“Please, come in.” I opened the door, took off my cape, and—
One strong hand at my back, the other brushed against my cheek, and a thrill as he pulled me to him. I expected a kiss, but his hand swept over my hair, pushing my head so that I could feel his mouth on the soft skin above the lace of my collar and below my ear.
The touch of his cold lips against my neck and my knees went weak.
He bit me.
I opened my mouth—was it to scream or moan?—and before a noise could come out, I felt the pain.
Sharp teeth sheared through my flesh like scalpels. Blood—my blood—rushed into his mouth. The life was drawn from me by his lips.
And still beyond all that, beyond death, I felt a thumb across my nipple.
It was the most intense thing I’d ever experienced in my life. Shock, fear, suffering, arousal in a moment. The sensation was more than the sum of my parts; I felt my whole body alive at his touch. Primal experiences that no lady should have known, until the wedding night and childbirth.
I’m not certain how we arrived in my room, but he settled me onto my bed and raised his left wrist to his mouth. I saw a flash of white, white teeth, so long, so sharp. His jaw worked; I heard the gentle growling, a dog with a bone, and then the ripping of flesh.
A sharp scent caught me. Rich, dark, earthy, a metallic edge. My body, my being, contracted with need for it. All my earlier thoughts of the physical element of romance, those utterly chaste kisses tinged with hope and illusion, fled in the face of that longing.
That was real need. Real life.
I knew instantly what to do. I grabbed his wrist, drew it to my mouth. I latched on as surely as any babe to its nurse. My teeth sank into his flesh and I guided his blood over my tongue. The dryness that threatened to consume me tightened to an ache, as if resisting the offered nourishment, and then . . .
It began to burn, as if I were being devoured from the inside out. I could no more stop the flow of blood than I could scream with the pain it brought. As I kept sucking, the wildfire devoured me, and all I knew was that if I perished at that instant, I would die craving more blood. A slave to my own torment, a willing victim to a terrible pleasure.
I was a fool, was nearly my last thought. So wrong. This was what I sought, this commingling of fear, lust, life. And death.
Even as all the fires of hell seemed to consume me, I was grateful and remembered my manners.
“Thank y—”
Night. Again. I woke to bitter cold and blinding light.
“Sally, why are the windows open? It’s—”
But my voice didn’t work; my lips cracked as I tried to form the words.
I reached for the water pitcher; my hand hit something slippery and softly resistant, too close to me.
My fingers floated along the cloth. A shiver from my fingertips up my arm, until it felt as if my entire body registered what I felt: satin. I wasn’t in my bed. I was in a lidless box.
I realized it was a coffin.
The light was starlight. I was staring up at the stars. My eyes focused slowly, aching as if there were too much for them to take in. There was too much beauty in the night. The silver music of the stars, the brilliance of the sandy soil as it trickled from the earthen walls that surrounded me. It pattered on my sleeve, making a noise as quiet and as fleeting as mice.
Soil and satin, two things that ordinarily I would keep far apart. But with the shrill fairness of the stars above, the glorious pulse of the dark city around me, the cacophony of worms and voles beneath . . . it was just one more note.
I wanted to cry out in amazement, but I was as parched as the desert. A small noise escaped, barely a croak, but even that was gratifying to me.
The dryness of my mouth triggered something. A terrible hunger seized me, a thirst so awful it was as though I were filled with coal dust and cobwebs. I struggled to sit up, the movement only underscoring the misery of my desiccated body.
“All will be well.”
Cold blue eyes, nameless but not unfamiliar, appeared, another constellation in the firmament. A sudden movement, quicker than even I could follow with my newly sharpened eyes, then strong arms around me and a rush of frigid air. My preserver took me from the grave with as little effort as if he’d scooped up a kitten. Just as easily, he cradled me in his lap.
“—you.” The effort of finishing my last mortal sentence made my throat ache. “I am so—”
“Here.”
He offered me his wrist again, and finally, his blood quenched my tortured throat. I began to relax, began to feel . . . more than alive. Sure-minded. Free.
