Blind Date with a Vampire–a free read from Evangeline

Hi guys, a friend of mine has brought to my attention that many readers are strapped for cash right now (I know the feeling) and can’t always afford books from their favorite authors. So I’ve decided to start publishing a free book right here on my site. I’ll add a new chapter every other week or so and I hope you enjoy it. Free from me to you and Happy Holidays! So without further ado, here is a blurb and the first few chapters of Blind Date with a Vampire.

 Blurb:

Samantha Blythe just got out of an abusive relationship and she just wants to find a nice guy to spend a little quality time with.  Too bad the guy she finds happens to be a vampire.

 

Nate Glover isn’t the right type of guy to be a vampire–he’s not a thousand year old Viking or an ancient Roman or a veteran of the Civil War.  Even worse, he’s sexually straight and financially stable–the vampire equivalent of a Republican.  Having been ‘brought over’ in 1955 he couldn’t handle being a vampire in the age of McCarthyism and Leave it to Beaver and decided to take a fifty-five year nap.  Now he finds himself unable to connect with the women of the twenty-first century on any level more meaningful than a gastronomic one–that is until he meets Sam.

 

Sam and Nate hit it off but it isn’t long before they have trouble.  Sam’s ex doesn’t want to let her go and it turns out that the Mistress who turned Nate undead in the first place feels the same way.  When Nate’s scheming friend finds out there’s something special about Sam, namely that a taste of her blood increases vampiric power, the new couple are summoned to the capital of Vampire-kind.  No, not Transylvania–Miami. Murder, mayhem, and a fight to the un-death ensue as Nate struggles to accept his powers, Sam learns to live with a man who’s a permanent night person, and they both try to bridge the generation gap and find true love in Blind Date with a Vampire

 

 

Blind Date With a Vampire

By: Evangeline Anderson

 

          Chapter 1

          Samantha

 

          Picture?  I typed, watching the words flare in blue on the computer screen and hit send.

          Right here, he sent back almost immediately, his words glowing red beneath mine.  I clicked on the link and found myself at a Yahoo site with the name, Natespicture at the top.  Hmm, only one?  Most guys had three or four and several had more than that.  I had checked out one site where the guy had pasted himself into various exotic locations–France, Malaysia, Russia– he had about thirty of them.  Pinky, my best friend since high school, took one look and pronounced  the pictures photo-manipulations, and not very good ones either.  She was always more computer savvy than me.

I was relieved to see that Nate55 seemed to think less was more.  I clicked on the thumbnail and waited for the picture to load.  I’m practically the only person I know who still has dial-up instead of broadband and it seemed to take forever for the whole shot to pop on the screen.

“Ewww, no way!”  Pinky was staring over my shoulder at my computer.  She tapped the screen with one shapely fire-engine red nail.  “Is he kidding with that or what?”

“I don’t know,” I said thoughtfully, brushing a strand of hair out of my eyes and leaning closer to look.  “But it’s interesting.”

“Interesting?  Are you serious?  It looks like a yearbook picture from the fifties or something.  How old is this guy anyway?”

“He says twenty eight,”  I told her, scrolling back through our brief conversation.  “Maybe he did it on purpose–used black and white film.  Maybe he’s going for the whole retro look.”

“It’s retro all right.”  She plopped on my bed, making a much bigger bounce than you’d think someone who weighs ninety-nine pounds soaking wet possibly could.  “Try another one,” she advised.   “This guy’s a dead end.”

“I don’t know,” I said defensively.  “I kind of like him.  He seems very…nice.” He did too.  We’d only had a brief on-line conversation but Nate55 seemed like a sweet guy.  Polite.  Not as pushy as some of the guys on YourTownSingles.com.

Pinky snorted indelicately.  “Nice?  Sammy, when I talked you into checking out this site I wanted you to find some hot guy to sweep you off your feet for a night of romantic passion.  Not some boring shmuck with no distinguishing characteristics.  Look at him– he’s so blah.”

I looked at the picture again.  It was hard to tell since the photo was black and white but Nate55 seemed to have dark hair and dark eyes.  He had nicely shaped features, nothing that would get him on the cover of GQ but then, I’d had enough of that with my ex, Brad. 

Nate55’s nose reminded me of a Greek statue and his upper lip was thin but the dark eyes were wide and expressive and his chin was strong.  That was good–I don’t like a weak chin.  All in all, the face that stared back at me from the photo had ‘nice guy’ stamped all over it.  And that was what I needed right then in my life.  Someone nice– someone safe. 

          A small chime from my computer let me know that I had an IM.  “He wants to meet,”  I told Pinky.  “Says he likes my picture.  What do you think?”

“Oh hell…”  Pinky sighed.  “Well, I say go for it if you want to.  I guess it doesn’t matter who you date as long as it’s not Brad.”

“Brad is definitely out of the picture,” I said.  “This guy’s located here in town.  He says name the time and place.”

“Tell him the DogWater.  That way if he’s boring at least there’s something to watch.” 

“Fine,” I said, typing rapidly.  “When?”

“No time like the present. I think the Lightening are playing tonight.”  Pinky is the only girl I know that genuinely likes sports as opposed to faking it for the benefit for whatever man she happens to be with the way all the rest of us do.

“Fine, but don’t get so caught up in the game you forget to keep an eye on me.  This whole internet dating thing still makes me a little nervous.  I’m only doing it because you wouldn’t stop nagging me.”  I looked at her severely and she smiled.

“You’ll be fine, sweetie, you’re a natural.  C’mon, let’s fix you up.” She hopped off the bed and started running her fingers through my long hair.  “Gorgeous,” she said, twisting the thick mass it into a loose French knot at the nape of my neck.  There is no other word to describe my hair but scarlet.  It’s too bright to be called auburn and too dark to be carroty-orange or strawberry blond.  I let her play with my hair because I knew she loved to do it.  “We’ll make you irresistible, sweetie,” she promised.  “Sexy Sammy– that’s you.”

“Yeah yeah, whatever,”  I mumbled, finishing the IM to Nate55.  He promised to meet me in an hour which gave me just enough time to get ready and get down to the DogWater if I hurried.  I would rather spend the night curled up with a good book and a cup of hot cocoa but Pinky wouldn’t hear of it.  She had pointed out that I’d spent too many free nights on my own since Brad and I split up and she was determined to get me out in the dating scene again.  I didn’t really want to get back in the scene after three long years as part of a couple—even if it had been a dysfunctional one.  But Pinky wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“No pain no gain,” she had reasoned, logging onto AOL on my ancient computer and typing in the URL for YourTownSingles.com.  The idea was to just meet a few guys for fun, nothing serious, to get me back in the swing of things.  I had picked through at least twenty before connecting with Nate55 who seemed like a safe choice.

 I logged off with a sigh.  It had been six months since I finally showed Brad the door and I still didn’t feel quite up to this.  But as Pinky said, there was  no time like the present.

“Should I change?” I asked, surveying myself in the bedroom mirror to admire the elegant twist my friend had coaxed my hair into.  Why couldn’t I ever do anything like that with it myself?

“Nah– you look fine,” she said, patting my shoulder.  “That sweater looks great  on you.”

“Thanks.”  It was a black v-neck that made my hair look redder and my skin look creamier than usual.  It also drew attention to my chest without making things too obvious.  “You’re a sweater girl,” my Nanny had always said.  “Girls with full bosoms look better in sweaters.”  I think she said that because she liked to keep me covered up–not that I had much chance to wear sweaters living in Tampa, Florida.  But it was January, the coldest month we have, and so I got a chance to wear a few now that the temperature had dipped down to the mid fifties at night.  By March or April I’d be back in t-shirts again, but it was nice while it lasted.  Jeans and black boots completed my outfit which was about right for the casual atmosphere of the DogWater.

“Here, wear these and slap on a little lipstick and you’re good to go.”  Pinky picked out a pair of black crystal drop earrings that were just a little too fancy.  Dubiously I put them on.  Her taste, as always, was impeccable– the earrings took the whole outfit up a notch.  I used some of the Clinique pink chocolate lipstick she offered  me and I was ready to go.

We stood side by side in the mirror, Pinky looking tiny and fragile like a blond doll beside me.  I’m not quite ready for the fat farm yet but  I was getting there since the messy break-up with Brad.  The size twelve jeans were a little tight in the waist and I hadn’t even looked at my size tens in months.  I stood up straight and tried not to slouch.  Time to get back into shape.  I promised myself that tomorrow I would start back on Atkins and this time I would really stick with it.

“You look fabulous sweetie.”  Pinky gave my hand a fond squeeze and brushed a wisp of her own luxuriant blond hair out of her china blue eyes.  “You’ll knock his socks off– not that it matters.”

“What do you mean, ‘not that it matters?’” I said, patting my hair one last time and reaching for my jacket.

“Well nobody actually ever meets the love of their life on these on-line dates.  It’s just for fun- you’ll see.  It’s good practice.” 

“Good practice.  Right,” I muttered as we walked out the door.

Chapter 2

Nate Glover

 

          The picture I sent her was about fifty years old but at least it was me.  I felt bad about it but there was nothing much I could do– vampires don’t exactly photograph well.  At least it still looked like me– I had hardly changed at all since the photo was taken.  It was the world around me that had become completely, utterly different.

It was Thad’s fault, of course—it always is. 

“Come on Nate, it’ll be fun.”   He’d coaxed me out to Leo’s, the new bar on West Hillsborough– new back in ’55 that is.  I’ve been by there recently and now it’s just another a seedy dump on the wrong end of town, but back then it was quite the swank spot. 

We sat in one of the plush vinyl booths and proceeded to get hammered, also at Thad’s insistence.  By the time the two exotic ladies of the night asked if they could sit with us, there was no saying ‘no’ even though they weren’t the kind of women I usually went for.  It didn’t matter to Thad though–he’s always loved women in all their many varieties, respectable or not.  We both paid for his carelessness that night.

The slim blonde with a foreign sounding accent snuggled up to me while Thad got the plump brunette whose drawl was pure Old South.  I was almost drunk enough to ask him to trade–almost but not quite.  I remember they were both dressed like back-up singers in short, glittery gowns my sister Mildred would have called ‘mod’ and my mother would have called ‘trashy.’  They had very white teeth and eyes that glowed weirdly in the dim light of the bar.  They kept buying us drinks even though they didn’t seem to want anything themselves.

“Hey now…thish…this is not how it’s s’posed to go.  We should be getting you ladiesh a drink.  Not…not the other way ‘round,” Thad, ever the charming gentleman, even when stinking drunk, protested.  They laughed, a brittle sound that seemed to break like shattered glass on the Formica tabletop.

“We’ll let you get us something to drink later, Sugar,” the brunette promised.  Later that night, in the woods behind the bar I remembered her words.

 I was almost drained dry at that point with the blonde’s fangs buried in my neck and huge black flowers were blooming in front of my eyes like silent explosions.  Terror and pleasure rolled through me in waves, threatening to crush the remaining brain function I had left.  It would have ended for me right there if the brunette hadn’t decided that Thad was just too gorgeous to waste.

“I’m going to bring him over,” I heard her tell her friend.  “I think I might want to see this one again.”

