set in and it was pissing me off. I took a taxi back to my house deep up in the West Hills of Portland, my heart pounding in my chest the closer and closer we got. By the time I was standing in front of my door, I was looking up and down the street like a schizophrenic.
The Council was not to be underestimated.
I knew they’d be looking for me and they had members in almost every city, waiting at their beck and call to perform any duties necessary at the drop of a hat. I was hoping I’d make it back here before they did, so I could collect a few things and then be on my way.
Once I’d left the island, my chances of staying in this beautiful house that my doctor’s salary had afforded me were gone. I unlocked the door quietly, listening for any sounds of life.
“Maybe I lucked out,” I murmured to myself as I walked in. I took a quick look around, admiring the antique furnishings and expensive art I’d lovingly collected over the years as Dr. Dane Benjamin.
Now, I’d need to be someone else.
But first, I needed cash. I ran back to my bedroom and unlocked the safe I’d had installed behind a small Picasso that had cost a small fortune.
Everything was waiting just as I’d left it - small stacks of cash were still neatly bound next to several small gold bars and a tiny black velvet pouch full of loose, sparkling diamonds. A new passport and Oregon driver’s license that I’d bought years ago was waiting next to the diamonds. I reached into my back pocket, pulling out Dane Benjamin’s passport and license and threw them in the empty safe, replacing the new ones and shoving my wallet back in my pocket.
The cash and gold and diamonds fit nicely in a duffel bag I retrieved from the closet. I zipped it shut and threw it over my shoulder as I headed towards the kitchen, grabbing the Picasso as I went.
I opened the kitchen cabinet and smiled at my perfectly lined up stash. I’d organized the bottles by blood type and I took a bottle of A and cracked the seal on it, bringing the glass bottle to my lips and letting the sweet elixir pour down my throat.
“Delicious,” I said to the empty room after I finished the entire bottle, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. I grabbed a few shopping bags and began placing the bottles in them until they were full. I left everything on the counter and returned to the bedroom, pulling a large, wheeled suitcase from the top shelf of the closet.
I packed lightly, leaving most of my formal clothes hanging in the closet. Besides jeans and t-shirts, I took two nice suits, just in case I needed them. Selecting my nicest pair of Italian leather loafers and a pair of sturdy hiking boots from my shoe collection, I placed them in the suitcase and zipped it up.
Everything ahead of me was one big unknown and I wanted to be prepared for any situation.
Mainly, I knew I’d be doing some unusual things to keep myself fed, and I don’t know why, but the blood of aristocrats tasted a lot better than the blood of peasants.
By keeping those suits, I was planning on dressing for the job I wanted, you might say…
I put all the bags in the trunk of my Mercedes parked in the garage and went back inside the house, taking one last look around at the home I’d built the last few years.
I’d been Dr. Dane Benjamin, heart surgeon at OHSU for the last ten years. Before that, I’d been Dr. Stewart Hollis at the University of Miami Hospital for twenty years. I was a damned good surgeon and I did my best every time I stepped into an operating room. Sure, I enjoyed the benefits the hospital provided, but I was careful not to get caught and not to indulge too greedily.
It was easy to transition from one identity to another when you had the Council helping you. They had vampires all over the place — in human resources departments, headhunters, DMV’s and social security offices, every major embassy and state department, even police officers and lawyers and judges.
When it was time for you to move on from your job, because the humans were noticing you’d been there a little too long and hadn’t really aged, or even if you screwed up a little, they were there for you.
Maybe you got fired or found yourself in a bad relationship. Maybe you did something that put you at risk of being discovered for who you really were, putting all of us at risk. Whatever the issue, if you reached out to the Council, as you were expected to, then they’d help.
As long as you did your part and contributed to society in a productive manner, they were there for you. They went beyond what you might imagine, even. That’s why they’d created the sanctuary for us. They recognized the darkest part of who we were, and accepted it.
Gave us a place to go to relieve ourselves.
But if you fucked up…
Well, that was a different story.
If you fucked up, you found yourself doing exactly what I was doing now. Looking back at your life and realizing how easy you had it. Looking back with longing and despair and anger that you had to let it all go.
I couldn’t just start over, not in any easy way.
I couldn’t reach out for help.
Of course, the Council hadn’t always been there. I’d gone hundreds of years without relying on them. That’s why I had the spare passport and ID, all the cash and gold. With the way that I lived on the edge of temptation, I knew I might need them someday.
I guess that day is now.
I suppose I’ve gotten spoiled lately, though. They made everything so easy.
But, fuck them.
I lived without them before, and I can do it again. As long as I stayed out of sight, stayed underground without them finding me, I would get along just fine.
I took one last look around and went back to the garage. Quickly, I changed the license plates on my car to spare ones I’d acquired should this very scenario arise, at the same time I’d acquired the passport. I mentally patted myself on the back for being slightly prepared.
