Page 11 of Hunting My Vampire

As I drove to the rehab center, I started to feel better about myself. I was going to be able to move on from this.

Especially as I knew about Jack Beaufort and his family. His father had built a huge empire of resorts that extended all over the country and also overseas. It was wealth that had been accrued over hundreds of years and much of it was wrapped up in tales of murder and stolen land. Many fingers had been pointed towards the Beaufort family over the years.

But Jack Beaufort in particular, was a bad one. He had been the last assignment on my list and I was finalizing my plan when someone put a stop to it. I was doing the research on how best to do it, driving around the castle area where he lived. This was where I had the car accident that had almost killed me. It put an end to my career as an assassin but I remembered enough of the brief about him. Jack had been accused of killing the head of a consortium in the Caribbean to weaken the competition and ensure Topaz Resorts could take over the properties they had an eye on. Witnesses had seen his henchmen on the scene where the businessman was murdered and in a court of law, one of the henchmen, who’d later been found dead, confessed that Jack Beaufort had told him to kill the target.

There might have been good vampires but he was not one of them. No matter how much he had sweet-talked me the night before, I had to accept that I had allowed my guard to slip. The only way I could live with this was if I never allowed it to happen again.

I turned off to the Still Waters Rehab Centre near White Mountain and parked outside the log cabin building, gathering Pearl’s gifts from her mother. There were people about, talking in groups and laughing. It was a peaceful place and I had seenPearl do well here. I went looking for her in her room and was told she was outside with the horses. I walked to the paddocks where Pearl was stroking a beautiful mare.

She smiled when she saw me walking towards her

“Kaya! I didn’t know you were coming!”

She gave me a warm hug, holding on tightly. I felt myself absorb the love of the embrace, felt myself relax for a bit.

“I brought some cookies and a few things from home,” I said, leaning against the wooden post and gazing out over the field.

“Choc chip?” she asked, eyes gleaming. “I’m getting a bit tired of the spinach smoothies here.”

“I can imagine,” I chuckled, thinking of Tina’s bacon.

“Ready to come home?”

She lifted her eyebrows. “I better be, right? Can’t stay here forever…”

Pearl sounded wistful and I knew why. She missed her daughter, of course, but coming back to her old life with all of its temptations was always a challenge. This was her third stint in rehab. She always left with the best intentions not to relapse but at some point, she lost the battle again. She was fighting her own demons and when the stresses of life got too much, she was unable to manage them.

“This time will be different,” I assured her, “You’re looking so much better.”

She was too. She’d picked up weight and her eyes had the old sparkle again that I remembered from before.

She smiled at me. “What’s new in your life, I can tell there is something you’re dying to tell me.”

Of course there was.

I didn’t know where to begin.

“Just spit it out,” she said, punching my arm playfully.

I didn’t know how to tell her.

“Is it a man?” she teased me. “It is, isn’t it!”

“Well, not strictly speaking,” I said, avoiding her eyes. “Not in the living, human sense.”

Her eyes widened. “A vampire!”

There was a reason why I picked Pearl to confide in. She wasn’t easily shocked and had a pretty wild past. She’d run away from home as a teenager, before I had come to stay with her family. She’d wound up in a club where she had done pole dancing for money. Eventually, she’d come home and made up with her parents but every so often she’d disappear, go on benders with men she’d met at the pub downtown. I didn’t approve of her lifestyle but I knew better than to criticize. My own life was no fairy tale and I’d had my share of monsters. We all dealt with life in our way, some of us were better at it than others.

“I shouldn’t have done it. But I was so attracted to him,” I admitted.

“How was it?” Pearl’s eyes sparkled. “I bet you it was fantastic! They can be wild in bed!”

“Well, yeah… but…”

“What?” Pearl wanted to know. “No-one is saying marry the guy, just have some fun! You deserve it!”

I shook my head.

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