The Fertile Vampire
Karen Ranney
Other Books by Karen Ranney
The Virgin of Clan Sinclair
The Witch of Clan Sinclair
The Devil of Clan Sinclair
The Lass Wore Black
A Scandalous Scot
A Scottish Love
A Borrowed Scot
A Highland Duchess
Sold to a Laird
A Scotsman in Love
The Devil Wears Tartan
The Scottish Companion
Autumn in Scotland
An Unlikely Governess
Till Next We Meet
The Highland Lords Series
After the Kiss
My Beloved
My True Love
Upon a Wicked Time
My Wicked Fantasy
Heaven Forbids
A Promise of Love
Above All Others
Tapestry
Murder by Mortgage
The Eyes of Love
What About Alice?
The Fertile Vampire
This book is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws, and all rights are reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement.
Copyright © 2014 Karen Ranney
All rights reserved worldwide.
To Leon Trask Van Orsdale
CHAPTER ONE
Back from the dead
Yes, there are such things as vampires.
Although the word vampire isn't exactly PC. It’s a little like calling an illegal alien a wetback. Very frowned on nowadays. A dozen names exist for vampires: life impaired, blood drinkers, children of the eternal night – all depending how you feel about them.
Me? I've always called them vampires.
You can imagine what I thought, then, when I woke up in the brand new Vampire Resuscitation Center.
Of course I didn’t know where I was at the time.
The roof of my mouth was coated with fur, my tongue thick as if I'd been given a double dose of Novocain. I lay there blinking up at the ceiling, the patterned tiles making me dizzy. I closed my eyes, opened them again a minute later, trying to focus on something to keep the room from swimming.
The smell of alcohol – the type you rub, not the type you drink – made me turn my head. There on a table was a metal tray filled with glass jars of instruments all of them soaking in what I surmised was alcohol.
Wherever I was they believed in antisepsis.
See, doesn't that prove I still functioned? I actually remembered my Lister from school.
The instruments, however, didn't give me a reassuring feeling. They reminded me of the same types of torture devices my dentist used when performing a gingivectomy. Lousy teeth run in the family plus I'd been a bad dental patient and hadn't flossed as much as I should.
Was I at the dentist?
I closed my eyes, trying to remember what happened.
Marcie Marie Montgomery – an awful name, but it was mine. I knew it. I remembered it. Good, one memory down, the rest of my life to go.
I smelled cloves, but it wasn't in the room as much as my memory.
Suddenly I knew.
Doug had come by last night in an attempt to reconcile. I hadn't let him in, but that didn't matter. The old adage about having to invite a vampire into your house didn’t apply if you’d invited him into your body. Wherever you were was invitation enough.
I wish someone had told me earlier.
He remained at the door, softly speaking to me. When I finally relented he pushed open the door easily and approached me, stalking me almost like a predator. I didn't actually enjoy feeling like prey and when I told him he only laughed.
"No one has ever turned me away, gumdrop."
"Perhaps it's better for your ego if they do," I said, taking a step backward, away from him.
I headed for the kitchen, to open the sliding glass door to the tiny garden. My townhouse had been small, cozy and homey from the beginning. Now it was filled with overheated vampire.
Maybe if he got some fresh air it would cool him off.
In a flash he had me up against the glass, his hands on either side of me. His body pressed against mine, reminding me he knew my body well. His mouth trailed a path from my ear and down my neck. He smelled delicious, like warm caramel and cloves.
When I told him, he laughed. “We don't have a smell.”
"Yes, you do."
My stepfather had smelled like popcorn.
Any thoughts of Doug’s smell vanished when he opened my collar so he could nibble there.
"What, you've run out of other willing girls?" I asked breathlessly.
"There's only you, Marcie," he murmured against my throat.
"I'm the flavor of the month. Maybe I'm vanilla and the others are chocolate."
I pulled away, straightened my blouse, and prayed for composure. Perhaps he thought I didn't have the same reaction to him as I always had. I did, of course, but my pride tried to do its job.
"Please leave, Doug."
Instead, he grinned at me, grabbed my hand, pulled me up the stairs and into my bedroom. It wouldn't be fair to call it coercion. If he tricked me with some secret vampire power it was the first time. Doug was a hottie, skilled in the sex department, and well endowed.
His lovemaking was the most exquisite experience I've ever known. Not something you'd label with a four letter word. Transcendent, maybe – yeah, a good word for it.
When it was over, my body shivering, shattering and shuddering, he bit me hard on the side of my left breast, almost in my armpit. Close to my heart and therefore even more deadly.
The pain from the bite’s the last thing I remember.
"There you are, finally awake."
I opened my eyes to find a woman dressed in a balloon decorated smock. Had she come from the pediatric ward?
