Vampires 101 (Twilight Hunters Book 1) A Vampire Romance (2 page)

“You’re hurt. You need help.” His deep - smooth voice was as hypnotic as his eyes.

Hurt was an understatement. It was more like I’d just crawled out of a train wreck, but strangely enough, the pain was barely making its way to my brain. There was no doubt that I could use a shot or two of the best pain killer Pine View Regional had to offer, but as bizarre as it sounds, the pain wasn’t what was on my mind most at the moment. No, topping my list of things I had to think about was the strange - drop dead gorgeous guy that was kneeling beside me.

Who was he?

Where had he come from?

I had so many questions, but had absolutely no way of asking them. My tongue seemed to be glued to the roof of my mouth. My lips parted as I tried to force words from my mouth, but it just wasn’t happening.

Though he was still smiling, his eyes reflected a storm of emotion. “This should have never happened.” He brought his fingers up to gently caress my cheek. His touch was electrifying - a combination of fire and ice. Though his skin was cold, his fingers left a scorching trail of fire across my face. I found myself struggling just to breathe. There was no way I was going to be able to say a word. This is something I would deeply regret later. I had so many questions.

It happened so fast that even now I can’t be sure of what exactly did happen. A blast of wind stirred up last years’ dead leaves, creating a cyclone of debris. When the wind died, he was gone.

Stunned, I looked around for him. What I had just witnessed was impossible. He must be hiding somewhere.

“Forget it. He’s long gone.”

I jerked my head around to see who else had decided to join the scare
Cassie to death
party.

The girl was about my age, maybe a little younger. She wore a fluorescent orange skirt and purple blouse. Her blond ponytail had streaks of orange pain running through it. If she were standing beneath a black light, she would have resembled a walking neon sign.

As odd as she looked, it was the piercings in her nose and lip that really disturbed me. Suffering unneeded pain was just so wrong, but then again, I had never been one for pain, needed or unneeded.

Now that I was thinking about it, the pain in my arm was getting to the point that I thought I might pass out. I stared down at the phone and thought about calling 911, but at this point, I wasn’t sure if I was awake or in the middle of an extremely weird dream. I mean really, if I weren’t dreaming, why was the cemetery suddenly populated with crazy people?

“I so wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Neon Girl put in her two cents while pointing to my phone.

“What would you know? You’re just another figment of my imagination. Besides … my arm feels like it’s about ready to fall off.”

Neon Girl sat on the grass beside me, as if we were getting ready to engage in casual conversation. “No really. You don’t want the police here. There’s a dead guy over there,” she pointed to the corpse of Killer Tom.

Wincing from pain, I tried to shrug my shoulders, but could only manage to lift one. “I didn’t kill him, but he
did
try and kill me. At least I’m sure he would have.”

She waved a hand in front of her, brushing away my words. My eyes caught the glint of long pink fingernails.

“You’ll never be able to explain what happened to him. They’ll lock you in the nut farm,” she warned.

Narrowing my eyes to slits, I gave her my fiercest, don’t
screw with me
glare. “Just who are you? And what are you doing in a cemetery in the middle of the night?”

“Oh … I was afraid that you’d ask those questions.” A sheepish smile touched her lips. “My name is Shadow, and I was following you,” she admitted.

“Really?” I asked while shaking my head in disbelief. “Why?”

“I was trying to see if I could get a look at one of
them
.”

“One of who?” I was getting more upset by the second, especially since my arm was absolutely killing me.

“One of
them
. You know … like the one that killed that guy over there,” she said, pointing to Tom. “By the way … he would have killed you. I’ve seen him do it before.”

My mouth fell open at this point. “Why haven’t you told anyone?”

Shadow lifted her hand to study her perfectly manicured nails. They would have been gorgeous if it hadn’t been for the god awful pink polish on them. “I wanted to take him out myself.”

“This is just crazy.” I said, trying to get to my feet so I could get out of there. I was totally sure I had tripped while walking home, and at this very moment, I was lying unconscious somewhere. There was no other reasonable explanation for what was happening.

“Don’t you want to know who
they
are?” she asked when she realized I was trying to leave.

“Not really.” I shook my head. “Right now I just want to regain consciousness so I can get to the hospital … and hopefully get a shot of morphine.”

Shadow’s pretty features twisted into a mask of confusion. “What do you mean? You’re awake now.”

“No way! You and everything else that’s happened is way too out there. You’re the ramblings of a confused mind. Unfortunately mine.”

Shadow let out a high-pitched giggle. “Oh I see. You think I’m not real.”

“Now you’re getting it,” I said with a grunt, as I finally managed to stand without tilting to one side or the other.

“I can take you to the hospital,” she offered, completely ignoring my earlier reference to her not being real.

Looking around, I saw no mode of transportation. “My imagination just isn’t into efficiency I guess,” I grumbled. “How are you going to get me there? You don’t have a car.”

A sly expression slid across her face and I suddenly found myself feeling even more uncomfortable with my current situation.

“Well one of the really awesome things about being a vampire … is that I do have some unusual talents,” she said, her baby doll lips spreading into a wide smile. “Trust me. I can get you there.”

Hmm, trust a vampire. Now I wasn’t exactly an expert on the undead, but I’d seen a random vampire movie here and there. Somehow trust and vampires never seemed to go together.

I blinked rapidly, hoping beyond hope that the gesture would reach my conscious mind and somehow bring me out of this ultra bizarre dream.

Nope, I wasn’t dreaming. The pain in my arm was way too pronounced. The only other explanation I could come up with was that this girl was just plain crazy. It didn’t make a lot of difference if she was really a vampire or insane, I was still in trouble.

