Love Scars

Evernight Publishing www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright© 2011 Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy

ISBN: 978-1-926950-58-7

Cover Artist: LF Designs Editor: Caitlin Ray

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews. This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATIO' This book, vampires and all, is dedicated to the memory of my uncle, Darrell Dean Neely, who loved reading almost as much as he loved his family. He shared his paranormal books with me, encouraged my writing, and praised my stories. He was one of my first beta readers and he never stopped believing that I would become an author. Uncle Darrell, this one is for you.

LOVE SCARS Sequel to Love Tattoo Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy Copyright © 2011

Chapter One The moment that he shivered in my arms, shuddered as if the cold January winds outside the window rushed over him with blizzard force, I knew something must be wrong. I could not put my finger on it, not then, but I realized from that first night that some slithering snake just trespassed into our little Eden. “Will?” I whispered in the comfortable cocoon we created beneath the covers. “What’s wrong?” Even before he spoke, my inner alarm bells shrieked like tornado sirens in a Texas spring. Although the shivers quit, I could feel the tension tighten his body, constrict it hard, and I sensed his anxiety. It threatened to spread to me like a wildfire and I tried to contain it. His hesitation sliced through my complacent mood like a Buck knife and I realized that something shifted, somehow and somewhere. “Nothing,” he said as he drew me closer to him. “It’s nothing at all, mo anam cara. It was a dream told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Or at least I hope that’s all that it is.” I didn’t believe it and I wasn’t about to let the issue drop. Instead, I picked at it, like a dog working a bone to get the last scrap of flesh. “Do you feel a chill?” His sigh echoed between us like a gust of wind through winter bare branches. “I’m not cold.” “Then what is it?” I prodded.

He paused so long that I got nervous, then said, “I don’t know.” Will doesn’t lie – at least not to me – but I could tell he was trying to downsize the magnitude of whatever the hell affected him. That wouldn’t work for me and I opened my mouth to protest and he stopped me. His lips fused to mine with force and held there as he used the one thing that would shut me up to his advantage. I kissed him back, tasting his sweetness like vintage wine and let my hands stray over his body, hungry and aching with need. His taut body softened under my touch, relaxed as he put whatever troubled him away for now. Will’s big hands traveled over my skin with such gentle skill that I quivered. He thumbed my nipple with one hand and brought his mouth down to suckle at the other like a baby. Shock waves of delight washed over me as I let my fingers stray into his hair, caressing his curls. Long before he kissed his way below my belly button, I needed him to release me and writhed beneath him, begging him to give me his cock. One of the advantages of being a vamp was that all my senses had heightened. My skin responded to the tiniest touch, the slightest motion. The brush of Will’s fingers against any part of me evoked powerful sensation and sweet response. I heard sound in a brand new way, amplified and enhanced. My vision sharpened, especially at night, and everything tasted richer to me than ever before. If the five basic senses grew stronger, so did other senses, the ones that no one can quite name. Call it sixth sense or fey the way that Will did, I tuned into him like a clear channel radio station. On the few times we were apart, I knew where he was and what he did. His thoughts reached me like brain messages and we had few secrets. In spirit as well as in the flesh, we were one. Now, as his hands teased my body, I picked up static from an outside source. I tried to tune it out but couldn’t and I wasn’t able to block it. The best I could do was push it back, a little farther away. To distract myself, I rose to meet him and used my fingernails as claws that raked his back. He shivered, this time with pleasure, and I thrust my pelvis toward him like a beggar. As he moved down toward me, nearing that connection, I locked my lips around his nipple and nibbled.

In response, Will thrust into me with power, flowed into me like a river following its course, and I answered his passion by giving it all back. We coupled, each movement raising us toward that ultimate moment of pure pleasure so that when we came, we came together. In a brilliant burst that reminded me of a fireworks finale on the Fourth of July back home, I screamed his name as he bit my shoulder with enough force to break the skin and we finished. He licked the tiny trickle of blood before collapsing down beside me with a grin. Whatever troubled him, he forgot for now. I left it at that, savoring the peace that comes after good loving, but I would find out and when I did, I would approach whatever the problem might be with head on force. In that winter twilight, as the last light faded away behind the horizon, I watched Will drift back to sleep. I marveled at his beauty, the little things I adored about him. I liked the way that his curls lay against his cheek. The fine hairs on his forearms fascinated me and they were so beautiful. So was he. Until then, the days of our togetherness were sweeter than anything I had ever known and I sure didn’t want to lose that, not for any reason. Days, we slept, skin to skin, one flesh. We owned our nights and did just about anything we wanted. We ate what we wanted and drank, too. If anything surprised me in those early days of being a vampire, it was that. In most of the old stories, the tall tales, and the ancient legends, vampires don’t drink anything but blood. That’s wrong, just one of those things that someone got wrong and it spread. I’ve been tempted to post something on Snopes.com to debunk the false information but I haven’t. When we were in Memphis, we prowled Beale Street and drank Walk Me Downs. We ate at Dyer’s and sometimes we rode the trolley in the moonlight. Once in awhile, we headed to Tunica and some nights, we just stayed home, happy with each other’s company. We had music, poetry, and we had each other. We didn’t need anything else. Out on the road, we sailed over the highways like that ghostly galleon from The Highwayman poem and before dawn came, we ate

steak and eggs over easy in some diner or a truck stop café. At home and away, we talked about everything and nothing. By the time that the heat of summer faded into the first frost, I would have sworn that there was nothing I did not know about Will Brennan or that he didn’t know about me. Apparently, I was wrong. Until that January dusk, I figured fairy tales always end happy and in my favorite Western movies, the hero rides off into the sunset with the gal riding behind him in the saddle. I had my Will Brennan and we had forever, all the time that exists. Until then, I always had to hurry, never had enough time. That changed when I did, You see, the living always feel that breath of mortality against the back of their neck but when you are undead, you have all the days, the weeks, months, and years that there will be ahead so the need to hurry vanishes. If you know – barring any unexpected complication like some fool with a stake to drive into your heart – you live forever, you have all the time in the world held between your hands. Lying there with Will, I felt like the clock just started ticking again. I felt crimped for time and I hated that. It jangled my nerves and made me feel lonesome even with Will beside me. I didn’t like that either so I woke him with a kiss. “Hey, wake up sleepy head,” I said. “We’re wasting time.” He grinned and I lit up like neon. “Are we, then?” he asked, pushing up on one elbow to look at me. “What would you like to do, my Cara?” When he looked at me like that, I wanted to roll him over for another round of lovemaking but that could come later. First, I wanted some bright lights, some blues music, and a steak. “Let’s go to BB King’s,” I said. The Beale Street club ranked high on my list of favorites even though too many tourists dropped by for a drink or meal to keep it Memphis real. Still, I liked the fried pickles and the steaks were tender enough for this Texas girl. Something about the boisterous, dim interior always felt ripe for a brawl although I hadn’t seen one yet. Most of the time, the music filled my need although I still felt too shy to try to get a gig. As a human gal, I never was bashful but I was still getting used to being a vampire. It’s different and it takes some adjustment. You look great but you feel different in so many ways. Until I felt comfortable in my vampire skin, I didn’t think I would sing in public that much. But,

when I got brave a few times and stepped up to the microphone at a few smaller clubs and if the audience reaction meant anything, I wasn’t half bad. I thought in time I would want to perform on a regular basis again and would. “That sounds fine,” Will said. “I need a donor first, though. Do you?” “I think so.” This remained so new to me that I couldn’t always tell for sure. Will said that the need for blood always gave him a bellyache but I sometimes had trouble deciding if I felt hungry or had a pain. “Then we’ll do that first, on Beale Street,” Will decided as he rolled out of bed with one graceful motion. Naked as the day he was born, he strutted across the room to pull on clean clothes including his black jeans, black Western shirt with pearl snaps, and his boots. He could be ready to roll in about two minutes. I envied that but it took me at least twenty and that’s only when I move fast. Half an hour later, we rolled down the driveway in the Caddy moving slower than usual because of the weather. Snow cascaded from the sky like thousands of white feathers fluttering to the earth and the wind blew it in every direction. If I wasn’t immortal and did not know that Will Brennan could drive anything, anywhere, I might have been afraid but instead I felt exhilarated. Although it snows back home in Texas on occasion, we don’t much get blizzards which is what that snowstorm seemed to be shaping up to become. I felt like we were inside of one of those cute little globes kids buy at discount stores and shake to make the glitter fall like snowflakes. We did not meet another vehicle as we rolled toward Memphis proper but sitting next to Will, inhaling the fragrant smoke of his cigarillo, listening to The Eagles, I didn’t mind. For those moments, our small world seemed confined to this space and I had all I needed. Joe Walsh’s voice poured from the speakers, familiar and true. He sings easy, like there is no effort involved and I like that. Sometimes I joined in, especially on the songs I loved most like the kicking classic, The Greeks Don’t Want o Freaks. The closer we got to downtown Memphis, to Beale Street, the more snow traveled down from the sky and I wondered if anything would even be open, so I asked Will.

“Aye, it’ll all be open,” he said, with a chuckle. “There may not be many people tonight but Beale Street never closes, not that I ever saw and I’ve been coming for years.” I did not ask how many; sometimes I just didn’t like to think about all the time he spent on earth before I got born. “That’s good, then.” “It is and it isn’t,” Will said, exhaling smoke. “We may have trouble finding donors.” We had no trouble finding a parking spot although the big old car slid a little as he wheeled into a place not too far from Beale Street. As we walked, hand in hand, we passed Elvis Presley in bronze, the statue that dominates the plaza. Snow covered Elvis’ shoulders and head and when I saw the two young men standing near it, looking like two little lost kids who wandered away from a school field trip, I knew we had our donors. I nudged Will and he nodded. Donor selection sometimes reminded me of bird hunting back home in Texas, without using dogs. He made his way through the driving snow, now mixed with sleet that plinked against the pavement with a hard, brittle sound, moving with his same sensual grace despite the weather. I trailed behind. “Hello there,” he said to the tourists huddled near the base of the statue. “It is a terrible night to be out.” “It is but we’re locked out of our car and my cell phone won’t connect so I can call someone.” “We can help,” Will said as he released my hand. By then, I knew just what to do and followed his lead. He swooped in close and leaned down to sink his teeth into one of the young guy’s neck, more difficult than usual because of the coat the donor wore. His inherent charm lulled the victims – or donors – so that they never know what hits them. I guess everything freeze frames for them and that’s not so bad. While Will took what he needed, I approached the other and with the same speed – vampires can move way faster than I ever imagined – I latched onto the second young man and drew blood. I still felt more than a little clumsy at this but it worked and I got what I needed. I felt that little rush that comes after feeding and Will nodded his approval. We were finished.Feeding on donors is something I had to get used to doing. You always read in most of the vampire novels and see it in the movies that drinking blood is erotic. It is and then it

isn’t. I still like full-blown sex with my man more than anything else and feeding comes in a far distant second or even third. There is a moment, though, of such titillation as that human lifeblood flows into your veins, energizing and nurturing that gives me a wild rush, a mini orgasm of sorts. I like that part fine although it took some getting used to for me. What I don’t like is that moment reminds me of sex with a total stranger. Afterward, I feel almost like I used them or I got down and dirty with someone I knew for less than five minutes in the backroom of a convenience store somewhere. When I tried to explain that to Will, he didn’t really get it but then this is just ordinary, everyday stuff to him. He’s done it for hundreds of years, after all. It doesn’t matter much if the donor is a man or a woman; the reaction is the same to me. I’m not one to care who loves who or give a flip about gender. If two adults are happy, then I’m happy for them. But when I never got a sexual rush from another woman so the first time I fed on one and did, well, it took a little getting used to for me. A few minutes later, we sat at a table just below the stage at BB King’s with Walk Me Downs in our hands. The place loomed almost empty, the crowd smaller than I had ever seen it but Will had called it correct – they were open. We ordered bourbon glazed rib eye steaks and while we waited, we let the blues touch our souls. Something about Delta blues rings way down deep. I don’t know exactly what or how but those rhythms, those sounds they reach inside and burn a scar into your heart. Good blues may rock but there is always something poignant beneath the music, some lingering pain, or hurt. As we listened, I needed to touch Will, to feel that physical connection we had so I grabbed his hand. I took comfort in his love, succor in the knowledge that such anguish could never wound us. He felt it too. Long before the steaks came, we moved together so close you could not have passed a paper napkin between us. Will wrapped his arm around my shoulder and that thrilled me. That arm told everyone he loved me and he possessed me, both body and soul. He did. He always would. Those steaks were perfection, thick and tender with that mouth watering combination of good beef and aged bourbon. The garlic

mashed potatoes on the side with some green beans; they tasted good too but the meat made the meal. We stayed late, until almost four in the morning, drinking and soaking up the blues. Maybe it was too many Walk Me Downs but I felt the songs resonating inside and I ached to sing that way. I lacked the inner agony, though, and if it was required to sing the blues like that, then I could live forever – and never do it. I keep saying “live” and thinking I’m alive but that’s one more thing I have to teach myself. Barring anything unforeseen, some complication, Will and I should exist forever but I guess being that we’re technically undead, we’re not alive. It’s hard to shift my thinking into that mode because I have a little trouble getting used to the idea that I’m not really alive any more, at least not in the sense I was up until Will delivered that third love tattoo that changed me. I exist and so old habits, like saying I’m alive or that I live, they die hard for me. I suppose it would for anyone but for a practical Texas gal like me, it’s just difficult. I’ll get it, though, in time. Pain, emotional or physical, wasn’t in my plan, not then, not ever. But I forgot, in all that heady emotion that we don’t always get what we want. I failed to remember that happily ever after is something just for fairy tales and that no one, even my beloved Will, is perfect. By the time we exited the club, the snow had stopped but coated everything like some winter fairyland. Halfway to the car, I stopped Will and faced him. I rose up on tiptoe, put my arms around his neck, and kissed him. Despite the chill outside, his mouth scorched mine when he returned the kiss, devouring my lips like a hungry man. Neither of us wore coats and although I clung to his neck, his hands roamed over my body evoking pleasure. Few people were out at that hour but a few other stragglers from Beale Street passed us by. If they looked, I missed it but then I was preoccupied with that kiss, all my senses overwhelmed with Will. When we stopped, I would have griped but unless we wanted to drop to the sidewalk and do it in the snow, we could go no farther here. His lips broke apart from mine but he looked down at me, his vivid blue eyes soft as I had ever seen them, and said, “Love sought is good, given unsought is better.”

Shakespeare spoken sounds sweet but from the lips of your lover, it becomes heady stuff no matter how often he quotes it. “What play is that from?” He knew the Bard’s work far better than I probably ever would but that didn’t matter. I liked hearing the poetry from his lips. Will grinned and I quivered with what that smile made me want to do. “Twelfth ight,” he told me. “Let’s go home, mo anam cara and finish what you started.” We did and it was good.

Chapter Two I remember waking up as a kid to the sound of the radio or the television in another room and not quite being able to distinguish the words. I might know by the cadence that it was Daddy’s local livestock reports he always tuned in to hear while he drank his morning coffee or that it was KWKH out of Shreveport by the country twang but not the words or the music. I woke up that morning after our Beale Street jaunt with the same feeling, that I heard a sound that I couldn’t quite identify, a distant signal that I received but could not understand. Something about it felt discordant and I roused up, wondering if Will heard it too but when I reached out for him, he wasn’t there. That alerted me something must be up; I always woke up with him beside me. Most of the time, since my rhythms had not yet settled to a vampire pace, I usually awakened first and lay next to him, waiting. I tossed back the covers. I could judge the time by the daylight behind the drapes – it was a long time yet until night. “Will?” I called but he did not answer. I directed my senses toward him and I felt him, nearby just before I inhaled the aroma of his cigarillo. He stood at the front windows, staring at the curtain, as if he were made of stone. All I could see was his profile but something about the tight stance of his shoulders screamed tension. I padded across the floor in my bare feet and touched his arm. “Will, honey, what is it?” Beneath my hand, his arm felt warm to the touch, not fever hot, but flesh warm and for a vampire, that is never good. We may heat when we have sex but the rest of the time, we remain cool, even cold by human standards. He turned toward me and his expression worried me even more than his temperature. His frown faded a little when he realized it was just me but his eyes radiated some inner anguish. “It’s probably nothing at all, “his voice sounded strained and his tone was flatter than the West Texas prairie. “Go back to bed, Cara, its still day.” Until then, he never brushed me off like that and it stung, a bit. I did my best to ignore it and not let my temper fire up into a fight but

it rankled. I felt like he shut me out, something that just hadn’t happened between us before. I cupped my hand to his cheek and it felt warmer than it ought too. He caught my fingers and pulled them to his lips, kissing them. “Don’t you feel well?” I asked him. “You look awful and you feel too warm.” New to this life, I was no expert on vampire health. I knew we got a pain in the belly when we needed to feed. I remembered Will telling me that if he stayed up into the day, he could become ill, even run a fever. That morning after I first learned the truth, he suffered a headache, the first in a century. I knew, too, that being outside in the full sunlight could put a vamp into critical condition although I had no idea just how. I didn’t think I wanted to know, either. Sometimes ignorance can really be best. I had no idea if vampires got sick, if they could have the flu, the measles, or other diseases. Until now, I never thought about it but I wondered and now I worried. If Will was sick, where in the hell did a vampire go for medical care? It sure wouldn’t be down to the nearest twenty-four clinic or hospital emergency room. “No, I don’t feel so good.” His sigh followed with enough force to make the drapes before him sway. “I’m not sick, though, I don’t think.” “What’s the matter?” He shut his eyes and made such a face that I knew whatever disturbed him must be truly terrible. Fear, something I had not felt in months, crept into my soul with claws and took up residence. I waited but he said nothing, just buried his face in both hands. Watching that hurt and his silence slashed my heart. “Will, please, say something. Tell me what is wrong. You’re scaring the daylights out of me.” Until that came out of my mouth, I didn’t realize the irony in it but I moved right on past. What mattered now was Will. “Mo anam cara,” he whispered as he took his hands away from his face. “I never thought that this would happen. I never dreamed that she would find me.” I liked the sound of that about as much as I like violent nausea. Whoever she was, I got ready to jump down her throat and stomp her with my boots for causing my man grief.

“Who is she?” I didn’t know the answer to that yet but I would bank my life – or at least my immortal future – that Will Brennan had not been cheating on me. “It’s Sallie,” he confessed, in a voice so tortured he sounded like a stranger. Then he recited a bit of Shakespeare than even I could place, lines from Macbeth, “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” That quote turned my cool blood to sub-Arctic in seconds even as I tried hard to place that name, Sallie. I had heard it before I couldn’t remember where – and then I did. “Do you mean the English woman who made you a vampire?” This was huge; he might have bothered to mention it sooner, I thought, with irritation. He nodded. “Aye, that’s the one, Sallie Hawkins. She’s found me.” Whatever he meant by that, it couldn’t be positive, not when it mentioned something wicked because what else is that negative. “Have you seen her or what? I don’t understand.” I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to like it much when I did. About the last thing I needed was some woman from his distant past showing up now to make my life miserable. Will sighed again, heavy as Neches River mud back in Texas. “No, Cara, I haven’t seen her but I feel her in my mind, like brain messages in my head. I can’t block her out and that troubles me. That hasn’t happened since I left England.” Now that nailed my attention. Maybe Sallie was responsible for that odd feeling of faraway static, that sense of intrusion. If she was, I hated her already. “Will, I think I’ve felt it too.” Alarm raised his voice and twisted his expression like a lemon slice squeezed into sweet tea. “Mo anam cara, are you sure?” “I think so,” I said with caution. “I don’t really get anything, just a vague uneasiness, and a sense that something or someone is trying to break through.” Some of the tension relaxed at that; whatever she did to him must be a lot worse than what I felt. That boded ill for him but made it easier for me.

“Thanks are to God, then. You’re not getting it the way I do and that’s a blessing,” he paused and then added, in Irish, “Ta me tinn.” “What?” Even though I don’t speak his first language, I had a fair idea what he said and I was right. “I don’t feel well at all,” he repeated, in English for my sake. Whatever the trouble, no matter what Sallie did, he needed rest. Everything else, explanations included could wait. “Come lie down and you’ll feel better,” I told him. “We can talk later.” He did not argue the point which told me more than anything how ill he felt. “Aye, all right then.” But I did have one more question, “When was the first time you felt – Sallie?” I spit out her name like a bad peanut. Will closed his eyes to think. “Just before we got up last night, I think.” I knew it; I felt it then and realized something was wrong. “It was when you shivered.” “Aye, it was.” He shuddered, thinking of it and I hugged him tight. “Let’s get in bed, Will.” He nodded and we crawled beneath the covers. We curled like spoons in a drawer, with me cuddled against his back. I could feel the tension in his body so I rubbed his back with a gentle hand and sang in a soft voice until he slept. Then I wept for a while, too wrought up to sleep, and when sunset came, I rose to find Malachi. The old man, Malachi, Will’s manservant and I were friends now, a hard won struggle although he had been nothing but nice to Will’s woman. It took teaching him how to make Texas buttermilk biscuits and Mississippi mud cake to go from polite servitude to real friendship. In exchange, he taught me how to make soda bread and Irish apple cake, two of Will’s favorites. After sharing the kitchen, we became buddies and the one big thing we had in common was how much we both cared – in different ways – for Will. “Will didn’t sleep enough,” I blurted out as I barged into the kitchen where he enjoyed a few cookies with his glass of John

Jameson, his usual bedtime snack. “He isn’t feeling very well and he’s too warm, not feverish yet but still hotter than he should be. Do vampires get sick, Malachi?” He swallowed his last bite of cookie and met my gaze with his aged, wise brown eyes. “I’ve known Will for twenty years and he’s been down sick just twice,” the old man wheezed. “So they do take sick on occasion but it doesn’t happen much. Both times were when he stayed up too late or didn’t get his rest.” “What can I do for him?” Malachi downed the rest of his whiskey. “If he’s not fevered yet, then he should be feeling better when he wakes up. Don’t go out dancing or whatever you do tonight and he will be fine.” “What if he does get sick?” I asked, ready to file it the knowledge away for future use. “I know one doctor,” he told me after a moment’s hesitation. “One that will treat vampires and the like. He is not one himself but I’ve heard that he has a family member who is. I never had to call on him but if we need him, Cara, I can find him.” “Good.” With that information tucked into my mental pocket, I headed back upstairs to check on Will. Even though it was way past dark, he still slept, posed on his back with arms folded over his chest. I ached to crawl back into bed beside him but I thought it might wake him so I sat down, easy as possible, on the edge of the bed. I watched him sleep, admiring his handsome face and moved almost to tender tears at how fatigued he looked. I had never seen him look this tired. When I touched his face, cheeks and then forehead the way Mama used to check me for fever, it seemed cooler, not yet the temperature it should be, but not as warm. I stroked the curve of his face with a single slow finger and bent to brush my lips against his, light as the brush of a ladybug’s wing. He opened his blue eyes and they lit like candles when he saw me. His lips shifted from a straight line into a smile that would have melted my heart if it had not already been a puddle. “I would not wish any companion in the world but you,” Will spoke in a voice melodious and richer than dark chocolate as he mouthed Shakespeare again. That must mean he feels better, I thought and so I quipped,

“Back in Texas, we just call that being a one-woman man.” Will laughed and I thrilled to hear the sound. “That’s grand, mo anam cara, as long as you are a one-man woman.” I leaned down to kiss him, full on the mouth. “I am. You must feel better.” “I do,” he said as he kissed me back, his lips sealing the promise we made before God, to each other, and with our words. “Let me show you how much.” “Will, maybe you should take it easy,” I suggested although my heart wasn’t in it at all and he knew it. “I’ll go gentle,” he told me and I surrendered. For a man with such big hands, his touch could be so soft, as delicate as a fragile cobweb trailing across my sensitive skin. He began with tiny caresses, feather like strokes that teased and tempted. Will’s fingers fondled the curve of my face, outlined my lips, and slipped lower to tickle my neck with each touch. When he reached my breasts, I drew a long breath and exhaled as delight prickled my skin with pleasure and the anticipation of more. His fingertips traced around each of my nipples, which hardened and bloomed like tiny roses. Then, delicate as a bee, he dipped his mouth to each in turn and suckled them. As my body quickened to his touch, I reached out to hold him and caress him too. I cupped his manhood between my hands and massaged with an easy hand, gratified to feel him stretch and harden at my touch. When his cock stood ready, I moved my hands to cup his buttocks, savoring the solid feel and then stroked my way up his body. I rubbed his broad back, then let my fingernails scratch at his skin, evoking small pleasure grunts from his lips. All of it happened with sweet, slowness and I savored it, even as my body craved more. Every sensation seemed heightened and intense but I loved every moment, right up to when Will entered me. With quick thrusts, he claimed me, made me his own again, and brought us both home with loving skill. I clutched him tight against me as we came with a joyous shout that mingled our voices the same way our bodies joined. After, we lay together for a little while, basking in that total, boneless contentment. In that time, in that space, nothing could touch us or harm us. Love blanketed us and succored us.

