Sara Humphreys: Vampire Trouble

The air around him was void of the normallyincessantsoundofflutteringhumanheartbeatsorthetypicalnoisesofNewYorkCitynightlife. No honking horns. No inane human conversation. Nothing.

For a split second, Shane thought he’d awakened somewhere other than his apartment within the Presidium’s New York facility. Standing ramrod straight, fangs bared and senses sharp, he surveyed the empty, hauntingly quiet Manhattan street.

Shane Quesada hadn’t been blanketed by silence like this in more than four hundred years, not since that fateful summer night so long ago. Though it had been centuries, he still recalled that hot August evening with vivid clarity. The mysterious woman visiting his village seduced him, turned him and then after toying with Shane for a century, Selena left the way she’d found him. Broken and alone.

That man—the one who wept for the woman who abandoned him—no longer existed, and Shane knew this particular moment was certainly not the time to revisit that period of weakness. Shutting down the unpleasant memory with the cold, calculating demeanor of a vampire sentry, he focused on figuring out where in the hell he was.

As he struggled to understand what was happening, his hands balled into fists and his jaw clenched. He could see he was standing outside The Coven, the club owned by one of the new czars of New York City, Olivia Hollingsworth. He’d frequented the place most nights over the past several months, but certainly not for the ear-shattering music, the stench of sweating humans, or the undrinkable swill that was served.

Instead, the blond, youngling vampire bartender had captured Shane’s interest and drawn him there night after night. Most evenings he wouldn’t stay long, only a few minutes before or after his sweeps of the city, but he’d discovered that skipping even one night made him surprisingly agitated. Even if only a moment or two, he simply had to have a glimpse of her. Maya Robertson, the flirtatious beauty who had a penchant for toying with human men, had become both the bane of his existence and the object of his long-dormant desire.

It had been years since he actually wanted awomanformorethanherblood. However, the moment Shane encountered the curvaceous beauty with the compelling blue eyes, lust gnawed at him. His sudden and instant attraction to the beautiful little vampire was highly unsettling. The nagging, pulsing need for her clawed relentlessly, deep in his gut, and even though he wanted nothing more than to claim her, Shane resisted.

He had no time for an emotional entanglement, let alone with one of the czar’s progeny. Emotions were dangerous and distracting. He was known as one of the finest and most focused sentries within the Presidium’s ranks, and he had no interest in losing his position or getting sloppy.

Aside from the fact that Maya was a youngling, only turned five years ago, she was reckless. And if there was one thing Shane couldn’t abide, it was recklessness. Maya had a fondness for human men, and from what he could tell, she’d taken many of them to her bed. His jaw clenched and anger fired through him at the mere thought of her with another man.

Shaking his head, he set his mouth in a tight line and fought to remove the image of her gorgeous oval-shaped face from his mind. Her skin was fair with not a freckle on it, and the only things more alluring than her hourglass figure were her enormous blue eyes. They were almost lavender, and she seemed fully aware of their hypnotic power. Maya might not be able to glamour Shane or any other vampire the way she could a human, but she certainly seemed to have him under her spell.

The woman had become a distraction, and in his line of work, things like that could get a vampire dusted. Shane sharpened his focus and tried to concentrate on the matter at hand—where the fuck he was and why the city had suddenly fallen silent.

What he found even more perplexing than the unsettlingquietwasthattheworldaroundhimwaspaintedinblackandwhite. Normally, with the night vision of a vampire, he would see the colorful world in varying shades of sepia tones, but not now. He blinked and turned slowly, surveying the familiar neighborhood, but things remained colorless and mute, as though he’d stepped into a silent film. There wasn’t a flicker of color anywhere, and the only sound was from his bare feet as he moved along the sidewalk.

Shane stopped.

Bare feet?

He looked down to find that he wasn’t wearing his sentry uniform, only a thin pair of cotton pajama pants. The same ones he’d put on before going to sleep for the day. He held his arms out and looked disapprovingly at his outright state of undress.

Pajamas?

What the hell was going on? He would never in his right mind leave his apartment in only his pajamas. As a sentry and well-known soldier for the Presidium, he had made far too many enemies over the years to leave his home unarmed—let alone half-naked.

Shane stilled when the realization of where he waswashedoverhim.

A dream.

He was walking in the dreamscape for the firsttimeinalmostfourhundredyears. A smile cracked his face and he ran both hands through his dark, thick hair while looking around in pure awe. The absence of dreams was something he’d grown accustomed to and hadn’t particularly missed. When he’d finally stopped dreaming, about ten years after being turned, it was the last step to letting go of his human life.

His smile faded when the gravity of what thismightmeansettledoverhim. Was he ill? Had he been bewitched in some way? Why now, after all this time, would he suddenly begin to dream again?

With those unanswered questions rattling through his mind, he saw two humans rounding the corner ahead of him. Shane stepped back into the shadows as they approached, but he kept his sights on them. The man had his arm wrapped tightly around the blond woman, who stumbled and was behaving as though she were highly intoxicated. Her hair fell over her face and she was shaking her head, trying to push the man away.

Shane stilled, uncertain of what to do. Could they see him? Were they merely a part of his dream, or were they sentient dreamwalkers like he was? It became abundantly clear that neither of them could see him when the human male tugged the young woman against him and started kissing her. She pushed him away, telling her aggressor to stop, but her words fell on deaf ears.

She struggled harder, which only infuriated the man. I bought you dinner and fed you drinks all fucking night. We both know where that leads .

The brute spun the blond around and tried tokissheragain, but she continued to refuse.

No, Shane heard her whimper. I want to go home.

I don’t think so. The man looked around, certain no one was in sight, and started dragging her into the alley next to the club. I own your ass.