“Cedric did. Before he left. We were talking about how we were created, and he mentioned what happened when you were-”
“Don’tevermention it again,” I snap. I wish I had fed more recently. I don’t like how agitated and restless I feel.
“Fine,” she says, throwing her hands up. “I was just trying to help.”
“I don’t need your help.”
She shakes her head, then turns back to the elevator.
“Don’t you ever get sick of being so cold all the time?” she says, pressing the button curtly. “If you keep going this way, you’re going to end up just like Tudor.”
I hiss at her as the elevator doors slam shut.
And when I know she’s gone, I drop to my knees, hot bloody tears rising to my eyes.
I can’t push back the memories now. They come flooding in.
Memories from a lifetime ago, when my heart still beat and the blood in my veins was my own. When the summers warmed my skin and the nights were for sleeping.
When my sister and I shared a small room, just a tiny bed for both of us.
Until one night I came to bed late. I’d been up watching the chickens, a shotgun in hand. A mysterious beast had been feeding on them. We thought it was a wolf, or perhaps a fox.
When I came back to my sister’s room, I discovered the culprit. A monster I could never have imagined.
A monster feasting from my little sister’s tiny body.
A monster with violet eyes.
A monster that came for me next.
BILLIE HOLIDAY
Celine
The sun rises, but I don’t bother with a coffin. I let the heavy day take me. It makes me impossibly weak, keeps me bound in my useless body. I let it sap my strength, weigh me down to the floor. It feels good to be helpless.
I spend another two days like this, a prisoner in my suite.
Then I start to miss the music. But I’m too weak for the piano, and its bare melodies make me more melancholy.
I crawl to the record-player. It’s too difficult to change the record, so I simply move the arm back to its original place and press play. It’s the last record I listened to.
Billie Holiday.
Amara
There’s a strange mood in the club when I arrive for my shift. I’ve been off for a few days, so maybe it’s just my imagination. But the air seems heavier and somber. There are more vampires than living humans, and they stay near the back, eying each other like predator and prey.
“Nova, is everything ok?” I ask, pouring a whiskey for the bear shifter as they take their usual seat at the bar.
“Didn’t you hear?” they ask, their pale eyebrows furrowed. “Tudor Thornblade came back for a visit after he heard about what happened between Celine and Cedric. He wasnothappy. Xia said he drained someone just toteach Celine a lesson.”
I gasp. “Hewhat?”
“Yeah,” Nova downs the entire glass in one gulp. “Really nasty business.”
“That’s awful.” I put a hand to my chest. I make a silent prayer to the moon for the life of an innocent lost too soon. “I thought that sort of thing didn’t happen as much anymore.”
