Forbidden Touch

by K. S. Haigwood

  Dane shook his head slowly. He forced his look to be a sad one, but Ciera wasn't buying it. She knew how good he was at his expressions. He wasn't really sad, and he damn sure wasn't sorry. "I'm sorry, Ciera. Mitch is about to be taken away. He will be informed that you were the one who planned all of this, and that you were the one who committed the heinous murders. I'm afraid that he'll want nothing more in this world than to see you dead, my love." His face brightened. "Oh, and to clear up something else. The Elders think that you were the one who killed all those people as well; compliments of me, of course," he said as he smiled mischievously. "I think my exact words to our parents were: I saw Ciera kill the last man with my own eyes. She saw me and then ran off. I followed her for a while, but she has gotten so skilled at blocking me that I lost track of her. I do believe she has gone mad, Father," he shrugged. "They sent me to find you, but of course, we can't go back there. I can't have you telling them what really happened now, can I?" he laughed softly. "Either I am getting better at lying, or our mother is getting worse at being able to sense the truth. She bought every word of it."

  Her heart was racing as she looked him in the eyes. She couldn't tell if he was lying. She looked at one of the other vampires. "He said that you were the only one who knew I had gone Rogue."

  Dane smiled. "He lied."

  "You, bastard!" She went at him with hands and finger nails, but he subdued her quickly, putting her back against the front of his body and holding her arms in place, crossed in front of her.

  "Calm down, Ciera. Do you know of one of the hidden places where vampires and mortals coexist? Is that where you were going, love? We can go there together. I can make you love me."

  "I could never love you," she whispered through her sobs.

  He kissed her cheek gently then breathed in her soft fragrance. "Yes, you could, Ciera, and yes, you will." He pulled a syringe out of his back pocket with his free hand. He slipped the cap off the thin needle with two fingers, then stuck it swiftly in her back. "Never mind telling me, I will get its location out of your head on my own. Sleep now, my love. When you wake up, we will be together."

  She let out a soft whimper, then she collapsed into darkness.

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  Chapter 32

  When Mitch came to, he was lying on his back, tied to a table in what seemed to be the bottom of a tall tower. The stone walls surrounding him were rounded, and he found it very interesting that he didn't have to squint to see the rust on the metal ceiling at least thirty feet above him.

  Where the hell am I? The room reeked of mold and mildew, and maybe a dead rodent or two. Then he heard loud bangs, like someone was trying to beat through the wall. The door creaked open, making him wince from the eardrum busting noise. The loud bangs couldn't have been footsteps, could they have?

  The guy that walked to him was way overdue for a bath, and when he began talking, Mitch pulled at the chains that bound him, trying to cover his ears. He was breathing heavy when the guy finally shut up. He hadn't understood a damn word he'd said, because the guy had been screaming at him. He knew that he was mistaken. He knew the guy hadn't been screaming. He'd been talking normally. It was his hearing that was so keen. Was he actually a vampire? And where the hell was Ciera?

  He tried to sit up in a panic. He had to find her. Surely if he was still alive, then she would be as well. "Where is…" he said, then lowered his own voice to a whisper because the loud sounds hurt his ears. "Where is Ciera?" he whispered, and his expression was pleading for the guy to tell him.

  The guy must have understood that any noise was hurting Mitch's ears, so he talked in a whisper. "She left Vegas with Dane a little while ago."

  Mitch jerked on the thick chains, but even with his newly acquired strength, they didn't even bend. "Where has he taken her?"

  The guy smiled. "You are misunderstanding, Mitch. She left with him of her own free will. She was waiting for him to arrive so she could leave with him."

  "You're lying!" Mitch shouted, then winced.

  The guy shook his head. "I have no reason to lie to you. She made it look as though the two of you were running from her family and the police. She was actually the vampire that drained all of those victims. She was the one who framed you. She was trying to get you to trust her so she could turn you into a vampire. Your father has been trying to keep her away, to protect you from her, but she is very smart. He is very upset with Ciera for turning you, and she knew that he would kill her when he arrived. So she chose to leave with Dane. He was helping her. His part was to appear to be chasing the two of you so you would want to become a vampire and protect her."

