Free Desperate and Dateless by Elizabeth Lapthorne

Chapter One
    Valentine’s Day, February 14
     
    Vicci tried to stifle her sigh. The large black-walled room reminded her uncannily of an enormous box. Multicolored flashing lights lit up the stage, where a band of bored-looking, barely pubescent young men made very loud noises supposedly singing yet another of their songs.
    As Vicci couldn’t distinguish one “song” from the next, she had long ago filtered out the noise. She stood in the far corner to one side of the band, her hand resting close to her beamer.
    Mentally she continued to count the hours until the Annual Vampiric Desperate and Dateless Ball would be over and she could crawl into her nice warm bed.
    Alone.
    “ Anything happening over at your end, Vicci?”
    Vicci really did sigh. She pressed the tiny earpiece on to reply and answered back wearily.
    “Unless you count a couple of hundred vampires dirty dancing and desperately trying to find the other half of their Soul’s Circle, nope. Not a thing.”
    The masculine chortle ringing inside her ear made her smile, but she didn’t laugh back. Vicci had no argument with the general concept behind the ball itself. Vampires congregating to find the other half of their Soul’s Circle seemed all fine and dandy to her.
    She hadn’t realized just how out of the merc mindset she had become until she found herself bored, standing in the one spot for hours on end while nothing more interesting than numerous people groping and dancing occurred. A couple of years ago, before she had left her merc days behind her, she could have stood for days in the one spot and not been bored.
    It hit home more than anything how she now no longer fit into her merc world, yet hadn’t fit properly into the Security work she had tried to settle into either. She felt odd and out of place no matter what she did now.
    “ This is a Desperate and Dateless Ball, Vicci. What else would you expect but a lot of dirty dancing and a heap of stupid kids wanting to live forever?”
    Vicci sighed. Contrary to the horror tales of old, vampires fed from emotions, not blood from the necks of innocent virgins. Almost any strong emotion would do, lust, happiness, sadness—whatever.
    Vampires were able to physically drink blood, but they didn’t need to unless they were severely hurt or hadn’t fed from emotions in a couple of days or more.
    The room positively overflowed with lust, the bumping and grinding of the vamps, as well as the few scattered humans and other races hoping to find a vampiric partner.
    While security wasn’t precisely needed, the vampires were political enough to know it looked good for them to be seen to be offering safety for the other patrons. The fact that everyone had known the existence of vampires for hundreds of years, and the last vampire murders had been well over thirty years ago, meant little. Mothers still warned their children of the dangers of being joined to a vampire.
    Personally, when Vicci had been offered the job for Security tonight, she couldn’t think of a worse way to spend an evening. Watching enormous groups of people drink themselves stupid and try to get attached to a vampire was not one of her top twenty ways to spend a night.
    Who the hell would want to live forever anyway? It would be incredibly boring—Vicci had more than enough time on her hands here and now, the thought of doing more Security work for decade after decade had her shuddering in revulsion.
    “It’s really not that bad, once you get into the swing of it.”
    Vicci jumped as a soft, sexy low voice uttered the seductive words from just beside her. Even though the music was well dulled from all the way over on the other side of the room, she couldn’t understand for a moment how she had been able to hear this man’s words.
    What felt worse to her ego, was she hadn’t noticed anyone coming up beside her. It startled her to realize he had crept up so silently.
    Verrrry old, she told herself. Vicci held herself carefully, not