“I need to get one of those black cards, apparently they open any door in the city,” I laugh.
“Hardly,” Lucan laughs with me. We ride the elevator up a few floors and it opens in the main lobby. When the door closes behind us, I notice it is marked Service Elevator.
“So you know we have to go up twice as many floors as your office to get to my apartment. Are you going to be okay?” Lucan asks, obviously remembering our previous elevator rides. For the second or maybe third time, I am embarrassed he can hear my thoughts.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I scoff and hop on to the waiting car. I half expect him to whip out the black card again but he doesn’t. Instead, he pushes the button for the 66th floor and we head up. “For some reason I don’t feel as anxious in an elevator when you’re here,” I admit. “I noticed it yesterday. I was going to thank you but I got...” I stop. He knows this already. He was there, listing to my thoughts. “Maybe you’re my cure,” I finish.
He winks.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The elevator opens to the 66th floor but the familiar voice doesn’t announce our arrival, probably because it’s not on the usual route. The lobby looks just like the pictures in my coffee table books, albeit a little dusty and worn down. The lighting is sparse, just emergency lights over head, but I can still make out the marble walls and murals. I hope I can see this again sometime in the light of day. We walk down the hallway to another elevator.
“Just a bit more and we’re there.” Lucan assures me. This elevator is of the kind you find in Europe that only holds a few people.
“Oh my!” I lived in Italy for a summer in college and took the stairs any chance I could to avoid these things. My stomach does a back flip and I regret the rich tiramisu. “We can just take the stairs?”
“I haven’t rewired the lights in there yet and there are a few loose boards. I don’t think it’s a good idea in those shoes.” He points down at my feet.
I relent. The stairs sound more frightening than the elevator at this point. Gathering my courage, I step in and Lucan pulls the iron grate closed behind us. The elevator jerks and sputters to life, just like the ones in Italy. And, just like the ones in Italy, it moves at a snail’s pace chugging itself upward in no particular hurry. I groan. Lucan is watching me, his gaze a mix of concern and apology. I try to smile and let him know I’m okay. We are incredibly close to each other in the tiny car and that makes me feel safe.
Lucan wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me closer. I melt as I look up into his eyes. The elevator gives another lurch and I instinctively put my hands on his chest to steady myself. The current flowing between us is soft and warm, pulling us together. The ancient elevator creaks to a stop and shutters a bit. Neither of us makes a move to disengage, our eyes and bodies locked together in the tiny space. I want him to kiss me again but I quickly hide the thought behind something else.
A mix of emotions seems to play over his face and he reaches over to pull the grate open. He extends his arm to usher me out of the car and into another ornate lobby. This time the lighting is bright and inviting. Here the frescos and marble inlaid floors have been painstakingly restored. In the center of the room is a living area with a large white leather couch and two matching chairs. An equally large glass and chrome coffee table sits in the center on top of a fuzzy white rug. The distinctive triangular windows of the Chrysler’s upper floors give way to a brilliant view of the City below. The entire floor is largely open like any New York loft. In a far corner, there is a large four-poster bed. A fluffy white comforter and a plethora of white pillows complete the effect.
“Would you like to sit down?” He motions towards the couch in the center of the room.
“Okay.” I am looking up at the inlaid wood on the ceiling near the entrance and trying to walk at the same time. I catch myself just before my ankles have a different idea. “Would you mind if I took off my shoes? I usually don’t wear these kinds of things and my feet have had enough.”
He smiles at me. “They are ridiculous.”
Once I am on the terra firma of the couch, I unfasten the buckles and sigh at the relief of being flatfooted again. Eight hundred dollars does not buy comfort apparently.
“Can I offer you some more wine?” He is behind me and I turn to see a rather large kitchen in the corner opposite the bed. It could be straight out of a Food Network cooking show. I tolerate wine well enough on occasion—except for maybe on Sunday night—but what I have really wanted all night is a beer. “Okay, thank you,” I answer to be polite.
Lucan shakes his head before heading to the Sub Zero fridge. In seconds, he’s back with two Coors Lights. This mind reading thing isn’t so bad after all, finally a man that knows your every desire. That makes us both laugh. He twists the tops off and hands me one. I am trying not to think of anything else I might desire of him.
“This is the most amazing place I have ever seen, I love it.” I walk towards the windows spanning the south wall and Lucan follows me. The surrounding buildings mostly obscure the view from my office on the 30th floor, but from here, the city spreads out below like a field of stars. I could enjoy this forever.
“Abri, I need to tell you something now.” His face looks tortured. Oh God, he heard the forever thing and now he thinks I’m a crazy bitch that’s ready to move in and start a family. I can’t even let myself go there, not after one date. I feel there is something there but it’s too soon to know what. I take a long draw on my beer.
“Oh Lucan—er, Luke, I just mean that I could look at the city like this forever, not specifically herein your apartment. I get that we’ve just met—” He puts his finger to my lips to stop my incessant rambling.
“Shh, I’m ready to tell you,” he whispers and with that I hear him speak a word in my mind.
Vampire.
