The Vampire's Protector. Michele Hauf

have immortality now? He certainly felt...something. Stronger, and more powerful. Sure. Yet if not immortal, what, indeed, had he become? And how to fix it?

      Did he want to fix it? That may imply his going back to the grave, of dying. Again. He rather liked the air today and the soft, sweet grass beneath his shoes. The sky appeared so clear and bluer than ever he could remember. When had he last admired the sky and simply inhaled the crisp summer air?

      No matter, he must not rile this woman overmuch in case she might bite and kill him. Perhaps he could play along with her suggestion to keeping an eye on him. Yes, must needs.

      A zombie? If he started to decay he would immediately request a second death, because if he turned into something like that thing displayed on her little box then—absolutely not.

      “Where is it?” he asked.

      “The black violin? It’s uh...” Her eyes wandered along the side of the fancy silver carriage, then snapped back toward him, though she didn’t meet his gaze directly. “...on its way to the Archives for storage.”

      “I don’t understand that.” She was lying to him. Moments earlier she had said she had it. “You played it not too long ago. I felt the music. It moved through my veins. And it called out to me.”

      “Really?” She stepped before him, admiration sparkling in her pale blue eyes. He recognized that look. So many had looked upon him as a literal idol when he’d been at his prime performing on the stage. “You’re really him. The Paganini.”

      “Indeed.” He set back his shoulders and puffed up his chest. Felt good to step back into the acknowledgment of his talents. He was a maestro, and he would resume that status. Because he knew nothing else.

      “What is your name, vampire?”

      “Summer Santiago.” She offered her hand, and he assumed she wanted him to shake it.

      He gripped it and her skin felt warm. Amazing to feel another being’s warmth and life, to be reassured that he, as well, possessed life. Then a flash burst in his brain, and he received a series of images as if a manic dream chased his reality. The vampire was twenty-eight, had always been a vampire, had a vampire brother named Johnny, and vampire parents. Her job title was a Retriever, and that had something to do with finding lost items or magical objects. An image of her lying beneath a steel carriage such as the one they stood before confused him. She wasn’t hurt. It was a place where she enjoyed being, or rather, working.

      Summer pulled her hand from his, and the images flickered out like an extinguished candle. Nicolo chugged out a gasp as the blue sky and sweet grass resumed his senses. “What was that?”

      “That was a handshake. I’m pretty sure they did it back in your time. Nineteenth century, right?”

      “No, those images. I saw...” He tapped his forehead. “You have a brother who is a vampire, and he sings on the stage alongside his wife. Why does she have horns?”

      “How do you know that?”

      “It came to me when I held your hand. Is the woman demon?”

      “No, Kambriel is vampire, but she wears horns as part of her stage costume. So holding my hand gave you images of my life? That’s some kind of cool power.”

      “I don’t know. It wasn’t cold. Your reference to things being hot and cold makes little sense to me.”

      “Oh, buddy, it’s slang, and you have so much to learn. But of course I don’t think you’ll have much time to gain all that knowledge.”

      “Why?”

      “You shouldn’t exist.”

      “Is that so? Why? Do you believe I am some unholy beast resurrected from death?”

      “Well...are you?”

      He hadn’t an answer to that one. And if he thought about it too much, he wouldn’t like the truth. She wanted to put him back in the grave? Never. He was alive, and nothing would change that. And he was strong enough to get one little vampiress off his back.

      He shoved her shoulder hard and watched as her body soared through the air a good thirty feet and she landed on the side of the road, tumbling into the grassy ditch.

      Nicolo winced. That had to hurt. But he had to protect himself if he wanted to survive this new world.

      “So long, vampire Summer. I am off to live my new life.”

       Chapter 4

      Summer gave the guy a head start. The next town was only a couple kilometers away, and she was in no hurry to slide behind the wheel again for the long drive home. She’d have to take him with her. Couldn’t let some dead guy wander around unsupervised. Especially if he had anything to do with the possibility of Bad Things Happening.

      Or even, Bad Things that Had Already Happened.

      She sat on the hood of the Audi and slipped on her Ray-Bans. Sunlight beamed over a distant swash of chestnut trees, glittering in white over the leaf canopy. Crickets chirped in the grasses edging the road, and somewhere a cow mooed.

      It wasn’t often she heard a cow moo in Paris. She loved these quiet moments out of the city. It served a different sort of adventure. A mental escape. Much as she sought the fast paced, the always moving, the rush and thrill of her job, times like this centered her. Gave her a few moments to appreciate nature. She wasn’t a tree-hugging hippy chick, just a soul who understood she was a part of everything on this planet, as it was a part of her.

      So what part of it all had Nicolo Paganini become? He was the furthest thing from a zombie. No body parts falling off. No nasty skin peels or lumbering gait. Hell, the man was good-looking, and she’d noticed the hard muscles beneath the white dress shirt. For some reason he looked fit, beyond what any picture had depicted of his sometimes comically distorted figure in the nineteenth century. According to the history books he’d been tall, gangly and often sickly.

      Was it possible he’d been forged differently when rising from the grave? Certainly he must have decayed lying in situ for a hundred and seventy-five years. So he had been renewed. To a marvelous degree. All parts of him were nicely proportioned and muscled. Every bit of him well made.

      “But let’s hope he’s not the Beneath-breaking-loose part of the director’s suspicions.”

      The musician had seemed innocuous enough. No flashing magic or vicious powers. Though when he’d shoved her away from him, she’d been startled at the force that had landed her far from where she had stood. He had never been that strong in his previous life. No mortal man was, for that matter.

      “He is different,” she decided. And that part worried her.

      Pulling out her cell phone, she dialed Acquisitions, and the director took her call. “You check out the cemetery?” Ethan Pierce asked.

      “I uh, didn’t get that far.”

      “I don’t understand. That was part of the mission, Santiago.”

      “I found Paganini. Alive. Wandering the roadside.”

      The director’s exhale spoke so much more than a curse or a few curt, remanding words.

      “I can hardly lure him back to the grave,” she provided. “Unless you need me to do that?” She winced, hoping the answer would not be an affirmative.

      “He’s alive. A man from the nineteenth century crawled out of his grave and is now walking the streets of Parma?”

      “Yes.”

      “I’m not sure what the protocol is for this. I’ll have to look into it. Does he seem violent, a danger to others?”

      “No. Just startled to be in a different time period. It’s like he’s a time traveler flashed forward to the future.”

      “Yes,