All I needed to do was lock up the house, get in my car and drive away.
The world was waiting…
The new me was waiting…
My future was waiting…
I pushed away the voice in my head that reminded me that the Council was also waiting.
Sliding behind the wheel, I pressed the button on the garage door opener and squinted my eyes as the sunlight poured in. I reached for my sunglasses, putting them on as I pulled out of the garage. I stopped in front of my house, looking up at it one last time and taking a deep breath.
“Goodbye, Dane Benjamin, you bloody bastard,” I whispered, as I put the Mercedes in gear and drove away from my past.
TWENTY
LEO
“Are you sure I can’t get a sunburn?” I asked Addy, as we sat in her backyard the next day, the early afternoon sun pouring down on us. It was a stark contrast from yesterday’s gloom, the perfect representation of Oregon weather. I knew the sun was only making a brief appearance and I was doing what most Oregonians did when the sun came out. I was worshipping it, and hoping it didn’t burn the hell out of my pasty skin at the same time.
“Nope,” Addy said. “Enjoy it as much as you want.”
Quackers was snuggling in my lap, finally calming down from the absolute freak-out he’d done when Addy had brought him home from her friend’s house. We were sitting in the backyard, talking quietly as I aske
d her a million questions now that we’d had some time to unwind.
And by unwind, I mean make love until we’d fallen asleep from exhaustion and then woken up and started all over again. I still couldn’t get enough of her and I was thankful she hadn’t said no once.
“So, nothing I ever read about vampires is true, then?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, a vampire can hang out in the sun. Dogs love them instead of hate them. And they can die. They aren’t entirely immortal.”
“Those things are all true, yes. Basically, we need blood to survive, but that’s about it. The rest is bullshit. But you keep saying ‘they’, Leo. You’re one of us now. You need to own it.”
“Right, right,” I agreed. “So, is there any other way?”
“Other way for what?”
“To kill them…us, I mean?” I asked. “Besides the ear thing.”
“Not that I know of.”
I nodded and petted Quackers as he snuggled harder against me.
“Do you think there are vampire dogs?” I asked.
Addy laughed before answering.
“I don’t know, maybe,” she said.
“So are there vampires that dogs don’t like?”
“Yes, absolutely. That’s one way to know a vampire is truly evil. A dog will absolutely want to destroy an evil vampire. Not all of us are bad people, Leo. Most of us are good people, who are just slaves to the needs of our bodies. We’re all just trying to live, to get along, just like everyone else. But some of us…men like Dane, for instance, but some others that are so much worse than him, too. There’s something darker about them. Maybe they were evil before they changed. Or maybe the change effected them to a more severe degree, on a deeper level, but there are those of us who can’t be trusted. They’d just as soon as tear your heart out as look at you. Vampire or not…”
“Wow,” I said. “So, if there are politician vampires, do you think there’s ever been a vampire President?”
“Of the US? I do. Rumors swirled around JFK, actually. And if you look closely at some of the pictures, you can see a gleam in his eye. It’s hard to tell from the pictures but his skin in some of the videos I’ve seen looks suspiciously like he could be one of us. But many other world leaders have been our kind.”
“What about the government? Do they know about us?”
“I'm sure they have secret reports and research. But what are they going to do? Announce it to the world? That would cause mass chaos. And besides, there are vampires working undercover in all aspects of the government, too. They help keep everything under wraps. There’s a lot more of us than you might imagine. It makes it easy when it’s a team effort.”
“I just can’t believe there hasn’t been any whistleblowers or anything…”
“Well, even if there was, would you believe them? Hollywood has made such a mockery of vampires, nobody in their right mind would believe them. They’d send them straight to the loony bin, or dismiss them completely. These days, the more outrageous the story, the more believable. But things like vampires? C’mon…” She shrugged and I knew she was right. “Our ancestors had the forethought to put all these myths out into the world, to make us seem so extreme and wild and savage that they’d never believe that we could possibly walk civilly amongst humans. They did it to protect us, because they knew what was coming. Population explosions, the industrial age, the technological age, not to mention the leaps and bounds gained in medical knowledge. If humans knew we were real, we’d all be tied up and tortured in some research lab under the guise of making new and improved humans. They’d never accept us as part of society.”
“You’re right,” I replied. She was depressing me, I must admit. “I forgot how much human’s suck.”
“They aren’t much on diversity when it comes to a different species. Hell, look how they treat each other, going to wars over skin color and religious beliefs and political affiliations. It’s barbaric. Not to mention how they treat animals. And they think we’re the savage ones…”
“Maybe trying to fit in with them is a bad idea, then?” I asked. I was still trying to figure everything out. Figure out where I fit in this new world…
“No. Trust me, the alternative is worse. I mean, we could run off and live in the woods, isolate ourselves completely, but that’s no life either. Eventually, we’d want a taste of society again. It’s better to play the game.”
