Lyric's Gift

by Lee, Trina M.

  Lyric’s Gift

  By Trina M. Lee

  Lyric’s Gift

  Copyright 2009 by Trina M. Lee

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Editor

  B. Leigh Hogan

  Cover Artist

  Stella Price

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Chapter One

  It was quiet. Too quiet. Not a dry autumn leaf crinkled nor a dog barked. The cold night stood in near silence. How deceitful. Beneath the stark illusion lay a world of darkness where things grew and pulsed, thriving on horrors and death. Creatures from the expected to the impossible nightmare existed solely to extinguish life and love.

  Blood thirsty and exhausted, Jade Kenyan walked in shadow. Alone, for tonight anyway. He was growing bored with the women that he’d begun using to fill the empty space at his side. They did nothing to soothe the real longing, the pain of so many years. On this night, more than any other, the ache of several long decades cut him so much deeper; another year had passed already since he’d last mourned the anniversary of the death of his wife.

  Tonight he hunted without care. He stalked the streets of Gray Falls with only one thing on his mind now: an easy kill that no one would miss. Plenty of those were on this side of the city. It was just a matter of singling one out.

  Cars continued to pass by but no longer in droves like during the peak hours. Jade tried to blend in with the few people walking down the street. Nobody cared enough looked twice at him anyway. Long hair tied back neatly, well dressed in a black Italian suit, he looked like one of many men who worked in the business district ten blocks away. They often strolled for a little after-hour’s action from the girls on the strip. In no time at all, he should be satisfying the bloodlust, if nothing else.

  A few working girls called to him before Jade spotted the one he wanted. After only a moment, Jade realized that she wasn’t a working girl at all. Rather, she appeared to be waiting for the bus. He slowed his pace and pretended to check his phone. He wanted a better look at the raven-haired woman half a block away.

  What was she doing out here so late if not working? Most women out after midnight in this end of town were looking for trouble of one kind or another.

  * * * *

  Lyric Morrison dug her cell phone out of her bag and double-checked the time. If she’d missed the last bus, she was screwed. This was the last time she agreed to accept payment by check; she doubted that she had enough cash on her to take a cab home. She hated being out alone like this, but her car had recently died so public transit had become the temporary alternative.

  She should have caught a ride home with one of the other dancers. Maybe she should try Storm again and pray for an answer. She’d already left two messages. If anything, her friend had gone to one of her noisy, late-night hangouts. The music would be too loud to hear her cell phone. Why couldn’t she just use vibrate like everybody else?

  Lyric searched for a cigarette, discovering an empty pack. Well, she was trying to quit anyway. Cursing, she redialed her friend. No luck and still no bus. Shit! People were walking toward her. No big deal, she told herself. It’s cool.

  Pulling her long, faux-fur coat tightly around her, she worried that the five-inch stilettos made her look as if she was out to turn tricks. Lyric was actually a well-trained burlesque dancer. She was in this part of town only because she and the girls had performed at a birthday party for a rich, aging millionaire.

  Something didn’t feel right. She watched the people nearby suspiciously. For Lyric, being psychic didn’t mean being able to know everything about everyone, but her visions did occasionally give her substantial insight.

  A man in an expensive suit lingered half a block away. Tall, dark and handsome. Her gaze lingered on him. Probably on the prowl for what he wasn’t getting at home. A couple had turned off down another street, and the atmosphere seemed to grow cold. Another man, much closer, seemed to be fumbling with something in his pocket. A gun?

  His eyes were fixed on her, and his lips moved, but the sound he produced was slurred and inaudible. Lyric watched him, frozen. She saw it then as the vision flashed before her eyes. The glint of the knife as it sliced through the air to bury itself fatally in her abdomen. The drug fiend was out to rob what he thought to be a prostitute with a few bucks in her purse.

  The man charged her suddenly, and she threw her hands up to ward off the blow. The knife was there in his hand, but he didn’t swing. Reeking of cheap booze and days old sweat, he groped wildly for her bag.

  Lyric tried unsuccessfully to defend herself, balancing precariously on her impossible shoes. Fully expecting a blow from the blade that glittered in the streetlight, she’d barely gotten a scream out when her attacker was snatched away.

  The man in the suit, his eyes glowing with a feral light, held her attacker immobile. With the unmistakable snap of bone, the man was disarmed. Her rescuer silenced the resulting pained howl with a hand, dragging him into the shadows between two buildings.

  Lyric stared open-mouthed into the shadows. Vampire. Gasping to catch her breath, she could only shake her head. As a true psychic, she’d learned to identify vampires early on. Those with supernatural abilities could often sense one another. The gift had run in the women of her family for generations, each of them possessing something uniquely her own. Lyric’s abilities encompassed spontaneous visions of the future.

  She hadn’t felt him as a vampire at first. He must naturally shield hard, which one had to when possessing any kind of mental capabilities of the sixth sense. However, the fact that she’d had no sense of him whatsoever meant he was certainly a powerful one.

