The Man of my Dreams (10 page)

Chapter 20

Unmasked

My hero walked around to the side of the bed. My captor saw him and instinctively grabbed for a knife, diving off the bed. My hero looked down at my attacker’s now flaccid penis and smiled, mocking him. This made the nutter absolutely furious and he lunged with the knife, only to be very easily forced to the ground. The knife was instantly removed from his hand.

“Why must you kidnap these poor women and torture them for your own pleasure?” he asked.

"Cassie loves me,” he screamed. “I've been nothing but kind and attentive to her. Ask her!” he looked at me expecting me to corroborate his story. His eyes looked into mine trustingly, almost expecting me to run to his rescue.

“No, you're wrong,” I said looking at my lover and smiling. “I went along with you to prolong my life, waiting for the man I truly love to come and save me.”

If he had a heart I believe it would have shattered then and there. He looked hurt and betrayed. But his mood soon turned to rage and he tried to lunge at me to take his revenge. He didn’t get far.

“Tsk, tsk,” said my dark haired angel. “You wouldn’t hurt a lady now, would you?” He had his arm around the nutter's neck and restrained him effortlessly.

I tried to loosen my shackles and then felt my baby kick.

Thank God
, I thought.
You're okay.
I put my hand on my stomach protectively and looked up to smile at my love.

He was panicking and she didn’t understand why. Her dark haired angel looked around as if searching for an escape route, then dragged his captive through the bedroom door. Once in the hall he looked sadly at Cassie, closing the door behind him.

Cassie was bewildered and had no idea what had just happened. She was no longer in danger. He'd come to save her . . . why would he want to get away from her?

She heard a man screaming and begging for his life. She almost jumped out of her skin, it was so sudden.

“What the hell was going on?" she exclaimed out loud.

Then Cassie heard a low rumbling sound. At first she couldn’t make out what it was, but then realised the noise was . . .
growling!
She remembered the stories of the Ghost ripping assailants to pieces, always accompanied by growling. She wondered how he could possibly do that— morph into a monster and suck the life blood out of criminals. How could her sweet and gentle lover possibly be the same monster that tore these men limb from limb? She needed to get out of these shackles! She wriggled her left hand and tried to get it out of her restraint, but it was too hard only using one hand.

Damn it!
She was stuck there until someone decided to free her.

She could hear banging and crashing and snarling and hissing and screaming. It was driving her crazy. What the hell was happening outside that door?

Suddenly, the door crashed off its hinges and a bloodied body came flying into the room. It was followed by a man. Well at least she thought he sort of looked like a man. He was covered in blood and dived onto the body lunging at its throat. Her former captor writhed on the floor, screaming out in agony. Cassie could hear the creature slurping and sucking.

“Oh God,” she thought, “It's drinking his blood!”

She heard a blood curdling scream and then realised it was coming from her. The creature jerked its head up and looked towards her. It had long straggly hair and ice blue eyes, very pale skin and fangs. Blood was dripping from them and running down its chin. The features looked familiar and she realised it was him! Him, the man who had made love to her in her dreams, the man who was the father of her baby. Only he wasn’t a man. Instead he was some sort of animal sucking blood out of the body lying on the floor.

She screamed again and frantically struggled to free herself, knowing that it was hopeless. The creature tilted his head sideways and looked at her as if with recognition. He forgot his meal and stood up and started to walk towards her. Cassie screamed and tried again to struggle free but couldn’t get out of her shackles.

“No, please don’t kill me!" she screamed. "You said you loved me, remember?”

It stopped and looked at her as if unsure of what she was saying. It tilted its head back opened its mouth and let out a piercing shriek.

Cassie fainted.

Chapter 21

Skeletons in the Closet

I gave it just one last big push and then he was out. I sighed and laid back down on the bed, waiting for Hayley to check my baby and then bring him to me. She seemed to be taking ages and I hadn’t heard a single sound coming from him yet.

Why wasn’t he crying?
I asked myself.
Shouldn’t he be crying by now?

I sat up a little and looked over to where Hayley and Maria were standing. They were hovering over him and both were looking deathly pale.

Oh no,
I thought.
He’s dead!

“I want to see him!” I jumped out of bed and almost fell on the floor. My legs felt a little like jelly, but I steadied myself and walked over to where they were standing. “I want to see him!”

“Cassie, I . . . ” Maria stopped in mid-sentence and then shook her head and looked down at the ground.

I almost pushed her out of the way and looked down at my baby lying on the table. I gasped in horror! He was hideous! No wonder they were in no hurry to show him to me! He was covered in coarse black hair and had big pointy teeth and black eyes and a tail! He looked at me and snarled. I backed away and started to scream.

