Alone (10 page)

The beautiful house had been filled
with the finest furnishing and most expensive decor, but none of
these things gave the building a soul. Like the vampire himself,
the house was little more than a shell.

Loneliness had become a part of
Sebastian. He thought he’d grown immune to the feeling. Loneliness
and he walked hand in hand, joined together like Siamese twins.
Only now the twin had become parasitic, the loneliness feeding on
him to grow stronger.

As his solitude grew, Sebastian’s
resolve to stay away from Serenity weakened.

He must be going crazy. He meant it when
he’d told Serenity not to leave her husband for him. Their being
together was inconceivable. He wouldn’t contemplate the events that
needed to happen to make their union a possibility, yet he wanted
to be around her. Being close to her healed his wounds but
Sebastian knew his being there wasn’t good for her. He could bring
her nothing but confusion, anguish and despair. With a single word,
he would turn her whole idea of the world and what it contained
upside down.

Serenity didn’t deserve any of this.
She should be happily married with a couple of children, or have a
high flying career or be travelling the world. She should be doing
whatever she wanted to make her happy.

Frustration churned within him as he
paced. He couldn’t stay indoors, the confining walls did nothing to
help his pent up despair. He needed to be outside, part of the
night again.

Sebastian stepped out of the front
door and headed down the driveway to the front gate. He hit the
buzzer on his keys and the electric gates slid open before
him.

An unused, silver Audi A6 sat in the
drive. Despite having taught himself to drive many years ago, being
behind the wheel made him nervous. Driving wasn’t in his nature.
Anything involving technology and mechanics didn’t sit well with
him.

W
hat was the point in a car when he moved
faster under his own power?

Sebastian didn’t intend to head
down into the commotion of the city. Even at night, Los Angeles
bustled with people. For every celebrity, several thousand wannabes
lived in the metropolis. Every waitress, sales person, even the guy
who pumped your gas, wanted to be an actor. Tourists intertwined
with the dreamers, and dotted between them were the extremely rich
who
thought
themselves famous. An undercurrent of kooks and weirdoes
also had their place in LA. Many could be found hanging out at
Venice Beach. Sebastian found the area a good hunting ground. When
that type of person went missing, it caused less of a stir. Those
people disappeared all the time and normally had fewer people who
cared about them

Even so, Sebastian hated to take life. He
never killed unless necessary and he found he needed to feed once a
month to survive. Even so, once monthly for centuries amounted to a
lot of death but he had grown used to it, dulled, anesthetized. He
didn’t care about these people. Most of them were worthless pieces
of space; drug addicts and dealers, lazy bums who never bothered to
work.

Who
was he to play God?

He’d tried to starve himself, but the need
grew overwhelming. The hypocrisy of looking down on drug addicts
when, in many ways, Sebastian wasn’t much better himself didn’t
evade him.

Tonight, he didn’t head down to Venice
Beach. Instead, he turned away from the city and headed deeper into
the hills toward the national park. He felt better being among
nature, away from the bright Los Angeles lights. The giant, white
Hollywood sign hung high above him.

I’ll go there,
he decided. He would
have space to think.

The cool October air bit at his skin but,
immune to the cold, he didn’t react. He walked at a normal pace, at
the speed of a man, up through the gravel paths where the joggers
went through their paces and people took their dogs for walks.
Tonight he was in no hurry, he needed time to think.

Sebastian had no reason to rush through
time. He saw his future, the rest of eternity, stretching before
him and Serenity wasn’t in it. He thought he had come to terms with
being alone, made his peace, but the fact tormented him.

The vampire scaled the wire fence
surrounding the fifty feet tall letters of the famous sign. His
fingers hooked into the wire mesh, pulling him up with ease and
speed. Vaulting over the top, he dropped to the ground.

Sebastian walked up to the start of the
sign, the letters towering over him. Someone had to paint the
thing, he marveled. Perhaps a job for one of his kind?

He dropped to a crouch and sprung into the
air, leaping to the top of the first line of the letter ‘H’. Steel
girders held the structure in place and he stepped across them,
balancing easily, until he reached the concrete and enamel frontage
of the sign. He stood on the edge, the world dropping away before
him. The view from the top always took his breath away; a sea of
lights—reds, greens and yellows—the city with all its weird and
wonderful inhabitants, living with no idea of what stood above,
watching them.

The vampire sat down, swinging his
legs over the edge.

Normally, this was the only time he
felt at peace with himself; alone in the night, seeing its beauty
for all that it was. Yet tonight, he found peace only came with
thoughts of Serenity, picturing her beautiful, haunted face in his
mind.

The air moved behind him and he froze, no
longer alone.

Sebastian turned to find a figure balanced
on the steel girders, as he had been only moments before. Moonlight
shrouded her face but he recognized her immediately. He could tell
by her scent alone; a mixture of blood and darkness and night.
Someone he’d hoped to never see again.

Madeline.

P
ale skin caught the moonlight, long red
hair springing around her face in ringlets. Her green eyes glowed
in the darkness, taking him in with a knowing, sly stare. She
looked good; beauty had never been Madeline’s problem. Her exterior
perfect; doll-like, exotic, but poison churned on the inside. Her
heart lay black and still inside her chest. Nothing gave her
greater pleasure than messing with people, playing the puppet
master. Madeline manipulated everyone to get what she
wanted.

Sebastian knew all about
her.

L
ong ago, she’d hurt the people he loved.
He thought he’d escaped her but now, here she was again.

