Page 7 of Resurrecting His Soul
He felt Lisandra watching him, knew that she was focused on the way he made eye contact with each person they went to, and listened for every nuance in his voice and the words he spoke when he told them that the waitress had fallen with a knife on her tray and cut herself during the fall. It wasn’t that creative of a story, sure, but he had learned that the simpler the fabrication, the easier it was for the human mind to grasp the lie and let go of the reality he was erasing. When he got to the last person he paused and turned to her. “Would you like to try?” he asked her.
She did not hesitate. “Yes.”
Taking her by the hand, he pulled her in front of him, between him and the human he had cornered, and he bent his head so his mouth was close to her ear and whispered. “Tilt his chin and make him look you in the eye.” She did just that. “Good. Now keep your eyes locked on his. Tell him the story you’ve heard me say to the others. Your words need to be confident. You want him to believe you. Humans are not hard to persuade. Their minds are not ready to accept we exist. It gives us an advantage. As long as you are confident, his mind will accept your words as the truth.”
With the man’s eyes locked on hers, Lisandra spoke. “You have never seen me. I don’t exist. The waitress is bleeding because she fell and the knife she was carrying jammed into her neck.”
The man nodded. “Yes, she shouldn’t have been so careless,” he said.
“That’s right,” Lisandra said, “but an ambulance is on the way. She will be okay.”
“That’s good,” the man said.
With that, Lisandra released his face and turned to Ricardo with a big smile on her face and his heart hammered behind his pecks, which was truly astounding considering how long it had been since it was last beating.
“I did it!” She threw her arms around his neck, and damn if that wasn’t the highlight of his day. Make that the last four centuries.
When she pulled back to look at him, he smiled. “Yes, love. It seems you are a natural. It took me much longer to get it just right.”
With a glance back where the waitress was, her smile fell. “Too bad I didn’t learn self-control quicker.”
“Actually, you showed quite a bit of restraint. Nobody here died, and considering you are a newly turned vampire who had not fed before you walked into this bar, it is miraculous you did not wipe out everyone in here.” Without acknowledging the way her jaw dropped, he took her hand and gave it a squeeze, then he directed her out of the small restaurant.
Lisandra was burning holes in his face, staring at him as they walked the distance back to his place. “I was wrong,” she said quietly. Ricardo looked at her. “I was wrong to assume I could figure this out on my own. Will you teach me?”
Ricardo stopped, and she followed suit. With a small smile, he grazed her cheek with his fingertips. “Of course, love. I am glad you asked.”
Lisandra took a small step back, and he dropped his hand. “I want you to teach me,” she said, “but I need you to hear me when I tell you I am not going to feed from people.”
“You don’t have to kill them to feed,” he said. “It isn’t easy, particularly as a new vampire because our instincts tell us to kill, but over time you can learn restraint. Most vampires don’t have much of a conscience, but it’s clear you aren’t anything like most vampires. Given the restraint you showed back there, not killing everyone in that bar, I have a feeling it wouldn’t take you long to develop the restraint needed to feed without killing.”
“No,” she said, her arms crossed and her jaw locked in place. “I won’t risk it.” Ricardo opened his mouth to protest, but she held up her hand and shook her head. “No, Ricardo. This is not negotiable.”
Ricardo watched her. The urge to feed was strong, and it was hard to stop once he got started. Then again, he had never tried to refrain from killing when he fed, not since the one person he had loved in his life had turned her back on him and shown him that she’d never given a damn about him as a human—and certainly not after he became a monster. In turn, he decided not to care about anyone else, and so he had embraced his monster within. There was nothing but a long bloody trail after that. There was something different about Lisandra, though. She made him care; care about her. And that was more than he had cared about anyone in centuries. He was drawn to her in a way he’d never known. The connection he felt pulling him to her was stronger than him, and he knew it wasn’t something he could fight, not that he wanted to fight it at all.
“Okay,” he said. “We will find a different way to feed, and as determined as you are, I have no doubt you will find a way to resist the urge to attack humans, probably sooner than I will.”
“Good,” she said, then a big smile spread across her face. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, there is one more thing I want to try right now.”
There was something mischievous sparkling in her emerald eyes and he knew he was going to do whatever she wanted. “And what is that?” he asked.
She took off like a flash of lightning, and yelled over her shoulder, “Beat you in the race back to your house!”
He was laughing when he took off behind her and thinking of all the ways she could reward him for the victory he was about to take when he beat her back home.
ChapterFive
Lisandra
There were definite benefits to being a vampire. Running like the wind was at the top of the list in Lisandra’s mind, even if Ricardo had beaten her back to his house… by a hair. She would get him next time. Why couldn’t the part of vampirism that was a myth be the need to survive by drinking blood? Abstaining from feeding on humans was going to be a lot harder than she had hoped, but there had to be a way. No way was she going to live out eternity locked away from any contact with other people. Jameson had done a good enough job keeping her secluded as a human, and she was damn sure not going to live like that anymore.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Jameson’s voice cut through the room and sliced into her sharper than a knife.
Lisandra gripped her hands, one around her keys and the other on her purse, and forced herself to turn and look at him with a fake smile. “I have dinner plans with Allison, remember. I told you about it a couple days ago.”
Jameson stomped across the room, forcing her backwards until her back hit the wall. He brought his hands to her shoulders and squeezed so hard she couldn’t stop the tears from the sharp pain that radiated down her arms. Maybe it wouldn’t have hurt so bad if he wasn’t pressing on old bruises, but he’d be hard pressed to find a spot on her body beneath her clothing that wasn’t marred by a bruise in some stage of healing. “So you think you are just going to go out with your girlfriend and leave me here to what, eat a frozen meal after working all day?” He slammed his fist into the wall next to her face and she bit her tongue to keep from screaming. “The only dinner plans you have are with me. Do you understand? Get your sorry ass in there and make me something to eat!”
Lisandra didn’t realize she was crying until she felt the tears roll off her chin. She swiped her hand across her face, wiping away her tears like they were her enemy. She was so done crying over that asshole. He wasn’t a part of her life anymore, and she wouldn’t shed another tear over him or her past. Focusing back on her present, she was worried that Ricardo may have been feeding on humans for too long to change. As difficult as it had been on her to walk away from that waitress, even with his help, she couldn’t imagine what it would be like to give into that thirst for as long as he had and then just walk away from it cold turkey. They shared some kind of connection. She had felt it even before completing her transition, and afterwards it only grew stronger. Still, she wasn’t sure that whatever was growing between them would be enough for him to change, and if he couldn’t find a way to stop killing humans, she had no idea what she was going to do. It wasn’t like she knew any other vampires who could help her learn about her new life, and even as strong as her conviction was not to kill humans, she knew she needed someone strong in her corner to help her follow her own convictions. Ricardo had not lied to her so far, and something about him made her want to trust him. Hell, it made her want to do a lot more with him but for now she’d stick to him teaching her about being a vampire. Damn, that was still so weird.