“Hey now…”  I could hear Thad’s voice, weaker but still fairly drunk.  Apparently he hadn’t lost as much blood as I had.  “I don’t know where you’re bringin’ me but I don’t go anywhere without Nate.”

“Oh, is that not sweet?”  The blond giggled, a sound like razor blades against your wrists.  “He doesn’t wish to go without his friend.”

“It’s one for all and all for one,” the brunette agreed.

“One for both and both for one,” Thad corrected her, making the blond giggle again– it was painful to listen to.

“All right then boys, what the hell,” the brunette said.  Which was definitely not the sort of language that a lady would use, at least not back in ‘55.  But I had figured out by the time she had her fangs buried in my jugular that these two were about as far from ladies as they could get…

That was how it happened.

I woke up three nights later with what I thought was the worst hangover I’d ever had, swearing never to go out with Thad again no matter what he said.  Also, I was thirstier than I had ever been before.  I thought about stumbling back into Leo’s for a little hair of the dog but just the idea of alcohol turned my stomach.  So did the thought of water or milk or anything else I could think of.  I was craving something else–something special– only I didn’t know what it was.

I found out soon enough.

I heard a rustling in the branches behind me and when I turned, there was the fattest opossum I had ever seen.  They’re scavengers and they’ll come right up and get in your trash or eat the cat food left out for strays or anything else they can find for that matter.  They’re not uncommon in Florida. 

I had never thought much about opossums before but I thought of this one now.  Before I knew it, I had snatched him right off the tree branch and I was holding the greasy, writhing bundle of gray and white fur to my face.  He snapped and bit and clawed but it didn’t bother me at all.  There was a sudden, blinding pain in my gums as my fangs shot out for the first time and then Mr. ‘Possum was lunch.  Or dinner, however you want to look at it. 

It wasn’t until I had finished and the small, broken body was lying at my feet that I realized what I’d done.  The realization nauseated me instantly.   I wanted to throw up in the worst way but my body refused to let go of one drop of blood.  In fact, I found myself licking my lips to get the last little traces and thinking with one part of my brain that Mr. ‘Possum hadn’t tasted too bad although another part of me was horrified at the thought.

 I reached up and carefully felt the two, razor sharp fangs now nestled securely in my upper row of teeth.  What was happening to me?

When I found out I wished I hadn’t.  I didn’t want to be a vampire although Thad, when I found him, seemed to be taking everything in stride as always.  Even in college he had always been a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants kind of guy.  I tried to explain to him that the predicament we now found ourselves in was considerably worse than a Trig test he’d forgotten to study for or possible expulsion for drilling a hole in the wall of the girls shower room.  Thad was always getting into some kind of trouble and dragging me with him but this time he’d dragged me right out of the world as I knew it.  We had been made into something wholly different—something other.  We weren’t even technically human any more.

Of course, Thad didn’t see it that way–to him it was just another way to meet girls.  Not that he needed to become a vampire to do that.  He and I are both tall with dark hair but that’s where the resemblance ends. 

Thad has piercing blue eyes, one of those little clefts in the middle of his chin, and rippling abdominals.  These last are a recent development since it wasn’t something most people thought of in the fifties– they mostly kept their stomachs decently covered.  Now, though, everybody has to have a ‘six-pack.’  Thad told me it wasn’t hard to bulk up– one nice thing about being a vampire is how easily you gain muscle mass and lose fat.  Must be the low carb, high protein diet, another thing we never considered in my time.

I sound like a grumpy old man moaning for the past but really, I don’t have anything against the new millennium.  I just have culture shock in the worst way.  Think of it as really profound jet lag.

I tried to make it as a vampire in nineteen fifty-five, I really did, but things just got harder and harder.  To being with, I found that animal blood couldn’t sustain me for very long.  I craved the flavor of humans.  I didn’t have to kill anyone when I fed, a few sips from the right person would satisfy me nicely, but I was choosy about whom I fed on. 

Taking blood from someone, at least the way I like to do it, can be a very personal process…very intimate.  Frankly, it wasn’t something I wanted to do with someone I didn’t find attractive although it didn’t seem to bother Thad, an indiscriminate biter from the first.  Of course, it put a damper on my love life, not that it had been red-hot to begin with.  It kind of ruins the date if you ask for a good night bite instead of the usual kiss.

After a while, I found that I could sort of hypnotize the person I wanted to bite; I just touched them and made eye contact and they ceased to have any objection about letting me sink fangs into them.  It didn’t feel right though.  What I needed was someone who would donate willingly, without any of my tricks.

It’s never easy to find that special someone and being a vampire just makes it that much harder.

Besides my personal life, my career was in shambles.  I had to quit my job as an investment banker of course–there was no way I could keep bankers’ hours now.  I told my family I was looking for something else and hardly ever saw them.  When I did come for dinner, my mother always complained I didn’t touch a thing.  How could I tell her that the sight and smell of her pot roast, always my favorite before, now left me cold?  That the cat sitting under the table looked more appetizing than her triple layer chocolate cake?  I couldn’t come over at all when they had spaghetti and garlic bread– the smell alone would make me gag.

Gradually, over the course of a year I drifted away from my friends and family.  I had made some good investments before I was brought over and that was what I lived on now, not that my grocery bill was very large.  People around me began to look at me with distrust.  I heard whispering among my neighbors and people I used to know from church and work. 

There goes that Nathanial Glover, used to be such a nice young man and now look at him. 

Did you hear he quit his job at First National? 

No– really? 

Yes and now he just wanders around all night doing nothing.  There’s something wrong about him. 

There certainly is. 

Gives you the creeps.

And on and on and on.  Vampires have very sharp hearing so I couldn’t miss any of it.

It all got to be too much.  I found a place that I thought was fitting– a crypt in the cemetery– and decided to hibernate for a while.  I don’t know how I understood this was possible but I instinctively felt that I could do it– just lie in a state of utter dormancy for a few years, until the world became less restrictive.  I mean, ask anyone who lived back then during the age of McCarthyism– it was hard enough being a Democrat, let alone a vampire.  I left a letter for my parents and sister, telling them I had joined the Foreign Legion (people really did that back then) and I took to my crypt.

The only person I told before I went was Thad.  He was living it up in Miami, already an exciting place, although it’s bigger and flashier now.  I called and told him my plan and he invited me to visit him first.  It’s easier to be a vampire in a big city, he said.  More people means more victims and less notice of a few little love bites.  Also, he said, he had met up with some more of ‘our kind’ and they were a great bunch– real fun-loving people.  But I was fed up.  I asked him to wake me up in a couple of years or if anything important happened. 

Of course he didn’t.

So I slept through the entire second half of the twentieth century.  I missed the sexual revolution, the moon landing, the Kennedy assassination, the ‘me generation’, the Cold War, and the entire nineties.  I asked Thad why he didn’t at least try to wake me up at some point and he said that I’d looked so peaceful he just hated to disturb me.

Thanks a lot, buddy.

When I woke up in early September of 2010, most of my immediate family was dead, except for Mildred, my little sister, who was in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s, and the world had literally passed me by.

I spent the next few months playing catch-up.  My investments had continued to mature so at least money wasn’t an issue.  I bought a nice condo in Hyde Park and tried to figure out who I was in relation to a society I barely recognized as my own. 

Thad, who had been living the high life for the past five decades, had been happy to welcome me back to the land of the living.  Or in our case…well, you get the idea.  The biggest news he had for me was that vampires, while still completely fictitious to the general public, were now ‘cool.’  To prove it, he gave me a list of books to read and movies to watch and I went through them all, even the really bad ones.

To my surprise, Thad was right.  Being undead was not, apparently, the handicap it used to be.  Not that it helped me that much.  Because all of my extensive reading and viewing taught me one thing: I am not the right type of person to be a vampire. 

Oh, I’m tall enough and my shoulders are fairly broad and I’m not a bad looking guy– except I’m pretty pale obviously.  But I’m just not the vampiric type. 

My hair is just plain brownish-black and it’s not long enough to make me look romantic in the least.  Also, my eyes aren’t midnight blue or emerald green or blazing amber– they’re a very uninspiring hazel.  And it’s not just my looks, either– my background is way too plain. 

I’ve never lived at Versailles and I’m not a thousand year old Viking or an ancient Roman or a veteran of the Civil War. I’m not even horribly scarred by holy water or emotionally stunted by a run in with the Spanish Inquisition.  I’m just a plain old twentieth century American guy and I’m only ninety-four, pretty young for a vamp.  I’m sexually straight and financially stable.  I don’t need to ‘drain’ anyone to live and I stay away from turf wars with other vampires.  Basically, I’m a boring guy as our kind goes– the vampire equivalent of a Republican. 

But once you’re brought over there’s no going back and since I didn’t want to hibernate again (who knows what I might miss this time,) I buckled down to learning how to get along in the twenty-first century.

One thing I do like is the technology, especially the Internet.  It’s amazing to have so much information and entertainment right at your fingertips.  Although I nearly choked the first time one of those porn pop-ups blinked on my screen.  It’s been hard to get used to the way sex seems to pervade every aspect of American culture from TV to movies to billboards on the freeway.  The other night I was flipping through the hundreds of channels I get with my cable package and I found what I thought was a Leave It To Beaver marathon.  It wasn’t.  

But, at least the Internet is a good way to meet victims.  I know that sounds callous but a guy’s got to eat, right?  Or in my case, drink.  It’s harmless, really.  I’d  meet the girl at the restaurant or bar of her choice, do my little hypnotism thing on her and have a quick snack.  I never took more than I needed or did anything else no matter how much I might be tempted.  To most vampires, according to Thad, taking blood, or ‘blooding’ is an opportunity to gain power and satisfy other appetites as well.  But I didn’t go in for that kind of thing.  No vampire seduction mind tricks for me– my mother raised me better than that.  In the morning, the girl had a mild case of amnesia and a slight headache which she thought was caused by a few too many drinks at the bar where that jerk she met on-line stood her up.

It still didn’t feel quite right but I had to survive and I had pretty much resigned myself to never finding that special someone—a permanent donor to share my life, such as it was.  I based that on the few legitimate dates I’d had since coming out of hibernation. 

The first girl I tried to date, Aurora (just call me Rory) had been a bubble-headed bleached blonde and self-confessed reality show addict.  She invited me to a karaoke bar and proceeded to show me why she should have made the cut on ‘American Idol.’  It didn’t take my enhanced vampiric hearing to tell she was completely tone deaf.

The second time I went out was on a double date with Thad, who promised me he had found me the perfect girl.  I wasn’t surprised that Thad had girls to spare– they love his carefully cultivated aura of mystery and danger and a lot of them seem to like dating a ‘vampire.’  Unfortunately, the girl he set me up with liked it a little too much.

“You may call me Mistress Sonia,” she intoned, raising one hand as I joined them at the round booth in the corner of one of those fancy new coffee bars.  They charge more for one tiny drink in those places than we used to pay for a whole pot of the stuff back in ‘55.

 I noticed all of ‘Mistress Sonia’s’ fingernails were painted black and after a moment I realized she was waiting for me to kiss her hand.  I shook it awkwardly instead and she pouted unattractively.  Her hair was dyed a deep purple with a white stripe down the middle like a mutant skunk and she was draped from head to toe in black velvet and lace.  Her skin was paler than mine.

