Adina Falling (Threads of Fate) (3 page)

BOOK: Adina Falling (Threads of Fate)
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Every highly populated area had a version of Garbage Collectors. They were formed nearly a century ago, once it was clear that Vamps were evolving and assimilating into human culture. A need for a clean-up crew became evident and so, the Elders developed a solution. The Garbage Collectors were a group of mysterious beings, a hybrid of shifters and demons, who could move stealthily about. They were bred specifically for the purpose of, essentially, cleaning up Vampire messes, no matter the size or shape. And they did that well. No one saw them come or go. It left us, the Vampires, with much less to worry about. They were also able to remove blood stains from carpeting which was something I needed done.

Holding the phone to my ear while a flat voice informed me that my information was being processed and my situation would be taken care of shortly, I glanced over at David again to check if he was still unconscious. My attention was brought to his neck where moonlight was dancing in the reflection from the diamond and gold cross he wore.

I smiled at the irony. Funny, I considered, That little icon is useless against me. I'm Jewish.

I yawned and sighed. Instant gratification of food and fucking; satisfied. The longing for something more still remained.

I went to bed.

 

I sighed and stretched toward the sunlight that snuck in through the cracks of the blinds covering my bedroom windows. One thing that silly Twilight series got right was that vampires could walk during the day. Evolution ensured progression; it was something that inevitably occurred for all of the Earth’s inhabitants. Survival of the fittest and, quite obvious, vampires were a stronger species. It had taken a few generations but slowly, vampires came out of the shadows and into the light. They did not, however, glitter in the sunlight. They didn’t tan, either.

It had appeared that vampire bodies had been slowly changing throughout the ages, our own form of evolution. No one questioned it; they simply enjoyed their new ability to tolerate sunlight. The newer the vampire, the more evident these changes became. Some of our vampire scientists thought it may have been a human virus transferred to us during feeding that got stronger as it was passed on. That was, most likely, their way of explaining without delving too deep, why question something so good? So, this human word “evolution” was repurposed to suit our needs. For the older vampires that still had a bit of sun sensitivity, special sunglasses and sunscreen were developed.

Luckily for the human race, blood-lust was the only thing that stayed nocturnal about vampires. There weren’t any vampires walking around, all day long, attacking and draining humans of their life source. Vampires had acclimated into regular society once they were able to live a fairly normal life. So, like the rest of the world, they woke up to an alarm clock and got ready for work, school or whatever else was expected of them to be productive world citizens.

With this progression, vamps were your everyday, ordinary working stiffs. We held the same types of jobs that our human counterparts did. We were doctors, lawyers, politicians, business owners, architects, rulers, artists, chefs, start-up companies and successful dot coms; you name it, we did it. Many of us were wealthier, however, due to longevity and experience. There were many vampires that were active participants in history; they didn’t have to learn about it from books or documentaries. They were there, analyzing and educating themselves on how to make things better. For everyone, including the mortals who made the messes to begin with.

We attended public and private schools, universities and beyond. Our moms joined playgroups to socialize their children. We were on the PTA board, room moms, and lunch ladies so that we could check on our children while they were in school for hours on end.

Over time, we became like everyone else. We were just like any other culture that immigrated and entered into another society. We had to find our place within our surroundings. Eventually we looked, sounded and acted exactly like everyone else. Vampires became no different than humans, aside from being more beautiful creatures with a taste for blood.

Looking at my alarm clock, I noted that it was only 8:30 a.m, I still had time to languish in bed for a half hour before I needed to get up and start my day. I worked from home as a writer. Erotica. The career path I had chosen made complete sense. Writing always came easy to me and it also happened to be a bit of a passion. As was sex. Combining my two favorite things, I went on to become a New York Times best-selling author. It only seemed like a logical choice. I was all about logic except when it had to with my personal life, then something altogether primal took over, tossing my hard earned logic, reasoning and routine, right out the window. It was quite an unfortunate personality trait of mine, one that I was constantly trying to tame. Quite unsuccessfully, might I add.

My cell-phone vibrated loudly on my nightstand, the screen displayed a picture of my mother. It was much too early to deal with that woman, especially when I hadn’t even had my coffee yet. Yet, I knew if I didn’t respond immediately, my mother would just keep calling until she got what she wanted.

Sighing, I grabbed my iPhone, “Mom?”

“Hi, honey. Did I wake you?” My mom, Barbara, was also a vampire. And that fact meant that I would, for all eternity, receive a million phone calls a day from my mother. Sure, it’s better than the alternative but that doesn’t always make it any less irritating.

“That’s alright, Mom. I was--”

“Adina, I wanted to let you know that a lovely man named Xander Stark will be calling you.” She lowered her voice to a whisper, “He’s one of us.”

I closed my eyes and sighed again, “And by ‘one of us’, what exactly do you mean?”

“He’s one of us-one of us.” Barbara replied evenly.

“Mom, whenever you tell me that someone is one of us, I don’t know if you are referring to their religion or their species status.” I loved my mother but she was both exhausting and exasperating despite her best intentions. Having a conversation with her was sometimes equivalent to a fang extraction.

“Adina, don’t be so dense. He’s one of us in both ways. He’s another Jewish Vampire.” My mother sounded as annoyed as I felt. I could almost guarantee that we both rolled our eyes at the exact same time.

“OK, great. Terrific, Mom. Because I was really looking to get fixed up.” Actually, I loathed blind-dates. It was on my list of ‘things to avoid at all costs’, along with wooden stakes and Michael. Oh, and Werewolves were on that list, too. I was not a fan of them, they were usually so arrogant. Not to mention that they always smelled a bit like wet dog. Aside from decapitation, wooden stakes were the only other way to exterminate a Vamp, those were some sharp objects that were clearly to be avoided at all cost.

