Chasing Shadows

chapter Five

Juliette finished her sandwich and returned to her animal form shortly before Mark returned from the store. Once again I offered to help him carry his things up to his apartment. As we did so, he asked me what other work needed to be done around the farm. I said that since the animals were all outside for the day and the stalls were all cleared and filled with fresh hay, there wasn’t much that needed done for the next few hours, except for a perimeter check of the fences. Mark offered to do that by himself, and since I did need to get to work on the outline for my next novel, I told him what to look for after retrieving Herugrim and saddling the stallion up for him to ride.

“You do still know how to ride, I presume?” I asked as I tightened the cinch under the Herugrum’s middle.

Mark laughed as he put his left foot in the stirrup and effortlessly lifted himself into the saddle. “I think I remember, Boss.”

I smacked his leg playfully. “Alright, smarty. Now, like I said, just look for damage to the rails and posts, make note of where you find any so we can replace or repair. And stay clear of Angus, of course, until he gets to know you better.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mark said, saluting me and then turning Herugrim around and riding off along the fence. As I was heading back into the house, Angel followed, nudging my leg. Curious, I allowed her back into the house, where she phased back into her human form and asked to use my phone, so she could call her mother and arrange a meeting (“Like I should have done earlier, before I went dog again”). After the usual greetings were exchanged, I heard her tell Monica Singleton “Mother, we really need to talk about Mark. It’s important,” as she cast a glance at me, and they arranged a rendezvous point a mile down the road from my house.

After Juliette departed my house for the second time that day, I went into my office and turned on my computer. While I waited for it to boot up, I called my agent and let him know that I was indeed going to write another book, that I had just the night before been hit with sudden inspiration for the plot. When he asked me to describe it to him, I gave him much the same information that Juliette had given me last night, wording it so that my protagonist—also a half-vampire like myself—was discovering these things herself for the very first time. George loved it, saying that her learning there were things about her vampire heritage she hadn’t even known would add depth to my character that would make her more relatable to my readers.

“Except for the being half-vampire part, of course,” he said.

I grinned in spite of myself. “Of course.”

I hung up the phone then and got to work, typing furiously as the structure for the story came to me. And as often happened when I got into my writing I lost all track of time, and had made it through the outline and the first two chapters before it suddenly dawned on me that Moe and Cissy were barking furiously. I stood and walked to the window, which faced the back yard, and looked outside. They were at the end of the kennel that was close to the barn, standing on their hind legs with their forelegs on the chain-link, still yapping madly. I also noted that Herugrim was standing outside the barn, nibbling at the grass along the far side of the driveway.

Fear pierced my heart as I flew from the office and into the kitchen, wrenching the back door open so forcefully that I tore it off the hinges. I didn’t care—didn’t even pay attention to the damage. I only knew that something had happened to Mark.

When I got outside, I immediately caught the scent of blood, and my eyes zeroed in on droplets of it on the ground just inside the barn entrance. Following it with my eyes, I saw that it led to the inside door of the tack room, and I just knew it would lead up the stairs to Mark’s apartment. Paying no heed to the fact that Herugrim was still unrestrained outside, I jerked open the door and raced up the stairs to the apartment, not even bothering to knock before I entered.

There was, as I had thought, blood on the stairway leading up, and there was yet more here on the carpet, in a trail that led to the half-open door of the bathroom. I heard water running as I ran across the living space, my heart still pounding with fear at what I would find.

Pushing the door open further, my eyes widened at the sight of Mark standing at the sink shirtless, blood running in rivulets down his face and chest, both of which were covered in bruises that already seemed to be healing. The blood, in fact, was mostly water now, the cuts also in the process of healing. He stopped wiping at his injuries and turned to look at me slowly.

“Mark…what happened?” I asked.

He didn’t answer for a moment. Unable to help myself, I reached out and traced my fingers along a small gash on his right shoulder, which closed together even as I touched it, cutting off the flow of blood.

“I can explain,” he said at last, his voice thick.

Wordlessly, I took the washcloth from his hand and held it under the still-running faucet, feeling my heart squeeze at the pink color of the water even though I knew his injuries were healing. After wringing out the excess, I carefully wiped his face and neck, then moved down to his torso and cleaned that as well. By the time I was finished, all his cuts had closed and the bruises were a sickly greenish yellow.

Mark swallowed. “I can explain,” he said again.

