Light Me Up Read online

  So far, she’d not been inflicted with the need.

  “My family hid from the Nazis for two years beneath a neighbor’s barn in rural Poland.”

  He sucked in his breath. “You were alive during

  World War Two?”

  “Yes, I am old enough to be your grandmother.”

  His gaze travelled her body, and she shivered. “You don’t look like my grandmother.”

  “I will always look this way. Eventually, the Nazis found us. We were being transported to wherever it was they were taking us. I assume a concentration camp. I had been separated from my family and placed with other women my age.”

  She could see it as she spoke the words to Ben. “The truck overturned, and I was thrown. Bleeding, I thought to run. I don’t remember exactly what happened after that. My blood must have attracted the Vampire. My next memory is being as I am.”

  “So, let me see if I have this straight. You were hunted by the Nazis and killed by a Vampire.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ruth, you should be twitching and crying all the time.”

  “As a Vampire I do not feel human emotions as you feel them.” Except towards you.

  She almost said it aloud and was glad when she didn’t. This man, he did things to her she couldn’t allow to continue. He would be dead —maybe by the morning— and she’d have to go on living for eternity. None of this was okay. She let go of him and stepped back.

  He cocked his head to the side in question. “Ruth?”

  “You’re lighting me up inside, Ben, like those candles your family lights every night. I can’t let it continue. I’m a creature of the dark.”

  Chapter Three

  Benjamin lay back in the recliner that had been his grandfather’s favorite. Even though his mother’s father was long since deceased, the piece of furniture was forever referred to as “grandpa’s chair.”

  His nieces and nephew ran through the room, holding bubbles sent to them in the mail from their Aunt Sandra. His mother’s sister had always been good at remembering Jennifer and Ben as children, and it looked like it had travelled on to the next generation as well.

  He kept waiting for his mother to tell the kids they had to go outside to use the bubbles, as she’d told him when he was the same age. When it didn’t happen, he decided rules for grandchildren were apparently different. He’d never even heard his mother raise her voice to them.

  Jennifer walked to his chair and sat down on the arm of it. “You look tired.”

  “I’m dying. I’m going to look tired from now until my heart finally gives out.”

  His sister sighed and rubbed her forehead. He reached out and grabbed her arm. “I’m sorry. I will try not to mention my upcoming demise. I know it upsets you.”

  “I don’t think you do. I don’t think you have any idea the hole that will form in this family when you are not here anymore.” She sniffed. “But it’s your death and if you want to talk about it, go ahead.”

  He grinned as he poked her with his index finger.

  “Thanks for your permission, sis.”

  She snorted. “Shut up.”

  He sighed, stretching his arms out over his head. “The irony here is that I finally met a woman.” He looked across the room at his grandmother, who sat in a folding chair watching the kids and their bubbles. “A Jewish woman.” Sort of.

  Jenny gasped. “You did?”

  “Yep.”

  “Where did you meet her?”

  “Actually, I was standing around, and she found me.”

  He sat up a little bit as he looked out the window. The sun was finally going down. He’d been watching for it all day. Sundown meant Ruth would be up. Of course, if she decided not to come tonight it wasn’t like he could go and find her.

  She’d run away so fast the night before. One second she had been there; the next she’d been gone.

  His grandmother stood up. “Hanukkah time.”

  The kids shrieked and ran for the table that held the menorah. They said the prayer as his mother lit the candles one at a time. He wasn’t religious, never had been, but he liked the gathering of his family around. Some of his strongest memories as a child were the times they all spent together.

  He wondered what Ruth thought about when she remembered her human life. Did she think about it at all? She’d said that he was lighting her up inside. Well, she’d done the same to him. All of a sudden, there was something to look forward to doing at the end of the day. It wasn’t exactly fair to him either. His life was ending. Every day he was weaker. Except for brief trips to the bathroom, he hadn’t been out of his chair all day.

  Even his grandmother with whom they didn’t discuss his death had to have noticed how bad off he was.

  He clenched his hand into a fist. He’d made his peace, albeit a rocky one, with what was going to happen to him. Now, he was going to have regrets, and all of them centered on the idea that he wouldn’t get more time to get to know Ruth.

  Of course, she had nothing but time. She’d told him twice she’d never change. Did that mean it irked her to look forever twenty-two? What did it mean to be a Vampire?

  These were things he wanted to know. Also, admittedly, he wanted to know if her lips were as soft as her skin, if she sighed when she kissed, if her dark eyes would flare with passion were they ever to make love.

  Now the last bit was something he would never know, and maybe that was the biggest regret of all. He leaned forward, holding his head in his hands. There was no doubt about it, the whole thing sucked.

  Jenny’s hand on his shoulder caught his attention.

  “Are you okay?”

  He nodded and smiled as he lifted his head. Her eyes were more than concerned, they were terrified. Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe, and it had nothing to do with his heart. Sometimes love could be stifling especially when you couldn’t do anything to make the other person feel better. “I need some air. I’ve been inside all day.”

