Authors: Heather Killough-Walden
“… No, man, the shit was coming out of her mouth then ‘cuz her throat was sewed on to that dude’s…”
Crap
, Evie thought furiously. She’d never been more tempted to tell someone to shut up. It was fortunate for the boys behind her that there were no children around; they would have afforded Evie the excuse she needed to get nasty.
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Almost at once, she saw
him
again. It was just a flash, but so powerful, so omnipresent, it honestly felt as though he was watching her then and there.
If I could put people like him to paper, I’d sell like Malcolm Cole
, she thought. The thriller writer, Malcolm Cole, had dominated the New York Times bestsellers list for years and probably would for years to come. His descriptions of people and places were so in-depth and three-dimensional, it was as if the author had experienced them himself. Evie would give just about anything to be as good as he was. As
successful
as he was.
She bit her lip and racked her brain for more memory detail. But all she could come up with was what she witnessed in those strange, fast flashes. A gleaming, expensive wrist watch. The smell of high-end cologne or aftershave. He was taller than her –
way
taller. She could just barely make out the perception of his form in front of her, larger than life and… and…
Evie made a small sound of frustration and ran a hard hand through her brown hair. It tangled almost at once, and she remembered that she hadn’t brushed it that morning.
Ugh, I must be a mess
, she thought. It wouldn’t have bothered her at home, but she’d gone to the trouble to leave the apartment this morning in order to ignore the building laundry and dishes and dust and focus on her writing. She needed to. She needed to get another book out soon. Her parents were depending on her and tax time was just around the corner. To say nothing of Christmas.
She swore under her breath. Her stomach was knotting up and by the return expressions she was getting from the people around her at the coffee shop, she knew that the look on her face was probably pretty unpleasant. Either that or they were just as irritated by the teenage trio as she was.
The no-kill shelter she volunteered at had lost a dog that morning. He’d been hit by a car and then brought into the shelter because the person who hit him couldn’t afford to take him to the vet. The shelter employed a vet, but the doctor didn’t make it on time. It hurt. Every time it happened, it hurt in a new way. Evie had been volunteering at the shelter for four years; she’d thought that by now she would be used to it. But nothing ever changed. She saw each animal as its
own
animal with its own soul and its own story to tell, and when it died, it was like reading the last page of that story.
So many of those stories were far too short.
It left her with a withered sensation, a little more helpless, a little less hopeful.
She was also worried about her parents. Her truck had been acting up lately and she hadn’t been able to make it to Billings to help them out as she’d planned this week. Plane tickets were too expensive at this short a notice. Her mother had two medical appointments to make it to, and neither she nor her father could drive. Her youngest brother, Stephen, was a marine enlisted in Afghanistan. As a result, Evie had been forced to call upon her other brother to ask for help.
Derek… was begrudging at best. And that worried Evie more than anything. The last thing she wanted was for her parents to feel that they were a burden to anyone. They’d taken good care of their kids for as long as they’d been capable of doing so. They deserved to be treated better in return.
Her stomach knotted again, a cramp of anxiety, and Evie ran a fast hand over her face. It was flushed hot, though her body felt cold.
Sugar
, she thought.
I need a sugar fix and some more coffee
.
The coffee shop always sold a plethora of uber unhealthy, ultra fattening dollops of sin that she normally turned a blind eye to and that would more than do the trick this time around. Evie grabbed her wallet out of her purse and headed to the front counter. Her pant size wasn’t going to thank her for this, but frankly, she couldn’t give a shit. She was really starting to stress, and as far as she was concerned stressed out people should be afforded an extra calorie allowance.
*****
Roman’s dark, dark eyes followed Evelynne Grace Farrow as she stood from her small round table and made her way to the coffee shop’s front counter. They tracked every tiny movement she made, each breath, every idiosyncratic twitch. They noted and memorized the angles of her chin, each emotion that crossed her face, every thought that skated across the spellbinding gold and brown of her eyes.
