Page 5 of Isabelle’s Forbidden Love

Orlando snatched his keys from the sideboard in the hallway of his small two-story house, and opened the entrance door. He breathed in the cool night air and let his gaze roam. A neighbor was walking his dog, urging the pet to pee, while the man lit a clandestine cigarette, looking over his shoulder back to his house as if checking to see if his wife was looking out the window. Orlando shook his head. From a distance of fifty yards, the man stank like an ashtray. Surely, his wife would smell the cigarette smoke clinging to him once he reentered the house.

Always alert to his surroundings, Orlando walked down the five steps to the small gate, where his mailbox was located. He unlocked it and pulled out the day’s mail. Before he could leaf through it, a sound to his left made him snap his head in that direction. His next-door neighbor, a woman in her fifties, stepped out of her house and approached.

“Evening, Mr. Carlisle,” she said.

The only reason she knew his name was because some of his mail had been mixed up with hers once or twice. It annoyed him, because he preferred to live in anonymity, but he hadn’t shown it. Just like now, he didn’t show that he wasn’t in the mood for a chat.

“Ms. Brix.” He nodded curtly, and turned on his heel to go back inside.

But Ms. Brix didn’t take the hint. “Did you hear about Wayne?”

With a silent sigh, he turned and pasted a cordial look on his face, though he wasn’t sure he succeeded. After all, he wasn’t known for his friendliness. “I don’t know anybody by that name.”

She gestured to the envelopes in his hand. “The mailman, Wayne Hong.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize that’s his name.”

Whatever gossip Ms. Brix had about the mailman, Orlando wasn’t interested in hearing about it. He needed to get ready for his shift at the Mezzanine, where he’d been working as a bouncer for the past year and a half. He liked the work for a multitude of reasons. First and foremost, it kept him sane. He was part of a community who all worked together for the good of their kind. It kept him in check, kept him accountable so he didn’t veer off the deep end.

While he had a lot of client contact as a bouncer at a nightclub that Samson part-owned, he wasn’t forced to be friendly to them. In fact, it was expected of him to be gruff. People took advantage of anybody who was too friendly. Orlando was there to make sure the clubbers behaved, and a rude bouncer helped keep the rowdy crowd sufficiently intimidated. There would be consequences if they didn’t play by the rules. And that rule went for humans and vampires alike. In fact, vampires were handled harsher than humans, because they could inflict much more physical pain without a weapon than a human.

Not having to talk much in his job also suited him fine. He wasn’t a man of many words. In fact, words didn’t come easily, and he preferred keeping his emotions and opinions to himself. There was nothing gained by letting anybody get close. He’d long ago walled in his heart for fear that he’d make another fatal mistake. Unfortunately, cracks in said wall had started to appear eighteen months ago. Cracks Samson’s daughter, Isabelle, was responsible for, even though she was oblivious to her effect on him. Just as well that they rarely ever met, and that she never gave him a second glance. He would be in deep trouble if she ever got an inkling that he lusted after her.

“…so grisly, I still can’t believe it. Wayne, he was such a nice man.”

Ms. Brix’s words pulled him back into the present.

“Wayne?”

She let out a sigh, her eyes tearing up now. How long exactly had he spaced out?

“Yes, it was a brutal murder. So much blood. Almost as grisly as the attack by that tiger from the zoo. Remember that? It was at least fifteen years ago, when that man climbed over the enclosure and was ripped apart by the tiger.”

Confused, Orlando stared at her. “Are you saying that our mailman was killed by a tiger from the zoo?”

She shook her head, looking annoyed. “No, of course not. But apparently whoever broke into his house and killed him, slaughtered him. I mean, they’re saying that there was so much blood. They found him dead this morning. It was all over the news. How come you hadn’t heard?”

Orlando shrugged. “Nightshift. Don’t follow the news much.” He gestured to the envelopes in his hand. “Gotta take care of this before my shift starts.”

“It frightens me,” she continued, undeterred. “He lived in the neighborhood, you know.”

“In Glen Park?” Orlando felt compelled to ask, though his patience was wearing thin. Very thin.

“Yes, on the other side of the hill, you know close to the BART station.” She sniffled. “I wish you weren’t working the nightshift, you know. It would be good to have a neighbor as big and strong as you around if there’s a killer on the loose.”

She cast him an appreciative glance, her eyes running over his biceps and pectorals, which bulged under his black T-shirt. If looks could undress a man, he would be standing in his front yard stark naked.

Time to extricate himself from this conversation. “I’m sure the police will make sure the neighborhood is safe. Good night.”

He turned before she could say anything else, and rushed up the steps. Seconds later, he was back inside his house and shut the door behind him. He sighed. Every murder was tragic, but there wasn’t really anything he could do. He was confident that the police could handle it. It was their job.

Orlando casually flipped through the mail, and was about to toss the lot into the bin, when he realized that there was a white envelope among the solicitations of real estate agents and flyers of the local supermarkets and other useless mass mailings. The postmark indicated that the letter was mailed from San Francisco. He turned the envelope over, but there was no sender’s name or address. He opened it and pulled out one piece of white cardstock. In neat letters it said, I know about Montreal.

All blood seemed to drain from him, and he felt a chill engulf his body and paralyze him. Somebody had found him. He’d always known it would happen one day. But why now, now when he had something to lose again, even if it was only a daydream? Because that was all it was, a dream. The dream that Isabelle was his, and that she loved him and accepted him with all his faults. And it would always remain a dream, because he would never act on it. The dream alone had been sustaining him for the last eighteen months. In fact, it had given him something to look forward to at the end of his workday. And now, somebody was threatening to take this little happiness away from him and expose the deeds of his past. To what end? To crush him once and for all and deliver the fate he’d escaped for so long, the fate he deserved for the sins he’d committed, the blood he’d spilled: death.

4

Isabelle got out of the elevator and walked along the top floor corridor of Scanguards’ headquarters in the Mission district. It was busy here, which was nothing unusual for this time of night. After all, this was when the pureblooded vampires as well as many of the vampire hybrids liked to work, since they slept during the day. Just like she did, at least most of the time. While she’d been in school and then later college, she’d kept different hours, but now she preferred the night, just like her father and his fellow vampires.