Vampire Ascending
by
Lorelei Bell
Chapter One
The full moon poured anemic light down around me as I arrived about eight minutes late for my job interview with a vampire. Mr. Paduraru had kindly agreed to meet me in my own little town of Moonlight, instead of giving me confusing directions to someplace in the city, which I'd never driven to by myself before. So, I chose a place that was easy to direct him to from the tollway. It was the Saloon, which was on the corner of Sunbank and Route 30.
Normally, it would only take me ten minutes to drive from my house to this bar, except that a huge John Deere tractor, hauling just-picked corn, took up the whole damn road, and I had to follow it the one mile from my house to turn onto Sunbank.
This was not your ordinary nine-to-five office job I was applying for. The ad had read, "Clairvoyant needed. Only serious applicants need apply." Disbelief had filled me as I read the ad, and I read it five or six times before I dialed the number. It was long distance-a Chicago area code-and I made mistakes before I'd gotten it right.
Yes, I was nervous about the interview. I didn't know he was a vampire until I spoke to him over the phone, of course. How I knew this was second nature. Sometimes all I had to do was walk up to a house I've never been inside before, and I knew the lay out of the place. Or, the emotions of the people inside a room would sometimes flood me. Sometimes, merely by speaking to someone-even on the phone-I would get a "read", and I knew something about them, and I definitely knew that Mr. Paduraru was equipped with fangs, and drank blood. Mostly, though, I only needed to touch something to get a read, sometimes they came as visions. I didn't do that very often. Not at all, if I could help it. Being a clairvoyant sometimes sucked, especially on a social level. Early on I'd had to learn to shield my mind against this ability, or hide in a closet-literally-or go insane. The gloves I always wore were my only other protection. I'm a touch clairvoyant, which is very rare.
Climbing down out of my Jeep I took in the other vehicles in the lot. There were seven cars-well, three were cars, the rest were pickups. Not many people here, but it was Monday.
Black and sharp, my shadow advanced ahead of me on the gravel lot as I walked toward The Saloon. I'd turned twenty-one four weeks ago, and had only been here once. I spotted a sleek, black Jaguar parked near the building. This could not belong to any of the regulars inside. It had to have been Mr. Paduraru's.
Curious, I angled for it and stopped next to it. I pulled in a little breath to steady myself, and closed my eyes. Suddenly, I had a flash of an image: Twin white spires cutting skyward over a Chicago skyline, my mind fed me this image easily.
Whoa. I had a little bit of a head spin as I opened my eyes. At that very moment, as I stood next to his car, I knew for sure that Mr. Paduraru was a vampire.
As the spinning stopped, and the vision faded, I felt some ebullient emotion, totally and inconceivably savage-possibly carnivorous-hit me like a wave of energy. It was a tangled emotion that I couldn't fully appreciate as a human. In fact, I didn't know where it was coming from at all.
That's when I saw a low shadow ease from a dense copse of trees, around the far side of the building. When it emerged from shadow into the light recognition threw me; I could hardly believe what I was looking at. Large and gray with four legs, and big yellow eyes staring right at me, it growled low and menacing.
Keys still in my hand, I froze. I surveyed my surroundings. I was alone. The wolf stood between myself and the tavern. Behind me, and about fifty yards beyond my own Jeep, the two roads, which converged at the corner, didn't have a lot of traffic. The closest house was simply too far away.
