Forbidden Days (The Firsts) (16 page)

“Who is it?” she asked.

“Stranger,” answered Jake.   “Human.  Well, dead human in a few moments.”

Park surged past Bas, even though he tried to grab her and stop her.  He let his hands drop.  It appeared she wasn’t going to let him protect her from the harsher elements of the vampire world.

The cookies shattered against the hard floor.   Bas watched her go down on her knees in the blood beside the naked blonde man.  Ah, hell.

“Zachary!” she said, looking back at Bas.  “It’s the man I had a date with the night we…met.  What’s he doing here?”

“We have no idea.  But Shanks or his boys attacked him tonight and left him at the beginning of the lane.”

Jake lifted his eyebrows.  “At least we know the connection now.”

A deep groan came from the man on the floor and his eyes opened a tiny bit.  “Park,” he managed to get out.  He stared at her without seeming to focus, and she leaned down to him.

“I found you.”  Then his head dropped back and he was unconscious again.

Park stood up, her face white and expressionless.  “It’s me. It’s my fault.  He came looking for me.”  She looked up at Bas, her eyes glistening.

Bas groaned.  “Ah, hell!”

Tilting his head, he looked at the woman he was falling in love with and rolled his eyes.  Falling in love with?  Where did that come from?

“Jake, take him to a cell.  I’ll be right there.”

Park smiled and gave him a kiss.

“Thank you.  He’s a really good man.  He’ll be an asset, I promise.”

Jake motioned for a guard to take him away.  “Bas, you’re already giving large amounts of blood to the other one.  It isn’t a good idea.”

Dez stepped forward.  “I’ll do it.  I haven’t sired one in over a hundred years.  It’s past time.” 

Park came toward the female vampire, a good six inches taller than her.  Dez stepped back.  “Uh, no…don’t need the hug.  Got it covered.”

“Thank you anyway.”

Without responding, Dez followed the guard.

144

Chapter Eleven

Bas pulled Park with him as he headed up the stairs toward the kitchen.  He called Cherise to bring Park a new dress since the one she was wearing was covered in her friend’s blood.

“Let’s get you something to eat.  Eugene is already in the kitchen and he’s making a few of his favorites for you.”

She followed him, but slowly.  

“Park, Dez is going to turn him,” he reassured her.  “We’ll save him.”

“I know.  Thank you.  But it still feels horrible to know he was nearly killed for me.  I didn’t pay enough attention.   Bas, he said he found me.  I forgot to call and let them know I was okay.  Bennie must have called the police and reported me missing.”  She gasped.  “Oh, shit!  I bet he was accused!  Bennie knew I had a date with him, and then I came up missing.  That’s why he was here.   All of it.  All of it is my fault.  Bas, you have to get that monster before he kills anyone else!”

“That’s the plan.  But right now, you and I need to discuss something else.”  He paused as he led her into the plush breakfast area of the kitchen.  It had a formal dining room adjacent to it, but Bas had them construct a cozy seating area with plush chairs and benches for informal meals.  That was actually where they usually ate.  The formal dining area sat abandoned except for the one or two times a year he entertained.

Park chose a long cushioned bench and curled up on it, pulling her legs up under her.

“Yes, Bas.  What is so urgent?”

“You.”

It caused a frown on Park’s face.  Was this where he came to his senses and realized she was just a dull ordinary human being and he wanted to send her home?

He felt her emotions and frowned back at her.

“This is what I mean.  That flaming bitch took a gorgeous brilliant little girl and destroyed her.  Park, I am going to make you understand how incredible you are.  It breaks me when you lose yourself and think you’re disposable.  You’re not.”  He moved in close and took her face in his hands the way she loved, his dark eyes compelling her jade ones to look at him.  This time she did not resist.   “Listen to me.  Hear me.  I want you, I need you, and you are going nowhere.  Not without me, anyway.   What I want is to find your birth parents, both of them.  Park, I know you don’t understand this, you don’t believe it, but you are not completely human.  I’m serious when I tell you you’re something different, special.  You healed from a gunshot wound and surgery to remove it, in minutes with no trace..  Even vampires can’t do that.  Your blood is exceptional.  Ambrosia to vampires.  I’ve never felt stronger than when I was on your blood.  But I don’t know what you are.  It’s important that we find out.  So I need to ask you some questions.”

