Chapter 21

Joseph’s POV

I have never been much for company. I spent most of my nights alone. As a vampire, having friends seemed pointless. The friends I did have died long ago, just like everyone else in my life. I was used to the loss, though it made wanting to get close to anyone unbearable.

The longer I lived, the more loss I endured.

I wish to not be burdened with that dreadful feeling ever again.

Meeting Tessa certainly wasn’t on my agenda when I moved to the city. But as I walked the mildly crowded streets and passed by her, the scent of her blood drew me in instantly. There was something about her that made me want to lose control.

She was on her way to the bar. What she was doing at a callboy bar was beyond me. But she was with another girl, someone more ordinary, someone who didn’t capture my attention as Tessa did.

When we passed, we locked our eyes. At that moment, it was like time had stopped. Her heartbeat quickened its pace, pumping the very blood that caused me to become ravenous.

I learned to control my hunger long ago, like most vampires, I have been trained to not need blood. It was a want, not a necessity.

But there was something about this particular blood that made me want to throw all that training out the window.

That girl she was with pulled her away and brought her inside that callboy bar.

I knew it was probably better if I just left and returned to my home as I planned. But my curiosity was getting the best of me.

I went toward the bar, the scent of her blood growing stronger the closer I got to her. Peering through the window, I saw her sitting at the counter with her friend. Even from outside the bar, I could hear her voice as if she was standing right next to me.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do… I can’t go home, and all my things are there,” she spoke with an eyeful of tears and her gaze lowered.

“Don’t even worry about that, Tessa. You know you can live with me. I’ll swing by your place in the morning and get your stuff. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”

Why didn’t she want to go home?

This curiosity only grew and soon, I found myself walking into the bar to speak with her myself. But I wasn’t expecting the night to take such a turn.

I hadn’t been with a woman in a long time. I hadn’t been genuinely attracted to a woman since my late wife who died a couple of centuries ago. So, my attraction to Tessa was unfamiliar to me.

However, there was something about her that made me want to talk to her. It made me want to tell her the truth about everything, despite knowing I shouldn’t. I don’t tell many people that I am in fact an immortal vampire.

Especially not those who are my students.

Tessa being my student only makes things more complicated.

This brings me to wonder why it was so easy for me to tell her the truth as soon as she showed an ounce of curiosity herself.

Not that it wasn’t my own fault, I was careless enough to leave a mark on her. I drank from her. I needed to taste the very blood that drew me in so quickly. The intoxicating elixir attracted me to her.

“Y… you’re a vampire?” She asked, her eyes large and I could hear the quickening of her heart.

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t murder those guys?”

“No.”

As much as I wanted to kill them, I didn’t. But I didn’t tell her that directly. She didn’t need to fear me more than she already did.

I didn’t come to this city to murder asshole humans. I came here because my help was requested by the Nightwalker police force.

The Nightwalker police have been monitoring a new string of vampire attacks in the city for some time now. The media had classified these random and brutal murders as animal attacks, but the Nightwalkers knew better than that.

The Nightwalker police were some of the few that knew about the existence of vampires and other beings. They also knew that I was a well-trained and trusted vampire that could help them with these mysterious cases.

I got the phone call a few weeks ago after I watched the latest news story about another animal attack. The fang-like bite marks on the victim’s neck in the released photo proved to me that it wasn’t an animal attack, but a vampire attack.

The Nightwalkers knew it too.

“Have you seen the news?” Chief Mulligan, head of the Nightwalker police force, asked once I answered the phone. “You know damn well it wasn’t an animal attack.”

“You are right about that,” I replied.

When a vampire is first developed, they are expected to train at the vampire academy so problems like this don’t arise. This led me to believe that these vampires were new. They lack training and have zero impulse control.

This was odd to me because it’s very rare for humans to turn into vampires without dying. I was one of a few that was turned without dying. Most vampires were born into this life. At a young age, they are demonstrated at an academy with highly trained elder vampires.

So, where these new adult and undomesticated vampires came from, I was unsure.

“We need your help,” Mulligan continued. “You would be able to track them much better than we can. Plus, being a vampire, you know how they think.”

“You want me to go to the city?”

I had been living far away from humans for a really long time.

“Since it may take a long time and you will be wandering around in the city quite often. Do you need a job as your cover?” Mulligan asked.

“I am the writer Joseph Evergreen already.”

“I know, but that won’t help you interact with humans and investigate them more,” Mulligan said.

I fell into silence. I was not sure about getting involved in human society too much.

“You know what? You could work at one of the local schools as a writing professor,” he suggested.

In the first century that I was alive, as Chris, I was a teacher along with a writer. I never thought I would go back to this lifestyle, but this was the only way I could move to the city and investigate these new vampires. My guess was they were hiding, blending in with society and uncoverable to the human eye.

I moved to the city within the week. My mind manipulation and the Nightwalker police helped me get the teaching job right before the semester started.

Everything quickly fell into place until I made that one error.

I bit Tessa and drank from her.

All those years of practicing restraint went out the window in an instant.

I walked into that bar wanting to know more about this woman, wondering why I was so drawn to her and curious about what made her so different.

It was as if her blood was some kind of addictive drug, and her invitation to sex was the last straw.

Once I had a little taste of it, that’s all I could think about.

But I didn’t know she would be my student.

Now I can’t cross that student-teacher boundary despite how mouth-watering her scent was.

Also, she thought I was a callboy.

What the actual fuck?

Back in the present moment, Tessa continued to sit beside me on the couch, waiting for me to say something more. Or maybe she was still trying to process what I had already said to her.

“You spoke about Christopher more as if you knew him…” she spoke slowly as she was still trying to wrap her mind around everything and piece together information. “Then those handwritten and signed manuscripts… you have the same handwriting.” She paused for another moment. “Was I right? Are you him?”

“Yes,” I was once Christopher Moore.”

Chris was my original identity from before I became a vampire. That was also the era I developed my love for literature.

Tessa shook her head in disbelief.

“This can’t be right…” she breathed. “That would mean that the man I’ve idolized for most of my life is a—” her words fell short. “These attacks in the city… they were vampire attacks. I know they were….”

She was smart. I had to give her credit for that.

It was certainly an impulsive move to tell Tessa the truth about me being a vampire.

But I had lived such a long and composed life, that maybe I could be impulsive at least once.