“I’ll be very careful. But, Campbell, there are people out there who are hungry, who don’t have homes, who the world has forgotten about. I can’t sit here and do nothing while that is going on when I could make a difference. Maybe it’s a small dent in the problem, but it’s something.”
“I’m not going to talk you out of this, am I?”
“No. It means too much to me.”
“Why?”
“I just told you.”
“I know, you care about the people. But it’s more than that. There’s caring, and then there’s passion.”
She turned her back on him and started wrapping the prepared plates with plastic wrap and placing them in the refrigerator. “Someone close to me started this program, someone who isn’t around to do it anymore.” She turned back to face him again. “Listen, I’m going upstairs. There’s a small balcony on the back side of the apartment. You’re welcome to sit out there if you’d like.”
“I need to get back to work and patrol the area.”
“Oh, okay.” She was surprised by how much she wanted him to stay, but she wasn’t about to admit that just because she didn’t want to be alone.
“But I can stay a bit longer.”
She climbed the stairs, calling herself a fool all the way up. By the time she reached the top one, he was already seated outside on the balcony.
“Now, that’s just annoying,” she said, causing him to smile. The sight of it, fang-free, took her breath away.
He glanced toward the darkened building behind hers. “Aren’t you afraid someone will see me up here? Word is spreading that there are humans working with vampires. Your neighbors might get the wrong idea about you.”
“That building is empty. Everyone either wiped out by the virus or they moved away from the city. Even the owners died, so I don’t know if it’s even safe now. Ownership may be wrapped up in court.”
She crossed the room to the door next to the tiny balcony, knowing she was safe from Campbell as long as she didn’t invite him inside. She gestured toward the brick building. “It’s things like all those empty apartments that make me so angry. After humanity took a bigger hit than it ever has, there’s plenty of space for the homeless. But either the buildings are not safe or the owners are greedy and won’t allow anyone to live in the space for free.” She shook her head at the waste. “There are some shelters, but not enough and they don’t have enough funding. They’re crowded, dangerous, run low on food and supplies.”
“Maybe things will change,” he said. “It really hasn’t been that long since the world got turned on its head. People are still in shock.”
Being this close to him should have scared her, but it didn’t. He couldn’t hurt her. And if it weren’t for the bright blue of his eyes in the half-light, she wouldn’t have been able to tell he was a vampire. Feeling silly talking on the phone to him when he was only a few feet away, she started to open the balcony door.
“Olivia, no!”
She halted and met his gaze. “You can’t come in unless I invite you, right?”
He hesitated, staring at the crack in the door as if it might lead to eternal damnation. Finally, he nodded.
Her heart beating faster, a fact of which he was most certainly aware, she opened the door a little wider and pulled one of her dining chairs up next to it. She ended the call and slipped the phone into her pocket.
“You’ll get cold,” he said.
She smiled. “I have blankets. I’d offer you one, but I know you don’t need it.” His gorgeous expanse of chest that first night had shown her that. Her skin flushed at that memory, and she had to shove away a fantasy about running her hands over all that taut, muscled skin.
He shook his head and looked out into the night when a metallic bang sounded in the distance, most likely an animal scavenging in the alleys for food. She watched as he assessed any potential threat then relaxed.
“Are you always cold?” she asked.
“I would be to the human touch. We don’t really notice it after a while.”
“But you do at first?”
He nodded, and she didn’t think he would elaborate.
“That’s the oddest part of the transition, feeling the heat slowly drain out of your body. That and feeling your heart slow until it finally just stops.”
“You felt yourself dying and were awake for it all?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s horrible.”
He shrugged. “What’s done is done. Just have to make the best of it.” He stared at her for a long moment. “Why are you talking to me?”
She held his gaze as she thought for a moment. “I like you. Despite the fact I know you could kill me in the blink of an eye, my instinct tells me you’re a good guy. At least as much as you can be. A few days ago I would have never believed that was possible.”
“What changed your mind?”
“When you came back to apologize, how concerned you’ve been for my safety and that of the other people on that list. You probably don’t even realize how many times you’ve scanned the area for danger just since you’ve been sitting on the balcony. I don’t care what superpowers vampires have—I don’t think that can be faked that well.”
He stared at her for so long that she grew uncomfortable. “What?”
“No one ever sees that. Granted, humans being killed by vampires and left in the streets made it impossible to believe that some of us aren’t all bad.”
“You all are so powerful. How did you stay hidden so long?”
He received a text and replied before answering her.
“Centuries ago we weren’t. That’s how all the stories about vampires got started. But the Imperium eventually set up strict laws about feeding and revealing ourselves. That’s when V Force, or the Guard, as it was called then, was started, the enforcement arm of the Imperium. It’s how we ensured our survival.”
“Did the Imperium change the laws when Bokor hit?”
“Not about revelation. But when you have a limited food supply and too many vampires falling into bloodlust, it became impossible to keep them all in check. The feeding laws did change after the blood banks were established. It’s illegal to feed from a human now.”
“And your job got a lot more difficult.”
He nodded. “Staying fed and keeping ourselves under control became a lot harder.” He glanced at her before looking away with what looked like shame on his face. “Still is sometimes, despite the blood banks.”
“None of us knows what we’d do if we were starving until it happens,” she said. “Humans have killed for food, too.” The full force of that truth didn’t hit her until she said the words, making her realize that on that one thing humans and vampires were similar.
“That’s different.”
“Is it? There’s brutality in survival, for every species.”
He was quiet again for several seconds before finally saying, “I guess.”
They fell into silence and she glanced up at the rising full moon. Though the city that used to never sleep lay quiet, it was nice to know some things never changed. The sun still rose each morning. The wind still blew. And the moon still made its way through its phases month after month.
“Who did you lose?” Campbell asked, his voice quiet.
She shifted her gaze back to him.
“The person who started the food delivery to the homeless,” he said.
The old pain that never entirely went away stabbed at her. She would have guessed she wouldn’t have wanted to share that information with him, but she found she wanted to talk about Jeremy. He’d been on her mind even more the past couple of days. Maybe it was her too-close brush with death, or the fact that for the first time since he’d been gone she was feeling attraction toward another man. And to her, no matter what Mindy said, Campbell was a man. He was no longer just a mindless animal.