Dark DNA: A Paranormal Romance (Vampire and Werewolf) (2 page)

Gabby was obviously out of breath from the jog she had just done but she was so excited about her device and it’s discovery that she could barely contain herself. And her arms were so tired from carrying it – it only weighed about ten pounds or so but she thought to herself that the next version definitely needed to be smaller and lighter. She was really getting a workout between the sudden run and the fact that she was lugging this metal box about!

If this machine works, and she felt that it was working, then her whole life was about to change. Was she really ready for that? Gabby thought that and all sorts of things to herself now – but not anything at all about whether or not she should be afraid of the figure she had just spotted ahead – the one that was setting her machine off like fireworks on the fourth of July! The figure that she had followed now for almost six or seven blocks!

The figure she was following – the one that was only about twenty feet away from her now – just  kept on walking down the road with a casual stroll, not really seeming to pay one bit of attention to her obviously ridiculous attempt at following him. Good news for her – she hadn’t scared him off yet! Maybe he was listening to music on an ipod or something…

As she drew closer to the figure, still only feet behind him, he stepped into the light of a nearby street lamp. A flash of bright blond hair and clearly broad shoulders told her right away that it was definitely a… man. A man? Suddenly she became really nervous.

Up to this point she had not even thought about doing anything dangerous – she was just so excited about her scanner… Suddenly her excitement was replaced with fear! What if he had a gun or attacked her? She had no way of defending herself short of hitting him with her scanner! Even though Gabby was fairly tall for a girl, she had no fighting training of any kind – and she knew she wasn’t strong enough to fight off a healthy adult male, especially as tired as she was right now.

Chapter 3

The metal scanner in her hand went absolutely berserk as she took the next step closer to the man ahead of her. The needle on the top was flopping back and forth like it was possessed, and the lights – all of them, they were all red – and flashing like crazy! Even worse than before! She silently complimented herself for not being stupid enough to let this one beep as well – she was so happy she turned the volume off before she left the apartment. If she had left it on there’s no telling just how loud it would have been – especially now, and it would have given her away for sure. So much for stealth mode.

Gabby froze in place after she took the step and wondered for a second just how she would approach this thing. Now that she was so close to him/it/whatever, just how would she find out if she was right? After what seemed like several moments of doubt,  she came to the conclusion that the element of surprise was definitely the way to go. Catch him off guard and if anything went wrong, well, she could always run away. Her long legs meant she could run – and as soon as she got a brief rest she knew she would be ready to go if necessary.

“It’s now or never!” Gabby said to herself under her breath, hoping the being wouldn’t hear her. She carefully sat her scanner down on the sidewalk and then quickened her pace, making sure that her long, slender legs covered the distance between them quickly. As soon as she felt she was close enough to the figure, she let out a yell and jumped on the man’s back, knocking them both to the ground. This attack could have been described as many things – but certainly not graceful. Think more Grace Adler or Lucille Ball.

The guy Gabby jumped on, obviously not expecting such a welcome as this, yelled, grumbled and grunted as Gabby man-handled him, flipping him over amidst the skirmish. He flailed about like a school girl – definitely not what she was expecting (thank goodness) but before he knew what was happening next, she grabbed his face with a firm grip, right around his chin and pulled his upper lip up to expose his top row of teeth.

“Are you kidding me?! No way!” Gabby yelled to no one in particular, completely exasperated by tonight’s events and the tackle she had just so skillfully made. In fact, her hands were still holding the guys mouth.

She saw nothing out of the ordinary inside the mans mouth. He had completely normal teeth! They might even be described as a little bit yellow – not pearly white, but there were no fangs. No tusks. No pointy incisors. No jagged canines. No crazy bridgework. No funky dentition of any kind, in fact!

The mans eyes were light green and shone like a bright light underneath the streetlamp.  He seemed a bit shocked to find himself on the pavement with a strange, long legged woman sitting on top of him, sticking her fingers into his mouth and playing with his lips. And where doesn’t that kind of behavior happen all the time?

