Chasing Daybreak (Dark of Night Book 1) Read Online Free

them over too…”
    I gagged on my sandwich.
    Frank, from middle school. I wondered for a moment if the eczema had cleared up, and then I shook my head.
    “Can’t, Ma. Shane and I have to go talk to Reggie down at the station tonight.”
    I hadn’t actually set that up yet, but anything was better than one of my mom’s ‘come and see my single daughter’ dinners. I’d done it before and left feeling like an exhibit at a freak show. At the mention of Shane, she made a grunting sound low in her throat. Nothing raised her hackles like the mention of my one-time fiancé turned blood-sucking roomie.
    “You’d think that today, of all days, you’d want to be away from that monster.”
    I wrinkled my brow. “Today?”
    She sighed and pointed at her desk calendar. “Do you know what day it is?”
    “Uh… June sixth…” Oh . I saw her point.
    Today was the one-year anniversary of the day Shane had left me at the altar. Not that it was entirely his fault. He had been a smidge preoccupied, being attacked by a psycho vampire and all.
    “I’m so over all that,” I lied smoothly, still staring at the calendar on her cluttered desk as if it were an alien being.
    She just gave me that look . You know, the one moms gave you when they knew you were completely and totally full of shit.
    “And he’s living in your attic because ?”
    I rolled my eyes. We’d been over this a million times.
    Because he’d been attacked and turned into a blood-sucking demon. Because he’d been unable to go back to his job as a teacher afterward. Because the vamp that turned him and was supposed to take care of him had been hunted down and killed for creating him without the blessing of the local Vamp-in-Charge. He’d had no place else to go, and no one else to depend on. His own folks had cursed and spit on him when he tried to go home. I was all he had. Besides, a small, tiny, mutinous part of myself still loved him.
    And I hated him for that.
    The day Shane had been thrust back into my life was a turning point for me, for both of us really. Even though I’d been expecting him, the knock on my door had surprised me. I’d been drifting for days on the sensation that none of it was real, that at any moment I’d wake up to find it had all been a horrible dream.
    When I’d answered the door, Shane stood there, in the cool, spring rain, water dripping off the tip of his nose. He had a duffle bag in one hand and a bag of blood in the other. His eyes were drawn to the ground as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to look me in the eye. It shattered the fragile grip of sanity I’d been holding on to and I ran to him, throwing my arms around him as I had so many times before. I wanted him to hold me, to tell me everything was going to be all right. I never needed another human being so much in my life as I needed him in that moment. He wound his fingers in my hair. Dropping everything else at his feet, he crushed his mouth to mine and kissed me passionately, ferociously. I lost myself in him.
    Until I felt the sharp prick of his fangs in my bottom lip. The taste of old pennies filled my mouth, making my stomach churn. I tried to pull away, but he held me tightly, his fingers digging into my skin, pulling my hair painfully. I screamed into his mouth and clawed at his face with my fingernails. Finally, he dropped me, literally, into a puddle at his feet. Wiping my hand across my mouth, I smeared the blood that was still seeping from my lip. I looked into his eyes, expecting remorse, but I saw only cold, red eyes. He licked his lip hungrily. I backpedaled quickly across the threshold of the front door. He took a predatory step forward before regaining control of himself. Shaking his head, he blinked, his eyes returning to their natural hue. Using the door to brace myself, I stood, dripping onto the wood floor.
    “I’ll go,” was all he said as he turned to leave.
    “Go where?” I’d asked. Even then, he meant more to me than my own safety.