After the Fall: A Vampire Chronicle (Book One) by Mary Ellen Gorry Page A

that she was walking out the door. He jumped to his feet and raced after her, grabbing her arm as she started to walk down Sixth Avenue.
    “Get your hands off of me!” she hissed, starting to realize that all her shouting had caused a crowd to gather.
    “I’m sorry,” he rushed, “but don’t run away. Not yet. I’m sorry for everything I said and I’m sorry for making you mad, but did you say that you saw the killers?”
    Maybe he had heard wrong. That was the only thing that made sense. She hesitated for a second, almost turning around and leaving without saying a thing. But Chris looked extremely worried. Worried for her.
    “Yeah, they were there,” she said, finally standing still and turning to face him. She took a deep breath, relaxing. She was starting to calm down.
                  “So, you actually saw the people who…who did this to your family?”
                  “Yes,” she answered, exasperated, “If you could call them people.” She shuddered at the memory. She wasn’t sure, but it seemed like that statement bothered Chris; his frown suddenly became much more pronounced.
                  “What do you mean by that?” he asked, hoping he had managed to hide the insistence in his voice, hoping she meant only that their behavior was inhuman, not that the killers themselves had been inhuman. The reason vampires had managed to become such a well kept secret was that 99.9 percent of their victims always ended up dead, so that virtually the only ones with knowledge of their existence were the vampires themselves and those who fought them. Christian was ready to admit to himself that he was more than concerned that Caroline knew entirely too much about what was going on, but mostly because of what he feared might happen to her if the vampires found out she knew.
                  He liked Caroline. For the first time in many years, he had found in her someone he could relate to, someone he felt comfortable being with. Okay, so she had spent most of their conversation yelling at him and she probably hated his guts. He was willing to bet, though, that most of that anger was coming from a place that couldn’t allow herself to feel sad. He knew what that was like. He had spent years being so angry he had almost gotten himself killed. She was trying so hard to be strong. She was all alone – no family, no friends. He knew what that was like, too. It was Christian’s duty to keep vampires from harming humans in general, but suddenly, he more specifically wanted to protect Caroline. He had already failed her once, which was why she was in this mess to begin with. He wouldn’t fail her again. But first he had to find out exactly what it was she knew.
                  “I don’t know if I believe in God or in the devil, but after that day, I’ll tell you Chris – I definitely believe in evil. They stood in front of me, my parents’ blood dripping from their mouths, and they smiled at me. They actually smiled. It was the most chilling and horribly evil thing in the whole world. As if they thought they were vampires or something.”
                  Christian was trying to come to a decision. Caroline knew. Okay, she didn’t know she knew, but she knew. But worse than that, the vampires knew she knew. He had failed to truly anticipate the very real possibility that she actually knew something substantial, but worse than that, to truly anticipate that the vampires would now be aware of the fact that she was aware of their existence. He couldn’t simply leave her here, on the street, and return to Lorenzo with just the knowledge that she was in way over her head. If he returned to the hotel and left Caroline behind, she would be as good as dead.
                  Yet, if he brought Caroline back to the hotel with him, she would know that vampires really did exist, and that there were people who dedicated their lives to killing