Mixed Blessing (Mixed Blessing Mystery, Book 1) Read online

  But, my soul was another matter. Another matter entirely.

  The next few customers blurred into each other. The music my only safe haven in amongst the plethora of blood-filled bodies that swam over the dance floor and retreated to the bar for replenishment. One rapidly beating pulse after another. One sweat soaked, humanity reeking body after another. All clamouring for their next fix. Just like me. Addicts to our own personal drugs.

  Young pre-college boy was back for another round. This time he'd gained some courage. His smile more flirtatious. His eyes leaving my lips and trailing over my upper body. I was taller than him, but it might have been an illusion. The bar was the highest spot in the club. Good for spotting trouble above the rhythmic movement of the crowd. Today I could see all the way across the room to the group of vampires in the corner, sitting on the gold, brown and red plushly furnished dark gleaming wooden benches that makes Sensations the chicest spot du jour.

  No humans were with them yet, but they were hunting. Just like me. One happened to look up at the moment my eyes spotted him. He raised his half full glass in a salute and smiled a knowing smile. He knew me. He probably thought he knew all about me. He'd be wrong. His name's Marcus and he lives with Samson and Lucinda. He's part of their group. He's also going be the first one I stake. He's too cocky, too confident. He thinks he rules the world.

  A soft clearing of a throat in front of me brought me back to my mark. I smiled.

  “Sorry, got distracted there. Another Jim Beam?” He liked that I had remembered what he was drinking. I'd served over thirty customers since I last did him. It made him feel special. He should have felt special. He was the only person in this room who mattered to me now.

  “Yeah, thanks,” he replied. Smile bigger, eyes showing more than just approval.

  I poured the drink with a little vampire flourish, not enough to draw attention, just enough to impress the impressionable. It was all part of the act. The lure. The web. My Dark Shadow approved of my tactics. She practically purred in anticipation of the hunt. Doug moved closer in my periphery.

  I slid the finished drink across the bar and leaned down provocatively. “This one's on the house,” I said, just loud enough for him to hear. He swallowed and I watched the movement closely.

  “Wh...when do you knock off?” he asked haltingly, caught in my trap. So easy.

  I flicked a glance at the wall clock. One more hour. I was about to reply when Doug leant in and whispered, only loud enough for a vampire to hear, “Go now, you need to feed.” He pulled back and offered a smile. I didn't return it.

  I didn't need his help. I didn't need his concern. I could control the need. The hunger. I didn't need a free pass, a get-out-of-jail-free card. I didn't need him or anyone else.

  I turned back to the young guy and smiled. “One more hour.” Doug shook his head and walked away.

  The guy nodded and went to say something else, but a drunk pushed in front demanding a beer. I winked at the guy, his face beamed and he returned to his mates to watch me from their table off to the side.

  The next hour dragged. My Dark Shadow complained incessantly. I was starting to notice the older humans. The ones in their late twenties and thirties. The ones still capturing what is left of their failing youth. They weren't young enough for my taste, but the Dark Shadow didn't care. Their hearts beat, blood flows in their veins. What more do you want? she asked.

  I wanted freedom. I wanted my life back. I wanted the sun and hamburgers and my innocence again. I wanted the last few months to not exist. I wanted to ignore the ad in the paper for competent and experienced bar staff at Sensations, the most popular bar in Auckland City. I wanted Samson to never have entered my life.

  I wanted a lot of things, but the Dark Shadow only laughed. She laughed and laughed and laughed; taunting me, teasing me, belittling me. What I wanted was a pipe dream. What I wanted no longer existed for me.

  The young guy returned for a final drink, a final smile and his final chance of escape. Leave now, my Light-filled side commanded. Run while you can. Instead I found myself saying, “Meet me out front in fifteen?” He nodded, in a daze. And I hadn't even used an ounce of Sanguis Vitam.

