Shattered Days (The Firsts Book 7)

by C. L. Quinn

  After her mental break, and although it was still linked to her lifeforce, the tie with her spirit amulet had been severed, which made it impossible for her to regain her sanity. One traumatic moment after another had to have driven her mad. Tamesine knew some details, from recent events. A sister, beloved, had betrayed and murdered her. Even now, even aware she would have to know someday, she couldn’t face the truth.

  These were the memories locked inside that eventually, she would have to find and know. These memories she had shut out of her conscious mind must be regained and reconciled into her life, or she would never be truly well again.

  This was the journey that sent her from her home in France to this little street in America. As one of the most powerful vampires on this earth, Tamesine knew it was within her ability to find her way back. That path back from her darkness had begun.

  Tonight, though, back to her mundane job. As she picked up her bag, she smiled, thinking about Frank. He was becoming an important part of this journey. He mattered to her now, made her feel happy.

  Happy. There was a word she hadn’t applied to herself in a long time. Confused, sad, uneasy, discontent, scared, yes. But not happy.

  “Hmm,” she said, as she locked her door. “Hmmm.”

  It struck her that she almost skipped up the stairs that led down to her apartment. She couldn’t stop smiling as she hurried down the street to Frank’s Place.

  Claude sat in the rented car, silent, as he watched the vampire walking from her typical human dwelling to her normal human job. To anyone else on the street, she looked like a lovely young woman with her whole life ahead of her. Job, husband, children, eventually a mortgage and car payment. The sweet story of an average woman living her life.

  Hardly, he thought, looking around at the other pedestrians sadly ignorant of the truth. How would they react if they knew she was a dangerous predator, a vampire who used humans like convenient buffets whenever the bloodlust overcame her? Oh, yes, she could blend in when she wanted to. She certainly looked human, except for the obscene perfection.

  Claude had to agree, this one personified the perfection quotient. She was stunningly beautiful, if you looked close enough. He knew, though, they often masked their appearance when they were near humans too long. The sensual natures of vampires tended to excite humans too easily. The bitch would have to fight off most human males and some females if she didn’t control her appearance or sexual pheromones, or whatever-the-hell it was that vampires exuded that made humans so attracted to them.

  Information was power, though, and the fact that he’d been trained for two decades to spot them, to resist them, to detest them, made him invulnerable. Compulsion was the exception. No human would overcome that horrid skill that vampires wielded with little concern for the repercussions.

  The uninitiated became vampire’s victims, wholesale targets for them to do whatever they wanted with them. Claude was grateful for his position in the SRS, recently promoted to director of supernatural control for the whole of the America’s and Canada. He’d rather be in Europe, but just this position alone made his future bright within the organization that was better funded than God.

  Vampires were incredibly difficult to contain. Next to impossible, in fact, before the serum. But this special elixir cooked up by some of the highest paid scientists in the world, effectively neutralized even the first blood vampires. It rendered them unconscious, but in a weakened state, even after they awakened. Vampires could unlock any lock, but not when they were controlled by the serum.

  The man who funded and headed the Supernatural Research Society, now Claude’s direct boss, Jacques Lamont, was very proud of this greatest achievement. A serum that could bring down a vampire had never been successful before.

  Although Claude knew that this particular vampire was one of the most powerful of all of the vampires they knew, the serum-filled darts had taken her down too.

  Once Lamont gave the word, Claude and his team would take her. Until then, he had to sit on his hands like a recalcitrant child. He hated this part. It was dull and unsatisfactory. Taking her, chaining her, caging her for the rest of her life as they studied her until the inevitable end, a beheading that would be final, that was the part he looked forward to the most.

  Turning on the radio, he reached for a piece of American style pizza. There was no need to follow her right now, he knew where she was heading. To that nasty late-night restaurant. He imagined the food there was dismal, but he quite enjoyed this unusual pizza called Hawaiian. The flavors were interesting, so he settled in to enjoy the food until he checked on Tamesine later in the night.