“What have you gotten me into?”  I muttered to Thad, under the guise of retrieving my paper napkin which I had dropped on purpose.  He and I were both pretending to drink espresso while the girls were having frappuccinos.  His own date looked pretty normal besides an apparent fetish for black leather and chains.  Thad likes all kinds.

“What have you gotten me into?” he mocked softly, doing his best imitation of me which was a little too good for comfort.  He had a hard edge to him now that hadn’t been there before we were brought over and I wondered if something had happened in the last fifty years that he wasn’t telling me about.  But before I could say anything, Thad turned to my date.  “Mistress Sonia is Goth, isn’t that so, my lovely?” he said, caressing her heavily made-up cheek with one long finger. He was in his ‘Master Vampire’ mode that night and loving every minute of it.  Mistress Sonia fairly purred beneath his touch and his own date scowled jealously.  The night only went downhill from there.

I tried to stick it out and at least be polite but the conversation was awkward at best.  I think Sonia expected me to be smooth and sleek and sexily evil, to play a part the way Thad was for his date.  But I just didn’t have it in me. 

Look, I wanted to tell her, I’m not the Prince of Darkness sent from Hell to fulfill your darkest sexual fantasies and drain you dry.  I’m just an ordinary guy who happens to drink blood now and then and not even that much of it. 

But that obviously wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

The night came to an end abruptly when Mistress Sonia invited me back to her place for ‘drinks’ as she coyly put it.  As she issued the invitation, she was caressing her short, stubby neck with one black finger-nailed hand.  She also implied that we might get into a little light bondage and domination.  She didn’t say who would be holding the whip and I didn’t care to find out.  I excused myself to the restroom where I melted through the wall and never came back.

 I guess I’m just an old fashioned kind of guy.

That was the last time I doubled dated with Thad.  Unfortunately, none of the other dates I went on amounted to much more—I just couldn’t seem to connect with the women of this generation on any level deeper than a gastronomic one.

I blinked away the memory of the disastrous dates and looked once more at the picture on my HP flat screen monitor.  She had the reddest hair I had ever seen and a pale, pretty face with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Only serious brown eyes the color of dark chocolate saved her from being unbearably cute.

          Tonight’s snack. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 3

Sam

 

He was wearing khakis and a green short-sleeved polo shirt that showed off nice arms and he was taller than I’d expected him to be– maybe six one or two. That was nice.  Since I’m five eight, being with a short guy makes me self-conscious.  He had kind of an old fashioned hair cut but that was okay–sometimes it seems like every guy I see has a better ‘do’ than me.  At least he didn’t have frosted tips.  No tattoos or piercings either, he was very clean cut.  Nanny would have approved and I wished she was still alive to tell. 

I waved him over to the booth I had already claimed and stood up for a minute to meet him as he nodded and joined me without smiling.  To one side of us, far enough to be out of earshot but close enough to keep an eye on the situation, Pinky sat.  She had already claimed a tall, spindly table and was perched on a stool nursing a strawberry margarita and watching the hockey game.

The DogWater is kind of a family sports bar with decent food and a nice friendly atmosphere.  Every spare inch of wall space is crammed with different sized televisions all tuned to different major sporting events so you can take your pick or just ignore them all, like I usually do.  The sandwiches and entrees are named after different breeds of dogs (like their foot long hot dog which is called the Great Dane) and they serve the food in big plastic dog dishes.  It’s cute and since it was a Tuesday night it wasn’t too crowded either.

“Hi,” I said, trying to get a feel for him as we sat down.  “I’m Samantha Blythe, nice to meet you.”

“Your picture doesn’t do you justice, Samantha,” he said seriously, extending his hand.  “Nathanial Glover, I’m very pleased to meet you, too.” 

Well, he was extremely polite if not actually a barrel of laughs so far.  I told myself to give him a chance although I could already hear Pinky saying ‘I told you so’ as soon as we got home.

“Your picture was very interesting,” I said, taking his outstretched hand which was large and warm without being damp.  “Not many people use black and white film these days.”

“Yes, well… it’s kind of an old picture,” he said.  Then, still holding my hand he leaned across the table and looked me straight in the eye.  “I know we’ll become very good friends,” he said firmly.  His voice was low and soothing and he had a very slight Southern accent.  I noticed that his dark eyes were actually a lovely shade of greenish-brown with gold flecks near the pupil.  All this was nice, but the way he was still holding my hand and his intense tone when I had only just met him creeped me out a little.

“Um, we’ll see,” I said, laughing weakly and withdrawing my hand.  A look that might have been surprise flickered over his almost-handsome face and then subsided.  “So what do you do?”  I asked to cover the awkward silence.

“Welcome to tha DogWater Café where we treat you like the dog you are. What can I getcha?” 

It was a gum-chewing waitress who looked supremely bored.  She had curly brown hair and was wearing the ubiquitous bar maid uniform– short shorts and a low cut tank top.  I thought she had to be freezing since the door of the bar was propped open but she didn’t seem to mind the cold. 

“Somethin’ to drink?  Or how ‘bout an order of curly poodle fries or a mess of doggie bones?” She looked at us expectantly.

“I’m sorry?  Doggie bones?” my date said politely.  He raised one dark eyebrow at the waitress, appeared to notice her low cut blouse for the first time, and looked hastily away.  Hmm, that was strange– most guys would have ogled, at least for a moment.  She obviously believed in the old maxim ‘if ya got it, flaunt it’– not much was left to the imagination in the cleavage department.  But the sight didn’t seem to interest him at all.  Was he gay or just super polite?

“I forgot you said you hadn’t been here before,” I said to him.  “Doggie bones are baby back ribs– they do a great honey-garlic barbeque sauce here.  Would you like to split an order?”

He blanched briefly before quickly pulling his expression back in check.  “I’m sorry- it’s just that I’m severely allergic to garlic,” he explained.  “So I think I’ll have to pass.  But please feel free to order anything you want.”

“Well,” I hedged.  “I’m actually on a low carb diet right now so…”  I looked at the waitress.  “I’ll just have a glass of red wine, please.”

 If he wasn’t eating then I certainly wasn’t either.  Ribs are too messy for a first date meal anyway, although I wouldn’t have minded some poodle fries…No– low carb, I reminded myself sternly.  Fries are definitely not low carb.

“I’ll have the same,” he said, smiling a little at me as he ordered.  “I’m on a special diet too.” 

The waitress shrugged and moved off popping her gum and shaking her tush as I smiled back at him.  His teeth were toothpaste commercial white and he seemed to have too many of them somehow but the smile was nice all the same.

“Are you doing Atkins?”  I asked. 

“Something like that,” he answered, smiling again, wider this time as though at some private joke.

“Oh, South Beach or the Zone?” I said, interested at once.  He certainly didn’t look like he needed to lose any weight– he was in nice shape from what I could see.  But he was awfully pale.  I wondered if he was taking the low carb thing too far. 

“The Zone?” he asked, looking confused.

“Like Atkins but stricter.  Oh, never mind– you don’t look like you need to lose weight anyway.”

“Neither do you,” he said with unexpected sincerity. 

“Oh please,” I said.  “Let’s not get into all that.”

“Into what?”

I sighed and reached up reflexively to smooth my hair, forgetting for a moment that it was pulled into a twist.  “I say I need to lose weight and you say no I don’t when we both know I do…It’s too complicated. Let’s just not go there.”

He looked hard at me and shook his head.  “I can see nothing I can say will change your mind but from what I’ve seen of it, I like your shape.  You’re very…”  He made a slight curving motion with his hands in the air.  “voluptuous.  And I wouldn’t give an insincere compliment.”

“Well…thank you.”  I felt the blood rushing to my face and looked down at my hands.  He seemed to be on the level but I wasn’t sure how to feel about what he’d said.  I knew I needed to get down to a smaller size but  I guessed some men liked ‘voluptuous’ women, as he put it.  My ex, Brad, certainly hadn’t been one of them.  Just then the waitress came back with our wine.  I took a sip, grateful to have something to do with my hands.

 “Um, what did you say it is you do?”  I asked as he lowered his wineglass.  “I’m a nurse,”  I added.

“I’m in investments,” he said.  “Investment banking.  Where do you work?”

“Tampa General on the pedi wing.  It’s nice but you have to like kids.”  Then, realizing what that it sounded like, I backpedaled hastily.  “I mean not that it matters…I don’t have any or anything.”

“No,” he said, his voice was softer and he looked a little sad. “No,” he said again.  “I like children.  I don’t have any either.”

“Well, yeah. But if you have them you have to have more than one, I think.  I mean, I was an only child and I always wished I had a brother or sister to play with.  You have any family in town?”  I asked.

 He looked down at his large, well shaped hands which were folded neatly on the table and shook his head.  “Most of my immediate family is gone.  I… lost touch with them and when I wanted to get re-connected it was too late.”  He shook his head.  “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” he murmured, toying with his wine glass.

“Why not?  I thought that was the idea of meeting, to get to know each other,” I said lightly.  “And I know how you feel– both my parents died in a car wreck when I was twelve.  My grandmother raised me after that but she died around a year ago.  It’s lonely being the only one left.”    

“It is,” he said, looking up and meeting my eyes.  He really meant it, I could tell.  “It really is.”

He looked so sad that I had to reach over and cover one of his large hands with my own.  “I’m sorry,” I said awkwardly.  “I didn’t mean to make you sad.”

“No, that’s…”  He shook his head and sat up a little straighter, as though he could push his emotions aside by main force of will.  “That’s all right.” He turned his hand palm up so that we were almost holding hands.  Somehow that seemed okay even though I barely knew him.  It sounds cheesy but I was really feeling a connection here.  Maybe what Pinky said about nobody finding anyone for a serious relationship on these internet dates wasn’t true…

“Hey, Princess, who’s your new girlfriend?”  A heavy hand fell on my shoulder.  With a feeling of dread I looked up the burly arm attached to it and into the face of my ex-fiancé, Brad Wilkinson.

Brad was a man’s man in every way. He was a firefighter I’d met on my twenty-first birthday when he’d actually saved me from a burning building.  That’s how he liked to tell it, anyway.  Actually, someone had burned a bag of microwave popcorn in the building I used to work in, filling the air with smoke and triggering the automatic alarm.  By the time the mistake was discovered there were fire trucks all over the parking lot and plenty of hunky firemen to go with them.  I just happened to catch Brad’s eye because I was thinner then and I had on a tight sweater.

I can’t deny Brad had looked good standing there with his hose in his hand, ready to fight the fire and rescue any damsels in distress.  He was an ex-ex-ex-Buccaneer who had been cut his first season because of a torn ACL but he still had a linebacker’s body and kept himself in shape.  He posed every year for those charity beef cake calendars they do– Sexy Firemen Help Fight Muscular Dystrophy– that kind of thing where the guys stand around with their shirts off holding the fire hose in suggestive poses, thank you Sigmund Freud.  He had deep blue eyes, a golden tan and carelessly rumpled blond hair.  I personally knew it took him at least an hour to get that careless look but no one who hadn’t seen him primping in front of the mirror would ever guess.

