Either way, she didn’t know I was a vampire when her fangs descended into my skin.
She didn’t know I was a vampire as my blood began to spill down my neck, into her waiting mouth.
She didn’t know I was a vampire when she swallowed gulp after gulp of my blood.
But she did know when she…stopped.
She stared up at me, stricken. Her eyes were wide, her sunglasses having fallen off the bridge of her nose and lost below us against the darkness of the floor, between the writhing bodies surrounding us. Her gaze locked with mine as her fingernails twisted in my side, as she squeezed my hand so tightly, I wondered if my bones were breaking.
“You’re…you’re…” she whispered, her chest heaving, my blood glistening on her lips.
“Married,” I murmured to her, leaning close. My lips turned up in a half-smile. “And you tried to kill my wife, once. Something I don’t think I can ever quite forgive.”
Her fingernails, embedded in my skin, released as she staggered backward. As she let go of me, her eyes wide, her face stricken.
“So I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I wasn’t delicious,” I growled.
And Darcy fell to her knees on the dance floor.
The moment she did, the music certainly continued, the throb of the bass pulsing through the crowd, but the crowd itself rippled into silence, starting from the small circle that formed around Darcy, out to the corners and outer edges of the ballroom itself.
And then, almost as if the power cords had been unplugged…
The music ceased.
Darcy slumped down farther, back onto her heels, and then down onto her hip and thigh on the floor, placing her gloved hands against the tiles, panting for breath, my blood coursing out of her mouth and down her chin.
“Someone’s hurt!” someone cried out.
“Turn on the lights!”
And, just like that, the overhead lights were turned on.
And the scene before me was visible in all of its ghastly glory.
No more was Darcy shrouded by the kind veil of darkness. Now, her incredibly pale face was visible, the hat knocked off her head by her topple and sitting beside her on the floor.
I could see her face clearly now.
And I took a step backward in disgust.
She was half rotten. Or, at least, her skin had the appearance of rottenness, her cheek sunken in beneath her left eye, a tatter of flesh drooping over her jowl. Her eyes were still shadowed by her form, but in the bright light from the overhead chandeliers with their thousands of bulbs, I could see that they were a sort of milky gray.
I would have thought she almost looked pitiful, hunched over on the ground, panting for breath.
But then she looked up at me, her eyes narrowed…
And she snarled.
“She’s a vampire,” Darcy barked, then coughed. “I drank her blood, and she’s a fucking vampire. She poisoned me.”
“What?! No!” came a familiar voice, and then not-Melody was there, kneeling beside Darcy, throwing her arms about the gasping woman. “No! You drank her?”
“Yes,” murmured Darcy, and then she heaved, blood pouring out of her mouth. My blood…
And her own.
She began to spasm on the floor, the poison of my vampire’s blood, what should never, ever be taken by other vampires, coursing through her. I know now that vampire blood is the most potent poison that a vampire can consume.
But what I knew then was this:
Darcy was dying.
Again.
“No…” Melody sobbed, clinging tightly to Darcy’s body as she convulsed. Melody’s long, red waves fell around her shoulders, draping around Darcy’s body, too, hiding the two of them from view as Melody clung to the dying vampire.
It didn’t take long. Perhaps a handful of heartbeats.
And then Darcy was perfectly still.
Melody was sobbing so hard that she couldn’t find her breath. She held tightly to Darcy’s body, rocking back and forth on the floor, surrounding by a spreading pool of the blood that foamed out of Darcy’s mouth, her fangs bright white and bloodied in the light.
Finally, she glanced up at me, her eyes rimmed round with red from weeping.
But it was only the work of a heartbeat, when she saw me, for her face to contort into a wicked snarl.
“You killed her. It took so much to bring her back, and you’ve killed her. I can’t bring her back again…she’s lost to me forever now.”
I stared down at her, quiet. I clearly knew what it was like to lose the love of your life. I had sympathy for her, simply because I knew the depths of that pain.
