by Ashley Mason
Copyright © 2013 Ashley Mason
All rights reserved by the Author
A&K Publishing
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events in this novel are fictitious and resemblance to real persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. No part of this novel may be reproduced, stored or transmitted without the prior permission in writing from the author.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. If you would like to share this book with another person, please do. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
To Tricia– Thank you for being the first to really push me at something I never thought I would be any good at.
To Kristina– Thank you for giving me the drive to finish.
The first thing she felt against her cold, naked thigh was the hot skin of a man’s hand. Her flesh under his was hard and unyielding, a strange sensation. Everything about her was stiff and rigid, frozen in an unmoving state.
“She’s hot…even if…dead.” The man’s voice was hard and brutal. His words came in and out of focus, the girl unable to clearly hear everything he said. It was like someone kept hitting the mute button over and over.
Mute, unmute, mute, unmute.
Not only did it seem like her hearing was going, but she wasn’t able to see anything either. The room was shrouded in darkness, like she had gone blind. The loss of these sensations only heightened her sense of touch, her skin pimpling with gooseflesh under the stranger’s rough and callused hands.
‘Ok, just focus on one thing at a time.’ She could sense her fingertips, knew where they were, but she couldn’t seem to make them move. The feel of the man’s hand roaming higher on her body, heading for her stomach, kept breaking her concentration making it almost impossible for her to do what she knew had to be done.
“Man, hurry…get…done. This place…creeps…”
The change was almost unnoticeable, but the girl on the metal table felt a strange kind of warmth slowly spiraling out from her core; tendrils of heat and strength moving from her gut out to the tips of her fingers and toes, igniting even the strands of her hair. But still she couldn’t move. He was now fondling her chest, touching her in places that she somehow knew had never been touched before. A feeling of rage and a surge of strength shot through her once more and suddenly she knew, if she tried once more, she would be able to move.
With the slightest thought, her arm shot up, her delicate fingers wrapping cruelly around the man’s thick throat, instantly crushing his windpipe. His eyes widened in shock and fear, his hands trying unsuccessfully to pull hers from his throat. He gave one last wheezing breath before collapsing to the floor, his lips having turned a delicate shade of blue.
Slowly she opened her eyes and took her first look around the room. It reminded her of a morgue like off of her favorite cop shows. The walls were painted a dull and boring cadet gray with a matching floor. There were several stainless steel tables and metal doors in the wall for storing dead bodies, drains in the floor and big bright lights on revolving stands.
“Where-,” Her voice cracked, parched as though she’d been left out in the desert for days with no water. She pressed a frigid hand to her cool forehead as she tried to remember how she had ended up in a morgue, naked and laying on an examination table. The girl hadn’t even spared a second glance for the dead man or for his partner who was still backed into a corner where he had retreated in fear, staring at her like he was seeing a ghost. There was a deep pulsing ache in her head, like she had a hangover and she was thirsty…so thirsty. The desire for something to drink seemed to be slowly filling her throat and mouth, moving south, until she felt as though she would burst. Every inch of her ached and throbbed, her veins feeling as though they had collapsed beneath her skin. Her skin felt dry like sandpaper and tissue thin, as though it would tear right off.
She had to force her mind past the gnawing thirst in her throat to look over at the silent man, narrowing her eyes and wondering at the strangely sharp image before her. He seemed almost to be backlit in a glowing red light that seemed to almost pulse around him. Just looking at the frightened man seemed to aggravate her thirst further. She gave a slight shake of her head, silvery blonde hair floating around her shoulders like a cloud of spun sugar.
“Where…am I?” she croaked, rubbing her fingers tentatively down her throat to try and ease the pain. The grown man squeaked then started to cry, a dark stain slowly spreading across the front of his pants.
“I-I don’t know…Please, I have no clue. You…you’re supposed to be-“ His sobbing choked off the rest of his words and then he seemed to lose all feeling in his legs as the man slid silently to the floor, out cold for the moment. He seemed to be out cold, his body giving a little jerk or two as if he were dreaming.
Taking a deep breath, the girl sat up and slowly swung her legs over the edge of the cold metal table beneath her; the white cloth that must have at one point been covering her slipped to the floor to lie in a puddle below her long legs. As she lifted herself down, the table rolled several feet away from her and she stumbled forward, catching herself on one of the numerous metal doors. As she steadied herself, she glanced down at the desk beside her, a photo clipped to a file catching her eye.
Something about the young woman was disturbingly familiar and even though she didn’t know who she was…she knew the girl in the photo was in fact her. There was no doubt in her mind. Everything from the long flowing hair to the dark, nearly black eyes was her. “Name…there has to be a name…” Finally able to stand on her own, the girl snatched up the file and ripped it open; her eyes searching the cover page for the name she knew would be on there.
There it was. It was such a simple thing, a name, but it was the only thing that felt solid and real to her at that point.
