First Blood

by Susan Sizemore

  Ginny had stayed outside, having no taste for Geneva’s new games. It was clear that her sister was revealing a buried side both twins had tried to repress, and now it’d finally been given free reign.

  Yet Ginny hadn’t gotten involved—not until Nolan had yelled for her to take Geneva’s place as his sadist.

  And that’s when it had all fallen apart.

  Geneva had been struck with possessive rage, attacking Ginny with their awareness. Sinking her teeth into Nolan’s neck. Sucking him dry until he screamed, “More! More!” while chasing an orgasm to death’s door itself.

  Caught off guard, Ginny had frozen, trapped outside in the shared awareness as she and Geneva had both convulsed with pounding climaxes, bursting apart, Ginny finally falling to the ground, satiated.

  But afterward?

  While Geneva had laughed wildly, discovering her Shangrila, Ginny had stumbled into the house, up the stairs, to the fresh corpse, intent on healing evidence of the injuries and bites.

  Covering up like a good vampire should.

  So in the end, part of the story she’d told Ben had been true: The cops really had been nosing around the area that night, and the vampires had deserted the place. But a severely weakened Ginny had been concentrating on getting her crazed twin away, and Nolan had been left behind.

  As the memory faded, Geneva pulled her awareness out of Ginny with a jarring yank.

  “Ginny?”

  Reluctantly, she focused on her sister, but the sight of the newest corpse made Ginny turn away.

  “Ginny!” Geneva sounded anxious now, no doubt because she’d felt through their cold awareness just how disconnected they truly were. “I’m the one who accepts you for what you are. Ben won’t. Especially if he ever found out that you got off on Nolan’s death as much as I did.”

  “Don’t even mention him knowing, Geneva, because I won’t allow it.”

  Flinching, her sister’s lips parted, her silvered eyes widening as if Ginny had gutted her swiftly and silently.

  Then, wiping the blood from her mouth, her twin got to her knees.

  “I wonder,” she said, voice low, “what your Ben would do if he knew all of it.”

  “He’s never going to.”

  And she meant it with all her heart . . . or whatever she had gained from Ben. She would protect him until her last breath.

  Geneva stood, her arms curved by her sides, her eyes flashing as her temper escalated. “You mean that you hope he never finds out.”

  Without a word, Ginny got to her feet, too, using the wall for balance. For the first time, the stench of the corpse’s blood turned her stomach and vised her head.

  “I’m going now,” she said.

  Back to Ben, away from what used to be her sister.

  “No, you’re not,” Geneva said.

  Ginny didn’t even have time to answer before her twin zoomed across the foyer and grabbed her by the throat.

  “No”— Geneva banged her into the wall, where marble chips crumbled—“you’re”—she slammed her into it again— “not!”

  Ginny’s sight scattered into pieces as she gagged, grasping at her sister’s hand around her throat.

  Strong, much too strong.

  Sorin’s mocking words came back to her. One of you is more powerful. I made sure of that with my blood.

  Now they knew which twin it was.

  Geneva kept on pummeling, adding insult to injury.

  “I’m going to”—slam—“tell Ben”—bam—“everything!”

  Feeling no pain now, just a vague thudding as her head banged against the wall again, all Ginny could imagine was Ben’s face if he should find out the real truth about Nolan.

  He’d look as beaten as she was.

  It sent a bolt of fire through her, and she gathered all her strength, yelling while she grabbed Geneva’s hands and tore them away from her throat. In one furious move, she had Geneva pinned to the wall.

  “Don’t do this, Gen,” she said, panting. “Don’t—”

  Geneva narrowed her eyes, and awareness stabbed into Ginny’s head. Their connection had warped into a deadly weapon, and it was all Ginny could do to withstand the spear of agony.

  But she kept seeing Ben. Ben.

  Mentally blocking her sister’s attack, Ginny struck back with shattering force, harder, faster.

  Again . . . again . . .

  Geneva ’s silver eyes rolled back in her head, her mouth gaped in a scream that halted mid-screech.