But the sympathy ended quickly when I remembered what Darcy had done.
What Melody had planned to do.
She wanted to kill me, to create this exact same pain in Kane.
And my sympathy evaporated.
“I brought her back from the dead,” Melody snarled, letting Darcy’s body settle gently to the ground. She rose, her hands balled into fists, our mingled blood on the skin of her palms, her fingers, as she stared at me, her nostrils flaring. “And now she’s lost to me forever.”
I’d just been turned into a vampire. People being brought back from the dead was probably around number twenty on my list of “strangest things that happened to me this week,” but as Melody snarled, as she set me in her sights, I took a step backward.
I’d just been bitten and had my blood taken from me. I was weakened by this (and by the fact that I had just been turned into a vampire). I wasn’t ready for an all out fight.
But it didn’t matter if I was ready or not.
For here Melody came, intent on destroying me.
Containing the purest fury, she raced across the relatively small space between us in an instant, reaching me before I could even react. It would live in my memory for always, her snarl, her teeth distended and as sharp as daggers as she ran across the space between us, her crimson gown flaring out behind her like a bloody flag. When she reached me, she wasted no time. She had the upper hand—I hadn’t expected her.
She threw me to the ground.
I hit the black and red tiles with my shoulder and slid a few paces from the impact. As I hit the ground, I heard a terrible crack in my shoulder blade, and I cried out from the intense, searing pain that blossomed there.
But I didn’t have time to dwell on it, because Melody was suddenly there, looming over me with a savage smile on her lips, growling in delight as her hands were suddenly at my throat, as her fingernails embedded themselves into my skin…
An arm came about Melody’s shoulders and dragged her off of me. I gasped for breath as I stared up at my savior…
Kane.
Kane held tightly to Melody as the vampire snarled and struggled, as she bit and clawed, trying to find purchase on Kane to do her harm. But for Kane’s part, she simply held tightly and refused to let go.
Eventually, Melody sagged against her, gasping for breath.
And it was then that her face—my old face, that of Melody—faded away.
And it was replaced by the vampire I’d seen in the mirror that morning. Blonde hair, pretty…but certainly not Melody.
“Who is involved in this?” asked Kane, glancing around the room. “Who helped this person bring Darcy back?”
Kane was glancing away from me, her gaze scouring the room, as I lay, gasping on the ground. I couldn’t find air. I pressed my hand over the claw marks in my neck when I felt a warm palm drift over my cheek.
I turned, my skin blossoming to goose flesh, as I stared up at the woman who crouched beside me then.
She moved like a panther, slow and sure and remarkably powerful as she sat back on her heels on the tile floor behind me, her palm still almost lovingly held against my cheek.
Like Kane, she had long, white-blonde hair, but hers was full of sumptuous waves.
And, like Kane, she possessed and inherent power that emanated from her.
“I’m surprised
you even had to ask, Kane,” the woman beside me murmured quietly.
Her voice was quiet, yes…but still, somehow, her words seemed to carry across the stillness of the room, the ballroom so quiet now, so quiet, that you could hear the not-Melody’s sobs against Kane as she finally ceased her struggles.
Kane turned, and her eyes lighted on the woman beside me.
And she stiffened, her mouth downturning subtly into a soft frown.
“Magdalena,” said Kane.
Magdalena.
The woman who had murdered me, long ago. And she crouched now beside me, her palm against my cheek, her hands dangerously close to my neck.
I stiffened as Magdalena traced a tender path over that cheek with her forefinger again and again, gazing down at me with a soft smile.
“She’s very pretty, Kane,” she almost purred into the stillness. “I can see why you find her attractive. Pity, that.”
“Magdalena,” Kane began, but Magdalena’s gaze rose to meet Kane’s.
And she shook her head gently.
“Were you going to tell me not to do this?” she asked, almost whispering it into the stillness.
