Once Bitten, No Longer Shy by Julie Steimle (chrome ebook reader txt) 📕

is not influencing this for your continued reformation? Cut him a break.”

The vampire stared at him. He then looked to Rick. Rick was staring at Troy, amazed. And why not? It had taken all this for Troy to finally lose his resentment for the wolf. As a vampire, he had plenty of reason to still dislike him.

“You are ok now,” Nicole said, gently kissing Troy on the head. “You won’t be lonely without me.”

Troy looked to her voice, seeing her float up toward the ceiling, everyone else watching him. Troy was surprised he could see her. It was like staring at a watermark in the air, but the loveliest watermark he had ever witnessed. She was smiling, almost glowing.

“I am sorry,” he said.

Nicole chuckled. “I’m in no pain. But please talk to my mother. Tell her something she can believe. Don’t tell her about vampires, though. Not unless it is a joke, at least.”

He nodded, wiping his eyes. “What do you get when you cross a snowman with a vampire?”

Everyone stared at him, most not seeing Nicole, though Deidre and JJ peeked with interest at Troy, pleased that he could.

She shrugged. “I don’t know? What do you get when you cross a snowman with a vampire?”

“Frostbite.”

Nicole laughed. Then, looking upward again, she floated to the doors out where Troy could have sworn he saw in the lobby a bag lady with a shopping cart beckon to Nicole while also waggling a finger at Matthew who also blinked at her. No one else seemed to be able to see them.

“What would be the politically correct term for a vampire?” Randon asked off-handedly, walking to his side.

Steve peered at him with one eye closed. “Is there one?”

Troy said, “Pigmentally-challenged.”

Silvia busted into a laugh.

The others did not laugh so much, though Rick struggled through droll snorts while Matthew definitely rolled his eyes.

“What’s another name for a red blood count?” Tom said just as off-handedly, not laughing at all.

Piranha peeked to him.

Troy chuckled and said, “Dracula.”

This time they all moaned—though Tom grinned to himself.

Spilled Blood

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Eight

 

 

No use crying over spilled milk, to be sure. But crying over spilled blood was a different thing.

Troy was still mourning Nicole’s death, despite everything. He missed her. Her voice. Her passion. The funny way she looked at him when she thought he was being naïve. And though he blamed himself less, he still believed that if he had not introduced all of those bite victims to each other, if he had not been angry with her and had taken her home with him, she would still be alive.

However, he was happy that Nicole was able to pass on at least and wasn’t haunting him. A haunting ghost was never happy. JJ and Deidre were insistent on this, despite how her frosty kisses and whispers were oddly romantic and had been tempting for him to hold on to—the tragic vampire and his ghostly lover. But that was wrong. And he could feel it also. She was now free.

He did visit her family after the police had—a week after, at her funeral. They wept and hugged him as Nicole has describe him to them in the most flattering imagery the weekend before Brandon was killed. She had described him as a kind PhD student who might marry her one day. They were that serious, she had told them. Which, on the whole, was true. He was also grateful she was discrete about their sex life and had not mentioned anything about his masculine physiology as she had to everyone else. Her friends, however, kept trying to check out his ‘package’.

Her murder was described to her family as a violent rape by a serial killer in the making, and not a vampire attack. Troy had not even known she had been raped and was horrified to find out. The fact that a vampire had killed her had overshadowed that Connor had also raped her. Troy was half inclined to break into the prison to kill Connor just for that—and it took everything in him to restrain himself from asking Tom to get the imps to castrate him while in prison. Tom probably would have agreed to it.

Yet the trial went swiftly, and justly, and the would-be vampire was found guilty—with two life sentences, one for Nicole and one for Brandon. The police had gathered plenty of evidence and eye witnesses for the murder of Brandon, and they actually did find enough proof that Conner had been stalking Nicole. But the clincher was that they had DNA evidence of the crime against Nicole Collins, due to her rape, something Connor had clearly not taken into account in his monstrous passion for blood and sex. Troy vindictively hoped Connor’s inmates would show the guy plenty of both.

But the awful result of bringing those men into the bite group did not stop there. The police had also found proof that Joshua Miller was making and selling crystal meth. Matthew and JJ both made sure he was prosecuted and jailed, removed from civil society.

And Marcus had his own trial for his illegal porn and blackmail prostitution. His prison sentence was unfortunately not as long as the other two. But the creep, Troy learned, also had a venereal disease that ‘someone’ decided not to allow him to get or use medication for. Troy guessed Piranha who had taken personal insult to what the man had been doing to the women he had contact with. His pills he seemed to go astray or fall down cracks in his prison cell and get lost. And he was unable to purchase more. And even after he got out of prison, he always seemed to lose his prescription and suffered immensely for it.