  Confused, Ginny withdrew from her twin’s mind.

  One of you is more powerful. I made sure of that with my blood.

  Maybe that twin hadn’t been Geneva at all.

  Her sister slumped, a doll in a red dress pooling on the floor. Her eyes, which had now gone blue and dull, gazed up at Ginny.

  Then a voice insinuated itself into her awareness.

  Ginny?

  The pathetic plea ricocheted through every cell, slaying a little piece of Ginny with every lancing contact.

  “No,” she said, trying to undo the damage, using her hands to heal her sister, using her brain to attempt a mental repair, but it was beyond her powers. A master vampire might be able to undo this, but not her . . .

  Ginny, her twin said, through their remaining twin awareness, I’m so sorry. Stay with me—please?

  Not knowing what to do, Ginny cradled her prone sister. Her tears wet Geneva’s dark hair and washed the corpse’s blood from her skin.

  It took her a few minutes to realize that Geneva’s awareness had started to feel warmer, less hateful and separate.

  They lay like this for hours, Ginny’s aching skull healing as she tried to talk Geneva back into movement. But all her twin could do was repeat Ginny’s name, as if she didn’t quite realize that her motor skills had been fried and her circumstances went way beyond Ginny leaving her now.

  Eventually, Ginny took her twin to a favorite chair near the curtained window. Hours passed and night fell once again, and she opened the curtains so Geneva could at least see the city.

  Then, as Ginny stroked her sister’s hair back from her blank face, she thought of how Nolan’s killer really had been brought to a certain justice, just as Ginny had told Ben.

  A lie had ended up becoming the truth.

  Her hand fell away from Geneva’s head. Ginny had seen her twin choose a path they’d been taught to avoid, but after joining with Ben, she finally felt the pain. But she hadn’t wanted Ben to experience the same agony, so she had lied to him, protecting him—always protecting somebody—from a truth he deserved to hear.

  A pall hovered over the room. A choice.

  Should she tell him? Could she ease him into the truth?

  Time ticked on as Ginny watched the night, sitting at Geneva’s side, listening to her twin repeating the same pleas over and over.

  Ginny? Ginny???

  She picked up the telephone, dialing Ben’s hotel.

  THIRTEEN

  AFTER FINALLY RECEIVING A CALL FROM GINNY, Ben wasted no time getting to her apartment. He didn’t doubt that he belonged with her; after all, how would he fit in at Holstead, Texas, now?

  Besides, Ginny was his air, his blood, an integral part of him after their bite.

  He knocked on her door and, soon afterward, it creaked open.

  And there she was, heart-stopping in a pale dress.

  But her eyes were ringed with a sadness so deep that he reached out to her.

  She fell into his arms and held on to him for what seemed like dear life. He embraced her just as forcefully.

  Ginny was his home. His world.

  “I thought you’d be back at the hotel last night,” he said into her hair.

  He was trembling in his belly, and he thought he felt her quivering, too.

  “I was going to come back,” she said into his chest. “I wanted to, believe me, but . . .”

  As he framed her face in his hands, he saw the silver shards in her blue eyes. This time, there was no shared fanta
sy to confuse him, just . . . sorrow.

  Yeah, his Ginny could definitely feel sorrow, and he wanted to ease it.

  He led her deeper inside the apartment, which was spacious and gothic. At the same time, she told him about the fallout between her and her sister, which had evidently come to a head because of Ginny’s attachment to Ben.

  But he could tell there was something else she was holding back. He gave her time.

  “My sister couldn’t stand the thought of existing on her own,” Ginny finished. “And, somehow, she made sure I’d stay.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes going silver, and his veins tightened until they throbbed.

  They hadn’t seen each other for hours, but it felt like years.

  “Ben,” she said, her voice and gaze wrapping around him.

  She led him to a couch and slowly eased him down to it.

  If she wanted his blood he’d give it to her. He’d give her anything.

  She smoothed his brow with her fingers, whispering affectionate words, lulling him until he felt as if he were floating on water, the moon of her gaze shining down on his humming body.

