Finding Fire: Paranormal Romance (Bad Boys Of The Underworld Book 1) Read online

  She could go back to her apartment and let the Stakes know about her latest contact with Mr. X. That wasn’t the best idea because she still didn’t know what any of their motives were.

  If they tried to kill this Nicolas or tried to convince him to convert one of them before Anna could question him, he might leave town. It could take years to get another opportunity like this.

  Whatever she did, it would have to be on her own. She put her headphones back on and headed back to her apartment to formulate a plan of action.

  Later that night, Anna had the beginnings of a plan. She needed to know what this man was before she could decide what to do about him. All she knew was his name, his address, and the time he usually left his apartment. And there was only one way to find out more about him without arousing his suspicions. She was going to try to get into his apartment after he left.

  Anna wasn’t what anyone would call experienced at breaking and entering, but she knew a bit. Thanks to her rather unhealthy paranoia, she’d made sure she knew how locks were cracked before she purchased the five different types that currently adorned her own door. That had been years ago, but she hoped she could still manage one lock. It was a vampire. He might not even have great locks due to the lack of people willing to break into a monster’s apartment.

  The fact that his apartment was on the fourth story of the building was also in her favor. Most burglars were smart enough to not go after the apartment farthest from an exit.

  Anna thought about wearing all black, but that wouldn’t work. She had to get into the building somehow, and that would mean blending in with the other tenants. She chose blue jeans and a navy sweater.

  Her hair was back in its normal ponytail. She couldn’t wear sunglasses because, at this time of night, it would cause more attention than she needed. She did put on her everyday glasses though. They had black rims and added to the non-threatening air she was going for.

  Apparently a lot of thought goes into the outfit worn for breaking into someone’s home, thought Anna.

  She had to dig through her closet for a while in order to find her old lock picking tools. After kicking up a lot of dust and making a mess of her bedroom, she pulled them out of an old storage container.

  She took the same small bag she’d taken jogging. She added an older faculty ID badge she’d found while digging through her closet. If she needed to ask someone to let her in, she could hold it up while her thumb covered up the name portion. All it would show was her picture and that she was a teacher at the university.

  No one would find a college professor going to meet one of her students that threatening.

  She didn’t have any gloves that would work well for her purposes, but she had never been fingerprinted, so she would take the risk of getting her prints lifted.

  She grabbed a flashlight from her junk drawer in the kitchen area of the living space. She stopped before she left the apartment to do one more mental check of what she might need.

  Satisfied with what she had, she left the house in order to commit a major felony.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Anna started to think that this Nicolas guy would never leave his apartment. She had gotten back to the bus stop bench around ten thirty in case he left earlier than usual, and no one had left the building in over an hour. There were only two apartments per floor. On the fourth, one was dark while one had lights on and shadows moved behind the curtains. Anna assumed if Nicolas was a vampire, his was probably the one with movement.

  She hadn’t seen anybody leave the apartment, so she needed to solve her problem of getting in the building. She hoped she could convince someone to let her in as they were entering.

  That would raise suspicions if the tenant she recruited to help her was later notified of a break-in, but Anna wasn’t planning on taking anything, so Nicolas should have no idea she’d even been there, let alone notify the police.

  She was going to have to think of some other way for her to gain access to the apartment. Luckily for her, this street wasn’t busy at night. Anna blended into the shadows of the building on the side of the bus stop, so the few people who did walk by didn’t notice her.

  As she started to think of different ways she could get into the building, the lights on the fourth story went out. Now or never, she thought.

  She started across the street with a falsely confident stride. When she got to the building, she glanced through the glass of the doors at the empty staircase.

  There was still no man approaching. She made a show of fiddling in her bag for the keys to her own apartment. As she heard footsteps approach, she acted as if she dropped them.

  “Darn it,” she said in a voice a bit louder than an honest person might have, hoping the man approaching might hear her. She reached down and picked them up.

  When she straightened, a figure came down the last flight of stairs, toward her. She took the key to one of the smaller locks on the main door to her apartment and made it look as though she was about to unlock the door.

  As she hoped, he opened the door before she could put the ill-fitting key into the lock. It was only when the door opened that she finally looked up at him.

  Her breath left her. He was magnificent. Not model beautiful, but powerful. The sharp planes of his face, along with his massive height, would intimidate even Brad. He towered over Anna, marking his height as well over six feet.

  His black hair only caused his eyes to look darker in his pale face. Anna immediately noticed his eyes were not black, but a dark brown. These were not the soulless eyes she’d seen fifteen years prior.

  This assessment of him took only a fraction of a second. She immediately looked down and shuffled past him, trying to not be noticed, even though she stood right in front of him.

  Apparently he wasn’t that suspicious of her, because he was out the door without a word and walked down the street and away from Anna. Even though she knew she should rush upstairs, she paused to watch him go.

