by Liz Meldon
Arms wrapped around herself, bright white talons digging into both biceps, Ella perched on the side of her unmade queen. As the last of her adrenaline surge tapered off, her mind raced and her body wept, the aches and anxiety flooding back home.
Malachi closed the gap between them in a single stride, standing before her with his arms crossed and his eyes black. Something buzzed between them, a poignant hum, a flicker in the air that surrounded him. Moira had mentioned it in the past, a supernatural creature’s aura. They were all different, like a fingerprint.
She felt it now, Malachi’s presence.
Not that she had never felt it before, mind you. The eldest Saevitia brother positively oozed presence, filling whatever room he entered and diverting all attention to him. With a face like that, hair like gold, a smile that cut you off at the knees, and eyes that saw right down to your marrow—how could he not?
But this was different. Like the sensual tingling in your lips, nerves on fire at the closeness of a lover, Ella felt him in a way that seemed far too intimate—that should have brought heat to her cheeks. Malachi’s energy was so wild and beautiful and chaotic. A constant maelstrom swirling around him.
Somehow, Ella welcomed it right now.
“I need you to make a joke,” she whispered, peering into those stunning black orbs without the urge to shy away. “Sarcastic, scathing, crude—something.”
Malachi’s lips twitched, as if fighting a smile that wouldn’t have reached his eyes anyway. “I’m afraid I don’t find your situation humorous.”
Amidst all the other pain—in her gums, in her gut—the faint pressure of tears touched her eyes and nose. She blinked, hoping to push the offending liquid back, but that only forced it out. Thick and viscous, twin trails crept down her cheeks, and when she brushed them away, her hands came back smeared a dark reddish brown. She stiffened, her stomach roiling at the sight.
“What—”
“It’s blood,” Malachi told her, all calm and serious and distant. Her least favorite version of the demon. When she lifted her gaze to his again, he cleared his throat. “You’re crying blood.”
Ella shot to her feet, panic surging, but was soon shoved back down by a heavy hand on her shoulder.
“Why?” she demanded, voice just a little too squeaky for her liking. God, could this hunger just give it a rest already? Malachi’s brow furrowed, expression a harsh blend of pity and incredulity.
“Because… Because vampires weep tears of blood.”
His tone suggested she should have come to that conclusion on her own. Ella opened her mouth to balk at the sheer lunacy of his statement, but nothing came out. Instead, she clammed up and wiped away the blood when her bedroom door flew open, and in waltzed Cordelia with a flourish of bustle and the click of tiny kitten heels.
“Really, cousin,” she mused, shaking her head as she kicked the door shut behind her. “So blunt. Find some tact, will you?”
“Why?” Malachi stepped aside as she brushed by, his movements stilted, his expression tight. Ella tracked the witch’s path from the door to her bed before settling on the mug of something in her hand. Never mind that Cordelia had regressed to full Victorian-era funeral attire, her black corset painfully tight and bird cage netting obscuring half her pale, aristocratic face. The mug—that had Ella’s attention, because it smelled so sinfully sweet that her mouth started to water again.
“Because,” Cordelia said with a sniff, barely sparing the chaos demon a cursory glance as she settled on the bed, “your little human may be gone, but—”
“I’m not…” Ella crept forward, her eyes on the mug, panic subsiding to something dark and wild again. “I’m not…”
Not his little human.
And certainly not gone.
“Here. Drink.”
The witch didn’t need to ask twice. Before she could inch the mug in Ella’s general direction, she lunged and snatched it up, bringing it to her lips and drinking deep.
Holy. Fucking. God.
That was…
This was heaven in a mug. It had to be. Warm, almost too-hot liquid oozed down her throat, slow and thick and exquisite. Tangy, metallic, rich. She moaned shamelessly.
“Slowly, for Lucifer’s sake,” Malachi growled, but she ignored him, tipping back so that droplets splashed across her cheeks, her nose, her lips, so that she could milk it for every last drop.
The witch beside her sighed. “She’s fine.”
“She’ll make herself sick.”
