Sucking in San Francisco Read Free

curly and does its own thing. My eyes are bluish green and I have good cheekbones and pouty lips going for me.
    Something strikes me as odd. He doesn’t smell right. No luscious human smell. No rich blood flowing anywhere. What is he? Everything about him is wrong. I suck in a deep breath trying to find a scent. For the hundredth time, I wonder why I’m doing this.
    “How are you?” I ask.
    The hair on my arms stands up.
    He thinks about it for a moment.
    “That depends.”
    “On what?”
    “On whether or not you’re going to tell me why a vampire is hunting down suicide victims in the middle of the night,” he says.
    The acid in his tone could eat through the cables of the bridge.
    Oh boy.
    “What’re you talking about?”
    He waves his hand at me and my body seizes like it’s in a vise grip. I can’t move a muscle except for my head. I struggle with every thing in me without letting him know. I don’t want him to know how scared I am. What is he? Is this how those vamps died? Please let me just make it home.
    “You know damn well what I’m talking about, blood sucker.”
    “What about you, glow-boy?” I sneer.
    That startles him. Good, maybe he didn’t realize he glows to vampires. I’m sure he knows I haven’t a clue to what he is. Oh God, he might be the one staking vampires. I can’t move a flipping inch. All my senses are on overload with fear. I can taste the salt in the air and fog as it continues to roll in. But I can’t get a fix on him. No heart beat. No blood. He smells of sunlight, a sharp contrast with the night sea air.
    He keeps me from looking away with his intense stare. “I want to know if you make a habit of luring your victims from your hotline. That is one of the lowest tricks I have ever witnessed from your kind and I have witnessed a lot,” he practically spits at me.
    I can’t stop staring into his eyes. God help me, they are mesmerizing. Mesmerizing and filled with hate.
    “Hey, whoa, buddy. You wanted to meet me here. I came against my better judgment. I would never take advantage of someone in this kind of situation.”
    He’s quiet for a moment.
    “What did you plan to do with me once you got here?”
    I stifle my guilty thoughts about my little feeding-as-a-last-resort-plan and all my lusty thoughts before I answer. I struggle against my invisible restraints.
    “I don’t know. I thought I could talk to you. Maybe talk some sense into you. If not, grab you and take you to the hospital.”
    He raises his eyebrows as he walks around me, looking me over. He takes his time as if making an inventory. He definitely did not expect my answer. How the hell did he know I was a vampire? I still haven’t admitted to anything yet. I don’t think that fact has escaped his notice. Or is this all an act before he pulls out his sharp stick?
    “What kind of leech are you?”
    “Hey, no need to call names,” I say through clenched teeth as I try to move. “I’m just a person who cares about her fellow man. Life wasn’t so kind to me before the Big Bite either.” My voice cracks. Dammit.
    He snorts. “Sure you care. I’ve never met a parasite yet that has.”
    “I said no names. I’m not like most people. I don’t know who you’ve met so far, but they don’t sound very nice.”
    “No, you’re right, I haven’t met any nice vampires. Very few nice people either,” he says thoughtfully. He dusts his hands off as if he has touched something foul.
    “Looks like you’ve been hanging out with the wrong crowds, Aidan.”
    He studies me for a minute and snaps a wicked grin.
    “It seems I have and that I might be mistaken. Forgive me,” he says.
    In one second he’s there and the next he’s gone. The binding grip is blessedly gone, too. My knees give way - I fall in the dark, in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge, in the middle of the night, wondering what in the hell has just happened. How did he do that? Who had I just talked to? And why, for all that’s holy, when