She’d swear she heard regret and loss in his response. Could vampires remember what it was like to be human? Did they miss it?
“What did you do back then, before?” She couldn’t stop asking questions. Odd as it might seem, talking to him was better than being alone in her quiet apartment with only her thoughts and overactive imagination.
He laughed a little. “One of New York’s Finest.”
She felt herself smile and was fully aware of how surreal it was that the man who’d made her smile had tried to kill her only a short time ago. “Couldn’t get away from it, huh?”
“Once a cop, always a cop, I guess.”
“You like it still?” The idea that vamps would even have laws or law enforcement boggled her mind.
“Gotta do something good with eternity.”
“And you’re the head honcho?”
“Of Team 1. We cover Manhattan along with one other team. There are different teams in the other boroughs, other cities.”
She stared at him for several ticks of the clock on her mantel. “So it’s true? There are good vampires and bad ones?”
He leaned back against a car parked at the curb.
“Yeah. Well, as good as a vampire can be, anyway.”
She shifted on the seat, leaning back against the wall. “What determines it? Free will like humans?”
“In a way. This is going to sound a bit woo-woo, something I would have laughed at before I was turned.”
“We live in a world full of woo-woo now.”
He nodded. “There are two kinds of vampires—Souled and Soulless. The Souled ones used to be good people and they brought that into their vampire lives. The Soulless were not so good—criminals, sociopaths, the kind of people we locked up. The Souled don’t like being vampires any more than humans like the fact that we exist. The Soulless thrive on being immortal and powerful.”
“So you believe we have souls?”
He shrugged. “It makes as much sense as anything else. Whatever the dividing line between good and evil is, it’s what separates vampires.”
Wow, she’d had no idea. She’d just assumed vamps were vamps, hungry and dangerous beasts one and all.
“Are the Souled vampires the ones who set up the deal with the blood banks?” She, like everyone else she knew, donated blood on a regular basis to help keep vampire attacks to a minimum.
“Yeah, at the direction of the Imperium, our ruling body. Humans might not believe it, but we have laws, too. For centuries vampires weren’t supposed to feed any more than necessary for survival. Since the Bokor virus, it’s been illegal to feed from humans at all. If they do and drain a human, they have to be eliminated.”
Olivia swallowed hard at the idea that she might have been drained the previous night.
“That means...” For some reason she couldn’t force the rest of her thought into words. Her eyes met Campbell’s and held.
“Yes. If I’d killed you, I’d be dead now, too. My team would have had no choice.” He paused for a moment. “And that’s as it should be.”
Something had shifted about her perception of Campbell in the past few minutes, because the idea that he would have been killed didn’t sit well. He was still a vampire, still deadly, and she was no less frightened of him. But as she stared down at him now, he seemed more like a man than a thirst-mad animal. He seemed...honorable.
But she didn’t fool herself. The only reason he seemed sane and rational at the moment was because he had pints of human blood working their way through his system. She tried not to gag at that mental image and shifted her thoughts in a safer direction.
“Why don’t we know about all this?” she asked. “Why don’t you tell the world about the differences in vampires instead of having everyone think you’re all evil?”
“Because it’s too dangerous. Even Souled vampires have to fight their need to kill. You know that firsthand.”
She shivered at the memory.
“It’s safer for humans if they’re frightened of all of us,” he said. “Besides, do you honestly think they’d believe it if we suddenly said some of us were good guys?”
She understood the logic, was surprised any vampire would spare a thought for the safety of humans.
“So V Force enforces your laws?”
“Yeah. Just think of us as a SWAT team with fangs.”
She laughed. When he wasn’t trying to attack her, he had a nice sense of humor.
“What about you?” he asked. “Why were you out so late?”
She hesitated, not sure she wanted to reveal too much personal information even if he did seem harmless at the moment. Still, he hadn’t tried to talk his way inside, had even told her how to kill a vamp. Not that she’d ever be fast or strong enough to do so, but it still showed some trust on his part.
“I take meals to the homeless. A lot of them hang out in the parks during the day. Some things haven’t changed since before the virus.”
“And you got your car stolen and were attacked by vampires for your trouble. Classic case of no good deed goes unpunished, huh?”
She couldn’t help smiling at him, at his echoing of the very thought she’d had. “I guess.”
A lull in the conversation had Olivia wondering what in the world she was doing having a friendly conversation with a vampire. And why it was so easy to talk to him.
A light came on in the apartment across the street—Dr. Stevens getting ready to go to work the moment the sun broke the eastern horizon.
“It’s almost daybreak,” she said, returning her gaze to Campbell. Twenty-four hours ago she couldn’t have imagined giving a vampire any sort of warning. Would have instead been thankful that the sun had wiped another monster from the face of the earth.
“I know. I can feel it.”
“You can?”
“Built-in self-preservation.” He glanced over his shoulder before catching her gaze again. “Remember that. Even more than humans, vampires are all about self-preservation and taking out threats to that. So don’t trust me or any other vampire. You were lucky last night. But luck can run out.”
“Apology accepted.” She wouldn’t say what had happened was okay, because it wasn’t. But she felt his sincerity down deep, too.
Campbell shoved away from the car. “Better get home before I turn into vamp barbecue. I’ll leave your phone by the front door. I’ve added my number into your contacts so you can text me the VIN for your car. We’ll let you know if we find it.”
“Thanks.” She watched as he gave her one last long look then headed back toward the center of Midtown. Even with darkness still hugging the street, she could appreciate the way he moved—all barely contained, graceful power. Why couldn’t he be human?
She hadn’t realized until that moment how lonely she was. She had a wonderful friend in Mindy, regulars at the diner, even her favorites among the homeless she helped each day. But none of those relationships reached the loneliest spot, the one that had started growing the day the virus had killed Jeremy. No one had tempted her to open up that part of herself again until tonight. And that man wasn’t even a person anymore. Was he? What had always been clear lines before seemed a little blurrier after her conversation with Campbell.
Olivia watched him grow smaller, and a tinge of nervousness edged into her. If he didn’t get off the street soon, the sun would kill him. Vamps had incredible speed to go with their strength. Why wasn’t he using it? But then she blinked and he was gone.
And though it defied logic, she felt even lonelier than before.
Chapter 5
Campbell pushed his supernatural speed for all it was worth to cover the blocks between Olivia’s apartment and Team 1’s headquarters, the sun’s deadly rays nipping at his heels as if they were the hounds of hell. When he finally reached home and ducked inside, he wasn’t smoking or sprouting flames but his backside was definitely beginning to get uncomfortably warm.