“Then she’ll make herself sick,” Cordelia said primly. “She’s already sick, cousin.”
Sick was the last thing Ella felt. In fact, she had never felt better in all her life, limbs pulsing with vitality, every cell in her body rejuvenated. She had never been much of a runner, but in that moment, she could have tackled a marathon ten times over.
Until the mug was empty. Until she swallowed every last drop, sliding her finger around inside so that she wouldn’t miss anything. It was only when the empty mug hung limply off her finger that she finally processed what Cordelia had said.
“I’m not… sick,” she said weakly. Cordelia flashed her a thin smile, then patted her knee.
“Oh, my darling, you’re certainly not well.”
Ella wasn’t sick. Kingsley hadn’t been sick. She had always liked him the most out of all Alaric’s old bodyguards. “I’m not sick. I’m a…”
The word died on the tip of her tongue. Ella couldn’t bring herself to say it. She couldn’t process it, let alone admit it. But if she wasn’t a—you know—then why had she just downed an entire mug of piping hot blood?
She could smell it now—properly. Now that the thirst had been quenched, a sacrifice made to the dark thing flickering inside her, she understood what she had just consumed.
“I’m a…”
“Vampire,” Malachi finished for her. The finality of his tone, the curtness of that one word, tipped her over the edge. The mug slipped off her finger and onto the bed as her face crumpled and every dam inside her burst.
“Now, now, it’s not so bad,” Cordelia cooed, an arm around her shuddering shoulders. The witch shuffled over and tucked Ella under her chin, smoothing her hair away from her face. Bloody tears sliced down her cheeks; they’d ruin Cordelia’s dress. She blinked at the absurdity of the thought: Cordelia bled all the time for her magic. A few vampire tears were probably nothing to her.
“Yes, well,” Malachi muttered, fiddling with one of his golden rings, “it isn’t exactly good either.”
Was this why she wasn’t breathing? The tears continued to fall, but Ella had no hiccups, no hitched breath. Cordelia tightened her grip around her shoulders, teeth gnashing briefly.
“Either be useful, Mal, or get out.”
The chaos demon scoffed. “Shall I lie to her, then? Paint the rosiest picture I can fathom—”
“I’m hardly doing that,” Cordelia snipped. “Stop being dramatic.”
Although Ella’s gaze bounced like a tennis ball back and forth between the pair, she didn’t really digest much of what they were saying. Not the snide comments, not the under-the-breath mutterings. In fact, she was starting to think she was in shock, but she couldn’t feel any of the usual symptoms. No freezing cold fingers or toes, no light-headedness, no prickling from top to bottom like she was about to pass out. No urge to empty her guts onto the floor.
“What does all this mean?” she croaked at last, cutting off Malachi and Cordelia, who, at that point, were just talking over each other. The pair fell silent for a moment, and she sat up, untangling herself from Cordelia’s oddly maternal grasp. “How…?”
“We believe you were attacked after you left your, er, job,” the witch told her. She picked up Ella’s discarded mug and tapped the ceramic rim with one long nail—a nail oddly reminiscent of hers, now. “Moira and Malachi found you behind the school, bitten. Someone was with you, but he or she fled before any identification could be made. Do you have any recollection of that?”
She shook her head miserably. “No.”
Ella remembered—in the vaguest sense—sitting in on a lesson, half listening, half grading a quiz the students had taken the day before. Then the bell rang, and things started to get fuzzy again.
Ella, bella, darling sweet girl…
Jaw clenched, she brushed at her ear, hating the baritone rumble, the heat of some ghost’s breath on her neck.
Fearing, too, that not only had she become a vampire without her knowledge or consent, but that she had also gone batshit crazy in the process.
“You’ve spent the last two days transitioning from human to vampire,” Cordelia carried on after a beat of tense silence. “It’s a benefit that you don’t remember it. The process is rather painful. A great deal of screaming, contorting. Your body isn’t what it once was, and it never will be again, I’m afraid.”
Ella shot up, unable to sit still a second longer, and started to pace around her pitch-black bedroom. She could see just fine, every damn detail, but did these demons have a pair of permanent night-vision goggles too?
