Dangerous Love (10 page)

Sage
held her hand over her mouth to keep her laughter quiet. She knew the vampire had a sense of humor, but she wasn’t expecting this. Curtsying low, she replied, “The lady would be honored to have this dance.”

Vayna grinned and pulled the young woman into her arms, standing up straight in a waltz position, her one arm around her partner’s waist, the other gently grasping her hand. Slowly she began to dance, moving them both about in small circles. A few couples smiled and pointed, chattering about how cute they were. A few others left, disgusted by such a display. But what made both women smile were the couples that got up and joined them, dancing to the playing orchestra.

Vayna stared down into happy gray eyes, a soft smile on her face as they danced. With each step, they steadily grew closer until the vampire’s arms were around her human’s waist and Sage was resting her head on the other’s shoulder. They danced together slowly, just enjoying the moment. Neither woman wanted it to end; both knew they were going to be disappointed when the end came sooner than they wanted it to. But for that moment, they were content to just dance. Forgetting their worries, forgetting their cares, forgetting that they were vampire and human. Right then, it was just them, just that dance. And that was all that mattered to them.

The so
ng slowly began to close and both of them sighed heavily as they drew away enough to look into each other’s eyes. How they hated the moment being ruined like it was! Sage turned around in her lovers arms and watched the orchestra play. They swayed lightly as they listened to the music, relaxed and happy. It was nice, just being like this. The night was young and both women felt comfortable for the first time in quite a while.

The concert ended not too much longer after their dance and they slowly began to make their way out of the park. The silence between them was comfortable and their
hands were interlocked as they trailed behind a group of gossiping girls.

“Say, did you hear? Café Scarab is opening back up again,” one of the girls said.

“Really? Didn’t they just close for renovations?” another one of the group asked, her hair done up with a single paint brush keeping it in place.

“Yeah, but they got them done early so they’re reopening tomorrow afternoon. They’re apparently having a huge party to celebrate,” the first girl responded as she nodded her head.

“We should go check it out,” paintbrush girl said as they turned right, going opposite the way that Vayna and Sage were going, “It’s been a while since we had a decent place to work on our art…”

Vayna was ready to dismiss the entire conversation from her mind until she saw the look on her human’s face.
Sage had a far off look on her face, almost as if she were remembering something. She murmured softly to herself, “Café Scarab…”

“Do you remember something?” she asked her as they stopped moving. She turned her human lover toward her as she gazed down at her. They were forced to move off to the side of the walkway as
others tried to get around them as they made annoyed remarks at being stopped.

“Maybe… it sounds familiar. Like I’ve been there before,” she replied distantly as she tried hard to think about why that name sounded familiar. She shook her head when nothing came to mind, only the nagging feeling that she knew that place.

“Why don’t we go there tomorrow?” Vayna suggested as she nodded thoughtfully. It would be a way to verify if Sage did indeed know the place and they would hopefully find more clues to her identity that way. It was a shot in the dark, but they didn’t really have much choice. They didn’t have any clues right at that moment and it wasn’t like they had anything to lose.

Sage
nodded her head at the suggestion, thinking that was a great idea. There was nothing else for them to go on and it wasn’t like it’d hurt for them to go check the place out. If anything they’d attend an awesome party at the very least. At the most… they’d find out more about who she was, “Let’s go home.”

Vayna hummed softly as she wrapped her arm around her human’s shoulders and the two began to walk again. They finished the walk to her apartment in silence lost in their respective thoughts. If the ancient
vampire wasn’t paying attention when she did, they would’ve walked right by the entrance to her apartment building. She quietly led Sage back up to her apartment and let her into the darkened interior. The young human gave off a very tired scent and she smiled lightly as she steered her toward her bedroom as she said, “Get changed and I’ll meet you there in a few moments, okay?”

Sage
nodded as she padded off to her vampire’s bedroom, leaving Vayna behind. Said vampire stood and watched until she disappeared before walking over and pouring herself a glass of blood. She sipped it thoughtfully for a few minutes, using the sweet liquid to clench her thirst before placing the empty glass in the sink and heading toward the bedroom. She walked in on silent feet as she gazed upon the tired figure on her bed. Sage had already changed and was lying there waiting for her.

