Vampires 101 (Twilight Hunters Book 1) A Vampire Romance (9 page)

“Well I guess we talk to someone that can give us a little more information. Like the guy that wrote this article,” she said, pointing to a name at the bottom of the page. “It looks like he’s in Salt Lake. That’s not far from here,” she added.

Well talking to the guy was probably harmless enough. After all, just like Shadow, I wanted to find them too, but for a different reason. If I could find him, I just might be able to talk him into another kiss. Just the memory of his kiss was enough to get the attention of certain female body parts.

Given that he didn’t want me to trick him into showing himself again, he was leaving me no choice but to hunt him down. So it would seem that our first step in hunting down these mega powerful vampires was to talk to Mr. Sean Taft, history scholar and all around expert on paranormal creatures.

Sounded like a good plan to me, but given that it was 2:00 in the morning, and that the guy was almost certainly snoozing away, it would probably have to wait for another time.

The persistent tapping that was making its way into my head, served as an unpleasant reminder of how Riley so rudely woke me the morning before. My thoughts were just coherent enough to wonder if I had ended up in my car again. That would totally piss me off, especially if Riley was waking me up again. This time he’d tell Dad for sure.

Forcing one eye open, I was immensely relieved to see I was still in my bed, and that it was still dark. I needed at least another couple hours sleep. Now if that annoying tapping would stop.

Where was it coming from anyway?

Pushing up into a sitting position, I looked around the room, hoping to find the source of my torture. The guilty party was my closet door, which was banging against the wall as it swung back and forth.

Since I was half asleep, I didn’t bother wondering why the door was swinging. The only thing I could think of was latching it so I could get some sleep.

Throwing the blankets to the side, I climbed out of bed and stumbled to the closet. Given that I was still somewhere between blissful slumber and my first cup of coffee, I can’t say that I was too startled when I looked into my closet and saw something other than clothes.

In my current state, a Mack truck coming at me probably wouldn’t have gotten a lot of attention, besides I had been having some extremely weird dreams. It wasn’t all that unreasonable to assume that what I was seeing was just a byproduct of too many potato chips. Grams always said that eating before you went to bed would do weird things to your head, not to mention what it could do to your rear end and hips.

In place of my clothes and the pile of junk that should have been sitting on my closet floor, there was a dark - stormy sky. Fingers of lightning spread across the black rolling clouds until it resembled a web of electricity. I felt an almost irresistible urge to step through the threshold and into those clouds. The sky was drawing me in like a magnet, and if it hadn’t been for my overwhelming fear of heights, I would have stepped through that door.

It’s just that falling out of the sky would have been so not cool, and would probably hurt like hell too.

Hadn’t I heard somewhere, that if you are falling in a dream and hit the ground, it would really kill you? I wasn’t real anxious to find out how accurate that theory was.

While I was caught up in a very intense inner battle to decide if I should step forward or slam the door, the atmosphere changed. Electricity seemed to be oozing from the room behind me.

Even before I felt his hand on my shoulder, I knew he was there. My every cell sizzled in his presence. I was overcome with a need to join with him - to know his body and soul on the most intimate level.

“Princess … you can’t take that step yet.”

His hand slid beneath my shirt to caress the curve of my breast - slowly exploring until he found my erect nipple. The air around me was so blistering hot that I had to fight just to breathe. The heat intensified when he found his way into my panties to invade the wet - swollen lips between my legs.

My hand flew to my mouth to smother a gasp as he pushed into me. I could feel his lips on my neck, and then the sharp pain of his fangs piercing my skin. Reaching behind me, I grasped for a handful of his thick - silky hair, but felt nothing. There was nothing there but empty space.

My eyes flew open, and at the same time, I realized that I was now in my bed. Though it had felt so real, it had to have been a dream. There was no other explanation.

I was consumed with bitter disappointment. If I could have stayed in the dream for just a few minutes longer, I would have probably had the best orgasm of my life. My body still burned with the residue of need the dream had left behind.

Now I had no choice but to make a date with a cold shower, which was never as effective as a date with a hot guy.

My light shielding curtains made it difficult to tell if it was night or day, but the purple sky I could see through the gap of the two panels did give me somewhat of a clue. If I wanted to know exactly what time it was, I was going to have to make the effort to roll over and look at the clock.  I didn’t have quite that much ambition yet.

That would change in about five seconds.

“Well that was interesting.” The deep male voice came from the corner near the closet.

Ok, so if it wasn’t Damian’s voice, which I knew it wasn’t, ‘cause I’d already committed his voice to the deepest levels of my memory, whose voice was it?

Hearing a strange voice in a dark bedroom had a funny way of jumpstarting ambition. In fact, it works better than coffee, even French coffee. I sat up so fast that I was sure I’d left my brain sitting behind me on my pillow.

Damn those light-shielding curtains!

All I could see was a blob-shaped shadow in the corner, and it was so dark that I wasn’t even sure I was seeing that. I was torn between reaching over and switching on my bedside lamp, or making a run for the door while screaming my head off. The lamp was closer. 

Truthfully, I was half expecting the shadow to disappear as soon as light flooded the bedroom, but it turns out it was never a shadow at all. Sitting in the corner of my bedroom, was a guy - a very strange guy - a guy that wasn’t supposed to be there.

At first I was too stunned to utter a sound, let alone move. He was wearing ripped blue jeans and a white T-shirt with a very nice design of a skull, entwined with red and black roses. His sandy colored hair was so frizzy it looked like he’d just stuck his finger in a light socket. He had a goatee and mustache. He was also wearing mirrored sunglasses.

