Stefan (Lost Nights Series Book 1) Read online

  To my surprise, we drove along the ribbon of lonely highway for nearly a half hour before we saw the lights of a town. I pulled off on the exit ramp and tried to keep a close eye on the girl while still safely navigating the thickening traffic. At this slow speed she might be tempted to simply jump out of the car and get herself hit by traffic. But to my surprise, she stayed put.

  I drove slowly through town, unable to read the signs posted, but just trying to stay with the flow of heavy traffic. Fifteen minutes later, I located what looked to be a somewhat busy shopping area. It probably wasn’t anywhere near where she lived, but at least she’d be able to find someone who could understand her and help. I was useless.

  Pulling the car over to the side of the road just on the outskirts of the square, I parked the car and glanced up at the girl in the mirror. She looked utterly confused, her wide gaze darting from me to the square. I wished I could wipe her memory. It wasn’t so much to protect myself, but she’d seen things that were going to haunt her for the rest of her life. There was definitely a blessing in the promise having your memory wiped clean. Ignorance was bliss.

  Hitting the unlock button, I watched as her eyes darted to the silver tab as it popped up from the door. I turned in my seat and gave her another close-lipped smile before pointing at her and then the square. “Go.”

  She stared at me for several seconds before slowly edging to the door. Placing her hand on the handle, she froze and looked at me. I nodded, trying to look encouraging without scaring her more than she already was. She pulled the handle and the door opened a crack. She waited, as if expecting me to pounce on her at any second. I just smiled.

  This time, she darted out of the car, slamming the door behind her as she started to run for the square. She didn’t look back at me as she plunged into the nearest crowd of people. I told myself that she was going to be fine. She’d find help. Hell, if I didn’t get out of there soon, she’d tell the cops exactly where to find me and that wouldn’t do me a bit of good.

  Throwing the car back into drive, I pulled into traffic and headed back out of the city and onto the highway.

  There was no plan. I didn’t know where I was or where I was even going. My only thought was to get away from where I’d dropped the girl so I couldn’t be caught for kidnapping or murder. I’d already been down that road and Stefan wasn’t here to get here to get me out of jail again. Of course, that was assuming that I was in a country that viewed vampires as people. There were a few that regarded them as animals. As such, people were permitted to shoot them on sight.

  The miles rolled by and I welcomed the blissful numbness that settled over my mind. Too much had happened in a short span of time. Kidnapped, murdered, turned into a nightwalker, and the murder of two people by my own hands. Was this all because I’d chosen to be with Stefan? The emptiness was a gift.

  But as the night wasted away, a growing panic started to push aside the numb. I needed to find shelter, somewhere safe I could spend the daylight hours. But I didn’t know where I was and I’d driven too far to turn back to Vanko’s house. All around me were barren fields still trying to shake off the grip of winter and small scatterings of trees.

  When I at last came to a town, I pulled off. There had to be something somewhere. An abandoned house. An old unused warehouse. Anything that would offer protection from the sun’s rays. I wandered down street after street, searching for anything that might serve when I finally stumbled across the most cliché of options. Pulling over by the entrance to the large graveyard, I let myself succumb to the hysterical laugh that bubbled up. Stefan would have laughed at the irony of it. Or been insulted. Sometimes there was no telling what he’d find humorous, but his reaction was always amusing.

  Getting a hold of myself, I put the car back into drive and continued for a few more blocks before parking the car along a lonely, empty street filled with dark, rundown houses. If the police managed to track the car back to the kidnapping, I certainly didn’t want it to be anywhere near where my daytime resting spot was.

  With my hands shoved in the pockets of my jeans, I wandered down the street, marveling at the fact that I wasn’t cold despite the frost gilding the grass and parked car windows white. Stefan was right in that I was aware that it was cold, but the frigid temperature had lost its painful bite. Jack Frost had been de-clawed.