  Mitch's brow furrowed in disbelief. "My father? I've never even met my father. You lie!" he shouted, and tugged on the chains again.

  The guy sat in a chair beside the table Mitch was on. "You've met him. You just weren't aware of who, or what, he was. He's been watching over you. He is the only one of our kind that can withstand the sun in solid form. He is hoping that you have inherited his gift," he lowered his head. "Now that he has failed to protect you, and you have become one of us."

  Mitch laid his head back on the table and closed his eyes. He didn't know what to believe. He knew he didn't want to believe that Ciera had lied to him. She wouldn't have gone through all they had gone through just to get him to trust her. Alice had told them they were soulmates. He squeezed his eyes shut as hot tears burned them. Unless the psychic and the witch had been in on the lie, too. But he had been the one to show her where Alice was located. He sighed. But she had told him to sit in the vehicle while she went to talk to the woman first. She may have used compulsion on her to tell them certain things. And Ciera had been the only one that knew where Nellie's house was located. She may have known Nellie all along, and the old woman was just playing her part.

  He sighed as he opened his eyes. God, he didn't know what to believe.

  "Your father would like to talk with you," the guy whispered. Mitch's head shot around to look at him.

  "He is here? He wants to talk to me now?" Mitch said, aghast.

  The guy nodded once, his expression unreadable. "I will take the chains off you if you will promise to stay down here, on the lower level. We didn't know how you would react when you woke up from your transition. We didn't need you running upstairs. It is daylight. You don't want to know how sunlight feels on your skin now."

  Mitch nodded and the guy took the chains off his wrists and ankles.

  "Come with me," the guy said as Mitch sat up.

  He scooted off the table and noticed that there was dried blood all over his clothes. It must have been from the wreck. He and Ciera had been exchanging blood and he had only opened his eyes a moment before she had smashed into a truck that was parked sideways in the middle of the road. That was the last thing he remembered. Amazingly, his body didn't hurt at all from the crash.

  The memory of Ciera telling him that she had loved him from the first moment she saw him slammed into his frontal lobe. His body began to tingle and he shook the memory of her away. He couldn't think about her. Everything had been a lie and if it was the last thing he did in his life, he was going to make her pay for that lie. She made him fall in love with her, and then she had turned him into a creature of the undead and left him.

  He could picture her laughing with that Dane vampire, touching that Dane vampire…kissing that Dane vampire. He reared back his arm and punched his fist through a wooden wall as he left the room. He stared in amazement at his arm. It was sunk in the wall up to his elbow. It hadn't even hurt. He pulled it out of the hole and looked at his dirty knuckles in bewilderment. There wasn't a scratch on them. He peered through the hole. There was another room there like the one he had just come out of. It, too, was made of stone. Had he just punched a hole through a stone wall?

  "You in shock?" A familiar voice said, and Mitch's head shot in the direction of the newcomer.

  His eyes grew wide in disbelief as they fell upon his old partner. "Lazarus?
What are you doing here?" He held up his hands in front of his body, palms out. "Look, I didn't kill any of those people. Someone is trying to frame me. If you're here to arrest me, you are in for a rude awakening. I'm not going." His eyes locked with his old partner then it dawned on him why Lazarus might be here.

  Lazarus smiled cunningly. "Look at me, Mitch," he laughed lightly. "Tell me what you see."

  Mitch took a step back as he tried to catch his breath. He had looked at this son of a bitch for the last two years and had never seen what he was seeing now. They were about the same height, the same build. Hell, even their eyes were the same shade of brown.

  "Oh, God," Mitch said as he ran his fingers through his hair. He backed up against the wall he had punched a hole through, then slid to the concrete floor. He sat there and stared up at Lazarus for the longest before he spoke again. "That is how you lived. When you got shot and died, that is how you came back."

