She could just … just rip someone apart. It would be so easy paint the human’s walls with her blood, then tear the house down, timber by timber and set the wreckage on fire. Here she was, willing to give Ramsey another chance to love her and instead of thanking her for the opportunity to share her bed again, he was slumming it with a … a human.
Angelina pushed her tongue between her lips. She hated the lot of them. Humans were so beneath her. They’d been beneath her even when she was a human herself. Luckily, she hadn’t stayed normal and mortal for too long. She’d always known that she was destined for greatness.
It was supposed to have been her out with the sheep that night. She should’ve met the Creator. She should’ve been turned. It was only by blind luck that Ramsey was an Original, and she was his acolyte.
Wild animals had been preying on their livestock, and she and Ramsey were taking turns on watch throughout the night. She had come inside before her time was officially over, and Ramsey, being Ramsey, had gone out earlier than he was supposed to.
If she had been chosen, she would’ve left Ramsey where he was … as he was. Human.
Angelina clenched her fists, preparing to burst through the door, kill the human and claim her husband. But could she kill that woman before Ramsey stopped her? Angelina thought on it. She did have the element of surprise on her side. Ramsey hadn’t expected her to follow him from his house to this pauper’s hut. But Ramsey was faster and stronger than she was.
What would killing the human get her, besides on Ramsey’s bad side? He did warn her to leave him and his alone. But was the human his?
Hm. She kicked the thought around in her head. He would be mad. Yes. Probably mad enough to not want to see her for years afterward. Not good. She needed to stay on his good side. Her plan depended on it.
The woman cried out in passion.
Oh, hell. Angelina balled her fist and pulled it back, readying to punch down the door. This wouldn’t be the first or last time that she’d done something to get on Ramsey’s bad side.
A sound from the back of the house pulled her from her murderous thoughts. Angelina dropped her arm and went toward the noise. Peeking through one of the windows was the sniveling man Ramsey had scared away. Angelina stood on her tiptoes and looked over his shoulder, following his line of sight.
The whore was on her knees. Angelina growled.
The man jumped and tried to move away. Angelina gripped the window frame, trapping him between her arms. “Look at her,” she snarled.
He tried to duck under her arms, but she pressed against his back, pinning him in place.
“I-I just wanted to make sure that he didn’t hurt her. Believe me, I—I wasn’t spying on them.”
Angelina smirked. Such a liar. The grass was worn in the spot he stood in. It didn’t take vampire eyes to see that the area was frequented. “You are spying. This isn’t the first time that you peeked through this window, watching her, either.”
“I-I come here sometimes. B-but only to make sure that she’s getting along all right. It’s not spying if I’m just checking up on her.”
Angelina took a step closer, forcing him to press against the window. “You’re not spying? Why not? They’re putting on a show for us. Just look at them.” She nodded toward the couple. They’d moved from fucking like dogs to her riding him. Angelina had to give it to the woman, she looked to be taking Ramsey’s entire length. Impressive. “She’s a whore, and he should be licking the bottom of my shoes.”
“Wh-who is that man?” He tried to look at her over his shoulder. “Wh-who are you?”
“My name is Angelina, and that man? He’s my husband.”
He pulled his face into an unattractive frown. “Then why aren’t you going in there to put an end to this? I’ll be your back-up.”
“Back me up?” Angelina chuckled. “Aw, sweet thing, Ramsey could tear off your limbs and mine before we lifted a finger against him.”
He squinted, watching Ramsey guide the woman over his cock. Her big breasts bounced as she rode up and down. She held them in her hands and massaged and tugged her nipples. “He doesn’t look all that tough.”
She patted his shoulder. “You poor stupid human. You would say that because you don’t know who he is and what he can do to you.” She let out a sigh. Should she kill this human and drain him? She wasn’t hungry. She’d already eaten. But still. He was here. She was here. That’s how perfect stories began. Except this story would end with him in a drained heap.