  Fifteen minutes felt like fifteen hours. I worked on autopilot, but never failed to know where my target currently was. One sip of his drink. A bark of near drunken laughter in response to one of his friend's jokes. A hand through his sandy blonde short hair. A quick glance towards me at the bar. Then a furtive gaze over the top of another sip from his glass. He took a break to go to the toilet, but I wasn't concerned he would escape. His eyes never left me as he crossed the floor.

  He wanted me to follow him, but I wouldn't. Sensations was off limits. He didn't know this, but even my Dark Shadow resisted my prey's pull. Patience was the hunter's helper. Patience and a keen nose for blood.

  I served the last customers of the night and cleaned the bar top. Loaded the last of the glasses in the dish drawer under the bar, the rest would go out to the kitchen and the larger dish drawers there. The busboy could handle those. The bell was rung, the bar was closed and Doug proceeded to gently round up the crowd and suggest they head for the door. He never turfed them out immediately. Always gave them a moment to gather their courage and finish their drinks.

  The pull that brought the Norms to the bar was hard to switch off. Even if the vampires had all but left, waiting in the shadows on the street outside, the Norms clung to the safety they perceived in the dim light of the club. It was only their sense of propriety that convinced them in the end to leave.

  I chucked my apron in the hamper by the basement door and fished my keys out of my pocket, giving the illusion of normality. Doug watched as I crossed the floor to the front door. Normally I would say goodbye, but my fangs were too long to talk.

  I stepped out into the cool night air and walked some distance away. Stashing my keys back in my pocket, I removed my disposable contact lenses and discarded them in a nearby bin. No more than thirty seconds later my prey emerged from the sanctum of the club.

  I sighed. He'd had his chance not to follow. I hadn't even looked at him as I left the bar. He could have taken a bit longer to finish his drink, Doug would have allowed it. Even knowing I needed to feed, Doug still fights for the Norm's rights to say no. He would have provided a safe haven for my young guy, if the young guy had indicated he needed one.

  He hadn't, so here we were. Him saying goodbye to his friends. A few coarse comments and ribbing from his supposed mates and then with hands in pockets he sauntered over to where I stood in the shadows of a tall building. Waiting.

  “Hi,” he said awkwardly. Not sure what to do now when faced with the object of his desire. I smiled winningly and batted my eyelashes a little demurely making sure he couldn't see the red that now would be obvious in the lights. This one would like a little less brash and a little more girl, I thought. He relaxed ever so slightly.

  “Do you live around here?” I had a sudden hankering for more than just blood. Or at least, my Dark Shadow did.

  “No, North Shore.” Damn. I didn't ever take them home, even when the Dark Shadow won and I let her feed off more than just blood. It was never at my place. That was my sanctuary. My haven from the evil in the world.

  “Come on,” I said and clasped his hand, “walk with me a bit.”

  His palm was sweaty. He was nervous. I didn't think he had picked a girl up in a bar before. I'd have to make sure I gave him a good memory when I finally glazed him, but first, we needed a quiet spot.

  I had no intention of harming him. My Dark Shadow may have wanted more than just blood and sex, but I was still in charge. I would take only what I needed and no more, and in return he'd have a memory to rival all others. That way, Lucinda wouldn't feel compelled to hunt me. To follow that Nosferatin pull that would lead her to a vampire about to kill.

  Young pre-college boy didn't know what he was offering, but he was offering it willingly. There was no theft about to be performed.


  I led him down a dark alley away from the late night, or early morning bustle, of Karangahape Road, or K Road as we called it. He followed without a care, he was so besotted he didn't even realise the danger he was willingly walking into. I stopped at the darkened stoop of the back door to a business, long since closed for the day. Turning to him, I laced my arms about his neck and pulled his body against mine.

  “You're cute,” I purred against his ear, his hands started roaming hungrily. I wished for the thousandth time, that they would fight. That this one would be the one to deny me what my body craves. This one would hold the key to my salvation. But he didn't. He wanted me as much as I wanted him. But, for a very different reason.

