Vampires Need Not…Apply? (Accidentally Yours #4)(25)
Author: Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

Almost to the ground floor, Antonio stopped in the stairwell. “No. Hell no. I’m a vampire?” He inspected his hands and rubbed his face and neck. His skin felt tingly and alive. He didn’t feel dead.

He placed his right hand over his heart. There was nothing.

“Diablos!” He jumped back to escape his own chest. “What the hell?” He began recalling his neighbor, the one who attacked him and sliced through his neck. Antonio rubbed the spot, but there was no trace of any injury. His memories then flashed to the woman who’d been at his side as he bled. She was the same woman—vanilla and daisies—who’d come to the hospital and touched him. His heart jolted to life and began to thump like a team of galloping horses in his chest. The overwhelming urge to find her washed over him.

“What the hell are you waiting for?” No matter how absurd the situation, the one thing he knew, the only thing he knew, was that he needed to find her. He had prayed for his vision to return if only to see her face. The face of an angel. She had to be because she’d saved his life. Twice.

He raced through the lobby, out the front door of the building. He moved with such speed that the… humans? Caray. Was he truly calling them humans now? As if they were something altogether different and his brain had already accepted a concept his erratically beating heart had not.

He rounded the corner and caught her scent. A sharp pain jabbed at his gums and the coppery tang of blood coated his tongue.

Holy Santa Maria! No puede ser. He put his hands over his mouth. It can’t be. He’d popped out a fang! A pinche fang, like a pinche perro! Two of them! Not only that, but Antonio began to salivate, too. He’d never smelled anything sweeter than that scent of daisies.

His new razor-sharp vision—you mean, fang-sharp vision, don’t you?—caught the inky blur of black cloth slipping into an alley. He rushed to the mouth of the backstreet and was about to announce his presence when he spotted the woman cloaked in its shadows. She lifted a tabby, much like his beloved cat Simon, and held it to her chest as she spoke to it. “There’s a good kitty. That’s right…”

He smiled inwardly; she, too, loved animals. The woman must have been very distraught after killing his cat. An honest mistake, no doubt. Because surely such an angel would never kill an innocent creature on purpose.

He poked his head around the corner once again, but she’d disappeared.

Confused, Antonio slipped into the alley. His sensitive ears picked up every sound, but there were none to be heard; it was as quiet as a library on Friday night. Slowly, he moved through the garbage-strewn passage. Large Dumpsters marked every dark doorway, and empty wooden pallets were heaped in random piles. Antonio then noticed the alleyway hooked right and connected to another long side street with an outlet. As he followed along, the eerie silence chilled his bones, but what he witnessed next chilled his heart.

Several rats lay twitching on the ground alongside the orange cat—dead orange cat with half a rat sticking from its mouth, like it had choked on the thing. A man, wedged in the corner between the wall and a large green Dumpster, lay with a shard of jagged glass sticking from his throat. The smell of blood filled the air.

Antonio approached the man who wore dirty black jeans and mud-caked boots. His army-green jacket smelled of something odd, some sort of burned material. Chemicals? Drugs perhaps. But his blood…

Antonio cupped his hands over his salivating mouth. “No. You are vegetarian. You do not believe in killing for your food.”

He crouched in front of the man. “Who did this to you? Hold still, I will call for an ambulance.” Antonio reached in his pocket. No cell phone. Diablo. “I’ll be right back.”

The man gurgled, “The woman.” He pointed down the alley and promptly expired.

No. His beauty? His vanilla-and-daisies angel? She did this? She killed these poor animals and this man? Impossible.

Antonio followed the trail of her scent to another alley ten blocks away. The sounds of the city—cabs, horns honking, pedestrians talking on their phones—roared in his ears. Headlights blazed down the street like shooting stars. Everything felt exaggerated—brighter, louder, the smells much more potent.

He approached the alley cautiously and peered around the corner. Death. It smelled like death mixed with that sweet perfume. Suddenly, he saw a shadow moving toward him. He ducked into a doorway as she passed by in a… Morticia Addams costume? What the hell? “Who are you?” he said more as a criticism rather than a question.

“Shit.” The woman turned. She froze and held her hand to her veiled face. “Oh my gods, is it really… you?”

Who did you expect? Cousin It? “Who the hell are you?” he asked again.

The woman took another step forward, and he instinctively wanted to bolt. Something about her terrified him, disgusted him.

Her hands, reeking of death, reached for him. He pushed himself flatter against the wall. “Don’t f**king touch me.”

“Of course. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Her arms fell to her side, and there was a long moment of silence as they studied each other.

What was she? Why did she wear that awful veil over her face? And why did he feel the strangest urge to touch her.

“You shouldn’t be out alone,” she finally said. “Not on your first night.”

“Who are y—”

Her phone rang—the Death March?

“Hold that thought.” She held up her index finger and then dug through her brightly colored purse to retrieve her cell.

“I bet you’re missing someone,” she said to the other person.

Antonio heard every word coming over the earpiece as if he himself held the device. The voice was one he recognized—the man from his dream. The one who did not want to make him a… vampire.

The cold, hard pieces of his new reality clicked into place. He really was a vampire, which meant… everything was ruined! His plans to decipher the tablet and open the portal, to save his brother, his plans for his own freedom. Yes, he had thought he was f**ked when he’d lost his sight, but now he was irrevocably screwed. There was absolutely no hope. He’d become the one thing he vowed he’d never be: a killer like his father. “You did this to me, didn’t you?” He scowled.

The woman’s veiled head lifted, and he knew she was looking at him. Hell, it felt like she was staring right through him.

“I’ll make sure he gets back. Bye.” She ended her call and dropped the phone in her bag. “Yes. I had Viktor turn you, but there was no other choice.”