And then her pretty hand found my throat.
“Magdalena,” growled Kane, her voice hard and dark, her eyes darkening, too. “Do not hurt her.”
“Why?” asked Magdalena, her head to the side, as if she was asking a genuine question. “Why shouldn’t I hurt her? I’ve been going to a lot of extraordinary trouble to hurt you, Kane, and—please stop me if I’m wrong—but I think you genuinely love this woman. No?”
Her grip on my throat tightened, and I could feel the back of my head being pushed into the tiles beneath me.
I gasped for breath, red dotting the corners of my vision, the tightness at my neck unfurling from uncomfortable to unbearable in a heartbeat.
“So,” said Magdalena, voice light, “if I kill this woman, it will definitely hurt you, won’t it, Kane?”
“You can’t kill her,” said Kane, lifting her chin, her eyes flashing. “Because…you killed her once before.”
This made Magdalena pause, made her grip on my throat lessen slightly as she stiffened, as she glanced up at Kane.
“Pardon?”
Kane breathed out. “You killed her once before, Magdalena. Rose was once my lover, Melody. You killed Melody over a hundred years ago to try to weaken me. But she couldn’t be stopped. She came back. She triumphed over death to find me. She…vanquished you and all your plans.”
Magdalena glanced down at me, and she looked genuinely shocked as she searched my face. But then she laughed.
“What a story! Next you’ll tell me you’ve learned how to sprout wings,” Magdalena purred.
“You set…fire…to my door…” I gasped, beneath her hand. “You killed me on the night I was supposed to marry Kane…”
Magdalena’s eyes widened, but only for a heartbeat. “Kane could have told you as much. There’s literally no proof…” Flustered, she cleared her throat. “And even if this was true, what would it matter?”
“It matters because you are constantly trying to overpower me,” said Kane steadily, her voice rising to be heard by all, “and you constantly fail. It matters because Rose, a human, loved me so deeply and irrevocably that she conquered death to find me again. A human conquered death…for a vampire.” Kane lifted her gaze, glanced about at her fellow vampires. “You all know that what Magdalena believes is wrong. You know that humans are so much more than what we take from them. We were once humans ourselves, and we can never forget where we came from. Magdalena is wrong, and she has been wrong all this time as she tries to tell you that I am weak or unworthy of your loyalty.” Kane lifted her chin, too, her eyes flashing brightly. “But Magdalena brought my killer back to life in order to subdue me. She will stop at nothing for power, and if any one of you stood in her way, she would make certain that you were destroyed, too. If you are loyal to me, you are loyal because you believe as I believe, or because you know that I will stand by you. I am fair. And Magdalena is not.”
It was a simple, eloquent speech, but the crowd around us began to whisper among themselves.
They had seen, and clearly, that Magdalena had done whatever was required to bring Darcy back from the dead…just to destroy Kane.
I would come to find out that, to a vampire, loyalty is paramount. After all, if your life is elongated so much that you appear immortal to a human…loyalty is the only thing you end up treasuring.
And Kane was right.
She was loyal.
And Magdalena was grasping and vicious and power-hungry.
And she would stop at nothing to get what she wanted.
There was no loyalty to her. Not a single drop.
Magdalena glanced around at the crowd. She could tell the tide was turning, and she let me go, standing quickly and smoothly, obviously trying to mitigate the situation. She laughed a little, her head to the side. “Kane would rather the humans subjugate us. We are the dominant species, and we deserve to thrive—” she began, but someone else stepped forward. A man who appeared to be in his forties, his eyes green and gleaming in the overhead lights, his suit as red as blood, and his beard peppered with gray hair.
“Did you really bring Darcy back, Magdalena?” he asked, incredulous
Magdalena stiffened.
“Of course I did,” she snarled then, after considering her options for a moment.
“Then that means—” the man began, but Magdalena beat him to it.
