“What else could you do?” She gazed at him like a child fascinated by a superhero, and he couldn’t resist bragging a bit. There were some advantages to life as a vampire.
“My senses are ten times as strong as yours, and I can run faster than your eye can follow. I’m immune to disease, and my body heals itself almost instantaneously.”
Her eyes churned like a whirlpool as the images swirled through her mind. He wished he could show her.
“Is it painful, needing to drink?” She bit her lip, her blunt teeth pressing firmly against the plump, pink flesh, an innocent gesture of empathy. She had no idea the images it stirred in his mind.
He took another step closer, letting her scent fill his nostrils and stoke the hunger. “The craving for blood feels a lot like regular hunger, although much more intense. It takes tremendous willpower to resist the urge to drink.”
It was challenging his restraint even now, having her near. He tried to warn her with his tone, scare her away, but she didn’t move. He didn’t understand why that pleased him so much. Instead, she clung to the bars of his cell, breathing heavily, her pulse throbbing against her skin.
“So, you used to get blood from the hospital? Did they catch you and that’s why you lost your job?”
He noticed she didn’t say steal, although she undoubtedly knew that was what he’d done. It was a forgivable offense in his mind, and apparently in hers, too. He needed it to survive, and stealing blood bags was better than attacking humans.
“No, I’ve never been caught before. I’m very good at hiding my true nature. I quit working at the blood bank when I decided to starve myself to death.”
She gasped, and her bright eyes widened as big as the sky. “Why would you want to do that?”
“Would you want to live forever if the world thought you were a monster?”
“I don’t think you’re a monster.” Her voice was so gentle, so accepting. The smooth, creamy skin of her young face and her azure eyes were soft with kindness. It made him want her in every way. But he couldn’t have her, and it wasn’t good for her to be here. It only tempted him to act out his fantasies.
He grabbed the bars right above her hands and put his face inches from hers, finally giving in to his desire to be close to her. But then he hardened his voice and his eyes as he glared at her, baring his sharp fangs. “I am.”
Chapter 6
Zoë dropped her hands from the cold bars and leapt back as Rowan snarled at her. What had just happened? They were talking like friends, and all of a sudden he turned on her. She’d felt so much sympathy for him as he spoke, a lonely, tortured soul, more human than monster. But maybe she was wrong. Maybe the monster was just as strong.
She rushed away, frightened by the sudden change in his demeanor. She didn’t go back the rest of the day, even though she was tempted to several times. She didn’t even check the view count on her video.
If what he said was true, Rowan was a vampire, which meant he was dangerous. Even if it was just pretend, he’d warned her away, which meant he didn’t want her to trust him. She didn’t know why it was so hard for her to accept that.
When she got home, she checked on her mom, made a box of macaroni for dinner, then headed for her room. She climbed up on her lumpy bed and snuggled into the colorful throw pillows piled against the wall as a makeshift headboard, then pulled out her phone and opened YouTube.
She checked her latest song video first and was happy to see almost a hundred views. There were a lot more comments than usual, too. They seemed to think her emotions were very real, and they wanted to know who the song was about. Did she have a secret relationship with a mysterious man?
She obviously wasn’t in love with Rowan; she barely knew him. Plus, he was either dangerous or deranged. But had her experience with him influenced her performance that much? It made her question her feelings, and she didn’t like the thoughts that kept flitting through her mind.
She wanted to forget all about him, but she couldn’t resist checking the view count on his video. Her mouth dropped open, and her tongue fell back in her throat, choking her. She sucked in raspy breaths, struggling to pull the air into her lungs. Over a million views in less than 24 hours! And thousands of comments. If only her song videos could get that much attention. She was finally getting noticed, but she was anonymous. She grumbled at the irony.
A lot of people thought it was a hoax, of course, but just as many thought it was real, and they wanted to know more about the creature in the video. If she answered some of their questions, would the video get even more attention?
She’d secretly taped their conversation today, hitting the record button before she went to his cell and slipping her phone in the breast pocket of her shirt so the camera peeked out. She couldn’t believe how much he’d told her. If what he said about himself was true, why did he trust her with his secrets?
It was probably all a crazy story, just a way for him to get attention. That made a lot more sense than the idea that he was actually a vampire. There was no way to prove any of what he’d said. But the thing was, it hadn’t sounded like a lie.
Well, if he wanted attention, she would give it to him. The first video was racking up views and would earn her a nice chunk of change that would help a lot with her school expenses. If she uploaded another one, she might make enough to pay for next semester, as well.
She watched the video again and decided she could edit out her questions and his replies would still make sense. That was the safest thing to do. Even though her face wasn’t visible and he didn’t call her by name, there was still a chance her voice could be recognized.
She took a few minutes to edit the video then emailed it to herself and grabbed her worn-out book bag. She had enough time to stop at the library and upload the video if she left right then.
An hour later, she took a seat in one of the movie theatre-style chairs in the middle of the large auditorium where her Intro to Psychology class was held. It was one of her favorite classes since they talked about all kinds of interesting things. Listening to the woman question Rowan today had made her wonder what it would be like to be a psychiatrist. How would she decide if Rowan was sane?
