Vampire Romance | Trancing Miranda: Chapter 4.2
Paid | "In the Falling Moonlight" | CH 4, SC @
⚠️ Trigger Warning: Vampire-donor interaction. Coercion. Manipulation. Lack of consent. Predatory behavior. Primarily, but not entirely, off-page
Previously on Trancing Miranda
Nick met with his friend council enforcer, Ragnar Erikson, at a club called the Vault. They discussed the politics of the vampire-run walled community of the Regio. At present, Daniel Boucher is the Authority—the single vampire in charge of the Regio. Seven years earlier, Daniel’s stepbrother Julien Suzera attempted to take over. Sentenced to 10 years house arrest, Julien has been released and may be a threat. Nick and Ragnar have been sent to the Regio by the vampire counsel to monitor the situation.
In the Falling Moonlight
Nick brought home the girl from the Vault. Her name was Alecia, and there hadn’t been a mark on her—until tonight.
As was usual after a break, he’d fed hard. Not B-12 and energy healing hard, but hard enough.
He had tranced Alecia as he fed, inducing a euphoric state humans called the rapture. She was on the couch beside him, sleeping it off, when his phone started to vibrate.
Nick stepped out onto the balcony. The lake was dark, and the moon was on its way to full. Dark clouds drifted quickly across its bright face.
“I’m sorry, I’m just getting back now,” VCU Special Agent Ed Harris said by way of hello. “But I knew you’d be up.”
“No problem,” Nick said. “I wanted to let you know I’m here.”
“Here in New Boston?”
“North Lake.”
Nick had met Harris some fifteen years earlier when the Council and VCU, or Vampire Crimes Unit, were trying to find a solution to the swap epidemic—an epidemic created and sustained by the half-vamps.
Like all vampires, they needed blood, but most didn’t have the magic to attract or keep a donor.
So they swapped instead. Giving the victim just enough of their blood to mimic the rapture. Not caring that this would trigger an addiction so overpowering and so deadly, it became a problem no one was able to solve.
“Are you here to kick back and fish?” Harris asked.
Nick sat down in one of the big Adirondack chairs that faced the lake. The moon broke free of the clouds to cast a narrow, sparkling path across the dark water, and the leaves of the willows were blue in its light. “I don’t fish, Ed.”
“Don’t tell me there’s another uprising on the horizon?”
The VCU would have been notified of Suzera’s release. Harris, in particular, would understand what that could mean.
“Were you here then?” Nick asked.
“Before my time. But also not my headache. Then or now. What happens inside the gate is your problem.”
“Unfortunately.”
Harris chuckled. “Where were you anyway?”
“Croatia.”
“You’re from there, right?”
“My family is.”
Or was. But Visoka had never really been home. Nick had moved around too much to feel that way about anywhere.
“Is there a castle?” Harris asked.
Nick smiled. Harris would be disappointed by Visoka’s moldering walls and collapsing outbuildings. “More like a fort.”
Alecia was up. Nick could hear her crossing the floor, her steps heavy and human and completely unlike Miranda’s.
“I have a couple of names for you to run.” Nick gave Harris Miranda’s name, and then Gyari’s, spelling it with and without the Y. “It’s a personal matter. Not council-related.”
“I’m home. So it will have to be tomorrow.”
“That’s fine.”
Nick reached back and opened the door, and Alecia stepped out onto the deck.
He tipped back his head and looked at her. Her little black dress was wrinkled, and her skin was pale. In the falling moonlight, the blood on her neck ran black. “Are you all right?”
She gave him a soft, dreamy sort of smile, still high on his energy, still more asleep than awake.
Nick patted his leg. “Do you want to sit with me?”
She sank down on the deck in front of him and rested her head on his thigh.
“So you have someone there, listening,” Harris said, “while you call a federal agent and ask for a favor?”
Nick brushed back Alecia’s soft blond hair. “She won’t remember.”
Because Nick would see that she didn’t.
Alecia wouldn’t remember anything after she left the Vault. She would decide she’d had too much to drink. And if she noticed the tiny double-dot marks at the base of her neck, she would dismiss them.
Like Ragnar, Nick would leave her just as he found her.
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