Night's Kiss (Children of The Night 1)

Now, after sending the woman on her way, he walked the dark streets of the city. As always these nights, his thoughts turned to Brenna. She was unlike any woman he had ever known, and not just because she was a witch. She was afraid of him, yet she stayed in his house. He admired her courage in coming to terms with life in a world so vastly different from the one she left behind. He loved the fact that she wasn't afraid to give him the rough side of her tongue. If he had one complaint, it was that she was so young. Nineteen. He could scarcely remember what it was like to be that young, and even though his physical body appeared to be that of a twenty-seven-year-old man, in reality he was three hundred and thirteen years old. Far too old for a sweet young thing like Brenna Flanagan.

Returning home, he went upstairs to Brenna's room. He stood beside her bed for twenty minutes, watching her sleep. He listened to the slow, steady sound of her breathing, admired the soft golden glow of her skin, the way her eyelashes made perfect crescents lying against her cheeks. Moonlight filtered through the window, casting silver highlights in her hair. A soft sigh escaped her lips, followed by a faint smile. He wondered what she was dreaming about, wondered if he dared hope she was dreaming of him. Grunting softly, he turned away from the bed. Any dreams she had about him would no doubt be nightmares from which she would awake screaming.

Going downstairs, he went into his den and sat at his computer. Bringing up his journal, he opened the file titled 2005. Before Brenna entered his life, he had written in his journal every night. Ah, Brenna. What a welcome distraction she was in his existence! He smiled, thinking of her. How pale and empty his nights had been without her.

He stared at the last entry in his journal and blew out a sigh. He had a lot of catching up to do. His fingers flew over the keys as he recorded his thoughts, starting with the night he had decided to end his existence. He had written a few notes soon after rescuing Brenna; now he expanded on them, writing his memories of what it had been like to travel through time, the exhilaration of speeding backward through the centuries, catching glimpses of people long dead and places long gone from the earth. He described his surprise at actually arriving at his destination, the sheer delight of watching Brenna Flanagan dance in the light of the moon, his horror when he saw her bound to the stake, his apprehension as he reached through the flames to free her.

He wrote of her reaction to the twenty-first century, of teaching her how to drive and taking her shopping. He described, in great detail, her wary acceptance of what he was, the attraction that burned between them whenever their eyes met, the first time he had kissed her.

Grinning, he went back and added a few sentences about his feelings when she had tried to turn him into a frog. He had been highly amused at the time. The memory made him laugh now, and it felt good. Laughter had been sorely missing from his life until now. He had Brenna to thank for making him laugh again, among other things.

Two hours later, his journal was up-to-date. He wondered what she would think, should he let her read the story of his existence. Would she find it fascinating, or would she be repulsed by his thoughts and deeds as he adjusted to life as a vampire?

Sitting there, with hours yet until dawn, he pulled up some of his older files. He skimmed through the years, reliving the confusion he had felt in the beginning, when every sunrise had filled him with dread and the niggling fear that he might not rise again. Vampire hunters had been everywhere in those dark times. Vampires had been more numerous in those days, and though he had called none of them friend, he had met with others of his kind to exchange information. In those days, every night brought reports of new deaths. The most fearsome hunter of them all had been Stuart Ramsey. He had destroyed more than fifty vampires before he died sometime in the seventeenth century. The name Ramsey had been feared through the ages as the descendents of Stuart Ramsey followed in his bloody footsteps. Today, the name Edward Ramsey was enough to send vampires scurrying for cover, though Roshan had recently heard a rumor that Ramsey was no longer a hunter but had become one of the hunted. An amusing irony, if it was true.

In the early 1800s, Roshan had taken a ship to America. It had been the worst journey of his entire existence. He had been trapped inside a coffin down in the hold of the ship by day and had prowled the deck by night, feeding off rats and an occasional crew member.

He had loved America at first sight The crowded cities, the diversity of its people. A veritable smorgasbord. Italians and Mexicans, Russians and Slavs, Poles and Germans, Danes and Swedes. And Indians. He had spent some time in the West, intrigued by the way the Indians lived. He had moved among the tribes, Sioux and Cheyenne, Crow and Arapaho, Apache and Comanche, studying their ways and their religions.

He had found it interesting that no matter the culture, whether the people were red, white, brown, or yellow, the mythology of every civilization included vampires, from the vampir of Hungary and the upior of Poland to the vyrkolakas of Greece. He supposed that accounted for the fact that vampires were the most popular monsters of all, and that vampire tales had been told and retold for thousands of years. He remembered reading his first vampire novel, Varney the Vampyre, which had been published back in 1847. Hundreds of books and movies had been made about the undead since then. He had read all the books, seen all the movies.

But none of those fictionalized works came close to the reality that he had lived for the last two hundred and eighty-six years.

Never, in all that time, had he felt the way he did now. For the first time in his long existence, he had hope, and that hope was embodied in the red-haired woman sleeping in his bed.

CHAPTER 11

Brenna slept late the following morning. Lying in bed, the blankets pulled up to her chin, she stared at the ceiling, thinking about her life and how drastically it had changed in such a very short time. Who would ever have thought that poor Brenna Flanagan, who had barely had the means to keep body and soul together, would ever be living in a house as grand as this one? She had more than enough food to eat, not to mention enough raiment to clothe a dozen women. She had seen wonders and inventions that no one in her time had ever imagined and would never believe possible. If she was dreaming, she wasn't sure she wanted to wake up.

She smiled as Morgana slid under her arm, begging for her attention.

"Good morrow," Brenna said. Rolling onto her side, she scratched the cat's ears, smiling as the cat began to purr.

Brenna's eyes widened suddenly. Roshan had promised to unlock the gates before he went to bed. Today, for the first time, she would be on her own, able to go anywhere she wished. Independent, she thought, just like the women of the time.