PART I:

AMERICA

Chapter 1

I was a romance novel junkie. I’d been one since I was fourteen and forced to read Pride & Prejudice for my Introduction to Great Literature class, during freshmen year. I’m not sure why it clicked then; I’d read Romeo + Juliet in middle school. Well…I mean I’d seen the movie, but all I ended up thinking afterward was how stupid both of the characters were and how young Leonardo DiCaprio was cute. It wasn’t really until high school that my heart ached for them, two fictional characters who may or may not have existed hundreds of years ago. And not just them, I’d gotten attached to Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester, Emma and Mr. Knightley, Margaret Hale and Mr. Thornton. It wasn’t all classic literature, either. I enjoyed Wesley and Buttercup, Claire and Jamie, heck even Peeta & Katniss…though some would argue The Hunger Games was not a romance novel. With each book I read, with each couple I was introduced to, I couldn’t help but wonder, how would my love story begin? Would I hate the guy and then slowly fall in love with him over time, because those secretly were my favorite type of stories. Who didn’t enjoy witty banter and stolen glances?

I wanted to know. I so badly wanted to know. And yet, every guy I’d ever met seemed to fail to spark anything in me. It was wrong to compare them to romance heroes. I knew that, and I should try to get to know people first before writing them off because there weren’t any fireworks. However, it didn’t change how I felt or the disappointments I’d gone through in the past.

A friend of mine in college told me once, “The moment you stop looking, you’re going to run smack into the man of your dreams.”

I wanted to tell her I read that in a book, too, but I let it go. So long as I kept living, I was going to keep thinking about it. I couldn’t help it; it was just how my brain worked. I saw romantic plots everywhere. So, nothing romantic ever touched me. It made me colder toward real love. I called it the romance reader’s curse. Nothing was stronger…expect death.

And man, did I die.

And with death, I became a junkie for something else.

Blood.

It was all I could think about today. I’d waited for hours for the sun to go down and for the humans to go to sleep so I could finally, desperately sink my teeth into something and drink. I’d driven to my favorite forest and parked my car on the edge of the road before running as fast and far as my feet could take me, enjoying the rush as I hunted, the sound of deer as they ran from me, feeling my presence. That was supposed to be my dinner…deer. When I smelled it, the honey-like scent of human blood—a lot of it—without even a second thought, I turned so quickly that I heard something snap under me. But I didn’t care to see what. I ran toward the smell only to stop at the sight of grey, not blue, but grey wolf-like eyes staring back at me. His white face and dark black, wavy hair caught in the moonlight.

He stood there as naked as the day he was born, staring back at me, as he drank from a blond-haired woman, who had gone limp in his arms. All around him, the bodies of other humans—seven total, five women and two men—lain like broken dolls upon the ground. He released the woman he currently drank from, and with one swift and easy motion tossed her at my feet. Unlike the rest, she was not bled dry, and I could hear the faint beating of her heart, fighting against hope to survive.

The aching need at the back of my throat burned, the smell of her sent tingles down my body, and I so badly wanted to taste her blood, but I stepped back and stopped when I heard a growl.

“Were you not taught manners, young one?” A deep, husky voice spoke with an accent I couldn’t place. And when I looked at the man, the vampire, stood only inches from me. His smooth bare muscular chest at my eye level forced me to look up. He had a slight 5 o’clock shadow across his defined jaw. “It is rude to waste food given to you.”

I took a moment to speak, too stunned by what I’d seen. “I—I don’t drink from humans.”

His eyebrow raised slightly. “What else is there to drink from? Rats?”

I shook my head. “Deer, and there are some bears—”

He growled and turned his head from me. “Such a fate repulses me.”

“Excuse me?” I gasped, but he ignored me, lifting the woman back up, tilting her body from side to side as he examined her. I thought he’d drink from her again, but he just crushed her neck with one hand before letting her drop back down.

“What land is this?” he questioned, looking upon the treetops and the forest he was in the middle of.

“We’re at Great Falls Park,” I said gently, not sure why I wasn’t running. Even though I was a vampire, too, it didn’t mean he wouldn’t attack me. Not all vampires were found of one another and even fought over territory.

“I do not mean the name of the forest,” he whispered again slowly. “What land? What nation is this?”

“Oh…America. Northern Virginia, specifically. We’re about twenty-five minutes from the capital.” I wondered why he didn’t know that. What had he been doing, swimming through the Atlantic and just happened to get out here?

“America?” he voiced in disgust before looking back to me, surprised.

“Yes, America,” I said, doing my best to look at him from the waist up. “Do you have a problem with Americans?”

“Many,” he grumbled. “They are loud and rude.”

I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms. “Just because the British say everything in a flat tone and with an accent doesn’t mean they aren’t equally rude.”

“You think I’m British?” He frowned deeply as if I had truly insulted him. “Americans are just loud British people with a new inflection.”

“I may be an Ameri

can, but I’m positive my people did not come from Britain,” I said, lifting my brown arm for him to see.

He glanced at me. “Long before the land was called Britannia, there were travelers upon it as well. Though wherever your people once hailed from, I’m sure the current ways of those who called themselves British or American have affected you as well.”

Asshole!

“Where do you hail from? And do they wear clothes there? Or do they prefer flashing their bodies in front of others?”

At the mention of his nakedness, he glanced down but didn’t seem bothered. “Long ago, I came from Greece. Nakedness, especially in the woods, was not abnormal.”

“Well it is very abnormal here, vampire or not,” I said, hoping he would get the hint.

“I do not know where my clothes are,” he said, looking around the bloody ground. “I do not remember how it is I came upon this land, either.”

“What?”

He moved toward the males he had killed and drank from touching the material of their clothes. “What year is it, young one?”

What in the hell?

“It’s 2020. Why?”

He began taking off the shoes and clothes from the body. “I thought I might have been dead and wished to know how long I may have been gone.”

Tags: J.J. McAvoy My Midnight Moonlight Valentine Vampires
Source: readsnovelonline.net