Much Ado About Vampires

“Yes,” Alec said, his sudden smile so brilliant, it made me clutch the couch to keep from flinging myself on him. “I think Cora is one of those beings. She was born as Eleanor, was killed, and reincarnated into her current form, soul and all.”

I stared at him, caught in the green snare of his gaze, wanting to believe the joy he felt was due to the fact that there might be a future for us rather than I was merely a form of salvation.

“That would explain why Eleanor doesn’t have a soul?” Pia asked.

“No, it wouldn’t. It doesn’t,” Eleanor insisted. “If she and I are the same person—and really, the idea is ludicrous ; just look at her! She’s completely unlike me. If we were the same person, we couldn’t exist together in the same time and place.”

“But you don’t, not really,” Kristoff said gently. “You’re a lich. Your existence is beyond the mortal world. Cora is mortal. You aren’t.”

I dragged my gaze off Alec to look at Eleanor, wondering if I had really ever been her. What a pain in the ass I was.

Alec laughed in my head. I wouldn’t say that, but I admit that I had only just met you when you were killed.

“Even admitting that was possible—and I don’t admit that for one minute. But let’s say it is. Then all that means is that she’s a knockoff of me, and I’m the original Beloved, and she has my soul.” Eleanor’s eyes narrowed on me. “And she can just give it back!”

“Oh, that is not going to happen,” I told her, amused despite the unpleasant situation. “Finders keepers, and all that.”

“Faugh!” she yelled at me, and spent the next five minutes arguing that Alec owed his allegiance to her.

“It seems to me that you’re just going to have to decide,” Kristoff told Alec when Eleanor wound down long enough for someone else to get in a word. “Cora or Eleanor. Which Beloved do you want?”

Instantly, my eyes went to Alec’s, my heart beating with sudden urgency.

“That is the question, isn’t it?” he said softly, smiling at Eleanor. She beamed back at him until he lifted her hand and kissed it. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you agreed to the plan to save me. You will have my eternal appreciation for such a noble act.”

“No,” Eleanor snarled, jerking her hand from his and backing away, her face black with rage. “You can’t mean that! You can’t pick her over me. I was brought back to save you!”

“I know you were, and I regret greatly—”

“Nooo!” she wailed, and bolted from the room.

An uncomfortable, highly charged silence fell upon us all as the sound of her footsteps racing up a flight of stairs, followed by the slamming of a door, drifted down to us.

“Oh, Alec,” Pia said, her shoulders slumping. “I’m so sorry. We thought we were helping you—”

“And I appreciate that you would do so,” Alec interrupted before turning to me. I struggled to keep my face placid, and not express any of the pleasure that I couldn’t deny when he obviously chose me over Eleanor.

He said nothing for a minute, simply looking at me.

“You knew that you were my Beloved, but you didn’t tell me,” he finally said, his voice as carefully neutral as his expression.

Where were his expressions of undying devotion? Where was his declaration that he had picked me? Where was his arrogant statement that I was his Beloved, and he would fill my nights with endless passion, and my days with expressions of utmost gratitude?

Rather than any of that, I got a sense of carefully masked anger.

“Yes.” I lifted my chin a little. “I knew. I don’t like vampires. I never have.”

“And yet you fed me.”

“I didn’t realize who you were then,” I pointed out.

“You don’t like vampires, but you fed me.”

Kristoff and Pia sat opposite, their gazes shifting from Alec to me and back again, just as if they were watching a tennis match.

“I explained to you about that. I thought you could help Diamond and me get out of the Akasha.”

“You fed me multiple times.”

“Well, you were hungry!” I said, slapping my hands on my legs, wanting desperately to know what he was thinking and feeling, needing the reassurance that he wanted me. “What was I supposed to do, let you starve?”

“You didn’t leave me behind. You were worried about my wounds.”

“Are you going to catalog every single one of my actions with regards to you? Because if you are, you should include me slapping you for trying to kiss me.”

His eyes narrowed. “You gave yourself to me. Repeatedly.”

I glanced at the others. “OK, really, I’m sure they don’t need to hear about that.”

Pia giggled.

“You’re my Beloved.”

“Well . . . yeah, I guess I am. I wasn’t quite sure about whether a reincarnated Beloved can be the same as the original one, but I guess that’s been proven.”

“You’re my Beloved,” he repeated, and without another word walked out of the room.

“Well, hell,” I said, now thoroughly miserable. “He hates me!”

“I don’t think . . .” Pia looked at Kristoff. “I don’t think that’s possible, is it? Can you hate your own Beloved ? ”

“No.” Kristoff got up, waving Pia back when she rose, as well. “He’s just a bit stunned is all, what with Eleanor, and now . . . this. I’ll go talk to him.”

Alec? I asked, wanting desperately for him to reassure me.

No, he said, and closed me out of his mind.

No what? No, he didn’t want to talk to me? No, he didn’t hate me? No, he never wanted to see me again? If that was the case, why had he more or less dumped Eleanor ?

“I could just cry,” I said, pleating the material of my pants in an effort to keep from doing exactly that.

“Don’t, it’ll just make your eyes puffy,” Pia said, moving over to sit next to me. “Alec’s a man, and you know how they are—some of them don’t cope well with emotional things, and you have to admit, going from no Beloved to two in the space of a day could make the calmest vampire go a little bit nuts. I’m just a bit curious, though. You said you don’t like vampires?”

“No, I don’t. I saw Alec kill that woman who beheaded me. It was . . . he just bit her and drained her dry. It was horrible. And then my sister married one, and although she seems to be really happy with Avery, it seems so wrong, somehow. He drinks her blood!”

“Just as Kristoff drinks mine, and Alec feeds from you. Do you think that’s wrong?”

“No,” I admitted, pleating and repleating the material of my jeans on my leg. “It’s very enjoyable, actually.”

She smiled a slow smile that let me know that I wasn’t the only one who found the act of feeding erotic.

“It’s just that—I never wanted to be with Alec. I wanted him out of the Akasha, because that was only fair —he saved my butt in there from a wrath demon, and Diamond was having a good time, so when the de Marco guy said pick one, I picked him.”

“Of course you did,” Pia agreed. “I would have done the same. Not that I understand how you came to know the Ilargi, but we’ll get to that, I’m sure.”

“But I didn’t want a permanent relationship with Alec. He’s . . . a vampire!”

“You know, I think you’re going to have to move past that point,” she said gently.

I sighed and slumped against the back of the couch. “I know. And to be honest, I think I have. I was going to tell him about the past-life thing, I really was. I just was waiting for the right moment, and then . . . then . . .”

“Then we went and screwed it all up by having Eleanor brought back. Nothing like having your hand forced,” she said, nodding. “I’m sure that, given a little time to get over the shock of today, he’ll be right back in your hair, driving you crazy.”

“Now probably wouldn’t be the best time to say that I’m not sure I want him in my hair,” I muttered, wishing I could rewind my life a few days.