Her blond hair was as bright as the fluorescent lights above me, her blue eyes a Bahamian shade of turquoise. Her smile was blinding – a yard wide with teeth almost supernaturally white.
Grandma, what big teeth you have.
"Why am I in the hospital?" I asked, closing my eyes.
"You're not in the hospital," she said. "You're in the VRC."
The Vampiric Resuscitation Center, for those of you who don't watch cable news.
I opened my eyes and stared at her. “Am I a vampire?”
She didn’t answer, only smiled again.
Thank you, Doug. Being turned into a vampire was a pretty high price to pay for great sex, wasn't it?
CHAPTER TWO
All’s fair in blood and war
"Up you go," the nurse said, reaching behind me and sliding the pillow out from beneath my head. “You need to sit up.”
I didn’t want to sit up. I wanted to close my eyes and go back to being unconscious.
I closed my eyes and tried.
She moved her arm and the back of my head hit the mattress. I opened my eyes and glared up at her.
“Are you hungry?”
The idea of ingesting anything was nauseating.
She must've known how I felt from my expression because her smile increased in wattage.
My nurse must be a sadist.
“How about a little water?”
I could
manage a sip or two of water.
She placed the blue plastic pitcher filled with ice water and the plastic cup on the patient table, moving it closer.
Another blinding smile and she vanished, her shoes squeaking on the vinyl floor.
She hadn't poured the water for me and had put the pillow on the end of the bed. The minute I reached for it my nausea subsided and so did the pounding on the back of my skull.
Gingerly, I sat up. I wasn't ready to go out and dance, but I didn’t feel so sick, either. I grabbed the pillow, dropped it behind me, then held the cup with my left hand while I poured with the right.
I surveyed my surroundings. Mine was the only bed in the room. A half open door revealed a bathroom. Blinds covered the far wall.
The water made me feel a little dizzy or maybe it was sitting up. A few minutes later I fell back on the pillow.
"I drank the water," I said when the nurse appeared a few minutes later. "What did you put in it?"
"I don't know what you mean," she said, eyes wide and innocent. "There's nothing in the water." For a few moments she managed to hold my gaze before looking away.
"You're going to rest," she said.
“For how long?” I wanted to say I didn’t feel like resting anymore, but I was surprisingly tired.
"How did I get here? After the dirty deed did Doug drop me off? Curbside service?"
"You don't remember?"
I eyed her for a moment wondering if nurses were given to a certain kind of conversational style called: Let's Play Obvious. Would I have asked if I knew? Or perhaps she thought I was testing her knowledge of me.
I ended up mutely shaking my head.
"You were admitted anonymously.”
In other words Doug had probably rolled me out of the car and beat it.
She bustled around my bed, straightening the sheets and placing the call button on the pillow. I hadn’t used it yet since I’d barely been conscious. What would happen if I did? Would anyone answer? I felt a little more secure with the door closed than I did with Little Miss Sunshine here.
I closed my eyes again. "I'm very tired," I said, hoping she got the hint. “I think I will sleep a little more.”
She left.
I tried to think of anything but about where – and what – I was, a respite lasting about five seconds. My mind was determined to circle around to the truth.
Vampires have been around since DNA. Let me rephrase. The knowledge of vampires has been around since DNA. They’ve existed for centuries, but when DNA came on the scene and scientists first realized there was something weird about a few people, there was no hiding the knowledge.
When I was thirteen I met my first real life vampire. His name was Paul and he was my stepfather. We only talked about him being a vampire once. He and my mother had been having what I’ll euphemistically call having “a good time”. When he'd emerged from the bedroom, heading for the kitchen, his lips had been bloody. No doubt he'd taken a snack from my mother in the act of coitus. Yes, another euphemism. It's my mother.
I suppose I must've looked shocked because he stopped at my bedroom door where I was standing and said, "You don't understand, Marcie. What goes on between adults is consensual."
“Including her being a midnight snack?"
Later, I asked my mother if she'd known what he was before they married. She'd answered a little reluctantly, but finally said, "Yes, I knew."
The older I got, the more I was conscious of Paul's sexuality which was, no doubt, why my mother was so attracted to him. He seemed to lure every woman on the block. We had neighbors stopping in at all hours of the day and night, bringing us food, asking for advice and to say hello.
All of the neighbors, of course, were women. The men frowned a lot at Paul.
Or the attraction might have been his smell. Paul smelled like popcorn to me. Hot buttery popcorn, the kind that's bad for you.
When I went to college, it was with a sense of relief. I didn't like being around Paul. I didn't like being around my mother when she was with Paul. It was like he had some kind of freaky hold over her.
The distant mother I’d always known, the one who looked at me like she was surprised I was still there, had become this wide-eyed woman who sat and watched my stepfather as if he were a particularly tasty mouse and she a starving cat.