Oh! She could even leave him here and the human would get blamed for it.
Wait no. They had diagnostics now. The authorities would know that he missed all his blood, and Ramsey would find out, and blah, blah, blah.
Angelina sighed again. It used to be so easy to kill people.
“I’m sorry that your husband is cheating on you.” He stared longingly through the window.
She nodded toward Ramsey. “Ramsey used to stare at me the way that you’re watching that woman.”
“How long have you guys been married?”
“Over two thousand years.”
The man jumped back, but hit against her chest. “Wait. What?”
Angelina ignored him and stared through the window. Ramsey had pulled the whore from her knees and took her against the wall. “Long ago. Long before you were even a thought. I lived with my father and six siblings in a house that was too small to hold us all. We were poor, destitute. I didn’t know a lot back then, but what I did know was that I had to escape poverty—my life. First, I was the mistress of a Roman soldier.” She couldn’t remember his face or his name. But she remembered the feeling of having someone worship her, and it felt good. “He didn’t have much, but he had more than I did. He’d promised to take me home with him and build me a house of my very own. He was married, but I didn’t mind being the other woman, not if it meant that I would be taken care of.” She chuckled.
The human watched the grinding couple as she told her tale.
“Well, it turned out that my soldier could not afford to buy me anything. All the time that I’d spent working on him was … for naught.” She shook her head. “It was disappointing to say the least.” She lifted a shoulder. “So, I killed him. Murder was easy to accomplish back then. No CSI or fingerprints or anything like that. One night after making love I bashed his head in with a rock and that was that.” She giggled. Now what she did remember was all of the blood splaying everywhere. It had been like a blood thunderstorm. She’d had plenty more blood showers after that. She liked them.
That got the man’s attention. He looked at her, aghast.
She waved him off. “Oh, please. I saw the look that you gave Ramsey when he sent you away.” She folded her arms. “I didn’t have a choice back then. I knew that I had to find another way out. So, the very next day I set out to the marketplace, and that’s when I saw Ramsey. He was selling his father’s bread. I asked around and found out more about him. He was the only child and his father owned a bakery that he was set to inherit. He wasn’t rich by any standard back then, but he had money and I knew with him that I could be his wife, not his mistress and I could live quite comfortably until I found someone else that could elevate my station in life. I gussied myself up and walked straight into that bakery and turned my charm on to ten.”
“That’s a nice love story,” he said absentmindedly, his attention back on the couple.
“The only reason we lasted as long as we did was because I kept getting pregnant, and with each pregnancy I knew the chances of me finding someone else and leaving Ramsey were growing slimmer and slimmer.”
“Wow, it sounds like you really didn’t love him at all.”
She smirked. “What does love have to do with anything? Ramsey had a means to get me out of that hellhole that my father called a home.”
“So why do you want him back now?”
“Haven’t you heard anything that I told you?” The man nodded, but his attention was still focused on the woman. O
f course he hadn’t listened to her. By now a normal human would’ve been scrambling trying to get away. “I only want people who can elevate my station in life. Ramsey is an Original. We can rule this world if we wanted to.”
With her by Ramsey’s side, whispering in his ear, he would take his rightful place as the ruler of the vampires—ruler of the world. He would do anything she told him to do. All that power would be hers.
“It doesn’t seem like he’s thinking about you now.”
She glared. “That’s because of that whore.”
That got his attention. The man bristled. “Dani’s not a whore.”
Angelina let out a soft cackle. “Is that your woman? Is this why you’re here lurking in the shadows?”
He shook his head. “No, but I wanted her to be.” He glared at the couple. He shook with anger. “You’re lurking with me, so don’t act all high and mighty.”
“I’m hiding in the shadows because I don’t have a death wish.” She looked at him, taking in his anger and grief. He wasn’t a bad looking man. Human women would find him attractive. But if he were a vampire he would be irresistible, his beauty rivaling even Ramsey’s. Hmm. It wouldn’t be so bad to keep him around for a little while. “I can give her to you.”
