HeartsAflameCollectionV (13 page)

Sophia awoke shortly before the dawn.
 
She and Logan made love again, and then she
took a quick shower and got dressed in the lovely new dress he’d purchased her
as a surprise.

“If you don’t like it, you can exchange it,” Logan
said, looking concerned.

“I absolutely love it!” Sophia said
,
twirling in the dress and making the skirt of the garment flair out like the
petals of a flower.
 
She twirled right
into Logan, making him stumble back onto the bed, where he caught her in his
arms.
 

“And I love you,” Logan said in a gentle voice and
kissed her softly on the lips.
 
She was
so sweet, he couldn’t get enough of the taste of her, although now that she was
no longer a virgin, the conflicting desire he felt to bite her had ebbed and he
could enjoy kissing her more easily without fearing his own instincts.
 
He looked at the clock and knew that dawn
would soon be upon them.
 
With a
disappointed sigh, he helped her up and guided her to the door.
 
“Will I see you again tonight?”

“That’s up to you,” Sophia said with a coy grin.
 
“What I said the other night, still
stands.
 
If you want to have a real
relationship with me, we can’t keep hiding here in your castle.
 
My friends want to meet the man I’ve been
dating, and it will help quell the rumors about you if you get out in the world
and start meeting people.
 
Once they see
how kind and wonderful you are, they’ll know you’re not the evil monster the
old stories have taught them to fear.”

Logan looked hesitant.
 
“I don’t know, my darling.
 
The members of my family have attempted to
make friends with the townspeople in the past, and it has always ended badly.
 
Now I am the last Longfellow left.
 
The others died horrible deaths, stabbed
through the heart by wooden stakes or silver spikes.”

“Don’t tell me a big, strong man like
yourself
is afraid.
 
I’m just talking about meeting a couple of my closest friends down at
the bar for a beer.
 
I’m not talking
about hosting a lynch mob.”

“I’m not afraid for myself; after all, I’ve survived
all these centuries up until now.
 
I am
afraid for you, however,” Logan said, caressing her cheek.

“Why would you be afraid for me?” Sophia pulled back,
confused.

Logan hesitated, not sure how much he could tell her
without scaring her.
 
Total honesty
seemed the best approach and the only way to truly protect her.
 
With a somber expression, he said, “Human
beings are easily frightened, and there’s no telling how they’ll react when
things go wrong in their lives.
 
Everything might seem fine now, but someday something might happen to
change that, and when it does, they’ll look for someone to blame and some way
to lash out to protect themselves and calm their fears.
 
History has shown that the Longfellow family
makes an easy target for their fears, but not just those related by blood.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that anyone associated with my family can
become a target of blame of fear as well.
 
Spouses, girlfriends, even mere acquaintances have been put to death by
ignorant and terrified townspeople looking for justice.
 
It’s why I’ve chosen to live alone all these
years.
 
I saw how painful it was for my
family to watch the ones they loved stabbed through the heart for crimes they
never committed.”

“You can’t think my friends would ever do a thing
like that.
 
There
hasn’t
been any vigilante justice or mob mentalities
for decades.” Sophia
brushed aside his fears.

“That may be true, but it doesn’t take much for that
to change.
 
Trust me.
 
I’ve seen too much to be naïve about this,
and you shouldn’t be either.”

“Nonsense!”
Sophia scoffed light-heartedly.
 
“Meet me
tonight at the bar down the street.
  
I’ll bring a small group of my closest friends.
 
Just my roommate Michelle,
my best friend Mark, and Michelle’s boyfriend Clyde.
 
Just three people.
 
Once you’ve met them and had a beer, we’ll
come back here to the castle.
 
I’ll make
it worth your while, if you know what I mean.”

Sophia winked at him seductively as she caressed her
hands over her body, and Logan felt an erection growing at just the thought of
making love to her again.

“All right,” Logan acquiesced.
 

Sophia kissed him goodbye and walked home in light of
the sunrise, admiring the deep pinks and oranges of the dawn.
 
She’d never been so happy in her entire life
and she smiled contentedly, not even paying attention to where she going.
 
That’s why she didn’t see the object in the
road until she had tripped over it and fell hard against the sidewalk, landing
on her hands and knees and scraping them painfully on the asphalt.
 

“What was that?” Sophia cried out.
 
She turned around and gasped in horror to
realize the object she had tripped over was a woman, lying prone in the
street.
 
“Oh my God!”

The woman had two puncture wounds that went deep into
her neck, but there was no blood pouring from the wound or on the ground around
her, as if all the blood had already been drained from her body.
 
Her skin was cold and deathly white.
 
Sophia turned the woman onto her back so she
could perform CPR.
 
To her horror, she
recognized the victim’s face.
 
It was
none other than her roommate Michelle!

“No!” Sophia wailed into the early morning sky.
 
