7

Violet Miller and the Teleporting Vampire Lord

The sunlight disappeared, the wind ceased to blow, and everything smelled of dust and damp wood in an instant. Violet blinked to adjust her eyes. Her hands were flat on a hardwood floor—she was on her knees… somewhere else. She’d just been at the police station… She’d just been grabbed and taken and…

When she looked up, she saw a wall filled with newspaper clippings and familiar blog articles; articles, she realized, she wrote. She quickly looked around and took inventory of a wooden desk, stacks of newspapers, and a chalk board to her right. A whole network of notes covered the chalkboard; details, dates, names…

Her own news stories came to mind in waves. It seemed like she was in an office of some sort—an office of someone who was as obsessed with the monster roaming the city streets as she was. Unless…

It all pieced together, memories of the day before that she thought she’d lost rushing back and slamming into place. This office. These articles. This cathedral… Violet gasped as she realized she’d come to this conclusion before, and she suddenly knew that all the memories she’d lost from the day prior were somehow back.

She scrambled to her feet and reeled backward—right into someone who nudged her away again. She spun with her fists raised.

A guy.

Theguy.

The one from the bell tower. He must have owned this office. He must have been following along on what the news was saying about his kidnapping, memory-stealing ways.

His hood was still up, shadowing his diabolical face, but the office window brought in enough light that Violet could see his features this time; his smooth, tanned skin. His wild, treacherously beautiful eyes. The shallow curve of his lips that he kept calmly together instead of gaping at her like she was at him.

Violet slid back and bumped into a desk. Her hand flew to it to keep balance, and she padded her fingers over everything in reach. But she didn’t take her eyes off the guy. He didn’t take his eyes off her, either. He just watched as her fingers wrapped around a cup of pens, and he raised an eyebrow as if asking what she planned to do with them.

They became ammo. She hurled them at him, three pens at a time.

“You psycho!” she shouted.

One pen bounced off his shoulder. Another off his stomach. One even pelted his face.

He looked annoyed, but he didn’t retaliate.

When that didn’t work, Violet spun for the desk and grabbed a jar of ink. She turned back and raised it above her head, threatening to throw it.

This time, his hands came up like a shield, and he tried to stop her. “Miss Miller—”

She splattered the ink at him—hitting the side of his face and his collar.

He dropped his hands and rose to his full height, eyes narrowing, mouth thinning. But he still didn’t try to grab her or shove her or eat her for a snack.

“Murderous, hostage-taking psycho!” she said anyway.

Violet spun for the desk and picked up a thick book to throw at him, but dizziness rushed in, and her limbs grew weak. The book dropped back onto the desk, and she grabbed her head as her thoughts teetered. Tingling sensations washed up her legs and she knew they might give out.

“My iron pills…” she murmured to herself, or whoever. She whirled back toward him, but the spinning only made it worse. Violet tipped forward, grabbing a handful of his vampire coat on the way down. He didn’t reach to catch her like a gentleman. He didn’t touch her at all as she passed out.

Music was playing somewhere, softly brushed violin strings and a deep cello. Violet opened her eyes.

A canopy of sheer curtains hung between thick, black, gothic-like spokes that held the bed together. It wasn’t a room she recognized, and she had to think for a moment before she recalled where she was.

She sprang up, gripping the white bedsheets with all her might when it hit her. Her mouth went dry, and her wide eyes darted around to take in her surroundings. The windows were covered by bloodred curtains, and the furniture around the room was all dark wood and surprisingly clean, yet inexplicably sharp looking.

Classical music, a gothic bed, drawn curtains…

“He is totally a vampire!” Violet whispered.

“Not at all.”

Violet almost sprang from the bed before spotting the silvery-eyed guy at her bedside. Her mind soared with the thought to fight her way out, but her body wouldn’t move. She sat there, pinned beneath his attention, realizing that exiting the bed would only make it easy for him to grab her.

Her eyes dropped to his casual white shirt and gym pants. His creepy coat was gone, allowing Violet to see several tattoos wrapping his neck. His curly hair was pulled back into a bun too, as though he was heading out for a jog like any normal person who got up early to exercise. He looked vastly different than he had in the bell tower and outside the police station. In fact, he was a bit handsome, in a terrifying way. She cleared her throat and scolded herself for having such a thought about a dangerous, possibly supernatural kidnapper.

