by Anna Santos
“Sorry, but I’m not on the menu. I just have to speak to her,” I said, pointing at Jessica. “So why don’t you run along? The fun is over tonight.”
“You are such a buzzkill!” Jessica nagged.
The vamp stared at me for a while. Looking at my black leather suit, he noticed the hilts of my swords. “Aren’t you too young to play with that?” he asked, smirking as if amused.
“Aren’t you old enough to understand what they mean?” I asked him back with a straight face, opening my mouth and showing my own fangs so he would just run away and leave us alone.
“I was not going to hurt her,” he claimed, eyes now opened wide and fear beginning to get the best of him. Lucky for me, he was a coward and wasn’t going to try to show how big and fast he was. I was in no mood to play anyhow, and he hadn’t done anything bad. At least, not that I knew of.
“Don’t worry. She can take care of herself,” I said, looking at Jessica, who giggled. “Just leave,” I ordered, and he used his super speed to vanish.
“Hey! I hadn’t finished with him yet! I don’t even have his phone number!” Jessica started to complain. “He was hot! Damn, Anna!”
“Jessica, I really hate when you do this,” I said, annoyed.
She just shrugged and made a happy face. It always upset me how reckless she was. Her neck was still bleeding from the puncture marks, and I stared at the blood, mesmerized. I had stronger urges for blood lately. The most recent tests showed I was going to have to drink blood on a regular basis. That morning in the clinic, after talking to my comatose brother, I’d spoken with my doctor. The news wasn’t good for me. My aging process had stopped, and my body was rejecting normal food. And Jessica smelled good. I’d never noticed how good she smelled until then.
“Hungry?” she asked, seeming to notice my fixation on her neck or the purple of my eyes.
“No, just intrigued about why you always smell so good. Your blood always smells sweeter than the rest’s.”
“It’s the magic,” she explained. “Sorry, I'll fix it.” She put her glowing hand over her neck and healed it. “I’ve missed you!” Then she ran to me and hugged me tight, making me gasp for air. I was not expecting that, but she was always a force of nature and really emotional. “So, are you having fun there? You don’t seem to want to come back home! It’s been, what, almost two months?”
“All is fine. I just took some time off.”
“And how is your wolf?” she asked, letting me go and clapping her hands with excitement. Jessica was my only girlfriend. I missed her a lot, even if I used to call her several times a week to tell her the news. She was the only one who knew what was really going on with Shane and me. I trusted her not to tell anyone. “So?” she asked with shining eyes and pleading face so I would tell her the latest events.
I smiled, relaxing. “Shane is fine, Jessie.”
“When can I meet him? I’m so curious to know him. He must be something else to tame you!” She chuckled, finding her joke hilarious. I put my hand on her forehead and pushed her back to annoy her and make her stop laughing. She hissed and pushed my hand aside. “Someone is touchy today!”
“Just stop saying nonsense. No one tamed me.”
“Okay, okay, so when can I meet him?”
“He doesn’t know about you and the others yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“He doesn’t know what I really do.”
“I know that! But I can pretend to be normal. I mean a hot normal witch who doesn’t have a secret identity. Besides, you said he’s your soul-mate. And I’m curious. Hybrids weren’t supposed to have soul-mates. And that brings up a lot of questions. Like, if two hybrids are soul-mates, how will they know that? Because it was Shane who told you. Since he isn’t a hybrid but a pure werewolf, he knows how to recognize his soul-mate. So if it’s true that hybrids also have soul-mates, do all supernatural beings have them, too?”
“Calm down, calm down,” I said, overwhelmed by how many questions she had and all the conjectures she was making. I was surprised. She’d really taken the time to think about the subject. “I think that the purebloods just invented that to make us feel bad and to dissuade other races from mingling and creating superior beings. Hybrids were killed while still infants. It’s not a surprise that they invented myths to make us feel even more outcast.”
“Point taken,” Jessica said, and then she just smiled and clapped her hands again, making me frown. She was always so happy that it seemed like nothing could make her feel bad, but I knew that was not true. “I’m so happy for you!” Her perfect white teeth were showing in her plump red mouth. She had a nice smile, and I missed her joyfulness. “And I want to meet Shane. So no more excuses!”
“Okay.”
“Hmm! Are you lying to me?”
“Of course not! I’ll arrange for you to come and meet him.”
“Good! Now, tell me. What did the doctor say?”
“I’m going to live forever,” I said in a grumpy tone that made her pout and roll her eyes.
“Yes, right—now try telling me something I didn’t know.” she said with sarcasm.
“I’m becoming a true vampire,” I shared, sighing deeply. I stopped walking so she could process my information.
“Did you stop aging?”
“Yes.”
“Everything will be alright,” she said, hugging me. I hugged her back.
“I don’t want to… feel the hunger and the lust for blood,” I confessed, my body trembling.
“How long ‘til that happens?”
“I don’t know. Days, weeks. Food no longer works by itself. I’m kind of—scared.”
“I know honey.” She cuddled my hair and hugged me tighter. “You should feed.”