Now he was looming over our booth, about to embarrass the living hell out of me and there was nothing I could do about it.  What aggravated me was that the DogWater wasn’t even one of our old haunts.  I only ever went there with Pinky– she for the games and I for the ribs.  It made me wonder if Brad had been watching me even though we’d been apart for six months and hadn’t spoken for three…

I decided to try and play it off.  Maybe if I introduced him civilly to my date, Brad would be satisfied and go on about his business.  After all, maybe he was here by coincidence.  Maybe he had just wanted to watch the game.  Maybe…

“This what ya traded me in for, Princess?”

  And maybe not. I winced at his old nickname for me.  Brad’s tone was belligerent and I could tell by his slight slurring that he’d already hit the bar.  Great, one of the many reasons I had called it quits in the first place was his drinking.  Brad was a mean drunk and a strong one and he tended to get careless with his fists when he’d had a few.  He was looking more angry by the second but I decided to give plan A a try anyway.

“Hello, Brad. I haven’t seen you in a while,” I said brightly, trying and failing to shrug his heavy hand off my shoulder where it rested like a lump of lead.  “This is my friend Nathaniel Glover. Nathaniel, meet Brad Wilkinson.  He used to play for the Bucs.”  This last statement never failed to puff Brad up so much he forgot to be angry.  The mention of his brief glory days as a pro football player  was usually like honey to an angry bear.  But tonight the bear wasn’t interested in honey.

“You banged her yet?”  Brad kept his hand on my shoulder and stared at my date while I withered in embarrassment.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Pinky about to get up and tangle with my big ex and I gave her a quick shake of my head to keep her away. Heads were beginning to turn in our direction; we were causing enough of a scene as it was.

“Actually I just met her,” Nathaniel said politely, as though they were discussing the weather or the Bucs’ chances for the playoffs instead of his possible carnal knowledge of my body.

“Well let me tell you, she’s a great piece of ass. Not that you’ll ever find out.”  Brad let go of me and seized my date by the front of his shirt in one motion, hauling him to his feet.  He was taller by about an inch and probably had at least thirty pounds on Nathaniel, all of it muscle, but the calm hazel eyes didn’t look worried in the least.  “Nobody touches my girl,” Brad growled, regressing so far down the evolutionary ladder he was barely walking erect.

“Brad, stop it!  We haven’t been a couple in six months! I am not your girl.”

“If you’re not mine you sure as hell ain’t gonna be anyone else’s either,” Brad snarled, drawing back a fist the size of a canned ham to let Nathaniel have it.

“No!”  I yelled but his arm was already in motion.  The night was going to end in bloodshed, misery, and pain.  It made me so mad and upset I could hardly see straight.  I watched, as if horrified slow motion, as Brad’s fist got closer and closer to Nathaniel’s face and… failed to connect. 

Moving faster than I had ever seen anyone move outside a movie, Nathaniel brought up his hand and caught Brad’s fist in his open palm just inches from his nose.  What amazed me more, though, was the way Brad just seemed to freeze with his fist in Nathaniel’s palm.  By the way Brad’s face got red and the cords stood out on his neck, it was obvious he was trying to move but Nathaniel was holding him in place effortlessly– the way I might hold a small child at arm’s length.  But Brad was no child.  When he saw there was no way to push forward with his fist he tried pulling backwards instead, with the same result– nothing.

“How the hell…?”  Brad gasped at last.  He was sweating and turning as red as his fire truck with the effort to get his hand away from Nathaniel and I was wondering the same thing.  Brad was the strongest man I knew.  To look at him, you’d never guess Nathaniel could hold him off so easily.

“Look at me.”  Nathaniel’s voice was low but it cracked like a whip in the suddenly quiet room.  Every eye in the place was on the situation taking place in the middle of the floor–not even a natural hat trick by St. Louis in the hockey game playing on all the tvs distracted anyone.

“Wha…”  Brad stared to say and then I saw him look, really look into Nathaniel’s calm hazel eyes for the first time and his face went suddenly slack.

“You’re going to go home quietly and not cause any more trouble tonight.  Right?” Nathaniel said in a low voice that seemed to echo inside my head.

“Right…”  Brad’s voice was dull and he nodded his head in big, exaggerated motions that might have been funny under other circumstances.  He looked drugged.

“All right then.”  Nathaniel released him suddenly and Brad staggered backwards, blinking as though he was just waking up from a dream.  I turned to Nathaniel who was still standing quietly in the middle of the room while Brad shook his head, looking like a confused bull.

“How did you…”  I began but he took me by the arm and pulled me towards the back door.

“Quickly, it won’t last for long,” he said, his voice low and urgent.  “He’s fixated on you– if he sees you again he’ll be twice as hard to control.”

“But…”  I gasped as he pulled me out the door and into the cold January night.  The back entrance of the bar led to a deserted parking lot.  Suddenly I was aware that I was totally alone with a man I barely knew who was obviously incredibly strong.  I hoped Pinky had seen where I’d gone but she’d been pretty distracted watching Brad and I couldn’t be sure.

“How did you do that to Brad?” I said, when I got my breath back.  I made sure I was standing close to the door in case I had to make a fast getaway.  He crossed his arms over his chest and just shook his head.  I felt frustrated, something weird had just happened in the bar and I wanted answers.  I stared at him, the dim light of the parking lot made his eyes seem to glitter strangely.  “Look, who are you?”  I asked, unaware of what was going to come out of my mouth until it actually did.  “What are you?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said grimly.  “It doesn’t matter anyway– I thought there might be something between us but it’s always the same.” He sighed.  “It probably wouldn’t have worked anyway.”

“What are you saying?” I asked but suddenly he was holding my hands in his and I didn’t have any idea how it had happened.  One minute his arms were still crossed and he was a good four feet away from me and the next second he was holding my hands in an unbreakable grip and looking intently into my eyes.  “What do you think you’re do—”  I began but he cut me off.

“Listen to me– you won’t remember any of this,” he said earnestly.  “You’re going to go home now and when you wake up tomorrow, this will all seem like a dream.”  

          “Of course I’ll remember it!  What are you talking about?” I demanded, searching the dark hazel eyes for answers and finding nothing.

“No,” he insisted again, staring like he would burn a hole in me with his eyes.  “You will remember nothing.”

“Listen, Nathaniel, if that’s even your name,” I said beginning to get really angry now.  “I’m going to remember what just happened back there till I’m old and gray.  I don’t see how I could possibly forget it.  Whatever mind trick you’re trying to play on me, it won’t work like it did on Brad.”

“But that’s impossible,” he said, looking more troubled and confused than ever but not, I noticed, letting go of my hands so I could get away.  “It always works.”

“What is it and how do you do it?”  I asked, curiosity overcoming my anger and fear.  “I’ve never seen anything like it– outside a movie, I mean.  I sure wish I could handle Brad like that.  I’d get him to stay out of my life forever.”

He gave a short bark of laughter.  “It doesn’t quite work like that.  It’s temporary in most cases, especially if you’ve made a lasting impression on the person.  That’s what I have to be careful not to do– make a lasting impression.”

“Well it’s too late for that, you certainly made one on me,” I said.  I realized too late that it might not be too smart to admit this to a man who seemed desperately to want me to forget him.  “Um, you never told me how you did it, either…Nathaniel.”  I tacked his name on the end hesitantly.  I wasn’t sure if he was who he said he was at all.  At that point, I wasn’t sure of anything.

He sighed again and seemed to make some kind of decision.  I realized he was about to tell me his secret and I leaned forward eagerly, despite my misgivings.  Curiosity killed the cat, Nanny would have said.

“Look,” he said at last.  “You might as well call me Nate, all my friends do. And the way I can cloud people’s minds, most people’s anyway, is that well…I’m a vampire.

Chapter 4

Nate

 

          I was impressed by the way she took it.  She didn’t try to pull away (I was still holding her hands in mine,) or start screaming for help.  Instead she narrowed those serious dark-chocolate eyes and stared at me hard.

“Prove it,” she said.

“I’m sorry, what?” I said.  I was confused by her reaction.  She was skeptical but not completely unwilling to believe me as I’d thought she would be.  Everyone knew vampires were completely fictitious.  Even the girls Thad sometimes dated who enjoyed his ‘Master Vampire’ persona thought he was just playing a part.  But this girl, Samantha, seemed willing to be convinced.

“I said prove it.  That thing you did back in the bar– maybe it was just some kind of cheap hypnotism thing that only works on the weak-minded.  Brad certainly falls into that category.”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked, half amused.  “Leap tall buildings in a single bound?”

“No,” she blew out a breath, frustrated.  “Whatever it is vampires do.  Besides drink blood, I mean,” she added quickly.  “Is that what you wanted to do to me– drink my blood?” 

“Well, yes,” I admitted.  “But not all of it– just some,” I added quickly, seeing her get a little paler.  “It’s how I live,” I explained awkwardly.  “I…ah, can’t really help it.”

“Why don’t you just buy some prepackaged then– from the blood bank or something?”  she asked.  I was still holding her hands but she seemed so calm– more curious than frightened– that I decided it was safe to let go.  I sighed and leaned against the outside wall of the bar, trying to think of a good way to answer her.

“Do you like to eat cold food?” I asked her.  “Frozen chicken or gravy after it’s been in the refrigerator awhile and it congeals?”  I was remembering my last Thanksgiving at home– my mother could make a turkey last forever but the gravy was pretty much a lost cause after it went in the ice box– it never heated up very well.  Apparently she was thinking along the same lines because she wrinkled her nose and frowned.

          “No,” she said.  “That’s disgusting.”

“Well I think so to,” I said mildly.

“Is that what it tastes like?  Gravy?” she asked.  The spark of curiosity was back in her eyes.

“Well…ah, no.  Not exactly.  It’s hard to explain…”  How could I tell her what it was like?  Like desire and pleasure and nourishment all wrapped up in one.  My eyes flickered to her long, shapely neck and the faint blue lines of her veins pulsing under her pale skin.  She was a lot prettier than the picture she had sent me on the computer and she smelled sweet and fresh and warm.  I became aware that I wanted her—and not just for blood.  I shifted uncomfortably, not meeting her eyes.  She was watching me closely.

“So it’s about more than food then,” she said at last.  “I suppose that’s the same reason you wouldn’t like to get it from an animal.”

“Any blood but human won’t sustain me for long,” I said.  “Think of my condition as being chronically anemic.”  I was trying to appeal to her as a nurse, which she had said she was.  “You wouldn’t try to give an anemic patient an animal blood transfusion, would you?”

“No…” she said reluctantly.  “No, I guess not,” she shook her head.  “I don’t even know why we’re standing here talking about this.”

“I thought that was the point,” I said, using her own words from earlier that evening.  “To get to know each other.”

She smiled a little at that and it lit up her pretty face.  Suddenly I wished fiercely that I really could get to know her.  “I meant that you still haven’t proved it to me,” she said.  “That you’re a…what you say you are.”

“A vampire,” I said as gently as I could.  There was no way to sugar coat it.  I thought about what I could show her without frightening her. “Watch my mouth,” I said, and opened it, making sure the dim light from the streetlight was shining so she could see.

