Chapter 2
Lucian
The metallic scent of blood pierces the winter air. It’s as striking as the first footstep after snowfall. Sudden and abrupt and foreign to the land.
Prey.
But it’s more than just blood.
A fruity scent mingles with metal, permeating the frostiness of the mountain’s wintery scent that’s been the environment for close to two months now.
The stillness of the earth becomes even more desolate when the scent races through me, like fire igniting my veins—heat felt for the first time since my death.
Human.
My fangs instantly extend and jab into my bottom lip, readying to feed. Hunger turns my eyes from black to red until the snow and woods are encased in a crimson haze.
Merry fucking Christmas to me.
The control I’ve been clinging to for the past century shreds into flakes more delicate than the blustery snow thrashing my face as I dart through the forest.
It’s been a while since a human’s been this far north.
Winter in the Rockies means unforgivable weather, so mortals don’t often travel out here this time of year.
Unfortunately, my food has to come from animals or from a local resident within one of the many small mountain towns.
In the summer, campers often go missing, so adding another to the authorities’ ever-growing list is simple.
Whichever human found themselves up here in this kind of weather is free game. They’re bleeding—and a lot—which means they’re probably halfway dead and will thank me for ending their pain sooner.
The scent leads a few minutes’ run away to one of the main roads connecting to the upper part of the mountain.
A car flipped onto its roof brings me to a halt. Glass is scattered all over the icy road and nearby snowbanks. The passenger-side door is crumpled in on itself, and given the faint trace of moose, it’s easy to guess what happened.
Human is human, and if they’re half-dead, even better.
I pace forward, but only for a step as the scent is…
different than what I’ve smelled before.
It stands out against all the numerous other ones, and instead of propelling me across the road to eat, it urges me to move slow.
The scent is delicate, whatever that means.
Something to cherish rather than devour.
Curious.
Snow crunches beneath my feet as I head to the driver’s side and crouch down, inspecting what it’ll take to remove whoever’s trapped in there. A person is upside down, the tight seatbelt and airbag keeping them from being crumpled.
Long dark hair and the scent of strawberries mingled with blood clears my vision from red to pink.
Female.
It’s been a while since I’ve drank from a woman. Their blood’s always sweeter than a male’s. Merry Christmas, indeed.
She whimpers and coughs, and her head angles slightly towards me, but her eyes remain shut. She senses I’m here, but soon, she’ll wish I wasn’t.
A quick snap of the seat belt allows me to dislodge her body, and then I clear the broken shards lining the window. She groans as I cautiously pull her from the vehicle, working at a human pace rather than a vampire’s, careful not to harm her further.
Seems pointless to care for her in this manner, considering my teeth will be buried in her pretty little throat in a moment, but it feels right to.
She’s limp as I tug her onto my lap and behind the shelter of her crashed vehicle.
While immortality means the temperature doesn’t inconvenience me, the wind is harsh to her, blowing strands of hair all over the place and reddening her cheeks.
If only I could recall what temperature is and isn’t safe for humans.
Her head is flopped to the side, covered with dark hair made brighter by snowflakes falling from above and the cut on her forehead. Smaller slices run up and down her neck and anywhere uncovered by her coat.
It’s her blood staining my hands, but my blood that’s racing in a way that it hasn’t since my mortal years.
My fangs throb again, anticipating draining her dry.
She’ll be the sweetest treat. A flavour I’ll spend the rest of forever hunting for to taste again.
If I had better control, perhaps I’d keep her alive and savour her for months, maybe even years.
“You’ll thank me for this,” I murmur, wiping her neck and baring it for my bite. With more time, I’d clean every single shard from her hair and make it as soft as it should be, but I’ve already waited long enough to consume her.
Her pulse races as my nose slides up her throat. Unfortunate time to wake up.
“H-he…”
I nearly ignore her. By all accounts, there’s no reason to be lifting my head and to pay her any sort of attention, but I do. As my fingers move her hair aside, she turns her face towards me and her eyelids flutter just enough for me to catch the colour of her irises.
A colour only found in my memories, the shade of the sky during the day. Sunlight after a lifetime spent in the dark, providing a chance to relive the daytime I occasionally miss.
She can be that daylight.
Something deep and heavy in my stomach pushes down on the urges that led me here. Something that chimes keep, keep, keep through my head and prevents me from killing her. Even my fangs retract while studying her, trying to determine where the sudden shift in impulses came from.
Instead of biting to feed, to kill, to drain, I want to bite to mark her up, to keep her. To ensure any vampire passing through is aware she’s claimed, branded, and all mine.
My meal, my prey, and no one else’s.
With these thoughts, I take her in, noting she’s younger than anticipated. Twenty, perhaps? It’s getting more and more difficult to track humans’ aging.
She’s also gorgeous.
There’s objective beauty, of course. Soft face, symmetrical features, and all that.
Then there’s genuine beauty. The kind found in a certain kind of strength.
A survivor’s strength. That’s what this girl is.
Somehow, as strange as the need to pull away from her and not kill her, I know it with every fibre of my being.
Not only does her nose have a little uptick, but her lips are full and red, only a few shades lighter than her blood. My thumb glides over the smooth skin of her cheek, but the scars on her neck and down the collar of her shirt tells me another story.
Someone’s hurt her before. My fangs return, this time not for hunger.
I brush my hand through her hair, dislodging more glass shards. She moves again, twisting into my hold. Her legs shift, as though to bring them up, but fails. She’s trying to curl into herself because she’s cold.
Of course, she is. It’s in the deep negatives, and for a human, it isn’t safe.
She isn’t supposed to be cold, though. Or safe. She’s supposed to be dead. By now, I should be walking away with her blood running through my system.
Now, the thought of that has me wanting to rip out my own undead heart. Oh, I still long to drain her dry—her scent is too tempting not to—but only to link her to me in ways no one else ever will. A way that’ll ensure I’m all she thinks about, all she sees, all she knows.
It’s an obsessive sort of need that pushes me to my feet, while retaining a tight hold on her body, curling her into my chest.
So strange.
Back when learning how my immortal body functions, Alec Dormer, the vampire king of North America, taught me that very few human emotions carry into immortality.
Love, namely, does not. Instead, being a vampire amplifies that kind of positive feeling of possession to the maximum degree—into obsession.
I think I understand him now.
Because the woman in my arms isn’t going anywhere ever again. She’s injured, so I’ll heal her. Then I’ll feed her, learn about her, care for her, feed from her, and make her mine.
Forever.
Once again…Merry Christmas to me.