Page 12 of John’s Yearning

But John didn’t take the time to enjoy the views. He was already late. No legal parking spot was available, so he parked in front of the shrink’s driveway, blocking it. The good doctor wouldn’t mind.

He let himself in by the tradesmen’s entrance, not bothering to knock. He knew the drill. Inside the basement with the low ceilings, harsh light greeted him. The white waiting room was empty. In fact, he wasn’t sure why there was a waiting room at all. John had never seen anybody waiting here. Anybody other than the person who was joining him for these sessions.

With a click, the door eased shut behind him, and the receptionist finally lifted her head from her paperwork behind the equally white counter.

“Mr. Grant,” she purred, adjusting her utterly skimpy pink top that stretched so tightly over her breasts that he wanted to take cover in case a button popped off and took out his eye.

Her platinum blonde hair was styled like Marilyn Monroe’s, and her makeup also mimicked the movie star’s face, her lips a deep red, her skin as pale as porcelain, her lashes black and long. The perfect pinup. He’d never bothered to memorize her name, in fact, he couldn’t even remember if he’d ever asked for her name. So in his mind he always called her Marilyn.

Marilyn ran her gaze over him in a leisurely fashion, not concealing her interest in the least bit. He assumed she treated each male client—he refused to call himself a patient—in the same manner. A vampire woman, she was different from human females, less docile, more demanding, and clearly not shy when it came to letting a man know what she wanted. However, he wasn’t biting. Literally or figuratively.

John pointed to one of the other doors. “Doc in?”

“They’ve both been waiting for you for ten minutes,” she said, a light scold in her high-pitched voice.

“I bet.” His protégée was always punctual. And the doc charged by the hour and made sure not a single minute of his time was wasted. They’d probably been bitching about him for the past ten minutes, discussing all the ways he wasn’t performing his duties as a maker.

Without another word or a knock, he entered the doctor’s office, letting the door slide shut behind him.

This was the fourth time he’d come here, and he didn’t like it any more than the first time. He still hated the tasteless black coffin-couch that looked like it belonged in a cheesy horror movie rather than a physician’s office. Just as he abhorred the fake gothic window murals—for the room didn’t actually have windows—which looked like they’d been copied from the set of the Addams Family. The stone floor could just as easily have been found in a crypt, and the filing cabinets sported handles that looked like stakes. Perhaps so a patient fed up with the doctor’s annoying questions could stab himself—or the doctor.

At least Dr. Drake, the only vampire shrink in San Francisco, dressed like a doctor: white lab coat, a white shirt, black pants, and black dress shoes. He was a tall, skinny vampire, and apparently many of John’s colleagues had consulted him at one time or another. Many voluntarily. Not so John. He’d been mandated to attend these sessions. He and his protégée, Deirdre.

She was sitting in the chair opposite Drake’s, drinking from a bottle with a straw. He recognized the label. She’d gotten herself a drink from the vending machine in Drake’s waiting room. Well, at least that meant she wasn’t as squeamish about drinking human blood as she’d been just after he’d turned her.

“John, so nice of you to finally join us,” Drake said with a good dose of sarcasm.

“Some of us have jobs,” John replied and slunk into the armchair next to Deirdre. “Hey, Deirdre.”

She tossed him a quick look. “John.”

The greeting was frosty with a side of ice storm. Great. Not that he’d expected anything different. After all, Deirdre was pissed at him. Actually, she was pissed at the whole world.

“Well, then let’s get started.” As usual, Drake’s jovial words grated on John, but he swallowed his distaste.

“Yes, let’s.”

“Tell me what’s been going on in your lives since I saw you both last,” Drake demanded. “Deirdre, why don’t you start?”

She set aside the half-empty bottle of blood and sat up straighter. She tossed her long light-brown hair over her shoulder, revealing more of her face. She was an attractive woman, but there were hard lines in her face, lines that attested to the battles she’d fought, the vast experience she’d gathered over several centuries, centuries she’d spent as a Stealth Guardian.

The immortal warriors were a race sworn to protect the humans from the demons of fear, a evil preternatural force that fed on the fear of humans and thrived during times of war and conflict. Over the centuries, the Stealth Guardians had developed invaluable skills to fight the demons, one being invisibility, the other teleportation. Yet, the fight against the demons was taking on new proportions, and thus they’d formed an alliance with Scanguards. Scanguards could draw on their skills when needed, and the Stealth Guardians used the vampires’ sense of smell to identify demons, who unlike other preternatural creature didn’t have a tell-tale aura by which they could be identified.

Deirdre had been a leader of her race, but she’d made decisions that had led to her race punishing her for treason. They had stripped her of all her supernatural powers during a prolonged incarceration in a lead cell, an act that had turned her human. Later, circumstances had led to her being turned into a vampire, turned by John.

“What is there to say?” she started. “I sleep during the day. I’m awake at night. I drink human blood. I don’t see the sun. I feel like a caged animal.”

“Hmm.” The doctor cast his eyes at John. “Would you care to comment, John?”

Careful not to aggravate Deirdre’s already explosive mood, he said, “At the beginning it’s an adjustment. I know it wasn’t your choice to be turned into a vampire, but had I not done it, you would have died.” He shrugged. “I know it’s hard to accept what you are, considering where you came from, what you were…” A creature more powerful than a vampire, with less vulnerabilities.

“It’s not about that!” Deirdre blurted. “I’ve accepted what I am. What you made me.” She glared at him. “But what now? What do I do now?”

John exchanged a look with the shrink.

“What do you mean by your question?” Drake asked.

Deirdre jumped up. “Do I speak Greek?” She marched to the fake window, then turned and leaned against the mural. “You don’t get it, do you?” She huffed. “I was a warrior. I was useful. I was a leader of my race. I made life and death decisions.”