She changed quickly and slipped into bed with her, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead before gently pulling her pant leg up.
Sage gave a small noise of annoyance at being bothered, but didn’t stop her vampire lover from checking her leg. Vayna slowly pulled the bandage off and hummed thoughtfully, “You were right, petite amour. It seems the moon did heal you.”

“Huh?” a sleep laden
Sage said as she struggled to sit up and look down at her leg. She frowned tiredly when she saw that her leg was completely healed. She ran her fingers over the spot as she said, “I have no idea what the heck is going on. That’s never happened before. At least, not that my short memory can recall.”

“I am at a loss to explain it as well,” Vayna said as she neatly folded up the bandage and tossed it into the small garbage can that sat next to her bed. It was unusual for a human to go through the same thing a
vampire did. Perhaps it was because the human was now her lover… but that never happened before. She shook her head tiredly. She was too exhausted to try and figure it out now, “Let’s get some sleep. We’ll try to figure it out in the morning.”

Sage
nodded as she snuggled back into her vampire, sighing softly when she felt the softness of the vampire’s blankets close in around her. Within moments she fell fast asleep pressed up against Vayna.

The ancient
vampire took a little longer to fall asleep, staring down at the conundrum that was her new lover. She couldn’t understand what was happening either. It all seemed to strange… the more she tried to think about it, the more she gave herself a headache and finally resigned to sleeping the problem away. It wasn’t like she was solving anything by staying up. Resting her head against her human lover’s, she slowly drifted off into Morpheus’ land not too long after Sage fell asleep, joining her in dream land.

Chapter 6

The day dawned bright and early for the vampire and her human lover. Vayna was already up and standing in the doorway of the living room leaning against the doorjamb as she sipped on a cup of blood. She had no idea why she was up so early. Sure she slept for several hours through the night, but she figured she still would’ve been back in bed with Sage sleeping. After all, her human was still blissfully unconscious in her bed. Her thoughts went over the events of the past few days. Less than 2 days before she was ready to end her undead life. It was still a rather tempting idea. Once Sage got her memory and left, there wouldn’t be anything else for her to live for.

Part of her tried to argue that Sage wouldn’t leave, but she knew better. Everyone left her in the end, and if she didn’t leave, Death himself would claim the young human in what would feel like a blink of the eye to her. She was not blind to the limitations of morality, and while she may have forever, Sage did not.
With a frown, she remembered what happened to Sage’s leg and how it healed just as if she were a vampire. But Vayna tasted her blood. She knew with absolute certainty that Sage was not a vampire.

There had to be an explanation for why her leg healed the way it did. Something like that just didn’t happen to humans.
At least, not in the real world. In stories and movies she watched, Vayna knew that humans could have strange healing powers like that, but this was the real world. Not some made up world of make believe where anything was possible. But then… that didn’t explain what happened.

She was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn’t hear the light footsteps come up behind her. She jumped slightly when she felt warm arms wrap around her
waist from behind. Sage nuzzled her face into Vayna’s shoulder as she said sleepily, “Good morning. What time is it?”

“Little after 7:30,” she replied as she looked over her shoulder at Sage. The young human stood behind her wrapped primarily in nothing more than a sheet.

“Ugh… why are you up this early?” Sage replied as she pressed her forehead against Vayna’s shoulder with a groan. 7:30 was way too early to be up in her opinion. Only people who like mornings got up at that time of day and she was not one of them.

“Just thinking,” Vayna replied as she
leaned back into her mate’s arms. Sage was entirely too amusing when she was half awake like this, she thought. While she wouldn’t consider herself a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, she didn’t mind it when she did wake up that early. Especially when she caught the few rare times when the moon set. Usually she was crawling into bed at that time of the night.

“About what?”
Sage asked as she gently nuzzled her vampire’s back. She wasn’t entirely sure she was awake enough to be talking about anything serious, but she wanted to know what the ancient vampire was thinking. It still secretly sent a thrill through her to think the word vampire in relation to Vayna. She never imagined her life becoming this wild. Course, she wasn’t sure
what
she imagined her life turning out like when she had her memory, but she was certain it couldn’t be anything as strange as this.

“You,” Vayna replied as she lifted the cup of blood to her lips and took a sip. She winced slightly, not expecting the coldness of the liquid. She forgot how it was to drink cold blood first thing in the morning.
Especially after she got a taste for warm blood again.

