VAMP RISING (By Moonlight Book 1) (13 page)

              “You’re a vampire now. It’s dark. You’ll get used to it. As for returning, I can’t tell you when that’s going to happen, if ever. It takes years to master the darkness, to learn to control it so that it doesn’t control you. It’s not safe to live among the humans after just having been turned. You’d be at risk for attacking someone. You could get caught. Most vampires live with their kind for decades at least before they attempt to integrate aspects of their former lives.”

              “It’s not fair to my parents,” she argued.

              “Not fair to them or not fair to you?” He challenged.

              Gwen fell silent.

              “You didn’t ask for this. I know that. But none-the-less,  it is reality,” he said in a softer tone.

              “It’s too dark, Christoph. I feel swallowed up by it. I’m disappearing.”

              He took a few steps towards her eyeing her with curiosity. His piercing green eyes seemed to bore through Gwen, as though he was peering into her soul and concerned for what he saw there. “It shouldn’t feel that dark,” he said as he gazed more and more deeply. “It should feel right to you, like coming home.”

              “It doesn’t,” she said softly. “It feels like hell.”

              “Since when? Since you woke up in the infirmary?”

              “Since I fed,” she admitted.

              “Whose blood did you drink?” He asked, but calmly this time.

              “Brandon’s.”

              Christoph sighed, releasing her from the intensity of his stare. “I thought I told you not to drink from shifters.”

              “You didn’t tell me why,” she argued, as though if he’d supplied a reason she might not have been so easily convinced by Brandon’s sensual persuasion.

              “My God, Gwen. I left you for one night. Newly turned vampires can’t have blood within the first forty-eight hours of waking. It interferes with the fresh vampire blood in their system. You have my blood in your body. It needs time to take root and influence the cells in your entire body.”

              “You never explained that,” she said accusingly.

              “You
are
a problem,” he stated offhandedly as a side note before continuing, “That’s why you’re feeling overwhelmed by darkness. You weren’t supposed to have any blood, and you drew from a shifter no less. That’s the absolute worst thing you could’ve done.”

              “Why? Why are shifters so bad?”

              “You can’t feed from the undead. Their blood doesn’t have the life your body requires. It’s like pouring sludge into the water supply. It’s poison. Brandon’s a werewolf. His soul carries a form of darkness that is diametrically opposed to the dark power in your vampire heart. He’s poisoned you.”

              “So what do I do?”

              “Well you don’t return to Seattle for one,” he snapped then drew in a deep breath while racking his brain for possible solutions. “What an idiot,” he muttered under his breath.

              “I don’t appreciate that,” she said, sternly defending herself.

              “Not you. Brandon.”

              “He meant well,” she said hoping to yank him out of his sudden preoccupation with Brandon’s idiocy.

              “He’s just trying to get into your pants,” said Christoph disgustedly, as though he was trying to get a bad taste out of his mouth.

              “I don’t mind,” she countered.

              Christoph’s eyes snapped up to meet hers. “He interests you?”

              Gwen nodded, holding her ground. “I find him attractive,” she stated proudly. “He’s nice to me. He’s made me feel welcome.”

              “That’s because he’s a dog who is trying to get in your pants,” he said astonished at her foolishness.

              “And I find it charming,” she said without a trace of shame. “He’s a good looking guy,” she went on, leveling with him. “I’d go for him if we’d met in Seattle.”

              “Let me make one thing perfectly clear,” he began, gravely dropping his tone an octave so that the severity of what he was about to say would register. “You cannot fall for a werewolf. A vampire cannot be with a werewolf. If you want a real second chance at life, if you want to live, if you want to find a way back to your parents and restore what you can of your life, then you cannot, under any circumstances, allow yourself to fall in love with Brandon Scott. Do you understand?”

              “Yes,” she said, crumbling under the weight of his warning, though in truth she understood his words, but not the meaning behind them.

              “Now,” he said, easing out of the intensity he’d used to warn her. “We need to replenish your vampire blood so that Brandon’s doesn’t harass you any longer.” Christoph approached Gwen, as he unbuttoned the collar of his crisply press shirt, opening the neckline. “You’ll need to drink quite a bit. And hopefully it’ll flush out the poisonous werewolf blood, as well as the darkness that’s disturbing you.”

              Gwen watched Christoph peel his dress shirt off then pull the white undershirt he was wearing up and over his head so that he was standing before her with no encumbrances. His skin was like silk, pale and flawless, and she could feel the heat rising off of him just as easily as she was able to smell his sweet tinny scent: the blood beneath his skin. It was intoxicating, like downing a glass of champagne on an empty stomach. If the sight of him aroused her appetite, she could only imagine what the taste of his blood might do.

              Christoph angled his head to the side, as a means to offer her his throat. He looked delectable. She could almost taste the power his blood carried. But her promise to Brandon was screaming in the forefront of her mind.

              She couldn’t deny her feelings for him. They were real. He meant something to her, but what Gwen questioned in this moment was whether or not that meaning outweighed the life she’d left behind. Her parents were out there. They wanted to find her and she wanted to be found. Christoph could be the means to that end. What if Brandon didn’t have to know she’d broken her promise?

              “I have to set my parents’ mind at ease,” she whispered, as Christoph aligned his smooth neck to her lips.

              She hadn’t meant for the quiver in her voice to be an invitation to him, but Christoph ran his warm fingertips up her bare arm, sending shivers of arousal rippling through her. He spoke softly in her ear, brushing his lips across her cheek as he said, “I can make that happen, but first you must drink.”