  “Oh.” She looked down at her hands. “Is that a good idea?”

  He stood up, pretending to feel stronger than he actually did. “It’s not a bad one.”

  “Do you want some company?”

  He shook his head and kept walking. “No thanks.”

  Making it through the front door, he shivered. It was colder than the others nights had been. No matter, he was pretty good at ignoring it.

  What really bothered him was the running thought that plagued his mind about whether or not Ruth would consider making him a Vampire. It was a silly notion, and yet even knowing that he couldn’t seem to stop himself from considering it.

  In some ways, the idea disgusted him. Did he want to drink blood? No. He’d had enough time in hospitals to see the stuff up close and personal. If you weren’t careful, it was messy and could end up all over the floor after some badly prepared nurse didn’t put the line in correctly for the transfusion you were supposed to be getting.

  Shaking his head, he pushed away the memory.

  He also didn’t relish the idea of having to be violent. Ruth didn’t come off that way, but that didn’t mean that despite her claims of not killing anyone she wasn’t actually running around committing atrocious acts in her spare time. Rubbing his nose and sniffing as he shivered, he acknowledged he really didn’t think she was doing that.

  His reasons for thinking the way he did were more emotional than logical. He just felt like she was safe.

  All of those unhappy thoughts aside, he relished the idea of having forever with Ruth. An eternity of gazing into her brown depths, of knowing her secrets, of making her happy. And —yes— of being truly strong and not getting well only to become sick again. He could imagine it in his mind.

  They could stand together, hand in hand, on his favorite beach in Santa Monica; the one he’d had to sit still on for the last year and not move around too much for fear of passing out. It would be night, but hell, he didn’t care. The moon over the ocean was just as beautiful as the s
un.

  He’d teach her to surf. Well, he’d teach her as well as he could. The bits of time when he’d been healthy enough to really take advantage of surfing had not made him an expert on the subject. He sighed. It would be amazing.

  “Penny for your thoughts.”

  He looked up, not surprised to see her but shocked that she’d snuck up on him tonight. “Looks like it was your turn to catch me by surprise.”

  The ocean wasn’t the only thing to look beautiful by moonlight. Ruth’s brown eyes twinkled from her serene face like a lighthouse calling lost ships to safety. In this case, he was the drowning sailor, desperate to find land. “I’m a Vampire. I’m supposed to be able to do it.

  The fact that you can is… odd.”

  He nodded; he had no explanation to make sense of the fact he could sneak up on her.

  “I wasn’t sure you would come tonight. I thought you told me I lit you up inside too much.”

  “You do.”

  He stood up, even though it was hard. Maybe it was pathetic but he didn’t want to look weak to her, even if he was. His appearance, in this moment, mattered to him.

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.” She took a silent step forward. The grass didn’t even seem to move beneath her feet. “If you didn’t think I’d come, why did you wait outside? This is not good weather for you to be running around in.”

  “I’m dying— I’m hardly running. It doesn’t matter what weather I spend the time I have left in.” He shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about this. He didn’t want to be dying for the minutes he had left with her. He wanted to tell her about his fantasy of surfing in moonlight.

  A flash caught his attention, and he turned. The

  Hanukkah candles glowed in the window. Four tonight. He’d seen them being lit inside just minutes ago and not given them much thought. Out here they looked ethereal.

  Ruth stepped forward and took his hand. He jumped, startled by the unexpected contact, and his heart skipped three beats. Looking at their hands joined together, they didn’t seem like two different creatures. He felt like a man holding a woman’s hand in the cold winter night. He brought their hands to his mouth and kissed the top of hers.

  She was warm.

  He closed his eyes against the sense. “Did you just feed?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you feed, is it violent?”

  She laughed, and he opened his eyes. “No. It’s simple. I approach, they fall under enthrallment —well, everyone but you does— I feed, I leave, they wake up.

  They have no memory of it.”

  Not letting go of her hand, he moved it from his mouth and let it hang by his side. “And then what do you do for the rest of the night?”

  “I wander.”

  What? “All night?”

  “Well, for a while I used to go to Vampire bars. I got tired of that.”

  “Wait.” He squeezed her hand. “Did you say

  Vampire bars?”

  “We have places we go to socialize. Some people use them as a means of trapping prey.”

  Prey. “You mean humans?”

  “Yes. Humans are our prey.”

  “Am I your prey?”

  “No, you’re different.”

  It amazed him that she talked about this and showed no emotion about it at all. She might as well have been discussing eating meat versus being a vegetarian. But in her case, she was talking about well… him.

  She looked down at the ground and pulled her hand away. Aha, she wasn’t completely unaffected by their conversation. It might just be a general sense of discomfort, but she wasn’t immune.

  For some reason, that was hugely important to Ben.

  It meant she felt things. He’d already suspected she did. Ruth was drawn to the candles, to memories she denied caring very much about, she’d grabbed his hand. She felt. Vampires, well at least this Vampire, were not cold, unfeeling eating machines.