Sage lifted her head and walked around her vampire and looked up into her blue eyes, a soft frown on her face as she asked, “Me?”

Vayna nodded her head as she looked down at her human. It was true, she was thinking about her. Her and how she wanted to end her existence before she met her. Not that she was going to tell her that, of course. The young human girl was dealing with enough on her plate, let alone worrying over a vampire. That thought made her pause for a moment. A human worry over a vampire? She almost scoffed out loud. There was no way a human would worry over a vampire, let alone her. She moved around Sage and headed into the kitchen, intending on another cup of albeit cold blood.

“What about me?” Sage asked as she turned and followed the ancient vampire into the kitchen. She was curious now about what Vayna was thinking about her. She halted for a second when the thoughts of the night before popped into her head and she blushed as she coughed awkwardly and took a seat at one of the various stools near the kitchen counter.

“No, I was not thinking about that,” Vayna replied with a wry smile as she turned around and gazed at the young human with a playful look in her eyes. Now that her human was thinking about it, it of course was now on her mind as well. She opened her freezer where the blood was and poured a fresh glass as she continued, “And no, I can’t read your mind.”

“Then how did you…”

“How did I know what you were thinking?” Vayna interrupted and finished for her. She put the blood bag back in the freezer carefully before turning around and taking a sip. Leaning against the counter, she said, “Your pheromones changed when you thought that.”

“Oh…” Sage said with a sheepish look on her face. She forgot that her vampire had a
very enhanced sense of smell. It must get annoying trying to ignore all the different subtle scents that she could smell that humans couldn’t.

“I was thinking about how your leg healed,” Vayna said as she gazed down at the dark red liquid in her cup. It was almost black and had a consistency close to syrup. After 3,000 years of living, she thought she’d get
used to the sight of blood, but now that it came conveniently packaged in a bag, she found it a bit weird. Maybe it was because she was used to having her meals fresh, as that was the only way to get blood for quite a few centuries. Bagged blood was not something she was used to drinking from. It had a stale taste.

“Do you really think the moon healed me?” Sage asked as she stood up and opened a cupboard, rifling through for some cereal. If she was going to be up this early, she might as well eat something while she was up. It looked like she wasn’t going to be going back to bed any time soon, so she might as well put some food in her stomach while she had the chance.

“Do you have any other explanation for it?” Vayna asked as she watched her human lover find food. She mentally winced when she realized she forgot how it was to have a human living with her. She really was going to need to get more food besides what she had. She couldn’t let poor Sage starve.

“No,” Sage said as she
took a bite of her cereal. She chewed thoughtfully for a moment as she considered what happened the night before with her leg. She really didn’t have any idea what was going on. This lack of memory thing was making it very difficult for her to remember if something like this ever happened before, “Still, there’s got to be a logical explanation for what happened.”

“Like being a vampire?”
Vayna questioned quietly as she stared down into her cup.

Sage looked up with a startled look on her face.
Her a vampire? She set her bowl down onto the counter and faced the ancient vampire as she said, “Come on, you’ve tasted my blood. You know I’m mortal. You of all people would know if I had any vampire blood in me. Not that being a vampire is a bad thing, I mean…”

She trailed off, unsure of what all to say. She would know if she were a vampire, she thought. Fangs and
a craving for blood was pretty hard to ignore. As far as she knew she didn’t have either of those things.

Vayna chuckled as she set her cup down and pulled Sage into her arms. She gave her a small smile as she said, “I know what you meant, petit amour. I don’t know what I was thinking. You’re right, I would know if you were a vampire and it’s quite obvious that you’re not.
”

“See? So it’s got to be some other explanation,” Sage said as she leaned up and kissed her vampire’s lips briefly before slipping out of her arm and grabbing her bowl. She quickly finished off her cereal before continuing to speak, “But it’s much too early for me to be thinking about anything like this. I’m going back to bed for a few more hours.”

“I think I’ll join you,” Vayna said as she drained the last of her blood and put her cup in the sink. She followed Sage into the bedroom and the two climbed back into bed, settling down in each other’s arms, “After all, the party isn’t until tonight anyway.”

“Exactly,” Sage said as she sighed softly and slowly fell asleep in the darkened room of her vampire. The last thought she had before she drifted off was that she hoped they would find something later that night that would help her find her memory.