In the Forests of the Night

frost—glass. It did not occur to me that I should not be able to smell glass. No human could.

Beneath these scents was something I did not recognize—not really like a smell at all, but like something between a taste and a fragrance that you catch for a moment on the breeze. Or perhaps it was the breeze itself, a gentle movement in the air. I focused on this sensation, and though it did not become clearer, its presence was strong.

Later I learned that this feeling was aura. The aura of death—my death—and of a vampire: Ather, my dark, immortal mother, who gave me this life against my will and who killed my mortal self.

I tried to walk, searching for a way out of the black room I was in, and found it surprisingly easy. The stiffness was gone from my body, and I moved smoothly, more as if I was floating than walking. The wood beneath my bare feet was smooth and cool.

I followed the wall until I reached a place that was not glass—a wooden door. I opened it slowly and blinked at the light that poured in. Turning my face away, I caught sight of the room I had just left. All four walls were mirrored, and my reflection flew back at me hundreds of times. Amazement filled me. Whoever owned this house must be rich, to have so much glass in one room. And yet there were no windows at all: nothing to let in the light and air.

I walked back into the room, entranced by my own reflection, hardly recognizing myself. I approached the mirrored surface and stretched a tentative hand out to the stranger reflected there. Her hair was still my golden hair, and her body had nearly my body's shape, but her form was more graceful, and when she walked she seemed to glide effortlessly. Her eyes were black as midnight, her skin as pale as death.

'Look hard, Risika,' a voice behind me said. 'Remember it well, for soon it will fade.'

I spun toward the voice. Everything about the speaker was black, from her hair and eyes to her clothing, everything but her unnaturally fair skin. My first thought was witch. It came from some vague recollection of my past life, though I did not know what that life had held.

My next thought was Ather. I remembered her—I remembered the dark halo her hair formed around her pale skin, and I remembered her icy laugh.

A scene flashed through my mind. Once again I remembered my death, but now I remembered before that—Aubrey, sheathing the knife that had just taken a life. Whose life? I did not know and was not sure I wanted to.

'Why have you brought me here?' I demanded. 'What have you done to me?'

'Come, now,' Ather told me. 'Surely you can figure it out. Look at my reflection — look well. Then tell me what I have done to you.'

I obeyed her command and turned back to the mirror. I could barely see her reflection. In the glass her form was so faint that her black hair appeared as little more than pale smoke.

'Now look at your own reflection,' she told me.

I did. Once again I looked at the figure in the mirror, wondering if she could truly be me. I had a picture of myself in my mind, and it was not the same as the one I was seeing; though very close, perhaps, it was still very wrong.

'Who am I?' I asked, turning back to her. I truly did not know.

'You do not remember your life?'

'No.' Ather smiled as I responded. A cold smile—if a snake could smile, it would smile as she did.

'I thought so,' she answered. 'Your memory will, sadly, return later, but for now …' She trailed off with a shrug, as if it did not matter.

'Who am I?' I demanded. 'Answer me.' I was angry, but her nonchalance was not the only reason. My mind had been spinning since I awoke. The sensation had been faint at first, but now the edges of my vision were beginning to go red.

'Why?' she responded. 'Who you were no longer matters. You are Risika, of Silver's bloodline.'

'And who is Risika?' I pressed, trying to ignore the painful shiver that wracked my body. 'What is she?'

'She is—you are—a vampire,' Ather told me. The information took a moment to reach my mind. I knew words like witch and Devil. This one was foreign. From somewhere, some memory I could not quite see, I heard someone say, 'There are creatures out there that would damn you if they could, simply for spite.'

Surely Ather was one of those creatures the speaker had been talking about. And Aubrey—I remembered him as well. Once again I saw him sheathing his knife, but still I could not remember why he had taken it out.

'You have made me into — 'I broke off.

'Do you know I can read your mind like a book?' Ather said, laughing. 'You are young now, still partially human. You will quickly learn to shield your thoughts, perhaps even from me. You are strong, even now. He warned me you would be. Was he afraid you would be too strong for me to control?'

I did not say anything, hardly understanding what Ather said. My head was spinning as if I had hit it on something, and I was having difficulty focusing on anything.

Ather paused, looking at me, and then smiled. When she did, I could see pale fangs, and I repressed another shiver. 'Come, child,' she told me. 'You need to hunt before your body destroys itself.'

Hunt. The word sent dread through me. It reminded me of wolves and cougars, animals who stalked their prey in the forest. Blood soaking into the ground. So much blood…

Now I wanted that blood. I could see the scarlet death in my mind. Surely the blood was warm and sweet and—

What was happening to me? These thoughts were not mine, were they?

'Come, Risika,' Ather snapped. 'The pain will worsen until you either feed or go mad from it.'

'No.' I said the word solidly, without reluctance, despite the way I felt. I was burning, and there was dust in my veins. I thought of blood and craved it the way I craved water on a long, hot day. I knew what Ather meant when she said hunt, but I would not kill to ease my own pain. I was not an animal. I was a human being…

At least, I hoped I was human. What had Ather done to me?

'Risika,' she told me, 'if you do not feed, the blood I have given you will kill you.' She was not pleading with me; she was stating facts. ' It will take days before you are truly dead, but by sunset tomorrow you will be too weak to hunt for yourself, and I refuse to spoon-feed you. Hunt or die, it is your choice.'

I hesitated, trying to remember. There was a reason that I should not hunt. Someone I knew would have resisted, someone I loved but could not remember … I could not remember. The only reason I could remember now was the one I had been taught all my life by the preachers—because killing was a sin.

But dying by my own choice was a sin as well.

Perhaps I was already damned.

'Foolish child,' Ather said. 'Look at yourself in that mirror and tell me that your own church would not condemn you for what you are. Would you refuse the life I have given you to try to save the soul which your god has damned?'

'I will not sell my soul to save my life,' I said, though in my mind I was not so sure. My church was cold and strict, but I feared the nothingness of a soulless death just as much as I feared the flames of the spoken Hell. And perhaps she was right. Perhaps it was already too late.

'No,' I said again, trying to convince myself more than her. 'I will not.'

'Brave words,' Ather told me. 'What if I told you it did not matter?' She was whispering now, as if that would drive her words into my mind. It was working. 'You signed the Devil's book as your blood fell onto my gift to you.'

In my mind the scene played itself out again. A black rose, the thorns sharp like the fangs of a viper. A drop of blood falling on the black flower as those fanglike thorns cut the hand that held them. Black eyes, much like Ather's black eyes but somehow infinitely colder, watching like a snake as the blood fell. Watching like a viper, like the thorns of the rose, as if he had bitten me…

My mind was filled with dark images and darker thoughts of snakes and hunting beasts and red blood falling on black petals. My heart was filled with pain and anger and hatred and the black blood that had damned me.