“I don’t want to feed from you,” I almost screamed when I felt her hand pulling my head to her neck. “You get all aroused from that!”
She just let me go and laughed hysterically, and then she added between giggles, “Women don’t arouse me, silly! You are safe.”
“No, thanks. I rather not drink from the source.”
“Picky!”
“Shut up! You know what happens to purebloods. I don’t want to go mad with other people’s thoughts and memories.”
“You don’t even know if you inherited the pureblood vampire’s gift!” She put her hands on her hips and stared at me as if I was a stubborn kid.
“Kevin did,” I mumbled, and she softened her face and breathed deeply.
“Yes, he did. Let’s go talk while we eat. We don’t need to go home right now. And we have a lot of stuff to catch up on. What do you say, girls’ night?”
I agreed happily and walked to my bike. Then I stopped and closed my eyes, smelling the air. I had the strangest impression of smelling Shane close by. I was getting paranoid! Shane was miles away, patrolling or hanging out with his friends in the bar. All alone, because I’d left him and gone to see my cousin and best friend. All alone. I was also feeling alone. I wanted to put on my helmet and run back to his arms and cry my soul out on his lap. Tell him everything until all the pain ended and I felt safe. He made me feel safe.
“Again with those daydreaming eyes,” Jessica complained, snapping me out of my thoughts. “Tomorrow you can go back to your wolf. Tonight you are mine.”
So I put on my helmet and gave Jessica hers, and we left to find an open diner to sit down and eat like normal people.
Chapter Twenty
Shane
I followed Anna and her friend to a diner. After they went in and sat at a table, I covered my head with my hooded sweater and went in. I sat far enough to not be seen but close enough to be able to listen to them. I asked for coffee and pie and stayed really attentive to their conversation. The truth was that I had found out more about Anna’s life in that hour than in all our time together.
I was feeling relieved. I could not deny that. Anna was just looking for a friend; she was not a spy and she was all but evil. In fact, she was all sad an
d worried about her final transformation. It also made me sad that she didn’t trust me enough to go back home and share all those things with me. I could help her; I could explain things to her. I could feed her. She didn’t need to be worry about the possibility of hurting people or having bloodlust. She would just need to drink from me. But she didn’t know that. I needed to talk to her and wait for her to open up. She was planning to let her friend come and meet me, therefore I thought that she was making progress in letting me in her life.
Then there was the fact of hiding that her father was a pureblood vampire. My master would definitely have to know about it, and my contacts needed to be informed, so my suspicions would be answered. If she was who I thought she was, destiny had a really twisted sense of humor.
I calmed all my thoughts and tried to listen to their conversation. It was now about something to do with Jessica’s dreams. They were eating pie and ice cream while sharing worries and thoughts.
“Have you found your vampire yet?” Anna asked as she put a piece of pie in her mouth.
“No, I’m still searching.”
“It wasn’t that guy?”
“Who?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“That blond one back there.”
“No. It wasn’t. But I was feeling hot enough with him. You just ruined for me a perfect good night of sex!” she complained.
“You mean five minutes of sex, because that was not a night of sex, for sure,” Annabel teased her.
She growled and then pouted again. “Five minutes is better than nothing.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure.”
“You’re annoying,” she complained.
“Yes, must be annoying to have me as your conscience. I guess I was away for too long, and there was no one left to stop you from doing stupid things like this.”
“Sure, Mom,” she said, completely ignoring Anna’s lecture and eating the ice cream while staring at the void.
Anna chuckled. “’I’ve missed you, Jessie!”
“I may have missed you, too, depending if you are still going to pester me about my choice of sexual partners.”
“You are a big girl. Just be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
“So… why weren’t you home with the boys?”
“I couldn’t stand Jason complaining all the time. He’s being a stuck-up brat since you gave him the keys to the castle,” she grumbled, and Anna smiled, amused. “Are they missing me?”
“Only for your cooking,” Anna said, making her roll her eyes and mutter something I didn’t understand. “How are the headaches?”
“They are okay. I had my shot of vampire blood the other day.”
“So, what were you doing in the back alley of the bar?”
“Trying to have sex. A girl has her needs,” she informed her with a piercing pair of blue eyes. Jessie was funny, I had to give her credit. “I was just expecting you tomorrow. Or did I mess up the days?
“Today is Saturday.”
“Already? I haven’t slept well for a while.”
“Nightmares?” Annabel wondered.
“Erotic dreams.”
Annabel almost chocked on her ice cream. Her friend Jessie giggled. “Please spare me the details.”
“Sure, they are way too hot for you to hear about, anyway.” Then she pouted and sighed with sad eyes. Anna must be used to her mood swings, because she just let her relax, waiting for her to talk about whatever she needed to. Jessie stroked the blonde hair from her face and sighed again. “I—I’m losing hope in finding him.”
“Maybe it’s just a dream.”
“It’s never just a dream. I know it was real, from a previous life. And I—feel the need to find him. As if… time is running out.” She was truly sad by then.
Anna looked at her with a sympathetic face. She knew Jessica was sad and feeling lonely, like I did. Apparently, her soul-mate was somewhere out there, and all she had were pieces of scattered dreams about him. Dreams she thought were past-life memories.