Sallie Hawkins felt far away and I did not feel that intrusive static, not then. We had to talk, though, about her so that I could understand the threat and we would but first, this interlude gave me strength to move forward, together. **** From the day he sailed from England’s shores, leaving Liverpool and heading out into the unknown sea to the New World, Will never thought much about Sallie. Until he told his Cara about her, she had not crossed his mind in decades. Unless he tried very hard, he couldn’t even remember what she looked like except that she had blonde hair and that she wasn’t very pretty. In his highwayman days, Sallie Hawkins had been no more than just another warm body in the night, another woman who offered sex. Like most, she lived a harsh, coarse life and the only thing resembling romance that came her way were the highwayman, hard men living on the edge. She meant nothing more to him, just one more necessity like food, ale, and a place to lie down. Until she transformed him, he saw no clue that she was anything more than a wanton, willing woman. He never loved her and he never thought she cared any more for him than any of the men. She was not the worst of them but if he remembered right, she was far from the best, a careless, often cruel woman who carried grudges. Some said she pegged Rob, one of his cohorts in crime, and sent him to the gallows because he spurned her. Will would have sworn he had all but forgotten the essence of her, remembering nothing more than that she made him what he was – a vampire. Yet when he felt her probing his mind, poking at his soul, he recognized her. Her intrusion upset him and he felt in his Irish bones that Sallie boded ill. His happiness with Cara meant everything and he did not want anything to touch what they had but he got the feeling that Sallie Hawkins sought vengeance for something, that she resented his newfound happiness and sought to destroy it. He would not allow that to happen, no matter what the cost. She could not get near his Cara. Will vowed that it would be so. He just hoped it was a promise he could keep even if he had to leave her to do it.

Chapter Three In Texas, the one thing you can count on about the weather is that if you wait a few minutes, it will change. We go from one extreme to the other in the Lone Star State and natives don’t think much about it. Tornadoes are just a fact of life down there and in the Piney Woods where I grew up there is no getting around that spring and summer are going to include some tornado weather. I never needed a weather forecaster to tell me when storms are brewing. There is a certain feeling in the air, a combination of heat and humidity. One of the first things that you notice is that the wind dies down to nothing and things get still. You feel weird electricity in the air and the sky gets overcast, not black dark, just light and gray but if you are familiar with tornadoes, you know a storm is coming. It may be just a thunderstorm or it could be a twister but you feel the foreboding in the air. Just before it hits, the sky gets an eerie cast to it and you know it’s probably time to head for the cellar. Credence Clearwater Revival got it because they sang about it in their hit, There’s A Bad Moon On The Rise. Even though it was January in Tennessee, I felt that same ominous weight, that prickling sense that something bad will happen. After our lovemaking, I left Will to shower and headed downstairs to make something to eat. I felt hungry and he said he did too. Despite requiring blood to exist, we need food and drink too. The drink is more an option; the food helps us thrive and survive. Sometimes when we need blood, food will help for a little while although it’s no substitute. I had to learn that while we needed both, blood came first and was most vital. I also had to wrap my head around the notion that my tastes changed when I did. Now that I was a vampire, I liked meat better than anything else. My sweet tooth yielded to a desire for flesh, be it beef or pork or chicken. About the sweetest thing I wanted most of the time now was a glass of wine. I didn’t even crave chocolate any more and that sometimes seemed like a near tragic loss. Matters of food and drink and donors aside, after his little setback, I wanted to nurture Will and pamper him a little. To do that, though, I had to walk a fine line between babying him, which he would never tolerate, and nursing which I figured he lacked patience to endure.

Mama would have forced chicken soup down his throat whether he wanted it or not. Failing that, she would have cooked up a mess of pinto beans with biscuits on the side but I thought Will might prefer something with more meat. I decided to roast a chicken. I would stuff it with an apple and potato dressing so I got things underway before Will came down. While the chicken cooked, we settled into the parlor before the fire and drank wine. I cuddled into the curve of his arm as we sat together on the sofa before the hearth. I wanted to ask him about Sallie, question why she trespassed into our lives, and what to do about it but then I also hated to broach the subject. So I sipped the sweet Moscato wine he poured and waited. I didn’t have to wait long; Will Brennan is not a man to dodge a problem. “I imagine you’re wondering about this with Sallie,” he said, after his first glass of wine that took the edge off the tension for both of us. I nodded. “Yes, I am but if it upsets you, it can wait.” Patience is not a virtue I have in much quantity and I really didn’t want to wait at all but I struggled to keep things from exploding. There seemed to be some tension between us, stirred up by the situation and I didn’t want that. I really didn’t want to get mad and argue either. He snorted. “We don’t have the luxury to wait, mo leannán. Sallie is too strong to ignore.” I did not like the sound of that at all. “What do you mean? How strong is she?” Will poured us each another glass before he answered me. “She’s an old vampire and that means she is much stronger than me.” That would have shocked me right out of my socks if I had been wearing any. “But you’ve been one for more than two hundred years!” “And she’s been one for about five hundred,” Will said, with a dry note in his voice like rattling bones. “I don’t begin to understand it all myself, but I know that the older the vampire, the more strength and power that they have.” It made sense and it scared billy hell out of me. Compared to Will, even more so to this Sallie, I was an infant, a helpless little

baby. Right then, I began to wonder whether or not I could handle what might be heading our way. “What does she want from you?” He faced me, his eyes darker than ever with sorrow and anguish. “I don’t know but nothing good.” I tried to tune into his thoughts but for the first time, I felt a barrier. Whatever he knew, he did his damndest to shield me from. And I didn’t like it all. It put space and distance between us that had never been there, not since that very first night that we met. “Will, tell me what you know.” It wasn’t a request but a demand but I tried to soften it with a caress so I stroked the curve of his face and left my hand there, cupped against his cheek. “She’s angry,” he whispered, “Somehow she doesn’t like that I found happiness with you. She resents it because I gather she’s never been happy, not when I knew her, and not since.” “Why has she found you now?” He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know except that I am happy for the first time since I left my home as a lad. I don’t know how she found me – I’ve not felt her in my head since soon after sailing from Liverpool but she must have kept up with me. Even if she didn’t, the few vampires I have known tell me that there will always be a bond, an open line of communication with the one who made you so all she had to do was search when she wanted to find me.” That made sense; I had that with him, most of the time. I liked it because it kept us connected but I didn’t like anyone else having the same kind of link. Especially now that I felt a wall go up between us. I might be new to being a vampire but I could tell when he shut me out. For now, he shared what he wanted me to know and nothing more. Meanwhile it seemed Sallie had a front row seat to Will’s consciousness. “She sounds like a wicked bitch.” I voiced my opinion and got a faint smile from Will. “Aye, she’s that and always was,” Will said. “But she’s dangerous and she can harm us. You know that old saying; hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. I think she feels somehow scorned or slighted because I found love and the joy we have. That’s what I feel from her, outrage, contempt, and a blood desire for revenge; for a charm of powerful trouble, like a hell-broth boil and bubble.”

His quote from the three witches in Macbeth sent a shiver through me. Danger and a sense of fear transmitted from him to me and I shook, like an old dog after a forced bath. Will tightened his arms around me. “I won’t let her hurt you,” his voice rang solemn as a priest at a funeral. “You know that, don’t you?” “I do,” My voice cracked with the words as emotion shattered my heart into glass. “But, Will, I don’t want her to harm you either.” He said nothing while I listened to the crackling fire, the sole sound in the room and then he sighed, “I will be fine, mo anam cara. You don’t need to worry for me.” He lied and I knew it but it was for my sake. If she scared Will – and she did – then I had plenty of reason to worry and I did. “Pour me another glass of wine,” I told him. “After that, we can eat.” The chicken roasted to a golden brown, near perfection. As I pulled it from the oven, I inhaled the delicious aroma of the apple and potato stuffing. Everything looked and smelled so good but I lacked much appetite. I set the kitchen table – we never had used the formal dining room although I had dusted it, once – and called Will. Although he complimented my cooking and put on a cheerful face, he ate very little. “Honey, have some more chicken,” I said, slicing off another hunk of breast to slap onto his plate. Will ate most of the meat but he ate nothing more and when I cleared the table, I scraped our leavings into the trash. That did not happen much; under normal circumstances, he cleaned his plate with gusto and so did I. I could not force feed him, much as I might want to, so I did the dishes while he kept me company at the table. Most nights, we talked while I did chores but he just sat there, smoking a cigarillo and stared into space. If I asked him a question, he answered and if I tried to draw him into conversation, he would speak but then he would fall back into the same uneasy silence. I knew why he felt so troubled and could not think of a single thing that I could say that would ease his inner pain. It takes a lot to make me wordless but that did. His silence and that distance that seem to be growing between us bothered me a lot. If I couldn’t be privy to what went on in his thoughts, then I had just about a snowball’s chance in

hell of helping him. This wasn’t what being married meant to me and Will needed to realize that. I am his wife, after all, not just a one night – or day in our case – stand. After I put up the last of the dishes, leaving everything tidy for Malachi come morning I circled around behind Will and put my hands on his shoulders. I could feel how taut his neck and shoulder muscles felt, hard as granite. Without a word, I put my hands against that tightness and began to rub with my hands. As I massaged, I could feel some of the rigid tension slack. Will leaned forward so that I could reach easier and I kneaded his flesh like bread dough until he sighed. “Don’t stop, Cara,” he told me, “That feels grand.” “I won’t.” I would rub those shoulders to give him ease all night if he wanted and by the time dawn filtered into the east, I almost had. My hands ached from the effort but I said nothing, just stretched them until the feeling returned. “It’s almost morning,” I said. “Would you like something else to eat? I can fix eggs and bacon if you want or biscuits.” Sometimes, depending on how we spent the night, Will liked breakfast before we retired but this time he shook his head. “Thank you but no, I’ll pass,” he said. “Come have one more glass of wine with me and we’ll go to bed.” We drank another glass of the light wine, the taste like honey in our mouths and then climbed the stairs for another day of rest. Will looked haggard so when we lay down together, I stretched my hands toward his bare back and rubbed it too. In time, sometime past dawn, he drifted into sleep and by then, exhausted and almost sick myself, I did too. Vamps do not dream at least not on a normal basis. We rest, as dead to consciousness as we are to the world and in my brief experience, we do not rouse until night comes. Sometime after midday, though, I came to, befuddled and blinking. Beside me, Will moaned and thrashed, twitching as if something bit or stung. I thought about the scorpions back home that sometimes find their way inside but as I stirred, I realized that whatever plagued him was not an insect but that damn Sallie. “Wake up, Will,” I cried, wrapping my arms around him as if that could protect him from her. “Honey, please.”

He did not awaken easy but writhed as if devils with heated pitchforks poked at him. It hurt me to watch so I called his name until he opened his eyes and looked into mine. He lacked time to raise his defenses and I picked up his thoughts. I saw the image of a woman, sharp-faced with hard eyes and a mouth that turned downward in a permanent frown. Her blonde hair looked both straggly and dirty, hanging lank about her shoulders. Her black eyes, darker than sin, met mine – or Will’s - since I shared his vision. They stabbed me with force, enough that it hurt somewhere deep within. Hatred rolled toward me in ugly waves like smoke from an out of control fire. It came toward me with such noxious force, such darkness that it reminded me of burning tires, illegal and nasty, oily and dark. Her lips curled with disdain and although her mouth did form words, I heard her voice, shrill and awful, echo in my mind in an English accent that could only come from the streets, the dens, and the dives of her time. More screech than speech, she said, “You’ll regret it all soon, Master William. You should have stayed here with me.” Her harsh accent reminded me of Eliza Doolittle before Professor Higgins taught her about the rain in Spain. She felt frightening and looked the part, like some special effects from a low budget horror movie. I shivered at the image she left behind, a new anxiety erupting somewhere inside from seeing it and I struggled to contain my emotions. This bitch was gnarly, much worse than I imagined. Will made a terrible sound, a strangled outcry and the image faded, leaving me to remember the awful words. Although I could not see her any longer, I felt her wickedness all around us. He snared me into his arms and held me so snug that I could not move had I wanted to shift position. I had no desire to go anywhere, though, and my arms clutched him as if I could hold him safe forever. We clung together like that for a long time until he spoke into the darkness, his brogue thickening his speech more than usual. “You saw her.” It was not a question but I whispered back into his ear, “I did.” “And you heard her.” “Yes.”

“Cara, mo anam cara, will you do whatever I ask?” I wasn’t sure if I liked the sound of that or where this might be going but I nodded, then found my voice. “Yes, Will.” “Clear your mind,” his voice came out hoarse and harsh. “Don’t think of anything but me, of us, of our love. Together, maybe, we can block her for now.” I was up for that; her essence radiated poisons more than a rattlesnake hiding among the bluebonnets that bloom all over the Texas countryside each spring. I did what he asked and we cuddled there, focused on each other and all that we meant, everything we felt. Time stretched out and expanded until I could not have guessed how long we remained that way. After an extended time, though, Sallie faded in slow stages. One moment, she remained a heavy presence in our minds and then she began to recede like flash flood waters. When we felt her no more, Will kissed me with such tenderness that I felt like crying. He managed to pack all the emotion he felt for me into that single kiss. “Tá grá agam duit, mo chroide,” he whispered and I knew enough Irish now to know what he said. I gave it back to him, in English, “I love you too,” I said. “Will it be all right now? Is she gone?’ He sighed. “She’s gone for now but she’ll be back.” Fear started to climb from somewhere around my stomach and claw up into my throat but I tried to check it. Sallie scared the hell out of me but I knew enough about mean dogs and wild things to know you never let the fear show or they can nail you. “We need to rest,” I told Will. Deep within my skull, a headache threatened to erupt and I wanted to avoid that if I could. “Aye, we do. Rest easy, Cara.” ‘Aye’ is not a common word for a 21st century American truck driver to use, not even one with an Irish lilt to his voice. As our days together added up, I noticed that Will used it more often with me just as he tossed in a few more words of Irish. I didn’t mind – I actually found it endearing but I realized that he did because with me he could be himself, natural

and unaffected. He didn’t have to mind his speech because I knew his history and all that he is. Will released me to turn onto his back, arms folded across his chest in his usual position. I scooted as close to him as I could so that our arms touched. After that ugly intrusion, I needed the security of his physical presence. I never felt anything like that and I would rather not feel it again. A sinking, sick feeling in my middle told me that I would. It was not over, not by a long shot. Our combined efforts to block her worked but it also took a lot of strength both mental and physical. We might be able to do it again but not now, not until after we recharged. I lay in the stillness wondering just what Sallie might be capable of doing to either Will or to me. A hundred dire possibilities haunted me, all too vivid, until I finally forced myself to shut down those thoughts. Then I worried about Will, hoping that this experience would not take such a physical toll on him. When I touched him, his temperature felt right and unlike me, he rested, oblivious to anything. I finally sang aloud so that I could relax enough to rest and the music did what none of my other efforts could, put me into that deep unconscious state. When I came awake I could tell by the quality of light in the room that sunset had long passed. I lay there alone and when I called his name, Will did not answer so I untangled myself from the covers and reached for him with my mind. I couldn’t find him that way, felt no sense of him at all. That was a first for me and one I hated more than I hate liver and green lima beans. Normally, I could reach out to him with no effort. Our connection until then had been strong and I wanted to keep it that way so I went to find him, loaded for bear and more than a little upset. I found him in one of the other upstairs bedrooms, the one he used as an office. I say office but really, it was no more than the place where he set up his computer. Outdated wallpaper on all four walls bloomed with oversized pink roses and the sole piece of furniture within the room was a parson’s table. On it, Will had his computer, modem, printer, and supplies. I used it several times a week to e-mail my family back home and to keep up with a few friends on Facebook. Will seldom went online so I wondered if he might be looking for loads to haul or researching something about spiritual attacks.

Whatever he did engrossed him enough that he did not hear me come into the room or notice me until I put my hands on his shoulders. “What are you doing?” He stiffened with surprise as if I intruded into his personal space and then wheeled about in his office chair to pull me onto his lap. “I thought maybe I should go out on the road again, in the truck,” he told me. “She knows where I am now, but if I go trucking, she may not find me as easy. Do you mind if I go?” “If you mean do I mind if you go out trucking alone, hell, yes. I mind a lot,” I said with a lot of heat. I loved going on the road with him and he knew that. If he went and left me home, waiting like the dutiful little housewife that I’m not, that let that bitch Sallie win. She wanted to divide and conquer. To me, after his suggestion, I felt like she was about to win the first skirmish in this personal little war. “Cara,” he said, with obvious frustration. “It’s for your own safety and your own good. If I go, she’ll follow me and maybe she’ll leave you alone.” “Bullshit,” I said, using the stronger word because nonsense just wouldn’t have cut it. “You married me, Will Brennan, and those vows said we’re in this for better or for worse. I’m going with you or you won’t go.” “Mo anam cara, please listen to me,” he pleaded but I wasn’t going to be swayed by his charm, not this time when so much was at stake. “No, Will, you hear what I have to say,” I told him. “If you go and I stay, she wins. I’m no soldier or general but everybody knows that you don’t split your troops. The ones that do usually lose. If you let her divide us, put distance between us, she’s winning without even having to fight.” He looked down into my face, eyes tender but mouth set in a hard line. “I want you safe, Cara,” he said after a long pause. “It’s not that I don’t want you with me – I do. But being at my side puts you in danger now. Woman, why can’t you understand that?” Nothing makes me madder than someone telling me I don’t understand when I do. I hopped off his lap and stood facing him, hands on my hips. “I get that just fine, Will. I’m not stupid but we’re

stronger together. If you go, I’m heading out with you. We go together or not at all.” He stared at me and I could see, even in my anger, how my suggestion hurt him. Knowing that he really didn’t want to leave me behind did little to temper my feelings, though. I wasn’t some fragile little flower that needed to be protected and he should know by now that this little Texas rose has more than a few thorns. As he remained silent, figuring out what he might be able to say to convince me, I delivered my ultimate weapon. “Okay, Will, this is how it is. If you want to go out in the truck, you just go on and go but as soon as you leave, I pack my bags and head back home to my mother. And I won’t come back either. I’ll find me some tall cowboy that takes my fancy and I’ll make him into a vampire so we can live happily ever after. Is that what you want, Will?” I watched his face as I spoke my piece and although I wanted to get at him, make him hurt like I ached inside right now, I didn’t expect him to look like I shot him through the heart. He paled, which is hard for a vampire to do, and his expression shifted from sober into such sorrow that I wanted to weep. He believed me and didn’t realize that I was bluffing. I didn’t want to leave him, not when I loved him more than being human, more than sunshine, more than my own family. I gave up everything in my world to be with him and I wasn’t about to leave him but I would use whatever weapon I could to protect my love and our marriage. Will leaped up out of the chair and crossed the few paces between us in seconds. He grasped my shoulders and shook me, just enough to get my attention. “Cara, don’t say such things,” he said, his voice rougher than I had ever heard it before. “You’re breaking my heart, mo anam cara. I love you, mo ghra, more than anything and all I want is to keep you safe. I remember right well what a bitch Sallie was and I’m afraid for you. I want to protect you. You know, don’t you, what you mean to me?” I did and now I felt guilty that I caused him such anguish but that didn’t change the fact that I was going with him come hell or high water. I shot him my meanest look and I might have said more hurtful things but then I saw the tears that trickled from his amazing

blue eyes to make slow trails down his cheeks. That moved me right out of my anger and I raised my hand to cup his face. “Don’t cry, Will,” I said, tears of my own threatening to erupt like a sudden thunderstorm. “I love you the same way you do me and I don’t want any other man, human or vampire or shapeshifter or space alien but you. I mean it, though, about going. You’re not going without me.” He shifted his hands from my shoulders to embrace me instead, locking me within his arms and held me tight against him. I cradled against him like a kid being comforted after a bad dream and when he raised my face for a kiss, I met him with my lips. That searching kiss asked if I loved him, without words, and I responded until I felt sure there was no doubt that I did. Our mouths melted and melded into one mouth. I could taste the salt of his tears and the tang of his tobacco, savoring both as proof that this was my Will. Physical expression of our love flared like a flame from the ashes of a campfire and jumped higher until desire consumed us both. I had not bothered to dress when I rolled out of bed to search for him so his hands roamed over my bare skin, his cool fingers evoking sensations that riveted me in place. When he touched my nipples, one at a time, they blossomed for him into tight, hard little roses and when he put his mouth down to suckle them, I whimpered with the exquisite feeling that radiated from those buds into the rest of my body. To give back what he gave I reached down between his legs to grasp his cock, hard as an Irish shillelagh, in my hand. I ran my hand up and down its length to caress it and then I squeezed, gentle but firm which ramped things up between us with speed. I think he growled with his delight at that but I couldn’t dwell on it because he swept me up into his arms. Kissing my mouth and straying to my throat at times, he carried me down the hall and tossed me onto the bed that I had vacated. He took me there, with swift certainty and all his skill as a lover, piercing into me with such force that I felt as if he speared me, pinned me to the bed for his own purpose. He did, of course, but even as he sought his own gratification, he aided in mine. I lifted my rear up to meet his thrusts, driving him deeper which we both liked and when that moment hit, it consumed us both as if we burned in a fire or drowned in a savage sea. As the pressure

mounted for release, the line between temptation and torment stretched fine but when it came, we rocked with it, vocal and fulfilled. When I crashed back into myself. I lay facing Will who smiled at me. “I guess this means I get to go,” I told him. He chuckled. “Aye, it does. You’re a stubborn woman, Cara and you’d wear down stone but you’ll go with me. It’s against my better judgment to be sure but you’ll go. I just hope I don’t come to regret it.” “Good,” I said. “So we’re going on the road?” “Aye, we’re going out in my truck together.” “I’m up for that whenever you want,” I told him with a grin, looking up into his face. “When do you want to leave?’ “Tomorrow after sundown,” Will told me. “ We’ll make the run I had planned with a few adjustments. I thought we would make a run down to Dallas. We can stay out an extra day or two. We’ll go to Rusk. You can tell your mama I want a late supper.” Mama would be delighted, I thought. She loved Will and she would cook whatever he wanted, no matter how late it got. “I will.” Now that I hoped we had that issue settled, I wanted more loving and so did he. “Just so I’m sure,” he said, assurance that I loved him back in his rich voice. “Love me again so I’ve no doubt.” He kissed me, a slow burn that heated my lips until they felt as pliable as melted candle wax. His mouth teased mine and I ran my fingers through his wild curls, answering the silent question he asked. He wanted me and I needed him just as much. Will could be a tender lover, gentle as if I were fragile, made from fine-spun glass but at times, he could be a natural force that took what he wanted without remorse. We slid to the hardwood floor and began. That night, he claimed me with his lips, his hands, and his body. His greedy passion smacked my lips until they felt swollen and his mouth bruised me as it swept downward, biting and gnawing. I did not object – instead I gloried in it, requiring just that kind of outburst. His onslaught removed all thought of Sallie from my mind and I knew he did not think of her either. Instead, he used his hands to touch me everywhere, even in my wet folds that cried out for his fingers to move harder, go faster.