I spent years evading Paul, but when he was killed in my freshman year of college, my relationship with my mother didn’t get closer. You might say it was frost covered.
Little did I know I’d be fascinated by another vampire.
Doug had the same pervasive sensuality Paul did, but instead of popcorn, he smelled of caramel and cloves. After the first date – or the first good sniff – I knew he was a vampire. For some reason, it didn't seem to matter. Doug was funny, charming, intelligent and seemed to sense exactly what I wanted before I even knew it. In no time at all, I was absolutely and completely, madly in love.
Sex with vampires is one of their greatest selling points. Don't let anyone tell you any different. You might not be able to wrap your mind around the fact they drink blood – which they do – but you can certainly grasp mind blowing sex.
Everywhere he touched, I glowed or sizzled like an electrical current.
I still went to bed with him even after I found out about the other three women. A few weeks later, I managed to pull myself together and tell him to go to hell.
Evidently, vampires don't get told to go to hell very often. Or maybe my reaction to his harem surprised him. He promised never to be with another woman while we were dating. I turned him down. I'd found a sliver of pride, soft like leftover soap, but it would have to do. I couldn't go back to him. I couldn't turn myself inside out and become a vestis. The name for people who’ll do anything to be around vampires.
I call them groupies, myself.
Hollywood stars used to be a big deal. Vampires have replaced them. You can’t get on social media without hearing about Mr. Fanghead this or Miss Fanghead that. They started fashion houses (using their lanky hungry look to good purpose), cosmetic firms (the tanned look is so yesterday, honey) and been outed as scientists and heads of corporations.
They were the celebrities of our day.
Me? I’m as far from a celebrity as anyone can be. I’m a commercial insurance adjuster, which sounds about as exciting as cotton panties. But I like the work because it challenges me mentally and it’s stable. There’s something essentially human in being an insurance adjuster.
Vampires aren’t important to the insurance industry. We don’t insure them.
Vampires gravitated to more exciting jobs like race car driving, scaffold climbing, window washing, that sort of thing - all at night, of course. If they were hurt in an accident no biggie. Two or three days later they were back on the job. Companies with high worker comp claims loved hiring vampires. In fact, there was more outrage over them stealing jobs than being, well, vampires.
Now I was one of them.
On that cheery thought I allowed myself to take another nap.
CHAPTER THREE
Vampire got your tongue?
Two days later I was greeted with a dimmer version of Little Miss Sunshine. This nurse had black hair, brows wiggling like caterpillars over dark eyes and crimson lips.
“What happens now?”
Her face changed from easy affability to narrow eyed and gauging.
"You feel flush with energy," she said, making it a statement more than a question.
I didn't fill flush with anything. Making it to the bathroom meant I leaned on the single chair beside my bed, then the wall, then the door. I was still feeling weak and trembly. At the same time I wasn't going to admit it to her.
"Damned energetic," I said.
Her hands stopped fluttering around me. I sent a glance toward the wall, having realized days ago that the blinds didn't shield a window but a wall. It could be midnight for all I knew and Little Miss Sunshine could be a vampire herself.
"Norm
ally we like patients to rest a week," she said. "Before the next step."
That didn't sound good. The coward I was didn’t ask: what’s the next step? I wanted to take this in inches.
"We've decided to send you off to counseling," she said.
Having been bored out of my mind for two days I was grateful for any change of routine. I'd watched enough television to recite the schedule for a dozen channels. For some reason I gravitated to murder shows. Anything featuring a murder mystery, from serial killer dramas to crime solving police procedurals, interested me. If there was blood, so be it.
This penchant for crime drama bothered me a little and I couldn't help but wonder if my humanity was slipping away bit by bit.
"Counseling?" I asked. "What's counseling? Like how to cope with your new life? That sort of thing?"
"Don't you think there should be? You go from human to –" her voice trailed away.
"Something paranormal? Subhuman? Weird?" I offered.
She left the room, but before she cleared the door, I called out, "So where do I go for this counseling?"
"I'll send an orderly," she said, not turning.
The orderly turned out to be a teenage volunteer. The cute young thing in a pink and white striped apron explained to me none of the other employees were available, but she would take me down to the chapel.
"The chapel?"
"Yes, ma'am. Isn't that where you're going? Counseling?"
When had I become a ma'am? But beyond the slam to my age, I didn't like the thought of being counseled in the chapel at all. Why was religion mixed in with this? Because I'd been turned after sex? Or because I'd indulged with a vampire?
The chapel was hidden on subfloor two, which meant two floors below ground level, something that didn't make me comfortable. Like being buried while still walking and talking.
The young girl stopped outside of a ordinary looking door. She pressed a button, smiled down at me, then bent to lock the wheelchair in place.
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