Amelia Atwater-Rhodes: Demon in My View

Then everything had changed. Carl, the love of her life, her husband for three years, was hit by a drunk driver. He died in a hospital bed while she wept in the waiting room.

Her parents had both passed away several years before, and her friends were few and far between. There wad no shoulder she could cry on. The only one who was there for her was the immortal Siete.

She still said no. Immortality was not what she wanted. Immortality without Carl was meaningless. She wanted only to be left alone and given time to grieve. Even this was denied her —

A knock on the door woke Jessica.

She lifted her head from the desktop and rubbed her eyes as she heard Anne call her name. According to Jessica’s computer, it was now just past ten in the morning.

Sleeping at her desk for five hours had left her with some kinks in her neck. She stood and stretched, then shut down her computer and opened the door to answer Anne.

Anne, wearing her Sunday best, had been about to knock on Jessica's door again.

"Are you running early or is my clock wrong?" Jessica asked, confused as to why Anne was all dressed up for church when she didn't need to leave for another hour.

"I told Hasana Rashida I'd meet up with her for a coffee before the service," Anne explained. "Hasana is your friend Caryn's mother. Have you met her?"

Jessica nodded once and managed not to add anything that might offend Anne.

"Caryn will be with us, if you'd like to come," Anne added hopefully. She offered the invitation every week, though Jessica never accepted.

Part of Jessica's dream gnawed at her: Monica Smoke. If anyone would know about Jazlyn, Monica's relatives would.

However, she had no desire to make small talk with Caryn and Hasana, so she declined the offer, deciding instead to speak with one of them outside the church. She took a shower and dressed slowly while Anne gathered her belongings and left the house.

Walking, Jessica reached the church about fifteen minutes before the service was scheduled to start. She waited at the corner of the building as Hasana, Caryn, and Anne approached, laughing. She didn't try to get their attention, and vaguely realized that she reminded herself of one of her characters, stalking prey.

As Hasana and Anne became lost in the crowd near the church doors, Jessica caught Caryn's arm.

"Caryn, I need to talk to you," she said in a hushed tone.

The girl jumped a bit but seemed to relax when she saw who had grabbed her. They slipped out of the group and into a less crowded area of the churchyard.

"About?" Caryn asked.

But before Jessica could answer, Caryn gasped. Her face froze in a look of horror as she pointed toward the side wall of the church.

It took Jessica a few moments to register what Caryn was seeing. The second she did, she bounded across the yard—toward Anne and the vampire who had her in his grasp.

Jessica didn't recognize the vampire, which she supposed was a good sign; if she hadn't written about him, he probably wasn't very strong. She was counting on that fact.

Tearing the vampire away from Anne, she slammed her fist into his jaw before he could even figure out what was happening. Anne stumbled back against the wall, and Caryn and Hasana, from opposite ends of the churchyard, hurried to her side. The rest of the churchgoers, clearly under the mind control of the vampire, continued to chat and make their way cheerfully into the building.

Before Jessica had a chance to check on Anne, the vampire turned and hit her hard enough that she found herself on the ground, her head spinning.

The vampire looked nervously from the witches and Anne to the group of people near the doors of the church, and Jessica could all but see his thoughts. If Caryn and Hasana interfered, he wouldn't be able to keep his control over the crowd, and this confrontation would get even messier.

Then he looked at Jessica, staring fiercely at her for one long moment. She tried to stand but couldn't find her balance; he had probably given her a concussion with that little love tap. She braced herself for his next strike. But he was gone.

Why had he left when he could have killed her in an instant? Suddenly last night's conversation popped back into her head.

There are actually very few of my kind who would dare to kill you.

I suppose you're one of the few.

I'm one of the reasons they wouldn't dare.

"Thank you, Aubrey," she said softly.

Caryn moved from Anne's side to Jessica's. Her face was pale, and she said nothing for a moment.

Jessica tried again to stand, and a wave of blackness passed over her vision. Caryn put a hand on her arm to help her up, then gently touched the side of Jessica's head where the vampire had hit her.

Jessica jerked back when she felt the warm wave of energy that flowed out of Caryn.

"Jessica—"

"I'm fine," she snapped, infuriated by her own weakness. She refused to accept help from Caryn.

But as she pulled away, she forced herself to add, "Thank you." The dizziness was gone completely.

As her thoughts focused, Jessica asked, "What about Anne?"

Caryn looked at her mother, who just shook her head.

Jessica's legs went out from under her.

"Jessica, I'm sorry…" Hasana was speaking, but Jessica hardly heard the words.

Caryn tried to take her hand, but she shook it off and went to Anne's side.

Anne was pale, but Jessica could tell that it wasn't blood loss that had killed her. The vampire hadn't had the time, so instead he had broken her neck.

She balled her hands into fists, so tightly that her nails drew blood from her palms. Why had he killed her? He had done so intentionally, not just to feed.

As she took the dead woman's hand, Jessica saw a piece of paper tucked into Anne's grip. Pulling it out, she needed to read no more than the first line before she recognized it as a page from the Dark Flame manuscript. It was a page on which Fala was described.

Scrawled on the back, in sharp black ink, were four words: Stay in your place.

Jessica found herself shaking with anger— at the nameless vampire who had killed Anne, and especially at Fala, who must have put him up to it.

Fala would never have been able to convince one of her kind to go directly against Aubrey, even if for some reason she hadn't wanted to kill Jessica with her own hands. But Anne was free and defenseless prey.

Hasana put a hand on Jessica's shoulder. "Come, Jessica. There are other people to deal with this. You don't need to stay here."

Jessica shrugged out of Hasana's grip, still looking at the only human who had ever bothered to care for her.

Aubrey paced in his room, as he'd done shortly after he'd first met Jessica Allodola, trying to reason out his emotions. It was nearly noon, and he was still awake; that alone was enough to make him irritable. Coupled with his confusion about last night's confrontation, he was very much in the mood to pick a fight.

She had stared him down. He couldn't help respecting her for it. Not to mention her all-but-suicidal challenge—

Not so suicidal, he reminded himself, interrupting his own thought. She won, after all.

Jessica was like a sand viper: beautiful, not apparently formidable, but fearless and deadly poisonous.

"Damn you, Fala," he whispered as the vampire's taunt echoed in his head: If I didn't know better, I'd say you were attracted to her. "Why aren't you ever wrong?"

Of course, there was more than the physical attraction Fala had speculated about. The actuality was far more dangerous both to his own position—as was any emotional attachment to a human—and to Jessica if any of his many enemies guessed the truth.