Will attacked me with love and invaded every sense. I fought him, not because I didn’t like it but because I did. I struggled to make the heated battle rage hotter and when I raked his back with my fingernails, the embers of our love burst into flame. For the first time, I used my teeth to needle his throat, not to drink but to give pleasure. His cry in response alerted me that I scored victory and I raised my own voice to in a wordless shout of triumph. He silenced me with his mouth, lips hungry, searching, as he tasted me like a glutton at a chain buffet. Even as our lips melted together, he fumbled my knees apart and entered me, with the force and power of a sword, penetrating to the very center of both body and soul. . I welcomed him and now, after our sensual battle, I yielded to him so that we could ride the rush of potent ecstasy together. When that climax came, it rocked us both and we lay together, a tangle on the floor afterward. Even though the wooden boards felt as hard as pavement beneath us, I felt wonderful, sated and seduced. With his wildness, Will conquered the demons of the day past for me including Sallie and I felt so happy that I began to laugh. He joined me, his deeper tones ringing like church bells on Sunday or the music of wind chimes dancing in the breeze. This was, I decided, a victory. We won this battle but only time would tell if we could win the war. I hoped that we would. But if we did, it would be through our combined unity and strength. We could not be divided and he could not shut me out. That was just one thing I could not allow, no matter what. Time would tell, I thought, with a sinking feeling and the dark realization that whatever was in motion might be something I could not stop no matter how hard I tried.

Chapter Four One of my favorite things as a little girl back home in Rusk was when my daddy loaded up the car for vacation. I loved riding in the back seat and if I could coax them to open the windows to let the highway wind rush through my hair, that was even better. Hitting the road to go somewhere new and different never lost its appeal for me. Although I don’t write many songs, I always thought someday I might pen one about the music of the road, the song of the highway. Other singers have and some made their fame with them. Leaving out on a trip always ripples with possibilities. My anticipation heightened this time because I had to fight so hard just to come along and also because I had no idea what might happen with Sallie Hawkins. My feelings were that it would be bad, not good. So my excitement mingled with a foreboding sense of the unknown, not the best way to begin a journey of any kind. My wanderlust was also tempered a lot by the fact that although we loved each other, even though our sex remained mind blowing and awesome, the barriers he had put up still concerned me. We were together but I wasn’t sure how open he was being, even now. Even the memory of the distance I’d felt was enough to make me feel awkward and I think he felt it too. We were a bit more formal with one another, more polite and for a couple in love, that usually doesn’t bode very well. When Will and I climbed into the cab of his rig just after dark, a little of that old eagerness for the open road awakened and I felt encouraged that we might elude Sallie Hawkins yet. I decided to hang onto those feelings for the moment and hope for the best. No matter what happened we would be out on the road and probably tomorrow night I would be home, eating Mama’s biscuits, and devouring her fried chicken. First, though, we picked up the load that Will would deliver in his rig. Riding higher than almost everyone else as you scoot down the road is heady. I loved the view from there and the cab gave us plenty of space. If I could have changed anything, I would have put in a long bench seat so that I could cozy up to Will instead of the very comfortable bucket seats. Other than that, the experience was kicking. He had a state of the art stereo system and behind us, the sleeper compartment was amazing.

I never rode in a big rig until I went out on the road with Will, but I dated a trucker once and his sleeper seemed small in comparison. I just peeked inside Steve’s but it was a tiny, cramped space with a single narrow cot and some shelves. Will’s boasted a queen-sized bed, a sink in one corner, and enough room to walk around the bed comfortably. He even had a recliner, a big comfortable La-Z-Boy chair squeezed in near the foot of the bed. It might lack the many comforts of our Memphis castle but that sleeper space offered plenty of the comforts of home. My man exudes power and sensual grace at all times but out on the road, I adore watching him drive that big truck. Something about being in command of a loaded rig that weighs in at a good eighty thousand pounds gives him a sense of command and he reminds me of some old time ship captain sailing the seas. With his dark hair and wicked beautiful eyes, he could almost pass for a pirate but I like to fantasize that he is a Captain on a Bedford to China run back in the heyday of the clipper ships. As we crossed over the river bridge into Arkansas, feeling a little less ill at ease, more in sync with him, I told Will that. “Before I became a highwayman, I dreamed of going to sea,” he replied me with a mischievous grin. “I always did want that more than growing praties.” “Praties?” “You call them potatoes, mo anam cara. Neither farming nor fishing had much appeal for me but I always thought I would like the sea because I could go far away,” his voice carried a wistful note and I realized if he had gone to sea, he would never have met Sallie Hawkins and would have died centuries before I was born. Crazy as it seems, I am glad he is a vampire or I would have missed ever knowing the love of my eternal life. “You think this is the next best thing, don’t you?” I asked. He cocked his head to ponder that and nodded. “Aye, I suppose if you exchange the water for land.” My own ocean experiences were limited to Galveston Bay but I liked the sweep of the sea, that seemingly endless stretch of water. I knew a lot more about beaches than boats but his enthusiasm for the sea felt contagious. On impulse, I said, “Maybe someday we can do that, Will, go to sea. Would you like that?”

“I would,” his voice had the solemn hush of prayers in church. “I’d like to go back home to Ireland most of all, though.” “Would you really?” Will nodded. “I know it must have changed a great deal since I lived there but I’ve never been back. And now that I have you, I feel like it would be all right to go home again. I know my family is long since dead and gone but I might find out what became of them anyway.” That was the first time he ever said much about his family and it surprised me, a bit. “Do you miss them?” He hesitated and then nodded. “Aye, I do. It’s been a long time but I do miss them, my mam, Da, and my brothers.” “How many brothers do you have, Will?” I asked, using present not past tense on purpose so it wouldn’t upset him. “Four brothers,” he told me. “Connor was the oldest, then me, then Sean, Aidan, and the youngest, Seamus. As a lad, he thought the sun shone out of my arse.” That touched me. “You must have been his hero, Will.” “I suppose so,” he sighed. “Would you want to go with me, back home, sometime?” He asked with such longing that I decided we would do it, just the moment this mess with Sallie ended. “I would love to and we will,” I promised. His smile and the bright hint of tears in his eyes gratified me more than words. I wanted to crawl over into his arms but I didn’t. Giving into emotion when hurtling down the highway at more than seventy miles an hour is never a good idea. Instead, I looked across the median to that rest stop where we first crossed paths. “There it is,” I cried as I had each time we passed by in the truck. Then, as I always did, I added, “What if I hadn’t stopped there that night?” “We were both meant to be there,” Will said. “It was our destiny, mo anam cara.” I am practical by nature – or I was anyway – but on this point, I couldn’t argue. Nothing but fate could have put us in the same place at the same time.

If we made the run to Dallas straight through, we could make it in about seven hours but that just makes a long haul harder. We didn’t eat before we left Memphis so when we hit Little Rock we wheeled into one of the big truck stops for a meal. With the parking area lit up brighter than high noon in July, we strolled hand in hand over to the restaurant for a big hamburger steak dinner. Just like everywhere else, Will turned heads and attracted attention. He just oozed so much charisma that people of all ages followed him with their eyes. Inside, we split up long enough to make a restroom stop and then entered the restaurant together. We slipped into a corner booth as far away from everyone else as we could so that we could soak up each other’s presence. Getting out of Memphis seemed to lift his spirits and so far, the far-reaching search beam of the evil Sallie had not found him. When our meal arrived at the table, I watched him eat with gusto and that made my own mood fly high. He finished his hamburger steak and half of mine. We talked, too. None of the heavy silences that disturbed me at home remained and after we finished, we lingered over another cup of coffee, more in harmony than we had been back at home. “Let’s go,” Will said, ready to roll. “We can hit Texarkana before morning and bunk down there. Tonight, we can head for Rusk. Did you tell your mother we’re coming?” “Of course I did. She said she would fry chickens for you.” His smile lit up brighter that the flame that fired his cigarillo. “And will she make biscuits, too?” I shook my head and pretended exasperation. “She said that she would. It’s no big deal - I make biscuits for you all the time.” Will wrinkled up his nose and teased me back. “Her biscuits are better than yours, darling.” I stuck out my tongue and whacked his arm, playful. He laughed and then he grabbed me in front of every other truck driver parked up for the night. I knew at least half were still awake and probably watching but I didn’t care. Will kissed me, tongue driving into my mouth with the same confidence and skill that he relied on to drive the truck. All my senses responded, warping into overdrive and I kissed him back. As we climbed into the truck, I started for the sleeper but he stopped me.

“We can do that if you like,” he told me, with a grin dancing around the corners of his mouth. “But if we do, we’ll be running late. Can you wait till we get to Tex-Ark?” I didn’t want to and he knew it but I nodded and as we rolled down the highway with the lights of North Little Rock in the rear view mirrors, I dug through his CD collection. I put in a Johnny Horton album and sang along. Since his family lived around Rusk too and his parents are buried there, he’s considered a hometown boy and I know almost all of the songs. I grew up on them. The familiar words flowed out of my mouth, soft and easy. Sometimes Will sang along too and in comfortable harmony with each other we made Texarkana before dawn. We rolled along the one of the main thoroughfares where one side of the street is Texas, the other Arkansas, and into a truck stop where we put up for the coming day. The first fingers of light touched the eastern sky, turning the few clouds soft pink and brilliant gold when we climbed back into the sleeper compartment. Fired by the memory of that kiss back in Little Rock, I pulled off my clothes and came to him naked as the day I was born. “Oh leannán,” he sighed as he ran his big hands over my bare body. “You would tempt the devil himself. You are so beautiful.” His caresses whispered over my skin, evoking such passion with each tender touch. “Then make love to me, Will Brennan,” I told him. “Love me, mo chroide.” My accent probably sounded bad but when I used that endearment, called him “my heart” in his native tongue, he took me with such sweet gentle passion that I felt like an angel. This time, he worshipped me with hands and body. His adoration sent rippling delight through me. Surges of bliss, physical contentment and joy, covered me and sank to the bottom of my soul.. For the first time since we came together, I let him pleasure me. I lay back and gathered all that he gave, accepting it. At the end, he brought me home with his tongue. He used it well to touch that inner core of me and I shouted my elation so loud that it probably rang out over truck parking. I stilled and basked in the buzz that hummed over my body like warm sunshine.

I met his eyes, filled with love and yearning. I knew then what I needed to do so I reached out and pleasured him. I did to him all he did to me, then more. I used lips, tongue, fingers, hands, even toes to pleasure Will from those dark curls down to the soles of his feet. When I took him into my mouth, I felt him quicken and harden. I suckled his member until I knew he must be about to burst and then climbed on top of him. He fit into me like a glove onto someone’s hand, tight and full. I squeezed around him and he shuddered, releasing his passion into me. He murmured to me, his voice softer than the pillows, sweeter than any candy, “O, thou art fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.” “More Shakespeare?” I whispered back, not recognizing the author but appreciating the beauty. “No, love. ‘Tis Marlowe.” Will breathed and I nodded, pleased with his quote, confident in his love. After that, we slept, curled together in each other’s arms, and did not wake at all until night. I thought then, enchanted back into fairy tale mode, that our troubles might be over and that we would feel nothing more of Sallie. Maybe she moved forward to some new victim and could forget the past. I wish I had been right. **** Each time he made love to her, he claimed more of her soul and owned a bigger piece of all that equaled Cara. To be fair, he gave a piece of himself to her each time and she owned his heart. If he could, he would have carved her name there for all time. Until he found her, Will did not know what love could be or what it could mean. Unwitting, ignorant he waited for this all his life, both before he became a night creature and after. Although forced to live in darkness, Cara brought him light. Cold blooded by nature, she offered him warmth and he wanted nothing but to spend all eternity with her. He ached for the happiness so long out of reach and until that twisted bitch of a whore Sallie Hawkins found him, he possessed it. Now that she threatened all he held dear, Will would fight to keep it.

Leaving Memphis helped and so far, Sallie had not found him but still she sought him. He could not tell Cara; he did not want to frighten her again but somewhere he could feel Sallie. Her essence felt faint and distant, the way that a radio station a thousand or more miles away came in distorted and fading. Will thought that sometime soon she would confront them. That she would find them again was without doubt. For now, though, until she did, he would enjoy his lady. He would love Cara with everything he possessed and in every way that he could. When and if the time came, he would protect her and to preserve her, he would let her go before he let Sallie harm her. Cara received some of Sallie’s evil thoughts but not all. If she had, she could not have slept so sweet in his arms with that little smile curling around her lips. Will remembered the images Sallie forwarded his way, terrible scenes of carnage and death. Unlike his innocent love, Sallie knew all the ways to kill a vampire and she would not hesitate to use them. Whatever happened to her in the centuries since they parted, she must have grown far more malicious and nasty. He would never believe she loved him, that Hawkins woman, but he did think she envied his happiness. She hated Cara because she was Will’s true soul mate, something that Sallie could never have been. His one hope lay with the power of love. Together he and Cara blocked her once and he wished that they might do that again. If all the Church taught him as a boy held true, then even the gates of hell could not prevail against such a love. For now, he could do nothing but wait and hope. Without Cara he would not have even had that.

Chapter Five No matter where we live or how, there is no place like home. As we rolled into Rusk long after dark, I understood all the more why Will longed to return to Toome. Nothing else substitutes for that familiarity with your home country. I loved the feel of the piney woods and in the sweep of the big truck’s headlights; I smiled to see all the pines still lining the road on either side. I knew all these roads and most of the people in the houses that we passed. Rusk hadn’t changed either. When we hit the four way stop by the Kettle restaurant, I knew I was just blocks from the house where I grew up. I swear I could smell Mama’s fried chicken from there and maybe, with my enhanced senses, I could. “I’m home,” I sang out to Will who smiled and reached across the dash to grasp my hand. “It feels like home to me, too,” he said, with that grin that I loved so very much. In the months since we found each other and wed, we came back to Rusk three times before, the last at Christmas. In my family, Will seemed to find surrogates for his own long gone folks and they adored him. Light warmed every window as we rolled up in front of the house and before we could step down from the rig, the front door opened and my parents appeared on the porch. Mama waved and rushed toward us. Quicker than me, Will met her and swept her up into his arms. By the big sappy grin on her face, she loved it. “It’s about time you got here,” she fussed but without heat. She wouldn’t be my mom if she didn’t. “I’ve had the table set for three hours and the chicken in the oven keeping warm for one. Come on in and let’s eat.” She paused long enough to hug me and I buried my face in her old familiar smell, inhaling it like incense. Daddy shook hands with Will and then hugged me tight. As we came through the small living room, where the television seldom stopped playing, my sister Tamara and her husband jumped up. Around their feet, hopping like fleas on a big stray mutt, their three kids bounced and somehow found their way into Will’s arms. I sneaked a peek at his face and smiled at the light that made his eyes sparkle.

When we gathered around the table, we joined hands to ask a blessing and then dived into the food. I admired the same old blue Willow Ware dishes and the recognizable worn silverware. I had the fork with bent tines at my place. Her biscuits did taste better than mine do and her fried chicken could have won a blue ribbon at any county fair in America. I watched Will eat with a good appetite and listened to him talk to my family. After the meal, I helped Mama clean up and then we sat around in the living room until after midnight talking. After my daddy yawned about six times and made noises about heading off to bed, we took the hint and said our good-byes. Leaving made me ache for the old days, times when I could have just bunked down at home until morning, back when I was still human. I wasn’t and neither was Will so we headed for the truck to roll into Dallas before dawn. Because it was not that far, the miles clicked away beneath the wheels as we talked about my family and our visit. For now, I felt easy in his presence again and I hoped that the fence he put up back in Memphis was down, gone for good. Listening to his voice affected me like aged bourbon with a little Coke splashed over some ice; it relaxed me and made me want more. Even after several months, I never got tired of listening to him talk. I knew even then that I never would. “I wish we could see them more often,” Will said. “It would make our existence a bit more normal.” I agreed. “It would and I miss them but I have you, honey.” He beamed at me but I noticed his hand stray over to his stomach. “Did you eat too much?” I asked, teasing. I knew all too well what that gesture meant. Will shook his head. “I don’t think I could eat too much of your ma’s good cooking. I’m getting that feeling though that I will need a donor before long.” “Me, too,” I said. “I just thought it was the biscuits.” He laughed. “It will be harder to find someone between here and Dallas. In the smaller towns, there are never many people out at night.” It was true. As we rolled out of Rusk and through Jacksonville, the streets loomed bare of traffic. I thought about what

few places might be open at that time of night and hit on the best idea yet. “What about a Wal-Mart Supercenter?” I asked Will just a few miles south of Tyler when we were still on Highway 69. “I think they’re all open twenty four hours a day.” His eyes never strayed from the road but after a moment, he nodded. “I’d not thought of that but it could work.” We pulled into the first one we saw and within minutes, we saw a few stragglers heading out of the store with purchases in hand. While I tried to figure out just what kind of person goes to the discount store to buy a 12 pack of soda pop or a huge package of baby diapers in the early morning hours, Will parked. We stepped out into the chilly night and I shivered. “Cara?” he asked with a wary tone and I knew he wondered if I felt Sallie. I didn’t, not then. “I’m just cold,” I told him. “Which one do you want?” We both considered the options, looking over the surprising number of people out so late. He chose a gal about my age but pounds heavier who struggled with a fifty-pound sack of dry dog food. Will shouldered it for her and asked directions to I-20, ones he didn’t need, on the way to her car. As he put the sack into her trunk, he stared into her eyes, she froze, and he fed. It happened just that fast and I bet she liked it. It was probably the best little sexual delight she’d had lately and I wouldn’t doubt it if she didn’t wander back to this parking lot at night for awhile, just hoping she might run into Will. I looked around for a likely donor and noticed a truck driver on his way back to his rig. I could tell he was human so I reached over to snare a cigarillo out of Will’s pocket and approached him. “Excuse me, do you have a light?” I asked in my sweetest Texas drawl. “Sure, baby girl,” he said, this man old enough to be my daddy. As he reached deep into his front jeans pocket I leaned close in and took what I needed. He never got to light that smoke for me after all. I hoped that he didn’t mind and I know that he liked what he felt. To him, that probably came across as the best damn hickey ever. Back in the truck, warm and sated, I turned to Will. “You were right.” “Was I?” He sounded amused.

“Yes. You said it would get easier and it has.” “That’s good, darling. Now that we’re fixed, let’s head for Dallas.” We made the big D just as the first flicker of light touched the horizon so we pulled into the first truck plaza we passed and parked. Time ran too short to do anything but fall into bed to sleep but we twined together, touching. I can always tell when I wake if Will is beside me or not. Before I had time to open my eyes to look for him I sensed he wasn’t there. Before I could freak out much, he spoke. “Cara, I’m here.” Something in his tone put my senses on edge and I sat up, blinking. He sat in the recliner at the foot of the bed and although he looked just fine, I knew he wasn’t. “What are you doing there?” My voice came out sharper than a brand new fishhook. “I had a pain.” His voice sounded dull. “It’s passed now, though.” I tossed off the sheet and vaulted to the foot of the bed. For now, he seemed to be open to me with every sense we possessed as vampires and I hoped he’d stay that way. I put my hand across his stomach, then up to his chest. “Where did it hurt? Was it here?” Will shook his head. “Neither. I woke with a headache fit to bust my head open, a sharp pain right there.” He indicated his temple with a single finger. I put two of mine over it and rubbed, very gentle. Since he wasn’t prone to headaches, my anxiety level shot up but I tried to be cool so I wouldn’t alarm him. He looked concerned enough already. “How long did it hurt?” Will shrugged his shoulders. “It wasn’t very long, a few minutes, maybe. I woke up with it hurting and the only thing that helped was when I sat up so I stayed up.” “You should be sleeping,” I told him. “Aye,” he said with a faint bitterness in his tone, “I should be and I should have left you home where you would be safe. I can always take you back to Rusk if it comes to that.” “Don’t even go there,” I warned. If he started that nonsense, I would get mad again in a heartbeat. My hope that he was done

erecting barriers faded more than a little. “You know how I feel about that and it’s not happening. Can’t you come lie down just for a little while.” “No. It’s time to rise anyway,” he responded. “I feel just fine now or I would if I didn’t have to worry about you. I need to get the trailer dropped and the return load picked up. Do you want to eat now or wait?” Worry never did fuel my appetite much. “We can wait unless you’re hungry.” “I’m not,” he said. “Will?” “What is it, mo anam cara?” “Was it her?” He hesitated, halfway up out of the chair and then sat back down to scrub one hand over his face. Right then, I could see he was going to try to be evasive again and I didn’t like that at all. “You would have to ask,” he snorted without anger. “You can be like a dog with a bone. I wasn’t going to say but I think that it was.” No surprise there. If it hadn’t been Sallie he wouldn’t have started up about leaving me home or taking me back to my parents at Rusk. He didn’t think it; he damn well knew it and I really wished he would quit with the efforts to put me off the trail. I knew it involved Sallie somehow from the moment I saw him up and out of bed, felt it in my bones like an old woman’s intuition. Knowing, though, didn’t mean I had a clue what to do about it so I asked him. “So what now?” “I don’t know yet,” Will said. “Nothing for now, I guess. I feel her but she’s still distant so we’ll get the load and head toward Shreveport.” He sounded resigned and more than a little annoyed but not upset. That was good, I decided. That made it less likely we’d argue about separating for safety. “What’s in Shreveport?” “It’s a short run so we drop the load. Then I thought we could go gaming if you want.” I was glad that he used “we” – he must have given up on sending me away.

“I would love it,” I exclaimed and meant it. I needed diversion and fun – we both did – and a night or two spent in the big casinos on either side of the Red River sounded like just the thing. “So would I.” Will’s eager grin defused some of my anxiety. Now that he made up his mind, everything happened in short order. We grabbed some big, thick cheeseburgers at the truck stop and then dropped off the trailer we hauled from Memphis. Will stuck the bills of lading into the compartment in the front of the trailer at the drop lot and then we headed across town to pick up the loaded trailer for the short run over to Shreve. With it hooked to the rig, we could head out and so we did, moving through the late night streets of Dallas with familiarity. Growing up in East Texas, I knew that country like my childhood. Two, two and a half hours at most and we’d roll into Shreveport with plenty of time to drop the trailer and get a hotel long before the sun came up. Since Will planned to roll down the interstate, we wouldn’t go near Rusk but I thought about my folks, tucked up snug in bed, as we went back east. This was a familiar trip I made many times and not the first time with Will. I settled into my seat and let Will take me back over to the heart of the Ark-La-Tex, Shreveport.

