Blood Candy Read online

  Rupert screamed like a madman. “You’ve killed your whole family!”

  Blake jumped up onto his feet and tackled him. “Not if you’re dead!” They both went crashing over a couch and into a table.

  Rupert clawed Blake’s eyes and threw him into a wall. He was too fast for Blake.

  “Fucking yanks!”

  Candy scrambled over to Jimmy. He moaned and rubbed his head, and then yelled, “Behind you!”

  The paintball gun lay right there next to her. She picked it up, rolled over onto her back, and held down the trigger. The balls streaked out at Rupert, a few hitting him, more hitting the wall behind him, and some hitting Blake slouched against the wall. They both screamed and then she lost sight of Rupert. A second later, her hand flared with pain as Rupert knocked the paintball gun out of her grip. He lifted her up by the neck and once again precious air couldn’t make it to her lungs.

  Jimmy said something behind her, but she didn’t know what.

  Rupert’s face looked like it had been burned all over. This asshole’s ugly, burnt up face is the last thing I’m ever going to see. As Candy thought that, his face twisted with surprise into a silent scream of agony and she had to cover her face as blood sprayed out of his mouth. Rupert fell to his knees, clutching the tip of a stake protruding from his chest as the blood continued gushing out.

  Candy wasn’t sure if her oxygen deprived brain was playing tricks on her or not. The image of a girl with black hair stood out against the darkness for the briefest of seconds, like the flash of a ghost in her mind. She blinked. There was no one there.

  The lupine howled down the hallway, shocking her back into reality. She felt faint. Blake held her up.

  The lupine howled again, this time closer. Red eyes flashed in the dark.

  “Get her out of here,” Jimmy said. “Get her someplace safe. Go!”

  Candy looked down at Jimmy, at his face twisted with pain. She saw Rupert there, too. He turned his head ever so slowly, the stake still sticking out of his heart, his eyes begging, pleading for help. Jimmy picked up the paintball gun. Candy didn’t want to watch as he put it in the vampire’s mouth. She was tired, her whole body throbbed, and she wanted nothing more than to close her eyes. But she had to see. She had to know.

  “I hope you burn in hell with the rest of your fucked up family,” Jimmy said.

  He held back on the trigger. Rupert convulsed while water mixed with blood, flesh, and the torn shells of the paintballs poured out of his mouth. His head exploded like a bomb, splashing brains and bone against the wall. Jimmy slumped down to the floor. Candy closed her eyes.

  “Get her out,” Jimmy said again.

  Blake lifted her off her feet and she wrapped her arms around his neck. Wind rushed against her, through her hair. After an amount of time she couldn’t recall, he set her back down. She didn’t want to let go of him. They held each other for a long time.

  “We need to get you someplace safe,” he said.

  “Is it over? Is the nightmare over?”

  “Almost.”

  The wind rushed again. The next thing she knew she was in the passenger seat of his car. Candy curled up, not bothering to put on the safety belt. She just wanted to sleep. She just wanted to forget.

  “It’s over,” she heard Blake say.

  The car pitched into motion. Exhaustion crept over her. A woman was singing on the radio.

  Girls just want to have fun.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Candy woke up in the impossibly comfortable four poster bed. She was wearing plaid pajamas and there were several bandages on her body from wounds she didn’t realize she had suffered. She sat up and looked out the window to a bright and warm summer afternoon.

  If she had dreamed, she only vaguely remembered it.

  Someone knocked on the door. Candy tried to say “come in,” but her neck was terribly sore and a crackled mutter came out instead. She went over and opened it to see Renaldo.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Candy. Are you feeling well?”

  She nodded and said in a hoarse whisper, “Yes.”

  Renaldo smiled pleasantly. “Very good. I’ll have one of the maids come up again to check on your wounds. Is there anything I can get you in the meantime?”

  Candy shook her head. Renaldo turned to leave.

  “Wait. Where’s Blake? Is he okay?”

  “Master Blake is well. He’s asleep.”

  Renaldo retreated down the hallway. Candy shut the door and went into the bathroom. She took off the bandages and found a nasty cut on her arm. She stood beneath hot water in the shower for a long time before getting dressed in jeans and a plain shirt. All of the clothes Renaldo had bought for her were tucked away in drawers or hanging in the closet, plus quite a bit more.

  She started towards the door then paused. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed several boxes wrapped with bows beside the bed. She reached for one of the boxes and then noticed a car key with a pink bow on top of the nightstand. She picked it up and put it in her pocket.

  Renaldo sat in the antechamber near the front door reading his book. He hopped out of the chair when Candy came down the stairs.

  “Are you hungry?” he said.

  “No.” She reached out and hugged him. He stood there awkwardly. “Thank you for everything, Renaldo. You’re a good man.”

  He cleared his throat and straightened his suit. “You’re welcome, Miss Candy.”

  Candy started to unlock the many bolts on the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home,” she said as she opened the door. Out on the driveway a pink Porsche waited for her. She pushed the unlock button on the key fob. The sports car beeped and flashed its lights.

  “I’m going home, Renaldo.”

  * * * * *

  “You know how worried I’ve been?”