“What does this mean for me?”
As she passed by Malachi and Cordelia, she felt them, the hum of their beings; Cordelia’s aura was rather chaotic too, but in a different sense than Malachi. Hers was disjointed and frantic, scattered, unrestrained, bound to make Ella’s heart race—if it could still do that. It frightened her, intrigued her.
Malachi’s beguiled her, blazing around him like the tail of a screeching comet. Not literally, of course, but the air seemed to shimmer all the same, beckoning her like a moth to the flame, encouraging her to touch, to explore in painstaking detail.
Which didn’t exactly seem like an appropriate response to any of this.
“It means,” Cordelia started, smoothing a hand over her black lace skirt before busying herself with the tulle beneath it, “you’ll need blood to survive. Human blood, preferably. The sun will kill you, as will Moira’s light should you come in direct contact with enough of it. You can get your bloodlust under control, but it’s all about exposure. You must keep your hunger satisfied, and you must familiarize yourself with the sounds and smells of humanity again. Life can and will go on, but… perhaps not as you intended.”
It hit her at once—the weight of it all, the jarring implications for her future. Like a sledgehammer to the temple, a wave of unfettered bullshit knocked the nonexistent wind right out of her. She might not have been gasping, and her heart might not have been racing, but she fell back against the wall next to her closet all the same, then slid down to the floor, plagued with a rush of numb, cold fear.
“So… So, I probably can’t teach?”
Cordelia pursed her lips. “Not right now. Not until you find some control.”
“And… Can I…” Ella dreaded the answer. “Can I have kids?”
Malachi turned away, his stoic silence telling her all she needed to know. Cordelia, meanwhile, drifted to the end of the bed, head tipped to one side as she appraised her.
“You can turn humans with your bite, but you cannot, well, birth a child in the traditional sense.”
Biting the insides of her cheeks, Ella nodded, eyes blurred with bloody tears. It wouldn’t have been in the cards for years, six or seven at least, but she had always envisioned a very particular future. Finish her degrees. Find a great school to teach in. Marry a good guy. Have a kid or two. Create the family she had craved when she was growing up, surrounded by four siblings who had the Midas touch—only they turned everything they touched to shit, not gold. She had watched her disinterested, disconnected, career-driven parents for years, knowing that she could do better, that she could find a partner and do this family thing right.
And now…
Face buried in her hands, she doubled over, body racked with sobs.
And now she was this thing—this thing who had destroyed her fledging career and her dream family in a single blow.
What was the point of her existence now?
Why not just get up and walk into the sunlight?
The thought had her bawling harder, but the flurry of the bedroom door flying open and slamming off the doorstop quelled her wails.
“I don’t care. She needs me!” Moira snapped. In the time since Cordelia arrived, the sun had descended behind the nearby buildings. Nothing more than a fading light stretched a few feet into her room now, and Moira blocked most of it.
Thump-thump.
The bloodlust came harder and faster this time, her thirst already quenched but her body aching for more. Ella shot off the ground with a snarl, but Malachi had his arms around her before she’d made it more than two feet closer to Moira—who was also immediately dragged out by Severus, protesting the whole way. The door slammed shut. Darkness fell. Ella screeched and flailed in Malachi’s grasp, until he turned and tossed her toward the bathroom.
She went down hard, stumbling, knees crashing into the floorboards, hands catching her before her face did. Trembling, she held herself there on all fours, waiting for this awful, out-of-control feeling to subside. Her belly gurgled. Her gums ached. Fat, bloody tears dribbled down her cheeks and onto the floor. Splat. Splat.
“This isn’t fair,” she rasped, voice cracking, heart breaking. “This isn’t my fault. I didn’t do anything.”
“There, there, my little bloody gosling,” Cordelia cooed, crouching in front of her and cupping her chin. “Life isn’t fair, is it? But we endure because we must. You will too.”