I tossed the washcloth in the sink and turned the water off, then looked at him, holding his gaze. I knew what he was going to say, at least I thought I did, and right at that moment, it didn’t matter. The electricity that always seemed to spark whenever my skin touched his had heated my blood and the air in the tiny bathroom until it was thick with tension. From the way he breathed, the way he looked at me, I knew that Mark was feeling it as well.

I stood up on my toes and tentatively pressed my lips to his. Mark responded, kissing me back as one of his hands came up to hold my head at the nape and the other snaked around my waist to firmly grip my bottom. I wrapped my arms around his waist, drawing us even closer together. My hands roamed up and down his back, feeling each taut, sinuous muscle as the kiss deepened and our tongues danced together. Mark turned and backed me up against the sink, pressing himself into me so that I felt his readiness against my belly.

Suddenly he broke the kiss off and touched his forehead to mine. We stood there for a moment in silence, our breathing in a matched, shallow rhythm.

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

He pulled back and I let him—reluctantly, of course, because all I wanted was to continue the kiss, to let the passion that was obviously very mutual continue on its natural course.

But I could see that Mark was very serious, that he absolutely had to say what was on his mind before he could continue. So I nodded and waited for him to speak.

He looked at me, his eyes searching my face, before he swallowed and said, “Saphrona I… I’m not entirely human.”

I felt my eyes widen. So he did know after all, or at least had some clue that he wasn’t your average human male. This was a good thing, I realized, and it was the sign I had been looking for—the one that told me he was ready to hear the truth about me.

I smiled tentatively and looked into his eyes. “It’s okay, Mark. I’m not entirely human, either.”

Mark frowned. “What do you mean?”

I unwound my arms from his waist and took his hands in mine. I knew that it was now or never, and taking a deep breath, I looked into his eyes again and said, “I am what is called a dhampyr. My mother was human and my father was…a vampire.”

His eyes widened as I said the last word, but he remained silent for a moment. “So all that stuff that I read in Vivian Drake’s Everland novels is true,” he said at last.

I smiled again, pleased that he had read my books. And because of who he was, what he meant to me, I said, “Actually, Mark, Vivian Drake is just a pseudonym. I wrote those books.”

He stepped back further, and my chest tightened when he dropped my hands. “You wrote them?”

I nodded. “Most everything you read about vampire biology is true,” I said. “At least insofar as we believe it to be.”

“And the dhunphyr? The immortal humans, are they real too?”

I looked him in the eye. “I think you know the answer to that,” I replied softly.

Mark leaned back against the open door, dragging his hands down his face and then back up through his close-cropped hair. “So there’s a name for what I am,” he said, before suddenly stepping away and out into the living room. I stood in the doorway watching him pace.

“I have wondered, for so many years,” he mused aloud. “I wondered why it was that I never got sick. How it could be that cuts always healed almost instantly. I broke my arm once, falling out of the tree in my best friend’s back yard—but by the time my dad showed up to take me to the hospital, the break had already begun knitting together. I could feel it—thank goodness the bones were in the right position, or it would have had to be re-broken. Of course, no one believed me, and Race’s mom said she must have been wrong when she thought I’d broken it.”

He turned around and looked at me. “I should be dead right now,” he said, then pointed to a scar on the left side of his neck that was about three inches long and slightly jagged. “See this? This is a shrapnel wound from an IED—in layman’s terms, it was a homemade bomb. A shard of metal from the casing sliced right through my jugular vein, because I was too close to the damn thing when it exploded.”

A hand flew to my mouth and I gasped, fear lancing through me yet again even though he was perfectly safe and healthy and standing right in front of me.

“I lost pints of blood from the wound—pints, damn it—but by the time I made it to the MASH unit, the cut was closing,” he went on. “The doctors were freaking out, wondering how I had lost so much blood from such a ‘minor flesh wound.’”

Mark paced away again, bracing his hands on the back of the couch. The way his muscles were bunching in his shoulders, I just wanted to go to him, to rub my hands all over them until the knots melted away. But I stayed rooted to the spot, leaning against the doorjamb of his bathroom.

“Do you have any idea what it is like to know that you are not normal and not be able to tell anyone?” Mark asked, and though I suspected he meant it as a rhetorical question, I answered him nonetheless.