  His hand had made it under my tank top, one smooth move and he had released my bra strap at the back. I was impressed, but also hungry. My eyes, when I opened them, cast an eerie red glow about the alley we are in. I let him cop a feel then pulled back and whispered, “Look at me.”

  He did, they all do. It was so damn easy I wanted to cry. In a second he'd think he was between silk sheets, wrapped up in an unknown woman's embrace. She'd be hot, he'd think he was in heaven. I made him believe he performed magic with his hands and mouth. That she told him he was the best she had ever had. She cried out in ecstasy again and again and he knew it was because of him. I made him believe he was a god tonight.

  Then I bit. I bit before I lost my courage. I bit before the Light inside rebelled. I had come too far to not feed this night. If the Dark Shadow was denied now, people would die.

  The first mouthful of his life giving blood exploded in my mouth. I cried out in bliss, giving the guy in my arms real material for his glazed induced dream. One swallow led to another and another. The world dimmed to just me and my prey. So sweet, so thick, so beautiful. In that moment I worshipped the body before me. I honoured it with each pull of blood from its veins. I relished it. I devoured it. I consumed it.

  I was alive again and the world was a brighter place.

  And then I heard the faint beat of his heart; staggering, failing, slowing. The Dark Shadow growled when I tried to withdraw my fangs. This was the hardest part. The battle of wills. She was strong, but then so was I. I would not harm this boy, this giver of life. I would not kill despite my body's desire to do so. We raged a war for a few more seconds, seconds that felt too long for the boy and not long enough for the vampire within.

  Finally, I won. I licked the puncture wounds closed. And breathed freely for the first time in days. My eyes would be cerulean blue again. My skin clear and soft and supple. To a Norm I would look full of life, glowing, ethereal almost. To a vampire I would be considered dangerous. There is nothing more powerful than a well fed Nosferatu.

  The guy pulled back in a daze, his face one big lazy smile.

  “You were fantastic,” I whispered into the space between us. “Go catch a taxi and go home to sleep it off.”

  He nodded, brushed a kiss against my lips. I let him. And then he was gone. And I was alone, in the murky shadows with my guilt and my rage and my hurt and anger and anxiety.

  I was one of them tonight. I was the predator humans should fear. I was not the vampire hunter, I was the vampire.

  The tears began and I slouched down into the darkness of the stoop.

  I felt so damn alone.

  Chapter 2

  Loss

  People think vampires don't dream. Common mythology would have you believe we die when the sun shines and don't rise from the dead until it sets. I don't know what my body does when it rests for the day, but I do know my mind, soul, and heart... dream.

  Memories of a life lived and lost. Images playing like a movie reel in my mind. Over and over again. And vampires have good memories, we remember with a clarity and certainty that humans are incapable of. We can also dream in the true sense of the word. We have hopes and desires, fears and anxieties like any other creature, but I can always tell when one dream is fabricated and another is reality come to haunt me again.

  I'm not sure how I got home from that alley or how long I sat hunched in on myself feeling such guilt at what I had become. Such loneliness in the knowledge I was one of them. But somehow I made it back to my apartment, showered off as much of my sins as I could manage and climbed into my bed.

  Maybe because the last conscious thoughts in my head, before sleep stole me from the world, were filled with anger and hurt, I dreamt of reality. Memories of my past life coming alive again inside my mind. There to torment me further, to reinforce how alone I now was. To remind me of a life where I had thought nothing could touch me, reach me in my cocoon of happiness.

  It was always these remembered moments, brought to life in my dreams, that hurt the most. I have no idea what my body does when I sleep, but when these dreams haunt me I always wake with tears drying on my cheeks.

  As the first dream began, I prayed to anyone who would give a damn about a monster like me, that this time it would be different. This time I'd break the cycle and dream of something sweet.

  Not that my memories weren't sweet, they just fell more into the bitter-sweet category, than outright sweet...

  "Babe, come to bed." His voice always made my heart miss a beat. That deep, seductive purr, laced with a hint of an English accent that sent shivers down my spine.