  He was incredibly handsome. She had never seen a man with such amazing hair: the deepest brown and just past shoulder length. Common sense told her to run, but something else made her stay. She strained for a better look into the dark, asking herself what the hell she was doing.

  Her eyes focused on the moving shapes beyond the street front. The vampire fed voraciously. There was a strangled groan and then silence. Lyric couldn’t tear her eyes away from the shadows. She would be damned if that bus showed up now.

  It felt like ages before the vampire stepped into the glow of the street light. He had not even a hair out of place. Green eyes rimmed in gold met Lyric’s uneasy gaze. If he came for her, there wasn’t much she could do.

  “Are you ok?” The vampire asked. He held a hand out to her, as if he were harmless. She didn’t budge.

  Looking into her storm-colored eyes, he wore a solemn expression. It struck Lyric as strange, but she was inexplicably drawn to the shadows that danced behind his eyes.

  She was shielding so tight that she knew he couldn’t help but be even more aware of her. She was a gifted human, rarer than the average fortune teller would have you think.

  “I’m fine, tha
nk you.” Her voice was soft and breathy as she studied him. “You just saved my life.”

  “What are you doing out here alone? This isn’t the street you want to be walking after dark.” He was careful not to address her statement, as if he was nobody’s hero.

  “I know,” she replied, shivering in the cooling night air. “I just did a show. I’m a dancer. A trained burlesque dancer, not a triple x dancer.” She was adamant about the kind of dance she did. It was artistic and took a lot of training and hard work. Nudity was brief and minimal at best. “I didn’t think I’d get stuck out here. My damn car just broke down. Last import I’ll ever buy.”

  “I think you missed the bus.” He looked up and down the street. Only a few cars went by. The night was dying down.

  “Yeah, that figures.” She glanced up and down the street uselessly. Strangely, she didn’t feel so afraid anymore.

  “Do you live far? Why don’t you let me get you a taxi?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t ask you to do that.” She protested.

  His eyes barely left her ruby red lips. He watched her with a transfixed look. She knew that her jet-black hair and those bad-girl heels invited him to guess what was beneath the faux-fur coat. Desperately, she began to punch numbers into her cell phone.

  “You didn’t ask. And really, it’s nothing … Just to ensure you get home safely.”

  Though everything about what he said was genuine, Lyric couldn’t resist teasing. “Your gesture is appreciated Mr. … Vampire, but how am I to be sure I won’t be your next midnight snack?”

  He gave her a look of obvious surprise. He apparently hadn’t expected her to recognize him for what he was.

  “Why don’t you tell me?” he asked. There was no mistaking his meaning. She wouldn’t have expected a vampire not to know that she had metaphysical abilities. However, a level of safety lay in the fact that he could not know the extent of her ability, unless he chose to test her.

  She knew damn well this creature had just killed a man in cold blood. Still, it wasn’t the first nor would it be the last murder she’d witnessed; her link to the supernatural world had resulted in many such incidents. Perhaps his chivalry didn’t work quite right for the human world, but he had saved her, and having only that to base her decision on, she slipped her phone back into her bag.

  “Thank you. I will gladly and gratefully accept a taxi ride home.” She now offered him her hand. “I’m Lyric.”

  “Jade Kenyan,” he said, accepting her offered hand gently, as if it were made of fragile glass. “I’m incredibly pleased to meet you, Lyric. That is a beautiful name. Your mother must have been a singer.”

  “She was,” Lyric nodded. “She was a flower child of the sixties. To this day she claims to have jammed with Hendrix.”

  She laughed then and pulled her hand away. Jade’s touch was just too warm and inviting. He was nothing but a stranger to her. He chuckled along with her but reacted subtly to her sudden change in demeanor.

  “I’d better be going,” Lyric glanced down the street, looking for the glow of an approaching taxi. “If you’d like to give me a way to reach you, I’d like to pay you back. At least for the cab.” She doubted there was any way of thanking him for her life.

  Jade raised a hand to flag down the next cab to come down the block. As it eased up to the curb next to them, he pressed a handful of bills into her palm.

  “Consider it a favor. No worries.” He flashed a smile and opened the car door for her. When she was inside, he spoke through the open window. “Have an evening as truly beautiful as yourself, Lyric.”

  He stepped back, and the car pulled away quickly. Too quickly.

  She glanced back at him for one last look before he was out of sight. Strange. Lyric couldn’t deny that he was mesmerizing but definitely dangerous, no matter how nice he’d been. Opening her closed fist, she carefully unfolded the crumpled bills. Her eyes widened.

  He’d given her more than a hundred dollars for a forty-dollar cab ride. He might not have been born in this century, but he existed in it. Surely, he knew the average cost of a cab ride across the city. It was more than generous. She would definitely have to pay him back.

