Chapter One

A Vampire Walks Into A Bar

New York City

She'd never felt like she belonged here. Her partner on the force, Darcy, called her an old soul. Hayley Marshall felt old. Not in years. The weight in her soul felt older than the passage of time. The things she had seen in her short life. Violence. Treachery. Grief. Dealing with it day by day seemed to weigh more heavily on her than the other new recruits. The chief had already talked to her once about her ability to handle being a cop in such a violent city.

She was a good cop. That wasn't the issue Chief Kessler assured her and really, it was pretty standard for new recruits to take a few years adjusting to life outside of the academy and facing the reality of the job.

Maybe it was a remnant from her past that she just couldn't shake. Abandoned by her parents, shuffled from foster home to foster home by people who just didn't care. Once she hit eighteen, Hayley was free of the system and took a few years to decide what she wanted to do. She didn't realize she'd wanted to be a cop until she'd walked into the academy.

Fighting for something good. Fighting for those who couldn't fight for themselves. Fighting evil. It felt right. She'd had no one to fight for her. She would do whatever she could so that as many people as she could would know that she would fight to protect them the way she wished someone had protected her.

She turned into diner and pulled open the door, searching for the familiar heads of a few of her fellow cops, including the dark haired Darcy who shot up from her seat and whistled her over. "There's my girl! The most bad ass cop on the NYPD!"

Hayley smiled and made her way over. Jesse, who had a few years experience on her stood and motioned for a waiter. Eddie, the veteran of their group with ten years experience raised his beer to her in salute. "For catching that stab-happy son of a bitch."

"Never bring a knife to a gun fight, right?" Hayley tossed back, even as her cheeks flushed at his praise. Eddie wasn't free with it so it always meant more when he did let her know he was proud of her. He was roughly twenty years older than her, the unofficial father figure to many of them.

"Did you see that idiot with the camera?" Darcy asked with obvious disgust.

Hayley sighed. "Yeah. Imagine that'll be all over the news tonight with every damned bleeding heart crying police brutality-"

"I punched the asshole," Jesse grumbled. "I would have rather shot him. I call that growth."

Hayley snorted. "Yes, you're very mature. Never mind that the bastard was terrorizing the neighborhood. They were only hookers after all." She took a long gulp from her beer. She spotted a movement out of the corner of her eye. A flash of black. Then blond.

"I see a commendation in your future," Darcy beamed at Hayley.

A thrill moved through her but Hayley shook her head. "Yeah, right."

Darcy looked over at Eddie who grinned at Hayley with twinkling grey eyes.

"What?" she asked, afraid to hope.

"I might have talked to the Sarge about talking to the mayor."

"You did not!" Hayley gasped. "Holy shit. You did!" She threw her arms around Eddie and hugged him. "Next round's on me!" She ran towards the bar.

"You're broke!" Darcy called after her.

"Visa!" Hayley tossed back with a laugh. It felt so good to have something to be happy about. A monster was off the streets and she'd helped make that happen. She slammed her hand down on the bar to get the man behind the counter's attention.

"A round of drinks for my fellow cops and I over there!" Hayley pointed to her friend's table and pulled her wallet out of her purse.

"Celebrating?" A male voice asked beside her.

She turned the smile towards him and her breath caught in her throat. If his voice was smooth like the best scotch she'd ever had, his face was pure sin and caught her with a flare of heat right between her legs. Blond hair, blue eyes in a strong angled face softened by a full mouth that… Damn. Hayley cleared her throat and turned her face away so he wouldn't see that heat manifest itself in a furious blush. "Yeah."

"Please. Allow me." He had an accent. British. Oh yeah. All polish and sophistication. She knew his type. What she didn't know was what he was doing in here alone. He hardly seemed the type to have to pick up women.

While she was mulling his situation over, she didn't notice the hundred dollar bill until it was sliding towards the bartender.

"Ah no," Hayley stopped it. No way was she letting money bags pay for her drinks. That was probably his game, how he had women fawning all over him, those kinds that needed men to take care of them.

She was definitely not one of those. "Thanks but no thanks." She slid the money back towards him.

"Please, I'd consider it my civic duty. My thanks to the NYPD for keeping the streets safe." He slid it now towards her with a dimpled smile.

