Anticipating, Chapter 2

(Cara’s POV)

“Don’t look up…don’t look up…don’t look… Fuck.” Those beautiful sunset-blue eyes, the same eyes gazing back at her in her dreams almost every night for the past two weeks, were still trained directly at her. “Is he trying to count my eyelashes?” Cara wondered a bit breathlessly at the intensity of his concentration. When a vampire focuses on someone, that someone knows it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Trapped in the depths of his unwavering gaze, wanting to drown in the light and the shadows of his eyes, Cara bit her lip. It would be so incredibly easy to… “What am I, twelve?” she grumbled to herself. With a bit of a smile and a blush, she shyly lowered her gaze back to the cup she didn’t remember holding.

Suddenly in need of more coffee, she moved gracefully over to the Keurig coffee maker that had mysteriously appeared the second time she’d visited the surprisingly well-appointed vampire compound. Evidentially someone had noticed that she had the exact same machine in her own tiny kitchen. Although it’d felt weird that someone would pay such close attention to her or her habits, it’d been a nice surprise. A very nice surprise. She wondered if the vampires realized that she had coffee in her veins instead of blood.

Judging by the heat she felt between her shoulder blades, those ancient, gorgeous eyes were still focused on her. Cara busied herself with her coffee and an apple as she fought the urge to glance over her shoulder at the male enigma known as Godric.

“Is such intensity just something antique vampires have, or is it just him?” she wondered. “Is it an age thing, a vampire thing, or is it just… him?”

Relief eased some of her tension when she heard a phone ring. Thankfully, Alaric must have news.

During his brief conversation in yet another language she didn’t speak, Cara succumbed to the urge to study Godric’s handsome features as she polished off her apple. His appearance had first struck her as being slightly more boyish than of a man full-grown, but…appearances were definitely deceiving.

In the course of the past several days, she’d come to realize that not only was Godric a man full-grown, but that his over 2000 years of experience had given him a surprisingly powerful personality, along with more wisdom and patience than she’d have thought possible. He was definitely someone you took quite seriously.

If eyes really were “windows to the soul”, then Godric’s soul went far deeper and stronger than she’d have ever expected of a vampire. But of course, all she’d known about vampires had been from what she’d read or seen on TV…until that night.

She shivered as she remembered the night that she’d unexpectedly saved a life and changed her own.

It was a dark and stormy night, although she didn’t laugh at the stereotypically noir setting. She’d been rushing from the grocery store, bag of veggies swinging in her hand, when she’d smelled wet dog…the strong, fetid stench of a nasty wet dog. Then she heard low moans and…snarling?

“What the everloving hell?” she asked herself as she looked into the dark alley past the corner of the grocery store and saw a woman struggling on the pavement with four huge, muscled, shaggy men around her. They were snarling , growling, and the two crouched over the lady were BITING her?

“Oh HELL no!”

Armed with a purse, a bag of veggies, and not much common sense, Cara barreled over and, using the pen still in her hand from checking items off her grocery list, attacked the smelly, shaggy dog-man closest to her. Her aim was accidentally true because he went down gratifyingly fast and stayed there.

Although her hand throbbed (“Who knew necks were THAT hard to puncture with a pen?”), she immediately went for the next closest stinky man-thing who was already turning toward her. She stared in horrified amazement at the thing’s creepy glowing-yellow eyes and, oddly, her hand with the pen in it rose automatically toward where she was staring. She refused to relive the feeling of her pen going deep into the thing’s eye, but was grateful the stab was apparently fatal as that thing also fell to the ground with a satisfying thud.

Now for the other dog-things…they were STILL gnawing on the woman! “Fuck this shit!” Cara fumed as she immediately grabbed the mace from her jacket pocket, ran over and started spraying. He lifted his blood-covered face and growled through huge fang-like teeth dripping blood…and got a face absolutely full of mace. He cursed, snarled viciously just before running off. Thankfully the slightly smaller bloody-mouthed dog-man near him yelped and ran off as well.

Cara dropped her purse and bag as she knelt down to the bloody woman and felt for a pulse…which wasn’t there. She checked for sounds of breathing…and found none. Her skin was so cold and had a faint bluish tint. This wasn’t looking good.

Then the woman blinked a couple of times…lifted her hand…and cleared her throat. With no pulse. Or breathing.

Oh, this must be one of those vampires she’d heard about.

She shrugged off her jacket and placed it under the woman’s head and brushed her dark hair out of her face.

“Are you ok? Well, obviously you’re not ok, but they’re gone now.”

The woman blinked a few more times, then shakily replied, “Blood…I’m…going to need…blood, but…for just now…I’m ok. I just…need to be still…for a few moments.”