He’d been watching her like this for two days. He’d been shadowing her ever since saving her life from a group of rogue horses in a parking lot outside of a mini-mall. He remained close by, always within a vampire’s arm’s reach. He could see her, but she couldn’t see him.
Roman D’Angelo was hidden from the sights of humanity beneath the shield of a spell, and from the solitude of this invisibility, he played guardian angel to his unwitting target. He was transfixed by her. He couldn’t pull away.
He’d been in her head, reading her thoughts like a fledgling vampire for the last forty-eight hours. It wasn’t like him. Such invasive Offspring behavior was the kind carried out by the young and rash and power-crazed. Roman had been around for
millennia
. There was a kind of exhaustion that came with the wisdom of time. They went hand in hand. He no longer treated the mortals around him as lesser beings with fewer rights, and hadn’t for a long time, partly because he knew better – and partly because he was too tired to care.
But Evie….
She’d been thinking about him,
remembering
him, despite the immense strength of the spell that he had placed over her. It was unheard of for a human to work past such mental walls. Who was she that she could do such a thing? It boggled his mind, fanning the flames of his curiosity into a bonfire of obsession.
Just now, she had been thinking about her parents. She was preoccupied with her responsibilities, saddened by the loss of one of the animals she helped care for, afraid for her parents’ safety, stressed over finances. The inner turmoil was causing her physical pain. He didn’t miss the way her heart rate sped up as a cramp claimed her abdomen and a headache developed behind her eyes. He wanted to interfere. With so little effort, he could fix everything and ease all of her worries away. At least, he could with anyone else. But if her resistance to his memory wipe was any indication, Evie was somehow at least partially immune to his powers.
Amazing….
Evie Farrow had shoved herself under his supernatural skin the moment she’d unwittingly come to him in his dreams. Her voice, her eyes, her very presence were confoundingly alluring. And then he’d held her above that parking lot two nights ago, and all reason had flown from his mind. He wasn’t himself now. She’d bewitched him.
But she was a mortal, not a witch. He’d have known otherwise.
At his command, Roman’s men had done their homework on her. What he hadn’t pulled from her mind, they’d discovered the old fashioned way. She was an “indie” published author with works in several different genres, and she hoped to one day win a Pulitzer.
She wanted to change the world, so she volunteered for a no-kill animal shelter in town that had too many animals and not enough funding. She was one of those souls who were the saving grace of the human race. Many people were unhappy with the way things were, but few bothered to make any kind of sacrifice in order to change the status quo. Evie was one of those few.
She was supporting two parents who had recently fallen on hard times, she had two brothers, both younger. She was born on Halloween night thirty years ago. She lived modestly, in a two-bedroom apartment just a few blocks from here in the heart of Portland on the West bank of the river. She was a loner, preferring long-distance friendships to those up close. She’d never had any serious illnesses or surgeries, and had never earned so much as a speeding ticket. She donated to several charities on a sporadic spur of the moment, and her Netflix cache contained more British comedies than anything else.
She was level-headed but for the occasional panic attack due to an anxiety disorder, so she would never suspect that she had what amounted to a seriously dangerous supernatural stalker tracking every one of her moves, both past and present. In the past two days, Roman had read all thirteen of her published novels. He now most likely knew more about little Evie Farrow than she knew about herself.
He knew she loved Night Wish. She blasted it into her poor defenseless ear drums every time her concentration drifted enough to piss her off. He knew she loved big, heavy boots; they were her weakness, perhaps. She wore a different pair every day of the week, though Portland winter weather called for them and more. She enjoyed vacuuming because the triangles it made in the carpet made her feel productive and calm. She loved watching British comedy to help herself through fits of anxiety, and she escaped to the train tracks when life got to be overwhelming, where she placed coins on the tracks and later collected them.
