“I want to live,” he said. “I’m supposed to. There’s something I have to do.”
“Is there? And what would that be, Seth?”
The man sounded almost amused. Didn’t matter. Seth knew it was real. “I don’t know all of it yet. There’s a girl—a woman—God, she’s something special.”
“Really?” Amusement was shaded by something far darker now. “She have a name?”
“I don’t know it…yet. But I know I have to find her. And I know there’s more—something major I have to do. So I’d better take you up on this…this vampire thing. ’Cause the alternative is to die, and I’ll never get it done that way.”
“You’ll never get anything done that way. So be it, then,” the vampire replied. And then he leaned over, and even as Seth told himself there would probably be some far less dramatic way to accomplish the thing than the one so common in pop fiction, the man bent closer, tipped Seth’s head back and sank his fangs into Seth’s throat.
He felt them pierce the skin, pop into the vein. There was pain, sharp and somehow good, and then there was the most incredible sense of release—not orgasmic, but more like a pressure cooker suddenly letting off steam. It rushed out of him, this pressure and tension and frailty, and pain, too. It rushed out of him with the blood that was rushing out of him, into the vampire’s hungry mouth.
He tipped his head back farther, willing the stranger to take it all, and he felt his life ebbing away, flowing out of him with every swallow the vampire took. And then the creature lifted his head away, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and lowered Seth to the ground.
Seth’s vision cleared, and he lay there on his back, in that alley full of trash, staring up at the glittering stars far, far away.
“You’re dying now. Just as you begin to do so, Seth, I’ll bring you back. Don’t be afraid. Just relax and let it happen.”
Seth tried to nod, but he sensed that nothing moved. Then, just before it all went black, he glimpsed her. Just for an instant. Her long, thick, copper-red hair hung over one shoulder, and her huge brown eyes pleaded with his in a way they never had before. He saw her more clearly, felt her more clearly, than he ever had. Her eyes were darkly lined, exotic and slanted. Her body was small, lithe but incredibly powerful. She was wild, he sensed, and then he sensed something else. She was caged.
She was begging for someone to help her. For him to help her.
It wasn’t a dream. Not this time. It was real. He was really seeing her, somehow, in his mind. It wasn’t a dream. Everything inside him reached for her, yearned for her, and then everything in him simply stopped. There was darkness, silence, no sense, no feeling, and then…
Bam!
Sensation slammed into him like an electric jolt. He went as rigid as a flat-lining patient when the paddles were applied.
But there were no paddles. There was only a wrist, which he was holding to his mouth with both hands, and from which he was drinking just as greedily as if he were dying of thirst.
He felt beyond feeling.
He sensed beyond belief.
He tasted and saw and heard and smelled a million, million things all at once, and knew them all. Jerking the wrist away from his mouth, pulling his head back, he sat there, blinking, reeling.
“It’ll be all right,” the vampire said. “It takes some time, but you’re going to get used to it.”
Somehow, Seth doubted that. “God, she’s real. I mean, I always knew it, but I doubted—I wondered. But she’s real. She’s so real, and she needs me.”
The man frowned at him. “Who needs you?”
“The girl,” Seth told him. “We have to find her. We have to go to her. But I don’t know how. I don’t know where she is, or—”
“Okay, okay, you take it easy now. We’ll get to the bottom of this, all right? Don’t worry. Right now, you just need to…rest. Just rest and let your body adjust to the change. Okay?”
Seth nodded, lowered his head, closed his eyes and muttered, “Okay.”
2
Vixen paced from one end of her cell to the other without breaking stride. Her steps were small and light and smooth, and she tended to walk on her toes. She didn’t like it here. She didn’t like the people who were holding her. She didn’t like the bars that held her captive or the fact that she couldn’t simply squeeze out between them. She could have, once. Before they made her into whatever sort of demon she had become. But she hadn’t been able to change since.
“Vixen, is it?”
The one called Briar leaned against the cage from the outside. Her hair was wild, wavy, thick and mink-brown, like her eyes. She was very young, must have been made into one of them at an unreasonably early age.
Then again, so had Vixen herself.
“What do you want?” Vixen asked. She gathered her hair, pulling it around to the front of her, so it hung over one shoulder, and stroked it. Whenever she was nervous, she tended to stroke or play with it—her way of touching her own nature, reminding herself of who and what she truly was. Not one of them. Never one of them.
“It’s not what I want,” Briar said. “It’s what Gregor wants.”
Vixen shrugged. “What does he want, then?”
“He wants you to help him. After all, he’s helped you.”
“He caged me. In this body. In this cell.”
Briar shrugged. “In the cell, maybe. Not in the body, though. You can still change.”
Vixen lowered her eyes, shaking her head slowly. Her throat felt tight, and odd, warm fluid filled her eyes. “I was in human form when he…bit me and drank my blood as if I were a chicken. He made me…whatever I am now. I tried to shift back, but—”
“You were newly made, and you were weak and frightened. That was six months ago, Vixen. You’re stronger now. You have to try again.”
Vixen looked Briar in the eye and shivered. She always shivered when she caught the scent of the darkness that lived in that one’s soul. It was cold and frightening.
“Try, Vixen.”
Vixen sighed and shook her head side to side.
“Try, Vixen,” Briar said again, but she said it differently this time. There was anger in her voice. “Try, or go to sleep hungry again.”
“I don’t mind going to sleep hungry.”
Briar sighed and reached up to the wall, where the long metal prod rested on a hook. Vixen flinched, and backed up as far as her cell would allow.
“Fine,” Briar said, “I’ll just play with you for a while, and then you can go to bed hungry. How’s that sound?” She stuck the rod between the bars, and no matter how Vixen twisted away, she couldn’t get beyond its reach. It touched her belly, and jolted her so hard her head snapped back and her knees buckled.
She curled on the floor, trembling. “Please, don’t.”
“But I enjoy it so.” Briar poked her again, in the neck this time.
Vixen jerked away, and her head hit the floor.
“Now,