Biting Winds Read online

  Biting Winds

  By Shawna Ireland

  Copyright 2013 Shawna Ireland

  CreateSpace Edition, License Notes

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  For my husband Shawn. You not only support my fairy tales, but you join me in their magical kingdoms. Thank you for being my dragon, my king, and my happily ever after.

  Acknowledgements:

  Shawn Murray, Richard Gomes, Belinda Chin, and Anela Chilcott-

  my grammar police, wordsmiths, and content choppers.

  James Chin, for his honest review.

  Tara Calderaro-for her patience and professional editing.

  Table of Contents

  Pg. #

  Chapter 1: Bodega Bay 3

  Chapter 2: Bruised 9

  Chapter 3: Instincts 12

  Chapter 4: Homesick 15

  Chapter 5: Excuses 22

  Chapter 6: Courting 26

  Chapter 7: The Beating 33

  Chapter 8: Young Dave 39

  Chapter 9: The Camera 44

  Chapter 10: Chivas 50

  Chapter 11: Sensitivity 53

  Chapter 12: Revealing 60

  Chapter 13: A Choice 66

  Chapter 14: Sleep Tight 72

  Chapter 15: The Plan 76

  Chapter 16: Lights Out 78

  Chapter 17: Blood 81

  Chapter 18: Going Home 83

  Chapter 19: The Nurses 85

  Chapter 20: Sangio's Death 93

  Chapter 21: The Devil 96

  Chapter 22: Hannah 102

  Chapter 23: Fanged Child 105

  Chapter 24: The Betrayal 110

  Chapter 25: Overkill 112

  Chapter 26: Healed 116

  Chapter 27: Lisbeth's Journal 119

  Chapter 28: Heaven and Hell 128

  Chapter 29: The Library 133

  Chapter 30: A Vampire Revealed 138

  Chapter 31: History 144

  Chapter 32: A Town's Reckoning 152

  Chapter 33: Self-Hatred 160

  Chapter 34: Headstones 165

  Chapter 35: Richard Smythe 168

  Chapter 36: Back to Bodega 175

  Chapter 37: Deadly Invitation 184

  Chapter 38: Dave's Reckoning 186

  Chapter 39: Going Forward 199

  Author Connection 209

  Teaser Chapter: Storms of Innocence 210

  Chapter 1

  Jessie Greene sat by the blazing campfire sipping the coffee she silently poured with trembling hands, unsure if she could even keep it down. She stared into the dying fire as if it would help her understand the mysterious predicament she now faced.

  "Dave?" Jessie asked her husband. "Is there any of my twenty-thousand dollars left?"

  "Yours? Now it's yours?" Dave laughed sarcastically.

  "Okay. Is there any of the twenty-thousand dollars left?" Jessie rephrased.

  "Nope," Dave grunted defensively.

  "I want to go home, Dave. Please," Jessie said quietly, now staring into her coffee.

  "Where's this home you keep asking me to take you to? You don't have one. Remember? Your apartment is already rented out. Your job is reassigned to someone else. Your home is with me now. You're my wife!"

  "You can't expect-" Jessie began.

  "What I expect is to finish my hot cup of coffee before you try picking a fight with me," Dave snapped.

  He was right. There was no home or job, and Dave managed to eat up twenty-thousand dollars on-well, she wasn't sure what he spent it on at this point.

  Where would she go? She could find her way out of the winding streets of the campground, but probably not before Dave would find her.

  Jessie watched her own teardrops silently spill into her coffee.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” Jessie informed him, unsure if he would even let her go at this point.

  Dave shrugged his shoulders and didn’t even look her way.

  Jessie walked slowly down the hot asphalt road with no desire to get back to her campsite, ever. Looking down at her feet, she kicked at small mounds of dry pine needles and broken leaves, which were ground into near dust from the scraping feet of campers heading to and from the camp showers, just like her. They were probably a whole hell of a lot happier than she was, and ready to embrace their camping experience. She, on the other hand, was already prepared to throw in the towel after less than a day.