  But when she gently started telling him about Nolan, he slowly sank into an anesthetic nothingness, suspended in darkness.

  Yet even under the drowning weight, he still saw Ginny wavering above him, extending a hand to pull him out in the end.

  FOURTEEN

  Years and years later . . .

  GINNY WENT TO BED, LYING DOWN NEXT TO BEN.

  In the low lamplight of their West Seventy-fourth Street condo, she lavished a gaze on her human lover. Ben had chosen to live in this modest one-bedroom, which was close to her sister and the old apartment yet far enough to bar any twin awareness.

  He was sixty-four now, his dark hair sprinkled with gray, his rough face slightly lined with wrinkles around the eyes and mouth. Over the years, he had grown used to her habit of resting during daylight and coming to full energy at dusk. He’d always been a night owl, too, he’d confessed.

  But that had been long after the night when she’d told him the truth about Nolan.

  He had been buried under it all at first, yet Ginny had persevered, determined to see him through the same pain she’d undergone with Geneva. It had taken him days, nights, to accept what she’d told him—and that she’d first lied about it— but then he’d come back to her.

  And she had welcomed her other half—her substitute soul—with open arms, sharing everything else with him, too: the Underground, her and Geneva’s vampiric life.

  Everything.

  As he felt her body press into the mattress, he opened his green eyes. “Is it late?”

  “Ten o’clock more or less.”

  “So you’re home for the night.”

  “You bet.”

  Every time darkness fell, Ginny visited the silent sister who sat like a mourning statue at the window overlooking Central Park. There, Ginny nurtured her and talked with her via their awareness. She also offered her blood, but her twin rarely needed it, seeing as Ginny had hired a young vampire she’d trained as a caretaker—one who gladly gave his own red for her.

  But that didn’t mean her twin still didn’t plead with Ginny to take her back. However, Ginny had accepted that long ago, because she did her best for Geneva, yet always went home to Ben.

  “Don’t tell me,” he said, grinning at her. “You’re here to drink my blood.”

  “Among other things.” She rested a hand on his neck, stroking with her thumb.

  Her flesh, still youthful and unblemished, provided contrast to his tanned roughness, making her all hot and wiggly.

  She didn’t bite him yet though. They had all night.

  “Don’t you ever wish I was still a young buck?” Ben asked, his eyes going heavy with each of her strokes. “You could’ve preserved me nearer to my peak, you know.”

  “I want you like this.” She bent to kiss him softly.

  She wanted him gloriously human, uncorrupted, and he’d lived up to her dreams, also providing her with blood so she wouldn’t have to hunt for it anymore. Commitment to a partner had always been in her nature, even though an official marriage was out of the question because of the mess it could create with the recent fake ID that accounted for her never-changing age.

  But that didn’t mean she and Ben weren’t married all the same.

  His hand sketched behind her, up her back, down to her butt. He squeezed, and she moaned, slipping down to his neck, where she kissed him.

  Ben, her Ben. She smelled him, reveled in him. Then, with loving deliberation, she primed his vein by nipping at it, rubbing his belly until they’d both gone into their own place, where they could still see each other in those mental mirrors.

  As she slid her palm down to his crotch, knowing he was so ready that he wouldn’t feel pain, only pleasure, she pierced him. Sucking lazily, she took him in until she was near to bursting.

  Up, up, floating, expanding and—

  Agony wracked her.

  But it wasn’t an orgasm.

  She broke away from Ben, rolling away, off the bed.

  Crashing to the hardwood floor, her vision quaked, convulsions rocking her as she fought an agony so terrible that she wished it would kill her.

  “Ginny,” she heard Ben cry, his hands on her, grasping, soothing. “Ginny, what’s happening?”

  She didn’t know . . .

  Then, as soon as it’d arrived, it left.

  As she wrestled for breath, she felt her skin loosen over her bones, her innards shift, her body grow into itself until she huddled into a fetal ball.

  “Ginny . . . ?”