  At the graveyard entrance, I paused and looked around to be sure that no one was watching me, but the area was empty. I shouldn’t have been surprised. It was after four in the morning and the city was still snuggled in its warm bed. Or rather, the humans were still asleep. The nightwalkers were another story.

  The graveyard resembled most graveyards I’d know in my short lifespan. It was filled with row after row of marble and granite headstones. Bare-limbed trees dotted the landscape as if watching over the occupants moldering and decaying underground. A tall iron fence ringed the cemetery, warning away the curious with its spark spikes. After some more wandering, I finally located a small crypt toward the back of the graveyard, half hidden behind the massive boughs of some pine trees. It took a few tries but I managed to break the padlock and force open the door with a loud screech of rusted metal. The air was stale and dusty. Inside the crypt was a lone stone sarcophagus with the name Isaac Polenta chiseled along with the dates February 1804 – June 1881. At least he’d lived a long life.

  Pushing the door closed, I shut myself in the utter darkness and yet I could still see. Faint light trickled through a trio of small, narrow stained glass windows depicting the Virgin Mother in prayer. I could clearly see the stone tomb and the uneven placement of the stones on the floor as if a light were shining overhead. It made me think that every time Stefan and I had laid in bed, whispering in the dark, he’d been able to see me, to see every expression that crossed my face.

  A sigh slipped from me as I sank to the floor and leaned my back against the tomb. What the hell was I going to do? I was a freaking vampire. What did that mean? For my life? If I went back to the United States, I didn’t think I’d be able to go back to my old job. Or maybe I could. I worked alone. I lived alone. I could travel exclusively at night and schedule all my Skype meetings after sunset. I didn’t have to tell anyone I was a vampire. Sure, I’d probably have to admit it after a decade or so when people started to notice that I wasn’t aging, but by then laws for vampires might have actually improved.

  Was I in total denial? Completely.

  But it sounded viable until I started to consider that I’d have to interact with other nightwalkers. The murder in Venice still needed to be solved. And I was determined to discover why I’d been kidnapped in the first place and by whom.

  I wasn’t sure how long I sat there before the first wave of fatigue hit me. The sun was close to the horizon. I’m not sure how I came to be so sure of that fact. Maybe nightwalker had a few survival instincts they were reborn with. But the why didn’t matter. It was time for all good little creatures of the night to go to bed.

  Slowly pushing to my feet, I looked down at the tomb. As distasteful as it might seem, I knew it was the wisest course. I wasn’t sure if the stained glass would be enough protection from the sun and if someone poked their head inside the crypt, it would be better if they didn’t spot me curled up in the corner like some homeless vagabond.

  With a soft grunt, I pushed the lid partially off the tomb and lifted poor old Uncle Isaac’s bones out so that I could fit inside. “Sorry old boy. I’ll put you back when the sun sets,” I muttered with a grimace.

  Lying in the tomb, I took a deep breath and focused on how easy it was to move the massive stone slab rather than think about the fact that I was attempting to bury myself alive. No. That was wrong. I wasn’t technically alive now. As I struggled with that thought in the complete unyielding darkness, another wave of fatigue hit me. But this one was different.

  My strength left me completely and there was an odd tugging in the center of my chest like someone was tied a string to my soul and was now trying to
pull it out of my body. Panic consumed me. Something was wrong. Horribly wrong. The tugging continued until I was sure that the key part of me was going to be ripped free and I would be nothing. I would become the air, floating free with no substance. It was the same feeling that had consumed me when Vanko had attacked. I was dying. Vanko had failed to turn me and my second chance had been only a cruel lie.

  I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. The sun had risen and I was dead.

  Chapter 14

  My scream reverberated through the stone tomb, searching for an exit, but it could only come back to rebuff me in the face. I was alive … so to speak. The sun had sunk back below the earth and I was alive. Dear god, did I have to go through dying every morning? It wasn’t painful, but the sensation was terrifying. Every morning I’d have to relive the terror that gripped me in the woods when Vanko had killed me.

