Relentless (Vampire Awakenings #11) - Brenda K. Davies Page 0,3

he couldn’t break. And he didn’t think he’d break it even if he could.

He easily recalled the wariness and curiosity in her midnight blue eyes as she looked from him to the picture of his last client. She was a vampire too; he’d recognized that immediately, but he didn’t think she was a killer like some of the others he’d run across. However, he had no way of knowing for sure, and being beautiful didn’t mean she wasn’t deadly. Oleander was beautiful too, and it was lethal.

Ever since turning into a vamp, he’d learned there were two types of vampires—those who killed and those who didn’t. He stayed away from those who killed; hell, he avoided most of his kind as often as possible.

That was the reason he hadn’t returned to the bar. He wanted to see the woman again, but not the other three vamps who were there too. The woman had known them. She went to them and spoke with them; they were her friends.

Friends, he thought with a small snort of laughter. The concept of friends was so odd to him; like family, he didn’t have friends anymore. He’d given them up ten years ago with his mortality.

But he didn’t know how much longer he could stay away from the woman. Maybe seeing her would help rid her from his system, and he could get through an hour or two without thinking about her. He should go back tonight.

So lost in contemplation, he didn’t hear Mrs. Abbott descending the stairs until she was already at the bottom of them. He rose as she entered the room.

“Here it is,” she said as she strode toward him with regal grace. Despite her outwardly calm demeanor, her hand trembled as she held the diary out to him. “I hope she forgives me for this.”

“I won’t tell her if you don’t,” he said.

He took the red, leather-bound book from her but didn’t open it. She was already anxious about this decision; seeing a stranger rifle through her daughter’s most private thoughts would only make it worse.

Still, he couldn’t stop himself from examining the cover. It was not the type of diary he would have associated with a sixteen-year-old girl. He’d expected flowers, or maybe some rainbows, or some other girlish thing, not this plain book that looked more like a journal than a diary.

He tucked the journal into the inner pocket of his leather jacket. “Can you think of anything else that might help me?”

“No. I gave you the names of her friends, told you where she liked to hang out and the activities she was involved in, but all those were things she liked to do before my husband died; I’m not sure any of them are relevant anymore. I should have paid more attention after he died, but I was so lost. And now, because of me, Julie is too.”

Even after years of dealing with these kinds of situations, Dante still felt awkward handling them. However, he rested his hand on her arm and held her gaze as he spoke. “Don’t blame yourself. Everyone deals with grief in their own way.”

He’d dealt with it by agreeing to end his mortal life and become something more. Whether that something more was man or monster, he still didn’t know.

“Thank you,” she whispered as she wiped the tears from her eyes.

“I’ll be in touch every day to let you know my progress.”

“Thank you,” she said again. “Let me get you a check.”

Chapter Three

It only took him a few hours to read the journal. It started about a month before her dad died and went right until the day she went missing. Julie’s grief and fury over her father’s death were evident in her words and on the tear stains marring some of the pages.

Her handwriting went from being neat and flowing to almost illegible in some passages. On more than a couple of pages were slashes and dents from where she stabbed the pen into the paper.

She used initials instead of names, and it wasn’t until someone labeled as PB entered her life that things changed. That was when she started talking about vampires and an afterlife here on earth. She imagined vamps as beautiful, misunderstood creatures who would help them.

Dante wanted to reach through the pages and shake the girl. Not all of his kind were bad, but Julie was playing with fire. Just like humans, vampires could be violent, soul-crushing monsters who would destroy her. He hoped she hadn’t really