  Somehow, Candy didn’t think her mother had been half as worried as she now tried to make it seem. When Candy arrived home none of her friends or extended family were waiting for her return. Her scrawny mother, who was only thirty-eight but looked more like fifty, had been sitting in front of her favorite daytime talk show in a night gown with a glass of whiskey dangling in her hand. Her mother hadn’t mentioned anything about the police, a missing persons report, or an ongoing investigation. Candy opened up the refrigerator and pulled out a jug of orange juice.

  “You need to get a job if you’re going to be back eating all my food again. God knows no college wants you and your luck with men’s worse than mine.”

  “That’s the truth,” Candy muttered.

  Her mother belligerently carried on. She must have been one glass shy of the kind of drunk where a person rambles nonsensically. “If you’re going to run around for days at a time doing God knows what, at least warn me. This is my house! And keep your legs closed, I can’t afford another child.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Candy said to appease her.

  Candy went to her room. She was surprised to find her mother hadn’t moved everything out of it. Her bed was still there, made up with a black and white comforter the way it had been the last time she was home several days earlier. Her red laptop was on the desk where she left it along with mail strewn all over the place; mostly letters from colleges.

  She sat on her bed and pulled out the cell phone the Misfits had given her. She thought about calling her friends, at least Amanda, until she realized she didn’t care. They had all probably forgotten about her and, if they hadn’t, she had forgotten about them.

  She stared at the ceiling for a long time with the cell phone on her chest. She heard her mother yell, asking whose pink Porsche was in the driveway. Candy laughed, though the humor was short lived. She had almost died. She had seen other people die, even if they were the vampires trying to get her.

  The Misfits might have started a war with the vampires because of her.

  The cell phone buzzed on her chest. She read the display and knew the number. It wasn’t yet evening, closer to four
o’clock, and she knew vampires usually didn’t get up quite that early in the summer, though they could if they wanted. The early call didn’t surprise her. She ignored it and waited to see how long it took for him to call again. Six minutes.

  She flipped the phone open and hit the “END” button to cancel the call. Then, she scrolled through the address book to another number and hit “TALK.”

  “I’m glad you called,” Jimmy said.

  Candy smiled. She put her head on a pillow and said, “Hey. Do you want to hang out sometime?”

  Misfits Forever.

  Thoughts, comments, questions or flames? Contact the author: [email protected]

  If you enjoyed this novel, please consider leaving a review. Thank you.

  Read on for the first chapter of Blood Slave, the second book in the Fangs Deep series.

  THE FANGS DEEP SERIES

  Blood Candy

  Blood Slave

  Blood Dreams

  Chapter One

  The vampire slipped through the crowd, a model of beauty against a backdrop of small-town mediocrity, yet no one else in the restaurant noticed his presence. Candy noticed. Never would she forget the inhumanly pale skin, the jet-black hair, the eerie gray eyes. No matter how much she wanted, the dreams never let her forget.

  The tables in her section were forgotten as the noise and bustle in the restaurant faded away, everything except the vampire and what he represented. He was the unsettling reminder of cold hands around her neck, choking the life away, of menacing fangs stained red with blood, of the bite that burned through her with an indescribable passion. The memories of a nightmare she’d lived through day and night, what his kind had put her and her friends through, how close they had come to dying.

  And now he was in her town, at her place of work.

  “Are you done daydreaming yet?”

  Candy snapped back to reality when her coworker, Julie Maronne, rushed down the aisle between packed tables while balancing a loaded tray on one hand. Julie tossed a sneer over her shoulder on her way by.

  “Sorry,” Candy said, but her eyes instantly drifted back to the vampire.

  This was her fourth shift at Maronne’s Bar & Grill, and the dining room along with the bar was completely packed with the Sunday night crowd. The job wasn’t glorious or even lucrative, but it got her out of the house, away from her mother, and put a few dollars into her pocket. The bar was owned by Anthony Maronne and staffed with his taskforce of Italian relatives, Julie being one of the younger cousins or sisters or nieces, Candy wasn’t sure which and she didn’t really care.

  The work would have been more enjoyable if it wasn’t for Julie, who seemed to be on a mission to make Candy’s life more difficult than it already was. And so long as vampires didn’t make unexpected visits.

  Candy made her way to a table full of rowdy rednecks, though her eyes never strayed far from the vampire. She barely paid attention to the hoots and whistles aimed at the snug fit of her dark blue uniform while she handed out drinks. She gave them a pleasant smile and scribbled down their orders, even though she knew these slobs wouldn’t leave much of a tip.

  No matter how much she tried, she couldn’t concentrate on anything. The vampire had been at the bar for less than five minutes and he was already flanked by two women. If they knew what he was, they’d run away.

  It felt like a nightmare was clawing its way out of a locked place in her mind. From a hidden vantage in the drink station between the kitchen and the dining room, Candy watched the vampire, though it didn’t appear he knew she existed, so busy was he with the growing crowd of women around him. He was doing this on purpose—she knew he was here to torment her, to make a public display of it. The order pad crumpled in her hand, though she was unsure who she hated more: the vampire or the trash flirting with him.

