*If this chapter doesn't make sense in any way, please let me know.  I had a bout a billion people distracting me as I tried to edit/write this and I wouldn't be surprised if something got effed up.  

As always, thanks for reading!*

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“Hey!”

Miriam jumped.  Eliot flinched.  

            They sprung apart as harsh beams of a flashlight stung through the branches.  Heavy footsteps crunched over the snow in their direction, and Miriam turned just in time to catch the burly figure of a cop staggering from between the trees. 

            “I said,” he panted as he came closer, waving the flashlight. “What the hell are you two kids doing out here?”

            Miriam blinked, giving Eliot enough time to maneuver his way in front of her, blocking her view. 

            “We were walking,” he said in a polite, casual tone.

He sounded so sure. It could have been the truth—that they, two teenagers, had just gone for a nice soothing walk…

            Through the aftermath of a winter storm. 

That little detail kept the lie from being believable, and though Miriam couldn’t see his face, she could tell that the police officer was skeptical. 

            “In the snow?”

            At the brusque tone, anyone else would have faltered.

Eliot just shrugged.  “She wanted to see if it felt like being inside a snow globe,” he explained on a bit of laughter.  He sounded amused, like someone indulging a girlfriend; hahaha, you know how girls are…

            “That true?”  The cop demanded. 

            Miriam figured that only she caught the way Eliot's eyes cut to her in a way that said better than words; play along.  

Slowly, he moved to stand by her side as the officer turned his focus on her.

"Is that true, young lady?"

            “Mmmm.”  She nodded stiffly.  “I thought all the snow looked…pretty,” she almost had to force herself to say the word, “from my bedroom window.”

            “Pretty?”  The officer, a man with dark hair and a graying beard, gave her a sour look, but with a sigh, he lowered his flashlight. 

            “Don’t you kids know what happened out here, last night?”  He demanded, exasperated. 

            Miriam couldn’t help it.  Her eyes darted to Eliot, who looked utterly smooth and in control as he uttered an innocent, “no officer.  What happened?”

            His voice didn’t even crack.  His gaze didn’t waver.  He looked like the pure definition of truth, and Miriam might have laughed if she wasn’t so uneasy.

            It took practice to lie like that, she couldn’t help thinking.  Years and years of practice…

            “There was a murder last night,” the officer explained, almost angrily, cutting into her thoughts.  “Someone was killed.”

            While Eliot seemed to be the reigning champ at lying, Miriam wasn't too bad at it either.  She didn’t even have to fake her fear as she stared at the cop with wide eyes. 

            “M-murdered?”

            Rather than elaborate, the officer eyed her as if seeing her fully for the first time.  Suspiciously, he turned to Eliot. 

            “Just where to you two kids live?”

            Eliot didn’t miss a beat.  “Over there,” he said, pointing over his shoulder.  “Those two houses.  We’re neighbors,” he added.

            Miriam had to fight to keep from flinching at that—she didn’t think it would be wise to mention that they were only ‘neighbors’ as of yesterday night. 

            She also didn’t think that his habit of breaking and entering—not to mention stalking—would go over well with the cop either. 

            So, she kept her mouth shut and let Eliot do the talking as the officer pulled a small notepad from his pocket.

            "I didn't think anyone lived here," he grumbled, flinty eyes sharp.  He jotted something down on his pad and glared from her to Eliot. “Names?”  

            “Eliot Marexsson,” Eliot said without missing a beat, “and Miriam…”

            It was a cold moment before she realized that he didn’t know her last name. 

            Though it was incredibly stupid to at the present moment, she still couldn’t help but feel a bit smug at that. 

            So Mr. Perfect didn’t know everything.

            “Spriller,” she blurted as the cop’s gaze began to narrow.  “Miriam Spriller.”

            Without a word, the cop added another line of scribble down on his notepad, and Miriam couldn’t keep from fidgeting as her eyes caught sight of two more police cars zooming down the road.           

They had to of had half the task force out here, by now—which said along when you factored in the heavy snow storm...

            They had finished setting up the tape, she saw, and now they just stood in a huddle, speaking in hushed voices. 

