I never thought there was so much of a thrill associated with having review alerts in my email. It makes me wanna jump up and do a dance...or write some more. :) Here's sum more!

Fifteen minutes later, I was in Josie's pale green Prius.

"What? You saw him?"

"Not only did I see him, he threw an extra large cup filled with popcorn butter at Marcus!"

I saw Josie's mouth twist as she stared straight ahead. She bit her lip hard and I heard a snort escape. I rolled my eyes as she busted up and began to howl with laughter loud enough to get stares from people on the sidewalk.

"Oh god!" She gasped for air, four lights later. "His face must've been priceless!" She finally managed to calm down. "Well, Dalca gave the bastard what was coming to him. I'll give him that."

I began to argue, but made a face as I remembered the last thing that Dalca had said to me. 'Just listen to your friend in the future. She is right occasionally it seems.' What the hell had he meant by that?

I mentioned it to Josie when she commented on the face I was making.

She got very quiet. Then she said, "Maybe that means that I was right about what I said earlier."

I laughed. "Josie, how would he know whether or not Marcus was cheating on me? I barely know the guy anyway. Why would I even give consideration to what he even said?"

"I don't know, Tasha," Josie said quietly. "Why don't you ask yourself that question? You brought it up."

I snapped my mouth shut fast and looked away. I refused to acknowledge that she had a point. Why was I worried about it? Did I think he was cheating? NO. Was I even going to think about it the next time I saw him? No...maybe...only if it came up in conversation. Would I ask him about it? No...probably not...of course not...maybe.

I looked up when I felt the car stop. We were in front of a Jewel.

"Why are we stopping?"

"Supplies," Josie said with a determined look on her face. "That vampire is not getting in my house."

We went into the store and Josie headed straight for the spice aisle. She grabbed some containers of garlic powder then marched to the produce section to pick out some fresh garlic. She wasn't taking any chances.

We checked out and got back in the car. But we weren't headed to my house yet.

"Next up, my church," Josie grimly, as if she were performing some morbid deed as dumping a body. I would have laughed if her caution wasn't well deserved.

We stopped at her church and we snuck in through the back entrance. We went to the main sanctuary where the held the services and went around behind the pulpit to the baptism thing that held the water for baptizing.

"Don't they get this water from a faucet or something?" I asked in a hiss as she dipped the first water bottle into the water. We had 3 to fill up. "Are you sure this counts as holy water? And doesn't t become unholy or something if it's stolen?"

Josie turned to glare at me. "Shut up! I have no idea but if you keep questioning its holy powers, God might jinx it or something to keep it from working when we really need it! So be quiet!"

I snickered a little but shut up afterward.

After that, we finally headed to my house. Our last stop before our final destination: Josie's house.

"I'll walk Shane while you get ready. But hurry up. Sundown is in less than an hour and I want to have my house vampire-proof before dark."

I had already told her that I had seen him in broad daylight, sunlight no less, but he was a vampire. If the stories were true then he only got stronger when night fell.

I went up to my room and packed a bag full of my stuff. All of my brushes, hair grease, shampoo, conditioner, straightening combs, flat iron, hair dryer, hair dyer comb attachments, sleeping bag...everything I would need. And clothes. But I could always come back for those.

When I was finally done, I was turning the lights out right as Josie walked in the front door with Shane. I gave him some food and refilled his bowl of water before giving him a giant hug and staring into his eyes and telling him I'd be back for him in the morning. He just stared back with baleful eyes. As if to say, 'Why are you leaving me?'

As I got in Josie's car, I felt guilt pang me. But I pushed it away. Dalca had talked to Shane as if he could understand exactly what the big German shepherd had been saying in dog language. And it looked as if he held no grudges towards Shane nor did he stalk him like he seemed to be doing me.

We got to Josie's house 30 minutes before dark, according to and app on Josie's iTouch. We hustled inside and I dropped my bag in her room without unpacking as we ran to the kitchen to dump out our loot. I smashed garlic and tossed it in a blender. Josie began to unscrew the tops of garlic powder containers.