“Are you the…” What were you supposed to call someone who looked and acted like a vampire? “…master of this house?” She said it with an uneasy note—it wasn’t really a house. More like a haunted mansion.

“Yes.” The guy’s deep voice was calm. Deceptively soothing.

Violet glanced at his arms where reddish marks covered his wrists and palms. It was like he’d stuck his hands into an oven and pulled out a hot pan without oven mitts.

“What are you, then? Some sort of dark housemaster of doom?” She scootched backward an inch on the bed, wondering if she could jump off the other side and plunge through the window. She’d have to break the glass with her body, but so be it. It would probably only be a two-story fall.

She swallowed at the thought, rubbed her temples, and cursed her brain fog. She needed her iron supplements before her irrational thinking got her killed.

Her attention fired back up to the Master of Doom. He was folding his large arms, hiding away the burn marks on his tanned skin.

“I’ll admit, I didn’t plan to ever see you again after you recklessly flung yourself off my roof like a fool,” he said. Violet’s fingers worked through the knots she’d made in the bedsheets. He spoke with a bit of an accent. “And I would have taken you home after you fainted in my faeborn-cursed office but…” He unfolded his arms and leaned forward, coming over her and bracing his fists against the bed. Violet’s insides tumbled into acrobatic leaps she didn’t realize her organs knew how to do. His face was less than three inches away, and he studied her curiously—right in the eyes. Exactly what a murderous psycho would do.

Violet’s breathing turned shallow when he inched even closer. She imagined him trying to kiss her or some other horrifying atrocity. But his cheek moved past hers and he paused there. He sniffed.

Violet’s jaw dropped. He was some kind of pervert.

She slapped a hand over her racing heart.

“You have a scent from exactly a decade ago that shouldn’t be on you,” the guy said matter-of-factly by her ear, and Violet’s wild heart seemed to stop.

She might have been dead on the spot for how still she was. How every muscle inside of her had tightened in an instant. A decade ago.

“What did you just say?”

The guy pulled away, stood, and refolded his arms. The room felt colder all of a sudden. He looked at Violet strangely. “Who are you?” he asked. “Why do you smell like that? You absolutely reek of something.”

Violet’s palms were sweaty, but her bewilderment at his rudeness was what stole her ability to respond. She couldn’t have told him if she wanted to—and she most certainly did not want to. She needed to run before he did something. Before he asked more invasive questions. She tossed the sheets aside and climbed from the bed to leave, hoping with every ounce of her being that he’d miraculously let her walk out without seizing her. She was unsure if she was more perturbed about his brief mention of her past, that he thought she stunk, or at how he’d looked at her like he wanted to take a large bite out of her neck with gross, elongated teeth he was probably hiding past his shapely lips.

But as soon as she stood, dizziness pooled at the sides of her brain and she put her arms out to catch her balance. After staring longingly at the door for a second, she sank back down to sit on the bed again.

The vampire lord didn’t move. He just watched. He also didn’t try to help her sit when she was clearly struggling—not that she wanted him anywhere near her. As her eyes went in and out of focus, Violet took another look at the red marks on his hands, trying to sort out what his problem was and why he was such an arse on wheels.

“What happened to your hands?” she asked, imagining him murdering people in his creepy cathedral basement and getting irritated skin from all the grabbing and holding and destroying.

The guy took a deep breath and huffed it out. “Sometimes it hurts to touch you,” he said.

Violet glanced up at his face. He didn’t seem like he was the joking sort. Creepy and deadly, maybe, but definitely not the jokester she thought he was when she’d read the inscription on the wooden doors out front warning trespassers that there were monsters in this building.

“This has to be a joke.” She rubbed her forehead viciously. The front doors had basically told her to stay out for her own good and she’d still waltzed up to the windows to snoop like a fresh platter of easy-to-murder young woman.

“Why would touching me hurt you?” she asked. “And who gave you permission to touch me in the first place?”

“It hurt the first time we met on the roof. But it doesn’t hurt today,” he informed her like this conversation was totally normal. “Why is that?”

“I don’t know! Don’t you think after all your evil deeds this might be some kind of deserved punishment?” she snapped.

“All of my evil…” He blinked. “Queensbane, what sort of faeborn evil mischief do you think I did?” he asked, and Violet released a grunt from the back of her throat.

“Are you joking? How many women are you going to kill before you stop terrorizing the streets?! In case you haven’t heard, I’m not afraid of you!” She pointed at him when she said it. Though, she was totally lying. Most of her was afraid, just a small, teensy tiny part of her wasn’t. The idiot part of her that was going to get her killed today.