            “What happened?”  She asked without thinking.  “I was here all night.  I didn’t hear a thing...”

            Though that wasn’t much of a stretch, considering that she had spent a majority of the night curled up in the corner of the room with her baseball bat clenched in her fists.   

            “Me neither,” Eliot pitched in, though this time…she couldn’t help thinking that his voice sounded a little too forced. 

            As if he really wasn’t too concerned, but was just trying to pretend that he was. 

            As if he had a damn good idea of just what had happened and didn't need any explanation.  

The officer didn't answer.  

            “You kids get back home,” he said on a sigh as he tucked the notepad pack into his pocket.  “It’s not safe out in these woods—especially with all this snow.”

            He waved them off and turned around, but not before Miriam caught sight of the look in his eyes.  As if he were hiding something.

            “Wait—”

            She took a step after him, but Eliot’s firm grip on her arm held her back.

            “You really don’t know when to quite while your ahead?”  He mused quietly. 

            Miriam’s head jerked up, eyes latching onto his, but all she saw in them was amusement. 

            Those red eyes sparkled as he gazed over her head toward the milling officers, but the set of his jaw made him look like a stone statue.  

            “I doubt he would have told us much anyway,” he muttered.  “With it being an open investigation and all—”

            He broke off as Miriam wrenched her arm away and took a step back. 

Even though he’d only touched her through the sleeve of her coat, she still felt an icy chill that went deep down to the bone. But not…physically, if that made sense—it went deeper than that.    

            Like being shocked by lightning.

Or burned...by ice.  

            “D-didn’t anyone ever tell you how rude it is to man-handle people?”  She snapped if only to hide her reaction.         

            The anger might have seemed a little more convincing if her fingers weren’t trembling as she absently rubbed the spot on her arm he’d touched. 

            Eliot shrugged and crossed his arm over his chest.  “No.”

            “W-well, it’s rude…”  Miriam blinked, and tried her hardest to ignore just how brightly his eyes glimmered in the dark of the woods. 

            Like rubies, or embers, or some other kind of precious gem…

They were beautiful...

            Stop it, she told herself.  His eyes were beside the point—the main one being that, with his massive body, once again he was currently blocking her only exit. 

            Somehow he seemed to realize this.  He glanced around toward the police who ignored them, to her house sitting what seemed like a ways away on top of that narrow hill…

            Then, that gaze roved slowly to her, pressed back against a stupid tree.

            He took a step closer. 

            And then another.

            And another…

            Until he blocked her in completely.  Until he was close enough to touch.  Or push away, she thought sternly. 

            So close, she could feel the icy cold that wafted from him again.  Colder than even the chilly wind nipping at her bare skin. 

            Those red eyes sparkled as he leaned down—just enough to make her flinch.  Enough so that he had no trouble reaching down, with those pale fingers to graze past her neck.

            “You should have called for help when you had the chance,” he said in a low murmur. 

The words should have been threatening, but Miriam could only stare, heart pounding, as he reached up—brushing so close past her skin she could almost feel the whisper-light touch—to finger a loose curl of her hair. 

            The motion was so odd she blinked…but his hand was still there.  Playing with a lock of her hair. 

            The brown strands almost looked like gold against his pale skin as he rubbed them absently between his fingertips. 

            Once…

            Twice…

            It was almost mesmerizing watching him. 

He caught her stare, and those amber eyes held hers captive for merely a second.  Then, very deliberately, he slipped the curl behind her ear.  So quickly he didn't even touch her skin.  

            “You’d make it too easy,” he muttered, almost to himself. 

But she barely heard him.

Her eyes were on his chest, firm beneath his sweater…and eerily still—even though she could feel hers heaving like mad beneath her coat. 

But no matter how long she stared, his chest didn't move.  Not once.

            Wait—

Even as she blinked and leaned closer…

            Nope, it still wasn’t moving.

            He could be holding his breath, she thought frantically, but a part of her didn’t buy it. 

He had to be breathing as his eyes held hers for a moment longer before breaking away. 

