Silver Dagger

by T. L. Sinclare

  "No, I'm not—"

  The bright light in Stephen's eyes swirled in front of her face.

  "Madeleine?" His voice was distant, not inside her head, but really far away. Like down a dark tunnel.

  "I don't feel so good," she whispered.

  And her world faded to black.

  ***

  Madeleine sank gracefully to the ground. Stephen snagged her just before impact. Energy pumped through his own body.

  "Maddie? Oh my God." He listened. Her heartbeat stuttered in his ears. He hadn't been paying attention. His mind had been filled with escape and rescue. Getting her away.

  He laid her on the ground and ripped the edges of her jacket open. The sweet smell of blood reached him. Red flooded her T-shirt.

  She'd been stabbed. He looked at the knife in her hand. Blood on the blade. The fight. Somehow she'd gotten in front of her own knife. Or someone had forced it into her.

  He hadn't noticed—he'd been so focused on getting her clear, he hadn't been listening for the subtle changes in her heartbeat. He could hear it now, and smell her blood. Damn, why hadn't he noticed? God, he was too late.

  Her heart slowed, but the wound still seeped.

  Stephen watched her life force flow from her body, the reality of what he'd done slamming into him. He'd killed her. He'd finally killed her. He pushed her hair back, away from her face. She was dying, and it was his fault.

  Damn it. He hadn't wanted this.

  Mixed with the truth was the painful cry of possession.

  She belonged to him. And he was going to lose her.

  Two hundred years alone. Two hundred years of crushing human emotions and learning to be content with what he'd become.

  Then she'd entered his life. All the human feelings, irritating as they were, had returned.

  And now he was going to lose her. The warm memory of making love to Madeleine settled on him—never to experience that again.

  He couldn't do it. He couldn't face another eternity alone.

  An instinct stronger than self-preservation screamed through his soul. He bent low over her and placed his mouth against her throat. The normally steady beat of her pulse was gone, turned erratic and struggling. He opened his mouth and pierced her skin with his teeth. The familiar rush of pleasure surged through him, but he stopped it. After a single taste he lifted his head.

  Blood already flowed from the wounds on his neck.

  He crushed the better angels in his head. Solitude for two hundred years.

  He wasn't going to lose her. She was his.

  He lifted her mouth to his throat and silently willed her to drink.

  Her lips opened against his skin and a few drops fell freely onto her tongue. It was enough. Her body reacted—lost in its own death, it clung to its one chance for survival. Her lips closed around the wound, and she began to drink, pulling his life into her body.

  Ecstasy roared through him. As if her soul were floating free, he captured it and held it. Her spirit sank into him. They merged through flashes of light and sparks of color. Her heart pounded in his chest. His thudded into hers, increasing the beat, strengthening her.

  "Stephen. No!"

  Pain ripped through him as the cry tore him away from Madeleine. His head snapped up. Nicholas stood in the alley. Fury flashed in his eyes.

  Stephen looked down at Madeleine, stretched out in his arms. Her eyes were shut, but her heart beat stronger than it had before.

  Oh my God. What have I done?

  He blinked, trying to clear his eyes and his memory. Caught in the threat of losing her, he'd done the unthinkable. He'd done to her what had been done to him.

  Stephen pushed himself to his knees, still staring at the fallen body. Oh my God.

  "Stephen?"

  He couldn't face Nicholas. Not after what he'd done.

  "Take care of her." Revulsion, a self-hatred beyond pain, pierced Stephen's heart. "Take care of her," he commanded again, stumbling to his feet and running from Madeleine.

  From the vampire he'd just created.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sunlight stabbed her eyes through closed lids, dragging her from sleep. Madeleine groaned, draped her arm over her eyes, and tried to drift off. God, she was tired. Her entire body ached as if she'd been slammed against a brick wall a few dozen times.

  "Madeleine, are you awake?"

  "Ahh!" She reacted, throwing herself across the bed, away from the voice. She fell off the mattress and landed with a thump on the floor.

  "Are you okay?"