“To bring back one vampire, twelve must be sacrificed,” she said with an uncanny smile. “And this I did. Yes.”
The crowd around her, almost imperceptibly, pulled back from her.
Magdalena glanced about her, her face in a careful, neutral mask now…but it was too late.
They knew what she’d done for power.
And it was unforgivable.
There are laws among the vampires. Laws are put in place, and have been since the dawn of time, by every society that has ever existed, because laws of consequence, of what is right and wrong, define us as thinking, feeling beings. This is true whether we are humans or vampires or anything else with language and culture and civilization.
Laws are required so that we do not descend into chaos.
And vampire law?
It’s simple:
You can kill a vampire in hand to hand combat, or because you’re quarreling.
But you cannot kill more than one at a time, and you cannot kill them in cold blood.
Both of these conventions are those that Magdalena broke, in order to destroy Kane.
And now it’d come to light.
Those who were loyal to Magdalena, who—perhaps—believed like her, that humans simply exist to drink from, could no longer support her.
At least…not in the open.
Magdalena gazed about at the assembled people, and for a single moment, her calm countenance cracked. She looked almost petulant in her rage as she glanced around her, and then back at Kane.
“No—” she began, but whatever else she’d been about to say was silenced. For Bran stepped forward, out of the crowd, and placed a hand on Magdalena’s shoulder.
“It’s over,” Bran whispered. “You’ve got to go.”
“No,” Magdalena snarled, and stepped out from under the weight of Bran’s palm. She whirled about, her hands clenching into fists as she gazed at everyone with wild eyes. “Come to me, now,” said Magdalena, flinging her head back, her gorgeous hair spilling over her shoulders, her smile cruel. “Let us stand together and defeat all the weakness that Kane stands for. Now!”
Tommie’s friend, Francesca, stepped forward too, shaking her head adamantly. “No, Magdalena. You know the punishment when you break the law.”
“Banishment,” was whispered among the people, the whisper soft, in the beginning, but growing louder in its sibilance, like a great ocean wave, set to come crashing down on us all.
Banishment.
Magdalena glanced about wildly, shaking her head. “No,” she said, and she said it again, plaintively this time. “No. Stand with me, my friends!”
Tommie came through the crowd beside Francesca, her jaw set.
“We are no friends of yours,” she murmured.
Magdalena stepped backward into the sea of people, glancing about herself, eyes wide and horrified as they circled around her, closing in on her.
“Banishment.”
Kane let the not-Melody go, her jaw set, too. The woman was still sobbing, and she crouched beside the crumpled body of Darcy, clutching her tightly until she was pulled off—not unkindly—by Bran.
I sat up, wincing, my hand at my throat as I felt the wounds made there. I could feel the pain searing through me, but at the same time, I could feel this strange sensation…like my skin rippling beneath my fingers.
My wounds were healing themselves.
“Kane!” Magdalena called out from the throng of people tightly moving around her, holding her in place. “I will come for you again. I will find you, and I will destroy you…it is inevitable.”
Kane lifted her chin, her eyes dark.
“No, Magdalena,” she said. “The only thing inevitable is that I will stop you once more.”
Then, Magdalena made no other sounds as she was dragged from the room, her teeth gnashing together, pure rage and anguish radiating from her in equal parts.
Kane moved across the space between us, and then there was no space at all as she wrapped me in her arms, as she sighed out into relief, pressing her mouth to the top of my head.
“Are you all right?” she whispered to me.
“Yes,” I answered, gripping her just as tightly as she gripped me.
The dreadful part was over. The plot against Kane was thwarted.
I was not dead.
And it was my wedding night.
As I tilted up my chin, as I brushed my mouth against Kane’s, she responded, cradling me to her, her fingers deep in my hair, her warmth surrounding me and holding me and completing me.
Just as I completed her.
And we kissed on the floor of the ballroom, so tangled up in one another that the very earth moved around us and finally let us be.
Choosing Eternity Page 17