As such, the biting victim’s group was officially disbanded. Troy had decided he didn’t want to put anyone else at risk, warning specifically the ladies not to maintain contact with the men. He had sent a group text and told them that if they ladies wanted to continue to meet together, they should do so on their own time. He also told them the website was up and running and should replace the group meetings for an online forum—including an app for their cell phones, but they should never post any personal information there, use pseudonym, and to keep safe from vampires and stalkers. He said he would continue to post updates on his research on the site, and he would continue to answer questions at need, but it was wise they not meet in person again.

Sue expressed her dismay about this.

So had Dalton, who said it wasn’t his fault creepy men had used their group for bad purposes.

But they all agreed it was probably best they start to build up a more private online connection.

The evening vampire group, however, still met together. They had been better vetted anyway. Troy had to discuss their issues with them in case the SRA made a case against them and their safety, and he still was the most experienced when it came to dealing with this sort of thing. Basically he felt he had to warn the others.

“But the website is up, right?” Cameron asked, nearly in panic, as he truly had gained a lot from the group. “You’ll still post what research you have found, right?”

“Yes,” Troy said, sighing. This pained him. “But from now on I don’t want to physically connect those that might prey on other victims. We need to keep them separate. My friend Matthew pointed out something my friend Rick used to say: ‘It takes a special kind of stupid to get bit by a werewolf.’ Well this applies to us also. It takes a special kind of stupid, and I might add a slimy personality, for a man to become a vampire, let alone a victim. As for the women… just stupid.”

Cameron cringed, but he nodded. He knew it. He had been bitten because he had been mouthy at the wrong time and place.

“All of us are damaged in some way,” Troy said, with a nod to Steve who was sitting a little more humbly among them. “Or we have done something to draw the attention of a vampire to us… which is troublesome. We have to admit, a lot of us simply made huge mistakes. I didn’t follow my own rules, and I was forced to drink their blood. This whole thing, to me, feels like another mistake.”

Mr. Lenox nodded with a sigh. Cameron cringed again, disagreeing. For him, their meetings had been a huge boon.  

“So, I was thinking about moving away from New York for a while,” Troy said. “The Order of Blood is after me and knows that I—”

“No.” Steve shook his head desperately. “You have your lab. You need to continue your research.”

Troy cringed, wishing Steve would let that go. He didn’t like the idea that the vampires thought he was some kind of prophesied threat to their existence—or savior. He was just a guy. And thinking that, he realized that he sounded just like Rick.

“Maybe you just need a vacation,” Mr. Lenox suggested, still a little stiff over Troy meddling in his marriage, but clearly aware that Troy had it worse. He was wearing the cross.

“Yeah, a break.” Cameron nodded, straightening up in his seat. “I know you are grieving, but you can’t give up.”

“Now that the website is up, we can spread the word and just use the online chat room for the bite victims, and other struggling vampires like us,” Mr. Lenox said anxiously. “Your friend in France, that Semour, is supposedly going to vet the new applicants, right? He’s got that Holy Seven website to do that—so they can track and truly vet the bite victims. Our mistake with those four men was that we assumed all victims were purely innocent. You’re right, there is a certain personality that draws in vampires, especially those people tempted by vampirism. It’s perverse. I’ve read your notes on the subject. You call them vampire bait.”

Troy nodded. He had an entire collection of notes on people he had nicknamed ‘vampire bait’. It could fill a chapter in a book. But he found it ironic that Semour Dawson of the Holy Seven, someone he hardly knew and who had threatened him, was called his friend.

He said, “The site is not being run by the Holy Seven. My online personal assistant has been keeping the site in order, actually. But they will be vetting and following up on the new applicants. We’ve made that deal.”

“Who is your assistant?” Steve asked. “Has he been vetted?”

Troy shrugged. He still did not know his name. He just had the web avatar and his online codename to go with. “He was hired through Deacon Enterprises, and they are quite thorough on screening whom they hire. They have to be.”

All of them had heard from Steve that the Deacons were werewolves. The thinly veiled secret had quickly become an open topic of discussion amongst them.

“I registered,” Cameron said. “The site looks good. Loads real quick too.”

Troy nodded. “Yeah.”

Bobo then walked in, followed by Art Condie. Both were in proper suits of Deacon Enterprise’s standard of quality. Art gave Troy a nod, looking surprisingly keen to talk to him.

Troy stiffened. Honestly, he had