My tormentor continued on toward me, barreling me back against the wall hard enough to dent the brickwork. I was stunned, and my opportunity to fight back vanished as a male vampire lifted me off the floor by the neck.
I gave a squealing intake of breath. I did not try to break the hold he had over me, as I was unwilling to give away what level of physical strength I had. “Ahhhh, Lucien. This is a pleasure.” So much for dignified strangulation. Not needing to breath came in handy.
Lucien was a tall man, approximately six and a half feet, one of the prettiest men I had ever seen. Long, shoulder length ash blond hair framed a perfectly sculpted face; laugh lines creased the perfect mouth, grey eyes burned from under thick, blond lashes. Broad shoulders, slim hips, muscles standing out beneath silky skin, he was every mortal woman’s wet dream.
Pity he was not interested in any woman’s flesh, beyond the problem of removing it from muscle and sinew, plus he was dead to boot.
I felt another presence come up to stand behind him, arms crossed, self-satisfied smirk firmly in place. This middle-aged, dark-haired man with blazing red eyes and good-natured features tapped Lucien on the arm and gestured for him to let me go.
Lucien did so with grotesque obedience, and I fell to the ground with a crash.
As I rubbed my throat I glared up at him. “Thanks ever so much, meat head.”
Lucien growled, and only the restraining hand of the newcomer on his arm stopped him from bouncing me around the room. From behind me, Bronwyn drew a hissing, strangled breath, as she struggled against Allenby, of all people.
The look in my eyes promised lethal injury if he harmed her. To his credit, he took me seriously and contented himself with just holding her, refraining from the lewd whispered comments and boasts of his amazing sexual endeavors. What a moron—Bronwyn would have known that whatever was true of me physically would also have been true of him. He would never again fuck so much as a blow-up sheep.
A hand touched my arm, and I shied away from it, knowing it belonged to the man with burning red eyes, demonic in aspect. His voice caressed me in a way that I’d always hated. “Eleanor. It’s truly a pleasure to see you again.”
I looked at him, jaw clenched as Bronwyn stared at us wide-eyed.
“David, you sorry bastard, why the hell don’t you just leave me the fuck alone?” I shied away from his grotesque, intimate touch and the quick, cold peck on my cheek.
He ran a finger along my jaw as Lucien grabbed my arms in a bone-crushing grip. I struggled in his grasp and pulled my face away from the offensive David.
“No matter.” His voice was a gentle whisper, and he truly looked offended by my lack of regard. “Our master is here now.”
I snarled at him, pulling back my lips to reveal my fangs. “I have no master.”
If Aristotle were here, it could mean only one thing. Bronwyn and I had to get away before he truly ended my existence.
I struggled harder. Lucien laughed at my efforts, and David looked on with grotesque, unwanted sympathy. A figure appeared in the shattered glass of the bay window. It glanced at the destruction in distaste, then sniffed in disapproval, and walked through with a kind of prissy daintiness that made me almost grind my teeth in frustration.
Just as I remembered him.
Tall and athletic, slicked down brown hair, burning, brown eyes hidden behind gold John Lennon spectacles that he didn’t need. In his long-fingered, soft-looking hand, of course, he carried a book.
I could never figure out why he insisted on looking like that. He looked like a turn of the century dweeb. Jerk.
He finished reading his paragraph and then fussily marked his place in the book with a bookmark.
“Ah, Eleanor. It’s good to see you.” He was the picture of smiling congeniality.
“Aristotle. The pleasure is not mine, nor will it ever be.” I gave him a bright, sunny smile. Bronwyn looked at me, wide-eyed, tense.
He smiled briefly, studying me as one would study an insect under a magnifying glass. I wondered if he’d fried lots of ants in the sunlight as a youngster.
“Tsk, tsk, no need for such bitterness.” His lips puckered in displeasure at my disrespect. Then he leaned forward, voice low and dangerously soft. “You’ve been a very, very, very bad little girl, Eleanor.”
“So spank me.” My voice dripped with sarcasm as malevolence shone bright in my eyes.
He regarded me with icy cold eyes, and then he snorted. “I believe I’ll leave that up to your sadly ignored spouse.”
Lucien and Allenby tittered, as David’s stony face remained expressionless. I heard a hissing intake of breath behind me as Bronwyn registered what he’d just said.
