I’d eaten squirrels as a human, which lessened my guilt marginally. Back home in Mystic Falls, my brother and I would hunt in the tangled woods that surrounded our estate.
Though squirrels were poor eating for most of the year, they were fat and tasted like nuts in the autumn. Squirrel blood, however, was no such feast; it was rank and unpleasant. It was nourishment, nothing more – and barely that. I forced myself to keep drinking. It was a tease, a reminder of the intoxicating liquid that runs in a human’s veins.
But from the moment Damon ended Callie’s life, I had sworn off humans forever. I would never kill, never feed from and never love another human. I could only bring them pain and death, even if I didn’t mean to. That’s what life as a vampire meant. That’s what life with this new, vengeful Damon as my brother meant.
An owl hooted in the elm that towered over my head. A chipmunk skittered past my feet. My shoulders slumped as I laid the poor squirrel down on the ground. So little blood remained in its body that the wound didn’t leak, the animal’s legs already growing stiff with rigor mortis. I wiped the traces of blood and fur from my face and headed deeper into the park, alone with my thoughts while a city of nearly a million people buzzed around me.
Since I’d sneaked off the train two weeks earlier, I’d been sleeping in the middle of the park in what was essentially a cave. I’d taken to marking a concrete slab with the passing of each day. Otherwise moments blended together, meaningless, and empty. Next to the cave was a fenced-in area where construction men had gathered the ‘useful’ remains of a village they had razed to make Central Park, as well as the architectural bric-a-brac they intended to install – carved fountains, baseless statues, lintels, thresholds and even gravestones.
I pushed past a barren branch – November’s chill had robbed nearly every tree of its leaves – and sniffed the air. It would rain soon. I knew that both from living in plantation country and from the monster senses that constantly gave me a thousand different pieces of information about the world around me.
And then the breeze changed direction, and brought with it the teasing, cloying scent of rust. There it was again. A painful, metallic tang.
The smell of blood.
I stepped into the clearing, my breath coming rapidly. The thick stench of iron was everywhere, filling the hollow with an almost palpable fog. I scanned the area.
There was the cave where I spent my tortured nights, tossing and turning and waiting for dawn. Just outside it was a jumble of beams and doors stolen from knocked-down houses and desecrated graves. Further in the distance there were the glowing white statues and fountains installed around the park.
And then I saw it. At the base of a statue of a regal prince was the body of a young woman, her white ball gown slowly turning a bloody red.
I felt the veins in my face crackle with Power. My fangs came out quickly and violently, painfully ripping through my gums. Instantly I became the hunter again: balanced on my toes, fingers flexed, ready to claw. As I made my way closer to her, all my senses became even more aroused – eyes widened to capture every shadow, nostrils flared to gather in the smells. Even my skin prickled, ready to detect the slightest change in air movement, in heat, in the minute pulses that indicated
The girl was small, but not sickly or dainty. She looked to be about sixteen. Her bosom jerked as she stuggled for breath. Her hair was dark, with curls highlighted gold in the light of the rising moon. She had been wearing silk flowers and ribbons in her hair, but these, along with her tresses, had come undone, trailing out behind her head like sea foam.
Her dress had a dark red slip buoyed by frothy white cotton tulle. Where her petticoats were torn, slashes of scarlet silk showed through, matching the blood that was seeping from her chest and down her bodice. One of her doeskin gloves was white, while the other was nearly black with soaked blood, as if she had tried to staunch her wound before she’d passed out.
Thick, curly lashes fluttered as her eyes rolled beneath their lids. This was a girl who clung to life, who was fighting as hard as she could to stay awake and survive the violence that had befallen her.
My ears could easily make out her heartbeat. Despite the girl’s strength and will, it was slowing, and I could count seconds between each beat.
The rest of the world was silent. It was just me, the moon and this dying girl. Her breath was coming slower now. She would most likely be dead in mere moments, and not by my hands.
I ran my tongue over my teeth. I had done my best. I had hunted down a squirrel – a
But the smell…
Spicy, rusty, sweet. It made my head spin. It wasn’t my fault she had been attacked. It wasn’t I who had caused the pool of blood to form around her prone body. Just one little sip couldn’t hurt…I couldn’t hurt her more than someone else already had…
I shivered, a delicious pain fluttering up my spine and down my body. My muscles flexed and relaxed of their own accord. I took a step closer, so close that I could reach out and touch the red substance.
Human blood would do far more than sustain me. It would fill me with warmth and Power. Nothing tasted like human blood, and nothing
In that moment, I forgot everything: why I was in New York, what happened in New Orleans, why I left Mystic Falls. Callie, Katherine, Damon…All were lost, and I was drawn mindlessly to the source of my agony and ectasy.
I knelt down in the grass. My parched lips drew back from my mouth, fangs fully exposed.
One lick. One drop. One taste. I needed it so badly. And technically, I wouldn’t be killing her.
Narrow streams of blood flowed down her chest, pulsing with her heart. I leaned over, my tongue reaching forward…One of her eyes fluttered open weakly, her thick lashes parting to reveal clear green eyes, eyes the colour of clover and grass.
The same colour eyes Callie had.
In my last memory of her, Callie was lying on the ground, dying, in a similar helpless pose. She had died of a knife wound in her back. Damon didn’t even have the decency to let her defend herself. He stabbed her while she was distracted, telling me how much she loved me. And then, before I could feed her my own blood and save her, Damon threw me aside and drained her completely. He left her a dry, dead husk and then tried to kill me, too. Had it not been for Lexi, he would have succeeded.
With a tortured scream, I pulled my hands back from the girl and pounded the ground. I forced the bloodlust that was in my eyes and cheeks back down to the dark place from which they came.
I took a moment longer to compose myself, then pulled the girl’s bodice aside to view her wound. She had been stabbed with a knife, or some other small and sharp blade. It had been shoved with near perfect precision between her breasts and into her ribcage – but had missed her heart. It was as though the attacker had
The attacker had not left the blade behind, so I placed my teeth against my wrist and tore open the skin there. The pain helped me to focus; a good, clean pain compared to that of my fangs coming out.
With incredible effort I pushed my wrist to her mouth and squeezed my fist. I had so little blood to spare – this would nearly kill me. I had no idea if it would even work now that I was feeding only on animals.