  "Excuse me?" an elderly woman called over to her from her beat up station wagon. "Can you tell me how to get to the showers?"

  "Sure," Jessie raised her arm to point down the hill, immediately regretful of the movement. She winced at the pain, grabbing at her shoulder.

  "You okay?"

  "Huh?" Jessie asked.

  "You look like you're in pain." The woman pointed towards the shoulder that Jessie was rubbing.

  "Oh, yeah," Jessie forced a smile. "Slept on it wrong."

  "Well, rub some Bengay on it. It works wonders!"

  "Bengay? Do they still make that stuff?" Jessie chuckled.

  "They sure do. Hold on," the lady said, rummaging through her purse. "I just happen to have a tube in my pocket book."

  "I couldn't," Jessie waved the tube away as the woman wagged it out of her window.

  "Don't be silly. I insist!" The woman pushed the tube further towards Jessie.

  "Okay!" Jessie resigned. "Thanks."

  "There's no better place than the great outdoors," the woman called out as she drove towards the showers.

  "There is no better place to be alone like the great outdoors!" Jessie muttered sarcastically to no one in particular as she roughly twisted her wedding ring around her finger.

  It wasn't that she didn't like camping. Jessie camped with her parents her entire life.

  Her father spent no time mourning the lack of a son and taught Jessie the sport of guns. She knew how to shoot a bow and arrow as well as Robin Hood by the time she was seven. She pitched her own tent, split wood, and built the campfires her family would sit around and roast marshmallows over.

  So, it wasn't camping that bothered her. It was the man who brought her here. If she were here with her parents, she would be thrilled, grilling freshly caught salmon next to her father while her mother used an old family trick of pouring boiling water into a cooler full of corn on the cob. Cooler cobs, her mother called it.

  Jessie's heart skipped with the memories of her parents as if they had been gone for so long. You would never know she saw them less than a day ago.

  Jessie was surrounded by seventy-five foot evergreens, groves of eucalyptus trees with puffs of smoke spread throughout the campground, climbing into the sky. She listened to chirping birds and rolled her eyes. She watched the Monarch butterflies outstretching their vibrant, earthy wings and visualized thwarting them with her fly swatter, but she was pretty sure she donated that to the Salvation Army when she packed up her apartment.

  “Figures!” Jessie muttered after an acorn dropped from a tree, bouncing off of her shoulder.

  She looked up into the tree where a squirrel looked back down at her, trying to look innocent. She wasn’t buying it. Not only had she mastered that look as a teenager, charming her father out of cash for the mall, but now that she was thirty-two she undeniably learned that people aren’t always as cute or gentle as they seemed. She was confident that the squirrels could just as cleverly disguise their cruelty behind soft fur and bushy tails.

  “I have your number.” Jessie glared at the squirrel through the broadly spaced branches, shielding her eyes from the sun.

  "Squirrels picking a fight with you?”
a deep and mildly amused voice asked.

  Jessie brought her gaze down from the towering trees and found herself standing in front of a stranger’s campsite, locking eyes with the lone camper.

  Try as she might, Jessie was unable to look away from this man. He was beautiful, in the most masculine aspect of the word. Angelic, in a dark sort of way, as he sat on the top of his picnic table, with his feet on the bench, leaning forward, elbows on knees. His hands were folded together pointing towards the ground and he appeared to be gazing into the fire, that is before Jessie stopped by to have a one-sided conversation with the squirrel.

  His hair was jet black and created the most romantic contrast with his milky white skin. And his eyes! They were as black as his hair, and could be described as both beckoning you closer while warning you to keep your distance.

  He must have been in his mid-thirties, and for lack of a more elegant word, he was hot!

  Jessie, oblivious to her staring, and quite possibly drooling, followed his gaze back up into the trees.

  “Need me to intervene?” the dark angel asked.

  “Eventually it has to come down. I’ll be waiting.”