Aristotle turned to her swift as a striking snake, and my heart sank to somewhere below floor level. I had hoped we could escape this—
that I could tell her of it in my own way. Oh, hell, who was I kidding?
I’d hoped to avoid them until after she was gone from old age, and then let them have their wicked way with me, if they could find me.
The arseholes had just blown all my carefully constructed plans all to hell.
“Didn’t you know, little mortal girl?” His words were calm and inexorable. He shook his head in disgust. “What a way to find out. You are truly a mutant, Eleanor.”
With that, he flicked his coat tails, and left the destruction of the house as carefully as he’d entered it, leaving his eager henchmen behind.
David turned and exchanged a meaningful glance with Lucien and Allenby. Lucien tightened his grip on me as Allenby threw Bronwyn into David’s arms.
Holding her gently as she struggled, he turned and raised an eyebrow at me.
I already knew what he was going to do, and I prayed wildly to whatever god would listen that a bolt of lightning hit them all where they stood. I struggled mightily against Lucien’s iron grip.
It was not to be.
Slowly, inexorably, David’s fangs extended and plunged deep into Bronwyn’s throat, and matching screams emerged from both of us.
Her struggles ceased by slow inches as he drained her of her blood.
As she became still, so did I, losing my will to live, to fight. Lucien released me.
David dropped her, rudely smacking his lips, and nonchalantly picked a tooth as I barreled past him to cradle Bronwyn’s still form in my arms.
Every nerve ending screamed in shock and pain, the salty, bitter tears flowed down my face, soaking my shirt front as my cries of anguish sounded throughout the night. “No, Bronwyn, No!”
My keen hearing picked up her faint heartbeat. The blessed sound filtered through my system, and I felt myself slipping to shock.
“Take them downstairs. We’ll finish it this evening. It’s too close to dawn for my liking.” David nodded and walked out, but not before his casual, congenial air was broken by the savage kick he aimed at my ribs.
“We can’t leave them together.” Allenby looked at Lucien, then at us.
Lucien shrugged. “Who cares? Do you really think Crowley here is going to do anything?”
“If she does . . .” Allenby’s voice trailed off with a smirk.
With none too gentle arms, they tore us apart and dragged our unresisting bodies through our house to the door to my lair. They threw us downstairs into my basement hideaway, and we tumbled down the steep, protesting stairs, Bronwyn’s dead weight landing on top of me.
Lucien giggled—a cold, triumphant, grotesque sound. He exchanged a quick, superior smirk with his buddies and locked the door behind them.
I paid only half a mind to it, knowing only Bronwyn, her mortal life nearing its close.
I held her tenderly, numb with shock and pain. Slowly her soft voice filtered into my consciousness.
“Eleanor? Pretty.”
I smiled gently, trying to control my tears. “Eleanor Carlisle Crowley.”
“David is your husband.”
“Was. Technically he’s a widower since I died before him. So no, I’m not married.” The tears ran out of both of our eyes, unchecked.
The look of pure betrayal in her eyes was heartbreaking. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
I hung my head in shame. For that inexcusable lapse there was no answer.
“I love you.”
“I love you too, my beloved mortal.”
“It’s time. It’s time.”
She meant she was dying.
I could not live without her. I just couldn’t do it. Life without her sweet smile, gentle green eyes, and playful spirit? Her cries of passion and love would haunt me to the end of time.
My voice was a whisper, impulse and selfishness driving me forward. “It doesn’t have to be.”
Her dazed and dimming eyes met mine, and I could see that she knew exactly what I was saying. She was grasping at the line I held out to her.
“You love me now. You probably won’t after I’ve done it.”
“Please. I want you. It’s all I ever wanted.” The beseeching whisper strained my battered and aching heart even more. “In death.”
“Until life do us part.” My lover lay dying, and I was still being me.
“Now, Crowley.”
I sighed and kissed her goodbye for what would probably be the last time. Like most vampire marriages, we were probably not going to respect each other in the morning. The grief caused fresh tears to come to my eyes. At least she would still be alive, and I could still see her, even if she wanted nothing to do with me anymore.
Steeling myself, I nicked a wrist with a sharp fang.