  As she entered the restaurant tonight, Tamesine’s eyes sought Frank’s, and when she saw him as he came from the storage room, and he lifted his eyes to look at her, she couldn’t help but smile.

  “Good morning, Sunshine,” he said, and carried a bucket of oil toward the grill.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  Been a very long time since I’ve seen the morning, she thought. But today feels kind of new, like a fresh morning might.

  Pulling on her apron, she turned to face the door as the chime announced someone had entered.

  Making relationships, real relationships, instead of blood-meals and sexual partners, felt right. She drew a deep, cleansing breath and approached the four young women who were waiting by the door.

  “Hi, would you prefer a table or booth?” Tamesine’s night began.

  While she seated the women and gave them menus, her eyes lifted to the entrance when a group of rowdy young men passed by on their way next door. She still had to deal with going into the adjacent bar later after her shift was over to find the man who’d walked into her life through her dreams.

  The Iron Butterfly was pretty quiet tonight. Marc let Bobby get out of there early since he now had full-time custody of his little girl.

  A quick glance at the clock told him it was just past midnight. After he wiped down the bar, he straightened up the row of wine glasses so he could put away the newly washed glasses that Bobby had brought back in just before he blew out of there.

  By the time Marc closed up tonight, it would be too late to check on the waitress. Tomorrow night, he was off, so he planned to go in for a meal and suss out the best way to find out what he wanted to know.

  As he stacked the glasses three tiers high, he smiled. What was the right way to ask a woman what the hell she was doing in his dreams? Without sounding like a crazy man or a stalker? He remembered the overprotective attitude of the guy behind the counter from the night before and knew that he might have trouble getting a chance to talk to her at all. Yeah, he got it.

  She was pretty. More than, actually, and probably had to fight the guys off. The cook had probably had to get rid of assholes more than once who tried to hit on her. Still, he needed to talk with her. While he doubted that it would go well, he felt driven to go back to her, to look her in the eyes, and see if there was a reason she kept coming to him while he slept.

  He looked up just as a regular motioned for him to bring another round. Giving the guy a nod of acknowledgement, he pulled some beers out of the fridge. Someone entered the Butterfly through the main entrance, and he vaguely noticed that it was a woman who took a seat on one of the stools at the bar.

  “I’ll be right back,” he advised her, and glanced over before he lifted the tray to deliver the beer to the table of noisy guys. He froze.

  The waitress from next door, the one that had penetrated his dreams, sat comfortably on the stool, her head erect, her eyes on him. They moved slowly over his body, head to foot, and lingered just below his belt, then moved back to his face.

  Marc was not a shy man, had never really known the discomfort of embarrassment, and yet he felt his face warm under her perusal. He gave her a curt nod, and walked over to serve his clients.

  What the hell was this? Why was she here? He wasn’t crazy, was he? The fact that she sat there, locked on him, did that mean that she did know
what was happening? That somehow she really had entered his dreams?

  He didn’t believe it was possible for someone to actually enter someone else’s dreams. Of course it wasn’t!

  But something weird was going on. The fact that she was here had to mean something.

  He placed the bottles in front of the four guys who acted like heathens and grabbed them like five-year-olds. One of them actually grunted like an ape before he chugged his bottle. Marc wasn’t paying attention.

  Slowly, he carried the tray back to the bar, laid it carefully on the counter, and turned to the blonde woman.

  “Hello,” he said quietly, trying to sound professionally detached. “What can I get for you?”

  This was the best look he’d had of her face up close. In the restaurant when she’d served him, he hadn’t paid any attention, and in the alley, it had been too dark.

  My God, he thought. She looks exactly as she does in my dream. Every detail. Huge blue eyes, full lips, almost otherworldly beautiful.

