Excerpt:

Vicci tried to stifle her sigh. The large black room reminded her uncannily of an enormous box. Multi-colored strobe lights lit up the stage, where a band of bored-looking, barely pubescent young men made very loud noises supposedly singing yet another of their songs.

As Vicci couldn’t distinguish one “song” from the next, she had long ago filtered out the noise. She stood in the far corner to one side of the band, her hand resting close to her beamer.

Mentally she continued to count the hours until the Inaugural Vampiric Desperate and Dateless Ball would be over and she could crawl into her nice warm bed. Alone.

“Anything happening your end, Vicci?”

Vicci really did sigh. She pressed the tiny ear piece onto reply and answered back wearily.

“Unless you count a couple of hundred vampires dirty dancing and desperately trying to find the other half of their Soul’s Circle, nope. Not a thing.”

The masculine chortle ringing inside her ear made her smile, but she didn’t laugh back. Vampires might be born, and not made as in the tales of the Old Millennium, yet much like humans and all the other species running around the galaxy, they were simply looking for “The Right One”.

Vicci had no argument with that, she reluctantly looked around every now and then. But to have to stand there for hours on end while nothing more interesting than numerous people groping and dancing occurred, well, let’s just say she looked forward to heading back home.

“This is a desperate and dateless ball, Vicci, what else would you expect but a lot of dirty dancing and a heap of stupid kids wanting to live forever?”

Vicci sighed. Unlike the horror tales of old, vampires fed from emotions. Lust, happiness, sadness—any strong emotion. They could drink blood, but didn’t need to unless they were severely hurt or hadn’t fed from emotions in a couple of days or more.

The room positively overflowed with lust, the bumping and grinding of the vamps, as well as the few scattered humans and other races hoping to find a vampiric partner.

Who the hell would want to live forever anyway? It would be incredibly boring—Vicci had more than enough time on her hands here and now, the thought of doing more Security work for decade after decade had her shuddering in revulsion.

“It’s really not that bad, once you get into the swing of it.”

Vicci jumped as a soft, sexy low voice uttered the seductive words from just beside her. Even though the music was well dulled from all the way over here on the other side of the room, she couldn’t understand for a moment how she had been able to hear this man’s words.

Verrrry old, she told herself. Vicci held herself carefully, not really sure how to treat the handsome man standing beside her. He only stood a few inches taller than her so he must have been just slightly under six foot. He had darkly tanned skin and neatly brushed, rich dark brown hair. In the yellow, blue and pink lights, his chocolate brown eyes reflected a myriad of different colors. Stubble ran along his jaw, almost as if he knew it added to his sex appeal and wouldn’t hinder his chances of a pick-up tonight at all.

Vicci bit the inside of her cheek and tried to remember what it was he had just said earlier.

“Hanging around, century after century I mean,” he continued, almost as if he could read her mind. Vicci slammed up her mental block. She hadn’t been so careless as to leave her mind and thoughts open to anyone, let alone a vampire in many, many years.

“I never thought it wouldn’t work for some. At their age,” she nodded to a particularly young girl dancing around in a see-through slip, “I’m sure they’d love to dance and party and drink for a couple of centuries or so. At my age, however,” she added more piously, “I don’t need the comfort of centuries to soften the blow. I know I won’t get everything I want, and have come to terms with it.”

“And what don’t you think you’ll be able to get in this passing?” her shadowy man asked seductively.