  She blinked and opened her eyes. Nick's concerned face filled the space in front of her.

  "Ahh!" she repeated, jerking back. "What the hell are you doing here?" She glanced around to make sure she was in her own house. She was. But what the hell was he doing there? "I thought you couldn't enter someone's house without an invitation."

  "That really only works with full vampires." He backed up and leaned against the window ledge. "I just didn't think you should get in the habit of inviting anyone in."

  Her mind was still a little cloudy from the night before, as if she'd been on a weeklong drunk, but that seemed to make some sense. The aches in her body invited caution as she slowly pressed to standing. She rested her legs against the side of the bed, using it for support. Exhaustion dragged her down. God, she needed more sleep.

  Get the hell out of the city. Stephen's warning flashed through her foggy thoughts. He'd told her to get out of town and then he'd…

  The rest was a blur, blackness and strange colors swirling through her head.

  She licked her lips. A strange taste lingered on her tongue—sweet and exotic.

  "What time is it?"

  "Four o'clock."

  "In the afternoon?" She looked down at her bed as if it had cast some spell. "I slept until four in the afternoon?"

  "Yes." Nick pushed away from the wall and walked toward her. "Madeleine, you have to—"

  Her scream stopped whatever he was going to say.

  Madeleine stared down at her T-shirt. What used to be a white T-shirt was red—or mostly red.

  "What happened? Did someone get hurt?" She tried to remember. They'd been at Death's Door and there was a fight. The memory came to her in flashes connected by dark empty spaces—claws and nails reaching across the dimly lit space, white fangs, growls of frustration. And a sharp pain in her side.

  Madeleine put her hand against her rib cage, the memory as piercing as a knife.

  A tiny tear in the fabric of her shirt stopped her exploring fingers.

  She'd been stabbed. It came back to her. She'd been bleeding, walking after Stephen, his command to leave town.

  "What happened? I was bleeding. This is my blood, isn't it?" She pulled the shirt out of the way. "Where's the wound?" She looked up at Nick, not wanting the answer she knew he would give her. "Why isn't there a wound? What happened?"

  "Madeleine, don't you get it? Don't you remember?" Nick paused. The anguish in his voice blew cold chills across her skin. He drew in a deep breath. "Stephen turned you into a vampire."

  She forced herself to laugh. It had to be a joke. A bad joke. The reality was too much to comprehend. "Funny, I don't feel the need to drink blood."

  "You will." Nick didn't smile. Agony wracked his face, an absolute need gripping his body. He looked tired again, as if he was being dragged down, pulled to the earth by a force stronger than gravity.

  "Nick, what's going on?"

  "He turned you into a vampire. In that alley last night. When you were lying there. Don't you remember?" She shook her head, but it wasn't just in answer to his question. It was also to deny the spark of memory. Something was there—a moment, a connection, something so wildly outrageous, so deeply intimate it couldn't be true.

  "He gave you some of his blood. You drank from him."

  She sank slowly onto the bed, her legs weakening, the memory coming to her more clearly now. The strange sensation of having Stephen inside her—not in a sexual sense, bu
t in a way beyond physical, inside her mind and her heart, capturing all the tiny corners of emptiness and filling them with himself. And of her sharing herself, filling him.

  He was still with her. She could feel him, despite the presence of the sun, despite their separation. It was insane. She shook her head again.

  "If I'm a vampire, why am I out in daylight? Shouldn't I be sleeping in a coffin somewhere?" She sounded snide and bitchy, but she couldn't make herself stop.

  "You're like I am." He shrugged. "A half-vampire."

  "This is like being a little bit pregnant, isn't it?" She stood up and started to walk. Finally, she turned and faced Nick. "How did it happen? Why did it happen?"

  He shook his head. "It doesn't matter why."

  "You know, people have been telling me that a lot lately—that the reasons don't matter. Well, it does matter."

  "Madeleine, it's done."

  "Then it can be undone."

  "It can't." Nick placed his hand on her arm and squeezed gently. "Madeleine, listen to me. You were there, bleeding in the alley. Dying. And Stephen helped you—"

  She jerked free of his grip and his attempt at comfort.

