“Try it this way first. Give her back blood. And if it fails…turn her.”
Silence.
The weightlessness began to fade as gravity became pronounced, almost heavy. I began to feel things. Pricking sensations all over my body, like when a foot that’s fallen asleep begins to wake up. I began to feel pain, pain filling every part of me like water rushing into a dry room.
Breath filled my aching lungs.
I began to feel…alive.
I took that first great breath of air. It was a terrible, painful breath, the water in my lungs making me cough it out in raspy, heaving spasms. I was being propped up. There was something beneath my upper body, beneath my head that was soft. I tried to open my eyes, but they were so heavy. I struggled with that. I struggled to open them, and I did.
There was a halo of light around the woman holding me. I blinked up at her, and I realized it wasn’t a halo of light…it was her hair. Her beautiful white-blonde hair.
Kane Sullivan stared down at me in wonder, eyes wide, mouth open.
Her teeth were sharp. Impossibly sharp. And a single trickle of blood ran down the side of her face from her mouth.
I took another breath of air.
“Hello,” whispered Kane, a single small tear tracing down the side of her face as she cradled my head, as I took another deep, ragged breath.
Somewhere, on the edge of the world, the sun peeked over the edge of the horizon. It rose.
The ocean roared behind us, but the sound of my heart overpowered everything as it beat quickly—too quickly.
I knew so very little, in that moment. So very little. And this was it:
I was alive. I knew that. I knew that, impossibly, I’d been dead, and somehow—equally impossibly—I’d been given a second chance. I was alive.
Kane stared down at me, her violently blue eyes flashing. She licked her lips, and a single drop of blood fell from her chin, hanging—as if suspended—in the air before it fell against the cold, bare skin on my shoulder. And against the two gaping wounds there.
And I knew that the woman holding me close, the woman who had saved my life, Kane Sullivan—somehow, impossibly…was a vampire.
-- Eternal Kiss --
I’d just died. And somehow, impossibly…I’d been brought back to life.
Behind us, the ocean boomed against the shore, the brown salt water pounding against the sand and rocks like caramel thunder. The sun had just slipped up and over the edge of the horizon, and it was already swallowed whole, engulfed by the cloud bank that huddled on the edge of the world angrily, like it might storm at any second. It was freezing—I remember that. The cold so absolute in my bones and blood that I wondered if I’d ever stop shaking, if I’d ever be warm again.
But these discomforts seemed so far from me.
Because I was laying on the wet sand in my wet clothes, shaking and coughing, impossibly alive when I should have absolutely been done.
And I was in the arms of a vampire.
Kane Sullivan stared down at me with her violently blue eyes, the blue so intense and sharp that it seemed to assault me as I lay there, powerless and exhausted and limp in her strong arms. But there was something else behind that power in her eyes. The lone trickle of blood down the side of her face from her full lips, the red contrasting too brightly with the paleness of her skin, the white-gold of her long, wet hair that lay in strands around her face, made me shiver, but then I was drawn back to her eyes again, drawn as if I was compelled by them.
There was power and there was intensity there, yes. And longing. My God, how the longing burned through her so fiercely, I almost stopped breathing again when I gazed at her.
But there was something else in those eyes, too. As I gazed deeply into her dilated black pupils, the black practically engulfing the usual brilliant blue, I saw it flicker again, and I concentrated on it, tried to place it. And then I knew it.
Sadness. Supreme anguish and sadness.
“Are you all right?” she asked me, licking her lips and breathing out, shifting my weight in her arms and against her legs so that she could take up the back of her pale left hand and wipe it over her mouth. If the intent was to get rid of the blood, of the evidence that she was a vampire, it was a wasted effort. Her teeth, teeth I had never seen pointed, now had razor sharp incisors that seemed to glint in the daylight, and the blood had smeared on her face like paint.
My breathing came ragged, great gulps of salty air that filled my aching lungs as I stared up at her.
“Rose, are you all right?” came a voice from my left, then. I gazed back, my neck aching, to take in a woman who knelt beside Kane, who seemed familiar to me. Kane wore her usual (albeit soaked through and rumpled) men’s suit with the tie, her long, wet white-blonde hair drawn back into a ponytail and hanging limply over her shoulder, stray strands stuck to the sides of her face. This other woman, too, wore a men’s suit, but instead of a tie, there was a smart little black satin bowtie at her neck. Her hair was cut as short as a man’s, and lay, smoothed and greased, against her head, like I imagine they wore it in the fifties. She had a kind face, large brown eyes, a gentle mouth. It was a strange circumstance to meet anyone in, but I liked her on sight.
“I…I think so,” I managed, the words coming out like a croak, and then I was coughing again—somehow, impossibly, more seawater spilling up and out of my lungs and mouth. Kane patted my back gently and helped me sit farther up so that the angle to spit out the water was better. I coughed and spat, and finally when I could take another ragged breath in again without coughing, I glanced sidelong at Kane.
She was close enough to kiss, and even though I was soaked through, freezing and bedraggled and had just gotten done spitting out a lungful of seawater, it was a thought I still had.
“What…just happened to me?” I managed to ask, then.
Kane glanced sidelong at the woman, shaking her head almost imperceptibly. And then she stood, and I was standing with her, because I was in her arms, hanging in the protective circle of them like it was a familiar thing.
She lifted me up as if I weighed nothing more than a whisper.
“You have to get in out of the cold, or we’ll lose you again,” said Kane then, softly, gently, her deep, dark voice quiet as she gazed down at me with those intense, sad eyes.
“I need to know,” I croaked out, shaking my head, taking in ragged breaths as I tried to maintain some semblance of breathing. “What happened to me?”