Chapter Six I have always loved both Shreveport and Bossier City, those tandem sister cities on either side of the Red River. That Texas Street Bridge, decked in neon, that connects them always felt like magic to me. My Aunt Doris used to live in Bossier and so sometimes we made the drive over to visit. Her boys, one on either side of me in age, were just as much best friends as cousins. We spent our time running through the neighborhood not far from Barksdale, the Air Force Base, and ducked for cover when one of the big jets came in roaring for a landing although it wasn’t necessary. That was all before gambling came to town and casinos of every size sprouted up like some kind of amazing mushrooms along the Red River. I had my favorite spots to visit and on our first trip through together, I almost cried when we found out that Murrell’s Diner, an old favorite and one time hangout of a lot of Louisiana Hayride stars had been razed down to a cement slab. Out there along East King’s Highway, though, Strawn’s Eat Shop still served up the same good food and Southern Maid Donuts, a thousand times better than any old Krispy Kreme confection, could still be bought hot when the neon lights said so. Will left I-20 so that we could roll into town on Highway 79, the road winding through Shreveport proper like a slow moving rattlesnake through all the old parts of town. Along the way, not far from the Louisiana State Fairgrounds, we left the load and then head off for the Horseshoe Casino over on the Bossier side. One of many, the multistoried hotel and gaming center was one of Will’s favorites. “We’re here,” he announced as we turned into the parking lot. “I’m glad – I’m hungry.” So was I. After we checked into one of the hotel’s premium suites, a luxurious mini apartment that we stayed in before and I adored, we headed for Jack Binion’s. The steakhouse, the ultimate in posh elegance had some of the best steaks I ever let cross my lips and they should be considering the cost. Their prices matched the quality but money was one thing we didn’t have to worry about. Tucked into a corner table near the massive windows that looked out over the Red River back toward Shreve, we ordered the prime New York Strips that weigh in at a full pound with sautéed mushrooms and baked

potatoes. As we waited for the food, I relaxed enough to enjoy the ambiance but Will acted distracted. He fidgeted something he almost never did and beneath the table, one boot tapped the floor in restless rhythm. I watched, knowing the reason behind his nervous tension but I didn’t want to talk about Sallie now so I chattered about everything else under the sun. He listened and as we cut into our steaks, he said, “I think we’ll stay a couple of days, then head home. Will that work for you?” “Sure.” I was up for whatever he wanted. “You know that as long as I am with you, I’m happy.” “I hope so, mo anam cara,” Will said. “I’ve turned out to be more trouble that you could have imagined.” “Do you mean this with Sallie?” I asked, hoping he might be opening up a little and he nodded. “Aye, I do. I’ve a bad feeling about all this, mo anam cara. My mother had the wee touch of what we called “The Sight,” or just being fey. I never thought I had any of that till now but I think whatever happens when she catches up to us will be something terrible. I think that there will be bloodshed.” His talk of psychic feelings made me feel cold again, as if I sat in a wind that came off a glacier. My Granny Riley had it and I did on a few occasions. Bothered by the reference, I answered with steadfast honesty. “Will, I promised to love you for better and for worse. I meant that. Everyone has to deal with stuff.” “Aye, I know,” he sighed. “This just seems more than most.” I put down my fork to reach my hand across the table, almost knocking over the cute table lamp in the process, so that I could take his hand in mine. “Whatever it takes, I’m up to handle,” I told him. “We’ll get through this. How’s your steak?” He took my hint and dropped the subject. “It’s very fine.” We finished our meal but we ate in silence after that. After, we went to play and I basked in the stares and glances that Will drew here. Although it happened everywhere we went, I still loved it. People recognized him at the Horseshoe, too, and a few even greeted him by name. One of the hostesses called out to him and he stopped to be polite.

“Will, it’s good to see you again,” she simpered and I glared at her, hostile. “It’s nice to visit again,” Will told her. “I want you to meet my wife, Cara. Cara, this is Beverly, one of the hostesses here.” “Charmed, I’m sure,” I said in a voice that indicated very well that I was anything but. Although we played for several hours, for the first time since I visited a casino with Will, he lost more than he won and about four in the morning, he turned to me with a frown. “I’m tired and I’m not having any luck here, gaming. Let’s go to the room.” “Sure.” I trailed in his wake as we headed for the elevators and up to our large suite. This wasn’t like Will, not at all, and so I was forewarned that things were starting to go sour even faster than I expected. I still wished he’d be a little more forthcoming and open about what the hell was going on but I was here to stay so I’d ride it out, no matter what happened. There just wasn’t anything else I could do. First thing he did once I shut the door was to sit down on the sectional sofa and remove his boots. I sat down on the other piece of the sofa and studied him. He did look tired, more than I had ever seen him and I knew that Sallie still chased him. I wanted to make love but I hesitated, wondering if he felt like sex but I didn’t wait have to wait long to find out. “Come here, darling,” he told me, stretching out his hand to me. “I need you tonight. Will you love me?” That was a question he never needed to ask; I would love him whenever, however, wherever he asked but I nodded and shucked out of my clothing in seconds. I crossed the few feet of floor to him and took his hand, using it bring him to stand before me. My hands trembled as I unsnapped his shirt and pulled it from him. His jeans and small clothes followed, ending up in a heap on the carpet as he pulled me against him with force. Before I could pucker my lips, he kissed me, his mouth hot and hurried against mine. His need roared like an angry lion as he devoured me with that kiss. I responded in kind. I felt his manhood, tight and hard against my torso so I ground my hips against it, teasing and begging at the same time. We kissed until my head whirled, until the room vanished and I was aware of nothing but Will Brennan. His

hands caressed me with softness and speed, a wicked combination that made me desperate for more. His musky man scent filled my senses with pure Will, a mixture of his sweat, his natural aroma, and even the cigarillos that he smoked. I could taste the fine steak in his mouth and I just wanted to absorb him into me. We clung and clawed each other, our shared caresses building up to a crescendo that we let grow. When need outweighed all else, he lay me down on the couch and I lifted my legs, open to him so that he could thrust his power into me. He claimed me, took what he needed as much as I did, and we hit that peak together. Our bodies clashed and then chimed with that burst of pleasure. He cried out, a wordless sound of fulfilled delight and I sang out a few words, “Love, love me, do, you know I love you,” I felt the shudder that passed through him and echoed it with my own body’s tremors. Spent, he collapsed onto me and the impact rolled us from the sofa onto the carpeting floor. I lay boneless and content as he rolled over so that he could look into my eyes as he said, “I beyond all limit of what else in the world do love, prize, honor you.” His Shakespeare quotations embroidered our love and I liked each other even if I couldn’t always place them. He knew my thoughts because then he said, “That’s Ferdinand, Act Three, of The Tempest.” “Mine was the Beatles,” I said and he laughed. “I know, Cara. I’ve listened to them many times. Let’s go to bed before we crash on the floor.” Since it would be a shame to have such a nice suite and sleep on the floor, I rose and drew the drapes. Although the view faced west, I felt the coming dawn so I joined Will in the king-sized bed and slid beneath the soft covers, one hand touching him. **** As good as our loving had been, I just knew that we couldn’t count on everything remaining normal. Long after we went to our rest, I struggled with sleep, or what we vamps call sleeping, but I tossed and turned, uneasy. I roused first and wondered why until I noticed that Will twitched in his sleep, fitful and restless. When I squinted at the clock across the room, I realized that it was late afternoon, still too early to

be up. I shut my eyes and tried to regain that comatose state but failed because Will began to make small moans, soft but terrible in anguish. He let loose several sentences, all in Irish that I could not understand but I caught the name Seamus more than once. That was the youngest of his brothers, I recalled, the one who looked up to Will. For the first time, I thought about what impact that Will’s apparent disappearance must have made on his family. Although he had been long gone from home when Sallie transformed him into an undead creature and when he took ship for America, they must have wondered. I know times were different and it must have been easy to lose contact with your loved ones, but they must have often wished they knew what became of him. Maybe they thought that his occupation as a highwayman did him in but most likely, they just never knew. His groans disturbed me and I thought about waking him but he looked so very haggard that I didn’t. I waited, losing out on my own rest, until he came around on his own. “You’re here,” he whispered with relief, his blue eyes bright as they stared into my face. “I had a dream that you were gone.” “I would never go anywhere, Will. I won’t leave you.” I meant that and he knew it despite what I said to the contrary to get him to bring me along on this road trip. “Aye, I know that you wouldn’t, not on your own. It was some evil thing Sallie put in my head. She wants me to think that she’ll take you from me and knowing the rude, rough ways she had when I knew her, she could well try.” That sent another icy chill through me but Will, who usually stayed tuned in to my feelings and reactions, failed to even notice. That demonstrated just how preoccupied he was with this Sallie. It might be petty but it made me mad all over again – I’m supposed to come first before anyone or anything. He sat up, tangled in the covers, and scrubbed his face with one hand. Whatever Sallie suggested, it upset him but I thought it might be best if I didn’t ask for details. I sat up beside him and touched his face. It felt warm, which didn’t surprise me with his current agitation. “So, she is back, then?” I asked although I knew the answer. “Yes.” His flat reply smacked me like the back of a hand.

“Can we block her again?” He shrugged his shoulders. “We can try, love.” So we did but it was much more difficult and took far more combined strength. After, we dressed and since my belly ached, I knew we both needed donors. I had no doubt that we would find some. Sallie might be coming through to him again but for now, I could still read Will like the pages of a favorite novel. His certainty that we would get the blood we needed without any trouble at all came through to me so strong that I relaxed just a bit. Whatever problems we might face, finding donors wasn’t one – at least not yet. I just wished that we could fend off the English bitch as easy. Casinos are one of the easiest spots for that and so we were fed in a very short time. I chose a dark Cajun man, with eyes like liquid desire and despite our precarious situation, all the trouble that lay on our plate, I enjoyed the feed more than usual. Since he called me mon cheri, I think he must have as well. Meanwhile, Will settled for some blonde but I watched while he drank and I couldn’t see that he got even the usual pleasure from it. That worried me as much as anything else even while I savored the taste of my Cajun. We went back to Binion’s but although the food - prime rib tonight – tasted just as succulent, neither Will or I had much appetite. I watched as he picked at his meat, eating less than half of it, and worried. I couldn’t manage mine either and he laid down his fork with a sigh. “We can go if you’re finished, mo anam cara,” Will told me. “I’ve eaten all I want.” “So have I.” Gambling didn’t work either. None of the slots paid off and when he spent a little time at the tables, he lost an incredible amount so fast that many of the onlookers gasped with horror. We stopped off in one of the bars but the crowded room and the gathered people were too much so Will paid for a bottle of sparkling Moscato wine and we took it upstairs to share. Although the wine tasted sweet, it failed to relax me. I sipped it as Will stood staring out the large windows that overlooked the Red River, a beautiful view. In the distance, the lights of downtown Shreveport sparkled like fairy lights but nothing seemed to cheer either of us. I drained my glass and joined him. He said nothing

when I approached but he reached out and put his arm around me, clasping me tight in his embrace. “Will, is it this bad?” From the way that he stood, I had a sinking feeling that it was even worse than my expectation which had been terrible. He faced me, his features ravaged with anxiety. He looked so worn that I knew he must feel ill again and I felt the fear that was beginning to take up residence in my gut surge up again like floodwaters. “It’s far worse than that,” he said in a low voice. “I don’t understand why she’s found me now but I don’t think she plans to stop until one or both of us are dead.” That word, dead, hung in the air like a thrown stone, heavy and full of meaning. New to this existence, I didn’t know much but I understood or thought that I did that vampires were not easy to kill. In fact I thought that we were supposed to enjoy an eternal undead existence. This was news to me and bad news at that. Up to then, I believed that we were immortal and now I had to learn that some ancient bitch of a vampire could do me in and that just sucked. The sole little thing that was positive at all was that, because of our dire circumstance, Will cracked open the door he’d slammed shut into his consciousness and let me stick a toe inside. “Can she do that?” I asked. He thumbed a smoke from his pocket and kindled it with a match before he answered. “I don’t know. I would have said no before all this began but now I think maybe she can.” That sounded very scary to me and I hugged closer against him, so near that the smoke of his cigarillo wafted into my face but I didn’t even try to brush it away. “How many ways are there to kill a vampire anyway? This was something I needed to know. “I thought it was just that old stake through the heart thing.” “That’s one way,” he said. “But there are many. A stake through the heart, whether it’s wood or something silver, works. So does beheading. I’ve heard that just plain beheading works but others have said that you have to cut out the heart and burn the body. Burning the body to ash is supposed to be another sure thing. Anything that destroys the body completely is said to work, burning,

melting it with acid, or blowing it to pieces. Then there’s what I’ve always thought must be the worst way of all.” If it was worse than beheading or being stabbed through the heart or burned to ash, I didn’t know if I wanted to know or not but I needed the knowledge. “What is that?” “If a vampire feeds on anyone, human or vamp, and drains the body, the person will die,” Will said in a really terrible voice. “You know when we feed, we take just what we need which isn’t much at all. I’ve heard it can be a slow, painful death but I don’t know. I don’t want to know.” “I hope you never do,” I shuddered. I hoped that neither of us ever did. “Is there anything else?” Will smoked down his cigarillo and snuffed it in the inch or so of wine that remained in his glass. “I don’t think so. Sunlight doesn’t kill but it can harm. Garlic, Holy Water, and crucifixes are all ineffective. They don’t kill or even hurt.” “I suppose Sallie is up on all of this?” “Sallie will know any way at all that will hurt or kill,” Will told me. “She’s a wicked bitch and always was but she seems worse now than ever. That’s the part I don’t understand at all, why she hates me now after hundreds of years. All I can pick up besides her hate, her violent anger, is that she doesn’t like it that I’m happy but I can’t understand why it matters to her now.” “Can’t we stop her?” I wanted to kick this woman to the curb and leave her for trash pickup. “That’s what I don’t know,” he answered, turning so that he held me in his arms, my face against his shoulder. “She’s so strong that I just don’t know.” I felt the rising heat of his body as I leaned against him; he seemed much too warm. “How do you feel?” I asked, knowing I was nagging but unable to help myself. “Terrible,” he breathed. “I had almost forgotten how awful it feels to be sick. My head feels fit to split in two and I ache all over. I’m hot, too, and I know that isn’t a good thing.” Even as I felt a rising anxiety about his condition, there was more than a little annoyance there too. Like any man, my vampire shut me out until he needed me and now that things hit a new level of

darkness, he was being open and honest. About damn time, too, I thought. That door between us stood wide open now and while I would walk right through it so that we could be fully together, in accord, I couldn’t quit put out that little burning flame of resentment that he had ever closed it in my face. I put that aside, as much as I could, though so I could get the facts I needed to deal with the situation at hand. “How does Sallie do this to you?” “Her presence in my mind and consciousness is like a poison,” he said after a pause. “I feel her seeking out places to hit and hurt. She’s like a cancer eating away at me. I feel bad but at least I don’t think this won’t kill me.” Now that gave me concern. If he wouldn’t tell me with complete certainty that this couldn’t kill him, that no way could it end his undead existence, then it was time to worry. It meant that it could put an end to Will Brennan and if to him, then to me. Death wasn’t supposed to haunt the undead, I thought, but now it did – or a reasonable enough version of death that we would cease to exist. So I did worry, all the time smoldering with more than a little anger because our eternal happily ever after wasn’t supposed to include sickness – despite the wedding vows that we made - let alone death. If we were home in Memphis I would have Malachi find that doctor he knows that treats vampires but there we were, far from home, in Bossier City. I could call my aunt, the one who used to live there, for a recommendation but she wouldn’t know any physicians who specialized in the undead. Not that she would possibly believe me. There wouldn’t be anything a medical person could do for Will between now and morning. That left it up to me and I’m a singer, not a nurse. I don’t know much beyond taking something over the counter for a headache. I possessed few tools and less knowledge. I had my music, which I believed had some power, and love, which wielded even more. I racked my brains thinking that I must be missing something and then I realized that I was – my secret weapon. Mama. She would know what to do, even if she wasn’t aware that her favorite new son-in-law happened to be a vampire.

“Come lie down for a few minutes,” I told Will. “It might help and I’ll call Mama. She can tell me what will help.” “I haven’t been to bed at night since I became a vampire,” he fussed as he stretched out on the bed. “There’s a first time for everything,” I told him and grabbed my cell phone to call my mother. It was late by her schedule but I knew she wouldn’t mind, not when I explained what I needed. “Hello?” She sounded sleepy when she answered but wary, too. “Mama, it’s Cara,” I stammered. “I’m sorry to call and wake you up.” “What’s wrong, baby?” That familiar tone hit me right in the heart and I wanted to cry but I didn’t. “Will isn’t feeling very well and I didn’t know what to do to help him,” I confessed. I sketched out his symptoms and waited for Mama’s opinion. “It sounds like he has the flu, honey,” she told me. “There’s a lot of it going around and with you out on the road so much, it’s no wonder he caught it. Dose him up with some ibuprofen, get that temperature down, and give him plenty of liquids. Let him rest up for a few days before you get back on the road. Are you sleeping in his truck?” “No, we have a hotel room over in Bossier,” I said. “How can I get his temp down?” “You can put him in a cool bath, not cold but not hot. That always helped you kids when you were sick. Don’t worry too much. He will be just fine in a few days, I promise.” “Thank you, Mama,” I sighed, “Thank you so much.” “Oh, you’re welcome,” she said with a yawn. “Tell Will I said “hey” and to get feeling better, okay?” “Okay, Mama. I love you.” “Love you too, baby girl.” Talking to her calmed me down and I gave Will her message. That brought a faint grin to his face and I dashed downstairs to one of the shops to buy some ibuprofen. I wasn’t sure if it would help but it wouldn’t hurt either. I dosed him with some and then got him to climb into the oversize bathtub. “I’ll do it if you join me,” he said and so I stripped down to sit beside him.

The tepid water relaxed me the same way that a hot bath did when I was human and it did seem to cool Will’s skin back to normal. Afterward, we sat on the sofa, cuddled together, and I had room service send up some tea. He sipped it and by the early morning hours, not long before dawn, he looked over at me with a sweet expression. “What?” “I feel some better,” Will said. “But best of all, whatever you did, Sallie’s backed off a bit.” While that seemed good to know, I couldn’t understand how I could take any credit for it. “I didn’t do anything but take care of you.” “You love me and you did it all with love,” he said after a moment’s thought. “Maybe the power of love is the one defense that works for now.” “For now?” He winced. “She’s getting stronger. I don’t know how long love will be enough but it helps, Cara, more than you know.” I cupped my hand along the curve of his face. “I’m glad, Will. The love may be the force that backed her off but there’s more than that. You can’t shut me out – and don’t try to tell me that you haven’t been. To defeat this bitch, we have to be in total accord, one mind, one body. Love is the power but we have to be united in it. He covered my hand with his and in his weary eyes I saw that he understood. I felt that space between us fill with all we felt for each other and I thought that maybe love would be enough after all. “Aye, Cara, you’re right. But you look tired too and dawn is nigh. Let’s get our rest and then when we awaken, we can go home.” Nothing sounded better to me than that so I nodded and we retired for the day, together in one accord. **** Illness rode him harder than he ever remembered and without her, her care and soothing touch, he would have been much sicker. Will Brennan had not joked when he described Sallie’s intrusion into his soul like poison. Ugly and potent, the harm she sent his direction sent ill effects in every direction within. When he told Cara he didn’t think this would kill him, he meant it but he could not tell her how certain he was that Sallie

Hawkins would never stop until he or Cara or both of them were dead. That English bitch wanted to destroy them both and he could not fathom why. Nor could he quite understand why his family, particularly wee Seamus, hung so heavy on his mind. Over the many years he learned not to dwell on what he lost or once had but his youngest brother now came to mind often. Though he seldom dreamed, he thought he might have dreamed of Seamus. He remembered the day that he left home, that first time and before he reached the end of the lane wee Seamus chased after him, calling his name. Will recalled well how he turned and swooped the little boy – ten years old because five years lay between them – into his arms and held him high. “Little man, you have to go home to Mam,” he told the child. “I’ll be home to visit sometimes and you’ll see me then.” Seamus screwed up his face into a frown that looked very much like his own; everyone marked how alike they looked. “I don’t want you to go but if you must, bring me a present when you come back.” “Aye, lad, I will,” he promised and he had, a gold coin once, a cloth puppet another time, and even a saint’s medal, solid silver. Remembering dampened his eyes and he pushed the memories back. He had plenty to deal with here and now. Will just had no idea how things would turn out but with an Irishman’s pessimism he feared that it might go bad. If he could keep Cara from harm, that would be enough.

Chapter Seven I have been to lavish, formal weddings that cost thousands of dollars with six-tiered cakes and live doves to release into the sky. I’ve been at blue jean weddings where barbecue replaced cake and I even accompanied a friend down to the courthouse where she said her vows in an antiseptic office setting. I served as bridesmaid at my sister’s wedding and tended the guest book at my brother’s nuptials. I’ve been there for cousins and friends. At every wedding, no matter what the size or denomination, I always loved the exchange of vows, those promises to one another that are meant to be kept for life. Until I married Will, I never really understood them. That one about sickness and health, I did not really get until Sallie entered our lives, crept in like a sneak thief to ravage our happiness. When Will started getting sick, I understand that vow, what it meant and how much you worry when it’s your sweetheart. I would have rather been sick myself, suffered any disease, injury, or illness than have Will under the weather. After following Mama’s advice and a long day’s rest, Will claimed he felt much better and he looked less haggard. His mind remained open to me, our souls in constant communication. What he thought, I knew and what he felt, I felt too. That made me feel much better and so I regained our closeness, maybe a little scarred but strong. We left Bossier City just after dark without even stopping to eat. Without a load, we traveled faster and hit I-20 to run across north Louisiana. After we crossed the Mississippi River at Vicksburg, Will pulled into a Waffle House so we could grab a burger. He ate all of his and half of mine; I felt glad that his appetite returned but I had trouble forcing down each bite. I had a feeling – felt it in my bones as Granny Riley would have said – that this was far from over. I thought it would probably get worse not better. So I didn’t want to eat and I was distracted. He didn’t ask why – he knew and as we walked back to the truck, he wrapped an arm about my waist. The weight of it comforted me and I moved against him, aching for something more. “Oh, Cara,” he said and he seized me. “You’re worried, you don’t eat, but you still want this?” “I want you, Will, and I love you,” I whispered. “I need you.” Tenderness darkened his eyes to almost navy as he quoted,

“If music be the food of love, play on.” Once we were inside the sleeper compartment, I realized he needed this just as much as me, maybe even more. He snared me into his arms and without removing all our clothing, he hammered me into joy. We stood up against the wall, my legs backed up against the bed, and he kissed me, his lips tasting of the hamburger and of his essence. His lips covered my mouth and somewhere along the way I lost track of where my lips ended and his began. When he pierced me, I received him, my inner sanctum moist and ready to hold him. I sheathed him and squeezed him as the waves of pleasure rippled through us both, rocking our souls and making the truck shake like thunderstorm winds. Everything came together fast, with such urgent need that we connected and then exploded every sense with wild, complete release. I screamed aloud and called his name at that last moment as I thought every star in the galaxy burst over my head. “That was good, mo anam cara,” Will gasped, stealing my breath as he took another kiss. “I want more of that later, at home in my own bed.” “Greedy, greedy, greedy,” I teased, “but I’ll give you what you want, honey.” He laughed, the first time in two days, and then we left. At Jackson, we left I-20 behind to pick up I-55 which would take us home to Memphis. We hit town before dawn but we didn’t stop at any of our favorite places. I longed for a Walk Me Down to ease the edge of the tension that cut through me like a knife but I didn’t ask. He wanted to get home and what he wanted so did I. His mood darkened the closer we got to home and I wondered why but once again he put up barriers so I could not read his thoughts. That meant Sallie must be near and so when we slowed to come down the long driveway to the castle, I wasn’t surprised to see Malachi standing on the top step of the porch. The old man frowned as he waved, his attention straying off to the left. Will swore under his breath, low but clear. “Will?” I asked, alerted that something must be very wrong. He made a fist and hit the dash so hard that I thought it would crack before he turned to me. “She is here.”