Annoyingly unhelpful words of wisdom delivered, the witch left in a whirl of lace, brocade, and tulle. Ella tracked the crisp song of kitten heels right out the door. Through wood and concrete, she heard the muffled argument between Moira, Severus, and Alaric. They must have moved downstairs again. And she was here. In this pitch-black room. With a craving for her best friend’s blood.
Malachi lingered just out of sight, his presence palpable, his gaze blazing across her back. Ella ignored him as she crawled—literally crawled—to her bed and hoisted herself in. The overwhelming scent of lotion and perfume and BO was less offensive this time as she drew the duvet up and tucked it under her arms, neither hot nor cold. Breathless. Lifeless. A pale, hangry corpse.
She wiped the blood from her cheeks—or, at least, she attempted to. Like regular tears, the liquid smeared when brushed, but now it painted her skin instead of disappearing across it. Great. Just fucking great.
Malachi loomed at the end of her bed, black-eyed and scowling, his aura buzzing so distinctly that she felt it in her bones. Ella rolled onto her side and drew her knees up, refusing to look at him. It wasn’t his fault, but this was his world, and somehow that was offense enough.
“Just go away, Malachi.”
“I can help you.”
Something torn between a snort and a sob ripped through her. Help? Like he’d been helping since he walked in, right? All moody and sour, a total fucking downer. The last creature in the world she thought would ever be a downer was Malachi Saevitia, and she felt the shift in his personality so viscerally now. Before, he had pushed every single one of her buttons, but he had also been charming and supportive, inquisitive and attentive. This new serious, angsty Malachi did nothing for her. Nothing. He couldn’t even crack a joke on request; at least Cordelia had a bit of pep in her step. How the hell was he supposed to help her?
Ever since that night on the roof, all he’d done was hurt her.
And—she just didn’t have the strength to put up with that right now.
“Please leave.” She fisted her hands in the duvet when he stayed perfectly still, like some handsome, scowling block of concrete at the end of her bed. He had no right to scowl. No right to be short with her, to wear this ridiculous mix of anger and pity so openly across his features. Ella had been dealt the bad hand. His life hadn’t just shot straight to hell, and it wasn’t on her to coddle whatever fucking ego trip the guy was on by ignoring her wishes. So, she grabbed the mug Cordelia had left on her nightstand and hurled it at him. �
�Get out!”
He dodged it with ease, and the mug patterned with purple and pink kitten silhouettes that she’d had since middle school shattered into a dozen little pieces as soon as it hit the wall. Lips trembling, her vision blurred to crimson as the grief hit.
“Just leave me alone,” Ella muttered, rolling back onto her side and sinking under the covers, her pillowcase stained red.
And without so much as a leering retort, Malachi obliged.
The door opened and shut for the final time that afternoon, and in the darkness, Ella let sorrow take her.
Chapter Seven
Ella’s first week as a vampire was a week of bloody tears and misery.
Funny how the house could be full of bodies, full of people who cared for her well-being, and yet loneliness and heartache reigned supreme.
She often wondered, in all those long, lonely hours, if this was how Moira had felt when her body first started to change. After her chestnut-brown curls fell out, after her eyes turned blue, her skin lost its pigment, Moira had retreated from the rest of the world by choice. It had concerned Ella—scared her half to death, honestly—but that was before she knew the truth, back when she’d thought it was health related, some genetic fuck-you that had also killed Lara Aurelia. She’d felt helpless, lost.
Which was probably how Moira felt now.
She and her best friend had been texting since Ella’s transition into this thing. Every day, throughout the day and night, Moira asked how she was feeling, what hurt, did she need to feed. Sometimes Ella replied. Most of the time the texts went unanswered, because what the hell was she supposed to say? How was she feeling? Broken. What hurt? Everything. Did she need to feed? Fuck yes.
But she couldn’t. She couldn’t stomach the thought of consuming humans in any capacity, no matter how desperately this new, savage body of hers demanded it. Cordelia had brought her microwaved mugs of blood, and although it pained her—and was probably killing her—Ella had let each grow cold on her nightstand. If she had the strength, she would set it outside her door or dump it down the sink. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the witch’s efforts, but she just…