Once Bitten, Twice Shy

chapter 20-Scary L word

Kieran's POV

Jesus,I'd never understood how kidnapped victims developed relationships with their captors.Your enemy is  your enemy;  there is no refueling for that proportion. But it was out of question if you are deeply sunk in Stockholm syndrome,which surfaces when a captive cannot escape and is isolated from his kind and threatened with death,but is shown token acts of kindness by the captor.

 With a shake of the head,I recalled my favorite quotes from Sun Tzu's  The art of war.

"If  you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear...The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. And keep your friends close,and your enemies closer."  

But if that enemy was a woman and you fall for her deliberately or not,  all those rules theories become subsided. That's what happening,here and now.

I thought, thanks  to Bram Stoker, and his ilk,I knew all about vampires there is to know,  even  after my training as a vampire hunter begun.But like most of us new hunters I found out in an extremely hard way  that hunting vamps is a bigger fucking business than what I thought.  

As I learned, they once were people, at least most of them,but now are dead;that they can't stand sunlight and does not spend their days in their coffins or need some disgusting stuff as native earth to survive.They do have reflections in mirrors  because they have souls or something that goes with  that line ; yet they cannot enter a house without being invited but once invited can enter again and again, And just for the record,  they cannot change into vampire bats which is biologically possible as I've learned in past few months with my own personal experiences.They drink  the blood of others  with the result that these others become vampires after death if they got infected by the venom and have  enough  blood left in their systems to complete the transformation; and  that,being dead already,they're awfully  hard to kill,the effective methods being beheading,cremation,or a  stake through the heart. But nobody, not even my own father,or my uncles ever mention to me that vampires and hunters can pluck apples from the forbidden tree together, or in otherwords fall in love.

Well,If you eliminate all possible explanations,then the impossible is  the answer.

"Why are you staring at your beer instead of drinking it?"She said with an unreadable expression on   her face. The heat  of the room was getting into my head.I was just as sociable as  a damned bear in  deep winter when it comes to an occasion that requires lot of talking.  

But I had to answer or snap for the sake of my sanity, if nothing else.

"I'm not going to drink tonight, sugar. Being kidnapped has killed my appetite."  

She leaned closer to me over the table. "Then at least pretend that you like it here."  

"Why would I  do that?"  

When I stared up at her,she was staring  back at  me with icy eyes that were blazing dsappointment,  which to my utter surprise,drilled a crack straight through my heart.

She pointed the bartender who was giving us one of  those curious side glances.And I didn't need to Google it to know that we were under the spotlight of the local gossip columns.Then she gave me, one of her gut wrenchingly beautiful smiles which instantly increased my heart beat.   

I'm in love with her. Really in love.Totally caught in the big, scary L word.And  what the hell am I going to do about it?  Trying to  replace control? I'd  thought that's where I  was,what I'm doing.