Pool of Crimson Read Free Page A

to be suffering from shock and slight blood loss since the bleeding had stopped once the vampire pulled away. Most vampires’ saliva had an anticoagulant in it to maintain blood flow so they could continue to feed. Once the vampire pulled away, the blood would slow naturally. The wound looked worse than it was. She’d live.
    I met her dazed expression and wide eyes. Mascara streaked down her face, following the trail her tears had taken. I wasn’t sure if she was afraid of me or everything that had happened, and I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to feel any more like a monster than I already did.
    “What do I do now?” she whispered to me in the darkness. Her voice sounded pathetic and small. There was a part of me that hated her just a little for the victimization in her voice. She still clutched her legs to her chest, as if that would protect her.
    I could have told her that everything would be all right, and she wouldn’t have nightmares about the attack for the rest of her life, but I knew better. Her fingers trembled as they touched the damaged skin at her neck. I watched her with anger- laced pity as she stared down at the blood on her palm.
    Lying down and dying would never keep you safe. You only lived if you fought back. Sometimes that killed you faster but if you fought, the vampires never lingered to play with you, which was always worse than death.
    “Go home. Eat a cookie or drink some juice and forget this night ever happened,” I said flatly. I walked out of the alley and back toward the noise and light of the street, leaving her behind.
    Standing on the corner under the streetlight was the vampire from the gallery and his familiar dark eyes, watching me with a faint and almost imperceptible upturn of his full lips. I turned back to look at the woman behind the dumpster as she stood on her own two feet, wobbly but upright. She stumbled the other way, and I met his eyes again. He watched me with the same heat in his gaze that I’d seen in the gallery and now he knew my name.
    Stupid!
    I was one of the few that still believed in vampires, ghouls, ghosts, werewolves, and all the monsters that lurk in the dark. I’d seen them. I’d killed them, and I feared them. Now one of them knew my name.

Chapter 2
    Two days, seven shops, and one annoyed vampire hunter later, I walked into a darkened shop in Westerville that reeked of Patchouli and incense. I pressed open the door and the wave of thick-scented air bombarded my senses. I instinctively pulled back. It wasn’t the smell that stopped me; it was the taste of the air and the push of magic that seemed to shove me out. Something didn’t want me there.
    Finally, the right place!
    I forced myself past the magical ward at the door and strode down the center aisle like I belonged there. The shop looked like a cheery Hallmark shop, bright with the light from the early afternoon filling the place from the wide front window. The shelves were orderly and filled with herbs, oils in cute little bottles with tidy ribbons, and shimmering stones in crafty little wooden bins. There were canisters of feathers and jars filled with dried things that I didn’t want to know the name of.
    The easy, nonthreatening new-age crystals and incense were in the front of the store with cute stuffed bunnies on display at every end cap. As I continued down the aisle, I noted that the shelves became filled with more potent things; rare power stones, jewel-encrusted daggers behind glass, animals that had been stuffed and posed for effect with sharp teeth and snarling jowls, and unidentifiable jars filled with what smelled of formaldehyde.
    Voices from a back room behind the counter were muffled, and I couldn’t make out a word as I approached. If it hadn’t been for the bottom row of pig fetuses in tightly sealed jars and the ward at the door, I’d have misjudged this sunny Suzy-homemaker shop for new-age nonsense. The deceptiveness set me on guard.
    A woman stood at the