The sobs wracked through her, blood tears streaming freely down her pale cheeks. Her body shook against the wall, knees pressed even tighter to her chest as if she could somehow make herself smaller, disappear entirely from this nightmare.
Then pain erupted.
Not the burning hunger from before. This was different. Worse.
Her skull felt like it was splitting apart from the inside. Images crashed through her mind with brutal clarity, memories that hadn't been there moments before suddenly flooding back in violent waves.
Lily screamed.
She clutched her head with both hands as if she could physically hold the pieces together.
The alleyway. Darkness. Blood pooling beneath her broken body.
The stranger's face hovering above her, pale and beautiful and terrible all at once.
His wrist pressed to her lips. Blood, his blood, forcing its way past her teeth, down her throat. Hot and coppery and wrong.
The graveyard. Cold earth beneath her dying body. Her bones snapping and reforming. Her heart racing, then slowing, then stopping altogether. Lungs seizing. Stomach convulsing.
Darkness swallowing her whole.
Being buried alive.
Dirt packed around her, suffocating and absolute.
"No, no, no—"
Arms wrapped around her. Strong. Steady.
The stranger pulled her against his chest, one hand rubbing slow circles on her back.
"I know," he murmured, "I know."
His voice was strangely comforting despite everything that he had done to her.
"I understand all too well. I was never offered a choice either. What you're experiencing now, I experienced centuries ago."
Lily buried her face against his shoulder and let herself break completely. Great, heaving sobs that shook her entire body. Blood stained his expensive shirt but he didn't pull away.
He just calmly held her, rocking her gently like she was a child waking from a nightmare.
"I died," she choked out between sobs, "I felt myself die."
"Yes."
He didn't lie to her. Didn't offer false comfort.
"And you were reborn. Death is merely the doorway we must pass through to reach eternity."
They stayed like that, wrapped in each other's arms while time passed unmarked. Below them, Dallas pulsed with life. Car horns. Distant laughter. Music bleeding from clubs and bars.
The living world continued, uncaring that death had claimed another soul.
***
The stranger crossed the room, retrieving a wet cloth from the kitchen. He knelt beside her again, gently tilting her chin up with cool fingers.
The cloth was soft against her skin as he wiped away the bloody tears with surprising tenderness. Each stroke was deliberate, careful. Like she was made of porcelain.
But Lily couldn't stop staring at the body slumped in the chair.
Torn flesh where she had ripped after biting with fangs she could still feel with her tongue. Fangs that wouldn't retract, wouldn't go away. A permanent reminder of the horror she had become.
She watched as blood continued trickling down in lazy rivulets. She had done that. She had killed him.
This had to be a nightmare. Had to be.
The stranger noticed her fixation. He finished cleaning her face and stood, tossing the blood-stained rag directly onto the corpse's face. It landed with a wet slap, covering those horrified eyes.
"What happens now?"
Her voice came out small, terrified.
"The police are going to find him. Find out. We'll be arrested. Sent to prison or worse."
The man laughed.
Actually laughed, deep and rich and genuinely amused.
Lily's hands clenched into fists. She failed to see anything remotely funny about their situation.
He caught her expression and his laughter subsided into a knowing smile.
"Forgive me. Your concern is touching but unnecessary."
He gestured dismissively at the body.
"I will dispose of this in a place where mortal authorities will never find it. Just as I did with the other three gang members in New Orleans."
"What do you mean by that?"
He waved her question away like shooing a fly.
"You don't want the truth to that particular question, my dear."
The shock was wearing thin now, replaced by a mounting wave of panic and practicality fighting for dominance in her mind.
"Will I need to kill every time I feed?"
The words tumbled out quickly, she wasn't sure she wanted him to even answer her.
"How often am I supposed to feed?"
His expression shifted, becoming serious. He dragged the leather chair he'd occupied earlier across the hardwood floor. He clearly didn't care about the deep scratches in the nice, expensive flooring of this apartment.
He positioned it next to the corpse and reclined casually, draping one arm around the dead man's shoulders like they were old friends sharing drinks.
The gesture was obscene. Disturbing.
"Most vampires these days don't kill when they feed."
He tapped a finger against the armrest.
"You can take small amounts here and there, if you prefer. But there are drawbacks."
Lily wrapped her arms around herself, listening with rapt attention.