Name: Tessa Gwendolyn Rake
Age: 22
Cause of Death: Animal Attack
‘Wait a minute…cause of DEATH?’ Tessa, because that was who she was, didn’t even notice as the folder and photo slipped from her grasp. That hadn’t been nearly everything in the report but they were the only three lines that had caught her attention. But…cause of death? That would mean that she was…dead. Her legs went weak once more and she had to steady herself against the deck.
“No…no way.” Her head whipped around, searching for a mirror. There, above a small wash sink, was a piece of small reflective glass that would confirm that it was all a mistake. That she, Tessa Rake, was in fact not dead but just…well, anything but dead. She ran to the sink, stopping herself with a hand to the mirror, covering her reflection. Taking a deep breath, Tessa slowly looked up at the same time that she lowered her hand.
Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw. In many ways, she was still the young woman in the photo. Her hair was a strange silvery gold, like moonlit sunflowers, if you could imagine such a thing. But her eyes were the exact opposite, an obsidian black in color with bright purple flecks laced through the dark. Or at least, that was what they looked like in the photo. It was hard at the moment to see any color in the dead, glazed over eyes that looked back at Tessa in the mirror; it was something straight out of a zombie movie. Luckily nothing else was very zombie-ish about her. Just pale white, flawless skin and long dark eyelashes. Her lips, normally a very healthy pink, were now just a lifeless washed out version of their normal color. And, to top it off, she was very naked and had two perfect puncture wounds in the side of her long graceful neck.
Animal attack
Bull shit.
A small groan from behind her brought Tessa back from the edge of absolute panic; her head turning slowly to find the source of the path
etic sound. The man was slowly coming to, cradling his head and whispering about a dead girl. Again, that raging thirst seemed to swell in Tessa’s throat, making it extremely difficult to breath or to even think clearly. The red glow was still present, now more clearly defined that he was awake. It seemed to swell and edge with every breath he took, with every beat of his heart.
Before she knew what she was doing, Tessa had taken a few steps towards him, slowly closing the distance, her bare feet making no noise on the cement floor. Suddenly, she could smell him, a coppery sweet smell that seemed to take over every other sense she had at her disposal. She took two more steps and suddenly he was right before her. He had finally looked up and was crying but she couldn’t focus on any of the words coming out of his mouth. They just sounded like gibberish to her and she found herself completely disinterested. All she could think about was the red glow about him and the painful thirst she was experiencing. It hadn’t even occurred to her to get a drink from the sink. The thought of water was almost…disgusting. Tessa slowly knelt and reached out, grabbing the man’s wrist and jerking him forward till he was pressed against her. His crying and sobbing become louder and more obnoxious as he feebly tried to pull from her steely grasp.
“Are you scared?” Tessa's voice was soft and sweet with a slight edge to it. He was nodding vigorously, still trying to pull away. “I was scared too. Can you imagine waking up in a place like this? Waking up to what your friend was doing to me? Try to imagine that for me, just for a moment.”
“I-I’m sorry! So sorry! He-he was a freak! But he paid me good money! Besides, you were…you were-“
Tessa felt a small smile slip into place, the corners of it dented as something sharp seemed to fill her mouth.
‘Strange…’
“Dead?” the man gulped loudly, nodding once. “Well, I guess you and your buddy were wrong, weren’t you?”
“Yes! Wrong, we were very, very wrong!” She leaned forward, burrowing her face in his neck and breathing in his scent deeply. Tessa wasn’t sure exactly what it was she was doing but she knew it was what she wanted. There was something in her screaming that the life blood coursing through his body was the only thing that would quench the horrible thirst that threatened to consume her. The voice was screaming at her to drink, to drink till she was full and to not stop till the man’s heart stopped.
To do it before it was too late.
Tessa knew that she should be repulsed by the thought of drinking blood but she wasn’t. She was excited by it.
Tessa laid a light kiss on the man’s neck and he sobbed once more before she sank her fangs into the soft flesh of his neck. Because she now knew that was what those sharp things in her mouth were.
Fangs.
They were hypodermic needle thin, the tips sliding easily through skin and muscle to reach the throbbing vein bursting with blood. As soon as they pierced that vein, the man’s blood flowed rich and thick into Tessa’s mouth, the taste more exquisite than anything she had ever tasted before in her life. She nearly sighed in relief but didn’t since that would have required her to stop. The more blood she drank the less painful her thirst became until it was almost gone. Soon, the flow of blood started to ebb as the man’s heart started to slow until finally it stopped and Tessa pulled away as the voice in her head screamed at her to do. The dead man dropped from her arms and she stood, every inch of her body imbued with strength that seemed almost inhuman. All her senses were heightened frighteningly so. Everything sparkled with brilliance, including colors she had never even seen before. She could hear cars out on the street three floors above her and everything in between. Tessa even felt a miniscule breeze that had found its way down to the subterranean floor. It tickled its way across her flesh, raising goose bumps in its wake.
She once again returned to the mirror, smiling slowly at her reflection. Gone were the horror movie eyes, replaced with the dark obsidian irises from the photo. Only now they seemed more purple than black. Her skin was still pale but there seemed a slight flush to it as the man’s blood coursed through her.
And her lips were the brightest shade of scarlet.
Beautiful.