He touched the windowsill. “How?”
Angelina stepped away and held out her hand. “Come with me, and she’s yours.”
He hesitated, looking from the window to Angelina.
“What’s your name?” she asked him.
“Alex.”
Angelina wiggled her fingers. “This isn’t an open-ended invitation, Alex. It expires in three seconds.”
Alex took her hand, and she wrapped him in a lover’s embrace. Angelina leaped into the air, taking him with her. Alex didn’t object to them being miles up into the sky. He was slowly dying in her arms.
****
“Can I come over?” Ramsey’s sultry voice caressed the most intimate parts of her body.
Too bad she couldn’t give into him, she had a life outside of the bed. Dani hopped on one foot while trying to slide her clog onto the other. “Not tonight. My vacation is officially over. I have to go back to work.”
“What time do you take your break? I’ll meet you for dinner.”
“You, at the hospital?” She laughed. “I think not, mister. One, the ladies would eat you alive, and two, it’s a hospital, you know, blood everywhere.” She finally got her shoe on and looked around for her keys.
“Do you think that a little blood would send me into some kind of bloodlust?”
She snatched her keys from the kitchen counter. “I didn’t say that you would go all batshit crazy over blood. I just wouldn’t want to endanger any of the patients.”
“Dani, I wouldn’t hurt anyone. I can be around blood without flying into a rage. That would be like me saying that I don’t leave chocolate cake out because I don’t trust you not to go on a sugar binge.”
She paused. “Wait. Do you have chocolate cake?”
“I do. I picked up another one from Drenda since your last one was ruined. If you let me come by I’ll bring you a slice—or all of it.”
She so wanted cake. Lots and lots of cake. “I would give my left tit for some cake right now,” she mumbled.
“It’s yours if you just say yes.”
“Hey! I wasn’t talking to you.”
He chuckled. “Sorry.”
She crouched to give Libby a kiss on the forehead. “Be a good girl. You’re in charge while I’m away.”
“So how about it?”
She made her way out the front door. “It’s my first night back to work. I’ll probably be too busy to take a break.” She locked the door behind her. “Plus, my break is only thirty minutes. I can’t have you coming all this way for thirty minutes.” She went out to her car. Something red caught her eye.
“Thirty minutes? Is that all? Why are you working again?”
On the window shield, stuck underneath one of the wipers was a single rose. She cheesed then picked it up and sniffed. “Bills, bills, bills.”
“You could call off tonight or the week even. Come back to New Orleans with me. Give your bills to Marcos. He’ll pay them.”
She unlocked her car and slid into the driver’s seat. “As appealing as letting you be my sugar daddy is, alas, I must pass. People are counting on me, and being the responsible adult that I am, I can’t let them down. Plus, if I didn’t show up to work tonight I think the other nurses would come to my house with pitchforks and torches.”
“Ouch, been there, done that.”
“Wait. You had an angry mob after you?” She started the car.
“Hello, vampire. I’ve had many angry mobs after me.”
She shook her head and backed out of her driveway. “I’ll have to take a rain check. You’ll have to get by without me tonight.” They’d spent the past three nights together, and she was sore in all the right places.
“If I must.”
She started down the street. It was just getting dark, and she had enough time to hit up a coffee shop before she got to work, took report and started her twelve-hour shift. “I’ll call you when I some get time.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
“And by the way. Thank you for the rose.”
“What rose?”
She glanced at the flower she’d put on the passenger side seat. When she made it to work she planned to find a cup and set it in the nurses’ break room. A little something to brighten a bleak space. “The rose that you left on my car window.”
Wait a minute. She frowned. The flower hadn’t been there when she’d gone out for groceries earlier and the sun had just set. Although there was a two-hour time difference between LA and New Orleans, Ramsey wouldn’t have had enough time to drop off the rose.
“I didn’t give you a rose.”
Alex.
