"Let's go grab some pizza to celebrate," Ash said.

"I've got to get home," Elyssa said. "Maybe another time."

"Me too," I said. "Great job, though, guys."

"I'll go with you," Nyte said, climbing into Ash's gargantuan periwinkle Ford.

They drove off leaving me and Elyssa standing near her car in the almost empty parking lot. She gave me an intense look of longing before pressing herself against me and delivering a kiss that curled my toes. My hands slid to the small of her back. She grabbed one of my hands and pressed it to her chest. I almost lost control over certain bodily functions.

A demon-possessed fever overcame me. My sex-starved sense slammed against its tin-foil prison. I picked up Elyssa. Twirled us around and set her on the hood of her car. She wrapped her legs around my waist and squeezed my body to hers. Her fingernails raked down my back. Spikes of pure pleasure shivered across my body. All thought of resistance vanished. More than anything on Earth, I wanted to be with her. I was ready to give it all to her. She pressed my hand to her thigh and moved it slowly upward. My heart pounded. The caged creature in my mind roared.

And then I lost it.

The flood of carnal hunger burst through the psychic dam. It clawed for the steaming sensuality bursting from her like solar flares. It snatched at those tendrils and for an instant, caught them. The tendrils slid from my grasp, insubstantial as smoke, and retreated. Strong hands gripped my shirt and flung me like a rag doll. I slid on my back across the gravel parking lot until a tree stump stopped me at the edge. I opened my eyes. Cold metal pressed against my throat. Warm liquid trickled down my neck. Twin violet stars pierced the dusk and stared down at me.

"Elyssa?" I croaked.

She was straddling me. Tears poured down her cheeks. "You filthy monster," she said, sobbing. "You almost had me, didn't you?"

"What are you talking about?"

"I should kill you this instant." She clenched her teeth, baring them while sobs wracked her body.

The cold metal pressed harder against my skin. Every heartbeat thrummed against the blade causing another trickle of hot blood to run down my neck. I held my breath for fear of opening an artery.

"You used your blood to lure me and I ran in like a stupid little mouse."

"My blood?" I rasped.

She choked on her sobs. "Damn you to hell. Why? How could you be a monster?"

"Please tell me what's wrong, Elyssa. I don't understand! Please tell me what the hell is going on!"

Her glowing eyes sprang open and I waited for ultra-violet lasers to scorch me. Her face was pale, bloodless. Her lips curled into a snarl. I gasped as her canines lengthened into pearly white stilettos. They didn't look like Stacey's fangs, but they looked every bit as menacing.

She stared at the blood trickling down my neck. Her nostrils flared as she drew in a deep breath. She licked her lips and lowered her face toward my neck. Abruptly she jerked back, shaking her head as if warding off a dizzy spell.

"You've been leading me on. Using me. You knew all about me and my family, didn't you?" Cold anger and betrayal frosted her voice.

"I don't know a thing about your family," I said. I felt dizzy either from a lack of blood or the realization that my girlfriend had fangs and had almost sucked my blood. "Elyssa, it's me, Justin. I would never do a thing to hurt you. Please tell me what's going on."

She stared into my eyes for a long moment before abruptly standing and backing away from me. I noticed a long iron-gray blade in one of her hands. "Explain, then, but don't come a step closer or I'll finish you."

I touched my neck and blood came away on my hand. "What in the hell are you, Elyssa? Why are your eyes glowing? Why do you have fangs?"

She stared at me again, divining the sincerity of my questions before answering. "You really don't know, do you?"

A hysterical laugh burst from my lips. I remembered how she'd held me back from Harry earlier and how tightly she'd gripped my arm the other day. It hadn't occurred to me because I was so unfamiliar with my newfound strength. Elyssa was as strong if not stronger than I was. "Are you like me? Do you have super strength?"

"Oh no," she said with scorn in her voice. "I'm nothing like you."

"But you're as strong as I am. I can't control this problem I have. I didn't want it to happen!"

Elyssa sobbed as fresh tears welled in her eyes. It broke my heart to see her in such pain. To see the pain that I'd caused her with my ignorance. She backed away from me as one might back away from a poisonous snake. "I don't want to hear it, Justin. Just stay away from me. Don't talk to me. Don't ever come near me again."

"Please, no, Elyssa. Don't go!"

She wiped the tears from her eyes and gave me a look that bordered between pure hatred and longing.

I ran toward her. She held the knife up in a defensive position. "I'm not lying. I will kill you if you come near me again."

"But—but Elyssa. I love you." My voice sounded so broken and desperate that I hardly recognized it as my own.