“Look, anybody can get a fake pair of fangs, I mean during Halloween there all over the…”  Her voice trailed off and her eyes widened as I showed her my little trick. I could feel my fangs extending, getting longer and sharper by the minute, proving they were real.  I know that some humans like to wear fake fangs and some even get permanent dentistry done to get a pair.  But I don’t know a single human who can extend and retract their ‘fangs’ at will.  It’s an impressive trick.  And judging by the look on her face, Samantha was more than impressed.

“How…”  She cleared her throat nervously.  “Why can you do that?”

“I don’t know how,” I said, honestly, letting my teeth go back to normal.  “It’s just something I can do.”  There were a number of things I could do, seemingly instinctively, that I didn’t understand and I couldn’t explain.  It was frustrating.  I had asked Thad about it on several occasions but he just smiled mysteriously and assured me that I would ‘grow into’ my powers, as though they were a new pair of pants that I had bought too big.  “As for why I can do it, well…”  I shrugged.  “Maybe it’s a survival mechanism.  It’s not always so easy to find a vein and you need something pretty sharp to get in once you do find one.”

“I guess you’re right,” she said, regaining some of her poise.  “It must be convenient when you’re…ah, hungry.  Or thirsty.  Or whatever.”  She blushed.

“There’s a lot that goes with it that isn’t so convenient.”  I shifted against the brick wall I was leaning on and she flinched, ever so slightly.  “I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, as lightly as I could.  “In case you were wondering.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said immediately, lifting her chin in a defiant little gesture that squeezed my heart.  “But I thought…well, aren’t you worried I’ll tell people?  Aren’t you at least going to threaten me to keep me from talking?”         

“I’m not the mafia, Samantha,” I said, trying not to laugh.  “And besides, who’d believe you if you told them you’d met a real live vampire?”  Maybe ‘real dead’ would have been a more accurate description but I thought she was spooked enough already.

She opened her mouth and then closed it again.  Finally she shook her head.  “You’re right,” she said at last.  “Even my best friend might think I was crazy.”  She looked at me curiously.  “I guess you don’t usually have this problem since you can erase people’s memories, huh?”

“This is the first time it’s ever been a problem,” I admitted.  “I’ve never met anyone like you before, Samantha.”

“You might as well call me Sam,” she said, smiling a little, throwing my own words back at me.  “All my friends do.  And I’ve never met anyone like you before either, Nate.  At least not that I remember.”

That shy smile transformed her from pretty to gorgeous and I felt myself grinning back like an idiot. There was something different about her, even more than the fact that she could somehow resist my powers.  Before I could stop myself I said, “I’d like to see you again…Sam.”

“All right,” she said, clearly surprised at herself for accepting my offer.  I was surprised too.  “I’ll give you my number.  Or you could just e-mail me.”

“Works for me.  Would you like to go back inside?  I think your large friend is gone now.”

She made a face.  “Brad’s not anything to me anymore, not even a friend.  But how can you tell he’s gone?  Can you see through walls?”

“No,” I said, smiling.  “I just can’t hear him or smell him anymore.”

“Oh,” she seemed about to ask me another question but then she just shrugged.  I went to the back door of the bar and was about to open it when she stopped me with one hand on my arm.  “Hey.”  She seemed nervous.  She wanted to tell me something. 

“Yes?”  I asked, keeping my voice low and non-threatening.  I had already decided I never wanted her to be afraid of me.

“I…I don’t want you to get the wrong impression of me.  I don’t meet guys over the internet all the time or anything.  And you should know that I’m not really…up for anything, um, kinky.”

I understood what she was trying to say.  “I wouldn’t bite you without your permission.”  I told her.  “Especially not now that I know you.” 

She looked relieved.  “Thanks, I didn’t want to just come right out and say it.”

“Say anything you want,” I told her.  “You won’t offend me.”

She appeared to consider my offer.  “Okay,” she said at last.  “I’ll keep that in mind next time.” 

I opened the bar door for her and she gave me that shy, half-smile again over her shoulder before we went back in.  Next time, I thought.

I think it’s safe to say I was happier than I had been in fifty years.

****I feel like I need to post a disclaimer before these next two chapters. The story takes a little turn into darkness here and probably not in the way you might think. So here I need to say that if you ever suffered any sexual abuse in the past, these chapters may upset you. Read at your own risk. The question for this week’s give-away contest is posted at the end.*****

Chapter 5

Sam

 

          I told Pinky I was going out with him again and that he seemed like a nice guy but nothing else.  I was afraid she would ask me about what had happened with Brad but I think she just assumed, like everyone else in the bar, that Brad had backed down on his own when he realized how strong Nate was.

Pinky hadn’t been close enough to see the dazed look in his eyes when Nate did his little mind-bending trick and afterwards she had been too distracted getting my big ex out of the DogWater and into his truck to miss me until the last five minutes I was gone.  I told her we’d ducked out for a minute until Brad left which was mostly true. 

I didn’t tell her that Nate had admitted he had planned to take some of my blood and erase my memory of it.  That kind of behavior doesn’t tend to inspire a lot of confidence or trust.  I wondered myself why I was so willing to trust him enough to see him again.  I had surprised myself saying yes when he asked me out for a second date– if you could call our first meeting a first date.

But I had had it up to my eyeballs with the typical American male.  Being with Brad for nearly three and a half years had cured me of wanting to date anyone ordinary for a while.  I liked Nate’s calm admission about what he was, his cool head in a conflict and his nice manners.  Sometimes, near the end of our relationship, when Brad would belch after a meal or pick his teeth at the table or do any of the hundred other disgusting little things he so often did, I would look at him and think, Is this all there is?  It was very depressing.

I felt like Nate had come along at a stagnant period of my life and shaken me loose somehow.  He had answered my question, ‘Is this all there is?’ and the answer was no.  There was something completely different.  It might not turn out to be what I thought it was but at least it would be new.  And that was good enough for me. I like new things.

 

                                                      * * * * *

 

          “The Tampa Club, really?” Pinky seemed excited.

“That’s what it says.”  I tapped my computer screen where the e-mail still blinked, smiling at her enthusiasm.

“We’ve got to get you ready!”  She was already digging through my closet at a furious pace. 

“Take it easy, Pinky, the date’s not ‘till Saturday night,” I said laughing.  “There’s plenty of time.”  But she didn’t even slow down.

“You don’t understand, Sammy,” she said, her voice muffled since her head was still buried in the second half of my closet.  “This is a really big deal.  The Tampa Club is the most exclusive, hard to get into place in this whole damn city.  I know you don’t get it since you haven’t lived here all your life like me, but your man must have either major money or major connections or both.”

“Maybe he just made a reservation,” I said.

“Maybe, shmaybe,” she said, poking her head out of the closet for a moment.  “You get into the T.C. by invitation only, Dahling.  Here, this might work.”  She had pulled the dressiest thing I owned out of the closet, a long sleek black gown with spaghetti straps and a plunging neckline.  I had gotten it a year before to wear to Brad’s Christmas party.  But I had subsequently had to work on that night and so the dress remained unworn.  In fact, the price tag still dangled from the back.  I had gotten it on sale at the new International Mall at the Lord and Taylor’s, a store so expensive I usually just passed on through it on my way into the mall.

“Isn’t that kind of dressy for a second date?”  I asked her, eyeing the dress as it dangled like a sleek black pelt from its hanger.       

“Hey, if he asked you to the Tampa Club then you’d better dress up,” she said.  “Now, you can wear those same black crystal earrings and your strappy black heels…

The days seemed to pass in a flash.  Before I knew it the date was upon me and Pinky was shoving me out the door when Nate drove up.  I noticed he had a big black Cadillac and it looked new.  Apparently he didn’t do to badly for himself.  I wondered if he really was in investment banking.  He probably worked from home online.

“I hope you don’t mind me not inviting you in right now, the house is kind of a mess,” I said, sliding into the plush leather seat beside him and gesturing to the one story brick bungalow Nanny had left me in her will. 

Old Seminole Heights, the neighborhood I lived in, used to be a pretty bad area but in the last five years or so it had been declared a historic district and people had begun buying the old houses and fixing them up.  Property prices had soared so much that I probably could have sold and bought myself a nice new house somewhere else that was much bigger than the small two bedroom one bath bungalow.  But I liked the sense of history around the old neighborhood. Nanny had grown up there and I thought I could still feel her presence there sometimes.  I had come to live with her after the car wreck with a drunk driver had taken both my parents and she had always been there for me.  The good memories I had of her inside that house were priceless, worth more than any realtor’s idea of property values.

“Not at all,” he said neutrally.  He was dressed in a nice tuxedo with a bowtie and everything and I was suddenly very glad Pinky had made me dress up although I felt next to naked in the slithery black dress.  Luckily, it was considerably warmer than it had been on the night of our first meeting although it was still a little chilly.  Winter always has a tenuous grip on Tampa–it can be forty degrees one night and seventy the next.

“You look nice,” I ventured.  I hoped he didn’t know I had another reason for not inviting him into the house.  I wasn’t a big fan of vampire fiction but I did remember that a vampire may not enter your house unless you invite him.  It might all be a big pile of baloney, as Nanny would have said, but he had said that he was allergic to garlic, so maybe there was some truth in the other old beliefs as well. 

Not inviting him in was my small nod to safety.  I hadn’t even worn any silver jewelry although I did have an antique silver cross of Nanny’s concealed in my little black beaded handbag. Better safe than sorry.  I thought of the cross as my can of mace, which is what I usually took along on dates just in case the guy got too frisky.  I had never had to use it on anybody though and I doubted I’d have to use the cross tonight.  Despite being what he was, Nate didn’t seem like the type to force himself on anyone.   

“You look lovely,” Nate said, gliding the big car onto the on-ramp to 275, the main highway that runs the length of the city.  “Although I confess I was hoping you’d wear your hair down.”

“Oh…”  I reached up to feel the elegant up-do Pinky had spent so much time on.  It was held in place with two black lacquered chopsticks decorated in ivory characters.  I was wearing the black crystal earrings I had on the first time we met and the black crystal choker that went with them.  I thought it looked very elegant but maybe I was wrong.  “Is it…should I have worn my hair down for the club?”  I asked, thinking that maybe it was some sort of a rule although I couldn’t imagine why.

“No, I just wanted to see your hair– it’s such an unusual color.  But this is nice too.  You have a beautiful neck.”

 The way he said it made me blush a little.  It was almost as though he were complimenting me on a much more intimate part of my anatomy. But I supposed that the neck would be a very erotic part of the body to a vampire because of the jugular running so close to the surface.

“Thank you,” was all I could think to say.  I wanted to ask him all about being a vampire, how it was, what he could do—all kinds of nosy questions just because when I finds something or someone new that I like, I want to know all about them.  I did remember that he had said I couldn’t offend him but still, I didn’t like to jump right in on such a delicate topic of conversation.  So I was searching around my brain for something else to say while the lights of downtown Tampa were whizzing past my window when he surprised me by asking how I liked being a nurse.

“Oh well, you know, I like it well enough,” I said.  “I like working with the kids although some of them– the really sick ones– break your heart.  It wasn’t my first choice for what I wanted out of life but it’s nice.  You know– practical.”

“Practical?”  he asked, arching one dark eyebrow.  He was concentrating on his driving so I felt I could study him a little while we talked.  He had a very strong profile and the whites of his eyes were very bright in the dim light from the dashboard.

