So, how was he to find out if one existed?
The Web, of course.
Padding barefoot into the living room of the cottage, he booted up his laptop and Googled vampire cures. Page after page of links came up. The only problem? They all referred to the role-playing game “Oblivion”.
He spent another forty minutes searching the Internet. He found numerous sites about vampires, how to become a vampire, how to recognize one, how to kill the monsters, not to mention numerous sites dedicated to the old TV shows, Dark Shadows and Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, and newer ones like Moonlight and The Vampire Diaries, as well as the works of Anne Rice. There were fan sites for notorious individual vampires, as well, both real and fictional—Dracula, Lestat, Rylan Saintcrow, Edward Cullen, Mick St. John, Rhys Costain, and Damon Salvatore. But nothing about a cure for actual vampirism.
Muttering an oath, he signed off, then sat there staring into the distance, until a familiar ache started deep inside of him. His tongue brushed his fangs as his need grew stronger. The hunger had become his master, a cruel tyrant he was helpless to resist, an addiction he craved almost as much as he despised it.
Dressing quickly, he left the small rental house. Blending into the shadows of the night, he went in search of prey—and rent money.
Chapter 2
Sara Winters closed the door behind her, turned the key in the lock, and let out a sigh. If today wasn’t the worst day she’d ever had, sales-wise, since she went into business, it was certainly in the top two. Opening a store of her own had seemed like such a good idea when she’d first arrived in Susandale. Gourmet chocolates and premium bath soaps and salts had seemed like the perfect combination. After all, practically every woman on the planet loved chocolate of one kind or another. And everybody had to bathe. And none of the other stores in town carried anything like what she offered.
Maybe there was a reason for that, she thought glumly. Maybe the women in this part of the country didn’t like sweets and never bought fancy scented soaps, bubble bath or lotion. Or maybe they just didn’t like her, although that didn’t seem likely. She had hardly met any of her neighbors since she moved here three months ago, and those she had met seemed a little, well, eccentric.
Now that she thought about it, the whole town seemed a little odd. Like the fact that she had seen very few children, which might have been understandable in a retirement community, but most of the people she had seen looked to be in their twenties and thirties. She rarely saw anyone on the streets before sunset, except the occasional tourist. Thank goodness for those, few though they might be, because they invariably stopped in to browse. And usually bought a bag of candy, if nothing else.
Strangest of all, most of the other businesses didn’t open until after sundown. Which made sense, she guessed, since few people were out and about during the day. She supposed that since Susandale was so small, most of the inhabitants worked out of town, or worked nights and slept days. Odder still was the fact that there was no school. Still, it was a small town. The kids were probably bussed to a bigger city nearby.
Brow furrowed, Sara gazed up and down the quiet street. Maybe she would do more business if she kept the same hours as the rest of the town’s shops. If she didn’t start turning a profit, she was going to have to pack up and go back home. And she really didn’t want to do that. This was her one chance to prove she could live on her own, that she could earn her own way. Her father had agreed to give her twelve months to prove she could succeed. If whatever business she started failed within that time, he expected her to return home and marry Dilworth.
It had been the thought of marrying Dilworth Young the Third and settling down into the same Stepford-wife kind of existence that her mother lived that had given Sara the courage to stand up to her overbearing father in the first place and demand that he give her a chance to strike out on her own. Certain she would fail, he had given her the money needed for the first and last month’s rent on her house, as well as the first month’s rent on her shop.
She had chosen Susandale because it was a small town, as different from her home in Vermont as night from day.
She was beginning to think coming here had been a major mistake.
Feeling the need for some comfort food, she walked down the street to Verna’s Bakery—one of the few places that opened early—and bought a buttermilk doughnut and a carton of milk. Then, thinking it was too nice to stay inside, she sat at one of the little tables in front of the bakery and tried to decide what to do about her future while she watched the sun set. She wasn’t desperate enough to go back home, at least not yet. Maybe she should just pack up and move to a bigger city, she thought, nibbling on the doughnut. Maybe Boston or Chicago. Or San Francisco. She had always wanted to see the Pacific Ocean.
She shook her head. In spite of everything, she liked it here. It was a pretty little town. She would give it another month or two. Tomorrow, she would change her working hours. Instead of doing business from ten to five, she would open at three in the afternoon and close at nine. And if that didn’t work? Well, she’d worry about that later.
She sat there for several minutes, lost in thought. After drinking the last of the milk, she tossed the carton in the trash can beside the door, then walked back to the shop to