  I lie in the dark, trembling and teeth chattering, for several minutes until I finally got a grip on myself. This must have been the price for escaping true death. I tried to tell myself that I’d get used to the feeling with time but I just wasn’t sure that such a thing could ever truly happen. Our every instinct was to fear death. You could never become accustomed.

  But what was my other option? Give up? Not likely. With a grunt, I slowly pushed the lid back on the tomb and listened for any sound to indicate that someone was near. Silence lay heave over the crypt and beyond in the graveyard. I could hear cars farther away and the wind rattling the limbs of the naked trees, but no one was close to my hiding spot.

  Swiftly climbing out of the tomb, I replaced old Uncle Isaac and closed the lid. Taking a second to brush off crypt dust, rotting clothes, wood, and bugs, I cautiously stepped into the graveyard. Relief replaced my earlier unease over my morning death, but the relief proved to be short-lived as hunger pangs started to assail me. My stomach ached and my fangs throbbed. I needed to feed again, which answered my question from the previous night — I needed to feed at least once every night. Damn.

  Hunkered in the shadows at the back of the graveyard, I tried to figure out what the hell I was going to do. The one time I’d fed, I killed Otto. Sure, there was a little part of me that had wanted him dead for his part in my kidnapping and murder, but I didn’t think that was why I’d killed him. The hunger had taken over. I couldn’t have stopped myself if I had wanted to.

  And now what? I didn’t want to hurt anyone else. And even if I could stop myself from taking too much, I couldn’t wipe the poor person’s memory and that seemed really important if I didn’t want the world knowing that I was a nightwalker. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  Flopping on the ground, I sat on the slightly damp grass with my head in my hands and my elbows balanced on my knees before me. My temples felt like someone was trying to drive spikes into my head and my joints ached. The longer I waited to feed, the more intense the pain became. But I didn’t know what to do. I’d rather starve than kill an innocent person. I feared the driving hunger as well. What if I couldn’t fight it and attacked someone?

  Lost in my own misery, I nearly missed the approach of … something … someone. The noises were incredibly faint like a squirrel or a rabbit moving quietly in the brush, but there was a sense of something much larger. I was just starting to push to my feet to look around when a young woman stepped into view. She was slender and short, wearing a motley of bright colors so that you couldn’t possibly miss her.

  Lurching back, I slammed my shoulder into a tree trunk, but barely noticed the pain. The woman said something angrily at me and made a pointing gesture. I didn’t understand her but I got the impression that I was being told to get the hell out of the graveyard.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t understand,” I said with a shake of my head. Her skin seemed to glow in the thin moonlight and there was an eerie silence to her movement that only nightwalkers could achieve.

  The woman seemed surprised and cocked her head to the side a bit. “You … Are you American?” she said with a distinctly British accent.

  “Yes,” I said with an enormous sigh of relief. I’d finally found someone I could communicate with.

  “I said you’re not welcome here. Shove off!”

  I jerked at her rough tone, embarrassment heating my cheeks. I’d never been kicked out of any place in my life and I certainly had never expected it to be a graveyard. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any harm. I just needed a place to stay for the day.”

  “Fine. It’s night,” she said sharply with an absent wave toward the dark sky above.” “You’re not welcome in this city.”

  “Could you at least tell me where ‘here’ is?”

  “Jedrzejow.”

  I continued to look at her blankly. The name of the city didn’t ring a single bell in my head.

  “Not too far from Kielce.”

  I shook my head, still not recognizing it.

  “You’re in Poland,” she said slowly.

  My legs gave out beneath me and I fell back to the ground. Poland. That bastard had driven me all the way to fucking Poland. That was on the other side of Europe. How was I going to get back to Venice? I had no money. No identification. Who was I fooling? I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I was the worst vampire ever made.

  The tear started falling and I hated myself because I couldn’t hold it together. It was all just too much. Framed for murder, kidnapped, killed, brought back from the dead, and then I kill the guy who killed me before he could tell me anything about being a nightwalker.

