Free The Vampire's Curse, A Paranormal Romance (Undead in Brown County #2) by S.J. Wright Page A

hundred years, and I had heard of only three individuals in the world who could accurately predict the future. Considering my growing lack of affection for Paris, the heat, the endless drunken nights in gloomy strange rooms, I was ripe for a new adventure.
    “ Where?” I demanded.
    “ I will show you. Please.”
    Although I still held an intense hatred for the creature and doubted his word, I agreed to mend him if he would lead me to the girl. It required a good deal of my venom, but I managed to heal him enough to be sure that he would have the ability to live up to his end of the bargain. I quickly disposed of the dead bar maid and took him to my townhouse on Saint Germain. He insisted on accompanying me to where the seer lived, explaining that I would never be able to find it on my own. Naturally, I did not trust him. I am no fool.
    When I took the poker from the fireplace and shoved it through his chest, right near his heart, he finally complied with my request.
    “ She’s a seamstress for a theater in London. Drury Lane.” He gasped.
    “ What’s her name?”
    “ Meekah.” A trickle of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth, “She’s African.”
    I tore his head off.
     
    Several weeks later, I met her for the first time. She barely spoke English at all, but appeared to be very intelligent. She told me that she had seen me coming. She had known where we would meet. She also knew that I was going to turn her into a vampire. Without resistance, she accepted the attention and gifts that I lavished on her.
    We spent the fall in a remote village near Bath. She had two servants, a little white dog, and garden. The cottage was not very large, but it was adequate for our needs. All I wanted was for her to be comfortable and to begin to trust me completely. Only then would I begin requesting information.
    Neither one of us ever ventured to question the nature of our relationship. To me, she was a very valuable asset, an ally who could bring great insight into what lay ahead. When her English began to improve, she indicated that she wished to go to the American Colonies. She had heard great things about the land and people there.
    She became a vampire the night we boarded our ship. By the time we landed in Boston, the crew had been reduced by fifteen men. She learned how to take blood from a human quickly and quietly, how to dispose of the body without making a sound, and how to take just a sip or two and compel the human to forget with just a flicker in her coffee-colored eyes.
    The first time she experienced a vision after having been changed, she nearly went mad. Everything was enhanced. The things she saw were more clear than ever before. The sounds were deafening. For four days, I implored her to tell me what she’d seen. With a stained linen shift billowing about her like the image of some horrid ghoul, she screamed at me.
    She said that she hated me. She hated herself.
    To keep the ship’s crew quiet about it, I’d had to compel the majority of them. I locked Meekah up for two days in a traveling trunk decorated with real silver emblems of my personal coat of arms. At the end of the second day, I unlocked the trunk.
    The shabbily dressed crewman I had brought with me down into the hold was for her. She stared at me silently for several minutes before she bit into him. I had imagined that she would completely drain the man, but she took only a few gulps of his blood.
    Then she wiped her mouth, turned to me, and said in a steady tone, “I no trust you. But will tell you what I see. You give what I want.”
    “ Anything you want. Yes.” I assured her, relieved that she seemed calm again.
    “ House in Boston. Big garden.”
    “ Yes. The largest one we can find.”
    She turned back to the man who had given his blood, grasped his chin gently with her dark calloused fingers and stared into his eyes solemnly, “Forget what has happened here. You go do work again. You forget Meekah drink blood.”
    When he