She nodded, so grateful to not be sent away.  “What do you want to know?”

“I need your names, your full name, your mother’s, your father’s, where you were born, where you lived.  A friend your mother may have gone to stay with.  Any place you can think she might have gone.  If there is anything you can remember at all about your childhood that could shed light on your origins.   And Park.  We need to talk about your abilities.  Your empathic touch, your telepathic skill…that thing you did in the vision I intercepted about the asshole in your bedroom.  You threw him across the room with no more than a thought.  Admit it, taken altogether, you are very unique.”  He moved closer.  She couldn’t keep her eyes off him.  “I think your mother knew.” 

That startled her. “You think my mother knew I was not normal?”

“I think she knew you were different.  I’ve thought about this a lot.  The way she kept you trapped in those apartments.  Wouldn’t send you to school.  She always told you that you couldn’t have sex, that it was wrong for you.  When she sent that old bastard into your room with you, you probably don’t remember this, but I paid attention.  She specifically told him no intercourse.  Park, I think she was afraid of you getting pregnant.  I think she was afraid of
you
.  You’re powerful, and she knew why.”

Park was staring into space now, her mind searching her memories.  “She always looked at me as if she didn’t know me, like she hated me.”

“I think it’s because she
did
know. We need to find her.  What was her name?”

Park let herself calm back down and come back to the present.  “Um, it was…Brenda Collier.  I think her friends called her Rena.  I don’t know her birth year, but the day and month were November twenty eighth.  I remember that well because every year on that day she would lock me in my room and go out to celebrate her birthday.  She wouldn’t come back until the next day, and a few times, not until a couple of days.  I always wondered what mine was, but I never knew back then.  We, uh, never celebrated mine.”

Everything Park told him about her childhood shocked him.  He wrote down the name.  “So your name is Park Collier.”  He started to write it down when she said, “No.”  He looked up.

“No.  My name on record is Punk.  Punk Collier.”

“What?  Officially?”

“Yeah.  I guess she told them it was an old family name, European.  They let her go ahead and name me that.  It’s on my birth certificate.”

“And that’s what she called you?”

Park snorted.  “No.  She never called me that.  There were a lot of other things…names…the nicest was little bitch.  I sort of learned to like that one.  I can’t believe I’m telling you this.  Anyway, when I left and decided to go to college, I changed it to Park.  It was close to the one on my birth certificate and I was able to convince them that it was a typo that never got fixed.  I didn’t have any trouble after that.  So I became Park.”

He stared at her and then pulled her into his arms, kissed her forehead.  “You don’t realize how amazing you are that you lived like that and still became such an incredible woman.  I bow down to you in awe.”

Without knowing it, Bas’s love and acceptance was working, and somewhere in a dark corner, where a little girl sat hiding, a light came on, and she thought that maybe…just maybe…there might be a place in this world where she could belong.  Someone who would want her.

She pulled away and swiped the moisture beneath her eyes.

“Weren’t you going to feed me?”

“I am.  Eugene!”

The big bear came storming in with a tray so laden even he could barely carry it.  “I was just waiting to make my
grande entrance.”

“Oh, my gosh, Eugene, what did you do?  I can’t eat all of that!”

Iain and Mick came in just as he sat the tray down.  A few moments later Vaz joined them, followed by Jake.  Bas scooted Park over.  “We can share, can’t we, sweetheart?”

Park didn’t hear anything else that transpired in the room after that.  Bas called her sweetheart.  It was the loveliest thing anyone had ever called her.  She reached for a plate piled with biscuits and gravy.  Being abducted by a vampire was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

Cherise showed up outside the breakfast nook with a fresh dress for Mr. Bas’s new human.  She hesitated before entering since they were already eating and looked around for the woman.  She was behind Jacob, and as he leaned forward, Cherise got her first look at her
.  Mon Dieu
!  It was not!  The child of
that one
was here?   He had searched for her for years and never found her.  Her family would want to know.  But Cherise’s allegiance was with Mr. Bas now.  She could not betray him.  But she could let him know
.  Must
let him know.  She watched Park laughing at something one of her boys said, and wondered if she was as bad as her family thought she was.