            He had to be breathing as he turned away without another word, leaving her alone at the edge of the woods.

            Even though he was colder than ice and his chest wasn’t moving, he still had to be breathing…

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            The basement of Alazzdria’s house was home to all sorts of interesting objects that must have been left behind by the past tenants.  Trapped in this old house, they must have gathered dust for years...

            There was an old-fashioned bar in the far corner, on top of which several silver candlesticks gleamed beneath sheets of cobwebs. Another—irreparably broken—piano stood by a high window. 

There was a stack of wooden chairs leaning against the staircase.  

            And, in the center of it all, two, sleek black coffins had been laid neatly on the remains of an old rug.  

            Eliot had waited patiently until sundown.  Until he could barely feel the prickle of daylight upon his skin.

Only then did he go down into that makeshift crypt and kick the lid off the nearest casket.

Thud!

            Without hesitation, he reached inside and dragged the half-slumbering body out onto the faded Persian carpet. 

            “Bloody hell, Eliot,” Sage grumbled as he rubbed his dark eyes.  “Is there a reason for this rude awakening?  It’s not even midnight—”

            Digging his nails into the pale flesh of the other vampire’s shoulder, Eliot ignored him.     

            “Did you do it?”  He snarled.  He was surprised by how harsh his own voice sounded.  Acidic. 

            Even Sage flinched, though his mouth curled up into one of his characteristic cocky grins. 

            “I’ve done a lot of things in my lifetime, Eliot old, boy,” he quipped.  

He barely got the last word out before Eliot slammed his head against the coffin’s edge. 

            Crack!

            A thin line of blood dribbled down the side of Sage’s chiseled jaw. 

            “Did you do it?”  Eliot demanded.  He didn’t know why he was so angry.  Why a burning rage prickled down his spine.  Or why he had the sudden urge to march over to those wooden chairs by the steps and break off a nice long piece.

            Perfect to run Sage through with. 

            “Mind if you at least let me in on my crimes, here?”  Sage asked, casually.  “It gets so hard to keep them straight.”

  He shrugged his slender shoulders, even though Eliot gripped them so tightly he could easily break an arm if he wanted. 

            Gritting his teeth, Eliot stood back, but not before shoving the other vampire hard against the floor. 

            “Did you attack her?”

            His own choice of words startled him so badly he might have stumbled to the bar and collapsed into one of the ancient stools—if he wasn’t sure that Sage would have used that time to run him through with something sharp.

            So he kept standing, even as his throat went dry.

            Sage watched him, black eyes innocently wide.  “Attack who?  Damn it Eliot, we’ve only been here for a day.”

            Eliot wasn’t fooled.

            Sage had done much, much worse when left off his leash for even a minute.    

Little Miriam was more lucky than she even knew...

            “The girl,” he snarled.  “The one in the house beyond the hill—Did.  You. Attack.  Her?”

            Sage grinned wickedly and rubbed at his forehead, even as the bleeding gash along his temple healed in the blink of an eye.  “Refresh my memory.”

            Eliot took a step forward, lip peeling back from his upper teeth.  He could feel his fangs slip down to press against his bottom lip. 

            “The girl, Sage,” he growled.  “With brown hair.  Home alone.  Pale,” he added, thinking of that smooth, white throat...

            "Hmm."  Sage wiggled his eyebrows.  “Try to be a little more specific.  I have terrible memory, you know…”

            “I know you were there—I could smell you," Eliot hissed.  His fingers curled into fists, but even as he fought the urge to smash one into Sage’s perfectly smug face, another thought caught him off guard. 

“But…you didn’t feed from her...”

Which just didn't make sense, because Eliot knew that feeding was the vampire’s sole purpose for seeking her out in the first place. 

Sage never liked to play a game he couldn’t win.

“…Why?”

            Sage casually leaned back against the floor and bit his lip thoughtfully.  There was a lethal gleam in his gaze now. His fangs sparkled in the waning light filtering in from the room's only window.  

He had dropped the innocent act.

            “Oh you mean her,” he said, sounding almost bored.  “The girl with tainted blood.”