He taunted me a little, as if he could tell the worst was past, and moved as if he’d take his wrist from me.
I clung to his arm, my fingers powerful, my mouth still demanding.
He laughed and relented. “Slowly, now, Miss Ravenscroft. Another moment, only. I did not bring you to life only to abandon it myself.”
I let his blood roll over my lips, felt it spill over and caress my cheek, as if I were savoring the juice from a stolen peach. I swallowed the last mouthful greedily as he firmly took his arm from me. I could make no complaint. I had never enjoyed food so well, never felt it nourish me so completely. So perfectly.
Now that the blood was gone—I wondered if my next mouthful would taste as lovely—I could smell him. Masculine, faintly of horse, laundry soap, and blood—perhaps even some from the laundress who’d washed that shirt. More distinctly I sensed power and lust.
“I do admire a young lady with an appetite,” he said, helping me to sit. A politeness, only; I felt more vital than I ever had. “I am Eric Northman. I will teach you about your new life and I shall protect you as my own. In return, I expect your obedience in all things.”
It was a better bargain than any lady in my acquaintance had ever been offered, and far more honest. I did not hesitate. “Oh, yes, please!”
A present to seal our compact: He gestured and a gaunt street Arab with a vacant look on her face stumbled to our side, obeying the same will that had compelled me to allow a strange man into my father’s house. Her rags were redolent of the perfume of the East End slums. She wordlessly stretched her dirty neck out in front of me.
“Drink,” was all my master said. He didn’t need to say more; the hunger I felt instructed me. The stink of her poverty was sharp but secondary to the entrancing rhythm of the pulse in her neck. It called me, the answer to my killing thirst.
A new and peculiar spasm in my mouth: I felt my teeth lengthening, becoming sharper. A throbbing in my entire person seemed to match the pulse at her throat that filled my ears.
I rose to my knees and clutched her by the shoulders. Without a second thought, or even a first, I bit down hard on her neck, felt the skin puncture and rend under my fangs. Her tiny whimper was a sweet counterpoint to the thumping in her veins, her weak resistance enthralling, as her blood filled me. The most delectable flavors rolled over my tongue like my favorite dinner: roast pork and savory pudding and dark red wine all together. I sucked harder, the tear in her skin wider than my greedy mouth could cover, and the blood sluiced down my chin and neck. The heat of the lost blood warmed and thrilled me as it soaked into my silk dress and my tumbled-down hair.
I felt myself refreshed to the point of ecstasy as existence vacated her forever.
I cast the small body away from me, useless now, an empty foul thing. My strength was greater than I realized. She arced through the air, to land, a broken doll, on a monument of an angel nearby. I licked at my lips and chin in a very unladylike fashion.
I half stood. “More!” The more I ate, the more I desired, and I craved other things, too, though I could not have put a name to them.
“You are wonderful!” My master, Eric, laughed. “There will be more, I promise you. But what if I told you there was something even better than feeding?”
> “There cannot be.” There was not even a twinge, as there might have been Before, at such greediness. Every sermon I’d ever heard against the sins of the flesh had been burned out of me. I yearned for more.
“There is.”
Eric raised me to my feet, placed my hand on the front of his trousers. The satisfaction I’d felt in drinking from the urchin diminished beside what I experienced now. The talk of love and eternal passion that—I could not even remember the name of my friend’s cousin—had promised me, was pretty, hollow, gilt-tin words, now banished by an irresistible yearning. Eric’s face was stunningly beautiful, pale, and hungry as mine, and those blue eyes burned still.
“Yes! Oh, yes, please!”
Then the naughty Miss Ravenscroft, whose previous noteworthy transgressions were only silly declarations and clumsy, stolen kisses from a boy whose name she couldn’t remember, truly became the vampire Pamela. No thoughts but my own satisfaction troubled me, and as I hauled up my skirts and petticoats, Eric lifted me to sit on the edge of a monument. An instant later, I felt him slam inside me, and I knew he was right. This was nearly the match of feeding, but in a way I had never experienced. I wrapped my legs around him, locking my ankles behind his back, and felt his being—no pulse, no heart—merge with mine. The blood he shared with me now linked us in a divine knot, sharing each other’s pleasure.
