A Dark Night (Book One of The Grandor Descendant series) (10 page)

Ari let these words swim around in her head. Ari had watched Ragon for two years, even dreamt about him; but why did he care about her?
He had never so much as spoken to her, not once at all during those times she had seen him at the library. And what had he been doing there? She knew now why he had only ever been there at night- vampires didn’t go out in the sun, but why go to the library in the first place? Since meeting him she had not seen him sketching or reading at all. In fact, she had not so much as seen a sketch pad, pencil or book.

C
hapter 7- Sources

It wasn’t until 4pm the next day when Ari finally dragged herself out of bed. Her body clock had almost completely become in sync with Ragon’s and the night life that ensued. Once she had showered and dressed, she tiptoed out of her bedroom, peering idly around the bend in the hallway. After a few minutes of searching the house and neither hearing nor seeing anything, she was satisfied that she was the only one awake yet, and set about doing the ordinary day to day things that might have occupied her time when she was living by herself. It had been hard to adjust to Ragon’s lifestyle. Quite apart from eating at odd hours and being awake during the night, there was also the absence of the gruelling courses she had been undertaking at university. Periodically Ari would catch herself thinking about her ambition of becoming 

It was at least
two hours later when Ragon joined her in the kitchen. She had already done the last weeks’ worth of washing, and was now cooking some eggs and bacon in a large frying pan on the stove.

“Good evening,” he
said, greeting her with a large smile.

A
ri couldn’t help but grin back. It was unbelievable how her relationship with Ragon had grown, despite the fact that her world had been turned upside down. One minute she had been studying to become a vet and the next, had discovered that vampires existed.

“Are you hungry-
” she began to say, hurriedly stirring her scrambled eggs.

“Food
, err… doesn’t go down well,” he said simply, looking at the frying pan as if it were some sort of undesirable entity in the room.

“Right,”
said Ari, beginning to serve up her dinner as she tried to ignore the disgusted look on Ragon’s face. “I was actually wondering… do you think I could come with you next time you go to the shops?”

Ragon looked at her curiously, and Ari thought that
perhaps she had offended him, so quickly added, “It’s just… I’m used to buying my own groceries and there are some things… some personal things that I need.”

She guessed b
y the confused look on his face that he had no idea what she was talking about, and this was confirmed when he said, “I will get you anything you want.”

Ari blushed, looking down at her feet as she hurried to think
how to phrase her sentence, but then shook her head, resigned. The absolute last thing that she wanted to ask Ragon for was tampons. Mercifully she was saved having to explain her need for female sanitary items however, when Sandra and Larissa walked into the room.

Clearly they had been listening to Ariana’s and Ragon’s conversation
.

“I’m obviously going to have to tell you the story about the birds and the bees
,” said Larissa, frowning at Ragon before smiling knowingly at Ari.

“Don’t worry honey; Lari
ssa and I are going hunting tonight. We can swing by the pharmacy on our way back,” said Sandra. “One of the perks of our infliction is that we don’t have to worry about monthly mood swings.”

I
t looked as if Ragon was going to question them further, but then Cambridge walked into the room and pinching his nose, said, “What is that god awful smell?” 

Ari looked down at her plate
of scrambled eggs and sizzling rations of bacon in confusion.

“Oh right
… I thought that perhaps something had died in here,” Cambridge said, before adding, “I’m not used to living with humans. Larissa and I don’t believe in keeping sources.”

Ari shrugged, piled her fork with scrambled eggs and took her first mouthful.
She savoured on the delicious texture of soft fluffy eggs, until she realised that her meal needed seasoning. Putting her folk down, Ari moved back into the kitchen looking for the salt. Her eyes were scanning the shelves in the cupboard, when she noticed a small container sitting next to a bag of unground, whole pepper corns. Reaching up for it eagerly, she moved back over to her breakfast and was just about to sprinkle the contents onto her food when Ragon blurred towards her.

“Stop,” he
yelled, and Ari felt her hand loosen around the purple bottle, so that it dropped to the floor.

“What?”
asked Ari, watching as Ragon reached out and caught the bottle, inches before it could shatter onto the floor.

“What are you doing?”
growled Ragon.

“What do you mean? Just put
ting some salt on my eggs,” she said innocently, her eyebrows creased together in confusion.

“This isn’t salt,”
said Ragon, taking the lid off Ari and gently securing it back onto the bottle. “It’s EDTA.”

All the vampires in the room gasped
, and Ari looked around at them in confusion.

“What’s EDTA?” she
asked.

“An anti-coagulant that’s
toxic to vampires; I bought it in case we had any unwelcome house guests,” explained Ragon.

“Oh,”
said Ari, looking down sheepishly at her food. “That explains why you keep it in the pantry,” she added sarcastically.

Ragon
didn’t answer but reached up high and placed the small bottle of EDTA on the top shelf in the cupboard, out of Ari’s reach.  

Ragon was still staring in disbelief at Ari, when a loud knocking on the front door distracted everyone. Cambridge and Thomas, who had been talking animatedly in the hallway, blurred into the kitchen to stand protectively in front of their mates. The sound of the knocking was still ringing in the living room, when Ragon reached the front door and opened it.

“Sameth,
” said Ragon, in a relieved tone.

“Not just me,”
said Sameth, pointing behind himself, at a large black convertible from which a man and two women sat, “Clyde just got here too.”

“You invited Clyde?” Larissa asked astounded.

Unable to fight her curiosity, Ari cranked her neck to see who had arrived. She saw the young man to whom Ragon was talking. Sameth looked no more than twenty years old; his eyes were wide and curious, although they didn’t quite have the same hopeful radiance you might expect in one so young. His features were round and boyish though handsome, with a wide forehead and matching pointed chin, that made Ari think he ought to belong in a boy band.

