Unearthly, The by Laura Thalassa

jerked my body to the side at the last minute, and my attacker plunged the knife into my shoulder. I screamed.
    Behind us the door opened, and then a roar eclipsed my scream. I saw the whites of my attacker’s eyes a second before his body was torn away from mine and flung across the room like a rag doll. I heard the sickening crack as his body hit the far wall and the plaster gave.
    Andre stood at my feet, looking like a fallen angel. A very pissed off fallen angel.
    “Take him away!” I heard him order his bodyguards.
    Andre bent over me, concerned. “I am so sorry,” he whispered.
    Andre’s gaze flicked to the knife that was still plunged in my shoulder before shifting back to me.
    “I need you to stare me in the eyes,” he commanded. “Don’t look away.”
    I glanced at his hand, which he’d wrapped around the hilt of the dagger.
    “No,” I whimpered.
    “Gabrielle, focus on me. Focus.” I stared into his eyes and felt everything fall away. It was just him, me, and that whimsical feeling I could really get used to. And then it all shattered as Andre yanked the knife out of my shoulder.
    The scream ripped from me.
    “Shhhh.” Andre soothed me like I was a small child. Someone handed him a towel, and he used it to halt the bleeding. It took many minutes for the pain and nausea to become manageable.
    “Aren’t you supposed to give me a drink before you go about pulling out knives?”
    That earned a chuckle. “I can’t be giving alcohol to minors. I might lose my liquor license.”
    I rolled my eyes. As if Andre actually followed the rules.
    “I think my nose is broken,” I said.
    He glanced down at my nose. “Then it already healed itself.”
    “ What ?” I realized the pain in my face had lessened. “How is that possible?”
    He picked me up, somehow managing to shrug even as he carried me.
    “Vampires heal much more rapidly than normal humans,” he said.
    We passed back into the VIP common room, where people huddled in clusters, some with their camera phones pulled out, taking shots of us.
    “I can walk, really,” I said, struggling against him. Reluctantly he put me down. “So vampires heal quickly. But I’m still human, aren’t I?”
    A crease appeared right between Andre’s eyebrows. I tried not to think about how breathtakingly gorgeous he looked.
    “Gabrielle, I think we can agree that you haven’t been completely human since you woke up in the hospital. Your nose is proof that your body already has the ability to return itself to its original state. This same ability keeps vampires frozen at whatever age they were changed.”
    “So what does that mean?” I asked.
    He only shook his head. “I don’t know.”
    ***
    When we approached the onsite paramedics, there was not much left for them to mend. The bruising on my face had lightened to a nasty yellow color — apparently this was a good thing — and the knife wound on my face had almost completely healed.
    Most surprising of all, my shoulder wound had closed up, making stiches unnecessary.
    The next few hours were weary. I repeated my story over and over to the police. Luckily the police — and just about everyone else on the island — happened to be supernaturals, which made telling the truth a whole lot easier. My assailant was in custody, and the police force was currently running a background check.
    Eventually, Andre rescued me. For once I appreciated his pushy ways. He pulled some strings and got me out of the police station before 1:00 a.m.
    I met him at the entrance, where he was sitting in one of the vinyl chairs. I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The sight of him dwarfing the seat in the sitting room of the police station, clad in his designer clothes, was ridiculous.
    “Inspector O’Reilly wanted me to give you her best regards,” I said, walking towards him.
    At some point today, my opinion of Andre had drastically changed. Maybe it was that he reached out to me when I had been feeling like a social pariah, or