As we worked I asked, "Did you find out what it is about garlic that's supposed to be so repelling to vampires?"

Josie wrinkled her nose as she answered, "It's supposed to be too strong for their senses. It's strong to us, but if we had the senses of an animal we couldn't STAND being in here. Hell, I can barely stand it now! Whoo!" She fanned her face and held her face back from the containers she had just unscrewed.

I nodded. A thought came to me. "Wouldn't onions do it too? I mean if we're talking strong smells..."

Josie stopped for a moment and looked at me with a thoughtful look on her face. "That would work. Look on the second shelf in the refrigerator. There should be half an onion."

There was and I tossed in the blender with the garlic. Almost immediately my eyes began to water and my nose smarted as I leaned away from the blender in an attempt to keep my eyebrows from burning off from the smell.

"Damn! I can't even see what I'm doing my eyes are burning so bad! Crack a window, will you?"

I did and leaned out to try and clear my eyes right as the voice of Josie's mom made me jump and hit my head on the sill with a bang.

Josie laughed as I turned around with tears streaming down my face from the onions and rubbing my head with a disgruntled look on my face.

"I said, what is that horrid smell?" Josie's mother demanded with one hand on her hip while the other pinched her nose.

"Hi, Mrs. Munerez," I said wiping tears out of my eyes.

"Hello, Natasha. Exactly what experiment did you girls say that you would be doing again?"

"An experiment to keep vampires away," I answered quickly when Josie looked lost as to what to say. She looked at me like I was crazy when I said what I did. "We want to see if it will work."

"How do you know that it will work if it REPELLES vampires?"

"They'll come to complain," I said with such confidence and a big cheesy smile that Josie's mother rolled her eyes.

"Whatever you say, Natasha," Mrs. Munerez said with a slight smile on her face. "As long the smell goes when you do, that's all I care about."

"We got you, Mom," Josie answered for me this time. "But were covered. I bought as much Febreeze as I did garlic powder," she said holding up some sprayers of Febreeze that I must have somehow missed her grabbing.

Her mother just shook her head as she walked out.

I looked into the blender at the pale white paste that had collected in the bottom of the container around the blades. Then I glanced at Josie.

"I think your mom is right. This smells terrible. We have enough. And I can't even see your face through my tears."

Josie chuckled and admitted my observation to be correct. She began to dust a little garlic powder across every windowsill and doorway in the house hold except the one in her room. That's where I went with my foul-smelling mixture of what was hopefully a good vampire-repellant.

I was going for easy cleanup and no permanent smells so I lumped the nasty mixture in a line across the polished wood of her windowsill and her doorway. I had already forewarned her to watch her step when she came in. Her room was permeated with the disgusting smell as soon as I plunked the first spoonful on the sill. I smiled in satisfaction as I wrinkled my nose at the funk. It was perfect.

Two hours after dark at nine o'clock, I was Josie's shower scrubbing my Japanese Cherry Blossom body wash into my skin, hoping it would soak in and replace the thick garlic smell that decided that my skin would make a good home. I rinsed and smiled in peaceful satisfaction when a sniff of my skin left no lingering trace of the nasty garlic smell that had remained from the other two scrubs.

I got out and took the shower cap out of my hair. I had just gotten it done and though I had a perm and my hair would stay straight though water, I wasn't willing to ruin sixty dollars of my dad's money.

I stepped over the line of pale goo that I had earlier lumped across the doorway. Josie sat on her bed in her PJs with her hair wet. There was a queen sized air mattress with my sleeping bag on it that now took up a portion of the free floor space in her attic room.

"Is everything ready?" I asked, digging in my bag for a comb as I began to wrap my hair.

"Yep." She was changing the song on her iPod before she plugged it in and began to blare out a French techno song called Alors on Danse. Neither of us really knew what the lyrics were in English, but we knew it was along the lines of "forget your problems and just dance." And that's exactly what we did.