The reassuring feel of the phone in my hand reminded me that I wasn’t completely helpless. I flipped open the phone and hit the 9, but before I could finish dialing the police, Shadow snatched it from my hand. It happened so quickly that I hadn’t even noticed her moving.

“You really don’t want to involve the police.”

“No, I really do,” I told her, trying to grab the phone out of her hand, but she was too fast.

“You don’t,” she said in a singsong voice. “They’ll lock you up.”

I stopped trying to get the phone and used my good arm to place a hand on my hip. “I hate to burst your bubble, but the police have been involved since the day I was born. My dad is the chief of police.”

She tossed me a sour look. “You know, I’m just trying to help you. Your dad is going to think your nuts too … if you tell him the truth.”

She had a point, but I wasn’t ready to give up my fight for the phone. “If you really want to help me, let me call for help so I can get some meds for the pain in my arm. It’s probably broken you know.”

She rolled her eyes, her disdain plainly showing on her face. “You are such a whiner. If your arm were broken, the pain would have had you screaming by now.”

Wow that stung. I’d never really considered myself to be a badass, but a wuss? Well I guess I could be when it came to pain.

“Let’s make a deal.” Shadow stepped closer. Taking my good arm, she helped me back into a sitting position. “You come up with a believable story to tell the police … and I’ll give you the phone back.”

Well she wasn’t exactly asking me to solve the problem of world hunger, but close. There was nothing believable about what had happened.

“Like what?” I asked her.

“Well you could leave out the part about him disappearing after he killed that guy. Just say he ran away after seeing what he’d done.”

I gave her another look of scathing indignation. “You know, I’m not a complete idiot. I wasn’t planning on telling them that part anyway.”

“Good girl,” she purred, while handing me the phone back.

I eyed her suspiciously. That was too easy. “If you are really a vampire, why haven’t you bitten me?”

“Oh get over yourself,” she laughed. “For one thing, I’ve already had my fill for the night … and I still need you to help me find
them
.”

Just who did she think
they
were? “You could provide a few more details,” I muttered.

“Well seeing as you already know about me … maybe I’ll pay you a visit and tell you about them … when you’re not being such a grouch. That way you’ll be ready the next time one of them show up.”

Before she’d even finished speaking, I knew I wasn’t going to get any real information out of her, so I opened the phone and dialed 911. When I looked back up, she was gone.

* * *

If he jerked on my arm one more time, I’d kick him with my good leg. It would just be my luck to end up with an intern.

“The pain medication should start working soon,” he told me just before making another attempt to jerk my arm back into place. It wasn’t broken, but it was dislocated, which had to be just as painful.

My screams were even louder than the guy in the room next to me, and from what I’d overheard, he had chunks of glass embedded in his stomach. Shadow was right. I was such a wuss.

When did he say that medication would start working?

Waiting until the meds started working before torturing me, was probably too much to ask for. It was Saturday night, and the emergency room was buzzing with accident victims, fights, and the occasional overdose. It was probably unreasonable to spend too much time on an almost murder victim.

I must have blacked out for a short time because when I opened my eyes, Dad was standing next to my bed - an ornery scowl distorting his otherwise handsome features. It didn’t matter to Dad that I was now an adult. He was still going to rip me a new one for being stupid enough to walk home after dark.

Dad’s bad mood wasn’t what was making me so uncomfortable at the moment. It was the detective standing next to him. Detective John Riley had a smile that could stop a woman’s heart before she knew what hit her, not to mention thick golden hair that made you want to just reach out and touch it. He may have been hot, but he was as stiff as a board and all business. In any case, that’s how he’d always acted toward me. Probably had something to do with being the chief’s daughter and all.

None of that mattered as much as the fact that if anyone could figure out I wasn’t being entirely truthful, that person would be Riley. He solved more cases than TV cops. Well that might be a slight exaggeration, but not by much.

All that aside, having Riley on this case meant I’d actually have to talk to him. That was difficult on a good day, let alone when I was feeling like death warmed over.

“Cassie! What were you thinking to walk through that cemetery at night? Why didn’t you call and ask for a ride?” Dad shot off questions like he were interrogating a suspect. The deep frown on his face told me that in his mind, there wasn’t too much difference between the bad guy and me, at least at that particular moment anyway.

Before I had the chance to come to my own defense, Riley started grilling me. “Can you tell me what happened … and who exactly killed the guy that attacked you?” he asked, his golden brown eyes leveled on me.

“Seriously? Can’t this wait until later?” I grumbled, hoping to put off the inevitable. Maybe I could buy myself enough time to come up with a better story than what I had, but it was doubtful. I’d never been real good at lying, especially to Dad. As a child, I was beyond sure that with him being a cop and all, he could easily tell when I was lying. My belief system hadn’t changed much since then.

Dad’s frown deepened, making the lines across his forehead appear even more marked. “I have a corpse down at the morgue that looks like he had a run in with Satan himself. Problem is … you were the only one there.”

“I was the only one there when the police arrived,” I corrected him.

“Ok … so you were walking home and the deceased attacked you. Then what?” Riley invited me to fill in some details.

I rolled my eyes, hoping he would get the hint that I was in too much pain to talk right then. It didn’t work. He was still waiting for an answer.

With a deep sigh, I put on my best poker playing face, but I really sucked at poker. “A guy was walking by and when he saw that I was being attacked, he intervened. I guess he took it too far and killed the guy. As soon as he realized what he’d done, he took off running. That’s all I know.”