Blood-Red Tear (2 page)

Chapter One

The loud buzzing of my alarm clock woke me from the horrifying dream, another in a long line of nightmares that had been plaguing me for months. I rolled over to turn off the alarm, my heart racing, my body covered in a fine sheen of sweat, tears running freely down my cheeks, as I fought to breathe, shocked by just how vivid my dream had been. I forced my trembling body upright, glancing around the room, reassuring myself that I was indeed alive and well.

Everything
in my bedroom appeared as it should, from my pale-pink walls to the large, white four-poster bed I slept in. I took a deep, shaky breath and reminded myself it had just been a dream. A horrible, disturbing nightmare that had been so real that my body physically ached as if it had indeed been injured, but still just a dream.

The
once mildly terrifying nightmares I had been experiencing for the last month were progressively growing worse.  So bad, that I dreaded going to sleep at night. I knew I should tell someone, ask for help, but I didn’t want to upset my family.
No
, I thought. It was better to keep the dreams to myself for the time being. The last thing I needed was for my parents to suspect something was wrong with me. It would make them worry, and when they worried about me they tended to overreact.

A
loud knock sounded on my door, jerking me from my thoughts. “Katie, it’s time to get up,” my brother, Paul, shouted from the other side.

“I’m up,
” I grumbled. It was the first day of a new school year, and I was already dreading getting back to the same dull routine of high school. It wasn’t that I didn’t like school, exactly. I got excellent grades and enjoyed being with my friends, but I always felt like I was supposed to be doing something else, that I had another purpose I wasn’t fulfilling. It was as if I was just biding my time until it became clear to me.

With a
loud sigh, I got up, knowing if I didn’t Paul would soon be back, pounding on my door again. I stretched and forced myself to get moving, and after a quick shower, I was standing in the entrance of my massive walk-in closet pondering what to wear. I walked past the row of dresses and heels my mother insisted on buying for me and moved on to the less formal clothes I favored, pulling out a T-shirt and a pair of jeans that I had chosen when she had taken me school- shopping.

As I dressed
, I could not help staring at my reflection in the full-length mirror on the wall with a smile. To my relief, I had finally lost the gangly, awkward frame of my youth. The once-flat body I had abhorred was now curvy in all the right places, and my long blonde hair that had once seemed dull and lifeless now fell over my shoulders in glistening waves to the small of my back. Even my face had lost its last vestiges of childhood roundness, leaving behind more defined cheeks and full lips that I knew guys found desirable.

Dressed and satisfied with my appearance I walked to the bed, grabbed
my bags, left my room, and walked down the hall to the massive mahogany staircase that would take me down to the main floor of our renovated eighteenth-century, three-story mansion.

The old home,
situated on the outskirts of a small town, was close enough to the local school and shops, but far enough to give my family the space they needed. The imposing mansion had been crumbling to the ground when my mother had found it, soon after they had adopted me, but my father, who loved her desperately, brought it for her anyway, and she had spent many years and untold amounts of money since, restoring it to its former glory.

T
he first floor of the home consisted of a chef’s kitchen, dining room, sitting room, game room, office, and a ballroom, which my mother used for parties, and any other important events in our family’s lives. The second floor contained Paul’s and my suites of rooms and a series of guest suites, and the third floor held the master suite, my parent’s sanctuary from the world. In all, it was one massive home and should have been cold and imposing, but somehow my mother had made it welcoming and comfortable for all of us, and we loved it.  

I reached
the bottom of the stairs and walked across the foyer to the kitchen, knowing my mother would be there, the same as she was every morning, making breakfast. It seemed kind of pointless since everyone in my family, beside myself, were vampires, but she insisted on keeping things as normal as possible for me, the only human in the household. To most people I supposed it would seem terrifying, but after a group of rogue vampires had attacked and killed my birth parents, they had taken me and raised me as their own. They were the only parents I had ever known and aside from a few subtle differences, like needing blood to nourish them, they were like any parents. They attended PTA meetings, open houses, and all of the important events in my life. Of course normal, human parents didn’t live forever, or look like movie stars even upon waking, but they made the effort for my sake and that is what counts. No child had ever been more loved, and I had grown up knowing what they were, so it didn’t matter to me if they were human or vampire. I loved them with all of my heart.

Besides
, they kept their vampire side well hidden. The fear of being found out was always prevalent, so I was a little clueless about most of the things they can do, but I do know they were not the monsters books and movies made them out to be. For example, they didn’t accost humans to get the blood they needed to survive; they got it from bags from one of the private blood banks my father founded many years before. He owned many such facilities around the world so vampires could acquire what they needed without feeding directly from humans. It was mutually beneficial since humans were paid for their donations, kept healthy by a battery of doctors my father kept on staff at his many facilities around the world, and vampires received the blood they needed to survive without harming anyone. In fact my father’s method had become the accepted way of living amongst most vampires, who genuinely liked humans and wanted to coexist with them peacefully. I knew though, from eavesdropping at his office door, that not all vampires felt that way. There were some who preferred the old ways and still hunted for blood the old-fashioned way, and that thought reminded me of my nightmare, causing goosebumps to rise on my skin and my body to tremble.

“Good morning
, Katie,” my mother called out with a warm smile as I entered the kitchen. She was beautiful, forever thirty, with long honey-blonde hair that hung well past her shoulders, liquid brown eyes like melted chocolate, pale skin of the finest porcelain, and a petite, curvy frame that made her appear fragile and innocent, belying the vampire power that I could feel flowing under the surface. Yet, I had never felt a moment’s fear in her presence. She was one of the most gentle, loving parents I could have hoped for, and I never felt more wanted than when she hugged me and told me how grateful she was to have found me, which was often. 