As soon as Gabby realized she must look completely crazy to the guy she just tackled she rolled off him quickly and jumped up, dusting off her clothes, never saying another word. Her victim, still a bit woozy from the ambush started to get up himself too, looking rattled and nervous. He never took his eyes off her and watched her carefully, wondering if she would attack again as he tried to right himself again.

“What the hell…. are you crazy?!” he mumbled to himself and maybe to his attacker too, obviously quite livid, yet calm too, dusting himself off just like Gabby was doing right now, looking for rips in his clothing, smoothing down his short hair – all without ever taking his eyes off of her.

“I’m soooooooo sorry,” she replied to the man before he could finish his question. She felt completely ridiculous standing right before a complete stranger she had just tackled on the pavement, assuming that he was a supernatural creature. She now realized just how absurd the whole event had been.

“I thought you were… I… I thought you were someone else,” she mumbled and did her best to clear her throat.

“Is it customary in this part of town to tackle complete strangers to the ground?” the man asked, his tone incredulous as he continued to stare at her. “Or is it just you?”

“No… it’s not. I mean… it’s not a regular thing… well… I have to go. Bye!” Gabby said quickly as she turned to make her retreat, heading straight for her device before she left.

The confused, though, uninjured stranger, continued to look at her as she moved away in retreat, his brow was knit together in bewilderment, as she picked up the small metal box with flashing lights and then quickly walked back down the street away from him.

He continued to watch her as she slowly jogged away – with each step she took he could see that she obviously was cringing. He understood from her body language with each clumsy movement, that she had made a mistake – that she just wanted to get away and was hoping he would not call the police and report the attack.

“Hey! Young lady! Hey, please… wait a minute! Please?” he yelled after her.

Gabby immediately froze and flipped the on switch to off on her invention when she heard him yelling at her. Her heart was pounding inside her chest and she held her device tightly against her body as she heard his steps approaching her from behind.

“I don’t know what that was all about back there, but I think I at least deserve an introduction after you had your hands all in my mouth. Don’t you agree?” he questioned her, as he approached her – she could hear his footsteps drawing him a bit closer to her as she stood there in the street, clutching a metal box to her chest.

She continued to stand there in the middle of the street, wondering if she could take the humiliation long enough for him to catch up to her, but then he called out to her again.  She turned to face the stranger – well, was anyone really a stranger once you have had your hands in their mouth, she wondered to herself? Gabby was completely overwhelmed and disappointed once she realized just how human this man in front of her was.

“I’m Asher,” the stranger said as he held out his hand to her, shaking hers carefully when she returned his gesture.

“Gabby,” she reluctantly admitted after internally debating whether or not she should give him her real name or a fake one. “Again, I’m really very sorry,” she added, looking anywhere but at him.

“Hey, mistakes happen, right… not that I believe that tackle you dropped on me was unintentional.” Asher laughed mildly. “It’s obvious that you didn’t mean to cause me any harm… at least once you stopped playing with my mouth anyway. But I would love to learn more about the person who you meant to tackle so I could warn him to start working out. You know, the person you obviously thought I was? More importantly, can you tell me just why you wanted to tackle that person in the first place,” he asked as he chuckled. “Maybe I can help,” he said laughing to himself again.

“Mmmmm… No… I don’t think so. It’s really… a little complicated,” she replied to him  dismissively.

“Yeah, I kinda guessed that,” he said to her, his charming smile now making it hard for  Gabby to look away. She was thankful just how good a sport Asher was after being mugged by a crazy lady carrying a metal box.

“Hey, listen…” he continued. “I’d love to get to know you a little better since you can obviously beat the crap out of me. Who knows, it seems to me that fate might have played a role in our meeting tonight. Just what are the chances two people would meet under the same conditions? And what a story we’ll have to tell our children…” he laughed. “So, would you like to get a beer or maybe some coffee some time?”

