The Vampire's Protector by Michele Hauf Read Free Book Online

and he received a series of images as if a manic dream chased his reality. The vampire was twenty-eight, had always been a vampire, had a vampire brother named Johnny, and vampire parents. Her job title was a Retriever, and that had something to do with finding lost items or magical objects. An image of her lying beneath a steel carriage such as the one they stood before confused him. She wasn’t hurt. It was a place where she enjoyed being, or rather, working.
    Summer pulled her hand from his, and the images flickered out like an extinguished candle. Nicolo chugged out a gasp as the blue sky and sweet grass resumed his senses. “What was that?”
    â€œThat was a handshake. I’m pretty sure they did it back in your time. Nineteenth century, right?”
    â€œNo, those images. I saw...” He tapped his forehead. “You have a brother who is a vampire, and he sings on the stage alongside his wife. Why does she have horns?”
    â€œHow do you know that?”
    â€œIt came to me when I held your hand. Is the woman demon?”
    â€œNo, Kambriel is vampire, but she wears horns as part of her stage costume. So holding my hand gave you images of my life? That’s some kind of cool power.”
    â€œI don’t know. It wasn’t cold. Your reference to things being hot and cold makes little sense to me.”
    â€œOh, buddy, it’s slang, and you have so much to learn. But of course I don’t think you’ll have much time to gain all that knowledge.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œYou shouldn’t exist.”
    â€œIs that so? Why? Do you believe I am some unholy beast resurrected from death?”
    â€œWell...are you?”
    He hadn’t an answer to that one. And if he thought about it too much, he wouldn’t like the truth. She wanted to put him back in the grave? Never. He was alive, and nothing would change that. And he was strong enough to get one little vampiress off his back.
    He shoved her shoulder hard and watched as her body soared through the air a good thirty feet and she landed on the side of the road, tumbling into the grassy ditch.
    Nicolo winced. That had to hurt. But he had to protect himself if he wanted to survive this new world.
    â€œSo long, vampire Summer. I am off to live my new life.”

Chapter 4
    S ummer gave the guy a head start. The next town was only a couple kilometers away, and she was in no hurry to slide behind the wheel again for the long drive home. She’d have to take him with her. Couldn’t let some dead guy wander around unsupervised. Especially if he had anything to do with the possibility of Bad Things Happening.
    Or even, Bad Things that Had Already Happened.
    She sat on the hood of the Audi and slipped on her Ray-Bans. Sunlight beamed over a distant swash of chestnut trees, glittering in white over the leaf canopy. Crickets chirped in the grasses edging the road, and somewhere a cow mooed.
    It wasn’t often she heard a cow moo in Paris. She loved these quiet moments out of the city. It served a different sort of adventure. A mental escape. Much as she sought the fast paced, the always moving, the rush and thrill of her job, times like this centered her. Gave her a few moments to appreciate nature. She wasn’t a tree-hugging hippy chick, just a soul who understood she was a part of everything on this planet, as it was a part of her.
    So what part of it all had Nicolo Paganini become? He was the furthest thing from a zombie. No body parts falling off. No nasty skin peels or lumbering gait. Hell, the man was good-looking, and she’d noticed the hard muscles beneath the white dress shirt. For some reason he looked fit, beyond what any picture had depicted of his sometimes comically distorted figure in the nineteenth century. According to the history books he’d been tall, gangly and often sickly.
    Was it possible he’d been forged differently when rising from the grave? Certainly he must have decayed