"With no ulterior motive, right?" Hayley said sarcastically.

His eyes roamed over her face with such hunger that Hayley couldn't move for a second, held still by the unmistakable lust on his face. No. Not lust. Or at least not just lust…there was something else there. Something darker that scared her a little, but not in a way that made her want to run. It made her want to get closer. "No. I think my motives are quite clear, love."

She shook her head, forcing herself to step back. Hayley pushed the money back towards him. "Sorry. Wrong girl."

She could feel his eyes on her the whole time for the rest of the night but Hayley was determined to avoid looking at him again. There was something…off about him. Dangerous. Yet familiar. A very odd sense of familiarity. What was the word? Deja-vu? When you see something you remember yet know you've never seen before. It was an uncomfortable feeling and by the end of the night she was so distracted that her friends noticed and she decided she was going to confront him and tell him to back off.

But when she turned to storm back towards the bar to tell him off he was gone.

Hayley blinked in confusion. She swore she could still feel him in the room but the bar stool he'd been perched on was empty.

"The blond guy?" the bartender, a tall muscled guy, asked. "He left after you brushed him off."

Two hours ago. Yet he'd been on her mind the whole time like an almost physical presence. Bastard.

Okay. So she needed to get laid apparently.

She'd never done the serious relationship thing. Her job didn't really gel with the dating world. Most guys liked their girls soft and dainty to prop up their egos. Hayley could admit she was attractive but no one would ever call her dainty and she didn't really have the patience for guys who constantly needed their egos massaged. And the ones she could think of being interested in never really stayed around anyway.

Passing ships in the night was more than enough for her. Bang off the feeling and no pressure afterwards. Pleasant.

Hmm. Maybe she shouldn't have discarded 'Dimples' so quickly. He would have been good, she thought as she walked down the street to her apartment. One night and then 'see ya'. That look in his eyes though. The darkness there that was a huge 'Danger' sign to anyone with two brain cells to rub together.

Hayley took a deep breath. Her neighborhood smelled like smoke-both pot and cigarette- and greasy food and piss. But the people in it weren't too bad. Mostly hard working immigrants struggling to better their lives but feeling forever displaced. Maybe that's why she loved the neighborhood. She could relate. And the rent was cheap.

But it wasn't the safest place, Hayley thought, reaching under her jacket for her gun when the hair on the back of her neck stood, a shiver going through her skin at the awareness that she was now being followed.

"Hey babe. How's it going?" A slurred New York accent.

She turned around. She didn't recognize him, and most importantly, he didn't recognize her. Everyone in the neighborhood knew she was a cop. "Better than it is for you. Go sleep it off, okay?"

"Aw come on, baby. Don't be like that. I just wanna be friends."

"Sure. Look me up on Facebook," Hayley said, continuing to walk but with a firm grip on her gun beneath her jacket.

"What's your problem, eh? You a stuck up bitch too good for me, huh?"

He grabbed her arm and she turned and pulled his hand up and around his back while one foot hooked around his and dropped him onto the ground. Hayley pinned him down with her knee in the middle of his back. She pocketed her gun, deeming it unnecessary and instead pulled out her badge and propped it up to his eye level on the ground.

"Aw Christ," the guy groaned.

"That's right. Now I've had a good day so I'm going to go home, and have a nice evening with some popcorn and a movie and you're going to go home and have a nice evening where you crash on your bed and sleep off the effects of some very bad decision making. Waking up in your own bed with a bitch of a hangover tomorrow instead of a jail cell will be my gift to you for the very good day that I've had. What do you think? Isn't that a nice present?"

"Yeah, yeah sure!" He insisted desperately.

"Great. Some free advice as we part ways. Consider some more positive life choices okay? You'll be better off for it, trust me." She got up and left him on the ground and continued to make her way home. Looking up suddenly as a familiar throb started again in the center of her chest, Hayley's breath caught when she spotted the guy from the bar standing out on a fourth floor balcony, looking down at her with a smile and that intense look of…what was that? Longing?

She didn't realize she was smiling back softly at first. His smile almost looked proud and she cocked her head in question before breaking their gaze and shaking her head. She didn't know what his deal was. When she looked up again, he was gone and a chill went through her that made her reach for her gun again and not let go until she was safely behind her door.