  Though, she wasn’t sure how. He’d avoided giving her too much information about himself. Jade Kenyan. She didn’t recognize the name. However, Lyric knew well that life worked in mysterious ways.

  Jade had been in the right place at the right time to save her life. If their paths were meant to cross again, they would. Until then, she owed him one hundred dollars.

  Chapter Two

  “I’m not kidding you Storm; I’d be dead right now if he hadn’t been there.” Lyric finished retelling the previous evening’s events to her friend as the two talked over morning coffee.

  Storm listened attentively, her hazel eyes wide. She’d been completely distraught when Lyric told her about the street vagrant attacking her. Lyric’s reassurance that Storm wasn’t at fault for missing the call did little to erase the guilty frown she wore.

  “That’s a bit odd though, isn’t it? You don’t usually have visions that don’t come to pass.” Storm observed.

  “I don’t usually have visions regarding myself either. Not like that.”

  “Interesting. What do you make of it?”

  “I can never be sure. Questioning what happens to me never helps. I just go with the flow.” Lyric had learned long ago that it wasn’t worth asking why it worked the way it did. Over the years, she’d realized that, that wasn’t the important part.

  Storm seemed to contemplate this, nodding. “Are you going to see him again?”

  Lyric gave a surprised laugh before chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip. “For one, he’s a vampire.” She paused and gave the other girl a teasing look. “So no, not for what you’re thinking. And for two, I don’t have any information on him other than his name.”

  “And monster status,” Storm was quick to toss in with a grin. She flipped her long, blonde hair back over her shoulder and stood, ready for a refill. “That’s hardly an excuse. I could try a tracking spell.”

  Storm was a witch. She and Lyric had met in a small occult and paranormal research group on the community college campus. That had been almost five years ago, and they had been close friends ever since. It wasn’t everyday that they met someone who really did understand what it was like to be different, at least, not the way that they were different. The basis of their friendship certainly wasn’t afterschool-special material.

  “I don’t know about that. Might not be a good idea. Maybe he doesn’t want to be found. He didn’t exactly give me his business card.”

  “Then why tell you his name at all?” Storm countered.

  “To be polite?” Lyric offered lamely.

  “Did you give your last name?”

  “No.”

  Storm gave her friend a raised eyebrow expression as she returned to the table. “So? Tell me what this sexy vampire looked like.”

  “I never said he was sexy,” Lyric said, a faint blush creeping up over her cheeks.

  “No, but you haven’t stopped glowing all morning. Nothing gets the blood pumping like a run-in with a sexy man. Now talk.” Storm stared expectantly at her until she finally broke the silence with a girlish laugh.

  “Ok, ok. I’ll tell you, but only because you’re right, he just happened to be amazingly gorgeous. Although, I’m sure it hardly matters because I will probably never see him again anyway.”

  * * * *

  Across town, in a three-level split much too large for one man, Jade Kenyan sat in quiet contemplation. For the first time in a long time, the windowless den in which he spent much of his waking daytime hours began to feel more like a prison than a sanctuary. This wasn’t the first time in all these years that he’d asked himself why he couldn’t let go.

  Jade seldom met a woman like Lyric. She gripped his lifeless heart and caused him to remember what that rush of infatuation felt like, that first meeting when he knew she was the one. Clenchi
ng his fists tight in anguish, Jade longed for the rush of love for the first time in more years than he could recall. And, the loss cut deeper because love had nothing left for him.

  That which was full of life would wither beneath his touch as, eventually, he took it away. The bloodlust dominated Jade’s existence. Not only could he not deny the need to consume the lives of women like Lyric, he didn’t really want to. He could look into the eyes of a beautiful, lively woman like her and see only blood and death. At his hands, that death would lay claim to her as it had to so many. That first hot splash upon puncturing the skin, the living energy within her blood and the promise of passion in death, just thinking about it caused him to grow hard.

  Little voices inside his head nagged him from each side. He almost regretted not giving Lyric a way to reach him. Almost. It was like a kick in the groin to know that she’d known exactly what he was and she hadn’t run screaming from him. Not to mention, her own abilities set her apart. Yet, he himself was just as likely to become her attacker as any human man on the street.

  It’s just a fantasy, Jade thought. He needed to get his head out of the clouds. He had been there by coincidence, just a passing moment in time. Already gone. He certainly was no hero. Entertaining the thought of seeing her again was trouble. It wasn’t an option.

  As the sun rose higher and hotter in the sky, Jade sought out the comfort of his basement bedroom. Fitful and uneasy, he tossed and turned in bed, tormented by his own forbidden desires.

  * * * *

  Lyric’s day was off to a typical start. She missed the bus so she was twenty minutes late to dance practice. That day her troupe, The Scarlet Ladies, was supposed to be working on a new cabaret routine. They were the regular house act at a very popular city club. The routine was supposed to debut in two weeks time, which shouldn’t be a problem if Lyric could avoid missing the rehearsals.