So I'm Not a Vampire? (Peaches - A Paranormal Shifter Romance Book 1) Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons--living or dead--is entirely coincidental.

  So, I'm Not a Vampire? @ 2014 by Rosi S. Phillips. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my Literotica fans.

  You all really inspired me to keep writing. Thank you.

  FOREWORD FROM THE AUTHOR

  Wow, they’re so many people I have to thank you this series. My mom, my editor, my publisher, my fans, the list goes on and on, but I’ll try and make it short.

  A big thanks goes out to my beta testers: Richard, Hyon, Krithi, Mary, Amy, Mary Lou, Nancy, and Susan.

  Another huge thank you goes out to my publisher, Max. I can’t thank him enough for all the help, encouragement, and swift kicks in the butt I needed to push through and do better. I know I wouldn’t have come this far in my writing without him. So, thank you, thank you, thank you.

  My mom, of course. The woman is incredible. From day one, she has been my biggest supporter, and I’m so happy that she’s my mom.

  My editors! Thank you to John and Abby from the Writing Center, Laszlo and the amazing editors hired by E-Book Publishing World that I don’t even know.

  But I think the biggest thanks goes to my fans. Without you all, none of this would be happening. I wouldn’t have continued writing, gotten better at it, and wanted to put my crazy ideas down on paper. I hope you’ll continue to support me and love my work.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  PREVIEW

  Prologue

  I'm Thinking ... I'm Thinking ... I'm Thinking ...

  So, I'm pretty sure I'm a vampire. I'm not going to jump the gun and declare myself a vamp just yet, but I'd bet my last bar of chocolate I'm right.

  At the moment, I'm lying on this super tacky metal slab freezing my—if I were a man—balls off, with this scratchy sheet over top of me. Oh, and I'm butt naked. Now, I've seen about a ba-gillion crime shows and I'm almost positive that I'm in a morgue: just one more thing that proves my whole vampire theory.

  Of course, the main question here is: "Why was your first thought, vamp’?" The main reason: I died. I'm one hundred percent sure about this one. It all began at my now-ex-boyfriend’s house. Me, being the cute and sincere girlfriend I am, decided to bake a batch of brownies and take it over to his place. Did we (mainly I, since we both knew I always end up eating two-thirds of the little delicacies) really need brownies? Hell, no! I was, well—am, pushing a size sixteen, and my long, bottle-red hair just ain't covering up that double chin anymore.

  Rob and I had been dating for about two years, give or take a month—which in my mind is six months too long without a commitment of either shared living quarters or a ring. But I'm a patient girl, and I thought Rob was worth it. He had this whole cute boy-next-door thing going on, except just a little wilder ‘cause he had a motorcycle. Did he ride it? No, but he had it, and that was all that counted.

  But back to the reason I'm pretty sure I'm a vampire and one hundred percent sure I'm dead. I went to see my boyfriend, yada, yada. Brought brownies, yada, yada. Caught him fucking the Chinese take-out man...

  Oh, wait! I hadn’t gotten to that part. Yup, I found my boyfriend ass up, taking it from behind, while our Chinese take-out guy rammed a pretty impressive piece of equipment in his ass. To say I was shocked would be an understatement. I hate to be one of those people, but I really would have preferred to see my boyfriend with his dick in a size zero chick instead of the way I caught him. It wasn't just a blow to my self-esteem, but also a blow to my womanhood. There's nothing like seeing your boyfriend getting the business from another dude to remind you of that extra muffin you ate and the few extra pounds you'd put on lately.

  I just stood there and screamed my head off like a banshee. Of course, Rob heard, but instead of getting limp and having his dick fall off as it should have, he came. That about sealed the deal for me. I whirled and marched out the front door. At the front steps, I realized I still had the brownies in my hands, and instead of just taking them with me, I decided to chuck them while I took a step. Clumsy me stepped wrong, turned awkwardly on my ankle, fell, and cracked my head on the pavement in front of his house.

  All I remember is a hazy feeling of pain, my ears ringing, and then darkness. I also think I remember seeing blood, but it just could have been a distorted image of my pink dress, because I'm pretty sure the thing had flown up and I was flashing God and everyone.

  So, here I am, lying in what I assume is a morgue with a very fresh memory of my death: my very humiliating, very embarrassing death. I just hope Rob lied to my parents and whoever came to collect my body, and made up some believable story about how we were having passionate sex in front of his house, and he was just soooo good that I came and died. Now that is a death I could get behind.