  He wanted to laugh aloud. His assumption had been correct. These were small elements of proof to back up what he’d been instinctually sure of. She took a step away.

  Damn. He’d been quiet too long. She was leaving. “Wait.”

  “I need to keep going. I can’t stay here.”

  “On your wanderings?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Tell me more about the Vampire bars.”

  “Why?” She put hands on her hips. “They upset you before.”

  He had to talk his way out of this. “Thinking of humans as prey was hard for me. I still want to hear. If you go to bars, that must mean Vampires socialize.”

  “We are by nature solitary. Occasionally we do

  need to see others of our kind. It’s like a compulsion that comes over us.” She stared at the candles and then at the sky. Anywhere, he noted, except at him. “Some travel twoby-two.”

  He stepped forward. “Like Noah and the Ark.” Raising an eyebrow, he continued. “Like mates.”

  “Exactly.”

  He reached out and touched her hair. It was smooth and soft. “Where is your mate?”

  “I have always preferred to be alone.”

  “Really? Why?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Why are you alone?”

  “Because I’m dying, and it’s not nice to inflict myself on someone who will lose me.”

  That was the truth. Everyone died. A perfectly healthy person could step out the door and get side-swiped by a car. Wham. It’s over. But he knew he was unwell. He knew that unless that car hit him soon, it would be the heart problem that killed him.

  Maybe it made him foolish. Maybe he should have run out and gotten married and had a bunch of kids while he could, but to him it felt selfish. Who was he to ask a woman to marry him and have his babies knowing there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d be around to see them graduate from high school?

  He couldn’t imagine it was a real turn on for some poor woman. Meet, fall in love, get married, have babies, watch husband die young.

  “My vampirism tends to make me very morose. I’m not very good company. I’m not exactly mate material. And most Vampires find the fact that I don’t kill humans to be odd. It means I’m always a little bit hungry. That probably adds to my general unpleasantness.”

  He laughed. Truth was, he couldn’t help himself. In fact, before long he was downright hysterical.

  Ruth’s eyes got huge. “What is so funny?”

  He pointed at her. “You are.”

  “I am?”

  Looking like a landed fish with her mouth gaping, she sputtered. “What about what I just said did you find amusing?”

  “Your general unpleasantness.” He snickered, calming down as he felt his heart beat too fast. That was part of what sucked about his condition. He couldn’t even enjoy simple things… like laughter. “Maybe you’re just depressed because someone made you a Vampire sixty-five years ago and you’ve been alone ever since.”

  She glanced down at the ground. “Until I met you, I thought I was over these human emotions. You bring them all back to me, and now you’re going to die.” She stared up at him, cocking her head to the side. “Thanks for that, really.”

  He grinned. “No problem.” He needed to sit down before he fell down. Waves of dizziness threatened to overtake him, and before he could blink, Ruth’s arms were around him. She carried him to the stoop he’d sat on earlier.

  “You’re carrying me?”

  She nodded. “I’m strong.”

  “Obviously, and here I was trying to be so macho.”

  “Don’t be macho, you’re dying.”

  Ben rolled his eyes as she sat him down. Like he needed the reminder.

  “Besides, that’s not what I like about you anyway.”

  She liked him? If his heart hadn’t already been struggling, he would swear it skipped a beat at that statement. “What do you like about me?”

  Sitting down next to him on the stoop, she l
eaned her head against his shoulder. Her hair smelled nice. He took a deep breath. It was like vanilla scented coffee. It had been years since he’d had caffeine but he liked to smell it wafting out of the doors of coffeehouses.

  “I think you are exactly the type of man I hoped to marry when I was alive.”

  “Really?” He cleared his throat. That was quite a declaration. Ben felt like the ground shifted beneath his feet at that statement. “Why?” “You’re strong…”

  He interrupted. “You just carried me to a stoop to sit down. I’m not strong.”

  “You are. To hang on the way you do, that’s strength. Also, you seem to have a depth of character that is very appealing. You’re kind, and family oriented.”

  He shook his head. “Only recently. I’ve been running an investment portfolio company out of Los Angeles for the last seven years —well, in between heart issues— I’ve hardly been home.”

  “You came home when it counted.”

  “To let them see me for a few days?”

  “You could have stayed out there, not strained yourself on a plane, had a little more time, made them all come out to see you. Probably your grandmother wouldn’t have gotten to see you at all.”

  “How did you get to be so smart?”

  “I’m an old woman. I’ve seen a lot of stuff.” Moving her head closer to him, she pressed her lips to his. For a moment, he was stunned. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe as her softness filled him up from the inside out.

  Just as quickly as it started, she pulled back.

  Her eyes looked misty before she looked down. “I’m sorry. That was inappropriate. I’m a Vampire. I shouldn’t have my lips anywhere near yours.”

  She stood up to move away, and he grabbed her arm. She couldn’t leave. If this was his last night, he wanted to spend it on this stoop with her not moving. “It was surprising but not unwelcome. Please stay.”

  Her eyebrows pressed downward. “We’re friends, right?”