  While he stared at her, he realized she was doing the same to him, her eyes also slowly scanning his face. He watched her tongue slide out, lingeringly, across her lower lip. He wanted to touch her there. It felt like they were in a bubble, oblivious of everything and everyone else around them.

  “Wine. Red, please,” she answered finally, her voice quiet, but strong.

  He couldn’t answer, so he just nodded once, and turned from her. As he poured the wine into one of the glasses he’d just stacked, he realized he’d been holding his breath. Why? Was it his immediate attraction to her? Yes, she was crazy gorgeous, but he’d been with plenty of lovely women in his life, so why did she affect him like this?

  He set the glass of wine on an Iron Butterfly napkin and pushed it towards her.

  “There you go.”

  She didn’t reach for it. She slid her hand out as if she was going to pick it up, but her hand didn’t stop at the stem of the glass. Her fingers curled around Marc’s wrist, a gentle grasp, her fingertips moving against his skin in a soft caress.

  “We need to speak.”

  Of all the things he might have expected her to say at that moment, that wasn’t one of them. It was something he had thought he might say to her, but that she sought him out…he didn’t understand.

  “What about?” He asked.

  “You know.” She paused, his eyes captured again by hers. “Don’t you?” Pulling her hand back, she touched the rim of the glass almost nervously.

  Well, this was what he’d wanted, to speak with her about the strange dreams. No point in acting clueless.

  “Yeah, I think I do.” Simple answer. He decided he’d let her begin. “When do you want to do this?”

  “Now, I think.”

  “I don’t close for another hour.”

  “That isn’t a problem.”

  She slid down off of the bar stool, and walked over to the men at the back table.

  He watched as she spoke to them, and they all got up suddenly and walked out. Then she went to the other two occupied tables, and they, too, got up and left without a word.

  After the door closed behind the last customer, she lifted her hand and he heard the lock snap into place.

  What the hell was that? She wasn’t anywhere near the door. He walked over and checked it. It was locked.

  Marc turned to face her.

  She hadn’t moved, just stood there in the middle of the bar. “What are you?” She said abruptly.

  “Funny, that’s word for word what I was going to ask you.”

  He started towards her. “Nothing about you makes sense. Not what is happening here, tonight. Certainly not what I saw in the alley the other night.”

  Now, within two feet of her, he stopped. “Not how I see and feel you in my dreams.”

  She nodded. “I thought you were having them too. I wasn’t sure, but, it felt too real.” Tamesine sighed. “We might as well sit down. I need to read you.”

  She picked up her wine glass before she scanned the room and pointed towards the back.

  They stepped over to a table behind a half-wall that had a long curved bench behind it. Tamesine sat down and pulled her legs up under her. So he’d seen her in the alley when she’d saved the girl. And it had shocked him, so he wasn’t supernatural. He didn’t seem to be, anyway, he read fully human. He truly was a mystery at this point.

  “I’ll start,” Tamesine said. “Two nights ago, I had a dream. I have a lot of them, that isn’t unusual for me. However, in this one, you appeared and held me. You turned what might have been a nightmare into a moment of peace. I don’t think this is news for you.”

  Marc had been standing, and finally came forward to sit on a chair across from the bench. She looked so relaxed, so beautiful, like she belonged there. He thought that maybe he’d never seen a woman as beautiful as this one.

  “It might not be. First, please tell me your name. I’m Marc.”

  “Tamesine. Those around here, they call me Tam, and I like it. You may do so too.”

  “Okay. Well, at the very least we know who the other person is now. I’m slow, but I’m getting this. Are you saying that we had a dream? Together? The same dream at the same time?”

  Tamesine nodded, and took a sip of her wine. “Umm. I am, because it is becoming apparent we did. I know that if I describe exactly what we did and what we said, you will know it because you were there. Marc, this is going to sound strange, but, I need to ask you. Where do you come from? Are your parents, uh, special?”

  “No more special than most, I guess. No less. I grew up in Wisconsin. Waukesha. Just a dull, average kid.”