I sat up and opened my eyes, instinctively putting my hands on my stomach. Still pregnant, thank God, it was only a dream. Or was it a premonition? I shuddered and looked at Maria.

It slowly started to come back to me— the madman who had kidnapped me, his tools of torture, the room with pictures of kidnapped and murdered women. And then . . . the other man. The other man who transformed from a beautiful, caring, lover into something else! But what exactly was he, a Vampire? Vampires weren’t real, they were a just myth. Or were they?

Cassie was pretty sure that her dark haired man was a Vampire. His fangs and blood-drinking kind of gave it away!

So, if the man she dreamt about and the Ghost were one in the same, then what? What had made him change from being human to this other . . . thing? He hadn’t hurt her and had most definitely saved her from being tortured, raped and eventually murdered.

“Well, he didn’t survive to tell the tale. The Ghost did him over pretty bad!” She said grinning. “If he hadn’t, I certainly would have!”

She told me there had been an anonymous phone call to the cops telling them what had happened and where. When they got there they found Micheal Banks with his throat ripped out, his penis ripped off and stuffed in his mouth and practically no blood in his body. Forensics had searched the area but once again couldn’t find any evidence of the Ghost, other than the macabre body lying on the floor and the broken furniture and door. There were obvious signs of a struggle, but no physical evidence.

They did, however, find a lot of trace evidence from different females and after seeing the pictures on the walls and his beloved toolbox, decided to do a thorough search of the house and grounds. Using a portable X-ray machine they found untold bones buried in his back yard. Once they started to dig they found the skeletons of fifteen women. Some were badly decomposed, but others died as recently as a few weeks ago. They used the horrifying pictures, dental records and DNA to identify the victim’s bodies so loved ones could be notified. He'd obviously been doing this for quite a while.

Cassie shuddered. God, she could quite easily have been one of those women if not for the Ghost. Now she understood what, in his roundabout way, he'd been trying to tell her. They could never be together in the real world because in the real world he looked like a monster and people would certainly notice!
But how did he come to me a human when I was fully conscious?
It was baffling, but she needed to know the answers. Maybe he'd visit her again and she could ask him. But would she feel the same about him, or would she be scared of him now? She honestly didn’t know.

“I am getting quite tired, Maria. Do you mind if I have a little nap now? I'll try not to freak you out with my screaming this time,” I said, smiling.

Chapter 22

They Walk Among Us

Someone was calling my name and touching my hand. I opened my eyes and saw a pretty young nurse trying to rouse me.

Damn it, he didn’t come,
I thought.

“These policemen want to have a word with you. Are you are feeling up to it?” she asked, smiling sweetly.

I nodded and pulled myself up, asking her to raise my bed so I could sit upright.

They wanted to know what I remembered about the attack. I told them about a hand going over my mouth and blacking out, then waking up in a stranger’s house. I told the officers that he cooked me dinner and ran me a bath before taking me into “the room.”

“Do you remember how you got away from him?” the younger policeman asked, frowning.

I didn’t want to give them any leads or descriptions on the Ghost. I didn’t want them to catch him and then find out he was less than human. What would they do to him? I couldn’t bear to think about it.

I felt miserable. Would he ever come back to me? And what if he came in his real form? Would I still love him? It was so much to take in and I honestly didn’t have a clue how I was going to feel. I was initially terrified when I saw him, but maybe that was shock. I certainly was not expecting him to change into a Vampire!

The strange thing was, I loved Vampires! Well, at least I loved the ones I'd seen on TV ever since my early teens. I found them very sensual and intriguing and a big turn on! I grew up watching Christopher Lee and Vincent Price horror movies and my favourite movie was Bram Stoker’s Dracula. But then, they were fantasies and never in a million years did I think I'd meet a real live Vampire. Or a real,
not so alive,
Vampire! It was a totally different experience being face to face with one, not knowing whether he was going to literally suck the life out of you.

I'd been scared even though I felt sure he loved me and wouldn’t have hurt me. The Vampire side of him, at first, didn’t seem to know who I was. Obviously he must have realised, as he'd freed me from my shackles and taken me to the hospital.

I texted Maria and asked her if she could call in before going home and grab my key. I wanted her to bring my laptop and a few toiletries from my house. I needed to do some more research.

I decided to start by researching Vampires. There was a flood of information on the Internet . . . unfortunately, all conflicting. The one common thread was they all needed blood to survive and had fangs. They had once been human. They'd all been turned.

But everything else was very unclear. Some slept in coffins, some slept in freezers and some even hung upside down in caves or closets. Some could change into bats or other animals. Some burnt up in sunlight and some sparkled. Others got weak or dehydrated. All agreed that decapitation or burning killed a vampire, but staking also killed some vampires while paralysing others. I was more confused than ever but was convinced that my lover was definitely one of these creatures.