She wondered when he had stopped being a stalker and an enemy. Elle’s eyes ran over his bare chest, which was all hard planes and muscle. About the time you jumped in the sack with him, another part of her replied. Looking at him, she wondered if anyone but Gran could really blame her.
She still couldn’t believe that she’d slept with a werewolf, but then, she still couldn’t really believe that she was sitting on a stupidly soft bed in a foreign apartment as a member of the undead. She’d hated vampires and weres for so long that it seemed strange to not care about having had sex with one. Although, that was nowhere near as bad as being one.
And she didn’t really care too much about that, either. Oh, she had already admitted her embarrassment and horror at what she’d done to Clay, but other than that, she felt strangely content.
Calm.
Not that she’d had a choice in the matter. She’d always thought approval from the human in question was required—blood, it was meant to be a law—but the Creep had just gone and done what he wanted. Since she had survived, most people would assume she’d wanted to be Chosen. And if she were to say she hadn’t, would that mean that she’d get her head lopped off, along with her Chooser’s?
Elle somewhat doubted that Gran would care if it had been consensual or not. None of her family would give a shit, Clay was right about that; they would probably want to stick a stake in her quick smart. After all, Gran was a purist and Elle was defying the natural order: the one according to Gran. She didn’t need her newfound telepathy to tell her that.
Clay picked up one end of the white towel hanging over his shoulders and scrubbed his hair. “Have you looked in the mirror yet?”
Elle shook her head. She wasn’t really sure she wanted to. The way that Clay looked at her—as if she were a princess come to sweep him off his feet—made her feel uncomfortable. He’d never looked at her like that before; did she really want to know what had caused such a big difference in his regard?
He dropped the towel. “You should.”
“Why?” Elle jutted her chin forward.
“Because you need to get to know the new you. You’re a vampire now, you aren’t human. You need to accept that; there’s no point fighting what you’ve become.”
Elle wasn’t so sure about that. Sure, she was calm about the change, for now. Why risk a hissy fit, when said fit had taken on a whole new level of danger?
“What? So I shouldn’t fight my urge to bite every neck I see?”
Unfortunately, that wasn’t an exaggeration. The trip to Clay’s apartment had been horrible. She’d been covered from head to toe in a ridiculous amount of clothing, and he’d managed to smear soot all over her face. She’d looked like a chimney sweep who had decided to wear everything in their closet. Nobody had noticed her—that part of their plan had worked. What she hadn’t counted on was her noticing everyone else. She could hear what everyone was thinking and most of it wasn’t pleasant. Rage at lovers, lots of thoughts about sex and naked bodies, worries about children, hungry stomachs and the desperate need to feel safe. So she’d known beyond a shadow of doubt that no one had noticed her, but plenty of women had noticed Clay. She’d had to really work on strengthening her mental shield, especially when some of those women had thought very…explicit things about Clay. The jealousy had been harsh and swift and shocking.
It hadn’t helped that she’d also found herself considering everyone in a food or non-food type of way.
Blood pumping in veins, heartbeats…the sheer smell of blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. It had been a cornucopia of edible scents. Even the stink of unwashed human flesh hadn’t been off-putting like normal, because there was blood underneath the surface. Her fangs lengthened just thinking of it.
She tried to distract herself by remembering the other vampires she’d walked past. They had smelled different. It had been an almost icy, burning smell, and even though she knew the exotic flavor that ran through their veins, they hadn’t smelled tasty at all.
Then there’d been Clay, who next to a human smelled a bit like a furry dog, but still good. Compared to a vampire though, he’d been appealing in a food and non-food way.
“Why don’t vampires feed off weres more often, since you can’t get addicted to vampire bites?” Elle asked into the silence.
Clay sighed and dropped his towel onto what appeared to be his dirty laundry chair. “Can you really imagine one of us agreeing to it if we didn’t have to?”
Elle tilted her head to the side. “Why not?” A little part of her felt even more guilty about what she’d done.
Clay walked over to his closet—which was really a pile of clothes on the floor—and began rifling through it. “It hurts.”
Elle frowned at his response. She lowered her mental shield just enough so that she could focus on Clay’s glittering amber mind. Perhaps she could see how much she had hurt him during her tick-like activities? It didn’t take long for her to realize that she couldn’t hear his thoughts, not like when she’d been in the coffin.
“Why can’t I hear your thoughts now, when I could before? How do you know about Graceds?” Elle asked. Other mental voices began working their way into her mind:
“I can’t pay the rent. Why the fuck did I bet on that stupid horse? A fucking donkey could have run faster. I’ll have to suck that bastard landlord’s cock again.”
“I hate them both. I should have never had children.”
“I just love John so much. I couldn’t live without him. I really couldn’t.”
Elle slammed the shield back into place.
Clay was staring at her, eyes intense. “I was thinking them at you. And I just know.”
Elle blinked. She guessed he must be right. She hadn’t heard a single peep from his mind, although she could somehow see it when her shield was down. And he clearly didn’t want to tell her how he knew about her race. Since she hadn’t told him anything, either, she couldn’t really fault him for not elaborating.
