The Vampire's Fall

The man followed so close behind her she could hear the trod of his boots on the concrete sidewalk. His name was Blade? Interesting name. Sharp and dangerous. It certainly matched his demeanor.

And he was stalking her.

“I have a weapon!” she called out, and scrambled for the truck keys in her skirt pocket.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said firmly.

“Says the serial killer before he dumps the girl in the pit,” she called over her shoulder.

Where had she mined such macabre information? It was frustrating to Zenia that she knew things—weird, odd things—and yet, knew nothing about herself.

“A knowledge walk?” she whispered as she neared the truck. Her stalker’s black truck was parked across the street from it. The truck bed was loaded with lumber and tools. So he’d been telling the truth about helping the old man. He earned trust points for doing a kind thing. Right?

“I need to make sure you are safe,” Blade said as he strode beside her, intent on not leaving her alone. “If you’re not from around here, and you don’t remember anything, you could be in trouble.”

“I appreciate that,” she said, still walking. “Really. Kindness of strangers, and all that. But I don’t know what I have to worry about. Wait. The old lady. I should have checked on her.”

“She’s...fine.”

“You said that with a pause. As if maybe she’s not fine. As if maybe you’ve just murdered her.”

He managed to overtake her rapid steps and stop before her on the sidewalk, planting his boots and slamming his fists akimbo. “Will you quit with the serial killer bit? I didn’t kill...the old lady. She wasn’t in the house when I went in there. I promise. There were others inside. Others who mentioned you.”

“Me? Really?” She turned at the hip to eye the pink house, then swung back to Blade. She had to tilt her head to meet his gaze; he was a tall one. “Who were they? They must know me. Maybe they can tell me who I am.”

“They were demons.”

He said it without a smirk or a wink. And that pulled the cord on Zenia’s freak-out alarm.

She shoved the guy away and ran toward her truck. Keys in hands, she opened the door, slid in and started the ignition. She’d be damned if she was going to talk to him one moment longer and risk his kind of crazy.

“Demons?” she muttered. “Talk about attracting a weirdo. I’ll have to return later, after he’s gone. If someone in that house knows about me...”

She shifted into gear, and rolled quickly by him. He waved, but it was more of a dismissive gesture. In the rearview mirror, she saw him get in his truck and turn it around on the narrow street. She quickly turned at the intersection, hoping to lose him.

“Demons,” she whispered again. “Can’t be. No. I won’t believe it. He’s a crazy madman that I was lucky to get away from him. This is bad.” She pressed a palm against the thumping heartbeats under her rib cage. “Really bad. Now I’ve got to shake a serial killer. I don’t want to die. I can’t die. I don’t even know what name they’d put on the tombstone.”

The image of a fresh grave made her miss the next stop sign. A shout alerted her to the pair of teenaged girls who had stepped off the curb, and now shook their fists at the truck.

“Oops. Sorry! Concentrate, Zenia. You don’t want to be arrested for murder.”

She glanced in the rearview mirror. The big black truck still followed.

“But who might be more guilty of such a heinous crime?” she muttered to herself.

He’d said there were others in the house who had asked after her. What had happened to the old woman?

Chapter 3 (#ulink_7d06621e-8160-5790-a0ef-9384e825a01d)

She was the prettiest woman in Tangle Lake. Demons wanted her. And she had amnesia.

Blade had discreetly followed Zenia to the Blue Bass, a dive bar nestled at the edge of town. So the tail hadn’t been as discreet as he’d hoped. Not easy to be covert in a small town with only two main streets. It was nearing eight in the evening and he suspected she had tried to give him the slip, but again, one of the hazards of a small town was lack of privacy.

Normally, he was not a curious man. That was his brother Trouble’s mien. But it wasn’t every day he watched a sexy woman tread about in a dirt field, and then had to slay demons to keep them from going after her.

He wanted to know where the demons had come from and why. And if she thought to use an amnesia defense to cover her knowledge then she’d better think again. She had to be hiding something. If a person had amnesia, shouldn’t they not operate a motor vehicle, avoid drinking in a bar and most likely be lying in the hospital?

Yeah, she was definitely pulling something over on him. Yet if there was a slight chance she was on the up and up, he sensed she wasn’t safe.

He entered the bar, and stood by the door to take in the yawn of an establishment paneled in rough-cut timbers and decorated with fishing rods, neon beer signs and the mascot stuffed bass with the milky white eyes. At the bar, Zenia ordered a beer. She didn’t fit in this redneck outpost. She looked more like a wine kind of gal.

Currently, she held her own against Brock Olafson, the town asshole. The guy had been divorced twice, owned a tanning bed—which explained his weird orange leathery skin—and never slowed his Hummer for a stop sign unless he sighted a black-and-white nearby.

Asshole was trying to pick up the pretty woman. Blade’s fingers had curled into fists the moment Brock sat down next to her. He held his jaw soft, not tense. Years of practice had allowed him to remain calm while holding within the roiling need to attack. It was never wise to attack. At least, not with human witnesses.

On the other hand, if a man opened the door of a house and was greeted by three demons, by all means, attack.

Brock slid his hand up the back of Zenia’s T-shirt. She slapped at him and shifted over to the next bar stool. Blade could hear her politely say, “Leave me alone. I just want to finish this drink in peace.”

“I’ll buy you another,” Brock said, shoving thick fingers over his short blond crew cut.

Before the asshole could slide onto the vacant bar stool, Blade pushed his palm onto the bar between the two of them. The bartender nodded at Blade and poured him a shot of Krupnik, a honey-sweet vodka the owner kept in stock for him.

Brock stepped away from the bar, muttering something about weirdos under his breath, but Blade kept an awareness of the man’s location in his peripheral vision as he tilted back the shot.

“Despite his rudeness, he did pin you correctly,” Zenia said and sipped her beer.

“How’s that?”

“You’re a weirdo. And I’ll ask you to leave me alone just like I did the other guy.”

“Sorry,” he said, and pushed the shot glass forward. “Did I interrupt something promising?”

She snickered and when she looked at him, he was momentarily fixed to her green eyes. She was so exotic and colorful, this memory-less woman who didn’t seem to belong, no matter the setting. And she smelled like the long grass and flowers he’d followed her through but an hour earlier. Blade lost track of Brock.

“Thanks,” she said. “But you can leave now.”

He sat on a bar stool and propped his elbows before him. “I’m not a weirdo,” he offered.

“You accused me, a person you don’t even know, of being a demon. Your hair is blue. You look like a goth. And you followed me here like some kind of serial—er, stalker. In my book that’s considered weird.”

The bartender poured another shot for Blade. He swallowed the vodka with a wince. Good stuff. He had a difficult time getting drunk. Blame it on his genetics. Being vampire and faery did come in handy when he wanted to hold his liquor. The only time he got drunk was when drinking from someone who had consumed whiskey. Whiskey-spiked blood always went straight to his head.

“It’s black,” he offered regarding his hair. “The neon light from that sign over the bar makes it blue.”

“If that’s your story. But I did see it in the sunlight. It’s blue.”

It wasn’t. Well, it sort of was. It was the faery in him. It sheened his black hair blue. It was a damned sight better than the pink that donned his sister, Daisy Blu’s, head.