Page 24 of My Blind Date is a Vampire

“So…what do you want to know?” Landon asked once we were settled down. We were both sitting on opposite ends of the two-seater couch, Landon with one leg up on the seat and the other on the ground, his body half turned to face me. I’d curled up into the corner on my end, my knees raised up to my chest and balancing a gigantic coffee mug precariously on my knees.

“I have so many questions, I don’t know which one to ask first. How about you just tell me anything you feel I need to know, and then if there’s anything I think of, I’ll ask later,” I suggested. Beverly had already summed up Landon’s history for me, but there was a difference in hearing something secondhand and getting it straight from the source.

He gulped and breathed in through his nose, staring down at the carpet with a faraway look in his eyes. Once he collected his thoughts, he looked me in the eyes and told me everything. “I was thirty-three when I was changed. I had a beautiful wife, her name was Amelia,” he began, a bittersweet smile in his face.

I tried not to show any emotion, thankful that I already knew he’d been married before. Jealousy had burned through me when I found out about that until I told myself that I didn’t even exist when Landon had married his first wife and that people could have more than one great love in their lifetime—even in a single human lifetime. Still, it stung a little to see him have that look in his eyes when he spoke about another woman; I coveted it and wanted it all for myself.

“We married young, but we had been struggling to conceive for years, even with the help of my mother and her potions. Amelia had had two prior miscarriages, but the third pregnancy passed the three- and six-month marks with no incident, so we were cautiously optimistic.”

“How come you’re not a witch or whatever? Sorry to interrupt, I’m just curious,” I cut in, lowering my legs and moving closer to him.

“It’s alright. The gift—that’s what they call it, tends to pass on from mother to daughter. Witch households were, and still are, matriarchal in nature, and it’s rare for the gift to pass from mother to son or from father to son; but it does happen once in a blue moon that a warlock is born. No one knows the reasoning behind it; perhaps it’s because the triple goddess is depicted as mother, maiden, and crone.” He shrugged. “Stranger still is that warlocks are twice as powerful as the average witch; anyway, I was an only child, so there was no Grayson daughter to inherit Mother’s gift.”

“I see,” I hummed, taking a sip of my coffee and scalding my tongue. Wincing, I put it aside on the coffee table, but now I had nothing to do with my hands, so I shoved them beneath my thighs. “I kinda feel like I should take notes. I’ve never written a book before, but all this talk of vampires, warlocks, and witches has my imagination revving,” I joked.

“If you need inspiration for a dashing hero, you know where to find me.” He winked, leaning forward, and I mirrored the action. Our faces were so close, I could make out the blue-grey flecks in his eyes.

“What happened next?” I asked him, pulling my bottom lip between my teeth to keep from kissing him. Like I thought it would, my question put a damper on the heat in his eyes. Leaning back and putting some space between us, Landon continued with his story.

“There was a small clan of vampires that had moved into our settlement. You see, witches are sort of mediators between humans and the supernatural; they also serve as guardians to humans who are too weak to defend against creatures of the dark like myself. The older vampires in our community knew that to indiscriminately kill and drain our human friends and neighbors was anathema to the tenets that we all agreed to live by. These new vampires were arrogant and drunk on their power and trampled over those core values, killing without a thought, stealing people away and using them for their own pleasure. It fell upon my mother and the other witches to put them in their place.

“Earlier that day, before Amelia and I visited, mother and her friends wounded the clan leader grievously as a warning. They should have just killed them all in my opinion because no one knows how to bear a grudge like an immortal. That night, the homes of my mother’s coven members were attacked, not a single person was left alive.” His voice hitched and unshed tears shimmered in his eyes. “I was helpless to save any of them; they went for my mother first. I did not see them coming—snapped her neck like she was nothing more than a twig and dismembered her in front of my eyes.”

“Oh, Landon.” I stood up and knelt on the floor in front of him, covering his fisted hands in mine. A sob lodged in my throat, imagining everything he’d gone through. The helplessness he felt watching his family murdered in front of him and being unable to do anything.