I didn’t envy her powers or her dreams. And I knew Anna couldn’t help her. She could just keep secret her escapes into vampire bars in search of her tall, blond vampire soul-mate. And she could not even come clean with her and tell her that he could no longer exist. Her dreams, if memories, were old; he had probably already died of old age or been killed. After all, when a soul-mate dies, the other grows old and weak and eventually passes away. Eternity ends when a supernatural loses his other half, after the bonding. If I were to lose Annabel, I wouldn’t have any other reason to keep living. My grief would make me weak and trigger my aging process; eventually I would die of old age or sadness. Dying of a broken heart was real to supernatural beings.
Jessica’s dreams were pointless, and I actually felt sorry for her. I could relate to her pain. I had felt it for a long time, before finding Anna. And I didn’t have the burden of knowing what she would look like or her race; I had no memories of us together in a past life. I could only understand a bit of Jessica’s pain, not all of it. It would be torture for her to have all those memories and experience all those dreams without being able to do anything about them.
Anna put her hand over Jessica’s, and I felt all my love for Anna beat inside my chest. She had a concerned look on her face. She didn’t want Jessica to feel sad. I didn’t want Anna to be sad.
“But enough about me.” Jessica’s voice woke me from my own thoughts. She amazed me by smiling and scaring her sadness away, and then she made me smile, because I heard my name again. “I want to know all about Shane. What is he like?”
“I’ve already told you everything about Shane,” Anna complained, scratching her neck again. I smirked over my coffee cup at that. She was probably feeling a force pulling her to me, like I was. Too bad she didn’t want to talk about me. I would have loved to hear what she had to say about me to her best friend.
“Humor me so I can feel a bit more jealous of you,” Jessica dared her.
I liked her already. She really made my day. I was curious to know what Anna was going to tell her.
“Shane is sexy, gorgeous, sensitive, and funny. He is a great listener. He makes me feel safe and complete. He is also a great fighter, and everybody respects him. He’s a really nice person.” She had a soft smile on her lips and dreamy eyes while speaking about me. I was drooling like a fool at every word she used to describe me.
“Okay, fine, that’s enough. It’s like he brainwashed you!”
“What?” Anna asked, the spoon at her mouth.
“That bond stuff is serious mojo! But I’m so jealous! You were not even looking for your mate and you found him. And me, here all alone, eating ice with me ice cream and pie to drown my sorrow and lack of sex.”
“Hey! I’m here with you!”
“Pfft! You are here today. Tomorrow, you’ll be back in your mate’s arms, continuing to have endless sex.”
“Jesus! Stop talking about sex. You are getting paranoid!”
“And you just got all red! Guilty much?”
“Of what?” Anna’s eyes flew wide open, as though she had no idea what Jessica was accusing.
“Of never giving me any details,” she explained, lowering her voice. Anna just rolled her eyes, and Jessica pouted, knowing that her friend was not going to indulge her.
Anna sighed, grabbed her phone, and stared at the screen. I hadn’t texted her or phoned again that night. I was following her, and she would most probably feel neglected by me. I had told her I was in a meeting, so she didn’t try to call me back, either, even when she stared quietly at the phone like she wanted to. I was just not calling and texting her all time because I was there, next to her, listening to her words and deciphering her sighs and long stares at the phone.
“Anna,” Jessica called, finding her absent stare strange. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes. Everything is… fine.”
“How long have you been away from him?”
“Since this morning.
”
“Wow! That is some scary shit!”
Anna frowned, as though surprised by her language just as I was. I was also intrigued by her words.
“Mate bond is like a powerful drug,” she explained. “I’ve been reading about it in my ancestors’ grimoire. It’s a witch book of shadows,” she clarified.
“I know what that is. You are my best friend and a witch. I’m bound to know what a grimoire is!”
“Fine, now let me finish. There it says that a mate bond works like a drug. The more you use it, the more you need it. And you’ve been there, like, forever so—I’m just saying.”
“I’m not following you at all,” Anna complained, pressing her finger to her forehead. She was probably feeling a headache coming on. It was not normal for her to be like that. She looked pale and distracted.
“Gosh, Anna! You are feeling all weird and sad because you have been away from him for a couple of hours, and you didn’t even drink from him. Imagine what will happen when you do! Not to mention what the sex will be like—wow! Fireworks and an out-of-body experience!”
Jessica seemed excited and happy about that, giggling as she stared at Anna with mischievous eyes and smile.
“It’s already like that,” Anna declared, pulling the plate of pie to her, eating it alone, and making Jessica complain. I smiled at her answer, proud of making her feel like that. She made me feel like that, too. It was perfect, even without sharing my blood with her; even if we hadn’t marked each other yet.
“If it’s that good, why are you like that?”
“Like what?”
“All grumpy and moody! It’s like you aren’t getting any!”
“Oh, trust me, I’m getting plenty.”
“Five-minutes plenty?”
“No, of course not. More like whole nights and barely having time to rest.”