“Really?” Gabby asked him with surprise. She couldn’t believe he was letting her off the hook – and then asking her out too. What a weird way to pick up men she thought to herself. “Are you sure?”

“Hey… any woman bold enough to jump a complete stranger in the middle of the street… and then to force a dental exam on him too… now that is a girl that deserves to be known better, you know?” he winked at her lightly.

Gabby reluctantly agreed with his request and shyly exchanged phone numbers with him. She even gave him her real phone number. But she really didn’t think he would ever call her. In fact, she was pretty sure that he would never call her. But less than a week later, here they both sat in their local corner café, having a cup of coffee together.

Chapter 4

Turns out, Gabby was happier now than she had been in a long time. Despite their obvious differences and his complete lack of scientific knowledge she still found Asher to be easy to talk with and enjoyed listening to him too – and he had some really interesting ideas himself. His deep voice was a continuous hum in her life now and she looked forward to hearing it.

She found out a lot about him during their conversations – for one thing, that he was a social studies teacher at the local high school, which is probably why he was so comfortable talking to complete strangers. He had been teaching there for five years now and obviously loved what he did – you could tell just by listening to him. When she later revealed that she was a scientist, he was so curious that he pressed her for information about her work and wanted to know more about what she did for a living.

“Well, I’m not sure exactly what you’d want to know about my work – it’s actually pretty boring,” she said quietly as she stared down into her coffee.

Asher reached out to lightly touch the back of Gabby’s hand that was wrapped around the warm coffee mug. “Please, Gabby, don’t assume things about me. I’d love to hear all about your work and what you’re studying,” he said as he held her brown eyes with his own.

She grinned at his comment, hesitated for another moment, and then began to share the details of her research and studies, even including her goal to eventually prove to the public at large that paranormal creatures such as werewolves and vampires are really, very real.

Asher sat up straight in his seat upon hearing her plans and then slowly bent low over the table to quietly speak to her. “Creatures,” he repeated, his eyes tightening just slightly. “You mean like, werewolves, vampires, monsters under the bed, that sort of thing?” he smiled with mild amusement not knowing if she were really serious or not – and not wanting to say the wrong thing to hurt her feelings.

“But I don’t understand, Gabby, how can that be true? You seem really sure of yourself but I have to ask, can you tell tell me, since I have never thought this to be true, just stories that you hear from time to time, what kind of proof do you have that these kinds of creatures really do exist?”

Gabby was relieved that Asher didn’t simply laugh in her face – she was so used to that response that she really expected it of him too. But his questions were a nice change of pace – and he even surprised her that he wanted to know more without just making fun of her or acting like she was a loon. Happy to have someone to talk to who seemed to be sincerely interested in her work, she went into great detail explaining to him all about her work, her research, her failures, and feeling kind of odd at being so frank with this stranger so soon.

Asher laughed and laughed when he recalled the unusual way that they met, now that he completely understood the reason. “Umm… so according to your invention, I give off some kind of a paranormal frequency, do I? I just thought it was my new aftershave,” he mused out loud.

Gabby, visibly still embarrassed at the memory, looked down at her hands as she blushed about how ridiculous it all must sound to him. Once again Asher reached out to lightly touch her hand and smile reassuringly during their discussion.

“Your work is really unusual. Potentially ground breaking too I have to believe. Having no scientific background I do find it all very intriguing from a lay person’s point of view,” he offered in a tone that was hard to define.

After a few more hours of conversation and about 2 more cups of coffee and a turkey sandwich that they shared, they finally parted ways, agreeing to repeat this pleasant meet up again soon. Gabby couldn’t believe her luck. Asher not only didn’t press charges against her when most people would have easily, but he was also easy to speak with too. And not at all hard on the eyes either! She was thankful for the potential new friend who had nothing at all to do with her school work or research life.