Clay slid a white shirt on and then walked over to the bed. He sat down next to her, causing the mattress to tip her upward. He began buttoning his shirt, which was a bit of a downer.
“I don’t get it,” Elle said, when she figured he wasn’t going to say anything else.
“Normally, I am resistant to Greens.”
That was interesting. She didn’t know any were or vampire who was, not when a Green wanted to hear them. “So Gran can’t hear you at all?” Elle asked.
Clay shook his head. “No, not even if I try thinking at her. She can’t hear squat.”
“But…she can hear everyone. Wolves and vampires, as well as humans and other Graceds—except Greens.”
“Not me,” Clay said. “But I am a bit of an oddity; something kooky in my genetic makeup.”
Elle began tapping her fingers against her shins. For some reason, she didn’t think the explanation was really that simple. “What exactly are genes? It’s something to do with blood, but the word doesn’t exist anymore. Not in any dictionary I could find. Gran talks about them a lot. Apart from you, she’s the only person I’ve heard use the word.”
“Really simply, they’re a code that makes you, well, you. Everyone has a code and everyone’s is slightly different. But there are bigger differences race to race.”
“Right,” Elle said, although she wasn’t sure she really got it. How does someone have a code? Can you see it? “You have genes that mean I can’t hear you unless you think loudly at me?” Elle frowned. “I can’t hear anyone else at the moment either, but that’s because I put up a shield, to stop the thoughts coming in. I think though, if I relaxed it, they’d seep in. Gran can hear everyone all the time, even shielded—I think—to some extent, unless they are other Greens.”
“Some people can turn it on and off, from what I’ve seen. I think it would be more of a hindrance to be able to hear every little thought that runs through a person’s brain. Most people are idiots. Or boring. Or worse, they’re both.” Clay shrugged.
&nbs
p; Elle laughed. “True.” She thought for a moment. “So, why don’t wolves let vampires feed off them? I mean, you taste okay.”
Clay finished doing up the last button on his shirt. “I taste good, do I?”
Elle just stared at him.
Clay ran a hand through his hair. “As I said, it hurts.”
Elle raised an eyebrow.
“We heal, really fast.”
“Tell me something new.” Everybody knew weres mended fast. It was the most basic thing about them, other than the fact they had furry little tails every other night.
“We heal a lot faster than vampires do; it’s part of being able to shapeshift. When you bit me, I healed almost as fast as you bit. So you had to bite me again and again—I’m not sure if you realized you were even doing it. And just because I heal fast, it doesn’t mean I can’t feel pain. I do.”
Elle winced.
“The long and short of it: we don’t like being bitten by vampires because it’s painful. But here’s the science lesson most people don’t know: vampires and werewolves produce oxygen in their blood. But not enough. We need that and the platelets and a few other chemicals from human or animal blood to sustain our rapid healing and alleged immortality. Hence why you don’t need to breathe as much—although you still do need to breathe, your blood gets enough oxygen from your food. Weres adapted to produce more oxygen, so we don’t need to drink human blood much, if at all; a sufficiently bloody steak will suffice. Vampires didn’t evolve as much, so when they drink our blood, they get most of what they need, but it’s strong. Too strong for many of them, and they can’t use it all. It’s wasteful. It can feel like being kicked by a team of draft horses from the inside out.”
All this talk of oxygen and platelets was beyond her knowledge. Gran would understand, though.
“Is that why they don’t like weres?” Elle asked. She’d noticed—everyone had noticed—that Pinton had a low wolf population and figured it was because the city was vampire-run. She’d been happy that there’d only really been one group of freaks to deal with, now she wasn’t so sure. Weres seemed better, somehow. After all, they were just as happy to munch on cow liver as human.
“It’s more why we don’t like them. They think of us as food—undesirable food, but food nonetheless. We don’t like being thought of as an after-dinner snack. Plus, they’re bigots.”
Elle let go of her legs and leaned back on the bed, so she was lying down. “So why are there so few wolves here?”
“We don’t generally like vampires and this town reeks of them.” Clay lay down next to her on his side. He propped his head on his hand. “Competition for food and all that. Plus, they think we’re lower class; even worse than humans, sometimes. Why would we want to work with people like that?”
Elle snorted. “Vampires don’t work. Not unless they have to.”
“That’s another difference between our races. We aren’t afraid of a bit of labor. Vampires like things being done for them. They’re soft, weak. How they live in their cities and their aristo societies, that isn’t what they were designed for.”
“Designed for?” Elle asked with a frown.
Clay rolled off the bed. “Enough of this. Time for you to see the new you.” He walked over to a set of drawers that were propped in the corner next to the bathroom door. Opening the top drawer, he withdrew an object the size of a small plate and then turned and walked back toward her. It was a mirror.
Dread filled the pit of her stomach and she wanted to spring up and run away. Precisely because she felt like that, she took the mirror from Clay. She wasn’t a coward and she wasn’t about to become one just because she now had fangs. And super strength, and really fast reflexes.