  She sought him with her gaze, and he hovered in her vision, his face a mask of wonder. Tears flooded his eyes as their mental mirror showed her the truth of her new appearance.

  Old, her skin heavily mapped, her hair turned pure white.

  “My maker,” she said in a tinier, weaker voice. “Gone. Someone must have killed him . . .”

  Ben gathered her into his arms, and she reached up a hand to touch his cheek.

  Human. She was truly older than he was in human years.

  “I’m . . . seventy-six, Ben,” she said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. “Seventy-six. Geneva, too.”

  “I’ll call her caretaker, and we’ll go to her.”

  Ben held Ginny in one arm, cradling her so he could get a better look at her face.

  No—what if he decided he didn’t want her anymore?

  Mortified, she began to cover herself with a hand.

  “Don’t,” he said. “You’re more beautiful than ever. Don’t you know that?”

  As she lowered her hand and allowed her lover to drink her in, Ginny realized that he was right.

  He’d made her feel much more beautiful than she had ever hoped to be.

  THICKER THAN BLOOD

  MELJEAN BROOK

  To Kat, for giving me Philly

  and a lot more.

  ONE

  LESS THAN TWO WEEKS AGO, ANNIE GALLAGHER would have slain another vampire for this.

  She’d followed the human to his home, anyway. He’d turned off the lights in his second-story bedroom, but she continued to wait; she wouldn’t feed from him until he slept. And so for the second time that night, she stood on a sidewalk and stared across a street at a pair of darkened windows—but this time, she didn’t let the ghosts overwhelm her.

  Annie blinked and looked away from the house. Not ghosts. Even she didn’t believe that the spirits of the dead haunted the Earth, let alone a pizzeria in Northeast Philadelphia. And except for her father, all of the people she’d been thinking of were still living.

  Not ghosts, but phantoms. Memories strong enough to bring the flavor of tomato sauce and mozzarella to a tongue that could no longer taste anything but blood.

  Fighting the restlessness and hunger that began pricking the length of her spine, Annie rolled her shoulders within her heavy jacket and tugged at the neckline of her black tank. The bod
y-hugging fabric didn’t tug far, and the movement only made her acutely conscious of the sweat soaking the material.

  No air-conditioning unit protruded from the face of the brick row home, but she’d heard one rumble to life moments after he’d gone inside. His house would be blissfully cool. But it probably wasn’t yet—and although his psychic scent indicated that he’d finally slipped into sleep, it wasn’t deep. At least ten or fifteen more minutes of waiting stretched ahead of her.

  Loitering. Suspicious behavior, maybe, but Annie doubted that she would be noticed by any of the neighborhood’s residents. This part of Mayfair was blue collar to its core, early to bed and early to rise. Even the weekends didn’t see much action after the local bars closed, and it wasn’t exactly bumping with traffic on a Thursday night.

  Or, considering that it was two-thirty, early Friday morning.

  Thursday, Friday . . . Whatever, she thought, suddenly impatient with herself. A vampire didn’t move to the same circadian rhythms as the rest of the city, so it hardly mattered what day of the week it was when the sun came up—it only mattered when it went down.

  Of course, if it hadn’t been Thursday, she wouldn’t have been standing there now.

  Annie closed her eyes. All right. So it mattered. Enough that it hadn’t been the sight of Tony’s Pizza that had stopped her in her tracks when she’d been walking down Frankford Avenue, but the stabbing realization that only a few hours earlier, her mother, her brother, and his family had probably been in the restaurant. Annie’s two nieces, and the nephew she’d only seen in pictures—all carrying on the Gallagher tradition: Tony’s every Thursday night.

  Surely they’d kept going after Annie’s transformation and her father’s death. Hell, even before she’d been turned, med school and her residency had prevented Annie from joining them half the time, anyway.

  But however many dinners she’d missed since then, there had been enough memories to keep her riveted to the spot, staring into the past and letting the present recede into shades of gray. And even as she’d cursed herself for letting such a little thing—such a bygone thing—get to her, she hadn’t been able to break away until a glint of auburn had burned through the haze of remembrance.