Will pointed toward the thick trees and then I could see the woman who stood there, arms folded against her chest with defiance and something more. Although she stood in the shadows, I could make out her face, narrow and pointed like a fox. Her small eyes stared at the world with hatred and her sharp nose looked long. Some people might call her pretty but I didn’t think so. She looked like what Mama used to call used hard and put up wet. Worst of all, I saw she was the nightmarish special effect being that had haunted me. This was even worse than that. At first I thought it was no more than an apparition, a spiritual manifestation which was more than enough to tighten my chest with tension but when she began to walk forward, I realized things were much worse than that. Sallie Hawkins was here in the physical flesh. “Stay here,” Will hissed from one side of his mouth as he swung open the door and vaulted out of the truck. I considered that for about two seconds and decided no way in hell was I going to sit back while he faced Sallie alone. I climbed down and caught up to him, standing at his side. He shot me a sideways glance, shook his head, and then reached for my hand. Despite his desire to protect me, I understood he appreciated my support. “Hello, Will!” Her voice rushed through the darkness at us, harsh and discordant. “I’ve come to call. Won’t you ask me in?” “I won’t,” he said, his voice close to a growl. “You’re not welcome here, Sallie Hawkins, so go away.” She tossed her head back and laughed, an evil cackle that sent shivers playing down my spine. “I came so far to find you that I plan to stay awhile. I have a wedding present for you both, my dears.” Images slammed into my mind with force, almost hard enough to rattle my teeth. All of them radiated violence and death, threats of blood and mayhem that I wanted to shut my eyes. That wouldn’t help, though, because the pictures were in my head. I saw myself lying with a stake through my chest, blood puddles beneath me. Another scene flashed through my thoughts, this time I saw Will’s body, headless and burning while Sallie watched, a smirk on her face. Other images were too horrible to even describe and I moaned, huddling against Will. He thrust me behind him and stepped forward, shielding me with his body.

“We want nothing from you, Sallie. Why can’t you leave us in peace? Her face twisted into a mask of hatred, her features narrowing and her eyes radiating with dark power. “Everything is your fault, Will Brennan, all of it and I won’t forgive it, ever.” I felt him stiffen, then listened as he told her, “I did nothing to you. If anyone should hold a grudge it would be me. Go n-ithe an cat thú is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat.” If I hadn’t been so scared, I would have laughed. I recognized the words, not because I knew Irish but because Will used the phrase once before, annoyed at another truck driver. May the cat eat you and then may the devil eat the cat suited Sallie well. I wished that a large cat, preferably a panther or tiger, would show up to devour her but wishes seldom work. From her blank look, she didn’t understand what it meant but she realized it was meant as an insult. As that sank in, Will leaned down to whisper in my ear, “Before she gets angrier, let’s hurry to the house. She can’t come inside unless we invite her.” He tightened his grip on my hand and then we ran, with the super speed that I never could manage until I became a vampire. We hit the porch just as Malachi held open the front door and rushed inside. Will shut the door and locked it. “Thanks be to God,” he sighed. “We’re inside. Are you all right, Cara?” I trembled but I nodded. “Yes.” “Good. Malachi, I’m sorry for this trouble.” Although he looked as shaken as I felt, the old man stood up straight. “I’ve faced trouble before, sir,” he told Will. “Who is that awful woman?” Will closed his eyes and then opened them. “She’s the woman who made me what I am, a very long time ago. It seems she decided to find me to settle some score that I knew nothing about. Don’t let her near you, Malachi.” “I won’t.” From where I stood, I could see through one of the windows at the rear of the house. The first fingers of sunlight touched the clouds to the east and made them golden. That explained my sudden

malaise, I thought, and lessened the threat. Sallie, as much a vampire as we are, would have to go somewhere to rest. “Will, its morning,” I told him. “We need to go to bed.” He lifted one hand to rub his forehead and I knew he must have a headache. “Aye, we do, mo anam cara. Tonight, we must talk and try to make a plan but if I don’t rest, I won’t be fit for any of it.” He wrapped an arm around me and we headed upstairs, together. Any thoughts of making love faded away in our extreme need for sleep so we undressed before climbing into bed where we faded into unconsciousness. Despite Sallie’s arrival and the danger, I slept like the dead. I woke to Will’s lips caressing mine, teasing and provoking me into an alert state. I could taste the whiskey on his lips, no bourbon but the sweet smooth silk of Irish whiskey. The subtle differences between corn and barley whiskey can be debated but Will taught me to love John Jameson’s. Although I savored the taste, I wondered how long he had been up and if he might be more anxious than I thought. Will loves good wine and other spirits but he seldom drinks whiskey. He either saves it for a treat or uses it to fight stress. I figured that it was the second. I opened my mouth to ask about his choice of drink but he rammed his tongue inside and French kissed me until I forgot about whiskey and everything but finishing what he began. I kissed him back, my body rousing with desire. He used his tongue as he kissed down my throat, causing every sensitive spot to resonate with want. Little thrills ran wild along my nerves and I vibrated with each one, like tiny electric bolts. With joy, I reached up to run my fingers through his thick black curls, caressing his face as I reached down to grip his shoulders. I pushed back against him, my body revved and ready but he took his own slow time. His mouth moved to my breasts and he pleasured me there until I thought I might cry out. Although I felt ready, he dropped lower still before he pulled me against him and entered me, fast and forceful. My back arched as I met him and took what he gave deep within where spirals of delight played upon one another. "For where thou art, there is the world itself and where thou art not desolation.”

His loving words evoked his emotion but they also reminded me of the scenes Sallie sent my way and I shuddered. Will grasped me tighter and I realized then that he felt the same.” For now, his mind lay open to me and I picked up his thoughts without effort. “I can’t lose you,” he whispered, his breath tickling my skin. “What would it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul? You are my soul, mo anam cara.” “And you are mine, Will Brennan.” Tears stung my eyes, blinded me for just a moment. “That’s the Bible not Shakespeare.” He laughed, which was what I intended. “I know more than a few quotes, darling woman. Unless you want to spend the night in bed, let’s rise.” I knew a few Bible verses, too. “Arise my love, my fair one, and come away” Will recognized the Songs of Solomon when he heard them and referenced them. “Then come, my dove, let’s go downstairs.” As soon as we descended the staircase, all the buoyant joy we shared in bed vanished and reality clamped down like a heavy fog. I stumbled, almost losing my balance on the bottom step and Will caught me in his arms. In the parlor, we settled onto the sofa before the fire and watched the flames. I felt the contentment of his company and yet fear crept around the edges. “Where is she now?” I voiced the question that we both asked. “I don’t know.” “But she will be back.” He stared at the fire and we listened to its soft crackle for a few minutes that seemed to stretch into hours. “Aye, she will. I think she is probably out there now. If we go outside, she will attack us.” I pondered that. We could stay inside this amazing house where she could not come. “We can stay home then. Maybe she’ll get tired and go away.” Will sounded very tired when he said, “I doubt that, Cara. And we can’t stay home forever as much as I might enjoy it.” I started to ask him why and then I realized. I hadn’t eaten food since Vicksburg and that was just a few bites. Even though I

needed the blood more, I also required a bit of food to keep my overall strength up. So did Will. We had not had a donor in several days and I felt that nagging little ache in my tummy. Until now, I had ignored it, chalking it up to stress or maybe hunger but there was no mistaking what it was. “Oh,” I said, with understanding. “What happens if we can’t get blood? Do we die?” I could not believe how calm I asked that question, not when it mattered so much. If Sallie could defeat us that easy, we were done now. He chuckled and that reassured me. “We don’t die, not this soon, but we get weaker. Right now, we need to be strong.” “What do we do? We can’t feed off each other, can we?” Will shook his head. “If one of us were in very bad shape, injured or dying, then the other could cut open a vein and offer a drink. It wouldn’t save a life but it would prolong it but that’s only for an extreme case. I wouldn’t even mention it except for Sallie.” “So what do we do?” “We can manage tonight,” Will said. “There are steaks in the kitchen and we can eat. It will help a little. If she’s still here tomorrow night, we’ll break out, somehow so we can feed.” What he didn’t say but I read in his thoughts was that if Sallie attacked again, using her mind, then we might be ill by tomorrow but he spared me or thought he did. I stood up. “Let’s go to the kitchen and I’ll cook the steaks for you. But, Will?” “Aye?” “Bring the whiskey too. I think we’ll both need it tonight.” A faint reflection of a grin touched his lips before it faded but he picked up the Jameson’s bottle and followed me to the kitchen. I cooked the huge steaks, full-cut sirloins, and ate all of mine although I had little appetite. I knew that I needed the protein and it helped the ache in my belly a little. The whiskey helped more than anything and we drank far too much as we waited for the dawn so we could retire. That booze helped dull the edges and made Sallie’s transmissions fuzzy. I felt her but I couldn’t quite get the message through the alcohol haze. For now, that was a very good thing.

Just before dawn, Will raised his last glass toward the side yard where we last saw Sallie Hawkins. “Pog ma thon,” he intoned with unholy delight and drained the whiskey. “What does that mean?” I asked. He did grin that time. “It means “kiss me arse” and it was for Sallie should she be listening.” Even though we were not sure at the time, we later would realize that she must have been and that his insult just fueled her fire.

Chapter Eight When I was sixteen, I came down with the flu and I got sicker than I had ever been. We’re not talking stomach flu here but the fullblown, get your vaccination against it, real influenza. I remember the headache most of all, the way that my head drummed like it might split open. My skin felt thin and the fever heat made it so sensitive that I could not bear to have anything more than a light cotton sheet against it. I felt bruised from the top of my head to the soles of my feet and my body ached. I just wanted it to all go away and so I lay in bed, ignoring everyone and everything. Mama would put a cold cloth on my head when I would let her and I remember hearing her fuss to Daddy that maybe they should take me to the hospital. I think that must have been the sickest I ever had been until I came around in Will’s arms. All I know is that I felt terrible, hurt all over and especially in my head. I realized that someone was talking to me, crooning really, and so I made the effort to open my eyes. That hurt and my first thought was that I had the mother of all hangovers, not an unlikely effect of too much good whiskey. Then I realized it must be something more. I looked up into Will’s worried eyes, so blue in a face taut with concern. “Will?” “Aye?” “What are you doing?” Unless I was more out of it than I thought, he carried me in his arms. “You’re sick, love, burning with fever.” His voice softened as he spoke, hushed like he was in church. “I’m taking you to the bath like you did me.” I lifted one hand to touch his face, to reassure the anxiety in his voice and felt his own heat. “You’re hot too. Are you sick?” He nodded. “I’m not good at all but you’re much worse. You gave me a fright because you wouldn’t wake up.” It took some effort but I stroked his cheek. “I’m sorry that I scared you.” His strong arms gathered me closer and he kissed my forehead.

“Love is like a knife, mo anam cara. Loving someone can cut to the bone but I would rather love than not.” In the big upstairs bathroom he undressed me like a child and slipped me into the claw foot tub filled with tepid water. The coolness against my skin felt so nice that I shut my eyes which alarmed Will enough to call my name. “What?” “I thought you fainted,” he admitted, “Does the water help?” “Yeah, it does,” I said. “Will, is she doing this to us?” “She is,” he told me. “Because we’re weaker right now, it’s easier for her.” I felt rotten, worse than tomatoes passed their prime. “Then we need to get stronger quick,” I said. “Do you know where the ibuprofen is? It was in my suitcase.” Will shook his head. “I don’t, Cara, but I’ll go find it. I think Malachi unpacked everything so I’ll ask him.” Since he normally headed for bed soon after we rose, that made me curious. “Isn’t he in bed?” “He’s not tonight,” Will said. “I asked him to stay up in case I needed his help. Will you be all right while I go find the pills for you?” “Sure,” I promised, famous last words. He bent over to kiss me and left with one backward glance as if he wasn’t quite sure he should leave me. I still felt crappy but the water did help and I figured the ibuprofen would help more when he brought it. If he could get Malachi to make hot tea, that would be even better. I closed my eyes and relaxed just a little when I noticed the start of a pain down in my stomach. I ignored it, wishing it away but about then sharper pains knifed through my midsection. It hurt and I bent over my tummy in the tub. Maybe I moaned; I don’t remember but Will ran into the room, wild-eyed and upset. “What’s wrong, love?” “My stomach hurts,” I whined. “It must be that bitch. If I ever get my hands on her, I’m going to teach her a Texas lesson.” He sat down on the closed commode lid and slumped with relief. He even grinned just a little.

“That’s not Sallie, Cara,” he said. “I feel the same way. Those are hunger pains because we’re long overdue for a donor.” I looked at him closer and saw that he hunched forward over his belly too. “Oh.” “Don’t look so sad, darling,” Will told me, “As soon as you feel like going downstairs, it won’t be a problem.” “What do you mean?” “You’ll see,” he promised. After the soak in the tub, some ibuprofen, and the hot tea I wanted, I did feel a little better except for my stomach. I would have walked downstairs but Will insisted on carrying me again. I felt like Scarlett O’Hara when Rhett Butler swept her into his arms and up to the bedroom and decided I could get used to this romantic care real quick. He set me on my feet and I wrapped the heavy velvet robe tighter around me when I saw that we had guests. A couple, a man and a woman both in their early twenties, sat on the sofa in the parlor and looked up when we entered. “Will, what’s going on?” I asked, grabbing his arm so that I could whisper in the general direction of his ear. “Who are they?” His smile expanded over his face. “They are donors. Malachi fetched them back when I asked him to find some.” I studied our donors. They looked rough and more than a little shopworn. Their clothes could have used a good wash and I thought I could smell some less than fresh body odor from the doorway. Behind that smell, I caught a whiff of cheap wine and cigarettes. “Did he get them from the homeless shelter?” Will nodded. “Well, that’s close. He picked them up off the street and promised them a hot meal. Oh, I’ll give them a bottle to go home with them when they leave.” I lifted one eyebrow to question that. “Is that a good idea? Won’t they tell everyone about the vampires that drank their blood?” “O, ye of little faith,” Will said. “Darling, by the time that they drain an entire bottle of my best John Jameson’s they won’t remember a thing. Besides, they are homeless drunks and no one will believe them if they do remember. Let’s take care of business so they can go.”

I sighed. “All right, I want to feel better.” He lifted one hand and summoned them, one of his courtly gestures that never failed. I had yet to see the man, woman, or child that he couldn’t charm if he put his mind toward the task. They came toward him, eager, and he leaned forward to say something soft I didn’t quite catch. I watched as he swept the woman’s long, lank hair away from her neck and bent with grace to drink. He looked up, over her and nodded. I took the cue and approached the man. He stood still and did nothing as I leaned down to sink my fangs into his soft throat. At the first rush of fresh, warm blood I wanted to shout with delight. It tasted as rich to me as the first bite of an ice cream sundae. I could feel it flowing into me, restoring and filling my need. As soon as we finished, Malachi appeared and handed them each a green whiskey bottle. “I’ll take them back into Memphis, sir, and return,” he told Will. “Be careful and watch out for Sallie,” Will told him. “Was the bitch still out there?” Malachi nodded. “She was but she didn’t try to stop me.” After he shepherded the homeless donors out, I turned to Will. “Why didn’t she try to hurt Malachi?” He took my hand and led me to the sofa. “She wants us, mo anam cara, no one else.” I settled into the curve of his arm. “I wish I knew why.” “I do, too,” Will told me. “You don’t feel so hot now. Are you feeling better, then?” “Some.” I had to be honest. I felt better but I was a long way from good and far, far away from great. “My stomach quit hurting.” “Mine did too,” he said. “I have felt better though, than this.” I gauged his heat against me, warm, too warm, but not hot. “Take some of the ibuprofen, Will. It helps.” “You help me more than anything,” he told me, his voice husky with tenderness. “Now that we’re fed, we will be a little stronger and we can shield ourselves more from Sallie. I don’t feel her now the same way that I did when I woke to find you so ill.” I scared him; I could hear it in his voice and read it in his eyes. His worry hit him hard and he still had some, deep within. I wanted to say something that would ease it but I couldn’t, not as long

as Sallie Hawkins waited to do us harm. I wondered just how long that we could withstand her spiritual attacks and as if he read my mind, Will spoke, “I’ve thought about this a lot, Cara, and I think maybe you should go home for just a little while. Go back to Rusk far away from Sallie and I don’t think she’ll hurt you there.” Leave you to make the sacrifice? I thought, I don’t think so, honey. Although I loved poetry and song, I didn’t have his knack for remembering lines but I knew some that would fit what I felt. Mine didn’t come from the Bard but from the Bible. “Entreat me not to leave thee or return from following after thee, for whither thou goest, I will go and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people and thy God, my God. Where you die, I will die and there will I be buried.” The blue of his eyes deepened and lit from within as he listened to me, head cocked to one side, intent on what I quoted. As I watched, twin tears exited the corners of his eyes to roll down his face, slow and steady. “If I should die,” he said with quiet measure, “I will die happy because of you; your love is my world, my sun, moon, and stars. You own my heart. I never thought, all the empty years, that I could ever be happy let alone die that way but if I should, I will because of you. I love you, mo anam cara.” I could not see through my own tears. “You are not going to die, Will Brennan, not now, not ever, but I love you too.” He cupped my chin in one hand and turned my face so that it was inches from his. “You are brave but you’re not Ruth,” he told me. “Without you, I will be lonely because now I have something to miss but I want you safe, Cara. Please think about going home.” All the devils in hell could not make me go. Neither could one she-demon named Sallie Hawkins. “I am not going to leave you, Will. The only way I’ll go home to Texas is if you come too.” “She would follow us there.” “Then we stay, together.” His gaze bored into me like a rock bit through soft shale on a drilling rig back home in Texas.

“If we die, then we die together.” I nodded. “Then we do.” After that, we reclined there in comfortable silence, bonded and united. Staring into the flickering flames, I did some thinking about good and evil. From what I remembered of my church teachings and the Bible, light triumphs over darkness. As creatures of the night, Will without his own choice, me by free will for love, we were barred from the light. But light wasn’t the only power that Jesus brought the world - the other was love. We had that in abundance and we could fight. I remembered something else that churches used in their ongoing battle against the devil and all – music. That was one weapon I possessed that I could use. I stirred against Will. “What is it?” “Is my guitar upstairs?” “Aye, I think so. Why?” I felt more confident now than I had since Sallie first made either one of us sick. “I think I’ll go get it. I want to sing.” Will frowned and I know he wondered if I might be having a relapse but I wasn’t. “I’ll bring it down for you,” he said. I listened to his tread on the stairs and thought about just what songs I could sing that would tap into the power of love and use that strength to protect us against Sallie. I stood up to get my Gibson when he brought it and my head whirled, dizzy. I swayed and fell into Will’s arms after he put the guitar down. “Cara, I’m taking you back upstairs,” he said, with a worry line dividing his forehead in half. “You’re still very sick.” “I just felt dizzy,” I protested. “I need to sing.” He glowered at me. “You need to rest.” I reached up to touch his face. “I probably do but Will, I think that if I sing about love, it will make us stronger. I know I’m sick but it’s important.” He stared at me. “Tell me how that can be.” So I told him and he nodded. “Maybe that would help but I don’t know.”

“I didn’t know that I would ever get sick once I was undead,” I said, telling him the truth. I had not expected that I could feel like this once I gained unholy if everlasting life. His eyes smote me with tenderness that poured toward me in waves, so sweet that I could drown in their depths. “You shouldn’t be sick at all, mo anam cara. Neither of us ought to be. Aside from the bit of bellyache when I need blood or the rare headache, I had almost forgotten what it felt like to be ill. It’s all because of that bitch out there.” “I know,” I said. “But you said she’s stronger than either one of us because she’s older.” “Aye,” he said in a voice like a whisper on a soft summer wind. “But there’s not much I can do about that.” “We have more love than she has power,” I told him through tears that filled my throat and overflowed from my eyes. “Let me sing Will, just two songs. Then maybe we can both feel better and we can get the rest we need come dawn.” I had him; I could feel it in his body so close to mine. “All right but if you get any worse, you will stop.” He handed me my guitar and I draped the strap across my chest. I settled into one of the chairs and strummed for a moment, making sure it was in tune. He sat down across from me, posture stiff. Will watched me close as if he thought I might topple to the floor in a faint. That felt like more of a possibility than I wanted to admit, especially to him, so I gathered my senses to begin. The first song I sang was Bette Midler’s, a tune that almost became her signature song, The Rose. As I lifted my voice with those haunting, lovely words that celebrate both the fragile nature and the overwhelming strength of love, I felt power ooze into my weary soul. I needed that and so even though I saw the tears stream down Will’s face, I didn’t stop but sang on. I segued into the other song that came to mind, perfect for us since he so often quoted Shakespeare, Taylor Swift’s Love Story with its Romeo and Juliet theme. Although the lyrics lacked the might of the first song, it still packed a force that resonated. I could feel the rising swell of emotion in the parlor, so tangible it seemed like a living force. I also began to feel somewhat better.

When I ended the second song, Will rose and he took my guitar from me. Then he wrapped me into his arms and held me. I felt the wetness of his tears and I felt him tremble. “I would sing to you, my own true love,” he whispered, “but all the love songs I know are sad.” “I don’t care.” “Aye, but I do. I’ll give you this bit from Hamlet instead,” Will said. “Doubt that the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move his aides, doubt truth to be a liar but never doubt I love.” The age old words dripped from Shakespeare pen had as much magic and music as a song and we clung to each other for a very long time. I shifted a little and he released me. “Do you feel well?” “I’m much better,” I said. “Are you?” “Aye, I am,” he gave me a faint grin. “And I’m hungry too.” Through the windows I could see that the heavy darkness of night already faded in advance of morning but there would be time. “Come on and I’ll make you bacon and eggs,” I told him, “But we have to hurry.” So we fed our bodies just as we had our souls, filled our stomachs and then in tandem, together, and stronger for the moment, we retired just as the first stray sunbeams touched the tops of the trees outside the castle. We had survived another night. Now if we could make it through the day to night again, maybe we could figure out something to defeat Sallie for good. **** He remembered sickness and fever; now that Cara fell ill, he recalled the frantic worry of loving someone sick. In his time, the one he was born into and should have died in, sickness loomed large and dangerous. No one ever knew when someone grew fevered or suffered pains if it would be a minor indisposition or fatal. What Will remembered all too well was how often people died. There had been that one terrible winter when fever raged through the town and countryside. Will fell sick first but got well again. He helped his mam nurse the others and poor wee Seamus, least of them all, grew so sick they despaired. Will sat with the boy sure that he would draw his last breath before morning but instead, the

fever broke and the boy lived. Even after so long, he felt again the joy that danced through his soul when he realized Seamus would recover. His one sister, seldom thought about, died when he was no more than three himself, victim to some fever or illness and he knew no more than her small grave in the churchyard. This torment with Sallie could not last much longer; Cara could not bear it. Neither could Will. He could endure his own pain and ill health. He would bear up even with a fever but Cara lacked the stamina. She was too young to this existence, he mused, and he feared for her. For now, Sallie Hawkins besieged them but he would confront her soon. They could not live without leaving or with the constant attacks. Will must win. If he lost, they would both die, he and his love. He would try again to send her away to save her but if she would not go, then they might die here together. He still hoped that they might win but he could not figure out quite how it could happen, only that it must. There was no other way. Cara, like it or not, must go home. He had to keep her safe above all else.