  Her mind circled with a mixture of reality, dreams, and terror. "Helped me?"

  "He gave you some of his blood. It healed you."

  "And it turned me into a vampire!"

  "Yes."

  Her arms instinctively wrapped themselves around her stomach. She didn't want to believe it. She couldn't believe it, but that didn't stop her from asking the question. "What happens now?"

  "You'll start noticing some changes. Soon. You'll be stronger, more sensitive to light. The hunger won't come for a few weeks, but then it hits and it gets stronger."

  She tried to turn away. She didn't want to hear this, but Nick said, "Madeleine, I'm not saying this to scare you, but you have to know. You can fight it for a while, but—" He gripped the corner post of her bed. His knuckles turned white as he held the sturdy wood. "He'll probably start urging you to make the final conversion."

  "How's that done?" She vaguely remembered them talking about this before.

  "There are two ways. If you die, you'll wake up a vampire. You didn't actually die last night. If you'd been a little farther gone, you might have. Instead, Stephen's blood healed you."

  "So, if I get hit by a car and die—it's instant vampire."

  Nick nodded. "It usually doesn't happen that way. Most take matters into their own hands and kill someone."

  Then she remembered what he'd told her before. The first kill. She was supposed to have been his.

  "You'll stay a half-vampire until you make your first kill." His voice dropped low. "Until you do, the hunger just gets worse. Stephen can help for a while. He's helped me, but eventually it's going to happen."

  The band around her heart tightened for a moment. Oh my God. It was too much to take in. She leaned against the windowsill. A vampire? She was going to turn into a vampire?

  The logical portion of her mind couldn't grasp the unbelievable—couldn't form it into a concept she could handle. Reality had disappeared.

  She finally lifted her eyes. "Why haven't you done it?" she accused, wanting to release some of the anger, focus it in some direction. She pushed away from the window and stalked across the room. "If you know it's inevitable, why didn't you kill me that night at Stephen's?"

  Nick's jaw tightened. With anger or restraint, she didn't know. Finally he smiled. It was a sad, self-mocking smile.

  "I guess I haven't given up hope."

  The smile fell from his lips and he turned away.

  "Nick, wait."

  "I need to go." He didn't stop.

  "I'm sorry, Nick," she called after him, regretting her snide comments. He'd been kind to her. She was even willing to call him a friend. And she'd chased him away.

  "Talk to Stephen," was all he said as he left.

  The door closed behind him with a quiet click. She stared at the space he'd vacated.

  She slowly began to pace the room. The movement seemed to help. The aches and pains she'd felt on awakening had faded quickly, leaving her feeling strong, energetic. She thought about what Nick had said. Was she actually changing already? Or was it just her normal body?

  She didn't know how long she walked. The fact that she was covering the same ten feet of ground didn't matter—she didn't see the world around her. She wandered in a daze of confusion, fury, and moments of abject terror.

  A ring broke the deep silence.

  She flinched and stared at the phone, but she let it ring. The answering machine picked up and Scott's voice filled the room. "Madeleine? If you're there, pick up."

  She dismissed his plea. There was enough running around her brain. She couldn't handle any more.

  "I'm going to keep calling until I reach you, so you'd best pick up."

  Scott was tenacious. That's what made him a good cop. She lifted the phone.

  "Hi, Scott."

  "What the hell was that last night?" he said by way of greeting. "You call me for help, and then you go running off when I get there?" He sounded wired.

  "Scott…"

  "And what were you doing with him? One week you think he's a vampire, and the next you go clubbing with him?"

  "Scott, it wasn't like that." Madeleine rubbed her hand over her eyes. She couldn't deal with this right now. She had too much happening. And she couldn't bring him into it. One of her friends had already been hurt. "Thanks for coming last night. Char's fine." I think. "Sorry for calling." She started to hang up, but Scott's voice stopped her.

  "We think we've found the murder weapon."

  Madeleine's hand tightened around the phone.