He knew she had no ingestible vices save caffeine, which she imbibed of at a fairly constant pace throughout the day and which had the opposite effect than expected, calming rather than stimulating her. She was a vegetarian, she took her vitamins, and she showered with a gel scented of cherry blossoms. It surrounded her like an ethereal veil, wafting temptingly around her as she moved.
There were things she hated about herself, and this self-degradation both endeared Roman to her and made him edgy. She had that charm of one who is lovely but doesn't know it. Even so, he had the impulse to erase the negative emotions from her mind, or at least to try. He couldn’t stand the thought of her berating herself over things as inconsequential and meaningless as her petite height and delicious curves, especially when she was so…
good
. But he schooled his impulses, as he was well versed in doing, and chalked her esteem issues up to being human. No mortal was ever fully happy, no matter what they claimed. Roman knew better than anyone that even the Dalai Lama most likely had skeletons in his spiritual closet.
But of all of the fascinating facts he’d gleaned from Evelynne Farrow’s mind, there was one bit of information that affected Roman more than the others.
He knew what kind of man she was attracted to.
It was easy enough to determine as much by simply reading her work. The leading men in her stories had different features. Some were blonde, some were brunette, some were taller than others and broader than others. They had different colored eyes, skin, and nationalities. But there was one thing they all had in common. Almost every single one of them was literally more than human, and
all
of them were positively larger than life. At least as far as the life
she
knew was concerned.
It made sense. There was an otherness to Evie’s mind that belied explanation. Her imagination was profound; he’d ventured into her dreams over the last two nights and had come away breathless with the color, detail and creativity of each one. She was vastly intelligent in that capacity. But there was something else. It was that light at the end of the tunnel that he had yet to identify. Whatever it was, it set her apart. It made sense that her eventual mate should be set apart as well.
And it was as if Evie knew this on a subconscious level. It was part of the reason that she had yet to develop any lasting or meaningful relationship with a man. She knew that a human would ultimately disappoint. Unfortunately, in a mortal world, this would have condemned her to a life of spinsterhood.
Fortunately
, she did not live in a purely mortal world. Not any more – and never again. Not now that he’d found her.
Roman watched her approach the counter as her turn arrived. The salesman greeted her warmly and she returned the gesture before ordering.
The man behind the counter smiled a teasing smile. “Cheesecake and sugar free coffee,” he repeated jokingly. “Got it.”
Evie laughed. “I know it makes no sense. But I can’t stand drinking my calories.”
Too bad
, Roman thought.
It’s all a vampire does.
And then he blinked. The thought had come unbidden, as well as the accompanying image that had floated before his mind’s eye: Evie – as a vampire.
It was impossible. Or, rather, it was no longer done. Roman had seen to that long, long ago. Offspring were born, not made. So why had he imagined her as one just then? And why had the picture caused his heart to race and his gut to clench in longing?
The man behind the counter took Evie’s money, handed her the slice of cheesecake, and nodded a farewell to her as she left for her seat to wait for her coffee. A charge hit the air between his table and hers, and Roman sat up a little straighter.
His dark gaze narrowed as a human slowly, somewhat nervously approached Evie, coming at her from the side and a little behind. A would-be flirter. Roman’s teeth erupted in his gums and his fingers curled into his palms. He could read the man’s thoughts plainly.
I don’t think so.
A pulse of Roman’s power struck the man’s mind, and the newcomer stopped in his tracks, his expression at once going blank.
Leave.
The command was simple and effective. The man frowned, turned on his heel, and headed toward the coffee shop’s exit. Roman watched him retreat, thoughts of violence occupying a part of him where no such thoughts had been entertained for thousands of years.
What’s wrong with me?
he thought, turning back to watch his target as she slowly pulled a bite of cheesecake from her lucky fork.
Beside them, a group of teenagers rattled on about some disgusting film in which all sorts of inhumane things were done to humane people. Roman would normally pay them no heed, but they were bothering Evie.