Chapter 'ine Granny Riley possessed what she called ‘The Sight”, some kind of precognition and she often knew what would happen before it came to pass. Mama called it fey and she had a touch of it, too. They always told me that I did, too, but other than a few flashes of intuition I never thought that I did. I didn’t dream about a fiery car crash like Granny did and warn my cousin Jolene to stay home, to not go to that concert in Dallas. Jolene listened and her best friend died when her Trans-Am exploded on impact with a concrete barrier. I didn’t predict the weather or tell anyone what gender their unborn child would be at birth. When I woke at nightfall, though, I had just enough Sight to know that Will had determined to send me away. I felt it and everything in me rebelled against it. If we could defeat this Sallie hag at all, it had to be together. Our love was the only power we had to go against her and even I wasn’t sure if it was enough. I didn’t feel bad at all when I roused up but when I realized Will was not beside me, I began to suffer a relapse that was probably more emotional than Sallie related. I climbed out of bed and noticed before I even made it to the door that my suitcases stood beside it. I had an idea that they must be packed and that Will intended to send me away. I thought about it and decided I would not go. Instead, though, to keep him happy and to not worry him so much, I would play along. I would tell him that I would leave, let him think that I was on my way back home to Rusk, but I would stay in Memphis. If I had to go rent a motel room or something, I would be near. Part of me hated the lie but something else, some conniving little piece knew I could and would do it. Although I’m mostly an honest person, I’ve been known to juggle the truth on a few occasions when it suited me. I never have told my family that Will is a vampire or that I became one, too. I keep it simple and I edit around the truth because if they believed me they would be devastated. So I can twist the truth when I must. I’m not proud of that but it’s there and because the stakes here were high, I would use it. When I heard his footfall on the stairs, I posed with my hands on my hips. As he came into the room, I screwed my face into a frown.

“What’s this?” I pointed at my luggage and glared in his direction. Will sighed. His face looked drawn and haggard, “I’m sending you home for a few days, Cara. I know you don’t want to go and I would rather keep you here with me but I need you safe. Please try to understand, leannán.” Lord but it was hard to be so mean to him. “I don’t understand, Will. You can’t force me to go.” He grasped my arms and held me. “I can, Cara. I called your mother and told her that you’re coming home. I told her you will be there sometime tomorrow. You have to go.” “You called Mama?” My surprise wasn’t faked. I couldn’t believe that he would do that to me. And he would have had to use my cell phone – he had no other. “Will Brennan, you shouldn’t have done that.” “Aye, well, it’s for your own good.” His voice rang stern with a note of steel he had never used toward me before. I could feel how hard it was for him to do this and I ached for him. I stared at him for a few moments and then I knew what I needed, what I wanted and he did too although he wouldn’t ask unless I offered. “If I go,” I chose my words with care, “then I’ll go after you love me.” His gaze narrowed as he studied me. He knew me well enough that he didn’t expect me to go so easy. To distract him from details, I took his face between my hands and kissed him. I let my lips stroke his mouth and within seconds, he kissed me back. His mouth touched mine with smooth, easy tenderness. His elastic lips molded to mine and clung as if glued in place. Will’s mouth caressed mine and then, he removed his so that he could trace the outline of my lips with one finger. That same digit traced my nose, circled around each eye, and caressed my face as if committing it to memory. Those light strokes made music that my nerves heard, sang notes that my soul heard and kept. He stroked my hair, combed it back from my face as he gazed at me as if I were the most precious, beautiful thing in the world. His soft eyes loved me with their light and his hands left my hair to fondle my body with exquisite, excruciating slowness. I think he touched

every inch of skin, light and delicate. He handled me as if I were made of thin, fragile glass that would shatter at a rough touch. His hands evoked such response that my skin prickled with desire. I wasn’t cold but tiny goose bumps erupted across my flesh, raised from desire. His easy caresses echoed through me and I responded. He kissed and teased my neck, my shoulders, with baby kisses that fluttered against my sensitive skin like angel wings. When he reached my breasts, he kissed each one and fondled each with his big hands. He cupped them as if they were as brittle as egg shells then bent his mouth to kiss, then suckled each nipple. My nipples stiffened in his mouth as shock waves of total desire flooded my senses. As Will’s hands played over my body I realized that this was more than just making love; he used every soft touch, each tender stroke to say good-bye. His unhurried movements committed each touch, each moment to memory so that he could savor it. That almost jolted me out of my rising desire – he must plan for me to be away for a long time. He fingered my belly and touched my bush with the same deliberate tenderness and I ran my fingers through his curls with force. His gentle hand evoked my need and I wanted something different. Where he gave me softness, I craved hardness. I wanted it rough and wet. So I pulled his head to mine and I kissed with lips with the smoldering force of a lit fuse, a short one. I bit at his lip, nibbled until I felt his mood shift from quiet devotion toward leaping flame. To feed that fire, I kissed him hard and then dropped my mouth to his nipples. I felt them pucker with chill bumps beneath my tongue and my own heat level soared. Will’s hands touched my honey pot and caressed, rubbing me in a way that might satisfy a cat but that only made me ache for more. I reached down and caught his hands in mine. Then I dropped to my knees so that I could take him into my mouth. I caressed him with my tongue in slow circles intended to drive him crazy. From the little moans and yips that came out of his mouth, I think it worked very well. I felt him grow in my mouth and after that, he forgot gentle and gave it to me the way I wanted. Will grabbed me and opened my knees to make way for what he would do next. With me spread out on the floor, he climbed on top

and entered me with a fast, harsh thrust that made me yell with joy. I arched up to meet him and pushed to make the sensations I felt expand. As he dived deeper, I drowned in a deluge of sensation, an overflow of physical delight that rippled through my body like floodtide waters. Like a sensual baptism, Will took me to the grave and then brought me back. He shouted his delight and called my name followed by a string of Irish endearments. Then he lay across me, sated and satisfied for a few minutes. He kissed me again and helped me up from the floor. “Now you can go,” he said, far more abrupt than his usual genial self. I stared at him. He took this very seriously and now, every sense reeling from his lovemaking, I felt guiltier about deceiving him. “Will…,” I opened my mouth to protest and he silenced me with his mouth, with another kiss. “I know you plan to argue about it but you must go,” he said, very firm. His face was an unreadable mask. “If you leave now, you can make it halfway to Rusk tonight.” I gazed at him, intent and curious. He acted more callous than I had ever seen him. From his strict tone, if I had not just experienced every nuance of love that the physical body can endure, I might have thought he did not care. I knew better and knew, too, that this pose intended to convince me to leave. He might even be trying to provoke me so I would be angry enough to go. “How will you know if I even get that far?” I asked, being more than a little cruel myself. “I can’t call you because I’m taking my phone with me. You don’t have one, not a cell and not a land line. You think Sallie wants you more than she wants me but what if you’re wrong?” My words hit home, harder than I expected because his expression shifted so that I caught a glimpse of the inner torment beneath the façade. In his alpha maleness he had never considered any possibility that he might be wrong to send me away but my careless words injected doubt into his soul. I wished I could gather up my words and take them back but they were there, out like stones scattered between us.

“I love you, mo anam cara. This is the best way I know to keep you safe. It’s one of the hardest things I have ever done but I must so let’s go.” Will picked up my suitcases in his hands and turned away from me. I struggled to find my voice, choked now by tears I did not dare shed. “What were the other hard things?” His back stiffened and he stayed silent so long I didn’t think he would answer me at all but he did, listing them one by one. “Leaving home the first time was the first. Watching my wee brother sick with the fever and thinking he would die and sending him back when I left, him crying. Learning what she made me into and sailing from Liverpool, knowing well I’d not see any of my own again.” Tears strangled my voice but I cried aloud when he added, “None of that, though, was half as hard as this.” He moved away then and I listened, tears pouring down my face, as he stomped down stairs. I waited, wanting to say so much more, to tell him all I felt, and to say that I was sorry for hurting him but I could not. He did not return so I trailed after him, wiping away the tears. My car waited out in front and I arrived in time to see him slam the trunk with the suitcases inside. He plucked my phone from his pocket and handed it to me. Then he put my purse over my arm. “Don’t let the door hit me on the way out,” I muttered as I stuck the phone into my purse. My irritation felt real now. I didn’t want to leave but he left me no choice. I wanted to tell him I wasn’t going to Texas, that I would be back tomorrow night, that he couldn’t get shed of me this easy but I didn’t. Will faced me and I saw that tears cascaded down his face too. “As soon as it is safe, I will come for you, Cara.” “You’d better,” I managed to say. “What did you tell my mother anyway?” Those blue eyes smote me with emotion. “I told her you had been sick and that I thought you needed some rest at home. I couldn’t tell her the entire truth, could I?” “No.” Then he kissed me with hunger, with such need that I almost caved and stayed but he released me before I could try it. The sadness in his face ravaged me, hurt me deep. He opened the driver’s door

and practically pushed me into the car. The keys were in the ignition and so I started it. “Slán agus beannacht leat, mo anam cara,” Will said in a voice as bleak as freezing rain. I knew enough Irish to remember what that meant – goodbye and bless you, my soul. “Good night, good night, parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say good night until it be morrow. I love you, Cara.” “I love you, too,” I said through a sob. I could hardly see through my tears as I drove down the long drive to the road. It seemed funny to drive my own car; since we got together, I seldom went anywhere without Will and when we did, it had been almost always in his vehicle, not mine. I didn’t even think to look for Sallie or wonder if she were out there, lurking somewhere. I hadn’t bothered to feel her, either, but then my heart ached with the sorrow of parting. My mind overflowed with thoughts of Will and decisions to make. Even though he thought I was going home, I turned toward Memphis and headed straight for the same motel where we first made love. Nothing had changed except the guitar shaped swimming pool had been drained for the winter months as I checked into a room. The first thing that I did was call Mama. “Cara, how are you?” Her voice sounded anxious and I could tell Will scared her to death. “I’m fine. I just had a touch of the flu, the same thing Will had,” I told her. “I called to tell you I’m not coming home. Will and I worked that out; he was just worried about me.” “Are you sure?” I was and told her so. After that short call, I lay down on the bed so that I could think about what to do next. That was hard, though, because all I could think about was Will. His sadness haunted me and I missed him. Since that first night we made love in a room identical to this one, we had never apart more than a short time. I lived in his wake and although I no longer needed air to breathe, I required Will to exist. Without him I felt disconnected and forlorn. I heard the refrain of that old Hank Williams tune in my head, the one about whippoorwills and midnight trains. I knew just how Hank senior felt and I knew that time would crawl by for me, too. I was so lonesome that I could cry too, and I did.

It just made it worse that I knew Will felt just as alone and equally awful. I could imagine him in that castle, worried, half sick, and distracted. I replayed our recent love and all the things that he said and it hit me, harder than a baseball into the outfielder’s glove. He had said good-bye, not just because he thought I was on my way to Texas but because he intended to sacrifice himself to Sallie to save me. He would give himself for me in sacrifice if that was what it took. Fear seized me like a Doberman pincher’s jaw and held tight. I sat up and wrapped my arms around my torso, rocking like a lost little girl wanting her Mama. My own mother was far away but it wasn’t her that I longed for – it was Will, only Will. I keened, one of my Granny’s old World words that her granny carried over from Ireland with her. Those low wails and heart rendering cries stayed within the room I hoped, and when I finished, I got up and scrubbed my face. I gathered my strength and stepped into my big girl pants. He might want to make that ultimate surrender for me but I wasn’t about to let him. All I needed was some kind of plan but first I had to be tough and get strong. I needed a donor and I knew just where to find one. I rocketed out of that room and headed for Beale Street. I could kill two birds with one stone there – drink some blood and treat myself to a Walk Me Down that would dull some of my inner anguish about Will. I did both and headed back to the room way before dawn. Three times, my cell rang but I didn’t know the number so I let it ring. Sometimes I got misplaced calls and I learned it was much easier to not pick up. If I answered them, sometimes they just wanted to argue with me and I wasn’t in the mood for that now. Too restless to sleep, I paced the room and pondered what I could do. Everything Will had told me about Sallie played through my mind. All that I had learned about vampires did too. By the time morning came I felt exhausted but I had half a plan in my mind. I reached out and sought Will. I touched his presence, familiar and beloved. For now, he remained safe and well. He already reposed and I gave him a mental kiss across the miles from Elvis Presley Boulevard back to our castle.

Then I retired for the day knowing I would need my strength when night fell again.

Chapter Ten When there is a power outage, you wake up to an empty blackness, a darkness that seems to have no beginning or end. It feels like a cave, a close, claustrophobic cave. You panic because for that first instant, you have no idea where you are or why or what happened. You can’t feel anything around you or see enough to know the location. You are alone in utter darkness. I felt that way when I roused after my rest. That disconcerted me enough but then I realized that I picked up on two different signals with my mind. One carried sweet familiarity but came with such a deep melancholy that I ached for Will. He missed me as much as I longed for him and I decided that I would go back to him. I didn’t want to play this game any longer. The other message that I received came straight from Sallie, dark and ugly. Her thoughts carried nothing but doom and threat. Receiving them seemed like trying to tune in an AM radio station because I got both signals, jumbled together. It was like hearing a favorite country song with heavy metal cutting in and I didn’t like it at all. When I tried to push Sallie away, to block her from my thoughts, it jammed what I received from Will. I could either get both and sort them out or obstruct both. For now, worried about Will, I picked up both so that I could try to know his thoughts, his feelings. I felt grubby so I showered, washing away some of my frustrations with the soap. Something happened to interrupt both mental transmissions before I had my shoes on. Everything faded away and no matter how hard I reached out with my mind to touch Will, I failed to locate him. Either he erected a wall to keep me out or Sallie barricaded him. Either way, it wasn’t a good indication so I checked out and hurried toward home. Halfway there, somewhere between Beale Street and Mud Island, my cell phone rang so I flipped it open. “Hello.” “Cara, what is going on?” “Mama?” “Tell me,” my mother demanded. “Will called just a little while ago and he sounded upset. He asked me if I had heard from

you and when I told him that you weren’t coming after all, he sounded disturbed. Then he asked me twenty questions about when I talked to you and stuff. What’s going on? Didn’t you go home after you called me?” I had to think fast. “No, Mama, I didn’t.” Two things bothered me – where did Will find a phone and why did it upset him that I wasn’t there? More must be going down than I knew and that scared me. “Are you having marital problems?” Mama asked with an edge in her voice. From that tone, I realized just who she would consider the scapegoat if we were. “No.” “Then why didn’t you go home?” I tried to hedge around the question. “I’m on my way home now.” “Cara?” I almost rear ended a milk truck so I pulled over so I could talk without distraction. The very last thing I needed to do right now would be crash. “Mama, it’s complicated.” That sounded lame even to me but it was all I had to offer. “I have to get home to Will now and I promise I can explain it all later.” “Please don’t throw away your marriage.” Tears thickened her voice and I wanted to cuss. “Mama, I’m not. I love Will more than life and we’re fine. There’s just a situation we have to deal with right now but it will be all worked out soon. I need to go, Mama.” Maybe she heard that desperate note in my voice or maybe she understood. After a long pause, she sighed and said, “You call me soon and let me know everything is all right. Will you?” “I promise that I will. I’ll talk to you later.” I hung up and darted out into the first traffic break I saw. Every slow moving vehicle seemed hell bent on getting between me and Will. I swerved around cars, passed trucks, and drove over the speed limit all the way home. I came roaring down the drive too fast, hitting all the bumps but I didn’t care. I flew home like a pigeon back to its coop. His Caddy wasn’t parked in its usual spot but sometimes he parked around back so I crossed my fingers and ran into the house.

“Will!” I shouted, “I’m home. Will, are you here?” When I saw movement in the shadows of the hallway, I whirled around but it was Malachi, not my husband. The old man stood still, wringing his hands in a nervous way that sent anxiety shooting through me. “He’s not here,” he said. “He’s gone to get you or so he said when he left out of here like every devil in hell was chasing him. Did you escape from her?” “Did I what from what her?” I asked, confused for a few seconds and then I knew. Sallie Hawkins just extended her long fingers into my life and conned Will into believing some lie. “Do you mean Sallie Hawkins?” “God help me, I do,” Malachi wailed, “She was on the porch when Will roused and when he went out to tell her to go away, she said that she had you. She told him that if he wanted to see you again without a stake through your heart to come and meet her. He called your family in Texas and when they didn’t know where you were, he believed it and he went after you.” “How did he call them?” I knew very well that there was not and had never been a phone in Will’s house. He had never needed one until I came along. “He went out and bought one of those cell phones after you left, Cara,” the old man said, still twisting his fingers together. “He wanted it so he could call you.” Will would seldom set foot in any kind of store unless he deemed it necessary so his purchase touched me. It was just another thing done for love and that made it sweet to me. I didn’t have time to reflect on it, though, because another question was far more vital. “Malachi, where did he go to meet her?” “He said Overton Park,” he said. “Do you know it? I did – I had just passed not that far from it on my way home. Overton Park ranked as one of Memphis’ largest city parks. It included a lot of old growth forest, two lakes, playground space, an art museum, the Leavitt Shell, a big bandstand, the Veteran’s Plaza, and much more. “Yes, but isn’t it closed at night?” It was a dumb question but I didn’t realize until after I asked it. “It won’t matter to such as you and Will,” Malachi said. “or to that wicked Sallie.”

That rang true but it was a big place and I had only been to it twice, just once with Will. “Do you know what part of the park?” I asked. He shook his head ‘no”. “Will never said.” Panic built in me like thunderhead clouds before a storm. It threatened to overwhelm me but I resisted. I tried again to reach Will with my mind and this time, I got a nibble. It reminded me of the kind of gentle tug you get when you’re fishing for bass and they start to bite. I focused on that. “I have to go find him,” I told Malachi. “I know you usually sleep at night but we may need you, so can you stay awake?” He nodded. “I promised him the same. Be careful.” “I’ll try,” I said, with a snort. Without waiting, I turned around and ran back to my car. I almost tripped over my own feet in my hurry but I jumped behind the wheel to head back into Memphis. As I did, I saw lighting stitch across the western sky with such huge bolts that I thought maybe the devil was tossing pitchforks for fun. The deep growl of thunder reverberated overhead and I felt the vibration. I couldn’t worry about weather, though, not now. Too much else was at stake. I filled my mind with Will, let every sense I possessed reach out toward him. My nerves clattered like wind chimes in a strong wind and I sought to reach for that calm deep inside. I headed for Overton Park and the closer I came, the more I could pick up on a sense of Will. I wasn’t able to quite read him but I felt him. For that moment, that was enough. By the time I reached the main entrance of the park, the wind rose and howled with an eerie sound that made me think of banshees. Granny Riley scared me as a child with her tales of the Irish death fairies who keen and wail when death is coming for someone in the house. Although I was raised Baptist, Granny was as Catholic as the Pope, as Irish as the Clancy Brothers so she kept the old ways. I woke up screaming myself from a few nightmares about such things and more than once. I got frightened when I heard a distant train whistle or the wind under the eaves of the house because I mistook those everyday sounds for the banshee’s cry. I pushed the thought of banshees and death away as I turned into the park. I drove right past the sign that proclaimed it closed at dusk daily and cut my headlights. o need to alert Memphis’ finest

that I was in Overton Park after hours, I thought, as I slowed to a crawl. I peered into the night, my vision better in the dark than it had ever been but I saw nothing of Will or of Sallie. Lightning flashed low and in my face, enough to blind me for a few seconds. I wound through the roads that traveled to different parts of the park and tried to seek Will with my mind. I caught a sense of him and so I turned that direction each time I came to an intersection. I knew I headed the right way but I could feel him stronger as I traveled deeper into the park. At the Veteran’s Plaza, an open space ringed by woods that features a number of different monuments and markers devoted to those who served in several different wars, I stopped the car near the flagpoles. Wind shook the lines that held the flags by day, rattling them like dry bones. That sound echoed down my spine, eerie and unpleasant. When I stepped out of the car, I could sense Will nearby and headed toward him like a bloodhound on a scent although I had not yet seen him. I followed my heart or nose or whatever you want to call it and there he was, with Sallie. They both stood at one of the monuments, this one a Grecian style structure with tall stone columns in a half circle. Will faced Sallie and I could see the tension that stiffened him at a distance. Her back faced me so I could see nothing but the spill of her blonde hair down her back like a young girl’s instead of the hell hag I knew that she was. Even over the rising wind I caught snatches of their voices, enough to make sense. “Where is she?” I heard Will ask, heartbreaking pleading in his voice. “Tell me.” Sallie laughed with an ugly sound that reminded me of some cartoon villainess or an animal. “I don’t have your woman, Will Brennan, but I wouldn’t tell you if I did. I have you and it’s time for you to pay.” “Give me Cara, set her free and you can do what you like with me.” His voice rang true pitched with such powerful love that I moved across the open winter grass with speed, stepping out so that he would see me. Lightning flared again and silhouetted me against the stormy sky.

“I’m here, Will.” I kept my voice calm with effort. “This bitch never had me.” Joy illuminated his face and lightened some of the harsh lines. He turned toward me and I felt a rush of love brush me, sent like a benediction. In that moment, I felt his love, his relief, and his unwavering commitment to beat Sallie now that I was here, alive and whole. “You’re here,” Sallie hissed, angry as a rattlesnake teased with a stick. “You should have stayed away and you could have lived. Now I’ll kill you too just for putting your nose into this.” Anger ignited in me and I started forward, planning to bitch slap her until her head rang like church bells. Before I took two full strides, she raised her arm and gestured toward me as if she backhanded me. I thought it was bluff until the impact sent me reeling. Her force hit me so hard that I flew about ten feet backward and landed hard against the ground. I opened my mouth to shout but nothing came out. The impact knocked the wind right out of me. “Leave her be!” Will shouted, provoked now into rage. “Do anything to Cara again and I swear to kill you if I have to tear your head off your body with my hands.” The English bitch laughed again as I struggled to gain my feet again. “You’ll do nothing. I am stronger than you, Will Brennan, and I will kill you, here and now. Tell your lady farewell if you like but now you will pay for all you caused me.” “What did I ever do to you?” he asked, standing just behind part of the monument that featured what looked to me like a baptismal fount although it could not be. Maybe it was just a vase but it stood waist high. “Why do you hate me? You’re the one who stole my mortal life from me and that’s more wrong that I ever did to you. Did you love me? You won’t tell me that and make me believe it.” I managed to sit up in the grass and as I collected myself, she turned so that I could see her face. In a flash of lightning she looked more human that I had ever seen her, features softening as she opened her lips to explain why she taunted and haunted Will. “All of it was your fault,” she said, her voice less harsh now. “If you hadn’t come from Ireland and if I had never let you into my bed, I wouldn’t have made you a vampire. If you never came to me, then he would not have come following after you and things would have been different.”