She dreamt of him. Sad blue eyes. A sinful mouth that did things to her she didn't think she'd ever felt before. The dreams unsettled her as much as her nightmares did, though she had to admit, they were a lot more enjoyable. She'd take sex dreams over her usual dreams drenched in blood any day. Blood and screams and a baby's cry that seemed to tear at the depths of her soul until she woke up sobbing.

"Bless me, Father for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last confession," Hayley said in the tiny dark space.

"Yes, my child."

That always made her smile. Father Andrew wasn't that much older than she was. He'd come to Sacred Heart only two years ago but he'd already established himself as a favorite of the congregation. She liked coming to see him in this beautiful church even though she didn't consider herself particularly religious though Andrew kept insisting she obviously was. Really, the ritual stuff was only always a preliminary until they got to the real stuff. It helped her to talk to him. Stuff she kept locked away. Her years at various foster homes, her sense of never belonging, her nightmares. He knew things about her that she'd never told another living soul.

After he gave his penance and absolution, they got down to it.

"There was this man last night. At a bar. I…felt like I knew him even though I'd never seen him before."

"We often feel that way, a sense of familiarity, connection. Human's are hard wired to look for it."

Hayley shook her head. "No. This felt different. It was…" She struggled to give voice to the feelings inside of her when she figured the stranger's face. "I felt like I knew him but just…couldn't remember from where. There was this…pull…"

"Attraction?" Andrew asked with a wry smile. Yeah, he would tease her about that considering she kept all men at arm's length.

"And…fear."

He looked at her in concern, through the mesh screen. "Do you think he's dangerous? A criminal?"

"Dangerous, yes. A criminal…with my luck, probably but yet…there was a sadness there too."

"Well most criminals don't become so because they've lived happy fulfilling lives," Andrew pointed out.

"Good point," she remarked with a wry snort. "I just can't shake…I dreamt about him and it wasn't like a dream it was…" She was glad the darkness kept him from seeing the sudden flush of heat in her face. "It felt like a memory. Like I'd touched that blond hair before. I'd looked into those blue eyes."

He stiffened beside her. "Blond, you said?"

Alert, she looked at him through the mesh screen. "Yeah. Why?"

"Just under six feet? Short hair. Lanky build. Brit-"

"British accent. Son of a bitch. Oooh! Shit. Sorry, Father. But what the hell? You know the guy?"

"I…" the priest hesitated.

Hayley understood his dilemma. "I won't ask for particulars if he's talking to you in here. I get it. But you've seen him here?"

"Yes. Hayley, listen to me. Stay away from him. He is a dangerous man. Tormented by demons that would make lesser men lose their sanity."

"Yeah, ditto," she reminded him dryly.

"No, not as you are, Hayley."

She cocked an eyebrow. "What? Are you talking Linda Blair? Pea soup?"

If it was possible to hear a man roll his eyes… "Just steer clear of him all right. I'm thinking of your safety."

"So he's violent? You know if he's done anything you're legally obligated to-"

"No, he would never harm you." He was silent for a moment, then his voice was so low she almost didn't hear him. "So that's what he meant then. He meant you. Poor soul."

"Well that's not cryptic at all."

He shook himself as if from a stupor. "Nothing. He's not a danger to you. Just deeply disturbed and I already said more than I should without betraying my vows so please don't ask me anything more."

"Okay. Okay. Fine." She should have felt relieved that she'd been warned away from him. Dimples sounded messy as hell and if it wasn't one thing she didn't need in her life it was 'messy.'

Hayley told herself to put the stranger out of her mind but even at the end of her day at work he remained there on the edge of her thoughts.

She was getting ready to take a shower when there was a knock on the door. Tightening the satin sash on her robe she looked through the peep hole and nearly jumped in shock as the blond stranger stood waiting on the other side. Her eyes went to the drawer containing her gun. She pulled it out just to make herself feel better because she was too curious not to open the damn door. When she opened the door, he smiled at her. The sweetest smile that warmed her heart even as it sent a hot burst of lust shimmering through her entire body.

I know you a small voice beat like a heart through her blood.

His voice was a caress over her skin, almost like a physical touch. "Hello, love. Can I come in?"