"First, you must always feed where you cannot be seen by humans. Second, you must always wipe the memory of the person you fed from."
He paused, letting that sink in.
"Lastly, feeding like this means you'll have to feed more frequently to control your thirst."
"More frequently. Like weekly or daily or what?"
"Bi-weekly should suffice for now."
He smacked the back of the corpse's head with casual violence. The body jerked forward slightly.
"Or, you can kill and feed less often. Draining a human dry means you'll normally only have to feed once a month, perhaps less depending on your activity level."
The thought of killing people regularly made her wince. She had never been in a fight before, let alone had any thoughts of hurting anyone. She was certain that she wouldn't be able to choose the later route of feeding.
"I'm not sure I can do that. The thought of killing people—"
"I understand."
The man cut her off, not unkindly.
"But killing those who deserve it is far easier to stomach than targeting innocent people."
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands steepled beneath his chin.
"Evil should be brought to justice through fear and violence. These men," he gestured at the body, "they prey on the weak. They destroy lives. Killing truly evil humans is safer than targeting innocent people as well."
"Safer how?"
"Not only do they deserve their fate, but humans won't search nearly as hard for them as they would a missing college student or a loving grandfather."
Lily's head was spinning. This was too much, too fast.
"This is a lot to take in all at once."
He nodded thoughtfully at her and stood with that same supernatural speed. He crossed to the window, staring out at the glittering cityscape.
"You are in Dallas, Texas."
His reflection was barely visible in the glass.
"I will have to leave you soon to manage some personal business. But I will be keeping an eye on you."
Terror lanced through her chest.
"Don't leave me."
She practically shouted those words before she could stop herself. Everyone always left her.
Despite everything, the horror, the death, the complete upheaval of her entire existence, she couldn't handle being abandoned by the only person who understood what she'd become. The one who had made her this way.
The man turned, giving her yet another sad smile.
"In order to survive in this world, you must learn to stand on your own two legs."
"That doesn't make any sense!"
Frustration bled into her voice.
"I don't know anything about being a vampire!"
"You will understand this valuable lesson one day in the near future."
His tone brooked no argument.
"For now, I will tell you the basics. The rest you must figure out on your own."
Lily's mind screamed protests. She was being abandoned. Turned into a monster and then just...left to figure it out alone.
But she forced herself to listen, to focus. If this was all she was getting, she needed to remember every word.
"Two things you must truly understand to survive the coming nights."
He held up one finger.
"Keep your existence secret. The mortal world at large must never know vampires exist. Individuals are fine, so long as they are truly trustworthy."
A second finger joined the first.
"You must never, under any circumstance, target a child. They are truly innocent and must be left alone by all vampires."
He paused before adding, "oh and make sure you avoid the sun. In fact, you should be indoors before the sun finishes rising. When the day breaks, you will die to the world, becoming a corpse."
Questions exploded through her mind like fireworks. Sleep where? Other vampires? How did the memory wiping work? Were there more laws? What happened if she broke them? Who enforced them? Would she burst into flames immediately or would it be like a bad sunburn that got worse the longer she was in the sun?
Her body language must have betrayed the maelstrom inside her head because he raised a hand.
"That is enough for tonight. You'll figure out the rest in due time, and you'll be all the stronger because of it."
"But—"
"No."
The finality in that single word silenced her.
Then his entire demeanor shifted. His arms spread wide, a genuine smile breaking across his handsome features.
"Now, for a change of topic!"
He approached her with renewed energy.
"I want to know all about your life. Why you became a painter. What inspires those masterful paint strokes of yours."
Lily blinked, completely thrown by the whiplash.
Here she was, sitting on the hardwood floor in a strange apartment in Dallas with a corpse bleeding out on a chair, her entire life destroyed, her humanity stripped away, and he wanted to discuss her art?
"I...I don't know how to answer that right now."
Her voice sounded uncertain, shaky.
"There are so many other questions that seem more pressing—"
"Start from the beginning."
The man settled back into his chair, moving the body aside with careless strength.
"I will not answer any other questions you have tonight, and that is final."
He crossed one leg over the other, folding his hands in his lap like they had all the time in the world.
Which, Lily supposed with sick realization, they did.
She stared at him, then at the body, then back at him.
Finally, she averted her eyes and lowered her head, exhausted in ways she didn't fully understand yet, ways that had nothing to do with her physical body.
"Fine, from the beginning then."