The students were buzzing, talking amongst themselves as they waited for class to start, but Zoë sat quietly, catching snippets of their conversations. She wasn’t usually confident enough to join in. She’d never fit in with her peers. She figured it was safer to stay quiet than to make a fool of herself, even though college didn’t seem quite as much like a popularity contest as high school had.
The bits of conversation she caught aroused her curiosity. They were talking about the first video of Rowan. Most of them seemed to think it was a convincing fake, but everybody had a strong opinion about it, one way or the other. When the teacher came in, a middle-aged woman with curly, brown hair and a boring wardrobe of plain blouses and cheap slacks, she could barely get them to quiet down long enough for her to speak.
“Hey Professor Rowe, what do you think about this guy in the video, the vampire? What’s his deal?” A cocky, handsome jock in the back blurted out before the professor had a chance to start her lecture.
“Yeah, what kind of crazy is that?” another guy asked, laughing and poking his elbow into the guy sitting next to them.
“I vant to suck your blooooood!” A guy said in a bad Dracula impersonation, bugging out his eyes and baring his teeth. Zoë rolled her eyes. Okay, so maybe college students were just as immature and judgmental as high schoolers were. Zoë’s head flicked from one person to another as they hollered out their opinions.
“Who would want to drink blood from a dead girl? That’s disgusting.” A prissy girl curled her lip and stuck out her tongue.
“He’s a psycho, that’s what he is, right? Certifiable.” Another girl giggled and spun her finger in a circle next to her head.
“They need to put him in the psych ward, for sure. He’s obviously unstable.” One of the more serious students chimed in.
Zoë scowled, irritated by their rude comments. They were judging him even though they knew nothing about him.
“What if he’s really a vampire? Maybe this is proof that they exist?” A goth girl said, garnering strange looks.
The professor waved her hands up and down in front of her, trying to get them to be quiet. “Settle down, class! I can see you’re all eager to talk about this. This might be a good opportunity for us to explore how mental disorders are diagnosed. Let’s take a few of your proposed diagnoses and see if any of them fit.”
She turned and started drawing columns on the white board with a squeaky, blue marker, labeling them Insane, Psychotic, and Delusional. “Let’s talk about insanity first, since that’s a term that tends to get thrown around a lot. Insanity is not a psychological diagnosis in that it’s not listed in the DSM. It’s more of a legal definition of a person who can’t distinguish fantasy from reality and is subject to uncontrollable, impulsive behavior. As far as the criminal system is concerned, it seems like our vampire fits this definition.”
The teacher went on to talk about the potential diagnoses, but everything around her blurred as Zoë digested that information. Did that mean the psychiatrist would want to commit Rowan? It might save him from a prison sentence, but would a psych ward be worse? He’d be locked up for sure, maybe forever. If he really did need blood to survive, would he starve to death in there? They certainly weren’t going to give him blood. Even if he was a vampire, that didn’t mean he deserved to die.
She suddenly regretted posting that second video. He spoke so calmly and rationally, she thought it made his story sound plausible. But would the police see it as evidence of his insanity? She didn’t think any of the students in her class had seen it yet since she’d posted it only a few minutes before class started. She wondered what their response would be to it. Would they think he was less crazy, or more?
Chapter 7
The police station buzzed with nervous energy, and Rowan was the main topic of conversation. He heard his name peppered through every conversation, along with words like crazy, dangerous, and of course, vampire, along with talk of a video of some kind. They hadn’t declared him mentally unstable yet, but they also hadn’t mentioned release. Apparently, whatever this video was, it had complicated the situation.
Rowan waited impatiently for someone to come speak to him directly, with nothing better to do than pace the short distance across his cell over and over again. A part of him wished that Zoë would come visit him, but another part hoped he’d scared her off. It was wrong of him to encourage her attention. Too risky for both of them.
He couldn’t believe all the things he’d told her. He’d kept his secrets from the world for hundreds of years, only to divulge them to a young girl out of what — boredom? A desire for companionship? What did he expect to get from her? It was pointless and foolish.
After what felt like hours of anticipation, an officer finally appeared at his cell — the man who’d pulled him off the victim. Garrison, was it?
He strutted up to the door, his barrel chest pushed out, his duty belt hanging low beneath his large stomach. He wrinkled his nose like something smelled bad, wriggling his salt and pepper mustache.
“Listen up, freak. We need to have ourselves a little chat. We’re going down to the interrogation room.”
He directed Rowan to turn around and stick his hands through a space in the bars so he could be handcuffed then opened the cell door and led him out. Rowan desperately wished he wasn’t so weak at the moment. If he was stronger, he would tear the handcuffs apart and speed out of the station quicker than the officer could blink. As he was, he was reduced to shuffling along beside him like a common criminal.
The officer led him to a small room with a battered table and a few chairs then shackled him to the metal loops bolted to the table. Fortunately, there were no windows to let in sunlight, only flickering fluorescents that filled the room with cold, artificial light. Two other officers joined them, the middle-aged officer with thinning red hair and yellow teeth named Jenson who’d booked him, and a skinny, black-haired kid, barely out of high school, whose badge said Hinkle. A two-way mirror on the back wall probably hid other spectators.