  “So, you don’t have…” Tamesine shook her head, then whispered, “I should just use compulsion.” But she didn’t want to. He had been inside her mind and she wanted this discussion to be honest and open. Plus, using her abilities seemed to bring chaos to her increasingly stable state of mind, and she did not want to harm the progress.

  “All right. You were there with me, in my mind, in my dreams. Do you have any idea why?”

  “None. I don’t know you. When I came into the diner the other night, it was for a quick sandwich. Sometimes, I forget to eat, and that night, I had to work, but I had a godawful headache, so I knew I needed to eat something before I went to work and drank any alcohol. I mean, you were nice, you took good care of me, but that’s it. And then I’m dreaming of you. Even that wouldn’t have blown my mind that much if it hadn’t been for what I saw in the alley.”

  “You were never meant to see that.”

  “How the hell did you do it? You weight, what, one-fifteen, one-twenty? Those guys outweighed you by fifty or eighty pounds. Now, I admit I drink some, but not here, not much, and I sure the fuck wasn’t drunk. So what I saw happened, just the way I saw it.”

  “Maybe. But, let that go for now. Please. Can you just come closer? Why don’t you sit next to me for a moment? I need to touch you.”

  “Why?”

  Marc wondered why he was so suspicious suddenly, and why the thought of her touching him was, at once, exhilarating and terrifying.

  “Please. I promise I won’t hurt you.” She scooted forward on the burgundy vinyl, and smiled. “I’m just a tiny woman, what can I do to a huge man like you?”

  Marc stared at her and shook his head. “Sure, other than throw me across this room, what could you do to me?”

  “I promise, I won’t throw you across this room. Besides, you already know what it’s like to touch me.”

  In the dream, yes, he did. More than anything at this moment, he wanted to find out what her touch would be like in reality. So he lifted his ass off of the cheap wooden chair and dropped it on the vinyl bench, just inches from Tamesine.

  “Seriously, this won’t hurt a bit,” she whispered as she moved so close to him, her knees touched his thighs.

  Marc’s breath cinched, and he closed his eyes. He felt her fingers slide along his arms, then across his shoulders, until they rested on the sid
es of his face. She took his head in her hands.

  “Relax. You’ve been inside me before.”

  Her phrase caused an immediate reaction. The image shot into his mind of actually being inside of her, and his cock responded, swelling until he could barely sit still, trapped inside of tight denim.

  He couldn’t do that, he couldn’t slip inside of her, the begging organ would have to remain trapped in his jeans, but his hands came up and wrapped around her waist with no conscious volition. The roaming fingers slipped down slightly to caress the shape of her lower back and lower yet, around her curved buttocks.

  You feel familiar, he said quietly.

  You’ve been there before, I should feel familiar, she told him.

  Only, she hadn’t. He hadn’t spoken to her either. Marc realized they were in each other’s conscious mind. He realized they had taken another left turn into The Twilight Zone. They were speaking to each other telepathically. What?

  He heard her voice again.

  Not telepathically. We’re linked, mind and body, now. Like when we dream-walked inside of each other’s sub-conscious, sleeping mind. If you can relax further, I can enter your sub-conscious memories, too, and that is what I need to do to find out what you are.

  You said that before. I don’t know what you mean, that you want to find out…what I am. I am a man. No one remarkable, no one important or relevant. Just a man who was born, will live a few decades, and die someday. I’m ordinary.

  I can’t believe that. Ordinary people could not enter my mind.

  Marc shot off of the couch, breaking contact with Tamesine as he moved out of reach.

  “What the fuck is this? How are we doing that? You keep asking me what I am…what are you?”

  Tamesine sipped the wine, her eyes following him as he paced, his hands sliding in confusion through his hair. She watched his movements. The long hair kept falling over his eyes, which fascinated her. The deep gray color of his iris’ were flecked with white, or silver, that seemed to sparkle, decidedly not a human characteristic.