“I do, actually,” I began, and he turned to face me. “I haven’t lived as a vampire since I was fifty years old. I’ve sustained myself on human food quite well, though to satisfy my need for blood—something I could not escape—I turned to animals. It’s why I set up this farm. But most of the people I know and associate with are humans. I have had to say goodbye to more people than I care to count over the years. I’ve left so many good friends behind because I had to walk away before they grew suspicious about my lack of aging.”

“How old are you?”

“I was born on Independence Day.”

Mark nodded. “But what year?” he pressed.

I smiled minutely. “1776.”

His eyes widened. “Wow. When you say Independence Day, you really mean it.”

I nodded, and then feeling suddenly vulnerable, I crossed my arms over my chest protectively and looked away from him. The secrets were out now, mine and his…

…so what happened next?

Mark crossed the room back to me. He reached over and pried my arms open, holding my hands in his. “We are what we are,” he said with a shrug and a light squeeze of my hands. “Didn’t choose it, can’t fight it, can’t change it—am I right?”

I shook my head. “No, I’m afraid not,” I replied.

He raised a hand to my chin and tilted it so that I was looking him in the eye. “At least now we don’t have to live with it alone anymore,” he said softly, and then lowered his lips to mine.

Immediately the fire of our earlier passion began to burn its way through me again. I wound my arms around his neck as his hands moved to my waist and drew me closer, our kiss deepening. After several moments Mark began to maneuver us toward the bedroom, and I went eagerly. When he had me next to the bed, he began to pull my shirt from the waistband of my jeans and I raised my arms so he could pull it over my head. I then reached behind my back and unclasped my bra myself—he moved back from me to see, and my eyes were on his face as he watched me pull the straps down my arms, letting the thin garment fall to the floor. Mark inhaled sharply at the sight of my pale, pert breasts.

“Beautiful,” he breathed, before lowering his head and capturing the tight pink nipple of my left breast in his mouth. This time it was I who inhaled sharply with pleasure, as electricity zinged through me to feel his tongue laving the sensitive nub. I felt my fangs dropping and did my best to concentrate on pulling them back up so that Mark wouldn’t see them—it wasn’t easy with the pleasurable fire raging through me, but though he appeared to have accepted me for what I was, I didn’t want to freak him out too soon. And a vampire’s fangs…well, they’d intimidate anyone. The distraction lasted all of a millisecond, my mind quickly returning to the pleasure at hand almost as soon as it had wandered away. One of Mark’s hands was snaking it’s way around to the small of my back to hold me steady while his other hand came up to cup my right breast, his thumb and forefinger teasing and pinching the nipple. My breath began to come in ragged gasps as my own hands found purchase on his shoulders, though wanting even more I soon moved them down to the waistband of his jeans and began to undo the button clasp.

Mark chuckled as his head and hands switched places, and he favored my right breast with the same attention he had given the left. I lowered the zipper and pulled open his pants, smiling when he jerked as I stroked his erection through the cotton briefs he wore.

Almost faster than I could blink, I found myself pushed back across the bed. Mark had shucked his jeans and underwear and kicked off his shoes, and was pulling my jeans down my legs before I knew it. I helped him along by pushing my panties down and toeing my shoes off so that he could pull my jeans and underwear off the rest of the way, then I opened for him. As he leaned his weight against me I drew my legs up and wrapped them around his waist, and I felt myself tremble as his erection was pressed against the opening between my thighs. With his hands cupping my face, Mark kissed me as he slowly entered me, and I gasped into his mouth as my arms tightened around his neck.

Our lovemaking was slow at first, as we took time to get used to the feel of each other’s body. I lifted my hips to match each of his thrusts, taking him deeper into my womanhood each time we moved. Mark soon began to grind his hips against me faster and faster, the pace of his movements growing more frenzied until at last we both cried out our release. I could feel him spasm inside me as we lay riding the waves of pleasure until they abated. When they were done he lay atop me, trembling and breathing heavily.

I stroked his back lazily as my own breathing slowly returned to a semblance of normalcy. After several minutes, Mark raised up on his elbows and looked at me. “Are you alright?” he asked.

I smiled. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

His expression was one of mild chagrin. “I was a little rough there towards the end.”

My smile widened, and I lifted my head to kiss him. “Do you hear me complaining?” I countered with a chuckle.

Mark’s eyebrows rose and a lazy smile spread across his lips. “Are you telling me you’re one of those women who likes a bit of… shall we say, unnecessary roughness…in the bedroom?” he queried.