“Drink. When you wake up you’ll be just like me.”
I yelped in pain as the blood flowed out of my body and into hers, leaving my nerve endings seared and jangling.
“Stop.” As the blood hit her stomach, beginning the transformation, she sucked harder on my life force, bringing me to the point of death.
I pulled my wrist away and slumped as she moaned at the loss of contact.
Weak almost to the point of immobility, I reached for her. I was so much older than her, so it was relatively easy, even in my weakened condition, to hold her steady as I plunged my ravenous fangs into her neck, almost shaking with need.
As her blood filled my stomach, some of the life returned, and I was able to control myself before I drained her to the last drop.
“Again.” I nicked my wrist. She lunged for it and sucked the sweet blood into her starving body. Again I had to stop her as the pain became intense and the weakness set in.
“Please.” She had had enough blood from me, and I was almost incapacitated. I could help her through the transformation, but I needed more of her sweet life force.
With trembling arms I embraced her, and took half of what she had taken from me. It left me a little stronger but hungry. It would have to be enough until I could feed again, show her how to do it.
I pulled her into my arms as she yelped softly. Ahhh, her first fang.
What vampire had not accidentally nicked their tongue on their first fang? She stiffened and stared around the room in wonder. I could see what she saw, the powerful shadows in the room, the dust motes floating lazily in the air.
Her hair, a glorious blaze of sunshine during her life, increased in luster and beauty a thousand fold, and her skin faded to the same white as mine as my blood worked its magic on her. She turned to me, smiling, revealing her new born fangs, luminous, crystalline green eyes staring at me as though for the first time.
Beautiful in life, she had crossed the boundaries into absolute radiance in death.
Her face twisted in pain. “What’s happening to me?” She twitched and gasped.
I grabbed her and stumbled to my feet. I ran for the bathroom, and put us both in the shower as her muscles convulsed. “I have you, I have you. Your body is dying. It’s natural, but it’ll last a few minutes.
Try to relax.”
I held her for the few hours left to us before dawn, as her body discarded all its waste, and she truly became dead. When it was done, I stripped us both and threw away our soiled, stinking clothes. I put her under the hot water with me, holding her, as she still appeared to not quite have the hang of supporting herself.
She stared at my naked body, transfixed, apparently, by a nipple. I looked down in amusement, my apprehensiveness hidden by my slight smile. “Hey, you all right there?”
“I can see everything.” Her voice was soft wonder. I knew exactly what she was talking about. The eyesight we both shared was incredible, intense, electrifying. It was as though we could see every molecule of skin, every pore.
“You’ll get used to it.” I wondered if she still saw me the same way. Would she still love me or would she be drunk on her newfound power? Had she really wanted the gift I had just given her? The next evening would tell. Her eyes would either burn green or red.
She looked at me, and it was with the same lust she had always had in life. How long would that last?
I could feel the pull of dawn on my body, and I watched her eyes go glassy under the same spell.
“It’s dawn. Time to sleep.” I pulled her into my arms and took her to my bed. Naked, we lay wrapped around one another, her head on my chest. It felt so darned odd, but then I realized it was because she wasn’t breathing.
She wasn’t breathing because I’d just made her into a vampire.
Could she still love me? Worse, did I still love her?
When I opened my eyes the next evening, it took me a moment to remember what had happened to us. I felt the cool weight of Bronwyn’s body, still in my arms, and I gazed down at her. I wondered how long it would take before she woke up.
I was starving, as I knew she would be when she woke, and almost desperately wanted to leave the shattered remains of our house.
I felt her muscles tighten in my arms and smiled as her eyes fluttered open.
She was truly beautiful—the smooth white skin, lustrous blonde hair, and vibrant green eyes that seemed to want to remain green, and
,in fact, looked as though a fire that was just beginning to smolder in them. Luckily, she didn’t look like she was going to sink into the same mental mire of immobility or psychopathy that other fledgling vampires were prone to. Her eyes, while still a trifle distracted, were as sharp as ever, and she did not appear drunk on the power of life and death she now had over mortals. When she looked at me, I could see the same Bronwyn I had always known looking out at me. I ached to show her more of the beauty of the world around us, but I knew that we simply didn’t have time to do it. In fact, there was no certainty at all that we would still exist by dawn.