Taking a deep breath, she lifted the mirror up to her face level and tried to keep her expression blank, but the first thing she noticed was her hair. It was just as bad as she’d feared. It was long. And still curly. The color was different, and she wished it had become blonde or brown or something. But it hadn’t. It wasn’t so metallic anymore, so coppery; rather, it now looked like her head had been dipped in a vat of blood. She’d known it was longer though, because she’d had to keep brushing it away, but she hadn’t looked at it, never really taken into account just how bloody long it was. It was down to her freaking ass! She was going to have to cut it.
Staring at the rest of her reflection, she felt shock sizzle through her, along with irritation. She still looked like her, there was no doubt about it, but she wasn’t some princess from a fairy tale. Her face seemed sharper, all the lines more well-defined, her lips a deep berry red and her skin paler, almost toneless. Elle thought the shock of her new appearance would have been equivalent to the one she might have experienced if she’d dyed her hair black, painted her face in cosmetics, and decided to parade in front of a mirror.
That feeling lasted until she met her stare in the mirror.
Her eyes. Her eyes. The Brown was now a deep purple, which was strange, but she’d expected that. The major differences were the Green and Gray flecks; they were bright, brilliant shards of color. It gave her eyes an opalescent appearance.
“I look mostly the same,” Elle said, trying to sound nonchalant as she lowered the mirror.
“What?” Clay’s eyebrows shot to his hairline.
“I mean, yeah, my face is thinner and my hair is darker. Dark red rather than copper; but I could have got that from a dye job.” All of what she’d said was true. She looked like her, but she didn’t look like her. It would take some getting used to, and she needed to cut her hair. “But my eyes are kind of freaky.”
Chapter 36
Anton’s cravat felt like it was choking him. Tugging at the snowy white cotton, he tried to loosen its grip on his neck, but only succeeded in making himself look uncomfortable. Which he was, but he didn’t want everyone at the blasted ball knowing it. They were already staring at him enough as it was. Imagine the stories they’d tell: Choked to death by white satin. He fought a smirk.
He hadn’t wanted to go to the Baron of Liverly’s ball, but he hadn’t had much choice. “Go and have fun,” had been his father’s words.
Anton had translated those to, “Go to the ball, pretend to have fun, but keep up the impression that we are happy with this match.”
The ball was the biggest event of the week, so he couldn’t fault his father’s logic. It was just that Liverly was a pompous fool who’d married a conniving bitch. Every year they hosted their “Winter Ball,” each more ridiculously decorated than the last. He really hadn’t wanted to go; one, because he hadn’t wanted to be chased by the baroness the whole night and two, he hated having to pretend happiness.
So far, his first concern thankfully hadn’t happened, probably because the engagement announcement had been printed in the papers that morning. His sister and mother had come to town the night before, and they’d been so excited for him that he knew his father hadn’t told them the truth: that he was sacrificing his only son for the sake of the family’s coffers.
His sister, Darla, had been especially pleased; she hadn’t debuted yet and didn’t understand how the world really worked. She was full of romantic dreams; he’d met his soon-to-be vampire husband at a ball and they’d fallen instantly in love, so much so that the vampire wanted to marry him and eschew all others. Maybe the vampire would even Choose him.
Anton couldn’t help but shake his head. He wondered if he’d ever been so foolish. Oh, he was well aware he’d made an idiot of himself over Annabel, but those emotions had been so intense. He couldn’t have resisted following their urges and he doubted he’d ever be that in love again. Before he’d met her, he certainly hadn’t wanted to get married this young and he’d never thought he’d settle for one person unless they were his perfect match. Funny how fate worked.
From the looks he’d been receiving ever since setting his polished boot inside Liverly’s door, everyone knew about his engagement as well. And they weren’t sure what to make of it. Most of the guests
were vampires, and he could see the indecision on their faces when they greeted him. Should they laugh at him, or should they welcome him? After all, one day he may well become one of them.
It was ridiculous; he was still the same person, the same baron, as yesterday. But he hadn’t been a threat then; he’d been a human they could tolerate or ignore. There hadn’t even been the remotest possibility that he would join their ranks. Now, well, he might be Chosen at any moment by his vampire husband. A baron who was only going to be alive for a hundred years could be tolerated with a little hand waving—but one that could be around for centuries? That bore thinking about.
Anton took a step forward and plastered a smile on his face. He gave a short bow and greeted the bored wife of another baron. She looked at him like he was a sweetmeat she’d like to nibble on. Which was probably accurate, since her fangs were out. He moved on quickly, feeling the looks following him. Why was his upcoming marriage such a shock? Had he been considered that unwanted?
On his way through the crowd, the thousands of white roses that bedecked the ballroom caught his eye. So did the ice statues that stood poised on tables above glittering crystal glasses. They all cost money. Everyone wore ridiculously expensive satins, silks and velvets; their diamonds and rubies glittering on silver and gold settings. Everything they wore—even the flowers and feathers in their primped hair—cost money. And he was being married to it. Why that necessitated whispers and titters as he walked through the crowd, he didn’t know. It was what most aristos married for, anyway. It was how they could afford to throw these ridiculous parties. He guessed though that most aristos married within their own races to achieve that wealth.
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