  Lazarus smiled as he helped Mitch to his feet. "I have been a vampire for over six hundred years. I have very special gifts; voluntarily stopping my heart is one of my many tricks. It doesn't hurt for me to do it. I wouldn't have had to put on quite the show, but a nosy neighbor showed up in the door right after the guy shot himself. I had six bullets in me and I couldn't very well just get up and walk away from something like that. Compulsion is one of the gifts I do not have. I would have had to kill the neighbor to keep my secret safe. I didn't want to do that; I am an officer of the law." He sighed, then motioned for Mitch to walk with him as he continued talking. "I heal very quickly, so to make it look like I was human, I had to reopen the wounds when the paramedic wasn't looking at me. I had to do that a few times until the doctor sewed me up himself. I refused for anyone to look at them after they declared me stable. I took the necessary leave of absence from work. I couldn't merely walk in the station after being discharged from the hospital for only a day."

  Mitch shook his head. He'd always thought that Lazarus was a little different. And he didn't know whether to be happy to know Lazarus' secret, or be pissed that the son of a bitch was his father and had never said anything about it. "My mother…you left her."

  Lazarus nodded sadly. "It was her choice, Mitch, not mine. She told me that she wanted you to have a normal life. It was very dangerous for her to even know about what I was, as you now know. But she knew I was different from the first time we met. I couldn't keep the secret from her for long. I loved her very much. She had made the choice to become like me…then she found out that she was pregnant with you." Lazarus' eyes lit up. "I was so happy that I was going to be a father," he frowned. "Then she told me I had to go. I sent her money over the years for you. She told me that she told you they were life insurance policies. She didn't want you to know anything about me. I wanted to be in your life, but I could understand where she was coming from. If any of my kind found out, they would have killed you. I watched you over these short years. I am able to walk in the sun, so I wasn't tied only to the night. I made every one of your boxing matches and football games when you were in high school. I made the decision never to tell you about what I am. I was at your mother's funeral. Do you remember?"

  Mitch blinked a few times. He had been so grief stricken that he wouldn't have remembered if God himself had of shown up and shook his hand. He shook his head.

  Lazarus touched Mitch's shoulder. "I am truly, very sorry about your mother. She raised you well." He sighed, and decided that changing the subject was in order. He didn't need Mitch focusing on the past right now. His son was a vampire and he would need to learn a lot. "Ciera found out that you were working the case of her victims and she instantly took a fascination to you. She wanted you, and when I confronted her and told her to leave you alone, she put two-and-two together, I guess. That made her want you more, I suppose. She knows about my many skills, and I guess she thought that you would be of some use to her if you became a vampire." Lazarus opened a door and they walked into a room where there were two humans lying on metal tables.

  The instant aroma engulfed Mitch's sense of smell. He didn't see the two people as innocent victims, he saw them as… food. He started for one of them and Lazarus simply put his hand on Mitch's chest to hold him in place.

  "Think this through; you don't want to kill these people. You want to satisfy your thirst, and then leave them alive so you may feed on them another day, right?"

  Mitch calmed his breathing, then looked over at Lazarus and nodded.

  "Good. Now, I will show you how," Lazarus took Mitch's arm with his hand and led him to the first human. It was a young woman.

  She was pretty, and for a split second he saw Ciera's features in the place of the girl's face. He blinked a few times, then she was only the scared little nineteen year old girl who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He looked at Lazarus, but evidently he hadn't seen Ciera in the girl. Guess his eyes were playing tricks on him. He wondered briefly if the tingling that was happening again in his body was normal for all vampires. He didn't spend much time thinking about it though. The girl's blood smelled too delicious to concentrate on much else.