“Honey, it’s time to start dating again. You and Michael have been divorced for ages now. Rumor has it that the Elders are going to set you up with someone and you know how well that goes.” Motherly concern coated her voice, she knew me well enough to know that an arranged marriage would be a horrible predicament for me to find myself in.

The Elders were a group of really ancient Vampires that made up the governing body for the entire Vampire world. Recently, due to the whole evolution thing, the Elders had been enforcing marriages to ensure procreation. On some rare yet gaining-in-momentum instances, vampire couples had been able to give birth. I happened to be one of the rare instances, back when it was even rarer for a vampire pregnancy to go to term. But nowadays, if a vampire reached a certain age and hadn’t coupled off, an arrangement was made. It was like living in the Dark Ages. But, if I were to sit down and give it some thought, an arranged marriage would definitely take some pressure off of me and my department store charge cards. Plus, it would probably lessen the sexual dry spells I encountered occasionally.

“Mom, I don’t need to be fixed up. I really don’t understand why it’s so important to be married. I did that once, remember. He turned out to be insane.” I tried to plead my case; I just didn’t want to get married again. Besides, Michael, my ex-husband, had made it very clear that he would destroy any man who tried to be with me. It made dating a little precarious; especially because of the fact that he was a powerful, psychotic vampire who had spies everywhere.

“Darling, I just want to see you happy.” That was always her response. To everything. It wasn’t enough for her that I had a successful writing career, she was old-fashioned in the sense that women needed to be defined by the men they married. So, therefore, to my mother, I had no definition. And this was coming from a woman who had been married three times since my father left us when I was in elementary school. I guess you could call her the Queen of Redefining.

“Listen, I’m going to call you back. It’s too early and I haven’t had my caffeine yet.” I sat up in bed, obviously languishing wasn’t going to happen. I figured that I may as well just start my day.

“How can you drink that stuff?” I could almost swear I heard my mother’s nose wrinkle in disgust. She preferred tea, it was more ‘civilized’, she claimed.

“I like that ‘stuff’. It’s all about routine, Mother. And coffee is part of mine. I’ll call you later. Love you.” I hung up without waiting for a response. She was used to it by now and knowing her, she wouldn’t wait until I called her back, she’d be calling me again within an hour.

I didn’t feel like getting dressed yet so I wandered over to the kitchen and popped a coffee pod into my Keurig coffee-maker. I glanced over to where David’s body had been resting only a few hours earlier. It was gone, as I had expected it would be. The Garbage Collectors probably had taken care of erasing his memory and then dumped him somewhere locally. He would probably have awakened with the sunrise in a state of confusion. But, alive, well and probably a little anemic. He would use his cell to call his wife with an excuse as to where he was and why he was there, having to make something up because he’d have absolutely no memory of the night before; she’d believe him and come to get him. I had left him one of my charming thought implants; he would definitely be changing his ways. Deep within his mind, he would have an ungodly, unreasonable, incurable fear that if he ever strayed from his wife, a monster would come out of his closet and eat his dick. It was immature and silly on my part, of course, but also a very effective tactic to call on these men’s childhood fears. I had learned from probing his mind that he had been terrified of the Boogeyman so, I used that as my weapon against him. And honestly, there was no reason why I couldn’t have a little fun with it while ridding the world of cheaters, one schmuck at a time.

A minute later, with a steaming cup of black coffee in my mug, I went to my desk and opened my computer. Routine was another big part of me. I liked it because it helped me stay focused and driven, which kept me at the top of my game. Writing was a very competitive career, one little slip up from my routine and I would fall from the graces of those best-seller lists. So every morning, like a ritual, I have coffee while going through my emails which usually total somewhere in the hundreds. I have never understood why someone would send me an email at 3 a.m yet that seemed to be a very busy time for my inbox.

I picked out the important ones, the ones from my editor, my publicist and my friends. I noticed that the emails for penis enhancements were bountiful and apparently I was being sent some sort of cosmic message that I couldn’t figure out because I didn’t happen to be in possession of a penis. Unless you counted my clitoris but that was the perfect size already, thank you.

Some responses and many deletions later, I went to work on my latest and highly anticipated novel, “Obsessive Love”, which was due to my editor in a few days and I hardly had any word count done. It wasn’t flowing easily for me. The sex scenes were intense but I just wasn’t nailing the dialogue. Morgan figured it was because I hadn’t ever had that sort of mutual obsessive, all-consuming love. Not even with my ex-husband. It was very one-sided; he was obsessive and all-consuming of me while I was scared to death of him.

I had known Morgan since I was 15; we had met during our freshman year in high school. We hated each other at first, we were both very Alpha in the vampire world and that has a tendency to cause a lot of friction. Eventually, we realized that by partnering as friends we could conquer the male world, and so we did. We’ve been best friends ever since.

Thinking that Morgan was the perfect person to help with getting some dialogue started, I picked up my phone. She had experience with that intense, mind blowing love with her husband, I figured she would be able to share some of their conversations with me and I could adapt them as necessary. As I was about to speed-dial her, my phone rang. Unknown caller, the display informed. One thing I hated was Unknown or Anonymous callers because, inevitably, they wanted something from you in the shape of bills, votes or business. Since I was in the process of finding ways to procrastinate, I answered. I figured I’d mess with the Unknown caller; it could be a fun two minutes before I got to work.

BOOK: Adina Falling (Threads of Fate)
4.84Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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