“Well, yes.  My grandmother always used to say if you’re in the medical field you’ll always have a job.”  I shrugged.  “So far, she’s right.”

“And what would you rather do?”  he asked, turning his head slightly to look at me.  I realized I’d been staring at him and ducked my head in embarrassment. 

“Promise not to laugh,” I said.

“Why would I laugh?” he said, not promising anything.

“Well, it’s not very realistic,” I said.  “But sometimes I wish I would have gone to art school instead.  I like to paint.  Pictures, I mean– landscapes, mostly.”

“Why didn’t you go?” he asked.  We were pulling up the ramp into the huge parking garage for the Bank of America building.  I knew because Pinky had told me that the Tampa Club was on the very top floor.

“I wanted to but my grandmother talked me out of it.  She felt like a woman should always be able to support herself.  My Grandfather died when she was twenty-nine and she had to raise my Mom and my aunt all by herself which wasn’t easy.  I think she always wished she would have had a professional skill of some kind to fall back on.”

“Why didn’t she marry again?” Nate asked.  He’d found us a space in the garage and was rolling the big caddy neatly into place.

“I don’t know exactly,” I said thoughtfully.  “She always just told me she was a one man kind of woman.”

“What about you?” he said, turning to face me after he unbuckled his seatbelt. I wondered why he bothered with it– maybe to avoid getting a ticket?  I was pretty sure a trip out the window if there was an accident wouldn’t hurt him although maybe it would be inconvenient.

“What about me what?”  I asked.

“Are you a one man kind of woman?” he asked, smiling a little but serious too.

“I don’t know,” I said, noticing again how white his teeth and eyes were.  “If I am, I guess I just haven’t met the man yet.”

He nodded as though he approved of my answer and then he came around my side of the car to open my door and help me out.  His hand on my arm was firm and a little cool.  I wondered if he had fed that night and if so on whom and if they had been willing.  Then I decided I didn’t want to think about it.

“After you,” he said, ushering me through the long luxurious lobby we found ourselves in.  The parking garage only went so high apparently, and we had to take an elevator to the top floor.  While we waited for the elevator to arrive, I looked at our reflections in the shiny gold doors and realized that Nate’s was barely visible.  He looked like a pale outline, almost a ghost standing beside me.  I turned my head quickly to make sure he wasn’t wisping away on me right there but he was solid as a rock, right by my elbow.  I turned back and looked at the reflection again and he was barely there.  He noticed me noticing and I nodded at our images in the door.

“That must be inconvenient,” I said.

 He shrugged.  “Sometimes.  I try to take care not to go places with a lot of mirrors.  But mostly, if someone notices, they think they’re seeing things. If they get agitated, I can always make them forget.” 

Oh yeah, I kept forgetting his power to cloud people’s thoughts or erase their memories. At least I could take comfort in the fact that it didn’t work on me.

We got into the elevator which went up so fast it made me dizzy and got out on the top floor.  The golden doors opened onto a staircase covered with plush crimson carpet and at the top of the stairs was a nice looking woman who was maybe just a year or two younger than me. She had on a black skirt and white silk blouse and she was standing behind a podium that looked like it was made of solid oak.

“Nathanial Glover and a guest,” Nate said.  She checked a piece of paper on the clipboard in front of her and nodded once.

“Of course, Mister Glover.  It’s always nice to have you.  Right this way please.”   She led us to the right down a long hall which had various doors that opened into different sized rooms and at last, ushered us into the very last one.  “The Gold room, as you requested, Mr. Glover,” she said formally.  “Josiah will be with you momentarily to take your orders.” 

The Gold room was either the smallest banquet hall or the largest private dining room I had ever seen.  The wall paper was cream with a golden curlicue pattern done in some kind of velvet and there were golden brocade drapes on the floor to ceiling windows pulled back to show the magnificent view of Tampa Bay spread out beneath us.  The floor looked very old and well cared for–it was wooden parquet that shone gently in the soft lighting.  In the center of the room was a small round table draped with a golden table cloth so dark it was amber.  It was laid with silverware and glasses for two and there was a tiny little lamp with a golden shade in the center.  I heard piano music and at the far end of the room I saw a cream colored baby grand.  An older gentleman with walnut brown skin and pure white hair was playing softly.

To say I was impressed was an understatement.  Brad’s idea of a nice date had been a Bucs night game and hot wings at Hooters afterwards.  I didn’t think I’d ever been anywhere this fancy in my life and that included my senior prom.  Nate pulled out my chair and seated me courteously before taking his place across from me.  His pale skin gleamed like he had swallowed the moon in the golden light from the little lamp.  I noticed again how beautiful his eyes were, how the green and brown seemed to flow together, with amber flecks melding the two together near the pupil.

“This is beautiful, are we the only ones here?” I asked, looking around me.  There were no other tables set up although there was certainly room for them.

“I thought it would be nicer to have a room to ourselves,” Nate answered.  Well, he really must be well off, I thought.  I could only imagine how much it cost to rent a room at the Tampa Club exclusively for the night.  I was sure Pinky would know.

“You must come here often,” I said.  “The hostess seemed to know you.”

He shrugged.  “Not so much actually but I’m one of the charter members.  Of course, they think I’m my grandson.” He grinned at me, suddenly exposing those white teeth which made me sit back a little.  But I could tell he was just being friendly. 

Just then our server, Josiah, who appeared to be even older than the gentleman playing the piano, appeared.  He had on a white serving jacket and black pants and a little white towel draped over one forearm.  I waited for him to hand us menus but instead, he recited a long list of delicious sounding appetizers and entrees from memory, giving exact details about how each one was prepared and served.

“I hope you won’t be offended if I don’t order any food,” Nate said, looking at me a little anxiously.

“No, of course not,” I said.  I hadn’t thought about this.  It’s hard enough to eat on a first date when the man you’re with is preoccupied with his own plate of food.  It would be that much harder if he didn’t have anything to distract him.  I don’t like people watching me eat and I bet most girls feel that way.  “Would you…could you join me in a glass of wine?”  I asked, uncertain if he could drink it or not.  He smiled at me warmly.

“I can have a sip or two,” he said.  “Would you like to order it or shall I?”

“Oh please…”  I gestured for him to order by all means.  “I wouldn’t know where to start,” I said.  After a few suggestions from Josiah, we settled on a nice Rose our server promised would compliment anything.

“And what will the lady have to eat?” he asked, and ran through the choices again.  I decided on a filet mignon done medium rare and a green salad with dressing on the side.

“And please be sure there’s no garlic on anything,” I added as an afterthought.  More and more I was beginning to think I definitely wanted a good night kiss and seeing that Nate was so deathly allergic to it I decided it wouldn’t do to have even a hint of garlic around.  Josiah promised there wouldn’t be and glided silently away to see to our orders.

“That was nice of you.  Was it for my benefit?” Nate asked.

 I nodded, and I could feel myself blushing.  I hoped he didn’t realize exactly why I had nixed the garlic.

“Tell me more about being a nurse,” he said, perhaps sensing my discomfort.

“Oh well, you know…”  I said.  I told him the highlights, glossing over some of the more unpleasant duties and some of the ruder doctors I had to work with, especially Dr. Sandburg who was constantly making sexist remarks and telling off-color jokes.  You’re not supposed to be able to get away with that kind of thing in this day and age but Dr. Sandburg happened to be golfing buddies with the Chief of Staff at Tampa General and so a lot of things he did and said were conveniently overlooked.  But I didn’t like to go into the negative aspects of my job, especially on a first date. 

Nate asked pertinent questions and seemed really interested.  He was a good listener, another first for me when it came to dates.  Brad would rather listen to the sound of his own voice than anything else.

Pretty soon the wine and my dinner arrived and I busied myself cutting the salad and filet into tiny, lady-like bites.  I hated to sit there in silence and just eat—it’s was Nate’s turn to talk, at least to my way of thinking.

“If you wouldn’t mind talking about it, I’d be interested in knowing what it’s like to be a vampire,” I said, spearing a small piece of salad on the end of my fork.  “Since I’ve told you so much about nursing.”

Nate smiled, but his smile was just a little grim, I thought.  “All right,” he said.  “But it’s not really a career choice like nursing, you know.”

“Was it your choice at all?”  I asked, immediately interested.  Would anyone willingly choose such a life?  What were the pros and cons?  I’m always interested in different cultures and ways of life.  Curious as a cat, Nanny used to call me.  Brad said I was just nosey.

Nate appeared to consider my question while I chewed my salad and at last he shook his head.  “No, I didn’t really have much of a choice,” he said.  “I guess you could say it was done to me without my consent but even if I had been offered a chance to choose, the only other option was death so I can’t honestly say I would have refused what I was given.” 

Of course I had to hear all about that so he told me while I ate the rest of my salad (which had a huge wedge of grilled blue cheese in the middle of it) and filet in tiny bites.

“I was twenty-eight in 1955 but I had only been out of college a few years because of the war.  The Korean Conflict, I think they call it now,” he said.  He was rolling the wineglass between his palms and looking down into the glass as though it was a magic mirror that could take him back in time.  “I think that war is mostly forgotten now, because it wasn’t as big or brutal as either of the World Wars or Viet Nam but I was in it and it was brutal enough for me.” He took the smallest possible sip of wine and went on. 

“While I was in the army I was stationed in Seoul and I had to see and do some things that made lasting impressions on me.  When I came home, I wasn’t the same person that had shipped out of basic training.  I’ve been reading a lot about it on the internet lately and I realize now that they would say I had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but nobody thought much about things like that back in ‘55.  They just thought I was depressed.”  He sighed and fiddled with his wine glass. 

“Back then there were no antidepressants and if you went to a therapist and anyone found out you were liable to be branded as crazy– there was a real stigma attached to it.  I went back to college and finished my degree in finance because that was what my parents expected of me but my heart wasn’t in it.   When I got a job at the bank and began to make good money, my Mother kept wanting me to find a nice girl and settle down but I couldn’t make myself be interested in that either.  I didn’t think it was fair to ask anyone else to put up with my problems.” He took another tiny sip of wine and went on.

“The only person I really liked to be around at that time was my best friend, Thad.  He had been in the war too but he’d been lucky and stayed Stateside the whole time he was in the service.  He was always such a crazy guy– up for anything, you know?  We’d been friends since college and I liked the way I could forget myself for a while when we went out, forget the things I’d done.”

 I wondered what things he was talking about exactly but I decided to just keep chewing.  If he wanted to tell me he would.  Nate ran one large hand through his old-fashioned hair-cut– his hair was very thick and dark– and continued.

“One night I was feeling especially bad and Thad had the idea that we should go to Leo’s down on West Hillsborough.  Do you know it?”

“Well, I’ve driven by it but it’s not the kind of place I’d go into on my own,” I said cautiously, taking another sip of the Rose. “It’s kind of not such a good part of town.”

“Back then it wasn’t bad,” he said.  “The club was new and Thad thought it would cheer me up to see it.  We went there and proceeded to get as drunk as possible in the shortest possible amount of time.  I don’t want you to think I was an alcoholic– I wasn’t.  I just needed to forget that night.”  He shook his head.  “I’ve wished a hundred thousand times since that I had just gone home and taken a sleeping pill instead.  Hell, a hundred sleeping pills.” He sighed deeply.  “Well, we hadn’t been there too long before we were joined by two women…”

He told me all about being led out behind the bar and drained and the way the two vampire women decided to ‘bring them over’ as he put it and the way he couldn’t have done anything else but died.  “And sometimes I wished I had when I learned what they had turned me into,” he said grimly, staring moodily into his wine glass.  Then he shook his head and looked up.