  He didn’t have the black eyes of the monster from her memory, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe they only were black while they were feeding, or the monster Anna saw could be something other than a vampire. These uncertainties were exactly why she had to question Nicolas if Mr. X was indeed right about him.

  Once the man was out of sight, she let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. She turned and continued up the stairs to apartment 4A.

  When she reached the door, she confirmed her suspicions that 4A was the apartment that light had been coming from earlier. To prove it was empty, she knocked loudly a couple of times. After a few moments, no one had answered.

  As quick as she could, she sank to her knees to inspect the lock. She was in luck. It was an older model, and she was confident she could get it open.

  She grabbed her tools out of her bag and got to work. It took longer than she’d remembered. Anna wasn’t sure whether that was due to the fact that she hadn’t done this in years, or because she knew what she was doing was wrong. Each second she spent working on the lock stretched and felt like an hour.

  She moved her right hand a certain way and heard the telltale click that informed her she was successful. She smiled at the small victory. This plan might actually work…

  There were some scratches on the knob where her tools had been, but they wouldn’t be noticeable unless someone looked for proof of a break-in.

  Anna stood up and put her tools in her bag. She set her hand on the doorknob and turned. The door swung in. Her heartbeat, which had already been echoing loudly in her ears, seemed to go even faster.

  Before anyone noticed her lingering in the hallway, she stepped inside and shut the door behind her. Immediately, she was surrounded by darkness. She dug in her bag for the flashlight so she could see again.

  The apartment, like most city apartments, wasn’t large. This layout appeared to be thin and long. The main door opened into a living area that spread out to her right. The rest of the apartment sprawled out from the
hallway at her left.

  It was an older building, and the hardwood floors had seen better days, but the high ceilings and peeling paint on the walls gave Anna shivers down her spine. She turned toward the living room.

  There wasn’t much by way of furnishings. Only an old couch across from an outdated television that sat on top of what she assumed to be a coffee table. The only other furnishings were the bookshelves that lined the walls of the room.

  They were six feet tall and shoved into every inch of available wall space. Anna approached the shelf closest to her and shined the light on some of the titles.

  The styles ranged from classic literature to modern day fantasy. There were biographies and old textbooks, and they were all arranged in no order at all. The shelves were so full that even the top of the shelves were covered with books.

  She took another look at the room with the light. Books were in stacks on the floor and lying about the couch. Nicolas didn’t just have full bookshelves to show off to friends, like some professors and students Anna had met in her time at the university. He actually read all of these books.

  It amazed her. She didn’t know whether she’d ever met someone with such eclectic tastes. She wondered why a bloodsucking monster would be so interested in reading. But it kind of made sense. Of course someone who lived forever would have a lot of time on their hands.

  She wandered around the room for a bit longer but soon realized she would find no proof of Nicolas being a vampire among all the books. She crossed toward the hallway.

  There wasn’t anything on the walls. No pictures or posters showing personality, nothing to give the space a more homey feel.

  Two doors lined the hall. She went into the first one. A small but efficient bathroom greeted her. The older style bathroom was in desperate need of a remodel, but the room itself wasn’t horrible considering a bachelor lived there.

  The sink had soap, razors, and shaving cream all along the border. She’d never thought of vampires having to shave before. Of course, she’d never considered what the bathroom of a vampire would look like.

  She opened the medicine cabinet. It was empty, save a few hygiene products. In this day and age, almost everyone at least had pain-killers somewhere in their home. However, they didn’t necessarily store it in their bathrooms.

  Anna moved onto the second doorway. This one contained the bedroom. The space was mostly taken up by a huge bed. She guessed it was a king. There was hardly room to move around the massive thing.

  A few books lay atop rumpled covers. One was written by a former aide to the president. The other was a horror novel by an author currently on the bestsellers lists.

  There was no room for any other furniture. The shades in this room were much heavier than the ones in the living room. Although, anyone who goes out at night, or works the night shift, would want to have heavy curtains in a bedroom. So would a vampire.

  She looked in the closet. Luckily, it had sliding doors, so the bed wouldn’t get in the way. Not too many clothes or shoes. Nothing caught Anna’s attention, so she shut the doors.

  She left the bedroom and continued her search. The hallway emptied out into a kitchen area. The windows in this room were the ones she saw from the street.

  She waved her light around until her beam caught on something shiny that made her stop dead. The refrigerator door had a shiny black padlock and massive chain to keep the door shut.

  Her heart kicked up a notch. She sank down on her knees and dug frantically for her lock picking tools.

  She’d never worked with a padlock before, but she had to see what was so important it needed to be locked away. A shaking hand finally pulled the tools out of her bag. She had to put down the flashlight to continue the task, but a little light still reached the lock from the floor.

  She tried to still her shaking hands and focus on opening the lock. After ten minutes of continued fumbling, the lock finally popped open. The sounds the chains made in the quiet darkness seemed loud and out of place in the silence.