“Ok, I’ll be right back – I need to check on those two dog-men to make sure they STAY down. Hang on!” Cara went back over to the first thing she’d downed. He wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t moving, either. Maybe pen stabs to the necks of doggy-men resulted in some sort of paralysis effect?

The second smelly thing was still dead, which she figured was excellent, all things considered. It was then that she noticed two things: it had stopped raining, and more people were suddenly approaching.

Worried about the wounded vampiress still vulnerable on the pavement, Cara grabbed her pen and the now-empty mace and faced the newcomers.

A young-looking male approached quickly, face full of angry concern. Cara raised her mighty pen and empty mace, determined to prevent further harm to the woman now struggling to sit up.

“Isabel!” he growled as he strode over toward the woman.

“It’s ok…he is…safe” the vampiress gasped as she struggled against gravity.

“Hey, don’t be moving around, ok? You need to stay still,” Cara replied, not looking away from the three people, two of whom were checking out the dog-men lying still on the ground.

The young male was suddenly by the lady’s side and checking her wounds. The woman’s shoulder and thigh bore the brunt of the attack, but she was scratched and bleeding in too many places to count. Cara ran back over to the lady, and was surprised to hear him say, “Drink, child, and heal.”

She remembered reading about how makers and their children have a special bond, and that that vampire blood was healing, but was still shocked to see the male tear his fangs into his own wrist and lower it to the lady’s mouth. But when the lady slowly held out her hand toward her, Cara automatically took it, more than willing to offer whatever comfort and security she could. The woman had certainly been through a terrible ordeal.

“It’s ok. It looks like these are the good guys, so you’re gonna be fine. Just relax,” she encouraged as she gently stroked the woman’s arm, willing her to relax and heal. She didn’t want to watch the blood exchanging bodies, so she kept her eyes on the others, and didn’t notice the male’s surprised look and curious gaze as his eyes flicked up to her face.

One of the other two people, whom she now assumed to be vampires, approached quickly.

“Godric, one Were is dead. The other yet lives although it seems he cannot move,” the tall, dark-haired, pale-skinned vampire stated. The vampire threw a questioning look at Cara.

“There were two more dog-men here when I found her, but they stopped attacking her and ran off.” Cara grimaced at the memory of them feeding from the lady.

“Which way did they go?” demanded the other, lighter-haired, vampire.

She pointed the direction, and mentioned that one of the two escaped dog-men seemed younger than the other. The light-haired vampire simply disappeared into the same direction.

“Dog men?” queried the boy-man apparently called Godric as his eyes honed in on her face with surprise.

“Yeah, well, they smelled like wet dogs and looked kinda like dogs, with huge fangs and shaggy hair, and they sure sounded like dogs the way they were snarling and growling. It was awful! I don’t see how she’s even still alive…or…whatever.”

“You know she is vampire?” Godric raised an eyebrow.

Cara quirked a grin. “The lack of pulse and breathing combined with the still-being-alive part sorta gave it away.” As she met this Godric’s powerful stare, she felt something…unfamiliar. Something exciting and soothing…something that made her think of things she shouldn’t consider because she couldn’t have.

She quickly turned her attention back to the lady who was thankfully no longer ingesting his blood. “How ya doing over here, hon? Feeling any better yet?”

“I will soon heal. Thank you.” Isabel was already sounding much stronger.

“What is your name?” Godric asked as he helped his child sit up.

“Cara”, she replied as glanced back at Godric…and tried not to notice how he had still been staring at her before he switched his gaze to Isabel. “You really are starting to look better already!”

She took a tissue from her pants pocket and started trying to dab some of the worst of the blood from Isabel’s wounded shoulder. “Is there anything else I can do?” She gave up on removing the blood and instead tried to brush more hair out of Isabel’s face.

Isabel squeezed her hand. “You saved my life. You truly did. I am grateful for your help and your kindness.”

“I couldn’t let them keep…ugh. That was horrible! What the hell kind of monsters WERE they?” Horrible images kept circling in Cara’s brain.

“Weres.” Godric spat the word out like it was a vile poison. “Filthy, disgusting Weres. And there were four of them?” He seemed surprised at the number.

“Yep. Two were standing more or less where those two are now, and the other two were…yeah, but they ran off after I emptied this can of mace in the one’s face.” Cara held up the now-empty canister. She remembered her pen, and leaned over to pick it up where she’d dropped it.

“Who would have thought a silver pen would have come in so handy, huh?” She tried to wipe the Were off the pen with the tissue still in her hand, but the memory of it going into the that weird yellow eye was rather revolting. She threw the pen away from her with a shudder.

Godric looked confused at her odd actions.

“Um, that pen kind of got poked into the dog-man’s eye. The one who isn’t still alive.” Cara grimaced the memory.

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**A/N: Stay tuned for Godric’s POV…he thinks the face Cara just made is the…**

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Next to:  Chapter 3

Back to:  Chapter 1

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