  Lazarus pointed to different parts of the girl's body: her wrist, the bend of her arm, her jugular. He pulled up her black skirt, but not too far as to expose her private area, and pointed to a blue vein there under the skin of her inner thigh. He would have never been able to see it when he was human, but with this incredible new sight he had acquired, all of the human's veins stood out in contrast to her pale skin.

  He didn't have to see them to know that they were there, though. He knew if he closed his eyes, that his sense of smell would guide him straight to her lovely blood.

  He felt something poke his bottom lip. He felt his mouth with his finger. There were two very sharp fangs protruding from each side of his two front teeth. Surprisingly, he knew just what to do with them. He looked back at Lazarus, and the guy motioned for him to proceed.

  When he walked back up to the girl's upper body, Ciera's green eyes were looking back at him. He quickly took a step back and just stared at her. She didn't disappear this time. She looked back at him with pleading eyes, eyes that were trying to tell him something. He turned his head away from her, took a breath and then glanced back. Ciera was no longer there before him, if she had ever been. He went to her quickly and opened her jugular. He sucked fiercely. The girl cried out in pain, but that didn't stop him. He took from her vein until her cries were only soft whimpering.

  "You need to stop. There are plenty mortals in the world. You will not run out of blood, and your hunger is satisfied." Lazarus said calmly.

  He jerked his head back, but the girl was still bleeding. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to latch back on to her neck.

  "Run your tongue across the puncture wounds; it will seal and heal them," Lazarus said, and Mitch obeyed with reluctance.

  The wounds closed before his eyes, and were already beginning to fade. The realization hit him hard at what he had just done to the girl. He'd almost killed her. He covered his mouth with his hand and realized that his fangs had gone back into hibernation. He sort of willed them to come back out, and they did. He imagined them going away, and they did.

  Lazarus laughed loudly. "You learn very quickly, son. It took me months to get the hang of it. I'm guessing that you will learn your skills very soon, where it had taken me eons to master all of them." He turned his head to the side and studied Mitch. "I am anxious to see if you can withstand the sun, but first we shall see if you have the gift of compulsion. I don't, so it won't surprise me if you do not as well." He walked to the girl and took her head in his hands. "Look into her eyes and tell her to do something."

  "What could she possibly do? She's chained to a table and almost completely drained of her blood," Mitch said.

  Lazarus shrugged. "Look deep into her eyes; try to look through her eyes, and tell her to kiss you. She is so afraid of you right now that only compulsion would make her do something like that so willingly."

/>   Mitch walked back to her. She started crying again when he came into her sight. "Please…don't hurt me." He felt sorry for her, but he didn't have any intentions to hurt her anymore.

  He focused on her brown eyes and tried to look through them as Lazarus had suggested. "Kiss me," he whispered.

  The girl's features softened and changed. Ciera was there again. He didn't wait for her to come all the way to him. He met her lips with a mad hunger that only Ciera could make him have. He may be pissed at her, and he may even kill her one day because of what she'd done to him, but he still wanted her, he still loved her. He would always love her.

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  Chapter 33

  Ciera broke back into consciousness from a horrible dream, but she didn't open her eyes. Mitch had been a vampire, and there had been another vampire there showing him how to feed. The crazy thing had been, that she had been the victim on the bed that he was training his feeding technique with. The other vampire hadn't looked familiar to her, but her dreams often did that to her sometimes. After Mitch had fed off her, he had kissed her so passionately that her body was still tingling from arousal.

  She opened her eyes to strange surroundings. She jumped out of the bed and pressed her back against the nearest wall. She looked back at the bed. Dane was there, beneath the sheets. Had she slept with him? Had she given herself to him? No. She shook her head. She would have remembered that. Although, she was only in a black cami and her panties, and she didn't remember a thing after Dane stuck a needle in her back.

  She realized her dream may not have been just a dream, but rather Mitch's reality. He was a vampire, she hoped. The other vampire must have been his father that Dane had spoken about. He was the killer. But how had she been there? She couldn't do that. Could he see her in his victim, or was he actually kissing another woman of his own freewill?