We only stopped once to turn it down around twelve when Josie's dad came in to complain.

It was two when I finally collapsed and gasped out, "Time out! I need...to breathe!"

Josie turned it down and changed the song to something more peaceful before falling on the bed, nearly devoid of energy.

It had been our victory dance. Dalca hadn't shown up and Josie's plan had worked. Now it was time to sleep off the fallout from that much energy release at once.

Out of breath I heard Josie gasp out, "At least it worked. Dalca didn't show. I guess vampires really are allergic to garlic."

We sat there and breathed and I shivered slightly when a breeze from the window floated past my sweaty skin.

"Could you close the window, Josie?"

Right as she replied I froze in realization.

"I didn't...open it..."

"You know, vampires aren't actually allergic to garlic. It just smells so strongly, I could tell what you had done from halfway across the city."

I would know that low, purring, sexy, shiver-inducing, slightly accented voice anywhere.

I whipped around on the bed to see him standing on Josie's windowsill, looking down distastefully at the white paste he was standing in. He was in his long black coat, but underneath there was a black shirt with the words A BLOODY GOOD TIME across it in red. He also wore a pair of dark blue jeans.

For the first time I saw him in proper lighting. He wasn't anywhere near as pale as I thought he was. He had some definite color to his skin. His skin tone looked as if he could be almost Spanish, but I could tell his accent—when it was there—wasn't Spanish. This was the first time I could really see the color of his hair too. It was a deepest jet black I had ever seen almost blue-black. It fell in messy layers nearly to his shoulders and it had a strange almost natural messy feather look that most people had to work to achieve.

He glanced up and met my eyes and I found myself literally frozen to the spot when his icy-green and molten amber eyes met mine. He smirked like he knew the effect he was having on me.

A low shriek made me look up at Josie's bed. She was scrambling to the farthest corner of her bed, where the walls met and she huddled in a ball.

"Don't scream!" I hissed at her from under her breath.

"Are you crazy?" She hissed back, having a panic attack. "Hoooooooooooooooooooly shit. Holy shit. Ho shit," was all she seemed to be able to chant for a moment before she shook herself and managed to form a coherent question faster than I could. "H-how the hell did you get up here?"

Dalca's face showed that he was clearly amused by the whole situation. "If you think about it, the answer to that question is really quite simple. I just jumped from the ground."

"We're three stories up."

Dalca gave a little cough, that was clearly supposed to disguise a laugh but failed at doing so. The laugh clearly said, 'thank you, Captain Obvious.'

"I fail to see what makes this so difficult for you to understand," said fully smiling and showing us long, sharp fangs at the anger that was starting to register on Josie's features past the fear. Above anything else, Josie HATED when people insulted her intellect.

But Dalca turned away from her and back to me, and I felt his eyes run over me like I was a steak in front of a starving Hyena. A laughing, starving hyena. Once more I was in nothing scandalous. Heck, this was even more modest than the shredded nightgown. This was actually borderline trashy. I was in a pair of old blue soccer shorts that I had left from my AYSO years and a holey old t-shirt with a picture of a bunny that I had attempted to draw on it when I had been much younger. It was as modest as modest gets. And yet, once more, I felt like I was wearing nothing.

"Still beautiful, I see, Love," he purred at me with a leer.

"Don't call me that," I spat at him. I battling to hold onto my anger and not slip and fall into the trap that his presence always had for me. His eyes knew it too and his smile was predatory as he stalked a step towards me.

"Once more, Love. What are you going to do if I don't?"

I scrambled to my feet as he stalked closer to me.

Right as my back hit the far wall, there was a splashing noise and his hair was abruptly wet and I felt a little hit my face.

I realized that Josie must've managed to get the tops off one of the bottles of 'holy water' and throw it at him.