  “Hey now. You can’t cry. Nightwalkers aren’t supposed to cry,” the woman said, sounding utterly bewildered.

  “I’m sorry,” I choked out. I wiped away my tears to find my hands streaked with blood. My tears had been turned to blood, which only made my sobbing worse. It was just that final straw that caused me to break. The past few days have been too much for me to take in. There was no normal for me any longer. My life was gone and I didn’t know what kind of future I could possibly even hope to have.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “It’s not you. It’s … everything. It’s just too much to take in,” I said softly between gasping sobs.

  The woman had crept closer so that she was now only a few feet away so that she could get a good look at my ragged appearance. “You haven’t been a nightwalker long, have you? Couple years? We all need a period of adjustment.” She was trying to be reassuring, which was incredibly sweet considering that she had been trying to kick me out of town just a minute earlier.

  “This is my second night,” I admitted, but she only looked confused.

  “Second night of what?”

  “Being a nightwalker.”

  The woman looked absolutely floored, her mouth hanging open in shock. But she quickly recovered, jumping away from me. “Where’s your maker?”

  I hesitated. I didn’t know if what I’d done was viewed as good or bad among nightwalkers. I wasn’t ready to lose the one person I could talk to, but I also couldn’t lie. I was a horrible liar. “He’s gone. Dead. I … killed him.” And then the story just came spilling out of me in a tumble of words, trying to convince her that it had been an accident.

  When I finished, she was sitting on the ground across from me with a sympathetic look in her brown eyes. “Ahhh… love. You’re going to be fine. You’re just a bit peckish. You’ll feel better once you’ve had a bite,” she said gently, nearly putting me in tears again.

  She rose to her feet in a flash. It wasn’t quite the same boneless manner I’d seen at the Coven meeting but she certainly moved less like a jerky puppet on a string than I did. I shied from her extended hand and got to my feet on my own, but she didn’t appear insulted.

  “I’m Daphne, but some of my mates call me Daffy for short.”

  “Erin Prescott.”

  “It’s just Erin now. Nightwalkers don’t bother with last names,” she continued easily with a wide grin. “There just aren’t enough of us around to make it worthwhile. In fact, most o
f them change their name from their human one. It’s really best to shed everything from your past life. It’s much easier to move on that way.”

  “What? Change my name to something like Spike or Vlad or….” I broke off at Daphne’s laughter and found myself smiling a little as well.

  “Did you watch that Buffy the Vampire Slayer show too? Wasn’t that a hoot? I do love that one.” She laughed, shaking her head. “No, it doesn’t have to be anything like that. My old name was Trudy, but I’d always liked Daphne so when I struck out on my own, I told everyone I was Daphne. You’ve got plenty of time now to think on it.” She started toward the entrance of the graveyard and motioned for me to follow. “Let’s get your breakfast.”

  “I can’t. I’m afraid. I’m afraid I’ll kill someone.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll help you.”

  I didn’t know if I would trust Daphne but I didn’t see what option I had. I certainly couldn’t take care of myself as I was. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing and I was just going to leave a trail of dead bodies as I tried to get back to Venice — assuming that was my ultimate destination.

  With some reluctance, I pushed to my feet and slowly walked toward her. There was a snarling in my head and an overwhelming urge to bite her, but I clamped down on it and held the shreds of my self-control together. Daphne gave no outward appearance that she knew of my struggles despite the shaking that now wracked my body. She kept a comfortable distance between us without seeming to.

  “How many other nightwalkers are there in Jedrzejow?” I asked between clenched teeth. With any luck, a continual stream of information from my companion would help to get my mind off the gnawing pain.

  There are just six of us and we like it like that.”

  “Don’t worry. I wasn’t planning to stay,” I said quickly. Were nightwalkers territorial? If so, I didn’t want to upset the one person who was willing to help me get through a feeding without killing anyone.