Forbidden Days (The Firsts) (40 page)

“Inside joke,” he explained, and went off whistling.

Burne joined Park on the balcony, her own cup filled with only blood, from the same donor, a cute Italian boy who was finishing up a doctorate at a local university.  Burne loved her blood with cinnamon and a chocolate chip cookie.  Or ten.

Park looked at her as she took the lounger next to her.  “Vaz leave?”

“Yeah.  I miss him already.  But he wants to check his place and make sure his security gets beefed up.  He said the only time he wants to get caught with his pants down around his ankles again is when I’m down there.”  She laughed.  “But he gave me a tablet computer and the latest mobile phone so we can keep in touch.  I think I’ll be living in Switzerland soon.   Thank god we can afford jets to take us wherever we want wherever we want.  I don’t want to be away from you too long.  I feel like we’re sisters.  Much more than I ever felt sister to the shit-heel brothers I was raised with.”

Park reached out a hand and grabbed Burnes.  “I do, too.  You remember that morning I came into your diner?  I was so lost that morning.  But you made me feel welcome…there was such a glow about you.  Something in me just recognized you.  Who would have guessed that we’d become family…forever sisters.  You’re going to be my daughter’s godmother.”

Burne squealed.  “I’d love to.  This new life…just have to figure out how I fit in…what I do for the rest of my…” She laughed again.  “I mean, for the next so many years.  It’s still weird knowing I’m kind of immortal.”

“Word, sister,” Park said and they both started laughing at each other.

“Well, I still want to identify this virus.  Eventually.  Bas said I can build a lab.  Hey, maybe you can become a geneticist and work with me.”

“Hmm.  It’s a thought.  Maybe.  Yeah, I like the idea.  Working with naked men…”

“I said geneticist…not proctologist.”

Bas came out and kissed Park.

“Morning girls.   Koen, Zach and I are going for a swim.  You want to join us?”

Park shook her head.  “Still tired.  I’m afraid our child is using all my strength what with the super growth.  Maybe some other time.”

“I’ll stay with you,”  Burne said, draining her coffee mug.  She got up and took Park’s mug.

“I’ll get us some more, sweetie.  It should help.  See ya, Sire.”

Bas grimaced.  “How long is she going to keep that up?”

“It’s Burne, who knows.”

He looked out at the glistening moonlit waters.

“Are you happy here, Park?”

“More than I ever expected to be.  More than I ever thought I deserved.”

“Koen suggested we might want to build something nearby.  He knows we old warhorses won’t survive long together in the same house.  You want to stay here?  Or do you want to return to the U.S.?”

Park thought for a moment.  There were things she’d miss back home.  But…

“Here, if you’ll be okay with it.  But I’ll go wherever you want.”

“Let’s stay here and get to know your father and your legacy.  We have all the time in the world.  Well, the others are waiting…and you
know
how patient your father is.”

She nodded, the shine in her eyes luminous.  Yes, this was where they needed to be.  Bas kissed her again and left.   She slipped her hands around her belly.

“We’re home,
cherie
.  We’re finally really home.”

After tonight, Daniel knew he didn’t deserve the beauty and climate of Bali.  He kept going north, to harder weather, then bore left toward Alaska.  He intended to take himself almost to the top of the world, where he would disappear and try to decide what the rest of his life held.  There would be no beaches and cocktails by the sea.  If he ended up polar bear food, it would be the most useful thing he’d done with his life in over ten years.  He just kept seeing the results of his last job…the beautiful woman who’s life was stolen from her.  No.  He didn’t deserve anything better than a hard life he might find in a land that didn’t see the sun for half the year.  It was a fitting fate for him.  The harsh beauty of the landscape was more than he deserved.  He would work to be worthy again.

Snow swirled in the air, making patterns because of the wind gusts.  It was beautiful and bitterly cold.  Eillia didn’t feel it.  She’d reached the outskirts of a small town…in the American state of Alaska, she thought.  It was brutal, and harsh, and isolated.  She’d found her hole.

Fini

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Charlie Quinn, the author of this tale, inhabits her own story in the book by T.C.Butts,
Last Best Hope
, where she lives a normal life that becomes extraordinary.  She’d left a life that wasn’t working for her in the busy city of Chicago, relocated to the stunning Colorado Rocky Mountains, and finally felt like she was home.  Filling in her time in her own little paradise on earth, she wrote a series of highly successful vampire romance novels, about which she says,  “
So I didn’t create timeless canons of literature…I created moments of escapist enjoyment, and in the lives many people had trapped themselves, it was as important as any Shakespeare sonnet or Tennyson
poem
.”

Forbidden Days
is the first in her series of fantastic tales about what makes us all most human.   T.C.Butts just helped her bring it to the real world.   If you would like to know Charlie’s story, she chronicles it in
Last Best Hope
, diary style, so the reader can come along for the ride.  Charlie has her own lessons to learn when the world as we know it is gone forever, and she has a chance to rediscover the same things her characters did, how to find the best of us at the worst of times. 

Also keep an eye out for Cherise’s story, coming soon in the second  story in Charlie’s vampire romance line, entitled 
Endless Days.  

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