Now what would someone sitting in the dark need with sunglasses?

“I have a gun,” I blurted out when I could finally make my tongue work. It was a total bluff. The closest thing I had to a gun was the small, gun-shaped lighter I used to light fireworks, and the occasional bonfire during party weekends up at the Old Mill. There was always the option of using it to light his frizzy hair on fire, but first I’d have to get close enough to him to do it. Somehow that didn’t seem like a reasonable option.

He quickly looked around the room, as if he were trying to figure out who I was talking to. Finally he looked back at me. “Wow Dude! Can you see me?”

“I can see plenty good enough to put a hole in you.” I glowered at him, sounding a lot more confident than I felt.

“Good luck with that,” he laughed. “I’m already dead.”

Ok then. What could a girl say to that?

“Yeah right! Like I’m buying that one. What the crap are you doing in my bedroom and how did you get in here?”

“I was trying to get through that door,” he told me, nodding toward the closet, “but it shut before I could make it.”

It took a minute to sink in, but then I realized that he was talking about the doorway in my dream. “Oh I get it. You’re not real. You are just another part of the dream.”

Now I didn’t feel quite so threatened, but he sure did seem real.”

“Is that what you think … that you are dreaming?” His laughter was irritating, possibly even more irritating than Shadow’s habit of rolling her eyes whenever she thought I was being stupid.

“Well yeah I’m dreaming. If you weren’t part of my dream, why would you want to go through a door that was in my dream?”

With his index finger, he slid his glasses up and stared at me with pale - blue eyes. “If that was a dream … I sure wish I’d had a few when I was still breathing. I really liked the part where you were ready to get off.”

I felt the blood rush to my face and had to fight the urge to cover my head with blankets. “That’s so not cool! Even if you are nothing more than a figment of my imagination … that is just so perverse.”

He shrugged before getting to his feet. “Dude … you should really check out your surroundings a little better before you go doing the funky monkey.”

The withering glare I directed at him should have gotten rid of even the most persistent pest that I might have crawling around in my subconscious, but he was still there, and he still had that cocky smile on his face. 

He walked over to the bed and sat next to me. I was slightly taken aback when the springs gave way beneath his weight.

“Lil sis, maybe I can be of some help. You know … like explain a couple of things.”

“You think?” I asked sarcastically.

“I’m not a dream, and neither was that door you opened. That door leads to other dimensions, and one of those dimensions is where I’m supposed to be right now. So if you would be a good little girl and open it again … I’ll jet on out of here.”

“I’ve got it!” I said, maneuvering around him and jumping out of bed. “I’m having one of those … what do you call them … night terrors. Yeah, that’s it. I’m not totally awake yet and that’s why you are still here. I need coffee.”

He threw his hands in the air. “Dude … you’re not listening.”

Without bothering to acknowledge his outburst, mostly because he was just some character I was dreaming up anyway, I headed for the kitchen. I still wasn’t awake yet so my dream guy followed me.

Two cups of coffee later, he was still sitting at my kitchen table. That left me little choice but to go along with him for the time being, at least until I could wake up.

“Ok … if you are dead. Who were you and what happened?”

“Finally!” His voice thundered through my apartment.

“Keep it down! You’ll wake the neighbors.”

“No one can hear me but you,” he pointed out. “My name is Chaz. I used to lived on the first floor.”

“How long ago?” This wasn’t sounding good at all. If he really was a ghost, I had to wonder how many more spooks were running amok in my apartment building.

He shrugged. “Time isn’t quite the same on this side as it is for you. I can’t be sure how long ago it was, but the last year I remember was 1989.”

Ok. That was a long time ago.

“Are you telling me that you’ve been here the whole time?” I asked.

“Yeah, mostly,” he said with a nod.

“What happened to you?” I was getting worried that I might be getting too caught up in my own dream world, but now I was curious.

“I’m not sure,” he said in a thoughtful voice. “But I think it happened when I hit the tree and rolled my truck into the river.”

The river ran alongside the road in front of the apartment complex. It all made sense. “So why are you still here? Why didn’t you like … cross into the light or something?”

“I’ve tried a few times, but I don’t think I can. It’s like every time I get ready to … the door closes on me. Just like it did tonight.”

“Wow that’s weird. Do you have unfinished business? I’ve heard that can do it,” I told him.

“I don’t know. Sometimes it’s hard to remember details from my life before.”

“If you are a ghost … why am I seeing you now … when I’ve never seen a ghost before?” Now I had something else to figure out.

“Are you sure you’ve never seen a ghost?” Chaz asked.

“Well yeah … I think. But there is old Mrs. Taylor upstairs … the one with all the cats. I’ve sometimes thought that she might be a ghost,” I muttered in a soft voice, letting my thoughts wander to the lady upstairs, and how her skin almost seemed transparent.

Chaz let out a deep - hearty laugh. “Nope. Mrs. Taylor is still alive and well, but I can relate to the mix up. She is scary.”

“Oh I know! What about that boy that runs up and down the sidewalk screaming about a fire? He has to be a ghost.”

Chaz shook his head. “No. He just wants someone to call the fire department because he thinks fire trucks are awesome.”

“Hmm … well I guess if you really are a ghost … you must be my first.”

“No way Dude! I’ve seen you talking to Johnny, and he’s a goner.”

My mouth dropped open. Johnny was such a sweet guy, though I had to admit he was just a tad secretive. When I worked late at the diner, I would sometimes come home and see Johnny sitting on the stairs that led to the second floor. He’d always smile and say hello, but not much more than that. Once I’d managed to get his name, but when I asked him why he was out so late, he just smiled and looked away.