  "In a minute," I replied, not lifting my head from the cocktail recipe book I was studying. Cocktail Happy Hour week at Sensations and my boss insisted I knew every single one of these suckers by heart. I knew them all, but by heart? Not a chance.

  "Don't make me come over there and get you," he growled, but I could tell he was smiling through the words. He wanted to come over here and get me.

  I could oblige.

  "Ah-huh," I mumbled and renewed my efforts. My eyesight blurred over the measurements for a Paihia Peach Punch.

  I didn't hear him move. Surprising really, the sheets on his bed were Egyptian cotton, the finest quality, but even those made a sound when you moved from beneath them. Samson was like a phantom in the night sometimes, silent feet, as quick as any cat on the prowl.

  "Gotcha!" he murmured in my ear as his strong arms came around my stomach and chest, and his face nestled in my hair at the side of my neck. "Now," - he ran a tongue down the side of my neck, something he did frequently, something I'd never had a boyfriend do before, but I'd decided I liked very much indeed - "what shall your punishment be for making me come get you?"

  I giggled, I couldn't help it, he had a way of sounding so upright and formal, but what he was doing with his hands right now was anything but upright and formal.

  "Samson," I warned.

  "Oh no, my beauty. You made me move, now you shall pay."

  In the next second I was airborne, flying through the short space from the desk I had been sitting at in the corner, to the centre of his king-sized bed. I landed with a "humph" as the air exploded from my chest... and then he was on me.

  He never "attacked" from the same angle or position every time. Sometimes he'd pin me with his large frame, his hands securely containing mine at the sides of my head. Or he'd straddle my hips, loom above me displaying the best set of pecs and abs I'd ever seen in real life or in a magazine. But this time, he chose to approach from my feet, his large, warm hands wrapping around each ankle, as he crawled up my body, laying kisses on the inside of each calf, each knee, then slowly, tortuously up each inside thigh.

  I watched his blond hair, bed tousled and sexy-messy, as he nuzzled the crease between my leg and my pelvis. His tongue flicking out and under my cotton panties. I'd never had a lover like Samson before, so attentive, so caring, so in-tune with what my body craved. He never sought his own release until he was sure I'd had my fill. Sometimes, I'd beg him to finish, my body too over-sensitised by his touches, his caresses, his kisses, his heat.

  Samson knew how to love a woman and he was all mine.

  The dream disappeared as that thought registered in my mind, then quickly segued into another.

  "I'll have
a dry white wine."

  The woman before me was exquisitely beautiful, but she knew it, I was sure. Blonde hair styled to perfection, heat straightened to within an inch of its life. Make-up, a little too heavy, but only just shy of perfect. Deep red lips, that pouted a smidgen too much. A low neckline that plunged a fair few centimetres further than it should have, ample breasts, cinched waist, and long, long legs wrapped up in a skin tight black leather skirt.

  Sensations always overflowed with the rich and beautiful, this woman fitted in, to... perfection. I'd heard a lot about the "in" club in town before I came to work here. The place to see and be seen at. But attendance was not easy, the queue outside the door after Happy Hour, winding down the street a good distance. The bouncers quite discerning on who they let into the inner sanctum that is Sensations on a Friday night.

  It was a step up from every other bar I'd worked at for the past six years and I was still reeling from having got the job. My second day on shift and it was proving to be an eye opener at that. I couldn't quite believe my luck, but my new boss, Doug, had said his last bartender had disappeared suddenly and I was helping him out in a bind. He seemed genuinely pleased to have hired me. I just hoped I didn't muck tonight up at all.

  I slid the Sauvignon Blanc across the bar top to the blonde and offered my best beaming smile, intending to make every single customer there tonight feel special, even if they screamed "too perfect to be true" like this woman did. She didn't even register my smile, too busy pouting and taking in the entirety of the club room itself. She did manage to slide a twenty across the bar to me, although our eyes never met once.

  "Where is he?" she asked the redhead next to her, drumming her manicured, blood red polished nails on the bar top.