Dalca turned with a roll of his eyes. He strode over to Josie who shrank back and for a long moment I was terrified that this was the last time that I would see her alive. But all he did was give her a wide smile, probably purposefully showing some fang, and pried the bottle from her fear-frozen fingers. He sniffed it and poured a little over his hand. No one moved for a long moment.

Then I saw him smirk and I heard his chuckle.

"Holy water is just water." His slight accent seemed to disappear for a moment when he said this and it confused me.

He turned back to me and my heart beat kicked up a notch as I considered what he was about to do to me, and I knew it wasn't from fear. Anxious to keep him away from me I blurted the first thing that popped into my head.

"How did you know I was here?"

"I tracked your scent, Love."

"From my house?"

"No. From the park that you were sitting in with that imbecile you call your boyfriend." His voice darkened for a moment and I saw anger sparking in his mismatched eyes. But I was confused. Why the hell would he be mad at the thought of my boyfriend? But he continued on with his eyes dancing in amusement. "Then of course it wasn't hard to figure out who would make half of the town smell of garlic within the span of two hours. I didn't even have to look. Not the best move on your part, Love. Nothing screams 'I'm trying to keep away a vampire' more that garlic and-" He gave an experimental sniff and chuckled. "Onions?"

"Why are you stalking me?"

He smiled at the question as if he knew I was trying to stall and was humoring me. This question more than anything just seemed to amuse him.

"I'm not stalking you. I'm simply claiming my property."

"I told you before. I'm NOT your anything. Least of all your property. Just because you bit doesn't mean you own me," I said dryly, giving him a poisonous look.

He laughed and I couldn't help but shiver.

"But there, Love, is where you're wrong. You see, you belonged to me long before now."

"Hell if I did," I spat venomously at him.

His smile grew wider. He stalked a little closer to me as he spoke.

"You see, your dear father made a deal with me a while back. I do a favor for him...and in exchange, I get whatever I want."

I tried to sink into the wall as he stalked closer to me, but I was still holding onto my anger. "You mean to tell me that my father made a bargain with YOU and that I was the thing that you demanded in return? That's ridiculous. Who asks for children as payment other than creepy little gnomes in fairytales?"

"I don't. Your father offered you up."

"What?" His words didn't quite register with my mind. They made no sense. No way in hell would my dad offer me up as payment for a debt.

He was a foot away from me now and I slowly began to slide towards the door. Behind Dalca I couldn't see Josie, but suddenly there was a blue and silver blur and a LOUD metal 'CLANG'.

He stopped and looked thoughtful. Then he turned and I could see Josie standing there with saucer eyes staring at him as if he had suddenly sprouted a third eye. She stood stunned for a moment, then whipped the metal bat back around so that it would collide straight on with his face.

Dalca didn't flinch. In fact, the bat never reached its destination. Dalca's hand was very suddenly holding the bat a foot away from his face with Josie struggling to pull it out of his grip.

We both froze as the metallic sound of metal being bent suddenly broke the silence. His hand had crushed the bat so that the part that his hand had been wrapped around was crushed to a section about an inch wide.

No one moved for a long moment.

"Oh HEEEEELL no!"

I jumped when I heard Josie's voice. Then I gave her a pleading look. I knew where this was going. That tone of voice meant only one thing: a Josie that was too stupid to listen to reason. This was the Josie that would argue with police officers, argue with me, and pick a fight just for the heck of it. I had a side like this too but it took a little less for it to come out. Meanwhile, Josie...

"This is my BROTHER's bat! Do you have any idea how much this COST?" She shrieked giving him a death glare.

"Yes," Dalca said rather flatly. "But if it was so expensive then maybe you shouldn't have tried to hit me with it."

"Maybe your head shouldn't be so hard," Josie shot back. "After all, you must be pretty thick-headed to ignore a girl after she says no and go on molesting her. This is just evidence." She gestured to the half crushed bat that now lay on the ground after both she and Dalca had dropped it.

Dalca looked faintly amused. "Do you have any idea who you're talking to?" He asked somewhat dubiously.