Even as I moaned my climax—only dimly aware of the chilly London air, the cooling corpse of my first meal nearby—I felt a pain that threatened to eradicate me. It grew and grew and I panicked. As the spiraling agony threatened to swallow me, I was certain I was entering hell.
More than a hundred years later, I am in hell.
I wake, remembering with longing my happy dream of sex with Eric. And now . . .
I’m facedown in a pile of blankets. My head feels as if it’s lined with silver as shiny black millipedes with leaden feet tap-dance inside my skull. The pain threatens to shatter me, and it’s only after a bit that I realize I was dreaming of my making. My most treasured memory, the night my life After began, came to console me. Given my circumstances, I’m worried that this may be the night my After life ends.
Finally, someone turns off the damn klaxon alarm, and my head reverberates with its dying echoes. Agony, as if I’ve been sunbathing, but I don’t smell smoke, don’t feel flames. I’m awake, so it must be night.
I’ve been poisoned, captured, but I can’t remember anything.
I burrow deeper into the blankets despite the fact that they reek of mothballs and mildew.
A grating noise—a door opening. I wish my head would just explode and be done with it. I must get up now, because I know I am in the worst kind of trouble.
I’m still trying to pull myself up when I hear the voice. Of any in the world, it’s the last one I want. It fills me with dread.
“Pam Ravenscroft. I’m sure you remember me.”
I can’t see past his motorcycle boots, but I remember flaming red hair and, incongruously, a scatter of freckles.
“Of course, Morgan,” I mutter to the damp cement floor. “I keep a scrapbook of degenerate monsters. You’re my prize.”
Not my best retort, but I’ve a head full of silver filings I can’t account for.
“Well, you put up quite a fight, though I’m not sure what tipped you off. Exactly how old are you, that you can smell trouble like that?”
Idiot. Never ask a lady her age. If she’s human, she’ll lie and say younger. If she’s vampire, she’ll lie and say older and more powerful. “As old as sin itself, and twice as sexy. Where’s Eric?”
“Unaware of my intentions. For the moment.”
“Good. He’ll be on his guard and you’ll shortly be a puddle of guts.”
“I think not. He suspects nothing.” Morgan stoops and shows me my phone. “He imagines you’ve secured the perimeter of the ‘Out-of-the-Coffin Day’ anniversary dinner party and are meeting Lily for a private celebration. I owe him a lot of money and don’t want to pay him, so I’m going to make it look like human fang-haters when I kill him. I can be as gruesome as I want and still have people believe it’s a human attack.”
Simple math, if you’re a vampire. Plus, Morgan is a pervert, so “gruesome” would only be the start of it.
I must escape and warn Eric, but—
Morgan might have been reading my mind. “That silver will be in your system for a couple of hours. By the time you can sit up straight, I’ll be solvent and Northman will be dead.”
“Eric shit bigger things than you when he was human.”
He laughs. “Maybe I’ll keep you around as a pet. Or I could feed you to Lily. You disappointed her so terribly, that would be a thing to see.”
Oh, hell. Lily. I slump. Years ago, Morgan killed Lily’s maker and took her as his own, treating her vilely.
Morgan laughs again and leaves.
I give him a few minutes to get out and then manage to sit. I’m not as sick as he thought; I don’t think they got the full dose into me, but I’m still feeling rough.
I must do something, so I go for the low-hanging fruit. “Hey! Hey!” I bang on the door.
A vamp so green you can still smell the dirt on him opens up the peephole. “Shut up in there!”
“Unless I get something to eat, this silver will kill me. You don’t want that.”
Instead of telling me, Yeah, he does, he says the most wonderful thing in the world.
“Huh?”
Oh, thank you, fates. “If I die, Eric will sense my death. He’ll know something’s up.” I try to look pathetic. It’s not hard.