I lifted one corner of my mouth into a lopsided grin. “Mark, we’re not exactly normal remember? By nature our bodies are designed to handle a little more than the average amount of wear and tear. So baby, if you can dish it, I can take it.”

He grinned wider. “You really shouldn’t have said that,” he warned, lowering his mouth to mine once again.

After our second round of lovemaking, we lay twined together in the middle of his full-size bed, and I suddenly recalled that Herugrim was still wandering the driveway outside. Mark jumped up and pulled his jeans on, saying he would put him back out to pasture with the others. When he returned several minutes later his eyes were wide.

“What the hell happened to your back door?” he asked.

I laughed as I sat up, gathering the sheet around me. “That, uh, was me,” I said. “I heard Moe and Cissy barking so I looked out my office window, and when I saw Herugrim at the side of the driveway I panicked because I knew you’d been hurt, but I didn’t know how. So I was a little forceful in opening the door.”

I looked up at him. “How did you get hurt, by the way?”

Mark came and sat beside me on the bed. “A garter snake spooked Herugrim, and he threw me—or tried to. My foot got caught in the stirrup and I got a little trampled before I could get free of him.”

“Oh God,” I cried, throwing my arms around him and holding him tightly. “If you hadn’t been dhunphyr, I cringe to think what could have happened to you.”

“Sweetheart, it’s okay,” Mark whispered, rubbing my back as he held me. “As you can see, I’m fine.”

I sat back, noting that now even the bruises had faded away, and it was as if he had never been hurt. “I know,” I said. “It’s just that… Well, now that you’re finally here in my life—”

He frowned. “What does that mean?”

I cupped his cheek in my hand. “You have so much to learn about the supernatural world. And one of those things is something we vampire types call pair-bonding.”

Mark raised an eyebrow. “Vivian Drake—well, you, I suppose—wrote about it in Everland. That stuff is real, too?”

I nodded. “It was one of the things that lead some of the more enlightened vampires from a long time ago to conclude that they weren’t really dead, because how could something that was dead and soulless have a soulmate?”

“And the part where it starts with dreams?”

I nodded again, holding his gaze as I said, “I’ve been dreaming about you since I was a child. You were always as you are now, fully grown and handsome. At first you protected me in my dreams, fighting off all the monsters my imagination conjured. As I grew older and became a woman, our relationship changed.”

“Did you know what I was then?” he asked.

With a shake of my head, I replied, “No. All this time I honestly thought you’d be a regular ol’ human. I didn’t know you were a dhunphyr until you showed up yesterday.”

He chuckled. “So that’s why you hired me.”

I laughed, too. “Partly. Okay, maybe mostly. I just knew that now that I had you in my life, I couldn’t let you go. I would have paid you any price to keep you here, even though I still don’t understand what a Marine would want with a job like this.”

Mark took my hands in his, sighing. “When I told you that piece of shrapnel should have killed me, I wasn’t kidding. I lost a lot of blood that day. Coming so close to death and surviving really brought home the fact that I’m not entirely human. That’s why when given the opportunity, I opted out despite the fact that I once believed I’d be a soldier my entire life. I needed to get my head on straight, figure out what it all meant. When I saw your ad in the paper, I suddenly felt that the kind of manual labor it takes to be a farmer was just what I needed to help me feel human again.”

Although there was no real reason to feel sorry for him, my emotions stirred for the turmoil he’d gone through all his life, not knowing or understanding what he was. I leaned forward and kissed him tenderly, before I leaned back and told him, “Well, it’s like you said… At least now you don’t have to live with it alone.”

Mark nodded, smiling lightly, though it fell a moment later. “What does this mean for us?”

I felt my cheeks color with the heat of sudden embarrassment. “Uh, I really hope you don’t think I’m the kind of woman who hops into bed with someone she’s just met, because I’m not. I’ve only ever had one lover, and that was more than fifty years ago.”

He cocked his head to the side in curiosity. “Can I ask what happened to him?”

“Arthur was actually more than my lover,” I began slowly. “He was my husband. I knew that he wasn’t you and never could be, but I met him during a time in my life when I just wanted someone to love me. And he did. He was a very sweet man, very kind…and also dedicated to serving his country. Arthur was in the Army; he died when the Allies stormed the beach at Normandy on D-day.”