"YES." She began to tick off all the things on her fingers as she said them. "I'm talking to the idiot who is going to pay for a new bat for my brother since his ridiculously hard head broke it; the fashion-stupid idiot standing in front of me who is seriously in need of a haircut; the one who broke into my friend's house and molested her; the one who stalked her on her date with her boyfriend; AND the one who showed up at my house STILL stalking my best friend at THREE O'CLOCK IN THE FUCKING MORNING. Yeah that gives me a pretty good idea of who I'm talking to."

Jesus Christ, Josie was going to get us both killed.'

"Hey, Josie," I slid around Dalca and gave him the same cheesy smile I gave her mom. "Can I talk to you for a second?" I tugged on her arm which she promptly yanked out of my grasp.

"No. This idiot needs to know exactly what he's doing. Somewhere in that thick head of his he realizes that what he is doing is morally wrong and will come to realize that we are right."

I just stared at her in open awe. Josie was an idiot. But Dalca's voice made me look at him. Oh god, was he ENGAGING her?

"Apparently I am not the only idiot for I don't keep pointing out painfully obvious things. Morals? A vampire?" He began to laugh in earnest. "In what strange parallel dimension do you live in that VAMPIRES would keep HUMAN morals? And not just that, I'm not the one who is insulting someone who could kill me in the next second."

Josie opened her mouth to reply but this was where I intervened. It's a good thing Josie's bedroom is in the attic, I thought, thinking of how my Dad would be storming in here by now if it were my room.

"Hey now," I said stepping between them and trying to play peacemaker between the pissed off Mexican and the irked European vampire. "Let's just all take a moment to think about what we've said. Perhaps we should meet up tomorrow and discuss exactly what made us so angry today."

Dalca looked at me for a long moment with a straight face before he started to snicker.

That was when Josie's mouth switched from idiotic to just plain STUPID.

She coughed something that sounded a LOT like 'Edward Cullen'. I whipped around and gave her a look that said SHUT UP plain and clear but she wasn't looking at me. She was studying her nails like the idiot she was.

There was a low growl that made the hair on the back of my neck prickle. "What did you just call me?" His voice was dangerous. I gave Josie a warning look which she ignored.

She looked up as if she were surprised. "Are you talking to me?" Then she looked sweetly apologetic. "I'm sorry all the garlic in the room seems to be making me cough." AND SHE DID IT AGAIN.

The girl had a death wish.

"I. AM. NOT. A. FICTIONAL. BOOK. CHARACTER," he growled out, as if each word disgusted him.

"Of course not," Josie said with ease. "But you RESEMBLE him. For example, you are stalking my best friend. That is very Edward-like. In fact," She continued wickedly, "I'd be willing to bet that you're just as creepy. You watch her sleep don't you." It wasn't a question. I just stopped trying. Josie was hell-bent on dying and taking me with her, it seemed. "I'm willing to bet that you even sparkle in the sun."

Dalca looked….irked. He was just slightly pissed off, as if someone had told one too many jokes at his expense. "I think you should listen to your friend and shut your mouth, Miss Munerez, before you get yourself killed."

Josie somehow missed the scary strain in his voice and how it had changed to a deadly quiet murmur. His accent was back slightly and I could see his eyes changing slowly to red as he gazed over my head at Josie.

Josie opened her arms wide with a laugh. "What are you going to do pretty boy? You don't look like you could push me over, let alone hurt me!" She pounded her chest with her hand once and laughed. "Bring it. Stupid, fang-less vampire. You won't do anything just like he wouldn't." Her voice was scorning now. But I sensed something coming from Dalca and when I looked at him, my mouth felt like chalk dust had filled it, it was so dry.

A feral snarl ripped through the air and Josie's insults. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Josie's skin lighten shade by shade until it reached the color of the sheets on her bed. Her eyes went wide as the gravity of what she had said finally got through her head.