  No one else knew what he was, knew anything about his dark secret; certainly not the promiscuous women hanging all over him. Who could she tell? Who could she go to for help? There was no one, but she wouldn’t let him get into her head. She had to keep herself busy, to beat him at his own game and not acknowledge him.

  Since the busboys were swamped and falling behind, Candy went out to clear one of her tables in the dining room. But keeping busy didn’t clear her mind; not when the vampire was sitting right there at the bar. Why was he here? Hadn’t she made herself clear when she told him to leave her alone? Her movements became frantic as she wiped the table, as she remembered things she never wanted to remember again, until she swiped a plate right off the edge. Dozens of eyes turned to her and the mess she’d made. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end and she knew by the sudden chill freezing through her veins that the vampire was watching as well.

  She rushed into the kitchen to escape the unwanted attention. Why wouldn’t he leave her alone? He was doing this on purpose, of that she was sure. There was no other reason for someone like him to be out here in her small town, a place most people considered the middle of nowhere. Glancing at a clock on the wall, she saw it was five hours into her six hour shift. She didn’t know if she could take another hour of this.

  Julie Maronne smacked a serving tray onto the counter loud enough that Candy jumped.

  “You don’t get paid to stand around.”

  Like most of her family, Julie had black hair and blue eyes, and those eyes were piercing straight through Candy. Since Candy’s first night on the job, Julie had done nothing but give her a hard time, which undoubtedly had something to do with pointless drama from years ago in school. Candy didn’t say a word, didn’t want to instigate, though plenty of choice words came to mind. She only wished that Julie would give it a rest already; her nerves were on edge and she didn’t have the patience to deal with this right now. From the look on Julie’s face, she wasn’t about to back off.

  “I know what you’re doing.” Julie narrowed her eyes and jabbed a finger at Candy. “You may be able to con my uncle into giving you a job with a shake of your ass but that won’t fly with me. I’ve been working here for three years and I’ll be damned if you come in and take my tables.”

  Candy bit her tongue, mostly because she wanted to keep her job, and also because Julie was a good three inches taller. Julie gave a satisfied half-grin as if the battle had been won. A few of the greasy cooks were staring at the spectacle, making Candy want to tell her where she could stick her attitude right along with her precious tables.

  “Don’t think I forgot what you and your friends did,” Julie said before she walked away.

  “Just ignore her,” one of the cooks said. “She’s not happy unless she’s bitching about something.”

  Candy grabbed a tray full of orders and went to finish her shift, intent on heeding the cook’s advice. As she tried to figure out what plate went to which boisterous redneck, she felt an unmistakable chill seep into her skin, but every time she turned around the vampire was only paying attention to one of the trashy girls hanging all over him.

  She couldn’t take it anymore. She didn’t care if the vampire won whatever game he was playing, if he proved that he could get into her head and break her down. She retreated into the employee lounge and hid there like a frightened child. It was less than two weeks ago when she and her friends were tormented and nearly killed by a family of vampires and those memories were all too fresh. Candy just wanted to forget, just wanted to return to her life and never see another pair of fangs again.

  “You okay, sweetie?”

  Samantha Maronne walked into the lounge. She was the veteran waitress on shift who had been training Candy over the last week and her black hair was frazzled from too many trips into the baking hot kitchen. Unlike Julie, Samantha was pleasant to be around and had a motherly quality that made working with her very easy.

  “I’m fine,” Candy said, feeling stupid for neglecting her work.

  “Does this have anything to do with the young man who was at the bar?”

  “No,” Candy lied. “Why?”

  Sama
ntha gave her an empathetic look that conveyed she’d been around for a while and knew a few things; that they could talk if Candy wanted. Then she checked the watch on her wrist and said, “You only have twenty minutes left on your shift. Why don’t you head on home. I’ll finish up your last two tables and give you the tip money tomorrow.”

  “I can finish,” Candy insisted.

  “Go on home.” Samantha pulled a piece of paper out of her apron pocket. “That young man left this for you. Go on and clock out. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  After Samantha left the lounge, Candy stared at the note for a long time. Written on the front in neat cursive was her first name. The thought of throwing it away crossed her mind, but what good would that do? Slowly, she unfolded the note and read the brief message within.

  Candy,

  Sorry if I made you uncomfortable, but we need to talk. It’s not over yet. Please call me.

  Blake

  She crammed the note into her pocket and clocked out. She should have thrown it away. She shouldn’t have ever read it. Now those words were stuck in her head—it’s not over yet. No, that couldn’t be true. It was over. The vampire family was dead. She had seen them all die. Candy grabbed her handbag and headed out of the restaurant, ignoring one last parting glare from Julie along the way.

  Maronne’s Bar & Grill wasn’t far from her mother’s house so she walked to work instead of wasting money on gas now that her mother found it necessary to charge for rent. She never thought her first summer after high school would have turned out the way it had. It never crossed her mind that she’d have to fight for her life against bloodsucking monsters. But those events had led her to the friends she never would have met otherwise, friends who meant the world to her, and she even managed to fall in love during that nightmare. The world had a funny way of arranging things.