  She placed the loud metal on the ground as gently as possible and opened the door. Light from the fridge filled the room. There was normal food inside. A gallon of milk, along with other meats, fruits, and vegetables sat on the top big shelves. But what caught Anna’s attention was on the bottom shelf.

  About eight jars full of a dark substance were lined up in a neat row. One was a bit farther forward from the others. That one was the only one that wasn’t filled to the top. She grabbed it and held it up to the light.

  Where the liquid slid along the inside of the jar, it left a coating on the inside of the glass. A coating that glowed a bright red under the light. Anna opened the jar and sniffed the interior.

  When the metallic, coppery scent hit her nose, she felt bile on the back of her throat.

  Her breath came out in pants. She was inside a vampire’s home. What was she doing? She needed to leave. He could be home any second, staring at her with those black eyes.

  She put the lid back on the jar with still trembling hands. She tried to get the chains and padlock on the fridge door to look exactly like they had before she’d ever disturbed them.

  She grabbed the bag and positioned it at the front of her body. She inserted one hand into the bag and rested her hand on the butt of the gun.

  After she took a few deep breaths, Anna headed straight for the door, convinced she hadn’t disturbed anything enough for Nicolas to ever even realize she’d been there. She reached the door and practically ran out of the dark apartment without ever looking back.

  She was out of the building in a matter of seconds and her feet pounded the pavement in her rush to get home. It wasn’t until she was a good block away from his building that she finally risked a glance around her to look for those eyes looking back at her. No one was around. Even so, she couldn’t shake the feeling he was just waiting for the right moment to pounce.

  ~~~~~

  Nicolas was weary when he returned home in the early morning hours. His head pounded from the offending smells that had surrounded him in the clubs, but he didn’t regret it.

  That bottled shit they called food couldn’t sustain him. Some nights he needed more. He needed the hunt.

  He headed up the stairs to his resting place. He climbed the stairs at a normal speed, since he was in no hurry tonight. Sure, he had the headache, but his whole body rejoiced in the thrill of the fresh blood that rushed through his veins. If it weren’t for the rising sun, he would be out in the city running circles around Manhattan just for the joy of feeling.

  He walked inside his sanctuary and immediately froze.

  Someone had been here. He took a deep breath in and studied the various scents. A woman… He followed the trail to his books, walking up to one the woman had paid particular attention to.

  He then followed the scent trail through the bathroom and bedroom. When he got to the kitchen, he looked at the padlock, which was right where it was when he’d left the previous evening.

  He knelt beside the steel chain and held the lock to his face. He inhaled. The scent was strong here. She’d struggled with the lock. With a vicious tug, Nicolas ripped the chain off the door. The refrigerator handle came off with it and smacked into the opposite wall. A small dusting of drywall rained down on the kitchen floor.

  He was oblivious to the mess as he opened the door. He immediately knew the jar she touched. He grabbed it and held it in his hand.

  As he stood up, he felt the sun rise up above the horizon. He was trapped in this place while this woman who had violated his space was out on the streets, running around. She could come back at any time. She and her friends would come with stakes and silver.

  His anger caused tremors through his muscles. His hand clenched and the jar exploded in his palm. The contents mixed with his own blood and fell to the floor. He threw the remaining shards in his bloodied hand at the wall and growled his frustrations.

  If he was still alive when the sun went down again, someone would pa
y for this violation.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Anna canceled all of her classes for the next day. She hadn’t slept at all. Visions of blood and monsters haunted her sleep.

  She went running to clear her head but made sure to go in the opposite direction of the building that housed the mysterious Nicolas. Even though the sun was out, she couldn’t bring herself to take any chances he would find her.

  When she finished her jog, her worries still waited for her at the apartment. She desperately wished she had Laura’s phone number and could confide in her, but that wasn’t an option. Even if she had the phone number, there was no way Anna could trust her.

  She needed this vampire alive no matter how much he terrified her. She needed to know whether he could help her find Evie. For the life of her, she couldn’t figure out how she could ask these questions.

  She knew nothing about him. There was no casual way she could knock on his door and tell him she knew what he was. The only way she had of contacting him would be to “accidentally” run into him as he left one night. Running into a vampire in the middle of the night didn’t seem like the safest option.

  She would have to find some other way to approach him. Anna could always find out what his hobbies were. He left his apartment around the same time every night. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find out where he went to.

  If there was one thing Anna was good at, it was blending into the background.

  Satisfied with her plan, she hopped into the shower to wash the sweat of her workout off of her skin.

  The rest of the day seemed endless. She had to respond to student e-mails and remind all the students that even though class was canceled, they still had to do the assigned reading.

  As the sun finally started to set, Anna contemplated which outfit could help her tail Nicolas while not being noticed. She decided on her jeans and a black tank. She threw her sweatshirt on over the tank and put her glasses on.