“
What do you want, Madeline?” he
regarded her coolly. “What are you doing here?”

She gave him a lop-sided smile and glanced
up from under her eyelashes, her full red mouth pouting. “I missed
you, Sebastian. I thought I’d see if you had changed your mind
about me?”

T
he sight of her made him tremble with
anger. “You’re insane. Get out of here.”

“
But I thought you might
have changed,” she said. “I thought you were interested in women
again?”

“
You’re not a
woman.”

“
Oh, not me, Sebastian,” she said
with a light tinkle of laughter. “The other woman.”

His blood froze. “I have no idea what
you’re talking about.”

She laughed again. “I think you know
exactly what I’m talking about. Dark hair? Big, sad-looking eyes? I
would have thought her a bit plain for your liking, Sebastian, but
then you never did have taste in women.”

She stopped and took a step closer,
looking at him carefully, studying his face.

“
Wow,” she said, her green
eyes wide. “You really care, don’t you?” She smiled again, her
false, bright smile. “Well, I guess that makes things easier for
me.”

“
What do you want, Madeline?” he
asked again.

She sidled up to him, her long, lean
body close, leaving only a sliver of air between them.

“
I want what I’ve always
wanted. I want you.”

Sebastian reached out and shoved her away.
The other vampire stumbled back, but didn’t fall. She glared at
him, eyes now yellow with fury, burning in the dark.

“
Don’t test me, Sebastian,”
she spat. The seductive woman had gone, replaced by a vicious wild
cat. “Don’t forget I can always take something away from
you.”

Rage soared through him. “So we’re
here again, Madeline?” he said, eyes narrowed with hatred. “The
only way you can get someone to be around you is by blackmailing
them?”

She looked at him with scorn,
forgetting herself for a moment. “There are plenty of others to
choose from. It’s easy enough for me to get who I want, and
Sebastian, I always get who I want.”

Then she seemed to remember herself and
turned again, meek and mild. “I just want a companion, Sebastian,
you must understand? I get so lonely. I know you do
too.”

“
Why me? Why can’t you leave
me alone?”

She placed a hand against his chest
and he shuddered at her touch. “Maybe I only want you because
you’ve made it so clear you don’t want me. I’ve always loved a good
chase.”

He tore her hand away from his chest and
stepped back. Inches from where they stood, the edge dropped fifty
feet to the ground.

“
Obviously not clear
enough.”

Madeline turned away, her shoulders
sagging. “I don’t know why you hate me so much.”

He barked laughter into the night.
“You did this to me! You made me what I am and you wonder why I
hate you for it?”

“
You are strong and beautiful,”
she breathed. “You will live forever. How can you hate me for
that?”

“
You took away everything I
loved. Who wants to spend eternity alone?”

“
So give in.”

Instantly, she stood directly in front
of him, her long slim fingers touching his cheek. “Stay with me and
you won’t be alone.”

Sebastian took a small step back, the
solid concrete, enamel and steel no longer beneath his feet. He
plummeted through the air, the cool wind whistling past his ears.
His stomach lurched, like hitting turbulence on an airplane, and
his feet hit the ground. Every muscle tensed to take the impact and
he dropped to a crouch.

Within moments, Madeline was by his side
again, dropping lighter than he had. She was more agile, faster
than him.

He rounded on her. “Get out of my
life, Madeline. I would rather spend eternity alone than one more
minute with you.”

She glared at him, yellow eyes like
beacons. “It’s that woman isn’t it?” she snarled, flashing her
canines at him.

“
A fucking human! What do
you want with another human? They’re weak, pathetic.”

“
They have feelings, they care,
they
love
.”

“
I can love,” she pretended to be
hurt.

“
You only love
yourself.”

He turned from her and started to walk
away. His ears listened for the sound of her following but only
silence greeted him. When he reached the chain-link fencing, he
risked turning around. The space behind him was empty but Sebastian
knew it wouldn’t be for long. Now she had found him again, she
wouldn’t leave him alone.

Madeline
must have searched every city to find
him, or maybe she just got lucky? He thought by leaving Europe he’d
escaped her. The other vampire thought America to be crass and
uneducated, a new world version of ‘new money’. He thought Los
Angeles was the one city Madeline would avoid, but he’d been
wrong.

H
e needed to leave again, to lose himself
in a world that was quickly becoming too small.

Chapter Nine

Jackson spent most of
the
next day
nursing his sore head. By mid-afternoon, he announced he needed a
medicinal brandy and was going to the bar.

As soon as he told Serenity, a flutter of
nervous butterflies stirred in her stomach. From past experience,
she knew Jackson never stuck to one drink. If he went down to the
bar, he wouldn’t return until closing time.

Time to go.

Nausea churned inside her.
Was
she
actually going to leave her husband? She planned to pack a bag,
take three hundred dollars out of a machine, and find a hotel for
the night. She’d decided not to take the first bus out so she could
try to get her hands on another three hundred dollars in the
morning. Jackson might cancel her card as soon as he realized she
was gone, but she suspected he’d most likely keep quiet in order to
track her by her cash withdrawals. Staying in town for one night
would allow her the extra money while not giving Jackson any idea
which direction she was heading. As soon as he figured out where
she was going, he would follow to make sure she never got the
chance to leave him again.

Serenity hadn’t booked a hotel or decided
at which one to stay. The less she planned, the more unpredictable
her movements were, increased the difficulty Jackson would
experience trying to finding her.