“Before my mind processed what was happening, Amelia was already on the ground, her lifeless eyes looking up at me, frozen forever in terror and clutching at her stomach—at our baby as two vampires drained her of her lifeblood. I tried to get to her, but there was another one on me, tearing at my throat like a rabid wolf. I’ll never forget the sound of them greedily gorging themselves; or the smell of blood soaking the very air I breathed. My attacker must have thought that I was dead when he was done, but I was still holding on and had his venom inside me. I woke up five days later to the stench of rotting corpses; everyone in our village dead.”

“Oh, honey, I am so sorry you had to live through all of that. You don’t have to tell me anymore.” I wiped away his tears.

“No. I want to tell you everything so that you know what kind of person I became back then and the man that I am now,” he said in a hoarse whisper. Getting down on his knees, he picked me up before sitting back on the couch and cradling me on his lap. “Will you listen?” he asked into the crook of my neck, breathing in my scent.

I nodded and laid my head against his shoulder, the palm of my hand resting over his heart as he told me of his past. From his feral days, seeking out those who hurt his family and killing innocent humans along the way, to his time spent with Beverly in Mystic Cove. He told me of his travels around the world, how he met Dane as a newborn vampire struggling to accept what he’d become and taking the young man under his wing. Landon spoke until his voice became rough from talking too much and the sky started to lighten up, pausing mid-sentence when I let out a huge yawn.

“I should go home and let you get some sleep,” he murmured into my hair, sounding like that was the last thing he wanted to do; in fact, his hands squeezed tighter around me.

Smiling, I shook my head and burrowed deeper into his embrace. “Stay. I still have so much to ask you, like if you really prefer O negative over other blood types and where you get your blood supply if you don’t drink straight from humans.”

“You’ve been talking to Beverly,” he huffed. “The hospital holds monthly blood drives and my clan buys some of the blood. There are those who prefer animal blood, but it’s not as sustaining as human blood, and there are some humans who are addicted to having a vampire drink straight from them, so there is never any shortage of food, so to speak.”

“Does it hurt to have a vampire drink from you?” I slurred, my eyes heavy with the need for sleep. I was jostled from the sleepy state when Landon got to his feet and started walking up to my bedroom.

“We can make the bite as painful or as pleasurable as we wish.”

“Is that so? You’ll have to show me sometime.”

He paused when I said that and looked down at me, his expression unreadable. He said nothing as he picked me up and carried me into my bedroom, depositing me on the bed before taking off his shoes and clothes and joining me under the sheets.

* * *

“I understand why you didn’t tell me that you were a vampire, Landon; it’s not the kind of thing you bring up after one date,” I told him, caressing his bearded cheeks as we lay face to face, our legs intertwined. “I’m not even mad that you waited to tell me. I just had a very human reaction after hearing that something I thought only existed in fairytales was real, and even though it will take me some time to really wrap my head around all this, what you are changes nothing about how I feel about you. I love you, Landon, and I want to be with you for as long as you’ll have me,” I whispered.

“Then you’re stuck with me forever because I’ll never stop loving you. This is your last chance to run, Julia, because if you stay, I’m never letting you slip away ever again. Being without you these last few weeks was torture and I never want to go through that again.” He pulled me close so that we were lying chest to chest, his breath fanning against my face.

“I’m going nowhere. I am yours, mind, body, and soul,” I declared, brushing away the hair falling over his eyes and basking in the moment, the rightness of it. I was made for Landon and he for me; the moment that thought crossed my mind, I felt something snap into place.

Landon’s fingers dug into my waist as we both gasped. A strange sensation burned within my chest and my heart swelled as an influx of emotions that were both mine and not mine flooded my system. Tears bloomed in my eyes and I had no idea why, just that I was tethered to Landon in a way I had not been a few minutes ago.

“What was that?” I asked when the sudden euphoria swirling within me ebbed.

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