Rowan stared at himself in the mirror. Besides the regrettable inmate uniform, he looked normal, human. A lot better than he felt. His body grew weaker every day, the hunger more pronounced. He felt it gnawing away at his insides like a parasite, eating him alive. Soon there would be nothing left but a shell that would crumble and disintegrate.
The room stank of nervous sweat and stale cigarettes with a faint scent of sweetness, probably from the powdered sugar donut residue on the police officers’ uniforms. But on top of all that flowed a current of human scent, the delicious smell of warm blood pulsing through veins. The officers’ unique odors swirled together into a buffet of temptation. Rowan breathed in deeply, savoring the forbidden fruit.
Garrison pulled out a chair, scraping the metal against the tile floor, then sat down and analyzed him, his steely eyes narrowing under bushy, gray brows. “I’d like to get rid of you, Eiris, but you’re not making it easy on me. If you’d told the psychiatrist that it was all a prank, we coulda released you on bail and left it to the judge to decide what to do with you. If you’d acted like a total psycho, she’d have sent you to the looney bin. But no, you had to confuse things with your Hannibal Lecter routine.”
Rowan winced but quickly wiped the telling emotion from his face. He’d thought he was making the right choice trying to use his intelligence to convince the psychiatrist of his sanity, when instead, he should’ve played the part of the idiotic prankster.
Garrison drummed his fingers on the table. “On top of that, videos of you sucking on that woman and talking about your medical condition got leaked somehow, and now the whole world wants to know about the vampire we got locked up.”
Rowan’s head jerked, and his brows lifted. He didn’t know what to make of that. Had the psychiatrist recorded their conversation and publicized it? That seemed unlikely. It was completely unprofessional and could get her banned from practice. Perhaps it was standard for the station to tape those sessions and someone with access to the video had released the recordings.
Rowan quickly thought back, trying to remember what all he’d said in the interview. He hadn’t used the word vampire, of course. He’d only spoken of a rare medical condition. It would be met with interest and speculation, but it didn’t seem too damning.
Garrison motioned towards Jenson who lifted a small, red and white cooler to the table and opened it up. Garrison reached inside, pulling out a blood bag. It glugged as he slapped it on the table. “We need some straight answers from you. You help us, we’ll help you.”
Rowan swallowed as he stared at it, fantasizing about plunging his fangs into the thin plastic and sucking it dry. After several long moments, he tore his gaze away and looked up at Garrison.
Garrison’s face twisted in disgust, then he crossed his arms over his broad chest and leaned back. “Seems like people are in a tizzy that there might be more of you out there. You had a wife who drank blood like you?”
Rowan swallowed the lump in his throat that threatened to choke him every time he was reminded of Anna. He thought he’d gotten over her, but all the reminders lately had brought his grief to the forefront of his mind. “Yes, but my mate died several years ago.”
Garrison picked up the blood bag and glared at him. “Did she steal blood from the hospital, like you?”
“No, when she was alive, we drank from each other. That’s how our kind normally feeds. We don’t drink from humans. We’re not a threat to them.” Rowan kept his voice gentle and tried to look non-menacing.
Garrison dropped the blood bag and growled at him. “So, why the hell were you sucking on that accident victim?”
Rowan closed his eyes, remembering that moment when he’d lost it. The grief, the need, the raging bloodlust. It scared him to think he could
be so out of control. “I’d gone without blood for a very long time. My body was weak and desperate, and she was a ready source. I never would’ve drunk from her if she wasn’t already dead.”
Garrison exchanged a glance with Jenson and jotted something on a notepad. “So how many of you are there?”
Rowan lifted his hands, rattling the handcuffs. “I have no idea. My wife was the only other one of my kind I’ve ever met.”
“She ever met any others?”
“Her family. The condition is genetic. But she wasn’t close to them.” Anna had run away, unwilling to mate with the vampire her family insisted upon. After she mated with Rowan, she never returned. He’d never met them, though he’d wanted to.
Garrison leaned forward and scowled, putting his face inches from Rowan’s, tempting him with the blood flooding his ruddy cheeks. “So you don’t know that the others aren’t a threat to humans. What about your family?”
“They’re long gone, but they weren’t like me.”
“But you said it was genetic. How’d you get it, then?” Hinkle, the tall, skinny, young officer with slicked, black hair piped up from the corner where he hovered.
Rowan cringed. Why had he said that? He was trying to make them think there weren’t many of his kind for them to worry about, but this was worse. “My mate… passed it on to me.”
“Holy crap, it’s contagious?” Hinkle squirmed and backed up further into the corner.
Rowan shook his head. This was getting worse and worse. “Not like you’re thinking. You can’t catch it like a cold. It’s transferred through a bite.”
“So you were a normal human, then she bit you, and you became a vampire? I thought you said your kind doesn’t bite humans.” The kid was taking over the interview, and Garrison scowled at him but didn’t tell him to butt out. He was a good interrogator; he’d gotten Rowan to say things he never intended.
Captured by the Vampire: Vampire Enforcement Agency Series Prequel Page 4