  Got sidetracked again. Silly little Peaches. That's my name, by the way. Well, my nickname is Peaches, but my real name is Georgia Kent. When my grandma used to come and visit me in grade school, she'd pinch my cheeks and say: "Chubby little cheeks, just like a peach, and good enough to eat." From that moment on my nickname was Peaches.

  Now I'm Peaches the Vampire. Wow, does that sound stupid and wrong. But, I mean, what other explanation is there for my sudden rebirth in a morgue? Scenario one is that the brownies I may have “sampled” on my way to Rob's house were contaminated, and I am now a zombie. Only thing wrong with that scenario is that I don’t smell myself decomposing, I can form complete thoughts, and I am craving chocolate, not brains.

  Scenario two would be that I'm in a coma. This one I could maybe get, if I didn't feel freaking, freezing cold, and wasn't thinking about being in a coma. Why would I imagine myself in a morgue if I were in a coma? That doesn’t make any sense. Plus, I read somewhere that people in a coma don't dream; and it doesn't really feel like a dream but cold, harsh reality.

  Option three—which is the one I'm sticking with until someone, or something, proves me wrong—is that I'm a vampire. Fact: I got a mosquito bite two weeks ago that hasn't gone away. Maybe it wasn't a mosquito bite but, like, a vampire bite. And, aside from the whole zombie thing, I don't know of any other creature that can come back to life, Frankenstein excluded.

  Then there's the possibility that I could still be alive, but the paramedics must have been really stupid if that's the case. With all the technology we have, I find it un-be-lievable that they would have made that big of a mistake.

  You know, Peaches the Vampire is starting to grow on me. It has that sort of epic quality like Dracula, or other vampires I can't think of right now. Vampire Peaches. Yeah, I can get behind that.

  Chapter One

  Maybe It's Cranberry Juice

  About ten minutes into lying on that deathly cold slab, I decided it was high time to move my vampire ass into gear. I mean if Twilight, Blood Ties, Moonlight, Buffy, Angel, and t
he million other vampire movies and shows were right, I had super speed and strength, and very soon I'd need blood and a dark place to sleep when the sun rose. Though since I was in a freezer for dead people, I wasn't sure if it was night or day. I decided to chance the odds based on the whole “vampire internal clock” thing. But then again, I could've just made that one up.

  Mustering my strength, I lifted my once flabby, weak human arms and used my new vamp strength to push the door open and then watch it fly off the hinges and into the wall. Apparently I made a lot of stuff up, because that door didn't even budge under my vampire strength, and it sure didn't fly off anything. TV and my imagination had betrayed me!

  "No big, my powers probably just need time to, uh—get here or something." Other vamp movies portrayed newbies as being as weak as newborns. Since I was a fledgling vamp, maybe the same applied to me. Meh, that explanation worked.

  It took forever and a day to finally get that stupid door open, but sheer force of will got the job done. I was surprised no mortician came to see what all the racket was about, but it was likely well past midnight and everyone was home.

  Now, I'd like to say my emergence from the freezer was elegant and graceful, but I'd be lying my big, fat butt off. I pushed too hard and the momentum sent me flying, head first, onto equally cold white tiled flooring. If I weren’t already dead, I'm pretty sure the impact would have killed me.

  "Stupid baby vamp strength." When I was at full vampire super-strength, I would lift an elephant with my pinky just because.

  I got up and looked around the room. It was pretty big with three silver rolling trays in the middle, a lamp overhead, and a giant wall of square, silver refrigerator. I have to say, though, those TV shows really got it right. I guess that was one of the reasons I wasn’t freaked out about the whole death and morgue thing.

  "Clothes, clothes, clothes," I mumbled as I looked around for a lab coat or something to throw over my nakedness.

  I spied a work jacket in the corner, and an instant outfit idea came to me. I picked up the sheet that had fallen off after my dive and twisted that around my body in a strapless dress sort of way. I cringed at the hairy ape legs I was sporting but promised myself a hot shower and a razor later.

  I threw on the jacket but couldn’t button the thing up. Apparently becoming a vampire hadn't made me instantaneously super hot. That sort of sucked, because going through the rest of my undead life as a size sixteen sounded about as appealing as a low fat, dairy-free, gluten-free muffin.

  I shuddered at the thought.

  My stomach rumbled at the thought of food, but drinking some rando's blood didn’t hold as much appeal now that I was actually among the ranks of the undead. How actors made the process of drinking that sticky, metallic stuff look so hot and sexy amazed me. But then again, they had darkened cranberry juice or something.

  “Hmm, cranberry juice.” I shook my head as I stepped out of the room and into the white-on-white hallway. “Get your head in the game, Peaches.”

