VAMPIRE ROMANCE: Moonlight Desires Complete Series (Books 1, 2, &3) (Paranormal Romance Collection, Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance With Sex) (Vampire Romance Boxed Set) (6 page)

              Shana was standing outside grabbing some air when mass was letting out. Shoving through the crowd frantically searching for Shana, Suze almost knocked over two children who had just received the body of the Lord for the first time in their lives. The lids of Shana’s eyes opened wide when she saw Suze rushing towards her like a warthog.

“Luke was great in there. He did great, Suze.” For the first time since they had arrived at the church, Shana seemed alert and engaged. She leaned in for a congratulatory hug.

The hug was rebuffed. “I just wanted you to know,” Suze spat out her red face, “That I called Tom before the service this morning and told him about those scratches on your neck. He knows where they came from and he knows where that corpse of yours resides.”

              Dumbfounded, that’s the word you’d use to describe Shana’s face. Dumbfounded because how did Suze figure it out? Dumbfounded because why would she tell Tom? Dumbfounded because what’s the big deal anyway?

“He said he was going to start driving out here around noon, which means you’ve got about seven hours to figure out why you were messing around with that blood sucking demon.”

              Shana slugged her sister in the jaw and stormed off. A circle formed around Suze, partially out of concern for the struck woman, partially to ogle the damage, partially to keep her from pursuing fisticuffs at a place of worship.

Chapter Five

On the walk back to her sister’s house, Shana’s phone rang six times. She never picked up. At the precise moment Shana realized she didn't have a key for the house, her phone started ringing a seventh time. The desire to enter was outweighed by the revulsion she felt for her kin in that moment, by the familial betrayal she had suffered. She sat on the stoop, checked her missed calls (all Suze and Nate) and called her fiance.

              Tom, like Shana did to her sister, ignored the call. Not because, mind you, he wanted to ignore the call. In fact, all he wanted in that moment was to hear his fiance’s voice, to hear how badly she needed him right now, how dependent she was on her everything, her Tommy. Maybe if she pleaded enough he could turn around and go home, call it a day. No, he ignored the call because the grindcore he was listening to was playing too loud over the car’s stereo. He chose the angry music because felt angry. The music amped up the road rage he felt being stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway at 1 PM on Sunday afternoon. Where were these people going anyway at 1 PM on a Sunday afternoon?

He stopped off in Mineola to get a bag of Doritos. Chips would soothe his weary soul.

              Dread consumed Shana as she heard Nate’s car pull around the block. Her muscles tensed in some barbaric animal reaction to her sister, the quick preparation to fight until their mutual annihilation. When she heard the car doors open, Shana was ready to pounce. But Suze was weeping and Nate walked around to assist the slow waltz towards her sister.

“Shana, why didn’t you pick up?”

“Why the fuck did you tell Tom?”

“If you had picked up we wouldn’t have had to rush back here.”

Shana’s body tensed again. “Don’t you even make this about me.”

Nate chimed, “We couldn’t find Luke after the service. We still can’t find Luke. The police are at the church now and they’re going to be here soon.”

The whole of Shana’s epidermis turned cold as a cadaver’s, and her body went as stiff as one too.

“Did you see him Shana? Did you see him leave while you were outside?”

A tight shake of the head was all Shana’s neck would allow for. She saw nothing, not that she was paying attention.

“Well,” Nate said, “better tell the police that since it might help them map possible routes he could have taken.”

“But…” Thoughts could barely be sculpted into words. “Why would… Run?”

The sobs started strong from Suze. “He wouldn’t have. I told him right before he went up there that we’d eat at the Olive Garden afterwards.”

“The Olive Garden is his favorite.” The way Nate said it, it was like he was talking about a dead person whose interests had travelled with him to the beyond, leaving only the Olive Garden in its wake.

Chapter Six

Tom sped down the I-80, uncaring for or just ignorant to the fact that Pennsylvania cops were positively itchy to pull over a car with New York plates. He tossed the empty Doritos bag out of his window and it hit a motorcyclist in the face. The biker swerved, and so did the cars around him. There was no collision, but one car in the right lane ended up getting stuck in an embankment on the side of the highway. Tom’s fly was undone so that he could scratch.

              The police were friendly enough considering what they must put up with in Cleveland. A Rust Belt city during the recession was not an easy place to keep the peace, what with drugs used and petty crimes committed by so much of the citizenry just to get by. But many officers are family men, well aware of the multitude of threats to a household. Hence, the disappearance of a child was one of the few times in which a cop's steely demeanor dissolved. The detective that came by the house was the same one that talked to Suze about the disappearance of Benjamin Henderson, the son of the meth addicts a few doors down.

              Roy Kerring was a three-decade veteran of the force. At a certain point in a detective's career, deduction becomes as much a process of instinct as reason. He understood the type of home Luke came from and the type of parents he had. Something in his gut told him that this was not a place a boy would want to run away from. A mother didn’t dress so well for a communion and act this kind of hysterical––Suze was literally pulling out strands of eyebrow after a few––without some deep mutual dependence established amongst members of the family.

              The three adults did the best they could to answer all police queries, but as is the nature of questioning in general, you only get answers for the questions you ask. Had the detective not looked back to the house as he walked out to his black Lincoln Towncar, he never would have noticed the blemish in the family’s front door. Closer inspection indicated that something sharp had created the protrusion in the door, and Nate confirmed his hunch that it may be an ice pick.

“One second, officer.” Nate went to the drawer where he and Suze stashed the map the night before. It took half a second for Roy to understand what he was looking at. Each red dot marked a place in Cleveland where a person who went missing in the past year was last scene. Some of these missing people turned up dead, and the police figured there was one person responsible.

