My Vampire Idol Read Free Page A

arrival.
     Female. Her scent was pure sin.
    Another bloody demon.
     
     

 

Chapter Two
     
    He was the one.  Her mark. She couldn’t believe she’d been the one to find him, since
     she was usually the one sent to the long-shot locales.
    The song washed over her as she quietly entered the small-town bar, the male voice
     full of gravel and grit, caressing her skin like the hands of a rough lover. Making
     her shiver with a need she forced herself to restrain for the sake of the unwary patrons.
    Son of a bitch.
    He could sing and play the guitar? No one had mentioned that little tidbit in his file. Rose was a
     sucker for musicians.
    Musicians and drop-dead sexy men who looked like they were carved out of sharp rock
     and bone and broken dreams. His pictures and what little video she’d had time to peruse
     had not done justice to this Scotsman’s appeal.
    He was big. He was bearded. He was a ginger with ice-blue eyes she wanted move closer
     to appreciate.
    The song he sang was soft and melancholy, his brow furrowed in a brooding expression
     that she knew came naturally to him. She’d think he actually had a beating heart,
     that he could feel the anguish of every word.
    It was a facade. He was good, but like the rest of his kind, he was little more than
     an actor camouflaged for the hunt.
    Rose might be half demon, but every bit of her was alive. She had feelings. If anything,
     her kind’s emotions were more intense than most humans…regardless of how they were
     painted by humanity and other species. Demons had received a lot of bad press over
     the years—though she would admit that when it came to the pure-blooded demons…and
     a few of her half-blooded relatives—some of that bad press was deserved.
     Vampires, on the other hand, were just cold, sexy corpses who—while claiming to recall
     the echoes of emotion—couldn’t truly experience anything beyond arrogance, pride and
     gluttony. At least, the ones she’d met. Yet they were forever romanticized in books
     and movies and tween television shows. If those teenyboppers knew what the blood-drinkers
     were really like… Well, they would no doubt still be in love—because the truth was,
     teenagers of every species were among the stupidest, almost entirely hormone-driven
     creatures on the planet.
    This was a surprise for Rose, though. A first. Vampires didn’t usually sing love songs
     in run-down, empty bars in the desert.  Singing without the intent to seduce or mesmerize.
     They never did anything without a reason.
    She’d done enough of her homework to know Mac was no arrogant showman like his roommates.
     Before they came into his life, he’d hardly left a footprint in hundreds of years. 
     And from what she’d seen of the vlog, he’d never willingly gotten in front of the
     camera until that idiotic competition at his castle. Now he was being hunted by her
     and others like her because of his contribution. By his elders for drawing too much
     attention to himself. What had possessed him to get on this—on any —stage when he knew they were looking for him?
    She noticed him send a look to the couple beside the bar, and the short woman responded
     with a beaming, watery smile and two thumbs up.
    For them ? For human strangers? How unusual. That made no sense…
    Unless he’d never chosen to suppress the empathy that came with the fangs... Rose
     shook her head. He was old enough to know better than that. Only a vampire who was
     young and stupid, or masochistic and suicidal kept that switch on all the time. And he was neither.
    At least, she’d been told he was neither.
    Maybe she had been told about this weakness. The poor vamp had a hero complex. That might be what
     this was about. He pretended that he wanted to be alone, that he didn’t care about
     anyone, but all of his actions belied that pretense. His castle was filled with orphan
     ghosts, his apartment with paranormal misfits and his life with the kind of trouble
     that