“Is it?” I asked. “Are there groups of vampires that live together exclusively?”
“There are,” she said. “Before the Council was formed, most vampires stayed close together, forming several tribes that lived together in close-knit communities. That worked well, but as the years passed, the younger generations wanted the modern comforts of life and they ventured out, leaving the elders alone and sprinkled sparingly around the world. A few communities are still out there. There’s the Inikias in South Africa. They live in the mountains, secluded from everything, surviving on the land and animals they hunt. They’ve evolved, just as we have, to be able to subsist without human blood; the animals are enough to survive for all of us. They take care of each other completely and shun any outsiders that come around. There’s also the Vampiro Viejos, or the ‘old vampires’, from Costa Rica. They live deep in the rainforest, and I’ve heard there are at least several hundred of them living harmoniously together there. There are others, also — smaller communities dispersed around the world. But even the Inikias and the Viejos and all the other tribes have representatives on the Council. Even the most remote of us all try to abide by the rules. It’s a worldwide effort. It’s quite tremendous, really, when you think about it.”
“And they all get along? The tribes?”
“Oh, heavens no. The tribes fight amongst themselves constantly. The Council is constantly holding hearings and voting on various issues. It’s run like any other government for the most part, just behind closed doors.”
“It’s unbelievable, really. To think that I never had any idea.”
“Don’t feel bad, Leo. We go to great lengths to keep things hidden.”
“Well, I guess that’s my job now, too.”
“It is,” she said. “It’s for your own good. But trust me, the humans don’t want to know that we really exist. The ones that do are the ones who end up working at the sanctuary. We keep them hidden, too.”
“It’s like I’ve gone to sleep and woken up to a whole new world.”
“I suppose you could put it that way,” she said, growing serious. “I hope someday you can forgive me.”
“Addy, stop that. I’ve told you,” I said, grabbing her hand. “I love you. You did what you had to do and I understand that now. Look at me! I’m strong! I’m alive! My heart is fucking beating! I’m still here with you, enjoying this glorious sunshine. I’m the luckiest bastard alive.”
“You flatter me,” she said, smiling over at me. I wanted to drown in her eyes forever.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” I said, my heart full of love for her. “Come here.”
I pulled her into my arms, pushing Quackers out of the way as he glared at me and gave me an annoyed whimper. She snuggled against me, her body fitting perfectly next to mine. Our fingers intertwined, lips finding lips, our tongues searching for the connection we were both hungry for. I was starving for her and yet I could still smell her on my skin from making love to her this morning.
And yet this morning felt like a lifetime ago.
I pulled my lips from hers, reaching down and unbuttoning her thin white linen shirt, revealing the red lace-trimmed bra she wore. I bent my head, running my tongue along the edge of the soft lace, sliding underneath and slipping over her hardened nipple. She gasped, her fingers sinking into my hair and pulling me closer. I ran my cheek over the creamy skin of her breasts, the silken smoothness of her flawless flesh sliding against me sensuously. I shuddered with lust and love, an intoxicating cocktail that urged me to rip the rest of her clo
thes away, the shirt, the jeans, the bra and the panties that I knew were the only things keeping me from becoming one with her.
She was all I wanted.
My sex. My friend. My love.
She was my forever.
She pulled my head up, kissing me hard, urgently, her body arching against mine, begging for me. I let go, allowing those gorgeously dark urges that I’d been holding back to rush forward, let them overtake me, overwhelm me, let them finally consume me with their white hot heat.
Her clothes were gone. A faint wisp of movement as they landed in the grass. I growled, my teeth tearing from my mouth at the same time Addy’s did — the moment our eyes met.
A fiery collision of savage need that had finally been unleashed, we descended on one another in a tornado of lust. Tangled together, our limbs, our tongues, our sex, we danced like animals, like beasts coming together in battle, and yet — under it all, under the frantic clutching fingers and needy moans, there was nothing but love in this fight.
The battle wasn’t against each other.
Together, we fought to find the very meaning of our existence, buried somewhere in the magic we created together.
Tangled and lost, drunk on darkness and enchanted by lust, we let love win.
Afterwards, we lay in the misty afterglow, the forgotten sun long hidden behind a cloud. She snuggled against me, her beauty glowing from within, her eyes shining up at me in the same way that I always imagined a woman might look at me.
“Addy,” I began, my voice thick with the remnants of lust and emotion, “I want you to know I’m okay. I’m in control. You can trust me. I need you to know that.”
“I do,” she whispered, brushing her lips against mine sweetly. “I can tell how strong you are. It’s exceptional really. Tomorrow, we’ll go out in public, see how you do…”
“Addy, tomorrow I’m going to see Ma. And bring Bessie home.”
The Sanctuary 2: The Vampire's Passion Page 6