Who else could’ve given it to her? But the question was why? She’d never been into him or gave him the idea that she was remotely interested in a relationship. Alex was flirty, but he was flirty with all the female nurses and some of the doctors. She chalked it up to a part of his personality. He’d had relationships with some of their coworkers. But dating a coworker wasn’t her thing, and neither was going out with a womanizer like Alex. He didn’t seem like a one woman type of man. She’d walked into the women’s locker room a few times to find one of his flings crying about him. No, thank you.
As soon as she got to work she would have a word with him. Alex had to quit whatever he was doing, first showing up unannounced at her house, now leaving gifts on her car. Ramsey had almost killed him that night. What would make him show up again? Was he crazy?
She glanced at the rose again. Me thinketh the answer is yes.
“Do I need to kill someone?” Ramsey asked. His voice took on a thicker accent when he was angry.
“Settle down. I think that it may’ve been Alex. He might have a crush on me. He’s scheduled to work a shift tonight. I’ll talk to him.”
Ramsey let out a deep grumble.
The only problem was that Alex wasn’t at work that night. He’d told her that he would be there, and a double check of the schedule showed that he was scheduled to work. But the nurse manager hand penciled, “No call, no show” by his name.
The next night there was another flower on her window shield. This one wasn’t a perfect long-stemmed rose. It was old and dried out—dying. And again, no Alex at work. She’d called him. Her call went straight to voice mail so she left a message.
“Hey, Alex, it’s Dani. Listen, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but cut it out. Do you remember my boyfriend? Big, mad, crazy? Well, the only reason that you’re still living is because I haven’t told him about the second rose that you left on my car. Stop. I don’t like you like that. Now, please leave me alone.”
Chapter Fifteen
“But how do you know it’s him?” Jamie adjusted the miniature car harness around her toddler son, Luca’s, shoulders
and torso. Jimmy, her husband, and their oldest child, Ashlin, were on another ride. Luca was just big and old enough for the little carnival car ride. He joined ten other excited toddlers.
“Because who else could it be?”
“Ramsey.” Jamie stepped back to survey her work. “You don’t think that he’ll escape from this, do you?”
Dani shook her head. Luca was a little daredevil at three years old, but even he wouldn’t be able to get out of the strap that crisscrossed and bit into his chubby stomach. “Nope.”
The carnival worker was making his way around and checking that all the harnesses were secured. When he came to Luca, both Jamie and Dani stepped out of his way. He gave them a thumbs-up and went to the next car.
Jamie motioned Dani to follow her out the enclosure and behind the gate.
“The first rose, I thought maybe it had come from Ramsey. But then the next night I got a dead rose, and then the…” Dani leaned in close to whisper. “Dead rats last night.”
Jamie shivered. “So three nights in a row you had something left on your car?”
“Yeah, and progressively worse. Besides, Ramsey said it wasn’t him, and I believe him.”
The ride started, and the cars began moving around in a small circle on a track. The cars were going about a mile in hour, but the kids laughed and screamed with glee. Anyone not watching would think the cars whipped around the track at breakneck speeds.
“And you tried to reach this Alex fella?” Jamie leaned against the gate and waved, smiling and gushing at Luca as he went by.
Dani leaned her back against the railing. The small carnival in the high school parking lot drew plenty of kids and families. It was her first night off in three nights and she would’ve rather have spent it in a nice warm bath soaking her tired legs and feet, but the last few nights had been too disturbing to sit at home alone.
Dani had woken at noon, dressed and left the house. She’d been relieved to find nothing but raindrops on her car. The rose had been nice, the dead rose had given her pause, but the dead rats, mutilated, with their throats ripped out had given her nightmares. To kill time and to soothe her nerves she’d gone to Bride’s job and taken her out to lunch. Then she’d gone to her dad’s house until Jamie called and invited her to the carnival with her family. Dani had been tired, but accepted the invitation anyway. At least she wouldn’t be home to receive anything else left on her car.
When a Vamp Falls Page 14