She performed chest compressions on Michelle,
trying to restart her lifeless heart, but it was useless.

“
Don’t
die, Michelle!
 
Come on!
 
Please don’t die!” Sophia cried,
and suddenly Michelle took a gasping breath of air into her lungs.
 
Sophia pulled back and saw that her efforts
had worked!
 
Michelle’s heart was beating
on its own again!
 
She was going to
live!
 
Someone had heard her shouting out
for help and called an ambulance, as a small crowd gathered to watch the
scene.
 
The emergency workers arrived
quickly and loaded Michelle into ambulance and drove away, but the immediate
danger had passed and they told Sophia she was a hero.

“I’m not the hero, Michelle is.
 
I was so afraid she wouldn’t make it.
 
I hope she’s going to be okay.
 
Those wounds on her neck looked horrible.”
Sophia shuddered.
 

Her best friend Mark was there, drawn by the
crowd.
 
He took Sophia into his arms,
holding her close while she trembled with excitement and cried with relief.

“Michelle is tough.
 
If anyone can pull through being stabbed in the neck like that, it’s her,”
Mark comforted her.
 

“Do you think so?” Sophia asked, wiping her eyes and
blowing her nose softly into a handkerchief he’d handed her. Mark nodded and
Sophia couldn’t help but smile.
 
“You’re
right.
 
Michelle has great inner
strength.
 
It’s what I loved most about
her, and found the most annoying.
 
The
last conversation I had with her was a quarrel.”

“About what?”
Mark
asked casually, but as Sophia explained to him about her romance with Logan
Longfellow and Michelle’s concerns about it, his expression changed.
 
To Sophia’s surprise, Mark sided with
Michelle and insisted that she stop seeing Logan.

“How can you say that?” Sophia cried out, hurt by his
words.
 
“I never thought I’d love someone
like I love Logan.
 
Michelle was
overreacting out of fear and ignorance.
 
My boyfriend is not an evil vampire!
 
You just don’t know him like I do!”

“That’s my point exactly,” Mark said calmly, while
tears ran down Sophia’s cheeks.
 
“Why
haven’t we met him yet?
 
Why do you only
meet with him at night?
 
What’s he hiding
in that castle of his?”

“Well, you’re going to meet him tonight!” Sophia
said, crossing her arms and jutting her chin.
 
“He promised to join me at the bar by the university tonight right after
sunset so he could meet all my friends. Of course, that was before I knew
Michelle had been attacked.”

“So, let me guess, you’re going to cancel your plans
and we’ll meet him some other night?” Mark said suspiciously.

“No, we’ll stick to the plan,” Sophia said
resolutely.
 
“Be there right after sunset
and you’ll get to meet Logan Longfellow and see for yourself what a kind,
intelligent, funny, wonderful man he is.
 
I won’t bother telling him about your ridiculous suspicions to save you
from embarrassment and having to apologize to him!”

“I don’t care if he knows what I think of him!” Mark
said, puffing his chest.
 
Sophia had
always thought of him as her best friend, but he’d always wanted to be
more.
 
Mark had wanted to be Sophia’s
boyfriend; he just never had the courage to ask her out.
 
Now Logan had beaten her to it, and she
thought she was in love with him.
 
Mark
knew he just had to prove to Sophia that she was wrong about Logan, and then he
could step in and be the man she loved.
 
Especially if he could prove to her that Logan was an evil vampire and
save her life, like a real hero.
 

A plan slowly started to form in Mark’s mind.
 
His face softened and he said gently
,
 
“
I’m sorry,
Sophia.
 
I didn’t mean to act like a
jerk; I guess I’m just worried about Michelle.
 
Let’s go to the hospital and check on her.
 
I can’t wait to meet your boyfriend tonight.”

Sophia felt at ease again.
 
This was the Mark who had been her best
friend all these years.
 
Hand in hand,
she went with him to the hospital, never guessing what troubles awaited her.

Logan Longfellow sat up in is coffin with a sudden
gasp. It was still
daytime
, but the heavy drapes were
all pulled safely closed, blocking out all traces of sunlight, so he was free
to roam about the house.
 
He had sensed
something he hadn’t felt in a long time, something so startling it had awoken
him from his slumber.
 
A new vampire had
just been formed!

He ran to his dresser and pulled out the crystal
jewel that had belonged to his mother centuries before.
 
Peering inside the jewel, he was able to see
images of a beautiful young girl walking in the moonlight.

“Sophia!” he cried out, recognizing the image of his
beloved.
 
As he kept watching the image
in the jewel, he saw another young woman her same age following her from a
distance. Logan watched, mesmerized, as Sophia entered his castle and the other
girl stayed hidden outside in the castle garden, spying on them.
 

He remembered that Sophia had given him her virginity
that night, and his mind filled with the memories of suckling her firm breasts
and sliding his rock-hard shaft deep into her tight, wet tunnel.
 
