Page 11 of Tamed By Her Vampire Protector

I stuck my tongue out at him.Jerk face.

He gave me a look full of meaning as he pulled the car out of the garage.“You have to promise to keep this a secret.Nobody can know about this place, not even Rose, Amanda, or Lizzy.”

I was as confused as much as I was on the edge of my seat with curiosity about where we were going.A joke was on the tip of my tongue, but the words died in my throat at the vulnerable look on Leo’s face.He was trusting me with something important to him.

“I won’t.Your secret is safe with me.”

He nodded, satisfied with my answer.“You’ll like it, I promise.”

I held onto my seatbelt with a white knuckled grip as we zoomed down the dark, empty streets of Los Angeles.The only things I could see were what was immediately in front of us and lit up by the headlights.With no other traffic on the roads, Leo pushed the racecar to its limits, going multiple times the speed limit posted on the road signs and sending me sliding across my seat with each sharp turn.

From what I remembered of the Los Angeles area, the Diamantis clan headquarters were somewhere near the downtown business and industrial area.We drove away from the urban core and soon we were flying down the freeway away from the city of angels.In the before times, we would have crawled along in gridlocked traffic, but today the entire road was ours.

Soon we took an off-ramp and turned down a couple local streets until we pulled into what looked like a typical suburban neighborhood.The houses were large, but in the before times, would have been cozy and welcoming unlike the soulless McMansions that filled most suburbs.It was the type of place that would not look out of place in a scene from a Hallmark Christmas movie special.

I pictured the type of people who used to live here.Happy families with perfectly well-behaved children and fluffy golden retrievers playing behind white picket fences and neatly trimmed hedges.Those poor people had no idea that their lives were going to end so suddenly.Almost all the homes were empty shells now, looted and vandalized soon after their inhabitants were killed.

It reminded me of my own home in Michigan.My parents most likely suffered the same fate as the people who used to live here.Regret filled me for having left them with so much remaining unsaid between us.

Leo kept driving until we reached what looked like a dead end, but it wasn’t.The paved road turned into a dirt road, obscured by the dead branches of once overgrown shrubbery.

I winced as the branches scraped against the side of the car as he drove through.I guess it didn’t really matter if the paintwork was scratched.Not much mattered these days.

Deeper and deeper we went down the bumpy dirt road until I thought my teeth were going to fall out of my mouth by how much they rattled in my head.Finally, I saw something in front of us lit up by the headlights.It was a house, though rundown shack might have been a more accurate description.It definitely looked out of place compared to the other neat and ornate houses in the neighborhood.

Leo drove the car until we were a good distance behind the house before he turned off the headlights and cut the engine.

“It’s better to park back here.We’re less likely to be spotted this way,” Leo explained.

Right.

I reached for the handle on my door, but before I could open it and get out, Leo was already there and holding the door open for me.Even though I didn’t need any help, I took his outstretched hand and accepted his help in getting out.

“What are we doing here?”I asked.

My eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness without the light from the headlights.I examined the little house, and maybe I had been a bit harsh in my earlier judgment.The windows were boarded up, which gave it a creepy abandoned look.In the before times, I imagined that the garden would have been full of flowering shrubs and trees, with chirping birds and butterflies fluttering about.It was actually kind of cute, like a grandmother’s cottage in a fairy tale or something.

“This is my house,” he replied.

“Really?I don’t really see you as the cottage core type.”

“You’d be surprised.That should teach you to never judge a book by its cover.”

Leo made his way over to the back door and pulled out a flashlight.He turned it on and handed it to me.“Here, hold this for me.”

I followed him with the flashlight.There wasn’t much except for a large white propane tank and some broken flower pots on the ground.He walked over to a giant terra-cotta pot and then started turning over the rocks on the ground surrounding it.

“I stumbled upon this place while on patrol in the before times.The owner was an elderly lady who passed away without family.I waited, but nobody came to claim the house.So, I boarded it up and cleaned it up the best I could.It looks awful, but after the darkness came, the looters didn’t even bother to come here.They all thought this place had been ransacked already, and the other houses looked like they had more expensive stuff to steal.”

“Ha!”Leo held up a bronze metal key triumphantly.I followed him as he practically skipped in excitement to unlock the back door.It took a couple of minutes of jiggling and coaxing, but Leo eventually got the creaky door to open.The noise pierced the otherwise silent night like a gunshot.

He ushered me in and closed the door behind us, locking it even though I doubted that anybody knew we were here.

“You can never be too safe,” Leo replied as if reading my mind.“I’ve kept this place a secret, but someone could have followed us here.”

Leo rummaged through some drawers before he found a box of matches.With the strike of a match, he lit up half a dozen candles placed around the room.The flickering flames lit up the room with a golden, cozy glow.

I turned off the flashlight and examined our surroundings.We were in a simple room with a rustic kitchen and dining area on one side and a living area on the other side.A plush love seat sofa covered in thick fuzzy blankets and plump pillows sat in front of a stone fireplace.The pile of ash and streaks of black soot on the stone indicated that the fireplace was functional and had been well-used instead of just a decorative centerpiece.

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