  “Must have been a serious offense.”

  “I feel like I should be embarrassed. I mean, it’s not every day you see a vicious woman bullying the squirrels,” Jessie laughed, shaking her head at herself.

  “Third one today!” he winked.

  “Then I’m really not embarrassed. Although I don't believe you.”

  "Is this where I pretend to be insulted?" He held his hand up to what Jessie presumed was his heart.

  "By the crazy squirrel lady? Hardly worth your time. Now, had I been chasing a bear through your campsite, I'd bypass insulted and go for mortally wounded."

  One word came to mind as the man grinned at her. Flawless. Hair, complexion, teeth, smile, and from what she could see of his physique from his sitting position, flawless. She may have been married, for however long this marriage would last, but she appreciated the view nonetheless.

  "Wait," he called as she walked away. "You dropped your, um, Bengay?"

  "Go ahead and laugh if you must. It was a gift from an old lady. How could I say no?"

  "It’s just-I didn't even know they still made this stuff," he laughed, holding it out to her. "I hope they improved the smell."

  "Maybe!" Jessie smiled back as she took the tube from his outstretched hands. "Or maybe it makes a great mosquito repellent."

  "Very well could be. Or a husband repellent." He looked down at Jessie's wedding ring. "But I'll let you be the guinea pig."

  "I hope so," Jessie mumbled.

  "What's that?"

  "Oh, nothing. Just considering the best use for this tube of Bengay. But I must be on my way."

  "Thanks for stopping by."

  "Thanks for having me!"

  "I assure you, it was my pleasure!"

  Jessie waved as she continued down to the showers, promising not to let this rotten honeymoon permanently alter her normally optimistic, cheerful personality. Temporarily, yes, but not forever.

  Luckily, the gale force winds died down, unlike last night when it was questionable whether she had a tent or a kite attached to the surrounding trees. Bodega Dunes, also known as Blowdega Dunes, had clearly earned the nickname given by its faithful admirers. Bodega Dunes, nestled along the coastline of Bodega Bay, possessed a wind that made Dorothy of Kansas’ tornado look frail.

  Today, just remnants of the wind speed were present as the janitorial staff scrambled around the campground picking up plastic bags, cardboard boxes, and bins full of garbage that were flung about when a careless camper messed up their attempt to secure the locking lids to the garbage cans.

  Her stomach grumbled as she smelled the fresh air, mingled with the barbecued meat of nearby campsites, feeling her appetite return for the first time since arriving in Bodega. However, she couldn't imagine holding anything in her stomach right now. The tense, anxious abdominal muscles made her feel nauseated, and the thought of eating proved just as painful as the act would have been.

  The cool wind that was biting into her cheeks and stinging her eyes was just strong enough to remind her that she was less than a mile from the ocean and if she had her way she intended to lie in the warm sand catching up on several of the many novels she packed away in her suitcase. The novels she expected to read on her tropical honeymoon.

  Who was she kidding? If she had her way, she would find the car keys and drive herself out of this hell that became her life when she arrived at a campground for her honeymoon.

  Chapter 2

  Jessie stood in the hot shower longer than any respectable camper would care to admit, spending most of the time thinking about her humiliating encounter with the tall, handsome man with haunting eyes. No matter how thick she layered the soapy bubbles, she could not smooth the excited, troublesome, and confusing goose bumps that consumed her excited skin.

  Jessie knew it was wrong to be thinking about another man on her honeymoon, though she wasn't thinking about him sexually. Well, not really. She was merely appreciating his beauty and imagining what his story was, and if it were half as exciting as her own. He didn't appear to be taking in the camping experience either.

  When she no longer could hide in the stranger’s fantasy, and it was time to return to her own nagging reality, she rinsed the conditioner from her hair and stepped out of the shower.

  Jessie wiped down the rustproof piece of stainless steel the camp used for a mirror. Apparently it was not scratch-resistant, creating a fog that wouldn’t wipe away with the condensation. She stood in front of the mirror, opening her towel, seeing for the first time, the evidence of last night’s beating.