It gave him an erection just thinking about
her, and how wonderfully warm and soft her body was against his hardness.
 

Logan shook his head to clear his mind and forced
himself to focus on the images in the jewel.
 
Logan suddenly gasped in horror as he saw a new figure enter the
scene.
 
It was one he knew well, his
cousin, Peter Longfellow.
 
Centuries ago,
Peter had come to live in the castle as a favor to his father, who was Logan’s
father’s brother.
 

The cousins did not get along well, for Peter did not
like to follow rules imposed on him at Longfellow castle. He would ask Logan to
play games with him of hide and seek.
 
Then, when Logan was hiding, Peter would commit horrible misdeeds and
blame them on his cousin.
 
Logan’s father
saw through the ruse and became even stricter on Peter, banning him from
drinking anything but the blood of chickens until he could learn to
behave.
 

“Why must we drink the blood of dumb farm animals
when there is an entire town full of succulent virgins available for us to
feast upon?” Peter had cajoled.

“It is forbidden to drink the blood of the townspeople.
 
It would kill them, and if they survived,
they would turn into vampires themselves.
 
You’ll get used to drinking the blood of farm animals and learn to like
it,” Logan had told his troublesome cousin.

“Not as much as I like drinking the blood of
virgins!” Peter had said.
 
He ran away
that night, never to seen again, and many people assumed he had died.
 
Soon after his disappearance, the little girl
had been found dead near the river.
 
Logan always wondered if she had been murdered by his dark and evil
cousin, but his father had insisted it must have been a wandering
stranger.
 
Now, looking at the jewel, and
witnessing Peter enter the scene, his heart filled with dread, for he knew that
he was right.
 
Peter wasn’t dead; he was
a murderer.

The image in the jewel showed him biting the neck of
the young woman who had followed Sophia and draining her blood.
 
He dragged her body out into the street and
left it there, as he disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
 
Then the image in the jewel changed, and
Logan saw the same young woman being given CPR by Sophia, and her lungs sucked
in air, and suddenly she was alive again! Only Logan knew she was no longer the
same.
 
She would now be a vampire.
 
The metamorphosis was slowly taking place
within her, and by nightfall she would be lusting human blood.
 
The image faded away as Michelle was taken to
a nearby hospital by ambulance.

I’ve
got to get to her first! I can lead her away from the town, teach her how to
drink the blood of animals, and teach her right from wrong.
 
Then she will not cause any harm to the
people or come to any harm herself.

Logan knew that if left to her own, the instincts of the
new vampire would lead her to do terrible things.
 
Even worse, if Peter found her first, he
would intentionally teach her to do dark things and she would be his disciple
of evil.
 

Logan waited impatiently the rest of the day for the
sun to set, forming his plans on how to best help the girl.
 
When the last rays of light had finally
dipped below the horizon, he grabbed his long coat and headed for the
door.
 
No sooner had he opened it to
leave when he saw Sophia standing there, looking beautiful, fresh, and vibrant.

“Sophia!” he gasped, suddenly remembering that he’d
promised to go out with her tonight.
 
She
looked so lovely in a blue dress that matched the color of her eyes, and her
auburn hair hung soft and loose over her shoulders.
 

Smiling sweetly, she kissed him warmly hello.
 
“Ready to meet my friends?
 
You won’t believe what happened today!
 
My roommate Michelle was attacked on the neck
by some kind of wild animal.
 
I actually
saved her life by performing CPR!
 
It was
the most incredible feeling!
 
So instead
of going to the bar, we’re all going to the hospital instead, to visit
Michelle.
 
I hope that’s all right with
you.”

Logan’s jaw dropped with surprise.
 
He hadn’t realized Sophia knew the woman she
had saved in the street.
 
This was
perfect!
 
She could take him right to
her! He invited her into the castle and told her everything he had seen in the
jewel.
 
The news that one of her closest
friends was now a vampire came as quite a shock to Sophia, but she was relieved
to know that Logan would be there to help her with the transition and keep her
friend safe.

“I can’t think of anyone better to care for her,”
Sophia said, holding his hand and looking at him lovingly.

“Thank you, but we’ve got to hurry!
 
I don’t want Peter to find her first!”

“Don’t
worry,
I will lead
you right to her.
 
Her room is on the
fifth floor of the hospital.
 
Let’s go!”
Sophia said and they ran out the castle together, arm in arm, completely
unaware that Peter was hiding nearby and had heard everything.

So,
she’s on the fifth floor.
Peter smiled to himself after Logan and
Sophia were far enough away.
 
Let the games begin, dear cousin.
 
Ready, set, go.

Do you like this book? Be sure to check other books in
this series

Lessons at Longfellow Castle - Volume 2

The Eye of Longfellow - Volume 3

Longfellow’s Legacy - Volume 4

Longfellow Series: Books 1-4 (4-Book Bundle)