The guy stared, his mouth gaping for several seconds. He released a huff-laugh of disbelief and put his hands on his hips as he seemed to let that sink in. Seemed to realize that she’d figured him out like the brilliant reporter she was. Then he laughed, more to himself. “Queensbane,” he murmured again as he rubbed his temple.

“How many?” Violet asked again. “How many more of us must suffer—”

“I’ll ask the questions, Human,” he cut her off, and Violet felt the blood drain from her face at the word.

“Human?” Every cuss word she knew went off in her mind like a potty-mouth grenade. “Oh my gosh, you are a vampire!” She scooted back on the bed and grabbed the sheets, pulling them high up to her neck.

The guy almost rolled his eyes. “Vampires don’t exist. Be realistic.”

Violet pointed at him. “You have to let me leave your creepy dungeon. Holding me here is a crime.”

“I haven’t tried to stop you from leaving. And you seem to be under the impression that I want you to stay, which I don’t. But I doubt you’re able to leave on your own two weak, wobbly human feet in your condition,” he said. “You need my help.”

“I’m going to have you arrested,” Violet promised. “You’re crazy, and I’ll make sure the whole world knows it.”

He stifled an eye roll. “If you’re finished with your outrageous threats, I’ll ask my questions now. Who. Are. You?” he tried again. “Explain why you’re painted with such a dreadful scent from—” He thought for a moment. He sniffed. “—at least ten faeborn years ago?”

Violet’s mouth hung open in disbelief. Not only was this guy a woman-snatcher, he was also totally bat-spit crazy.

When she didn’t answer, he said, “Fine. Play stupid. But at least tell me why you broke in here yestermorning.”

Her day yesterday returned in flashes. She had no idea how or why her memories had suddenly come back. But she remembered every detail; her atrocious exit from The Sprinkled Scoop, the bus ride phone call, getting ready for an interview for The Fairy Post, coming to the cathedral… “The job posting,” she realized, then grunted.

The guy raised a brow. “The job is yours.”

Violet blinked up at him. “I don’t want it.”

“Too bad.” He eyed her and unfolded his arms. “You are my ideal help, Violet Miller. Your writing, your fact checking, your belief in magic, your choice of stories for articles. And from what I hear, you need me now that The Sprinkled Scoop has dropped you like a charmed hot coal. Rest up today, and we’ll start tomorrow. Permitting you pass the interview in the morning, of course.” He turned and headed for the door.

Violet’s lips parted in disbelief. “Why did you make a job posting in the first place? Were you trying to lure in another innocent victim?” she challenged, scaring herself a little. “Am I going to be the next person you leave in a heap with no memories and rocks in my pockets?!”

The guy stopped. He turned, his eyes slightly wider even though the rest of him seemed as uninterested as before. “I posted a job, Human, because I’ve become busy with other things.”

Violet released a revulsed huff. Other things. “I can only imagine,” she said.

He seemed to think better of leaving. The guy turned and drew back into the room. The corner of his mouth tugged up into a poorly suppressed smirk. He approached until he stood right before Violet, a daunting statue of muscle strength, tattoos, and the devil’s eyes. “Worse things than you can possibly imagine,” he assured.

Violet swallowed. When he made eye contact like that, the colours of his irises were utterly consuming—like a drug or restraint that pinned her in place and made her believe she couldn’t move.

Her stomach interrupted with a growl. She slapped a hand over her abdomen, but he was already glancing at her loud, obnoxious stomach with something of its own to say.

“I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday,” Violet felt the need to explain for some unbeknownst reason, though she shouldn’t have cared what he thought. Her cheeks felt warm.

He sighed. “What would you like for breakfast? I have everything,” he said without addressing her stomach music.

Violet glanced back at the window she’d thought to leap through. There was no way she could eat here—with him.

“Toast? With jam?” she suggested.

His face twisted into a scowl. “No bread. How about cooked bird eggs, hog meat, and warm beast milk? And coffee?”

A scoffing laugh bubbled in Violet’s throat, but she sealed it in when she realized he wasn’t joking. “Sure,” was all she said, smile dropping.

He finally turned to leave. Violet stayed still until his footsteps disappeared down the hall. As soon as he was lost to his hunt for cooked bird eggs and hog meat, she lifted from the bed and used the wall to keep herself balanced while she planned her escape through her brain fog.