Love Bites *Sequel to Insanity Bites*

Z

I leaned against the wall and listened to the couple fighting next door. As usual it was about money troubles. My bedroom wall was smooth stone cement, a couple of inches thick but these people were so unbearably loud it was hard to miss them.

"Is this the best place you could find?" I looked up at the vampire who was assigned to play my father. "Mr. Aymen."

He had brown skin and dark hair that could resemble me but the way his shoulders hunched and his eyebrows creased in worry when I addressed him told me he was much younger than I was. 

"It's the closest to her," He replied immediately. "Do you want me to find someplace else?"

The moment he mentioned Rosalie, I started smiling. Just the thought of drinking her blood made my sluggish veins feel like they were finally working again. My heart beat for the first time in hours and I felt it like a hammer in my chest. 

"No, this will do." The closer the better.

"Umm, okay I'll leave you to it then," Aymen shifted on his feet waiting for me to say something and when I didn't he proceeded to the door.  He stopped just before leaving, as if remembering something and his hand gripped the door frame softly.

"Oh and you start school in a month. You've already been registered as a student." He turned back to me and spoke. His accent was thick and foreign, making me wonder if he had just come from the middle east.

"Awesome," I muttered sarcastically not liking the idea of school at all. I absent-mindedly stared at the well made single bed that I would hardly use. "Will you be taking me?" 

"Martha will," He replied referring to my so called mother. I'd met her briefly downstairs and she couldn't take her eyes off me let alone close her mouth the whole time. This couple looked like newbies who were so obviously starstruck by some of us older ones. They even asked me if I would be able to introduce them to Charlie if they acted well. Thankfully, they were on medical/hospital rotation so I would hardly see them.

"Okay, good night then," I waved my hand at him dismissively and he left. I unpacked some of my things -mostly my black coats - and arranged everything accordingly waiting for night to fall. When the outside grew dark and the streets fell silent I put on my coat and left the house.

I didn't need to check where her house was, after passing by today I had memorized the route immediately. As I neared her place I took in a deep breath of the cool night air and a mixture of scents assaulted my senses, some sweet, some old and decayed. One of them definitely belonged to her. 

I checked the watch on my wrist which read eleven o'clock. The lights upstairs were turned off but one downstairs still glowed dim yellow. I stopped by the side of a large oak tree that stood at the junction of her house and her neighbors.

Swallowed by the shadows, I leaned against the wall wondering where was the best vantage point for me. My hands caressed the warm wooden trunk behind me and I felt a tinge of familiarity. Weird, it felt like I had been here before. 

"Get out of my house you asshole!" The sound of a woman's shrill voice startled me and I whipped around to see a young lady in a night robe push a man out of her house. It was Rosalie's neighbor and the moment I saw her face I remembered everything.

It was Miranda. I had come here a year ago to accompany Charlie for a meeting and I remembered meeting her at a secluded bar in the city. In a drunken stupor she had divulged about her old dying husband and brought me back to her place to spend the night because he wasn't in.

My eyes lighted up in realization. She had invited me in.

 I waited for her male companion to leave and when she went back in I quietly snuck into one her rooms upstairs through a wide open window and made my way to her attic. After killing her old decrepit husband I had found some fascinating collectibles in his attic. The man was actually deployed and had survived the Vietnam war. No wonder he was so grumpy.