“It was too much,” he said, frowning, creasing his white forehead into wrinkles that smoothed instantly away the minute he stopped.  “I barely felt equipped to handle life as a normal human being, let alone as a vampire.  I decided what I needed was a long rest– a sleep that would hopefully heal my wounded emotions and let me get on with my life, whatever life I had left to lead, when I woke up.”

“You can do that?”  I asked.  I had finished my dinner ages ago and pushed the plate to one side.  Now I sat looking at him, drinking in his story.  It was so interesting.  Nothing makes me happier than something new and different and Nate was about as much of both as I could ask for.

“Can and did,” he said simply.  “I went to sleep at the end of nineteen fifty-five and I woke up four or five months ago.  I’ve been trying to get adjusted ever since.”

“Wow, that’s just…”  Words failed me.  He was like a time traveler from a past age.  A traveler that had no way of getting back to his original time.  “Amazing,” I finished at last. 

“It’s amazing all right,” he agreed.  I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not.  His face was blank.

“So how do you like the future?  Is it the way you imagined it would be back in nineteen fifty-five?”  I asked.

“Yes and no,” he said, thinking about it.  “There are some things– pretty silly things I guess, that I though we’d have by now.”

“Like?”  I wanted to keep him going.

“Like, I don’t know, flying cars, vacation trips to Mars, entire meals in pill form…that kind of thing.  Science fiction.  Then again, there are things I never would have dreamed of.  Like the Internet, I use that a lot. Advances in science and medicine…  Social changes too, though.”

“It’s hard to get used to all the pushy modern women, huh?”  I asked, grinning.

“Well, as a matter of fact yes.  Not that I have a problem with women in the workforce.  Or other races…none of that bothers me.  I was never a bigot, thank God, despite being raised in the South.  No.” He shifted in his chair and took another sip of wine.  “It’s the way women want to be treated now–like…like objects.”

“Objects?” I frowned, not understanding but he just nodded and went on.

“Do you know how strange it was for me to walk into a bookstore and see pictures on the front covers of most women’s magazine that would have been considered pornography in my time?” he said.  “And the articles…all about pleasing a man and different bedroom tricks.  There’s so much sex everywhere you look.”

 He was studying his wine glass closely and I had a feeling that if he wasn’t so pale he would have been blushing.  Maybe he didn’t have enough blood in his system to blush, I wasn’t sure.

“Seems to me most men would like that,” I said.  “Going to sleep and waking up in a much more permissive society.”

“Permissive is one thing, promiscuous is another.” He sounded very stern.

“Now you sound like my Nanny,” I said, laughing.  “She made me read a book called Passion and Purity when I first came to live with her.  It made her feelings on sex and everything that goes with it pretty clear.  Her basic philosophy was you better wait until you get married or move out.”

“I know I sound old-fashioned,” Nate said, looking miserable.  “I’m trying to get used to the way things are now but it’s hard.  There just seems to be…I don’t know, such a lack of courtesy.  A lack of respect between people in general and men and women in particular.  Everywhere I go I see and hear people doing and saying things that would never have been tolerated in my time.  I know we have a lot more social freedoms now but I wonder what we’ve given up to get them.” He looked sad, the same way he had when we’d talked about being alone, being the only one left out of our families, on our first date.  I could understand that look a little better now.  I reached over and touched his hand lightly.

“Not all women want to be treated like sex objects,” I said, gently.  “I think a lot of us appreciate a man who treats us like a lady.” 

He looked up at me and smiled.  Taking my hand in his, he caressed my palm with his long fingers.  “Would you like to dance with me then, pretty lady?” he asked, still smiling.  From any other guy it would have sounded corny but with Nate it sounded sincere and so sweet.

“I would be honored,” I told him. We stood up from the table and he brought me close to him, putting a hand on my waist.  The piano player, seeing what we were doing began playing a little louder, something easy and light that was good to dance to.

 Nate seemed to know exactly what he was doing and I began to wish that I had taken those ballroom dancing lessons I’d been thinking about but after a while I realized it didn’t matter– he was moving me around the polished parquet floor so effortlessly that I didn’t have to worry a bit where to put my feet.  It was like magic.  After a while the song changed to something softer and slower and he pulled me closer into his arms.  Without thinking about it, I put my head on his shoulder.  I noticed he was humming along with the music in a tuneful baritone.

“Oh,” I whispered after a while.  “I know this song– it’s Someone To Watch Over Me.  I love this kind of music.”

He pulled back a little to look into my eyes.  “Do you really?” he asked. 

I nodded.  “Mmhmm.  My Nanny was a big Gershwin fan.  It was practically all I listened to growing up.  She wouldn’t tolerate rock music in the house.”  I looked up at him.  Even in my heels he seemed to tower over me but not in a mean or frightening way.  He was still humming under his breath.  “Do you know the words?”  I asked.

“Hm, well, it’s been a long time but I think I still remember them,” he said.

“Sing it to me,” I said.

 He pulled me close again and began to sing soft and low in my ear.

“I may not be the man some girls think of as handsome,

           But to her heart I’ll carry the key.

           Won’t you tell her please to put on some speed,

           Follow my lead,

           Oh how I need…

           Someone to watch over me.”

His voice sent shivers all up and down my spine and I found myself leaning closer to him while we danced.  His hands on my waist and his big body against mine seemed very large and solid and it felt right to be near him.  Right then I didn’t care who or what he was or where or when he came from. I just let myself enjoy being with him and I liked to think he was feeling the same way.

It felt like we danced for hours although it was probably more like forty-five minutes and I was really sorry when it was time to go.  But I had promised to take a morning shift for a friend of mine who wanted to attend a baby shower so at last I had to ask Nate to take me home.

“I hate for this evening to end,” he said, as the big black car purred down the ramp of the parking garage.  “I know you have to get up early but would you consider a quick walk along the beach?  We’re not far from the Causeway and I love to go out to the bay on nights like this when the moon is full.”

I thought about it.  So far he had been a perfect gentleman and this had probably been the single most romantic date I’d ever been on.  Still, he was asking me to go out to a deserted stretch of beach alone with him and I’d only known him a week.  On the other hand, I had the silver cross in my purse.  Then again I didn’t know if it would work on him or not…

“Okay.”  I heard my voice saying.  Nate made a left on Kennedy Avenue and we were headed out on the Courtney Campbell, one of the long roads across the bay that connects Tampa to Saint Petersburg. 

Whenever I drive over the Courtney Campbell, I think it must be what everybody who’s never been to Florida imagines the whole state looks like.  It’s a long stretch of gently winding road lined with palm trees and narrow strips of sand lapped by the waters of Tampa Bay on both sides.  My favorite time to drive it is at sunset when the water turns purple and gold and the clouds are crimson but at night it’s beautiful too.  After asking if I could, I rolled down my window to let the breeze in and looked at the long, graceful curve of lights that lit the way across the water to St. Pete.

Finally Nate seemed to find a strip of beach that satisfied him and he pulled over onto the sand and came around my side to open my door.  I decided to take off my strappy black shoes and walk along the shore barefoot.  The sand was cold but it was better than trying to navigate in heels.  I left them on the floorboard of his car and took the hand he offered me.

Although it was a fairly warm night for January, it was still chilly and there was a brisk breeze blowing in from the bay.  I could feel my nipples peak embarrassingly in the thin black dress.  Letting go of Nate’s hand, I rubbed my palms up and down my bare arms, trying to warm up.

“Here,” he said, taking off his jacket and draping it around my shoulders.  It was warm and smelled like him– faintly spicy and masculine.  I was glad he didn’t wear any cologne. Brad had always been drenched in a cloud of Aramis or Curve or Obsession for Men.  It was enough to make you choke.

“Won’t you be cold?”  I asked, snuggling my cheek against the jacket’s collar and enjoying the scent some more.

“I’m not as vulnerable to heat or cold as you are,” he said, his voice remote.  I realized with a shiver that when he said ‘you’ he meant not just me, but the whole human race, which he was no longer a part of.  I also realized that my little beaded black purse with the silver cross was back on the floorboard of the Caddy with my shoes.

“It’s a beautiful night,” I said, trying not to think about it.

“More beautiful than I thought possible,” he said quietly.  He took my hand again and we walked a little further.  “The moon is very—” he started to say and then suddenly he tensed and his fingers clamped around mine in a grip that almost hurt it was so tight. 

“What?”  I asked but he shushed me, clearly hearing something I couldn’t.  Up ahead of us, there was a little copse of mangrove bushes and big bunches of West Indian sedge and knotgrass that often grow along the beach.  Nate dropped my hand and began moving towards the bushes and the dense black shadows they cast.  Feeling forgotten, I struggled along behind him, pushing my feet into the softer sand of the verge.  As I got closer, I began to hear a scuffling sound and a very soft, muffled kind of whine, like a dog might make if it was in pain.

Just as I was wondering again what in the world was going on, Nate suddenly melted into the shadows.  I quickened my pace, slipping a little in the dry sand, trying to see what was happening.  I was almost to the spot where he had disappeared when he suddenly appeared again, this time dragging a large man by the scruff of the neck like a puppy. 

“OW!  Hey, what the Hell!” the man was protesting .  He was thrashing around but Nate gripped him firmly by the neck and he couldn’t twist free despite his struggling.

“What…?”  I started again but then a low black shape came barreling out of the bushes and tackled Nate around the waist.  Clearly the second man was expecting Nate to go down like a ton of bricks when he hit him.  He was in for a surprise because instead of sending Nate sprawling, he simply bounced off, like a man that had run full tilt into a marble pillar.  He went to his knees in the sand, shaking his head to clear it and then tried again.  This time he got a grip on Nate’s legs.  Nate was still holding the other man who was kicking and yelling and they all went down in a tangle of body parts, Nate buried beneath the two burly strangers.

It was over pretty quick.  I wasn’t quite sure how it happened but before I had time to even think about running back to the Caddy for my cell to call the police, one man was stretched on the sand unconscious and the other was whimpering to himself and cradling an obviously broken arm. I noticed for the first time that the second man’s pants were unzipped.  Had he been relieving himself in the bushes?  If so, I had no idea why Nate had stopped him and started the altercation but being a nurse, I did what was natural for me and ran over to the man.  As I started to examine his arm, I felt a cool hand on my shoulder, turning me around.

“There is someone else who needs your help more.”  Nate looked calm and collected, as though he hadn’t just been scuffling in the sand with two large men.  He had a small cut on his lip that might have been caused by the ring the man with the broken arm was wearing on one puffy finger.  If the finger continued to swell, they would have to cut the ring off, I thought distractedly. 

As I watched, Nate licked the blood away from his cut lip with the tip of his tongue and it healed, closing up rapidly so that not even a scar was left.  That in itself was amazing and I immediately wanted to know all about it but there were other things on my mind at the moment.