As her smile grew, she stopped short, brought up by the sight of the sharp fangs in her mouth. They were perfectly white and unmarked, not a single drop of blood spilled or wasted.
That was when the terror kicked in. Now that the thirst was gone, Tessa was finally able to grasp the severity of her situation. Dead. She was really and truly dead.
A vampire.
Tessa screamed.
The sound was so loud and sharp that the mirror in front of her cracked and she shot back in surprise, tripping over her own feet and landing hard on the cold floor. With a soft groan, she pulled herself up with the use of her autopsy table, because that’s what it was. Her legs were so shaky they hardly seemed reliable enough to support her own weight.
“This is a dream, it has to be. I have to go…I have to go home.” Only one problem with that. She was completely naked so she quickly pulled her long hair in front of both of her shoulders to cover what she could. Glancing around sharply, Tessa caught sight of a long white lab coat hanging on the back of a door and quickly snatched it off its hook, wrapping it around her body and buttoning it up. “Shoes, shoes, shoes…” She dashed over the desk, pulling open the big bottom drawer, relieved that it wasn’t locked. “Bingo.” In the bottom of the drawer was a pair of strappy black heels and what looked like a set of spare clothes. Not caring that the shoes were at least a whole size too small, Tessa pulled them on and quietly pulled open the door that led from the room.
Darkness.
Or at least she thought the corridor beyond was dark. Her eyesight was a little strange; instead of the inky black she knew should fill the hall, it looked more like quicksilver covered everything, highlighting every nook and cranny clearly and in great detail. A mouse scurried across the path in front of her and instead of silver it was more reddish brown and it was surrounded by a faint pulsing red light. Normally, the sight of a mouse would send her running but instead the smell of its blood caused her to stop and sniff the air. While her body knew it was the same as the life giving liquid she had taken from the man back in the room, this small creature’s blood just didn’t seem as…interesting.
Once the mouse was out of sight she was on the move again, heading down the corridor to the large elevator at the end. Tessa quickly jabbed the button to send for the elevator and didn’t take another breath till the doors opened to allow her entrance. Glimpsing at the floors, she found the button with the L and hit it, hoping that no one would be in the lobby when she got there. This situation was not something she wanted to try and explain.
Luckily, when she stepped off and the doors slid shut behind her, she found the entire lobby empty and dark as well. Heading swiftly for the front doors, she noticed that the silver of the room faded as she got closer to the doors where light from a street lamp outside spilled a warm glow in through the huge window filled front of the building. After unlocking the door and stepping out onto the sidewalk she looked around to get her bearings, trying to figure out where she was and where she was going. Everything from before was still fuzzy but something was trying to break free. A name but what name? Tessa squeezed her eyes shut then smiled.
Penelope. Penelope Byrd, her very best friend who only lived about 2 miles from the city morgue, the building that Tessa was outside of. That meant she was a good hour from home with no car and no cash for a cab. Things were slowly coming back to her but nothing else seemed so very important at that point. She had a friend and that friend had an apartment filled with clothes, had a shower, and a spare bed that she knew Penelope would let her crash on. She still wasn’t sure what city she was in but that didn’t matter at that point.
“Great. Penny’s it is. She is going to flip…” Hunkering down further into her borrowed coat, she set off down the street, refusing to look up at anyone she happened to pass on the mostly deserted street
s. For the most part they left her alone as well, only one or two drunks whistling and calling out to her as she passed bars that seemed to be closing for the night. That meant it was nearly two in the morning and she could only hope that Penny was home and not staying somewhere else for the night. Despite the fact that everyone mostly ignored her, Tessa still felt like she was being watched. Also, she could hear faintly the sound of footsteps that matched her own. It was amazing what differences her ears did pick up though. The stride, though quiet, was heavier than hers and longer spaced as well so she knew it was a long legged male that followed her, if he was indeed following her. About a mile into her walk, she turned down a side street and, sure enough, the footsteps followed. Every turn she took, the man followed until finally her curiosity got the better of her. Besides, what did she have to be afraid of now anyways? Weren’t vampires supposed to have superhuman strength or something?
Without giving any warning, Tessa stopped and turned to face her stalker. He was maybe 50 feet behind her and she could see him clearly. The man had stopped directly beneath a streetlight and its light allowed her to see him in complete detail. The moment their eyes met, Tessa’s memory of the last couple of days slammed into her, tearing a shocked gasp from her throat. Her breathing became rapid and ragged as she seemed to lose herself in his gaze.
Her and Penelope at a café, studying. Then at Penny’s apartment changing for a night of fun. A dark club and cute guys buying those drinks till Tessa could barely stand on her own two feet. Something was….off though. She could remember catching glimpses of the guy she was looking at now throughout the night. But he had never approached her and she remembered having been upset about it. At least, she didn’t recall them ever speaking. So why was he here, now, following her after she had escaped death? Did he have something to do with her…change?
“Who the hell are you? What do you want?” The man tilted his head slightly to the side and held out his hands to show that he didn’t have a weapon. Not that Tessa was particularly worried.