  I have this terrible habit of talking to myself in the third person. My friends liked to count how many times I did it in a day. I really cut back from the hundreds it used to be, but every so often it creeps up on me.

  Though now that I thought about it, I really wouldn’t have to cut back anymore. I mean, I no longer had any friends, because everyone knows vampires can only be with other vampires when they’re newbies or they go on a rampage of blood, guts, and gore. I wondered how long it would take me to get to that stage; probably not long, given the rumblings in my tummy.

  “Oh blood, oh blood, oh where can you be,” I sang quietly as I walked through the building, peeking in different rooms in the hopes of finding my new liquid food. “Don’t you know, don’t you know, I’m freak-ing hungry.”

  On the fifth door I opened, I smelled blood; not like an overwhelming amount, but like someone had a bad cut that needed stitches bad. Sadly, my fangs didn’t pop out and I didn’t go psycho over the smell of it. Again, I chalked it up to me being new.

  I spied a glass fridge in the corner. I peeked inside and saw blue and red baskets with blood bags in them that were marked with the Red Cross symbol. I snatched an O neg bag and closed the fridge.

  “Yum. Blood.” My voice might have lacked excitement, but that was only because when I was a human blood grossed me out. I guess the transition just, like, took longer. Maybe it had something to do with my age. I feel like twenty-seven is sort of old in vamp years. It was particularly old, decrepit, and nearly expired in human years. Maybe because I was older it was talking my powers longer to emerge. At least, that’s what I told myself.

  “Bottoms up, Peaches,” I sighed to myself as I sank my teeth into the bag and got ... nothing but plastic. Several minutes of gnawing on the bag later, and I finally poked a hole in it. It was sort of like drinking a super gross—I mean delicious Capri Sun.

  So the taste wasn’t the best, but maybe O neg wasn’t my favorite. Plus, I bet it would have tasted a lot better from the warm, heart-beating source. Still, blood tasted like, well, blood. And after two minutes of trying to gag it down, I decided that maybe blood wasn’t really what vampires ate.

  I mean, Marcelline on Adventure Time (one of my guilty pleasure shows) just sucked the color out of red stuff. Maybe the same applied to me. Maybe red apples, cranberries, and cherries were what I needed to eat.

  Well, I had all of eternity to find out. But, first things first, I needed to find a way out of this creepy blood-and-dead-bodies infested place. There was no going home; but I’d been, uh, camping and I could rough it for a night. Plus, if worst came to worst, I could see if my vamp mind-control powers had come in yet. Now that would be cool!

  Chapter Two

  Pot Calling the Kettle Black

  It didn't take me long to find a way out of the morgue, or should I say my University Hospital. That's right; I was undead in my old alma mater, the University of Vermont. A few feet to my left was Chittenden Hall, and right behind that were a bunch of other halls. It was both comforting and creepy to be back at my old school, especially considering it was summer and there was no one around. It didn't exactly give me a warm, fuzzy feeling to be a vampire on campus.

  Oh! That could totally be the next title of a movie!

  Then reality set in and reminded me that while the bright, full moon and empty university did paint a great vamp horror flick, it didn't really work for me considering I was the ideal candidate to be killed first. I was white with bright hair, though it was red instead of blonde, and big. Don't get me wrong, the quaint charm of the place was still there, but it was all starting to give off the vibe of every horror flick ever made.

  "Fuck." It was the only thing I could think to say as all my bravado and most of my naive hope fled the building. For one, the closest I'd ever come to “roughing it” was setting up a cozy little pink tent and a portable DVD player on the deck of my house. My mom brought out cookies and classic funny camping movies. When I had to go to the bathroom, I just opened the door to my house and moseyed on up to my bathroom. Yeah, I'm a regular outdoorswoman.

  I could always break into one of the buildings or hope that a door was open somewhere, but there were two problems with that. The closest thing I'd come to breaking in was watching it done on TV, and I was hungry. I didn't trust myself not to go H.A.M—Hard As a Motherfucker—on some poor unsuspecting cop and suck all his blood out. I mean, maybe I could live off of strawberries and red wine for the rest of my life, but that was a discovery for another day.

  "Why am I not surprised to see a white woman alone at night on this campus? There must be an epidemic of stupid, willful endangerment going around," a deep male voice snickered.

  I'm surprised I didn't get whiplash with how fast my head turned. There was no one on the sidewalk with me, just a flickering streetlamp. The place practically screamed that a serial killer was going to step into the sporadic spotlight and smile at me. I tried to peer into the darkness, hoping that some of those st
upid—I mean, awesome vampire powers would finally manifest.