              Ohio, recounted the detective, has been home to as many of America’s presidents as its serial killers. For Roy Kerring, there was little difference between tracking the rise of a president and that of a serial killer. There are acts that define the, milestones in their tenure which fortify their legacy. But presidents sign bills and killers dispose of bodies. Understanding the patterns of each will help you understand this person you are studying.

              This is the point where Suze totally lost it. Roy Kerring was savvy in police work, not in people skills. Conversation was off the table, he discovered after another three or four minutes of this monolog.

“Well,” resolved the officer, “I’m going to just make my way out of here, need to get started on paper work back on the station. Any of you got anything else to tell me?”

He looked around the room, and only made eye contact with Shana. And then it came to her: that hobbling man with the stubby fingers and the ice pick.

“Officer!”

Roy was half in his jacket, half out. He paused waiting.

“There is one thing…” And then Shana caught herself. She had gone this long without telling Nate or Suze that a man with the ice pick caused the damage to their car. Who knows what kind of chaos that information could incite now. Shana willed herself into sobbing to avoid telling the details.

“Yes?” Shana’s sob was the only answer to the officer’s question. “Well if you end up in a state to tell me later, you have my card.”

Chapter Seven

By sundown, Tom was taking a dump at a rest stop just over the border of Ohio. He was checking another eBay auction and spent 45 minutes on the can. Something about the situation reminded him of the morning Shana left for Cleveland and his fury forced him out of the stall and into the car. He forgot to wipe.

              Shana needed a reprieve from the chaos. When she left, the phone was off the hook, beeping, and Suze was neatly organizing everything in Luke’s room for when he came home. Nate was in the garage drinking beer. It was too much.

              Naturally, there was one place Shana wished to go and that was the cemetery. Rational thought would have dictated that she avoid the place where she encountered the mad man just nights before, and for that matter, avoid the creature who was sowing fissures in her most near and dear relationships. But rational thought could not cut through the spell that gripped Shana.

              Still reveling in a reprisal of her adolescence, she wandered around the cemetery, admiring the gravestones of various arcane, elaborate shapes: the obelisks, the busts, the low-laying slabs. As she used to do, she went by each of them making up little two-sentences stories about the people who rested beneath. Nora Joralemon wore high heels every day. She never learned to surf like she saw on TV. Chet Yantis was always tinkering with the household appliances. His son never got a hug after puberty.

              As she approached Baker’s tomb, her knees quivered a little, breaking the even line of her stroll. The grass was a little more moist than usual, letting her shoe footprints sit for a little while longer before the grass rose back upright. The moon floating in and out of mist.

She found Baker standing outside of his mausoleum admiring the moon.

“Does it look any different after all these centuries?”

“Shana.” The vampire’s pale face lit up. “So good for you to come by.”

“No class tonight?”

“No.” They kissed. “Come.” The found a patch of that moist grass and sat down. Shana was wearing the same dress she wore to church, and the moisture quickly seeped through to her bottom.

              They were far from Baker's mausoleum, and as such, did not see Tom pull up to it. Gripping a wooden stake, Tom rushed into the mausoleum to slay the vampire like he had seen in the movies. There was nobody in there. In his dumb way, Tom just kind of milled around for a second and picked at his fingernails.

              A couple hundred yards away, his fiancee was being taken by a vampire. Shana was fellating the creature, enjoying the sensation of his frigid erection against the back of her pallette, for it reminded her of the refreshing sensation of an ice pop in the middle of a muggy Long Island heat wave. Feeling kinky, she slipped a finger into Baker's rear, and the vampire melted into the ground.

              Determined, Tom Googled “when do vampires go to bed” on his phone. There weren't really results for this query. Not a very persistent man, Tom was on the verge of giving up. But sulky as a teen, he went to go curse the sky first. And that's when he saw the secret to his success on the ceiling.

              The greatest lubricant in the world is human spit, and Shana always loved the sensation of a cock covered in her slobber being slipped into her hole. They lay on their sides, his hip inside her thigh, as they worked together to craft a lulling coital motion. It was slower, but they could each feel every centimeter of one another's organs at work, in exquisite harmony.

Shana told the vampire she would let him bite her, but not tonight.

              Twice, Tom slipped down the side of the mausoleum as he lost his footing. He actually drove by a ladder that the groundskeeper left out on his way into the cemetery, but this is not information retained by Tom's one-track mind. “Motherfuck! How do I get up there?” Stomping around the structure in rage, Tom found a lattice of vines on the other side. He scrambled up the side and clutched for dear life on the slightly domed top.

              Baker's body formed an arch, his head pushed down to hickey Shana's breasts while his bottom continued with its love making, the motions growing ever more insistent as Shana shivered in the intense sexual energy. The peculiar positioning of Baker's body was to prevent him from being tempted to draw the juice he so desperately needed, but it also made sure that his throbbing hard-on hit parts inside of Shana rarely frequented.

Shana climaxed for forty seconds straight.

Tom took off his Avenged Sevenfold t-shirt and wrapped it around his elbow.

Shana, mid-orgasm, pinned Baker's head to the ground, placing her forearm on his neck. The way he twisted gave them both intense satisfaction.

Tom ripped the blue tarp away from the glass skylight of the mausoleum. He smashed the glass with his elbow.

Shana sat upright, sweating profusely.

              Tom writhed on the ground by his car as his elbow bled. The t-shirt did not keep any of the glass out.

              Shana made her way back to the house. Tom found a $30 room at a no-name motor lodge.

              Baker returned to his abode to sleep the day through. When the sunlight shone through the broken skylight, it did not annihilate him like Tom had hoped. No, in fact Tom did not shatter the whole skylight, but only a small section.

A narrow ray of sunlight shone down on Baker's crotch, and his penis sizzled off like water on red hot pavement.

Shana got the best night sleep she had since coming to Cleveland.

TO BE CONTINUED