CHAPTER NINE
I step back, removing his finger from my lips. “Okay, I think I’ve officially had too much to drink. I know better than to mix my alcohols. I think I’m starting to hear things.” I rub my temples trying to replay the last few seconds. “You didn’t just do that thought exchange thing to me, did you?”
He nods his head once and then turns away from me. My brain begins firing off a string of questions that neither one of us can comprehend. My subconscious fight or flight reflex takes over and propels me backwards, away from Lucan and towards the creaky elevator across the room. The magnetic pull between our bodies that I’ve noticed and tried to ignore all night is stretching thin and it hurts. I find myself rubbing my chest. A voice in my head tells me to stay. It’s my own voice, not his.
“I need a minute. Can I use your bathroom?” My voice is smaller than I expect.
He says nothing, still facing away from me, and points to the far corner of the room next to the monstrous kitchen. My bare feet echo in the silence as I pad across the cold marble floor. I shut the door behind me and slide to the floor. If it had had a lock, I would have thrown it. What in the hell have I gotten myself into?
Vampire.
Vampire?
I will be the first to admit there are things in this world I do not understand, but this has taken the proverbial cake. Vampires cannot be real. Otherwise, I have to suspend everything I believe in, give up on my definition of reality. Suspension of belief is not something I am used to or even capable of, really. I have promised to trust him, but even trust had its boundaries. That voice in my head reminds me that I’ve already taken the mind reading and the electric shock in stride.
I do a quick mental check down of what I know about vampires versus Lucan O’Reilly. Lucan came to my office during the daylight and stood in front of a brightly lit window without bursting into flames. Hell, his apartment is more than half windows. He ate dinner and dessert with me tonight, not blood. We even used silver utensils and I am pretty sure there was some garlic in the mashed potatoes. There is a giant bed in the corner of the room, not a coffin. I saw his reflection along with mine in the mir
rors outside the restaurant. I haven’t noticed any crucifixes but that is probably not enough to be a determining factor. There is not a single match. Well, besides the moving really fast thing and the mind reading thing. And the fact that he just told me he was a vampire. Then again, that is probably enough when you thing about it.
This is ridiculous. I am doing a mental check-down of a real person against popular fiction. Fiction by definition is not real. Lucan is real.
My chest aches again and I am overwhelmed. My mom always told me to trust my gut. Neither she nor it have every steered me wrong. I think about the consequences of leaving now: how my life will continue forward, playing out on whatever tedious and uninteresting pathway I was headed down and that thought sickens me. This is where I am meant to be.
Then I realize I am here; I have found that little 3a.m. place in my soul I’ve been searching for. A deep breath centers me. I am here and everything is clear. Guess I didn’t even need to be that drunk to get here, I muse.
I wanted to deny it until now, but something had come alive in me yesterday morning—something that had kept me up all night and was now pushing me towards Lucan. That something was my destiny switching tracks like a train at a crossroads. Lucan was now my path.
I am running on gut instinct now. I stand up and check myself in the mirror. I don’t look crazy, but I must be. If I am going to stay and trust that this man is for real—and it’s not just that we are both seriously imbalanced—it is time for some explanations. Real ones based in fact and not fiction. With a deep breath, I open the door and look around the cavernous apartment. He is no longer standing by the windows.
“Luke?” No answer. I walk back towards the windows and look out. “Luke! Lucan!” I scream. He is perched on the ledge that makes up the lowest curve of the building’s steel spire. How did he get out there? I tap on the glass and he turns towards me, a look of shock on his face.
“Dammit Lucan! Get back in here!” I motion to him wildly.
He walks towards me, shoulders hunched and hands in his pockets. The moon casts a halo around his body like the sun had in my office earlier that day. He looks fragile and unsure. He points towards the last window to my left and I turn to look, maybe there is an opening there. There is no way I am joining him on his suicidal perch. There is nothing there but plate glass triangular windows. When I look back again, he is gone. Panic overtakes me and I spin around looking for another way out. I smack full speed into his chest.
“What are you doing, trying to kill me?” I scream, shoving him off me.
He springs back almost falling over the couch. Which is in the middle of the room at least twenty feet away. I know it is not from the force of my shove that he has traveled that far.
“I didn’t mean it like that. I mean sitting out there on the friggin’ building ledge, God knows how many feet up, giving me a heart attack. You could fall. Or maybe you can’t, but still! It scared the crap out of me. What were you doing out there?” My voice pings off the marble floors and high ceilings.
“I was giving you some privacy. The building blocks my ability to hear you, remember.”
“Oh,” I sigh in relief. My voice drops a few decibels. “Thank you. That was considerate.”
“And I didn’t want to see you when you left.” A tear is forming at the corner of his eye. I half expect it to be red. Vampires should cry blood, right.
“Left? Lucan, we’ve known each other for a grand total of twelve hours.” I am nervous to continue and can’t believe what I am about to say, but want him to hear me say this and not just think it. “But I feel like I’ve known you for all eternity, like I am supposed to be here with you. I’m not sure I could leave if I tried. But I need to know, I need for you to explain, verbally, what is going on here. Tell me this is real and I’m not really at home passed out from too many drinks at happy hour.”