He actually bites his lip, he’s trying so hard to think. I’ve seen more wit in Bubba sizing up a three-legged tabby for dinner.
“Get me a bottle of TrueBlood.” I hate the stuff; it tastes like a Barbie smells. “If you don’t want Morgan’s plan to fail.”
The door shuts. I’m alone with my worry.
It opens again shortly, and I can’t believe my luck. I raise my hand weakly, then let it fall back, as if exhausted.
The little idiot actually comes in. I wait until I can almost see where his pimples used to be, before he was made, then spring up. I grab his arm and yank down, seizing the back of his head, which abruptly meets my knee. Then, since I still appreciate the housewifely virtue of “waste not, want not,” I drain him dry.
His body collapses into a pile of nasty black gunk that will require a squeegee to clean up. I toss back the TrueBlood as well; I’ll need every bit of strength I have to get through the night alive.
I know the house. It doesn’t take me long to find my way out.
There’s one other guard, and he’s bigger and meaner than the puppy I ate downstairs, but I’m warmed up and feeling feisty. Once he’s returned to primordial ooze, I take his phone and car keys, and then his car.
Eric’s not answering. He’s probably so far underground the cement is blocking the signal.
As I drive, I wonder. I may not actually be as old as sin, but I’m not being vain when I consider that the junior varsity shouldn’t have been left to guard someone like me. It seemed far too easy to—
Oh. I get it. The A-squad is reserved for taking Eric out.
Shitballs.
I gun the engine and race hell-for-leather toward the party. I can’t concentrate on a plan. The only thing in my mind is seeing Lily right before the silver-filled hypodermic needle hit my neck.
I loved the twenties. I roared through them. Jazz and gin and shoes made to dance in. Beaded dresses, no more than scraps of silk but so heavy, so sensual, they might have been designed with a vampire’s heightened senses in mind. Feeding at that time was like ripping open an expensive box of chocolates. After years of thousands of tiny jet buttons and yards of wool, it was easier than tearing the plastic off a Twinkie and twice as sweet.
I met Lily whi
le I was hunting on New Year’s Eve. The woods of the Scottish highlands in 1926 were as pretty as a picture as I tracked two partygoers who’d sneaked off for a chilly game of slap-and-tickle.
The stink of their fear as I chased them was sauce on game, lemon in tea, whiskey on cake. My stomach wasn’t actually growling, but the idea was amusing. Every time I ate, it was as if I were rediscovering the act, finding some nuance revealed, some ecstasy not yet explored. Terror, exhaustion, and confusion added indefinably exquisite layers to taste. Maybe we lacked the need for other mortal organs, but vampire senses and appetites were enhanced to joy almost beyond bearing.
My hunger lent lightness to my step and wings to my feet. I’d cast off my dainty dancing slippers, rather than lose them—I’ve always taken care of my nice things—and gave in to the chase so quickly, I made no tracks on the snow.
The pair were weighed down with their meaty mortal bodies, their fear, and their clumsy will to live. They had no concept of what living was. Despite their every pretense at decadence, this would be the most lively night of their lives. It would be my gift to them.
A faint rustle, a skitter of ice pellets across the crust of snow. A rabbit? Some bird stirring?
My pace slowed as I warily tried to identify the source of the noise.
Another vampire, a stranger. There might be additional violence before the evening was through.
Best not to anticipate. It could as easily be happy violence as angry. Either would please me.
Like a breath, the rustling was gone. My fellow hunter had gone ahead, like a lioness circling around prey.
A shriek in a clearing ahead of me. The other vampire had appeared out of nowhere. She set down a lantern on a stump.
The light showed a man who’d been stopped by a slight woman, apparently in her late twenties, her black hair in a fashionable shingle, ornamented with sparkling jewels and graceful white feathers. The beads of the fringe on her dress were green on white silk, and the way they swayed reminded me of windblown pine boughs.
Her mouth was perfectly formed, a Cupid’s bow in scarlet that matched her nails. I had not seen such pallid perfection in skin since meeting Eric. Her features hinted at a delightful mix of Asian and European ancestry.
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