  The first bruise was just above her left breast, and she almost could make out the pattern of her husband’s diamond. She stifled a cry, for the umpteenth time today. There were a trail of bruises along her stomach, some larger and some smaller, and another one covered her left hip, right next to the knot that had arisen sometime during the night. The front of her thigh was littered with several bruises, though it ended up looking like one giant bruise if you stood far enough away. However, these weren’t the bruises she was especially worried about.

  She leaned into the mirror and pulled her long, auburn hair back surveying the bruises and swelling along the cartilage of her ears, as well as her skull behind her ears. As the swelling went down, she noticed each ear hid a raised knot. She already cleaned the dried blood from her ears before leaving the tent this morning, but she was worried that she may have internal damage to her ear, and possibly a slight concussion.

  Jessie slipped into her panties and bra, the ones she picked out of the bridal collection at Victoria's Secret for the sole purpose of pleasing her husband. Now she pictured her husband, back at camp, wanting to be intimate on the second night of their honeymoon. That, along with the memories from last night filled her mouth with bile, and sent her retching into the toilet bowl. Jessie sat on the floor of the bathroom, hugging the toilet long after her stomach was emptied. She cried until she had no tears left.

  As much as she hated her husband for what he did to her, she hated herself more. She mentored so many women about abusive relationships, teaching them the warning signs. She bragged about how she would never let a man lay a finger on her, just as her parents had taught her growing up. Her parents' fights were few and far between, but the most violent fight was her father slamming the front door of the house and speeding off in the car after he found out that his wife, with the too-big heart, lent several hundred dollars to a family member who had a history of forgetting her debts. Even then, he was more upset with the family member for taking advantage of her generosity than he was with her.

  Jessie had lain on the air mattress for several hours after the beating, contemplating her next move. Beat him with one of her Jimmy Choo stilettos that she wore to walk down the sandy isle yesterday? Go home to her parents who had warned her to take her time? Who had be
gged her to bring her fiancé home to meet them before tying the knot? Go back to L.A. homeless, jobless, broke and divorced?

  What would her father say if he saw her now? To see his strong, independent daughter in this condition? To know that she took a beating and didn't even try to fight back? If she were rational, she would know that her parents would welcome her home with open arms, minus the judgment. She would know that her nurse friends would put her up in their apartments until she got on her feet, and the hospital would jump at the chance to rehire her. However, Jessie was stunned; paralyzed by the fear of the unknown and the massive shift in her life towards an existence she couldn't comprehend.

  Jessie still found it hard to muster the strength to get up off the ground, but the cold, sand-covered floor and lingering aroma of urine and feces were great motivators. Grimacing, she pulled a piece of toilet paper that was stuck to the side of her leg off of her shaking it off her fingertips, and turned the shower back on, rinsing off again. She dressed quickly, and scooped up her dirty clothes while looking around for her misplaced hairbrush. Worried that other campers would be getting frustrated with her for being in the bathroom so long, Jessie decided to head back to camp with the towel still on her head. It beat sporting the rat's nest hiding beneath it.

  Chapter 3

  Sangio sat on the picnic table for several minutes after the woman left, still amused by his conversation. He noticed a hairbrush on the ground, where she had been standing. Since she had a small stack of clothes in her hands, Sangio presumed she must have dropped the brush when they were talking. He headed down to the showers, intending to leave the brush outside of the door.

  Her soft cries, carried through the vents above the window, caught his attention. Unable to walk away, he sat down on the bench for what felt like an eternity, waiting for her to come out, although he was unsure what he would say when she did.

  Sangio could not walk away, despite his inclination not to get involved. He didn’t even know what he was doing here, or why he was so intrigued by the woman. She was beautiful, sure, with a luscious mane of golden-brown curls, but Sangio had met more than a few beautiful women in his lifetime. What was it about her that would make him lock eyes with her when she would stop in front of his cove?