“Why did you fight them?” I asked.  I hoped it wasn’t just to impress me.  I’d had enough machismo to last me a lifetime in the years I’d spent with Brad.  Without a word of explanation, Nate turned me around so that I was facing the shadows cast by the mangrove bushes.  I became aware of the soft whimpering sound again, like a hurt animal.  Going closer, I could make out a small form huddled in the darkness.

“Go to her,” Nate said softly.  “I’m afraid I’d only scare her right now.”  I went and what I saw broke my heart. 

She couldn’t have been older than fourteen and she might have been closer to twelve.  It’s hard to tell since girls are in such a hurry to grow up now.  Nanny wouldn’t even let me out of the house with make-up on before I turned sixteen but lately I kept seeing younger and younger girls wearing clothes and make-up that seemed much too old for them.  Straggly blond hair hung in dark eyes clouded by pain.  Her thin t-shirt was ripped nearly in two, revealing small, barely developed breasts when she moved.  Her jeans and underwear were pulled down around her thin ankles.  It was obvious what the two men had been doing.

I forgot all about the expensive black dress I was wearing and dropped to my knees in the sand, crawling into the shadowed hollow made by the bushes.  When she saw me coming, the girl rolled herself into a tight little ball and began whispering fiercely to herself.

“It’s okay, honey,” I told her.  “I’m a nurse.  Let me just have a look at you.”

She shook her head violently, blond hair whipping against her bruised and bloody face.  “No!  Leave me alone,” she begged, curling into herself even more tightly.  I crawled into the hollow in the sand with her anyway and managed to get my arms around her.  She fought me for a moment and then suddenly, her arms went tight around my neck and she was sobbing her heart out.  I held her close, feeling her shiver like a whipped dog against me. Her skin was cold and gritty from lying in the sand      

          “It’s okay, honey,” I soothed her as best I could although I knew it was a lie I was telling both her and myself.  “You’re all right now.  I’ve got you.”  I rocked her gently and then wrapped Nate’s coat around the frail shoulders to try and warm her up.  She began to whisper again and I tilted my head to catch the frantic words.

“Just wanted to go home.  Jilly’s house is only two blocks from mine and I thought…”  It turned out she had been walking home from a study date with her best friend when the two men had grabbed her.  They’d taken her out to a deserted strip of beach and did what they wanted.  With the Bay so conveniently close to carry away the body and wash it clean of evidence, I had no illusions on what would have happened to her when they were done.  She would have been found a day or a week or a month from now or not at all, leaving her parents to wonder.  I bet they were frantic already. I knew I would be.

“Sam.” It was Nate, suddenly appearing beside me in the bushes.  He was no more mindful of his tux than I had been of my dress.  Seeing him, the girl cringed back against me, burying her face against my side like a small animal trying to hide.

“We need to get her to a hospital, Nate,” I whispered.  “She’s been through a lot tonight.”

“I heard,” he said grimly and the look on his face would have frightened a braver person than me.  His eyes were narrowed down to glowing slits and his jaw was clenched, a muscle jumping just below his white skin.  When he parted his lips to speak again, I caught just a glimpse of his teeth, looking whiter and sharper than I had ever seen them yet.  “I’m going to take care of them,” he said and I suddenly understood what he meant.

“Nate, no!”  I whispered fiercely.  “You can’t just…do that.”  I had no idea what that might be but I was certain I didn’t want to find out.  “My cell is in my purse.  Call the police and keep an eye on them.  Call an ambulance too, this girl needs help.  And we need to get her parents here,”  I added. 

The girl burrowed against me, whispering something over and over again that sounded like ‘Mom.’  I thought my heart would burst and I held her tighter.  Nate looked like he wanted to argue but I nodded my head at the sad little bundle of grief in my arms and frowned at him fiercely, hoping he would get the message.  With a last look at me he withdrew, hopefully to get my cell phone.

We stayed with her until her parents got there and then we had to talk to the police.  Her Mom and stepfather had been frantic, as I supposed they would be.  It broke something inside me to see the looks on their faces when they saw their little girl and understood what had happened to her.  She was taken away in an ambulance and I was glad to see the paramedics let her Mom ride with her. I found out as they were taking her away that her name was Lydia.

The two men were loaded into the back of a squad car, the unconscious one having woken up.  The man with the broken arm was whining about his injuries but I think the officers at the scene decided he could wait for medical attention until the next day.  I was inclined to agree with them– a broken arm would heal, what he and the other man had done to Lydia never would completely.  The police said they might want us to come to the station later to make a more formal statement but they finally let us go.  It was almost two AM when we climbed back into the black Caddy and drove away.

It was a quiet ride back and I sensed that Nate was still furious but I was too tired to care.  I kept seeing the girl’s face in my mind and feeling her tremble against me.  A few tears slipped down my cheeks and I wiped them away as best I could.  Before I knew it, the big car was idling in front of my own house and Nate was opening my door.

“Thank you for the lovely evening.  The first part of it I mean,” I said, as politely as I could.  I felt ragged.

“It was my pleasure,” he said stiffly.  His face was still very white and his eyes were glowing.  I thought he looked like a jack o’lantern with a lit candle behind his eyes.  He saw me to the door without touching me and then turned to go back to his car without another word.  He got in a drove away without even waving.  I watched the black Caddy disappear into the night feeling so numb and emotionally drained I almost didn’t care.

Almost.

Chapter 6

Nate

 

          When I got home I called Thad as soon as I walked through the door.  There were only a few hours until dawn and he had local contacts and would know how to find out where the two men had been taken.  I made a mental note to get a cell phone like Samantha had– it would have been useful to have. 

While I waited for him to call back with the location, I changed clothes rapidly.  I didn’t intend for anyone to see me but if they did and I didn’t get a chance to erase the memory the tux was too conspicuous.  Besides, it was filthy with sand and dirt.  I put on black jeans and a black long sleeved t-shirt although I usually try to avoid that color– it’s so stereotypical.  

As I pulled the shirt over my head I heard a knock at my window.  It was Thad, hovering coolly in midair with his arms crossed over his well muscled chest as though he flew every day.  In actuality, it was a skill he had only recently acquired and I knew it took great strength and stamina.  I let him in and noted he was dressing the part tonight in black leather pants that laced up the front and a black mesh t-shirt that showed off his ‘six-pack’.  I had probably interrupted him in the middle of some kind of exhibition or orgy.

I let him in and he kissed me casually on the mouth.  I backed up, resisting the urge to wipe my lips.  The first time Thad had greeted me this way, I had punched him in the face.  But he assured me it was a standard greeting between vampires of a similar rank.  I didn’t really believe him until some visitors from another province came to town and I saw them greeting Thad the same way.  But just because it was standard didn’t mean I had to like it. 

“Why did you come?  All I needed was information,” I said, closing the window and leaning back against it.

“You sounded tense on the phone, even more so than usual.” He grinned so that his fully extended fangs were clearly visible.  “I had to come in person.  I thought you might be feeling bloody.”

“For once you’re right,” I said.  I told him what had happened, leaving Samantha out of it as much as I could.  Thad was always a little too interested in my personal life.  When I finished, he whistled (not easy with extended fangs) and shook his head.

“A tragic story although it’s hard to understand why you care so much.  They’re only humans after all,” he said dispassionately.  “They’re fun to play with and sleep with but ultimately they’re all just food.”

“Not to me,” I said, feeling my hands clench into fists until my knuckles popped.  It was hard to understand how Thad could be so casual and callused about matters of life and death.  I wondered briefly if it was part of being a vampire or if something else had happened to harden him.

“Oh yes, I tend to forget that while we’re technically the same age, your second life is younger than mine,” he said.  Second life is what vampires call the time after they are brought over. As in, ‘I was nineteen when my second life began.’  It sounds nicer than saying undeath, I suppose, which is more accurate.

 “In time,” Thad continued philosophically, sitting down on my unused bed and crossing his leather clad legs, “you’ll shed these mortal cares and come into your own.  It took me at least a decade or two to really feel my power and longer than that to completely discard my human ideas.”

“Do you have the information or not?  Dawn is in a little more than two hours and I don’t intend to listen to you talk all my time away,” I said.

“I know where they are being held,” he said, standing up so quickly a mortal eye couldn’t have followed the motion.

“Then tell me.  I’m leaving,” I said, suiting actions to words.  He followed me down the stairs.  He knew I couldn’t fly the way he could.

“I’m coming with you,” he said as we reached the front door.  I stopped and looked at him.  His blue eyes were glowing with excitement.

“Why?”  I asked.  “I thought you weren’t interested.  After all, they’re only ‘humans.’”

“I almost never get to see you in this mood; it’s so refreshing.  Besides, you said there are two of them– that’s plenty of blood for both of us.”

“Fine but the kills are mine,” I told him, making sure he understood.  His eyes widened.

“Nathaniel!  I never thought I’d hear you say that.  I thought you swore you wouldn’t kill again after Korea.”  He grinned.  “I don’t care if I’m a vampire and have to live on blood, that doesn’t mean I have to kill people to do it.”  His voice was an eerily good impression of my own.  He knew it got under my skin when he imitated me so I decided to ignore it.  

“I’m making an exception,” I said shortly. 

He rubbed his hands together briskly in a very human gesture of anticipation.  “Excellent.  Blooding for terror will expand your powers vastly. She who made you was not of an ordinary lineage, you know.  You have enormous untapped potential.” 

I shook my head– ‘she who made you?’  I would never take to the vampire slang Thad had picked up so readily.

“I’m not doing it for the power,” I said, frowning.  “I’m doing it for revenge and if you want to help me it has to be done right.”

“Done right in what way?”  Thad asked, looking interested.

 I thought about it.

“Not too fast if it can be helped,” I said.  “It should be slow and especially painful.  And I don’t care about covering it up either.  Let the police make what they want of it.”

Thad’s eyes widened.  “You know we can’t go advertising our presence to the world at large, Nate,” he said.  “It’s forbidden.  You may be sorry for this later.”

I sighed in exasperation and walked out into the brisk night air, closing the door behind us but not bothering to lock it.  No one could enter the condo without my knowing it.  “I’m not planning on leaving anything that could tie us to it, Thad.  But I want to send a message.  Let it go on Unsolved Mysteries for all I care.”

“You watch too much television,” he said, shaking his head.  “I didn’t even think that show was still on anymore.”

“They play re-runs on the Sci-Fi channel,” I said.  “Besides, what else is there to do in this stupid century?”

“This,” he said.  “Come on.”

 I followed him.

We made sure it was slow and excruciatingly painful and it ended up being quite messy as well.  I felt the old familiar red rage drop over me like a suffocating blanket and I didn’t even know myself again until I woke the next night, still wearing their blood on my skin.

 I wanted to weep at first, for having let myself go back to that dark place inside where I could do such things with no remorse.  It was Korea all over again. But this time I found no tears or regret for my actions.  There was only a savage joy and the feeling of something huge inside me– something that had been awakened by the bloodshed and terror of the night before as Thad had warned me it would be.  A fist in my chest expanding, the fingers touching everything inside. 

I felt the power filling me even as the emotions leaked away.  I had broken a vow I made to myself over fifty years before but I felt nothing. Was this what Thad meant about shedding my mortal cares? 

 I didn’t think about Samantha until later.