She clenched her teeth and screamed. "Shut up! Shut up, you filthy, lying monster!" Then she slammed the door of her car and roared out of the parking lot.

I stood in the gathering dusk alone with my tears.

Happy Birthday.

Chapter 16

I stood rooted to the spot, agony ripping at my insides, until light faded and darkness took the sky. I somehow gathered the willpower to go to my car and get in. I cried like a baby the entire way home. Women were my kryptonite. Even the one that loved me now thought I was a monster. And maybe I was. Maybe she was a vampire too, but I didn't care. I didn't know anything about my condition except that it had caused more pain and harm than good. I couldn't beat up bullies. I couldn't protect my friends. Everything I did backfired and hurt the people I cared about.

I wasn't even sure I had friends anymore. What would Elyssa tell Ash and Nyte? She had known them much longer than I had. If she sat with them in the gymnasium at school, I wouldn't be able to. Not without getting my throat slit by a pencil sharpener.

One thing was for sure. I wasn't meeting Elyssa's parents on Sunday.

Elyssa's mother, Leia, popped into my mind. I remembered her eyes. Her violet eyes. Just like Elyssa's. I didn't have violet eyes. My eyes did not glow that I knew of. Or maybe they did and I just hadn't looked into a mirror at the right moment. I wondered if her entire family consisted of fanged violet-eyed people. The Vampire Brady Bunch. But if she was a vampire, why were her fangs so much different looking from Stacey's? And why wouldn't anyone give me straight answers?

I walked inside my house. Dad was nowhere to be found. I had questions for him, damn it. Who were the Conroys? Where had mom gone? What in the hell was going on? I went into my room and locked the door. I looked like a zombie. Dirt caked my face. Dried blood crusted my neck and a thin red line ran from the left side of my throat to my Adam's apple. I couldn't believe Elyssa had done that to me. No wonder I'd thought she was hiding something from me. She had been. My girlfriend—ex-girlfriend—was a vampire ninja assassin. The way she'd handled those swords during the tournament blew me away. She knew her stuff.

But I was still just as in the dark now as I'd been the day Stacey had attacked me. Except now I knew my super ex-girlfriend was a vampire, and Stacey was something completely different. What was it with me and supernatural chicks? I still didn't know what I was, but I knew for the most part what I wasn't. I wasn't a vampire, a werewolf, or a leprechaun, to start with. The list went on and on without helping me a bit. Nothing I'd read in paranormal novels had prepared me for this predicament. I didn't glow, glitter, or grow fangs, but I could seduce any woman in a heartbeat. Correction: I could seduce any normal woman. Apparently the supernatural ladies knew how to defend themselves.

I took a shower during which I alternated between sobbing and moments of stoic silence. This was worse than all my disastrous relationships rolled up into one big ball of pain.

Katie may have broken my heart in two, but Elyssa had shattered it.

I was the perfect candidate for a soap opera acting career: Plenty of drama and an unhappy ending to all my romantic endeavors. I found myself staring at my computer screen. Just staring at it without a clue as to why I'd sat down there in the first place. I ran several searches and came up with hundreds of results—mostly stories about mythical beings who feasted on the souls of young girls. Apparently, I was doomed with this curse. I didn't even know what to call my symptoms. I almost posted to WebMD:

Please help! I have this psychic sexual sense which lets me see these sex vapors emanating from women. Then I ravish them.

Sincerely, Unintentional Molester

That sounded absolutely idiotic. I scribbled my thoughts furiously on a bit of paper. The vapor as I called it was a sexual feeling that my mind interpreted as a misty halo surrounding females. It had to be psychic like telepathy of some sort. But I couldn't read minds, only hints of emotions around that sexual core of energy. A light bulb sparked on. I was sensing sexual energy and bits of emotional energy. Psychic energy.

I searched on those terms and came up with everything from yoga to people gluing energy stones to their foreheads. I also discovered every conceivable way to enlarge my manhood. Not even Yahoo Answers had anyone asking about super strength combined with the ability to make women rip off their clothes. I finally found a website that detailed hundreds of supernatural creatures including one that sounded like me—a dark faerie, one of the Unseelie, or evil faeries, that used its sexual lure to trap females while it drained them of beauty and life. But certain things didn't add up. Faeries were ancient, according to the website, immortal, and they didn't have children. So unless another evil faerie had done something to me and put me up for adoption, I didn't know how I could possibly be one. Deep down, I didn't really want to admit that I was a faerie either, because it sounded girly. But at least it was a start.