Without thinking, I reach out and grab both of his hands in mine. The shock proves to be near lethal this time and I collapse into his chest, my head resting just below the upward curve of his neck. I am breathing but other than that, there is no report to my brain from any of my bodily systems. I hear Lucan curse just as I black out.
CHAPTER TEN
It takes me a second to realize I am in Lucan’s black four-poster bed. The clock on the bedside table reads just after one so I’ve been out over an hour. I am still wearing my green dress but Lucan has managed to put his blue dress shirt on me. Several buttons are haphazardly fastened in the middle. It smells like him, even better than the jacket. Lucan is sitting in one of the living room chairs in his tight white undershirt watching me. I can feel the uneasiness pouring off him and it urges me out of the bed and to his side.
“Hey,” I say shyly. “What happened?”
“You passed out.” He smiles a tiny smile. He is searching my face and my brain for my next reaction. “I figured you’d be more comfortable in the bed.”
“Yes, thank you. Sorry I passed out. It must have been all that wine.” My joke is a feeble attempt at gauging his feelings. “Let’s try this again,” I say holding my hands out to him.
“You should sit down first. Do you need anything? Water? Food?”
“No. I’m good.” I sit down on the couch a few feet from him and pull my feet underneath me. The blue dress shirt rides up my neck and I can’t help but inhale the new wave of cologne that hits my nose. He notices and shifts his body towards me ever so slightly. “Wait. Before you make me pass out again I think I deserve to know what it is you’re doing to me with that.”
“True enough. If you pass out again what would I do with you?”
My brows furrow in response. I can think of a few things.
“I’ll start from the beginning. I was born in Ireland in 1479. My parents were feudal farmers. I lived there until I was twenty-five and then, bored of farming, I set out for Italy to become a painter. The Renaissance was in full swing then. But I was horrible and lost my apprenticeship within weeks. I began working in a café to earn enough money to eat and put a roof over my head. One night I was working alone and a man came in just before closing. He ordered a drink and sat at down. He was dressed in the high fashion of the day and carried a cane with a golden crest on the top. He finished his drink and I pleaded with him to leave but my Italian was even worse than my paintings.
“I finished mopping the café and went to the back alley to toss the dirty water. I was hoping my absence would give him the hint to leave, but I was wrong. While I was in the alley, someone attacked me from behind. When I turned around it was the man from the café. He grabbed my arms and wrenched me down to the ground. It felt like I had been struck by lightning before I blacked out.
“I woke up several days later in an abandoned building. There was a woman standing over me. Bianca. She told me what had happened to me, what I had become. I had apparently been sick the entire time I was unconscious as my mortal body died and the vampire venom took over. I had bruises all over my body where the last of my blood had pooled and my eyes were sunken into dark circles. They were no longer blue but dark red.” Lucan stops. “Abri?”
“It felt like a lightning strike and you blacked out?”
“Oh fuck. Abri, I didn’t. I promise.” My hand goes instinctively up to my neck to check for bite marks. The last thing I remember before passing out is my face being very close to his neck, in perfect alignment for biting. “Do you honestly think I would do that?”
“Why else would you bring me here and knock me out?” A tiny bit of fear was now working its way to the surface. I had been so stupid before, swayed by a pretty face and the fallacy of fate.
“Uh, coming here was your idea, love.” He has me there. “Rest assured Abri, you are as human now as when you woke up this morning. Now you told me I had a lot of explaining to do, do you want me to finish?”
He is so calm; it’s unnerving. I check my wrists and neck again. I am still in one piece. If he’d wanted to hurt me, he had the chance while I was out. “Go
on,” I mutter, feeling a little ashamed of my assumptions.
“Bianca taught me how to be a vampire. You know, the basic life skills.” His casual use of the word sends a shiver up my spine. He cringes almost imperceptibly at my reaction. “Sorry, but what else are you going to call it? Traditionally, vampires had lived in Eastern Europe but the Renaissance had drawn them, like everyone else, to Italy. I was not alone in my learning; there were many other newlings like me around. I will spare you the specifics of what my early years were like, but needless to say, they were less than romantic. Popular fiction has a much better ideal than my reality.”
I want to tell him that popular fiction is his reality in my opinion, but I don’t. He shrugs, having heard me anyways. “So where does the shocking and passing out thing come in? Is that a ‘basic life skill’?”
“That is more complicated than you might think,” he says, shifting himself away from me on the couch again, pulling his arms in close. I fight the instinct to reach out for him, to be close. That feeling in my chest is back but I can’t think about that right now. How is it my body feels compelled to be close to him when my mind is clearly wary of the dangers? “I’m guessing by now you’ve figured out that I am not like the vampires you’ve read about in books or seen in the movies, right?”
I nod in agreement. “For the most part, yes.”
“I can go out in the sun light. Garlic won’t kill me, nor will a stake to the heart, silver, or a crucifix. I don’t sleep in a coffin, as you can see. I do sleep, just not as much or as often as you need to. And I can’t compel anyone to do anything by staring at them, although that would come in handy in business if I could.”
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