              As his soft words washed over her, Gwen melted into his arms. He enveloped her. So tender was his embrace that she couldn’t distinguish his body from a warm bath. She felt suddenly transported, merging into the peaceful pool of his dark power that didn’t seem dark at all, but rather silvery and alluring. She wanted to be silvery and alluring like him. So she drank. And drank, abandoning her promise to the werewolf, while envisioning her old life. And drank...

*              *              *

              Brandon had been sitting on the front steps of Little Bear for twenty minutes when he finally saw Gwen at the far side of the field making her way up the path towards him. He rose to his feet, which caught her attention, but though she quickened her pace to meet him it seemed Gwen was avoiding his gaze, and every fear he’d wrestled down since joining the assembly last night reared back up in his chest.

              “Hey,” he said, hoping to read on her face whether or not the long night apart had severed their bond, yet praying it hadn’t. She looked closed off, cold, stiff. “I
had
to leave last night. There was no getting around it,” he said apologetically.

              “I figured that,” she said dryly.

              “Are you feeling better?”

              “I wasn’t aware that you didn’t want anyone finding out about us,” she said point blank. “You came off pretty strong and it didn’t seem like you were concerned if anyone noticed.”

              “True,” he offered. “I’m kind of always on thin ice here. Getting involved with a student doesn’t bode well with the Administration in general. It’s nothing on you.”

              “Is that it?” She challenged. “Not the fact that werewolf blood is poisonous?”

              Brandon was caught off guard by the information. He hadn’t known.

              “Or the fact that apparently werewolves and vampires just aren’t meant to be together, so if anyone found out they’d forbid this to continue. Is that why you didn’t want me to let anyone know? So that you could continue to seduce me and have your way?”

              “Whoa, I didn’t know any of that, really,” he stammered, trying to regain his balance while wrapping his head around her points. “Who told you that?”

              “Christoph,” she stated.

              “Poisonous? Are you alright?” He asked, deeply concerned.

              “I am now,” she said.

              Without thinking twice, Brandon wrapped his arms around her and drew her close, but when her arms failed to embrace him, he became filled with worry. He let go of her then searched her eyes for any hint they still might have something. “Then what’s wrong?” He asked finally after the silence had thrown a wall up between them.

              “I miss my family. I miss my life in Seattle,” she admitted. “I feel like I shouldn’t be here.”

              Brandon’s heart sank at that, but he tried to push the feeling aside, reminding himself that longing for the old life was natural for anyone who’d just turned. Then it occurred to him that her sudden revelation might have more to do with Christoph’s influence than her own anxieties. “What did Christoph say to that?”

              “What makes you think I said any of this to him?”

              “Didn’t you?”

              “Please don’t make this about your jealousy of Christoph.”

              “I’m not jealous.”

              “Of course you are. If you weren’t you wouldn’t have made me promise not to feed off him,” she countered.

              “I trust you, really. I’m not jealous. I just figured you’d ask him for advice,” he said, hoping his soft tone would help lower her guard. The tension between them was killing him.

              “Brandon, there’s a whole search party looking for me. It has put everything into perspective. I had a life. Yes, I was dying, but I still had a life. And I need to figure out how to get back to it. I’m in agony thinking about how panicked my family must be.”

              “I get it,” he started. “Everything you’re going through is perfectly normal-”

              “But it’s not because the other students aren’t dealing with the added complication of falling in love with someone who’s entirely wrong for them, who’s the wrong species for God’s sake.”

              “You’re falling in love with me?” He asked, as his lip curled into a crooked smile.

              Gwen hadn’t realized the confession had flown from her mouth until she saw the mischievous grin spreading across his face. She blushed, but refused to let out the smirk that was bubbling just below the surface. She sobered, reestablishing the seriousness that was true to her heart, and asked, “What happened with the search party? What did the pack end up doing?”

              Brandon seemed to clam up and fall silent. His steel blue eyes went dark, as though the memories of the night’s events were too upsetting to put into words.

              “You drove them away, didn’t you?” She demanded.

              “Not yet,” he said. “Not successfully.”

              “They just want to find me.”

              “I know,” he said suddenly somber. “You might get your wish, and sooner than you think...” he trailed off, slipping down the corridors of his worst fears, before his eyes shifted, locking with hers as if to make a plea, “I want things to be good between us.”

              “Things are too up in the air. I feel like I’m coming apart at the seams, Brandon.”

              A male voice stole their attention when he shouted across the field, “Hey Brandon, beers at Riley’s!”

              “It’s the middle of the afternoon!” Brandon called out, before turning to Gwen to add, “That’s Mark, another scout.”

              “Admin is in a long meeting and called off our routes until they figure some crap out about that search party! Truck’s leaving! You both should come!”

              Gwen felt Brandon’s eyes on her and knew he was wishing they could simply climb in that back of Mark’s pickup truck and drive off as though there wasn’t a rift between them. And truth be told, Gwen wanted that as well, but she knew it wouldn’t make her feel any less pulled in multiple directions.

              “You go on,” she suggested to Brandon. “Have fun.”

              He shook his head. “I’d rather be with you.”

              The truck beeped long and hard with Mark behind the wheel, but Brandon waved him off. It wasn’t until the pickup’s roaring idle bucked and the truck made  its way across the field and out of sight that Gwen motioned towards the entrance of Little Bear.