I honestly hadn’t thought of Arthur Caldwell in many years. Memories of that sweet man were just too painful to bear, and thinking of him now had me recalling that broken feeling I’d gotten when the Army chaplain had showed up at my door to tell me he’d been killed in action. I felt tears fill my eyes and I blinked furiously to dispel them, then suddenly felt Mark’s warm, strong arms surround me.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“What have you got to be sorry for? I’m the one who should be sorry. It’s obvious those memories still hurt you,” he said.

“But I don’t want you to think that I was being unfaithful to you, or that I don’t care about you.”

Mark sat back, holding my face gently in his hands. “Saphrona, in 1944 I wasn’t a gleam in my father’s eye—in fact, my father wasn’t even born yet. You can’t be blamed for living your life, for taking a chance on love when I wasn’t even around to be here for you.”

“So you’re okay with this? All this predestined soulmate stuff?”

He echoed the lopsided grin I had given him earlier. “I admit that it’s a little on the weird side, but then my whole life has been filled with weird. I mean, there was my condition, which I had no explanation for. And our dogs—remember I told you we’d always had a dog? Well, we had two before Angel, and they both disappeared mysteriously. Just one day took off and never came back.”

I thought of the reason why but held my tongue. Though I wanted to explain that to him as well, I also recognized that it wasn’t my place. I would let Angel—or rather, Juliette—explain that bit to him.

“Besides,” Mark was saying. “I’ve been feeling something ever since I met you. I couldn’t explain it before, but the moment I saw you I knew I would take whatever amount of money you could afford to pay me, because I had to get to know who you were. I just knew that I one day I wanted to be with you, just like this.”

“I bet you didn’t think it would happen the very next day,” I joked.

Mark grinned. “I didn’t have a clue,” he admitted. “But now that it has, I honestly can’t imagine spending one day of my life without you.”

“You won’t have to,” I said, kissing him again.

I’d meant for the kiss to be just a light peck—after all, we had already made love twice, and the daylight wasn’t going to last forever. There was still work to be done, which now included fixing the back door of my house. Mark, apparently, had other plans in mind, and I happily went along for the ride.

When we had sated ourselves a third time, I sighed reluctantly and said, “As much as I have enjoyed this afternoon’s extracurricular activities…”

Mark smiled. “So have I,” he said as he brushed his hand lazily up and down my arm.

“…we should get moving,” I said, pushing up on my elbow to look down at him. “The back door needs to be fixed and the animals aren’t going to bring themselves in.”

He sighed in the same resigned manner that I had. “Plus, I got blood on the carpet and need to find something to clean it with.”

“Just think,” I said, patting his six-pack abs as I rose. “You’ll get to enjoy my cooking again tonight, and any other night that you feel like coming down your stairs to knock on my back door.”

Mark chuckled as he, too, rose and came around the bed to gather his clothes. “Gonna have to repair the doorframe first, babe,” he said as he dragged his briefs and then his jeans on. “Besides, I was thinking that, you know, with this soulmate stuff going on between us, I might just move into the house with you. I mean, if you want me to. I’ll stay here if you’d be more comfortable—”

With a grin I jumped to my feet and threw my arms around him, holding him tight for a moment before standing back with what I knew was an ear-to-ear grin. “I was thinking of asking you if you’d like to move into the house with me, but I was afraid it would be too soon to bring it up.”

His smile was identical to mine, though he did sober some and say, “I know a lot of people would think we’re crazy, considering we just met—my mom and sister included, if she were even in the country. But I figure why the heck not, you know? You and I already know that we’re meant to be together, so why delay the inevitable?”

“Why indeed?” I agreed, still smiling hugely and feeling like I was about to burst with happiness.

Mark and I shoved each other back and forth playfully as we dressed, and I had finally pulled my jeans up and was tucking my shirt in when I froze at the sound of feet pounding up the stairs—

—two feet, not four.

Mark went on alert, and though I was definitely older and more than likely stronger than he was, he pushed me behind him as he moved cautiously toward the bedroom door. We heard the apartment door fly open and hit the wall, and I felt my blood drain out of my face as Juliette’s voice rang out, calling her brother’s name.

“Mark! Mark, where are you?” she cried with alarm.

Though he was obviously stunned, Mark ran out into the living room. He stopped short at the sight of his sister standing stark naked in the middle of his apartment.

“Jules? What—how?” he stammered. “And why the hell are you naked?!”

I stepped up beside him and laid my hand on his arm, ignoring the widening of Juliette’s eyes. “Sweetheart, remember me telling you that there was a lot about the supernatural world you needed to learn? Well, she’s one of them.”