  "Danielle's? How?"

  "I got a lucky break last night after you ran off. A tip. And it led me to the weapon."

  "And?" she encouraged, her beleaguered mind content to focus on something concrete.

  "Knife, of course, but we knew that. It looks like a fairly expensive knife. It looks like it's made of pure silver."

  "A silver dagger?" Her words were hollow and sounded surprisingly calm.

  "Yeah."

  "Etched designs on the blade?"

  Silence met her on the other end of the line. "How did you know that?"

  She gave a quick, humorless laugh. "Lucky guess."

  "Dammit, who's passing this information on to you?"

  Madeleine shook her head, ignoring Scott's rant. She had too much to think about. Danielle had been killed with one of Stephen's knives. Stephen? Madeleine rejected the idea as soon as it came to mind. Vampires couldn't touch silver. She'd seen that last night. But who was using Stephen's knives? He'd said someone had killed other vampires with the knives. That same person had killed Danielle.

  "I need to go."

  "Madeleine. Stay out of this."

  "I can't."

  "Then at least be careful."

  "I know what I'm getting into, Scott."

  "I'm sure that's what Danielle thought."

  An invisible fist punched into Madeleine's stomach. Oh, God. He's right. This is what Danielle had thought. Damn, she'd had almost the exact same conversation with Danielle a few days before she disappeared.

  "I have to go." Madeleine dropped the phone back on the cradle without hearing if Scott answered and stumbled to the mirror. Her pale skin glowed against the hideous brown wallpaper that lined the bathroom. Danielle. Danielle had been pale and exhausted. She'd been evasive, even surly, toward the end.

  Fire roiled in the center of Madeleine's stomach. She should have been swearing, cursing Stephen's name, but no sound would come out. She couldn't think. Nothing settled in her mind. Betrayal coursed through her blood.

  It was so obvious. She didn't know why she hadn't realized it before. She knew Danielle had been stabbed and that someone in Stephen's crowd was responsible. But this?

  Danielle had been converted. And then someone killed her with a silver dagger.

  ***

 
The light faded, releasing Stephen from the bonds that held him. As always, his mind woke moments before his body was able to react.

  Madeleine.

  She was the first thought on his mind, just as she'd been since he'd first met her. Tonight, however, it stronger than ever.

  Madeleine.

  She felt near. Impossible.

  Or it should have been impossible. The flood of memory from the night before awakened his heart. Had she survived? Had he converted her? Conversion was a chancy proposition. In the two hundred years since his own change, he could find no one who could explain why it worked sometimes and why it didn't others. Had he left her dying in that alley? Or worse, had he turned her into a creature like himself?

  Life returned to his body and he allowed himself the pleasure of his quickening senses.

  Madeleine.

  Her scent reached him. She was here. Near him.

  He opened his eyes and stared up. The lid to his coffin was open and the space above him was filled with Madeleine.

  The silver dagger she'd used last night was gripped tightly in her right hand, and she held it an inch from his chest. Fire flashed in her eyes.

  Well, she'd survived, and she was converted. The changes had already started, her heartbeat subtly different. More would follow. A stab of regret he couldn't control pierced his soul. He'd done this to her. The overwhelming self-disgust he'd felt when he'd realized what he'd done faded to a grim resolve.

  He wouldn't do it to her, couldn't do it to any creature, and there was only one way out. For both of them.

  "Good evening, Madeleine." He tried to sound casual, even bored. He saw he was successful when her eyes widened, and the knifepoint moved a fraction closer to his chest.

  She was almost mad enough to kill. Almost. It was too bad, really. A lot would be solved if she'd use the knife for its proscribed purpose. Fear and affection mixed with her rage, confusing her. No, Madeleine couldn't kill him in cold blood.

  "I want answers."

  He nodded, keeping his eyes trained on the dagger. "Move the knife, and we'll talk."

  "We can talk here. Who killed Danielle? And don't tell me it doesn't matter. She was killed by one of these knives, so that means she was killed by a human—a human who can be punished."