Jacobs man placed the dying human on the cold concrete flooring and Dez waved him off.   Concrete stone benches lined the far wall and she went over and sat down, watching the man, who had regained consciousness, gasping for air.  Good.  He could answer the question she needed to ask before they did this.  She drew a deep breath and pulled her long hair back and secured it with a large jaw clip.  No point in getting any more blood in it than she had to.  She stared at him.   Handsome,for a human.  Build like a vampire, so he obviously took very good care of his body.  He’d be pleased it wouldn’t take any work anymore.  Blue eyes, pale, like hers.  He’d lose those.  That hair was compelling.   Really, she wanted to bury her fingers in it, it looked so soft and full.  She sighed.  It had been so long since she’d sired a new vampire.  She’d done it only once in her life, and that one was now long dead.  Nothing in her life had ever hurt as much as when he died.  She’d thought she never would again.

“What the fuck was I thinking?”  she asked herself and then got down on the floor next to him.  She wasn’t a warm fuzzy type so she just left him sprawled awkwardly the way he’d dropped.

“Okay, boy, listen up.  We got time for me to ask this once.  You are dying.  That’s unmistakable.   I can save you, but only by destroying the life you have now.  Who you are, what you do, family, friends, everything you love, you will have to leave behind.  I’ll change you from what you are to what I am.  I’m virtually immortal, I never age, I’m ridiculously strong, and I need blood from humans like you to live.  I am what you humans would call a vampire.  We’re not evil, we’re not dead, but we’re
not
human anymore.  So you need to let me know if you want this.  I don’t give a fuck either way, but someone does.  So.  You can die and have all this drama over with if you prefer.  All you have to do is say it.  Let me die, or make me vampire.  Three words, your choice.   But, soon, little guy, because the reaper has your number.  Once you’re dead, the choice is made.  It can’t be unmade.”

His eyes were fixed on her.  He watched her lower her head, long eyelashes covering eyes as clear as an Icelandic lake.  When she looked back up at him a moment later, he saw the power in her, the gentleness she kept inside.  He felt her.  He
heard
her.

Choose life, you little motherfucker!

He tried to sit up.  Couldn’t.   No dignity in death.  He nodded his head and choked out, “I choose life.  Make me…like you.”

Tilting her head, she had to admit he’d make a stunning vampire.  Her eyes dropped to the family jewels, which were impressive, and she smiled.  He was going to like those even more as a vampire
. 
.

She got up and went to him, chained his hands to poles just like the ones in the next chamber that held Bernie.  He sat up, propped against the wall.  She slipped a dagger from her boot and slit her wrist, which shocked him.

Coming to him, she said, “This is gonna hurt.”

The first thing Park did when she finished her meal was grab her cell.  Bennie picked up immediately, and screamed into the phone.

“Park?!  Park?!”

“Bennie, yes, it’s me, I’m okay.  I’m so sorry I didn’t call sooner.  I got distracted and kept forgetting.  Please tell me you didn’t call the police and report me missing?”

“Of course I did!  Oh, god, Park, you’re really okay?”

Sweet Jesus.  “Of course. I feel so bad for having worried you and the others.  Please let the authorities know I’m sorry.”

“Well, where are you?  What happened?  Park, you’re not the type to do this!”

“I know, I know.  I just…well, I met someone, someone I used to know and we got talking, and he invited me to visit him and I thought, why not, and I just took an impromptu vacation.”

There was silence on the other end of the call.   Then Bennie said, quietly, “Is someone making you say that?”

“No, no, really, Bennie, I’m alright.  I promise.”

“Park, you are not the type to take impromptu vacations.  I know you after working with you for four years.  You would come back and wrap up your projects, assign anything you can’t,  pack properly, and let HR know your expected return.  What’s happening?”

Park didn’t know what to say.  Bennie was right.  “Um…okay.  Something
is
happening in my life that’s a little wild.  I can’t go into it, but Bennie, I
promise
you, I’m okay.  I’ll call and let the police know.  But don’t worry about me.  And on that point, will you make sure everything is assigned to the right department to be sure it all gets done properly?”