Looking
a little farther past Sameth, and out towards the driveway, Ari saw another man sitting in the driver’s seat of a very fast looking convertible. When Ari locked eyes with the man she gasped; he was absolutely gorgeous. Clyde, as Sameth had called him, was well built, with muscles that seemed to bulge obviously through his clothes, and large broad shoulders. He had short brown hair with blondish tips, and large oval shaped sparkling eyes that matched his cheeky smile. His lips were large and full, and when he saw Ari staring at him, he winked.

“Clyde,”
said Ragon, a little louder than necessary. “Thank you for coming, although I didn’t realise that you would be bringing
friends
with you. Will they be alright sharing one of the guest rooms?”

Reluctantly
, Ari looked past Clyde and towards the two girls in the back of the convertible. When Ari had seen the blonde beauties, she had expected Ragon’s jaw to drop. What she had not expected was for him to appear put-out by their arrival. 

“Well,”
said Clyde, jumping over the door of his car and stepping onto the driveway, “I thought the more the merrier, besides, they taste just as good as they look,” he added, a wicked gleam lighting his face. “Oh and, we will all share the one room. I… err, wouldn’t want you to be put-out.”

At these words Ari’s mouth dropped
; the two girls with him were sources.

As soon as the new
arrivals moved inside, Ari moved over to the couch, her bacon and eggs suddenly forgotten. In a flash Sandra and Larissa were next to her, and she thought for a moment that Larissa, like Ragon, seemed somewhat irritated by the newcomers.

“Come
and I will show you around,” said Ragon, and Sameth, Clyde and the two girls followed him up the stairs.

“Who was that?” Ari asked Sandra in a whisper.

“Oh, you mean Clyde?”
asked Sandra. “Well Clyde… he’s ah, I guess you could say-”

“
-a blood hungry, womanising jerk, that spends his time tricking girls into falling in love with him, and then getting them to spend the next few months of their lives being a blood bank,” Larissa finished for Sandra, glaring at the staircase from which Clyde had disappeared up.

“Seriously though Ari, Clyde has a reputation,”
said Sandra, in a tone of warning. “Stay away from him; he’s bad news. It’s entirely typical of Clyde to steal the show. He’s a notorious ladies vampire. Wherever he goes, women follow, and they seem to be only too happy to be whatever he needs from them- lover, company or food source.”

“Besides,”
said Larissa, leaning in even closer to Ari and whispering, “what about Ragon? He‘s twice the vamp Clyde will ever be.”

Ari stopped and thought for a moment. She couldn’t deny that since gett
ing to know Ragon, the real Ragon and not just the one she had fantasied about at the library, that she had developed feelings for him; what those feelings were, she wasn’t exactly sure. Ragon had saved her, and was gorgeous looking, but it was fairly clear to her that he had no thoughts of their being any more than ‘rescuer and saviour’. And there was the fact that Ragon was a vampire, and had attacked her; could mortals and vampires even date? Valiantly she tried to put all of this into a sentence; she had felt a connection with Larissa and Sandra, and thought that if she could explain all of this to them, they might actually be able to help her.

“It’s not like that with Ragon and me,” she said simply, failing miserably at communicating everything that she thought and felt.    

Sandra and Larissa turned to face each other, exchanged a knowing look and then stared straight back at Ari.

“Why did he rescue you then
… if there is nothing between you,” asked Larissa, a smug edge to her voice, as if she knew so much more than Ari.

“That was the first time we
properly met; when he saved me from those creeps,” said Ari. “In fact, since then Ragon has been stuck with me. Not only does he not think of me in that way, but he probably sees me as a giant pain in the arse. I saw him when we were at university together. There were a million girls in love with him… why would he possibly have thoughts for me?”

“Oh sugar, why do you think he saved you fr
om Kiara then?” said Sandra, brushing her red hair to one side. “He would hardly have rescued you from her if-”

But Sandra was interrupted by the clicking sound of heels walking d
own the stairs. A moment later the two blonde guests of Clyde walked into the kitchen. Sandra gave them a pitying look, while Larissa glared at them.

Ari was just about to introduce herself
, when the blonde girl stuck out her skinny wrist, as if in offering and said, “Clyde was wondering if you were hungry?”

Ari looked in horror at the girl, noting the large bite mark that already scarred her arm.

“So thoughtful,” said Sandra, in a voice of mock outrage. She was not talking to the blonde model, but to Clyde, who had just begun walking down the staircase also. “But Ari is not a vamp, and we are going to go out for dinner.”

“Besides,” said Larissa, “
we have very different tastes, and I don’t feel like having
your
left overs.”

After that Larissa
jumped from the couch and swept out onto the veranda.

“See you soon Ari,”
said Sandra, before following Larissa.

Clyde bowed
ever so slightly as the girls left.

“Your mates are even more beautiful than last I remembered,” said Clyde, smiling to Thomas and Cambridge.

Ari thought she heard Cambridge growl, but when she look
ed up at the gorgeous black man, she couldn’t see anything malicious at all about his appearance.

“How about you Sammy,”
said Clyde, spinning the girl over to him as he added, “I promise you; they are delicious.”

Sameth looked once at the
girl before tearing his eyes away, a little reluctantly in Ari’s opinion, and back to his suitcase as he said, “I bought provisions.”

Ari watc
hed as Sameth fumbled with the zipper of his suitcase and soon found what he was looking for, then began drinking from a blood bag labelled
AB
negative.