Will wrinkled up his face and I knew he didn’t understand what she babbled about any more than I did. “You make no sense,” he said. “Who came following after me? Do you mean a constable or something? Whatever happened to you had nothing to do with me.” “It was your fault,” Sallie answered him back. “He only came to find you but I lied and told him you were dead, hung at Tyburn Tree. He had such sweetness to him that I craved him and I did what I never did with you or any of the others – I gave him my heart.” I did not understand any of it but Will’s face darkened so I thought he must grasp some part of it. “Who are you talking about?” he growled. “Tell me now, damn you.” All of the softness in her face convulsed and her face became a hard, terrible mask. “It was your brother, Seamus. I called him ‘Jamie’ and I loved him well. I made him a vampire too so I could keep him, so we could love each other for all eternity but he proved to be a faithless bastard like you and he left me.” I found my feet just as Will swayed on his with shock. He grasped the edge of the vase with both hands for support. “Are you telling me that my brother Seamus came to you and you turned him into a vampire too?” His roar echoed louder than the next rumble of thunder. “I will kill you, you bloody, selfish bitch.” Sallie tossed back that mane of blonde hair. “No, no, Will. I’ll take your life and hers too. All these long years, these centuries, I bided my time. As long as you and your brother remained unhappy, I could tolerate it. When you found the joy, the love that I wanted, then I realized it was your fault, all of it. I vowed to kill you.” I took a few steps toward them although I had no idea what to do. I thought maybe I could step between them, distract her or something. My head still whirled from being tossed across the grass but I couldn’t get there fast enough. Will looked terrible in the dim light. “You know where to find my brother. Tell me.” “I won’t,” Sallie told him. “You can search for him in hell with this Cara at your side. Never fear, I’ll send him to you soon enough and you can burn together.” With the force and speed of a tornado, Sallie reached out and grasped Will. She bent her mouth to the side of his throat and sank

her teeth deep into his jugular vein. I heard his sharp cry as she did and I realized that she meant to kill him by draining his blood. Unless I could do something to stop her, she would. **** He could not bear much more. First he thought Cara went home and that separation all but destroyed him. He missed her as soon as the car drove out of sight and wanted her back. He almost ran after her but then, remembering why he sent her away, he restrained himself. Then after he bought a phone so that he could call her, he could not reach her and he worried that Sallie might have taken her away. Will worried until he called her mother who had not heard from her daughter at all. Then he called Cara again but she did not answer the phone. He thought then that she must be dead, believed that until Sallie appeared and claimed to have her. Will would have gone to hell if necessary to find her. He headed for Overton Park with speed but when he arrived, he saw no one but Sallie. He realized then that she duped him and he had fallen for the trick. Heartsick and terrified down to the soles of his boots, he thought he had lost everything, even his pride. Just as he begged for information, Cara came out of the shadows and joy drowned him. She was alive and whole. He would do anything to keep her that way and he steeled himself to die if necessary. He thought he probably would but he had to know why Sallie hated him so much before he did. When she said his brother’s name, his heart twisted until it hurt. He believed her, though, because her emotion speaking of Seamus was genuine. In moments, he took in the reality that his brother came to find him that Seamus thought he had been executed, and that Sallie took him into her bed. Will struggled to accept that hard-hearted, jaded Sallie fell in love and that when spurned; she sulked for centuries until he found happiness. Seamus, the little brother of his heart, lived. Shock reverberated through his soul much like a musket ball once echoed through his body. He had been shot just the once, on the Dover road during a robbery gone bad but Will remembered very well how it felt. This news tore a large hole through his heart with just as much pain as the ball ripped through his side.

Thinking of Seamus, he failed to see Sallie lunge at him and he did not realize what she meant to do until her teeth fastened into his flesh. Will knew then she meant to drain him and that she would not stop until he died, empty. He could do nothing and he doubted that Cara could. She would die and then Seamus. If he had any shred of comfort, it was that he would see them both in hell, where Sallie sent them all.

Chapter Eleven One time when I was barely in my teens, we were up in western Oklahoma at my uncle’s house. He lived way out on those flat, open plains and from his front porch you couldn’t see anything but prairie. A storm blew up and we sat there, watching as the wind stilled. A black line of clouds advanced from the southwest and a tornado, slender and graceful as a cowboy’s lariat dropped down. It moved like a malignant finger back and forth over the open country. We could see dust boiling up where it touched down and as it approached, we did nothing. We sat, too stunned to move as it wreaked havoc and then, just as fast as it appeared, it dissipated away. I remember that strange sense of helplessness that immobilized us. “There wasn’t anything we could do,” Uncle Raymond said as he lit an unfiltered Camel with a match scratched between his fingers. “We couldn’t stop it.” I felt that same terrible thing when I watched Sallie attack Will. I froze as she bit him. She latched onto him the way a snapping turtle will do a stick or even your hand if you are fool enough to stick it within reach. She meant to kill him and for a second, I didn’t think I could stop her. I still ached from the force of that blow she dealt with without even touching me. Then I realized I could not just stand still and watch Will die. I remembered that as a vampire I possessed super human strength and I reminded myself that love is a force to be reckoned with. More than that, I just plain got pissed off and everyone knows not to mess with a Texas girl when she’s mad. I sprang, feeling the power in my legs and muscles and reached the monument in seconds. I grasped Sallie by the shoulders and pulled but she resisted. One hand clawed at me and drew a few drops of blood. I heard her snarl at me and felt her attempt to throw me off but this time, I had time to be ready to resist. I drew deep from my inner well and pulled up love. I dredged up courage. I pulled out every memory I made with Will, took strength from each exchanged word of love, and let every physical touch we ever share fuel me with power.

I felt electrified as I hooked my hands over her shoulders and jerked with enough force that I pulled her free of Will. Sallie turned to fight me but I used her own trick back on her. I used my mental powers to toss her about fifteen feet away. She smacked into a monument of some general riding a granite horse with enough force that it knocked her out. She crumpled into a heap at the base but I know how fast vampires recover. I didn’t have very long so I turned to Will. When I removed Sallie from him, he had fallen to the ground, unconscious. I knelt down beside him and touched his hand. It felt like ice, so cold that it burned me and I shivered. His neck where she fed had bled but now nothing but a trickle ran from the wounds. Jerking her away ripped his flesh but it would heal. “Will, honey, can you hear me?” I asked, my voice urgent. He did not move or respond but lay too still. His skin, usually a translucent white, looked ashen and his face remained slack. I could not search for a pulse – vampires don’t have one – but fear coiled inside me like a snake preparing to strike. I thought he could be gone already but I leaned over him, kissed his slack lips and babbled at him some more. “Will Brennan, do you hear me?” I shrieked. “Please, if you love me, if you ever loved me, do something. Please, please, don’t leave me.” Nothing changed so I started to sing, tears raining down my face as I sang the song I did at our wedding, the beautiful and tender Time In A Bottle. Just as I hit the refrain, his eyes cracked open a little. I stopped singing and said his name. “Will?” His lips moved and I read the shape of the word but I could not hear it. “Aye.” I didn’t know what to ask – he obviously wasn’t all right and he seemed too weak to tell me what to do. I delved into his mind instead and plucked an idea from there. Whether or not it would work didn’t matter but I had to try. My fingers dug deep into his front jeans pocket and extracted the pocketknife he always carried. It was a Barlow knife, my Grandpa Riley’s, which my dad gave Will on our first visit home together. He carried it always since then and kept the blade razor sharp. I knew that knife well because I watched it in my dad and grandfather’s hand all my life. I had seen that knife whittle wood,

serve as a makeshift screwdriver, cut twine, and even clean fingernails. Both of them put that Barlow to use in the garden, doing home repairs, even in the kitchen. I now would use it for something it had never done before. I pulled open the larger of the two blades and scored a two inch line between my elbow and wrist. Blood welled up immediately and I lowered my arm to Will’s mouth. If he was not yet too far gone, the sucking instinct, the same one that makes babies nurse, should kick in and I could keep him alive until I got help. My blood stained his lips a brighter red than any lipstick and for a sinking, awful moment I thought he would not taste it. He stirred a little and his half-slit eyes widened another fraction. “Come on, baby,” I said. “Drink some blood. Please, Will.” His lips pursed as if for a kiss and then he suckled. I could feel his mouth against my arm, wet against the pain of the slice. At first his effort felt feeble but as the life sustaining liquid flowed from my veins into him, he swallowed more. I could sense the energy going into him and although he remained too weak to talk, I felt the shift. He would live for a little longer now but I needed help. To get it, I had to take him home. After I stripped off the T-shirt I wore and wrapped it around my arm, the bleeding slowed down. The last thing I needed to do now would be pass out from my own blood loss. Once stanched, though, the bleeding stopped. With that same amazing strength I used to pull Sallie away, I picked Will up across my shoulders and carried him to the car. I glanced back where she still lay, stunned and out at the base of the statue and reckoned it would not be long until she stirred. If I did not get us out of here fast, she would nail us. Will was in no condition to fight now and I wasn’t either. Thunder rumbled again, closer now and I knew that the storm would hit soon with full force. The other thing I knew, however, is that I was going to get the bitch. For now Will was the focus and once I tucked his large frame into my small back seat, I took off like champion horses from the starting gate. I rolled through the night darkened streets of Memphis with such speed that I half expected to see red revolving lights from a police cruiser in my rear view mirror at any moment. My other fear was that Sallie might follow. No one pursued me and I made it home.

Malachi must have heard the car because he came out to meet me. When I climbed out of the car, shirtless and stained with my own blood, he halted and stared. His eyes grew enormous and his lips fumbled as he tried to ask what happened. “Will’s hurt,” I shouted. “That bitch almost drained him of blood. Can you get that doctor you told me about, Malachi? Call him or go get him. Tell him Will is going to require some blood transfusions.” The old man hesitated and then as I shouldered Will to bring him inside, he joined me. “Can you carry him alone?” I could and would. “Yes. My purse is on the seat in the car and my phone is in it if you need it to call.” I made it upstairs to our bedroom with Will and put him on the bed. His body felt as chill as ice but he moaned as I stripped away his clothing. I couldn’t do much else until the doctor arrived, if he came at all but I did wash the wound in his neck. I talked to Will and sang little snatches of songs that I knew he liked. Time suspended as I waited, doing everything I could to tether Will to existence and not the blackness of death. For the first time since I heard the bombshell Sallie dropped, I wondered about his brother. Seamus, I recalled, was his youngest brother, the one he said ‘thought the sun shone out of my arse’. If Sallie spoke truth, then Seamus was not dead and long buried but a vampire like us. The full impact of what that would mean to Will sunk into me with the slow certainty of water put on to boil. He had someone of his own now and that would mean an incredible lot. It was complicated, though. Finding Seamus Brennan might prove difficult if I could not get his location from Sallie. I intended to kill her. If I didn’t she would not stop until Will, young Seamus, and me were all dead. I thought about that during the long time that stretched out until the Dr. Lafe Bishop arrived. Malachi ushered the doctor into the bedroom with enough pomp and ceremony for a high school graduation. I liked him on sight, mature but not old. He came in with such calm that I felt some of my fears ease. I wasn’t quite as happy when he insisted that I leave while he examined Will and started treatment. Then I looked down and realized I wore no shirt, that dried blood stained my skin and other clothing, and excused myself.

After a long, hot shower with lots of scrubbing, I dressed in the garments Malachi thoughtfully left for me. I slipped back into our bedroom and found it changed now into a facsimile of a hospital room. A bag of blood hung on an IV pole and connected with Will’s right arm. “How is he?” I asked, my voice cracking with the question. Dr. Bishop looked up and shot me a small smile. “He’s holding his own. He’s on his second unit of blood and appears to respond well to it. I have never seen anyone suffer a drain like that and live but I believe Will may very well do it.” Relief surged through me and I sighed. He wasn’t out of the woods but he had a good chance. That made me so weak-kneed that I sank into the nearest chair. “How many drained vampires have you seen?” I had to know although the answer would probably upset me. “Six,” his voice emerged dry as an August afternoon in a Texas cotton field. “They all died, too – if you can call the end to an undead existence death - but I think Will is going to survive. All indications are good.” “I’m glad,” I said and I was, more than I could express with any words. “Do you know why, though?” “I think your quick actions made the difference,” Dr. Bishop said. “Judging from the cut on your arm, I assume that you fed him?” I glanced down at the slender slice I inflicted on myself. “Yes, I did. May I sit with him?” “By all means, please do. He roused once and asked for you. I did sedate him to help him rest but soon enough I think he’ll wake for you again.” I rejected the chair beside the bed and settled onto the mattress. I faced Will and with a light touch, I lifted his hand into mine. It felt cool but more normal, not the terrible Arctic cold I felt earlier. Then I cupped my hand against his cheek in wordless bliss. He looked terrible but far better than he had back at Overton Park. “Will,” I whispered his name not because I wanted to wake him but because I loved the feel of it on my tongue. “I love you and you are going to be just fine. I hope that you can hear me because I want you to know how very much I love you.” Although he did not stir, I wanted to share with him beautiful words to express how I felt. I lacked his knowledge of Shakespeare

and although I knew more than a few love songs, I wanted something different. I thought back to my college lit days, to those heavy Norton textbooks, and I remembered the lines on marriage from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. More than once I heard bride and groom recite the words and although I could not remember them all, I spoke the ones that I could. “You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore. You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days. Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God,” I paused, letting the words pour over my aching heart and then I said, “That’s how it is for us, Will. We will be together no matter what happens, forever.” His closed eyelids looked as fragile as butterfly wings and as I spoke, I saw movement beneath them. Hope soared in my heart like a hawk over the piney woods of East Texas and I kept talking, babbling any words of love I could summon until Will opened his eyes. I met that beautiful blue gaze and smiled, “Hi, honey,” I said as I bent down to touch my lips to his, gentle and soft. His lips moved and I read the question he asked, where, and answered it. “We’re at home. She hurt you very badly but you’re going to be fine. I love you, Will.” “Mo anam cara, I love you too,” he murmured, audible but barely. “I thought you might be dead.” Tears burned in my eyes. Rubbing salt into them wouldn’t have hurt more. “I’m not, though, and neither are you.” “Seamus too?” he asked and even as frail as he was at that moment, I heard the hopefulness in his voice. “Seamus isn’t dead either,” I said. “Hush, now. You are very weak and you need to rest.” He attempted to nod. “Aye, I know. Stay here, Cara. Don’t go out again.” Those few words sapped what little strength he had marshaled and his eyes drooped. He asked me the one thing I could not promise not to do and I wasn’t going to lie to him again so I said, “Hush, Will.” He wanted to say more but lacked the energy.

I ached to tell him what I meant to do for him, for myself, and for his brother but I was short on courage so I didn’t. Instead, I held his hand and sang softly to him until his eyes shut again. “He’s better,” I said to Dr. Bishop when he came into the room to check on Will. “He woke up and said a few words.” “Good,” Dr. Bishop said. “He’s very weak at the moment, I’m afraid. Vampires heal quickly; though and so I think he’ll improve even more soon.” Outside, the storm hit with tremendous power. Even within those sturdy stone walls I could hear the wind buffet the castle and howl like a raging beast. I slipped my hand free of his and went to the window. I pulled the drape aside to peer out and saw rain falling in wild sheets, heavy and fast. Lightning illuminated the sky like a Fourth of July fireworks display and thunder boomed like a beast on a rampage. Behind me the clock chimed the hour and I counted. It was just four o’clock in the morning which left more than three hours until the winter dawn. I had time to do what I needed and so I kissed Will once more before I slipped out, intent on the task before me. I spoke aloud some of the few lines from Macbeth that I once memorized because they were appropriate even though just two of us, not three would meet. “When shall we three meet again, in thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurly-burly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won.” The battle with Sallie must be won and I had to be the one to do it. I went downstairs to beg, borrow, or steal what I needed from Malachi and then I would go out into the storm to find her. Then I would end her reign of terror, one way or another.

Chapter Twelve Back when I was still in elementary school my daddy bought me my first watch and I was proud of that thing. It was a Minnie Mouse watch and even then, they were rare. Kids at school liked it and some of them were just so green-eyed jealous that they tried to take it away from me. Susan Davis and some of the other girls ganged up on me in the girls’ restroom one day and told me I had to give it to them. I refused and walked out. Over the next few days, they kept after me about the watch. I wasn’t about to hand it over to them and they didn’t like it. On about the third or fourth day of this, four of them surrounded me there in the bathroom and told me to hand it over. By then, I had had enough. I was done and so I walked right over to Susan. I slapped her across her fat little cheeks and she started bawling. The big bully suddenly was just a sniveling little girl. Then I turned to the others and said, “Anybody else want a piece of me?” They didn’t and no one ever asked me to give them my watch – or anything else – again. I still remember how powerful I felt in that moment when I decided enough was enough. I felt the same way when I walked out to my car to go find Sallie. My plan was simple. If I could find her before dawn I would track her back to wherever she spent her days and then kill her. I had to do it and failing just was not an option. If I didn’t succeed, then we would all die, my love, his brother, and I. Rain soaked me as soon as I stepped off the porch but I didn’t care. I ran across the grass to my own car and climbed in. I turned the key and backed out with care because I could see very little through the torrential rains. Then I opened my mind to find Sallie, a little easier now that she had drawn blood when she scratched me. As I searched, I began to pick up on her and she was pissed. Her dark malevolence thrust out at me but I put up a mental wall to block the brunt of its force. Rage streaked the blackness of her thoughts with fire engine red and in my mind; I heard the echo of emergency sirens. They weren’t real, just a manifestation of her brain meant to demonstrate to me just how serious the situation had

become. Before I slammed her into the monument, I had just been part of her vendetta because of Will. Now Sallie Hawkins targeted me for my own sins. I pulled out onto the main road and headed off to Memphis. As I wondered how I would find her, I realized that if we, as vampires, liked Beale Street so much that maybe Sallie did too. From what Will told me, she ran an inn back in his highwayman days. Inns offered a lot of the same creature comforts as Beale Street – booze, babes, food, and maybe some music so it would be familiar territory for her. By the same token, she could be at any bar in the greater Memphis area and finding her would be all but impossible. My instincts, even when I was still a human girl, seldom failed me and I headed for the bright lights of Beale Street through the rain. If my hunch proved right, I would feel her stronger when I got closer. And if I didn’t, then it would be time to come up with Plan B, whatever it might be. Despite the nasty weather, Beale Street looked busy and I realized it must be Saturday night. Crowds thronged the street and many sported umbrellas or hats to keep off the rain. Others walked past in their drenched clothing and didn’t seem to care. I could understand that - drink enough Walk Me Downs and being cold is just a condition. I ducked into a doorway so that I could concentrate and gathered all my senses to find her. After a few minutes, I knew she was here and that I could find her. It would be easier than tracking coons back home in Texas. She left impressions where she passed just like a raccoon leaves footprints in the mud. I followed her sign and within thirty minutes, I found her in one of the smaller clubs. This one wasn’t one that I had ever visited with Will but I slipped inside. I hung toward the back because I didn’t want her to see me. Surprising her was vital to my plan. I watched her as she flirted with men and danced with wild rhythms. She fed on their energy, sucked it into her soul so that she would be stronger when she faced me. To even the playing field, I followed a donor to the restrooms and took what I needed so my own strength wouldn’t fail at a crucial moment. She expected me, I could read that much, but she remained unaware of me. Her focus on the men and the dance distracted her and I felt glad. If she knew I stood in the same room, she might

attack me here and now. I wouldn’t stand a chance if she drained me. No one was here to give me enough blood to survive or to take me home. I would just become one of many unsolved murders in a big city. Time dawdled as I waited. Timing mattered here. Sallie would have to leave the bar with enough time to reach wherever she called home before full sunrise and I had to follow her. I also had to catch her in the first moments of repose to have a fighting chance at destroying her. If I waited too long, I would have to lie down myself and wait until dark fell. She would be stronger then and my chances less. Around six thirty in the morning, after most of the crowds had thinned out to nothing, Sallie stalked out of the bar without a word or by your leave to anyone. That gave me my cue to follow so I trailed ten feet behind her on the sidewalk outside. I saw her get into a vehicle, a dark blue SUV and I ran like a deer in November to my car so I could follow. Full daylight wouldn’t hit for another thirty or thirty five minutes but I got a nervous ball of ice down in my stomach wondering if my plan would work out or not. I thought I might lose her as we traveled through the early morning streets of Memphis but even though traffic picked up with every intersection I crossed, I kept up and followed her into the Hickory Hill neighborhood. I slowed to a creep when she pulled into the driveway of a brick house with a two car garage. It reminded me a lot of the house where fictional astronaut Anthony Nelson lived with his genie, Jeannie, in Cocoa Beach, Florida in that old series, I Dream of Jeannie. This house, though still nice enough, wasn’t quite as wellkept nor was the neighborhood. Urban blight touched everything with a light hand so far but I could see that it would overcome another once nice residential area within a decade. As I pulled to the curb more than a block away, I watched Sallie park and let herself into the house. I snuck a glance east and realized that dawn would arrive within minutes so I turned off the engine and stepped out. I picked up the bag that I prepared at home, an old camping backpack loaded down with everything that I thought I might possibly need. I carried a hatchet, a big hunting knife, a huge hammer, and an 18 inch long steel stake. I think they are used for shoring up concrete forms when pouring fresh cement but I picked up

more than a week earlier, thinking if things came to this conclusion, that it would be ideal. I felt odd tripping down the street with my bag of tools at that time of morning but I schooled myself to act natural. Hell, I might just be a neighbor coming to call and have a cup of Joe with my friend. I walked up the driveway with my nerves playing heavy metal music, and put my hand on the front door. It wasn’t locked which I thought either meant I was lucky or that Sallie knew I was on my way. Before I entered, I let my mind touch Will. Through our connection, I knew that he rested but that he felt me. I sent love to him and hoped that he remained too sedated to know what I was about to attempt. I stepped into the house, walking with a light tread and listened. I heard nothing so I advanced but with slow measure. I decided that the door to the right of the entry might be the master bedroom so I stepped that way. The louvered door remained open so I peeked through it to see Sallie. She lay on her back on the bed, above the covers, with arms crossed over her chest the same way that Will often did. Must be the quintessential vampire pose, I thought and almost giggled. I’ve been known to do that when I’m nervous but this would not be a good time so I swallowed my mirth. Hate is a strong word and a hurtful one. I’ve never been much of one to hate but as I approached that bed, I hated Sallie Hawkins for all she had done. Most of all, I loathed her for what she did to Will. If I hadn’t acted quick and done the right thing, he would have been gone from me. I ran down a mental list of Sallie’s many sins, ranging from first making Will into what he was and for concealing Seamus’ existence from him for so many years. By the time I stood above her bed with a hammer and the metal stake in my hands, I thought I was ready to kill her. I stared at her chest and wished that her crossed arms were just a little bit lower. Their current position might be in the way of the stake. I tried to remember back to high school health classes and the one anatomy class I almost flunked in college to figure out where her heart should be. If memory served, I needed to aim for the center of her chest, high enough to hit somewhere between those breasts which were just too darn perky for someone over five hundred years old.

