Destined For a Vampire (29 page)

“I know. If I need anything, I’ll let you know.”

How about a baseball bat for his car? Or a tire iron for his femurs?

But obviously I didn’t say those things. If I did, my mother would stick to me like Velcro for the rest of the night. Instead, I just walked calmly past her and trudged toward my room.

“Honey?”

I turned back around.

“You forgot this.” She put the necklace back into the box and handed it to me. “It must be from your dad or something. It looks expensive.”

I nodded as I turned around again and trudged away. I needed to get far, far away from her pitying looks.

Tossing the box onto my bed, I dropped next to it like a sack of bricks, my breath whooshing out of me. Regardless of the fact that it was only 6:00, I was bone-weary. I didn’t even take the time to take my clothes off or stop to pee. I knew that if I thought about this mess for one more second, I might start screaming.

Ramming a pillow over my head to block out the dying sunlight, I closed my eyes and slipped mercifully into the silent oblivion of sleep.

But sleep betrayed me. Dreams of Derek cheating on me plagued me off and on as I tossed and turned, slept and woke. Pissed off and frustrated at my subconscious psyche, I crammed the pillow over my head again, inhaling the cool, cottony smell of my sheets as I tried to ease myself back into slumber.

Before long, a pair of dark eyes stared at me. Blinking, I walked toward them, and they morphed into a man. A breathtakingly beautiful man. I literally couldn’t breathe as I stepped up to him, the sunlight bouncing off of his angular handsome face. His dark eyes, almost black, sparkled in the sun as he pulled me close, his strong arms wrapping around my back. His scent was intoxicating and familiar and I buried my face in his chest.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured into my ear, his voice husky against my cheek. “Don’t leave me again…”

My eyes snapped open and I stared at the green numbers on my alarm clock.

2:00 a.m. Who the heck was that? I had never met that man…but I knew him. The familiarity was unmistakable. It was so strong that it was overwhelming. And I was annoyed that I had woken up.

But something had woken me. Something had pulled me from my delicious dream. And I knew it wasn’t a noise or a light that had disturbed me. It was a feeling. A strange feeling.

It took me until 2:01 to wake up enough to realize that I was clutching the bloodstone necklace in my hand. Apparently, I had grabbed it in my sleep. The cool stone was polished and smooth in my palm and as I turned it over, vivid images assailed me like a lightning bolt. Sloe-eyed, dark skinned people, the heavy scent of jasmine and blue eye paint. I gasped just as soon as I could breathe again and dropped the stone onto the floor.

What the hell was that? I could swear that I still smelled jasmine.

I pulled my knees up to my chest and stared at the necklace in the corner. If I didn’t know better, I would think that the red splotches were glowing, rising above the surface of the stone and pulsing. But that would be impossible. Or I was crazy.

And that was entirely possible.

I waited until my raspy breathing returned to normal and then curled up in bed. Every two seconds, I glanced back toward the necklace. It was laying motionlessly on the floor, as innocuous as ever. And it was not glowing. Either I was crazy or I had imagined it. I finally drifted back off to sleep as I desperately tried to convince myself that I had dreamed the whole thing… because I didn’t like the alternative.