Dalca had his fangs bared at Josie. His eyes were a glowing bloody red and he had crouched slightly, like a lethal panther about to pounce. This was identical to the look that he had given Marcus. There something strange about his eyes. Then he was gone.

I looked around in confusion. I had blinked and he had disappeared. What the hell?

I heard a weird choking noise from behind me. I turned to see Dalca holding Josie three feet above the ground by her throat. He snarled at her and I finally realized what was missing from his eyes. It was the slight charade that he played in front of me. It was something in his eyes that made him look human. But that element was missing as he glared at Josie, whose face was turning dark red. Her eyes were wide and they locked with mine and begged me for help.

I sprang into action and ran over to him as the lights dimmed a flickered before going out completely. Fear plunged ice into my veins. This was Dalca. It had to be. But I had never heard of anything like vampire making the lights go out or anything.

I heard a hissing growl form words and I shivered when I understood them.

"Little human, you dare to insinuate that I am as fangless as you? You will die for that insult."

NO!

I ran over to him and grabbed his arm. I could see his eyes glowing red unnaturally as if they were lit from behind. His head snapped towards my face and I dry-swallowed before speaking.

"Dalca, please. Don't kill her." He just stared at me. It was then I knew that it was going to take more than me just asking him to let her go to make it happen. "I'll-I'll do what you say….you can do what you want to me…just don't kill her." I closed my eyes as I said this and I looked down and dropped my hand. I was going to murder Josie when this was over. She would owe me for life after this.

The choking noise stopped and I heard a thump on the hardwood floor. I opened my eyes to see Josie unmoving form on the floor. I rushed forward as the lights flicked back on and his hand caught my arm.

"She is fine, merely unconscious." His voice seemed deeper and I could still hear his accent. I still strained towards her without really pulling, biting my lip in worry. There were purple bruises around her neck, but I could see her breathing and it calmed me.

His hand gently turned me and I was looking into his now amber and spearmint eyes. I glared at him before looking away for fear he would explode again.

"Just get it over with," I said closing my eyes and lifting my head as I waited for him to bite me or something.

"Come," was all he said and his grip on my arm didn't change. My eyes flickered open as I was pulled towards the window.

"Wait. What? That's not was we agreed to!"

He stopped and looked back at me with feral eyes. He wasn't angry, but I could see that he still hadn't re-donned the human charade that he played.

He eyed me steadily. "I could just finish what I started there," He said, gesturing to Josie's prone form on the floor. "Besides," he leaned in close to me and I felt his smell invade my head and it turned my muscles to mush. His eyes burned into mine. "I didn't think that you would break a promise so easily. But then I guess it is a trait that runs in the family." His voice was quiet, but it carried in the silent room, full of menace and scorn. Gone was the arrogance and the amusement. His voice sounded world weary and bitter which was so different from what he usually sounded like it was disconcerting. I looked away.

"Y-you know I don't have any idea what you mean," I said carefully, avoiding his eyes.

I flinched when his soft black hair brushed my cheek. "In time you shall. I think it's time you and I talked."

I kept my head lowered and I didn't look at him. I shivered as I felt his hand slide up my arm and wrap around my waist. He was surprisingly gentle. I was pulled to his body and his black coat was around us both. My face was almost against his chest and I made some effort not to put my face against it. The heady smell almost overwhelmed me.

"Close your eyes. This makes most people sick."

I didn't even have time to ask him what he meant. My stomach lurched sickeningly. A low hum vibrated my ears and my teeth chattered from the intensity. The whole thing only lasted a few seconds but when it stopped my stomach was still lurching.

Dalca released me slowly and I slipped to the grass, my legs unable to support the weight of my body. I tried to hold onto the contents of my stomach, but it was difficult. It was as though I had been forced onto a roller coaster that only shook you up and down. When the world finally stopped spinning, I realized that I was outside.

This part was a little longer than the rest...just cuz I didn't want to split it up. :) I would LOVE to hear a little something from the people who read this. PLEASE.

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