Chapter One #2
“No!” I gasp, the word tearing out of my throat as I wrench against her grip. “No, no, p-please—” My voice fractures, turns shrill, useless, as terror floods every limb and my feet scramble for traction that isn’t there.
She spins me around effortlessly.
The world blurs, lights streaking, my stomach lurching as I lose all sense of direction.
Then my back slams into the hood of the car hard enough to knock the air clean out of my lungs.
Pain blooms sharp and bright between my shoulder blades, the impact rattling my teeth, heat flaring where metal meets bone.
I gasp, a broken sound clawing out of me as my hands slap uselessly against the warm hood, my palms stinging.
Before I can even suck in another breath, she’s there.
Too close.
Her body cages mine in, inches from my face, and the space between us collapses until I can see every impossible detail—her skin flawless and pale, her eyes burning red with hunger, lips curved in something that might be amusement.
I catch her scent, metallic and stale, the sour smell of blood left too long hangs in the air, and my stomach clenches hard.
My heart hammers wildly, my ribs aching as fear crushes down on me so hard I can barely think.
I’m trapped.
And she knows it.
No pulse flutters in her throat.
No breath disturbs the air between us.
When she smiles, her canines extend with a soft click that I feel more than hear, elongating into fangs that gleam wetly in the moonlight.
“Please, what, little one?” Her free hand comes up to brush hair from my face, the gesture almost tender.
Almost loving. “Please don’t kill you? Please make it quick?
” Her thumb traces my cheekbone with the kind of gentleness that makes the threat so much worse. “I’m not going to kill you, Charlotte.”
Ah, she knows my name.
How the hell does she know my name?
“I’m going to give you so much more than death.” Her face descends toward my throat, and panic detonates in my chest, a violent blast that steals the air from my lungs.
I thrash. God, I thrash like my life depends on it because it does. My free hand claws at her face, her shoulder, anything I can reach. My legs kick uselessly against the car, heels scraping metal. I bring my elbow up and drive it toward her ribs with every ounce of strength I possess.
She doesn’t even flinch.
The impact jars through my bones, but she stands there, rigid as if carved from marble. Her lips brush my racing pulse, and the feeling sends electricity crackling down my spine, not pleasure, just pure animal terror translating into sensation.
“Your heart is so loud,” she murmurs against my skin. “Thunder beneath my hands. War drums summoning me home.”
“P-Please,” The word breaks apart in my mouth, fragments of sound that mean nothing. “Please d-don’t!”
Pressure blooms at my throat.
At first, it’s only weight, her mouth closing over my skin, pinning me there as my breath stutters uselessly in my chest. Then something sharp drives in, sudden and indescribable, while my mind scrambles for meaning it can’t find. Heat flashes white-hot, and pain detonates through my neck.
I scream, but the sound comes out thin, strangled, as a tearing sensation rips through me, deep enough that my knees buckle even though she still has me trapped against the car. Something warm spills immediately, slick against my skin, and the realization hits an instant later.
Blood.
I feel it running down my neck in thick, pulsing streams, soaking into my collar, sliding along my collarbone, and down my chest. With every pull of her mouth, more pours out of me, my body growing heavier, weaker, as if gravity has doubled.
The world tilts, lights blur as the warmth keeps flowing, unstoppable.
I can’t breathe.
My hands scrabble uselessly at her arms, at the car, at anything solid, fingers already clumsy and numb. The pain isn’t clean or contained—it spreads, radiating outward in blinding waves, as if she’s gone past skin and muscle and sunk into something vital. Something essential.
It’s the sensation of being pulled apart from the inside.
A dizzying weakness floods my limbs as panic spirals, my thoughts scattering into fragments, burning, pressure, the sickening awareness of being drained.
She’s going to kill me.
The certainty lands cold and absolute, even as the blood keeps running, hot against my skin, pooling beneath me, every ruthless pull of her mouth widening the agony and dragging more of me away.
And I still don’t understand how this is happening.
Only that it is.
My scream rips across the empty lookout, echoing off trees and stone. But there’s no one to hear it, no one to help, just me, her, and what’s-his-name’s body cooling on the gravel, and the city lights twinkling below with no one knowing what’s happening up here.
She drinks.
And drinks.
And drinks.
The warmth of the hood beneath me grows colder. My vision fragments at the edges, reality breaking apart into puzzle pieces that no longer fit together. The stars overhead multiply, then blur, then fade.
The cold spreads from her grip into my veins, through my chest, down my spine. Not the cold of winter but the cold of absence. The cold of everything vital being pulled out and swallowed down.
This is dying.
I’m dying.
The thought arrives with surprising clarity through the haze of pain and failing breath. This is what it feels like when life leaves your body, when blood stops carrying oxygen to your brain, when your heart forgets how to beat because there’s nothing left to pump.
My hands, still scrambling weakly at her shoulders, lose strength. My fingers go numb. Everything goes numb except the burning cold in my throat where she’s still drinking, still taking, still emptying me out as if I’m nothing but a vessel meant to be drained.
The darkness at the edge of my vision creeps inward, swallowing the stars, swallowing the city lights, swallowing everything until there’s only the sensation of her mouth on my throat, the cold spreading through my chest, and the distant, fading rhythm of my heartbeat slowing, slowing, slowing…
Then, she pulls back.
Air rushes into my lungs in a desperate gasp that tastes like copper. My eyes flutter open. When did they close? And her face swims into focus above me. Blood stains her mouth, dark and glistening.
My blood.
So much of my blood.
“Almost there,” she whispers, and her voice sounds as if it’s coming from underwater, distant and distorted. “Just a little more.”
Her wrist comes up to her mouth, and I watch through failing vision as she bites into her own flesh, tearing it open with those terrible fangs. Blood wells up, darker than mine, thicker, with a smell that makes something ancient and hungry wake up in the dying parts of my brain.
“Drink,” she commands, pressing her wrist to my lips.
I moan in disgust, trying to turn my head, trying to clamp my mouth shut, but my body doesn’t listen anymore.
The first spill of blood hits my tongue, hot and thick, coppery enough that my jaw tightens reflexively.
It tastes like metal, salt, and heat, too rich, too alive, flooding my mouth until there’s no space left for air or thought.
And then something else slips in.
Sweet, not sugar-sweet, but deep and dark, the kind that settles at the back of my throat. It tastes of power layered over iron and flesh, of something ancient waking up inside me, like drinking starlight laced with poison, beautiful and impossible to stop swallowing.
I swallow, not because I want to.
But because my throat convulses automatically, forcing it down.
She makes me drink and drink and drink until my stomach rebels and my mouth fills with the taste of her ancient power mixing with my human mortality.
Until something fundamental shifts inside my chest, like the world tilting on its axis.
Until I’m not sure if I’m dying or being reborn into something worse than death.
When she finally pulls away, I’m gasping, choking, drowning in air that my lungs can’t seem to process anymore. My vision dissolves completely, the world bleeding to black at the edges.
The last thing I see is her face above mine, beautiful, terrible, and utterly inhuman.
The last thing I hear is her voice, soft, satisfied, and drenched with promise…
“I have plans for you, little scion.”
Then… the darkness swallows me whole.
And somewhere in that darkness, my heart stops beating.