Always the Vampire

“Now where were we?”


Within the space of a long, deep sigh, he stripped me of my Cinderella dress and carried us to our own fantasyland.





The afterglow of our loving should have been beacon bright, but I found myself crying softly.

Saber must’ve felt my tears on his chest, because he turned me over and wiped my damp cheek with his thumb.

“Hey, was I that bad?”

“No, that good. Like you were before your trip.”

“So these are tears of sexual ecstasy?”

I gave him a watery chuckle, but my voice caught as I whispered, “Deke, I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t,” he said, nestling me to his side. “We’re going to beat this. We have a prime suspect now, and that’s more than we had this afternoon.”

“What if we can’t find and destroy Starrack? Or get to him before the Void cuts loose to do its own thing?”

“I contacted Jim Crushman in Atlanta. Crusher will put out the word through the merc network, and they’ll contact their informants.”

I pulled back enough to blink at him. “Mercenaries have informants?”

“Human and supernatural. Gnomes mostly, but I can’t mention a particular group. Triton’s note said Cosmil is making inquiries through his contacts, too.” He hugged me close. “If all else fails, we have to hope Lia can track Starrack.”

“Or the Void.”

“Or both.” He kissed my forehead. “Now remind me what you have scheduled with Maggie so I can help you work around your oldmaid duties.”

“Old maid?” I echoed with a playful punch to his ribs.

“You are a whopping 228 years of age.”

“Don’t make me hurt you.”

“Tell me.”

“We have the caterer, the florist, and the cake-tasting meetings tomorrow and Thursday, then the bachelorette get away to Fernandina Beach is Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. And isn’t Neil’s bachelor party Saturday night?”

“Mmm,” he murmured, and kissed my temple.

A lingering kiss that migrated to my cheek.

I cleared my throat. “Then I have the bridal shower here next Saturday.”

“Uh-huh,” he breathed in my ear.

“And the couples shower and barbeque is Sunday at your houhowza.”

His next kiss landed in a place that robbed me of speech, robbed me of coherent thought, and rewarded me with joy.



An hour later, Saber slept. I lingered beside him for a while, basking in a sated stupor. Our joining might have been better than normal, but I’d keep diligent watch for signs of the illness. And pray I never saw them. I would not want to live with the horror of that sight.

Snowball jumped on the bed and curled herself around Saber’s head, which was my cue to get up, toss on a nightshirt, and get to work.

After hanging my costume in the closet, I made a beeline to the living room to work at my laptop. First I read over the list of Council of Ancients members Saber had left on the desk. Hmmm. No wonder he hadn’t found these folks. With names like Gandolph the Seer and Grover the Elf, the only sites that came up in my own search were for The Lord of the Rings and fantasy pages.

Next, just because I felt like it, I used Saber’s VPA pass codes to access the private areas of the VPA site. There was zip info on the COA period and not much on the Void, other than a warning that vampires were falling ill and what their symptoms might include. Guess Saber wasn’t fibbing about the VPA being clueless about tracking the Void. Heck, maybe the COA truly didn’t know about the Void or about Starrack being rogue, either, unless Cosmil had alerted them.

With those searches done, Millie’s concern about Maybelle’s reading of my astrology chart nagged at me. True, Maybelle was a dabbler, not an expert, but the woman knew her stuff. If she mentioned something amiss to Millie, it wasn’t an idle comment.

I’d see Maybelle tomorrow night at bridge club, but whether I’d have the privacy to ask her about my chart was iffy. Instead of stewing, I opted to be proactive. I plugged “astrology charts” into Google and turned up over two million results. Not helpful. I typed in “astrology charts disappearing from yours” and got over a hundred thousand listings. I refined the search to “disappearing from your own astrology chart” and got just over twenty-three thousand results, but they all dealt with habits and addictions not disappearing on their own. Duh.

I eyed the sites in the right column and spotted two astrologers who advertised free answers to short questions. What the heck. I shot each of them a note. Never hurts to see what one can get gratis.