If I aimed just above where her arms rested, it could work but as I stood there, it dawned on me that this might be harder than I expected. Even though I felt like I hated her worse than turnip greens or lima beans, I never had killed another human or anything that was once human. I had hunted and taken game but it wasn’t the same as when you planned to eat what you killed. This felt different and very heavy but I knew that if I didn’t do it, Sallie would kill me first, Will, and Seamus last of all. So I steeled myself to get it done. I pulled that stake from the bag with one hand, lifted out the hammer with the other. My hands trembled as I put that foot and a half long metal stake into place, one end resting against her flesh. I held it there with my left and raised my right with the hammer to wield the first blow. When the metal speared into her body, I felt the reverberation all the way up both arms. Sallie’s eyes popped open with the speed of a kid’s jack in the box and bored into mine with malice. Even as she glared at me, her body writhed the same way that a night crawler does when you put it onto a hook for fishing bait. I whacked the stake with the hammer again, three more times for good measure. She made a truly terrible sound, somewhere between groaning, growling, and mewling rolled into one. Some blood seeped out around the bottom of the stake but I kept my eyes on her face. So far, she didn’t seem to be dying even though I felt confident that the stake pierced her heart. I never asked Will how long it might take so I had no idea. She might expire any moment now or this could go on for hours, which I didn’t have. A bank of windows along one wall faced east and I could see the glow of the sun as it began to peek over the horizon. I felt that sucking, aching fatigue that came now with each new dawn and I knew I had just a little time until I would either start feeling bad or collapse for my own rest. A swell of dizziness surged over me and I almost gave into it. I thought of Will and found more strength. I swung the hammer with more force and the stake shoved deeper into her chest. She still wiggled and I realized that I might have to do something more. Some of the old lore about vampires swore they won’t die until you cut off their head so I put down the hammer. Sallie wasn’t going anywhere at the moment; she remained impaled on the stake so I reached into the bag for my hatchet.

When my dad or my granny killed a chicken or two for supper I never wanted to watch when they detached the head. Now I had to detach a head that was many sizes larger and I lacked much stomach for the task. I leaned over her and moved in closer so that I could try and she lifted one arm. She raked me from my right ear to my chin along the side of my face with her talon like fingernails. I gasped with pain and felt the warmth of my own blood trickle down my face. That enraged me enough that I lifted the hatchet and with all the superhuman powerful force that I possessed, I brought it down across her throat. My first stroke hit home with a horrible thwack. I could see through layers of skin and flesh. Just as I reared back to strike again, I heard a whoosh and then a pop. As I stood there, stunned, Sallie burst into flame. Eerie blue flames that reminded me of natural gas erupted from the top of her half severed head to the bottoms of her feet which now curled like those of the Wicked Witch of the East when the house landed on top of her. I could hear the whisper of the fire that burned and a crackle as her skin ignited. I had never seen spontaneous combustion before but I would bet my last dollar that was what I watched now. Unlike the movies where the dead vampire turns to dust or ages into dry bones, Sallie burnt to nothing but ashes in a very short time. The fire roared with such intensity that I stepped back all the way to the bedroom door. Heat wavered in the air between me and the bed that had become her funeral pyre but nothing else burned. It burned blue, like the soft shade of a gas flame almost pretty but intense. In minutes, nothing remained of what had been Sallie Hawkins but soot and ash. Smoke puffed from the remains and although the bed appeared scorched, nothing else in the room had been touched by the flames. The reek of burning filled my nose with a rank stink and I dropped the hatchet to the floor. Ding dong, the witch is dead, I thought, feeling very woozy as I backed out of the bedroom. If I did not rest soon I would be ill. Already, a headache pounded at my brain with powerful might. I staggered into the living room, away from the stench and collapsed onto the couch. I wanted to tell Will that we were safe now but even as I tried reaching for him with my mind, the darkness swirled around me like fog and I let myself sink into its depths.

With my last burst of consciousness, I touched my mind to his and knew that he fared the same, no better, and no worse. Until tonight, that would have to be enough. **** He struggled to think, searching through layers of weakness, pain, darkness, and mental fog to make sense of anything. Weakness covered him like a blanket and he could not seem to throw it aside. When he tried very hard, Will remembered most of what happened and that Sallie had all but destroyed him. Cara had been there and he thought that she pulled him back from the edge of an abyss that would have been his destruction. Although he reached for her both with his mind and with one feeble, palsied hand, he could not find her. She should be here, at his side, but she was absent. A dim memory played across his weary consciousness and he remembered her touch, a snatch of song. Some hint of danger lingered, too, and he worried for her. Something was wrong, he knew it and some other thing about his brother, about Seamus, niggled but he could not grasp it. She could tell him and would. He needed her and nothing more. “Cara,” he said with all the strength he could muster. “Where’s Cara?” He yearned for the touch of her hand and required her presence. Will wanted to hear her voice and to feel her gentle lips caress him. He attempted to sit up but failed. “Don’t do that, Will,” a familiar voice said somewhere above him. “You’ll hurt yourself more or pull the transfusion line loose again. Dr. Bishop’s gone home for now and I can’t fix it if you do.” That voice was one he should know and after some reflection, he placed it as Malachi, his manservant. “Malachi, where’s Cara?” he gasped, pulling every scrap of strength together that he could so that the question would be audible. “I want Cara.” “She’s not here,” the old man said. “its day so she can’t come home until nightfall. I am sure she’s safe and that she will be back as soon as she can. She sat with you most of the night.”

Those sweet remembered moments were true, then. Cara had been with him. That should have eased his anxiety but her absence fueled it instead. He used the last of his flagging energy open his eyes to ask, “Where is she?” Malachi’s face filled his vision, blurry at first and then cleared. Concern sharpened his aged features and although he hesitated, Will received the answer, plucked it from the older man’s brain and would have bellowed ‘no’ if he could. Like some martyred saint, his Cara had gone to kill Sallie Hawkins. By now, he feared she must be gone, that she must exist no longer. That explained why he could not tap into her essence and tears scalded his throat before burning his eyes. As he slipped back into darkness, a blackness he thought aided by drugs, Will whispered his favorite endearment for her, “mo anam cara.”Unless she existed, he didn’t care if he did.

Chapter Thirteen Back home in Rusk when someone you know dies, there are certain rituals that must happen. As word spreads, everyone rallies together. There is always some older woman who bakes a cake, another who will fix a ham. Somebody goes down to the supermarket to buy a meat and cheese deli tray. Others go to order a plant or some flowers. By the time of the funeral, just about everyone in town has been down to the funeral home to sign the book. Through it all, no matter how old or young the deceased was, there is a sense of disbelief. That suspended reality hovers around if the death is close, a family member or good friend, for a few days longer. You pick up the phone to call them and then remember you can’t. Maybe you fix their favorite dessert before it hits you that they won’t be around to eat any. It is a surreal feeling. I woke with that kind of detachment, that strange feeling that what happened could not be real that evening after I dispatched Sallie. As I roused in that unfamiliar house, I panicked for the first moments because I had no idea where I was or why. Memory poured over my head the way I used to drown my waffles in syrup and I remembered everything. That raunchy odor of something burned hit my nose and I thought I just might vomit. I got up and shut the bedroom door all the way but I wasn’t going back into that room for love or money. I wanted to get out of this place but I wondered just how Sallie came to live here. None of the pictures on the walls looked like anyone she would know and when I nosed around a little, I found out that the house belonged to a professor from the University of Memphis. Dr. Paul Zabrocki leased the place to Sallie while off on a sabbatical year of study. I found the signed lease and all of the paperwork tucked into a folder on the kitchen counter As a professor of anthropology, I thought Dr. Z would have been intrigued if not outraged if he ever learned who he leased the family home at the end of the first semester. I hoped he wouldn’t mind too much about the damaged bed and that he wouldn’t dig too deep into the pile of ashes stacked there. Maybe his insurance would cover any damages. I could have Will send some money to cover it anonymously too, later.

I gathered up my supplies and started to leave, eager to get home to Will when I realized that Sallie might have left some clue about the whereabouts of Seamus. I searched a little but when I found nothing, I realized that any hints where we might find him probably vanished with her. It was just before six o’clock on that January evening when I slipped outside and hurried back to my car. I extended my mind toward Will and touched him. I could not tap into his consciousness the way I wanted but I could feel that he lived and sense that he felt stronger. The overwhelming sense that I received was that he wanted me. His worry stretched over the miles and I felt his agony that he feared me dead. My face hurt where Sallie sliced it in her death throes. When I lifted my hand to touch my cheek, it felt tender and I could feel the dried blood. I glanced down at my stained clothing but I had nothing to change into and I wasn’t in the mood to go shopping. I headed home with speed, running traffic lights and passing cars in my hurry. As soon as I pulled up in front of the house, I saw that lights burned in our bedroom. Another car, a little Fiat, sat near where Will’s big Cadillac could normally be seen and I guessed maybe it belonged to Dr. Bishop. I streaked across the yard and let myself in. I paused in the entry hall and listened but the house seemed quiet. “Cara?” Malachi stepped into the hallway and stared at me. “Is that really you?” “Yeah, of course it is,” I said. “How’s Will?” I should have known from the somber expression that weighted down his face but he shook his head and said, “He’s not worse but he’s no better. Dr. Bishop is with him now.” Sobs tightened my chest and crawled up my throat. Tears threatened to leak from my eyes but I blinked them away. Crying wouldn’t help anything but I trembled inside. I destroyed Sallie and I thought he would be much improved now. I took the stairs two and three at a time, almost stumbling in my hurry and burst into the room. Will looked better. His color was not the sick and terrible gray any longer but his own fair complexion. I stopped at the foot of the bed and Dr. Bishop looked up at me, his eyes narrow with concern. “How is he?” I asked.

He sighed and I heard the wind of a thousand storms echo in that sound. “I don’t know. I thought he would have responded more by now. He’s had multiple units of blood but he remains very weak. I’m a little concerned because vampires usually recover quickly. I can’t quite figure it out but I’m glad you are here.” His quiet tone scared me because it was the way doctors talked when hope faded, not increased. I could sit down and weep or I could do something that might help, so I did. “Me, too,” I said with total honesty. I glanced up and saw that the IV with the blood bag was gone. “Does he have enough blood?” He nodded. “Yes. There’s not much more I can do at this point. If you’re comfortable with it, I’ll go on. I have other patients to see.” “I’m fine with it,” I said and meant it. I didn’t even want to know if his other patients were human or vampire. “If we need you, I can always have Malachi call you.” “Good luck,” he said as he patted my shoulder in passing. “You might want to wash up a bit or you’ll scare him.” I wondered. Now that I couldn’t see my reflection, I hadn’t bothered to look in any mirrors but he could be right. I grabbed a clean pair of jeans and one of my favorite sweatshirts. After I changed, I went to the bathroom to wash my face. The soap stung on the open cut but I didn’t care. I brushed my hair and left it loose, the way Will liked it most of all and went back to sit beside my husband. Although I could have parked myself in the chair beside the bed, I wanted to be even closer than that so I sat down on the edge of the bed. My leg touched his still body and I reached for his hand. I cradled his limp right hand in mine; stroking each finger with the lightest touch I could manage. Beneath my fingertips, his flesh seemed to be at the right temperature and he rested easy. He shouldn’t be asleep at night, though, so I moved from his hand to touch his face. I bent low to touch my mouth to his in a light, fleeting kiss, then another with more substance. “Will, honey, I’m back and it is over,” I murmured. He did not move so I talked to him, just prattling words of love. When that failed to have an effect, I decided it was time to try music. My Gibson stood on its stand across the room but to fetch it, I would have to untangle my hand from Will’s and I didn’t want to leave him. So I decided I would sing accapella but it had to be just

the right song. I knew probably dozens of love songs so I searched my mental memory banks. I thought about Madonna’s song, Rain and considered Could I Have This Dance by Anne Murray, even pondered singing Hank William’s bright, bouncy tune, Say Hey, Good-Lookin’ but rejected them all. They were good songs but all failed to express just what I wanted. As I sat beside Will, turning over my deep emotions, I found the song – Love Me Tender. Those rich, powerful lyrics would work. I began singing, the pace and tempo Elvis style, my voice more like that of Norah Jones who covered it. I pulled up what I felt from the bottom of my soul and put it into the song. All the time I sang, I watched Will’s face and waited for a flicker of response, for something. I still held his right hand and twice, I felt slight movement. Just as I sang the refrain for the last time, he opened his eyes. He blinked twice before he focused but when those blue eyes found me, recognition rocketed into them. I kept my gaze locked to his and said, “Hey, I’m home.” His mouth stretched and widened into the sweetest, biggest smile I ever saw on anyone’s face and he spoke, “Deo gratis. Cara, I thought you must be gone forever.” Will’s voice resonated with his normal timbre and he sounded like himself, a great improvement from the weak tone he last used to me. Relief filled all the empty spaces of my heart and salved some of the worry. “I’m alive or whatever we call it,” I said. “But Sallie is not.” I let that news sink into his consciousness. His eyes broadened and increased in size. He pushed up on both elbows in an effort to sit so I helped him rise up just enough to prop against the pillows. “You killed her, then.” It was not a question but I nodded. Admiration and surprise intertwined in his voice as he added, “its over.” “Yes, Will.” He looked at me as if I had just bested the meanest bully on the playground and I felt the warmth of his respect touch me within. “We’re a pair,” he said with quiet pride and joy, “I would have died to keep you safe and I almost did. You did what had to be done and you lived. So did I because of what you did. Mo anam cara, you

are an amazing woman and I’m glad you are mine. I dreamt my lady came and found me dead – strange dream that gives a dead man leave to think! And breathed such life with kisses in my lips that I revived and was an emperor. Ah me, how sweet is love itself possessed when but love shadows are so rich in joy Romeo’s words hit me with force, Romeo speaking just before he learned that his lady Juliet was believed dead. “Act 5 isn’t it?” I asked, my voice cracking with emotion, “We have a happier ending than he did.” “Aye,” his voice whispered like a wind through tall corn in summer. “We do because you had courage.” He acted like I played the hero but I didn’t feel like one. “I just did what had to be done, Will, nothing more. If I hadn’t, she wouldn’t stop until we were all three dead.” Will lifted an eyebrow at that. “Three?” I couldn’t believe he would not remember what she said about his brother. “She promised to kill me, you, and Seamus.” Hope flared in his eyes with light the way that the first lamp turned on in the evening shadows illuminates the entire room. Joy sparkled in his eyes and I saw a tear slip from one eye to roll down his cheek. “Seamus is a vampire. I thought I must have dreamed that or that it was just wishful thinking.” “It wasn’t,” I told him. “She must have loved him and he spurned her. Because he hurt her, when you became happy she came after you. She blamed you.” “I remember that now.” His expression mingled shock with awe, tempered with joy. “All that long lonely time when I thought I lived alone in the world, I wasn’t. My brother is out there somewhere, Cara, and I have blood family again.” “You do,” I said through my tears. “And you have me. I’ll help you find him but right now, you need to recover. How do you feel?” He laughed, a little. “I feel very weak, love, and I’m hungry.” “You should be both after what happened. You scared both me and Malachi half to death. Do you want some tea?” Will nodded. “I’ll take some tea with a bit of Jameson whiskey. If I do all right with that, I want a steak.”

I would get him anything he wanted but I didn’t have to. Out of the deeper shadows near the bedroom door, Malachi spoke. He must have been there all the time but I had not realized it. “I’ll fetch the tea and whiskey first,” he said, his voice no longer somber. “It’s good to see you are feeling better. I’ll be back with both in a jiffy.” He left and we stared at each other, our eyes saying things that our mouths could not put into words. In the last twenty-four hours, I stayed strong. I managed to put my emotions on hold and focus on the task that had to be accomplished. I worried about Will all the time I spent away from him but I kept it from overwhelming me or it would have eaten me alive. Now that I could see his virile strength begin to return, now that his recovery looked certain, I could release all that emotion I held back. I laid my head down across his chest and cried. I sobbed aloud with relief and happiness. I cried for every awful, terrible moment that I wanted to forget. I wept out all my tensions and I bawled away each fear that haunted me. Will’s body became my haven and I felt safe again. As I blubbered away, he lifted a hand to stroke my hair with infinite gentleness. His touch both eased and blessed me. By the time Malachi brought the tea, I cried out all the tears I had. Red-eyed and wet-faced, I curled up beside Will on the huge bed as we drank the hot tea, balm for both body and soul. I sketched for him what happened with Sallie and how, knowing that once I told him we would never speak of it again. He said little, just listened as I described that terrible trail, my actions, and that unexpected burst of fire that consumed her. I ached to make love with him but although he climbed out of bed and dressed to go have that steak, I could sense the physical frailty. I could wait. Now that he turned a corner, he would heal fast and for this night, the web of love that we spun all around us offered enough succor and sanctuary. We had many questions. As we ate the fine sirloin steaks Malachi grilled for us, Will reached out and touched my face. “What happened here?” “Sallie slashed me with her fingernails,” I told him. “It’s nothing, really.” “It will scar,” Will said.

“I don’t care. I imagine the side of your neck will, too but it doesn’t matter.” He cut another bite of meat and chewed it. “I don’t suppose that it does but they’re love scars, mo anam cara, hard won.” I smiled. “They were that.” The physical reminders of this time would remain there for all eternity but there were other marks too. Those were inner scars, emotional wounds that would heal but remain because we would remember. Just before morning came, we retired upstairs and we slept the day away in each other’s arms. At nightfall, restored and cured, he roused me for love. Will kissed me awake, his lips on my seeking answers and I gave those to him with my mouth. His lips awakened my desire and brought it to a fiery need within seconds. He kissed me with such slow deliberation that I wanted it to last forever even while his kisses made me hunger for more. His hands over my body felt as gentle as a soft spring rain but as searching as a lonely heart. As he touched me, he awakened my passion but he also venerated me until I felt like some fine object d’art or a rock super star. He conquered every physical sense so that I lay beside him, his blank canvas or his unformed clay to make what he would. I had no defenses against his caring touch that stroked me with adoration and stoked my inner fires at the same time. I could not resist nor did I want to as he pleasured me in every way with quiet need. Near death awakens a fierce survival instinct and also evokes a deep need for sexual connection, the most basic way to defy death. He had almost died in both body and immortal soul at Overton Park. I looked death in whatever incarnation comes for such as we straight in the eye and then spit in its eye. I broke the Sixth Commandment to save three lives, something I had to believe even God, at least the Old Testament Jehovah, would understand. So in recognition and in celebration I yielded to Will’s searching hands and let his fingers do what they would. He teased my throat and kissed the base of it with hot lips that seared me to the bone. His mouth tickled across my skin, fragile and light as a bee’s wings before his mouth stung, his teeth piercing my tender flesh. Those sensations raised goose bumps across my bare flesh and he nibbled my breasts, pausing long enough to kiss each

swollen nipple. That sent high voltage electricity rushing through my body. I twisted beneath him, my own hands reaching upward to touch him, to caress, to pat, to feel. Each contact reassured me that Will lived, that he beat Death and survived to celebrate life with me. As Will moved his mouth over my belly, his lips burning the soft flesh there, I lifted my own mouth to put love tattoos on the uninjured side of his throat and to stitch yet more on his chest. His manhood grew at my touch until I could feel it hard and ready just above my willing well. His tongue circled my bellybutton and made me giggle like a little girl. In between, he returned to my mouth like a honey seeking bee to a flower, kissing me with abandon and such passion that it swept me away each time. He made me feel like the beach covered by the pounding surf, the incoming tide that washed over all with power. Then he used his tongue to pleasure me, tasting and taunting me with such skill I thought I might die. Each stroke came with such tenderness, such intent to bring nothing but delight that I gave over to the rising storm and let it break over me with unrivaled joy. Sensation played over my skin and radiated outward from that inner core of my body. I became flame and I burned him, caught him in the explosion that rocketed through me with speed. My legs lifted to wrap around his body, snaring him so that he could not back away. He thrust into me with such might that I thought our combined bodies might go through the mattress to fall onto the floor. I pushed back so that we ground together and created waves of rapture that cascaded over us like an incoming tide. Just as my legs held and squeezed him, I tightened the walls of my vaginal space so that they caressed him. His uninhibited moans of glad release echoed into my ears and resonated into my soul. We hit the final peak together in an amazing impact of flesh, a pinnacle of satisfied delight. Spirals of bliss swirled me into a dizzy pocket where everything felt enchanted. We rode that high and lay twined together as it receded, leaving us sated and fulfilled. Death retreated from our thoughts, diminished and debunked by the overwhelming force of our lovemaking. We leached away any poison that Sallie might have left in us with our love and burned any lingering ill effects into ashes. We recaptured our kingdom and gained that near perfect peace we shared.

Our life belonged to us again, our hearts to one another. As I put my head on Will’s shoulder, savoring the feel of his arm around me, he whispered, “Love is begun by time and time qualifies the spark and fire of it.” I could recognize the beauty of another Will’s words but I couldn’t name the reference. He knew that and so he added, “That’s out of the King’s mouth, from Hamlet.” He carried poetry in his soul; I had music. So I sang a few lines from the only Randy Travis song I ever liked, Forever And Ever Amen, ending with a snippet of the refrain, “I’m gonna love you forever and ever, forever and ever, amen.” That promise was one that I would keep; we both would. Our love felt stronger now, tempered in the fire the way that steel is forged, tried and tested but always true. **** He never thought of himself as a lucky man; if there was such a thing as the luck of the Irish, Will lacked it. Now, however, after cheating death and keeping his love, his Cara, he wondered if his luck might have changed for the better. Maybe he didn’t deserve it but then again perhaps he did but he had the love of a good woman for all time and he had a brother somewhere out in the world. If they could find Seamus, he would have a living relative again. Cara’s family embraced him and he treasured that but Seamus was his brother and his favorite of them all. He thought that they would find him in time. If they could win against such as Sallie Hawkins, then maybe God had a little mercy left for vampires too and there might be just enough more to find his brother. If not, he still had Cara, world enough, and time. Cara’s Afterward When I first heard the word ‘honeymoon’ I thought it must be something to eat. After all in my part of the world, moon pies are a big dessert treat and honey is something you drizzle over your biscuits so it seemed to make sense that a honeymoon might be a new kind of cupcake or something. Of course, I was just six years old, too.

I really grasped the concept when I was 17 and my cousin Mary, five years older, got married. Her new husband whisked her off to the beaches of Southern California for their honeymoon. She came back with sand in her shoes, a to die for suntan, and a secret little smile. Mary never looked prettier or happier. On her first anniversary, with her ankles swollen to basketball size and pregnant with their first, Mary told me that the honeymoon was over. “I thought it was over when you came back from California,” I said. She laughed. “No, that was just the honeymoon trip. The real honeymoon is over when you have to face reality and we have. When Thad’s dad passed away, we had to deal with it. It was hard but we did, together. Now I’m pregnant and that’s another event to face. Until the honeymoon is over, you’re not really married. Now we are.” For Will and me, our honeymoon lasted right up till that night Sallie stuck her psychic claws into his consciousness. We emerged from our self-constructed cocoon to stand together and with the power of love, we survived. In those terrible weeks, during Sallie’s reign of terror, something shifted and we became really married. Things like that strengthen rather than destroy and so, in her efforts to destroy our happiness, Sallie sealed us together forever. We went back to our usual existence, going trucking, crawling Beale Street, dancing in the moonlight and loving one another but we appreciated it all so much more. Knowing that it could be taken away with little or no warning increases the value. One question niggled and I vowed to find the answer for my Will – where in the hell could we find Seamus Brennan. Until I found an answer, though, we would continue our undead existence and love together, me and my sexy, darling truck driving vampire man.

The End

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Other Books by Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy: Wolfe's Lady Love Tattoo

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