“Good morning,
” I responded, kissing her cheek and taking the plate she offered me before walking into the dining room where my father sat at the head of the table, reading his morning newspaper. He looked up as I entered the room, his smile as warm as my mother’s had been, and I was struck by how truly good looking the man I called my “father” was. His dark hair was short and tapered, and his green eyes twinkled with happiness as he watched me approach. The charcoal-grey designer suit he wore emphasized his fit physique and made it easy to see why all the moms flirted shamelessly with him at school functions and around town despite the fact he made it clear my mother was the only woman for him.

We were extremely close
, probably closer than most fathers and daughters. He had told me many times he had never expected to have children and that when they had found me I had been the answer to their dreams. I supposed that was why he always made an effort to spend time with me no matter how busy he got. Paul, who came to them shortly after my arrival, had been an added bonus, one he had also embraced wholeheartedly, but he had raised me for most of my life so our bond was a little different.

“Good morning,” h
e said as I leaned over and kissed him on his cheek. “Did you sleep well?”

“Uh, yeah,” I murmured
, sitting down to eat hurriedly before my brother appeared and began berating me about being late.  (Something he had done every morning before school for as long as I could remember.)

I was hurriedly shoveling my breakfast down when
Paul walked in seconds later, giving me the dark, impatient look that he used when I was holding him up. “Are you going to take all day eating that?” he asked leaning against the wall, frowning as I lifted the fork to my mouth for another bite. “You are going to make us late.”

He sounded gruff
, but I knew he wasn’t really mad, so I didn’t take it to heart. “Good, maybe that will give you time to brush your hair,” I teased.

“There’s nothing wrong with my hair,” he growled, but looked into the decorative mirror positioned over the antique buffet server across the room
to run a hand through its untamed mass.

I had to bit
e my lip to keep from laughing. Paul was seriously good looking: his light brown hair with its blond tips always had that just-got-out-of-bed look, which although messy, suited him. He had muscles that went on forever and a face that made females drool. Dressed in faded jeans and a tight T-shirt from a trendy store all of the kids shopped at, he looked more like a model for one of their ads than a vampire. Every girl in town wanted to date him, and I wondered if they knew what he was whether that would detract from his allure or add to it. With the current popularity of vampires in my generation, I figured that if they found out, he just might find himself a celebrity instead of a monster to be feared. Not that it mattered. Paul never dated. It seemed his sole mission in life was to watch over me and he took that job seriously, whether I wanted him to or not.

“Come on,
you know I hate to be late,” he growled.

“I just started eating
, nerd boy. It’s not my fault that you eat from a bottle. Some of us actually have to chew our food.”

The corner of his lip lifted in a sneer.
“It’s not a bottle, it’s a bag, and I could eat from your friends instead if you’d like.” He flashed me a bit of fang and made a low, sucking noise to emphasize his meaning.

“Paul,” m
y father warned with a frown.

“Yuck
, that’s gross.” I stuck my tongue out at him just as my mother walked into the room. She spared me a disapproving look then turned to Paul with her hands on her hips.

“We do not drink from humans
, Paul, so stop teasing your sister,” she scolded. I chuckled, but then she turned her motherly glare upon me.  “It is not ladylike to stick your tongue out.”

“I’m sorry,” I said
, ashamed.

She directed her stare back to
Paul, who mumbled a similar apology. “Now knock it off, before I punish you both.”

I fought back the laugh that formed in my throat and saw my brother doing the same. My mother had never lifted a finger against either of us and she never would. She loved us too much
, and we both knew it.

“I was just kidding
, runt. I don’t drink straight from the source, it makes you humans squeamish,” Paul teased.

My mother
glared harder at him, but I knew she loved him as if he was her own and that she would forgive him, for his statement. Besides, she was used to our teasing; Paul and I harassed each other all the time. He was not my brother by blood, but in my heart he was the greatest brother I could have asked for, and I loved him dearly.

  “No problem, Dracula,
” I teased, knowing he hated to be compared to the infamous vampire who gave their kind such a bad reputation. It had become somewhat of a joke between us now, but when he had bought the movie and made me watch it when I was younger, I had been terrified for months afterward. After seeing what the famous vampire could do I did everything Paul asked without question, until my parents found out what he had done and chewed him out for his duplicity.

“Three minutes or you’re walking,”
he said, looking pointedly at the clock before leaving the room.

H
e wouldn’t leave me, I reassured myself, but just to be sure I finished my breakfast quickly, grabbed my backpack from the floor, gave my mother a hug, said goodbye to my father, and hurried outside to where he stood waiting impatiently beside the new truck my parents had brought him for his birthday a few weeks before.

The truck was dark blue with s
kulls and white ghostly wisps hovering over tombstones custom-painted on the sides, and stood on wheels so high I struggled to get inside by myself. He chuckled, lifted me inside, and then handed me my book bag before he got in the driver’s side, revved the engine, and took off down the long driveway that hid our palatial home from the rest of the world.

  The drive
down the mountain to the town below was peaceful and we drove in silence, both of us caught up in the beauty of the late summer morning. We reached the center of our small town, where a few local shops and restaurants were situated, and he slowed down to obey the thirty-mile-an-hour speed limit, cautious as always when I was in the car with him, and I couldn’t help but smile. Although he was annoying for the most part, as most brothers were, his concern for my safety was touching.