“It’s no use, Kane—we have to tell her, or she could become frantic,” came that deep, gentle voice. The other woman again. She reached out and brushed her fingers over my shoulder. Kane shook her head, not able to gaze into my eyes as she held me tightly to her. I was aware of her breasts against my side, aware of the muscles in her arms as she held me so lightly. I was aware of the brightness in her eyes, and the curve of her jaw that I couldn’t help tracing with my tired eyes. Everything about her drew me in, in a way that I couldn’t deny and I certainly couldn’t fight against.
Not that I, even then, even in the beginning, would ever have fought against my feelings for Kane Sullivan.
“Very well,” Kane whispered, her voice tight and uneasy as she sank down to her knees, gently resting me against the rough sand of the beach, half-leaning against her, the hardness of her muscles contrasted with the softness of her breasts, and I knew exactly how my body was against her, knew it when I closed my eyes. My heart beat too quickly, everything heightened. Above us, too far above us to really make out the sound, I heard the cry of a gull. I heard the rush of my own blood, could taste the salt of the water as if someone had poured an entire shaker in my mouth.
I felt…strange.
“But quickly, Branna,” Kane hissed up at the woman still standing, the woman’s hands on her slight hips. “She’s in danger of the elements out here.”
“Well, who are we to talk about danger, hm?” asked Branna, the other woman with the close-cropped hair and gentle eyes, as she sank down beside the both o
f us with an almost teasing smile, an elbow languidly perched on her one knee, the other pressing against the sand. “My name is Branna Sullivan,” she told me then, softly, kindly. “And I and Kane—the latter of which I am sure you are most aware—are vampires.” She said the word heavily, as if she’d had practice saying it, and as I stared at her wide, brown eyes, I knew she wasn’t joking.
I couldn’t have acted like this was a farce or some practical joke anyway. I…remembered.
I remembered Mags, under the water, the way her eyes flashed, the way her mouth tore into my skin.
I remembered Kane pulling me from the water.
I remembered her talking with someone else—this woman, I realized, this Branna—as they tried to decide what to do to best save me.
Kane had said she was going to give me blood. But that was impossible. There were two gaping wounds in my shoulder, and it’s impossible to give blood through a wound and not using a needle…isn’t it?
Nothing made sense as I sat on the cold sand, pillowed and in the encircling, protective arms of this woman a few days earlier I hadn’t even known, this woman who, from the very first meeting, enthralled and bewitched me in a way I’d never known before.
This woman, Kane Sullivan. Who was a vampire.
Branna cleared her throat, and again I glanced to her, and not to Kane—who wasn’t looking at my face anyway. Kane was gazing out to sea as if she had a vast, unanswered question, and only the rolling waves could answer it.
Branna’s head was to the side as she glanced me up and down, appraising me. “Is that enough of an answer for now, Miss Clyde? I’m worried you could catch your death. Or…well. Worse.”
What’s worse than catching my death?
Oh. Yes.
Dying.
I searched Kane’s face, trying to get her eyes back to me, but they would not. I remembered Mags, dragging me under the water, trying to drain me, I realized, if I was going to believe wholeheartedly that they were, in fact, vampires. I stood, then, or tried to, stumbling a little as I propelled myself to feet that felt the pin-and-needle pricking of limbs recently come back to life. And they had, I realized.
All of me had recently come back to life.
“You’re vampires,” I managed, repeating Branna’s sentiment as the two vampires below me remained kneeling and crouching in the sand. Kane’s attention was finally back on me, and I hate to admit it…but it made me feel seen. Important. In her gaze, I was alive and I was fully seen, and it rankled me deeply that I wanted her to look at me. That when she wasn’t looking at me, when I wasn’t the object of her attentions, it smarted.
I’d never been like that. And I didn’t want it to start now.
Yes, Kane Sullivan was utterly captivating. Yes, Kane Sullivan had seemingly bewitched me from the first moment I’d met her. But I’d be damned if I was desperate for someone’s attention—even if that someone was a gorgeous vampire who’d just saved me from dying.
“So, Mags was just…going to eat me up for a morning snack?” I spluttered, trying to draw my ragged and torn garments (what had once, I supposed, been my pajama top—my coat was long gone, lost to the waves). “Is that how you all are?” I managed, taking a deep breath, trying to quell hysteria. Cool, appraising anger began to move through me, then, replacing the franticness. I much preferred the anger.
But with it came a strange…side effect. As I stood over the two women, as I tried to draw the scraps closer around my shoulders (I was the type of bone-deep chilled that made me wonder if I might ever be warm again), I began to realize that every one of my senses was much sharper, brighter. Honestly, it felt like getting drunk…but in reverse. When I get tipsy (or, let’s be honest, completely smashed), everything around me seems to be going much too fast, and everything is muddled. Here and now, everything was completely and crystalline clear. I could hear the sound of particles of sand moving against other particles, the scuttle of tiny crab legs farther down the beach. If I glanced out to sea, I could make out the shape of fish miles from shore.
“What’s happening to me?” I asked, marveling, staring down at my hands. I could hear the thrum of hush of a million miles of veins, could hear the individual cells of blood moving in me.
“I gave you some of my blood,” said Kane, unfolding and standing in one smooth, graceful motion. She glanced down at me, then, her head to the side, her arms folded carefully, and her feet hip-width apart. She looked at ease, but I could sense how she could move, so quickly, in a heartbeat. I felt that I, too, could have caught a falling wine glass perfectly or could sidestep a car. It was a strange, exhilarating sensation, rushing through me. A powerful one. “I gave you blood back,” said Kane, then, her nostrils flaring a little as she sniffed the air. “The blood of a vampire is…powerful,” she said, letting the word dangle between us. “You will have some heightened sensations for a few days as the blood moves through you.”
“You had to give me blood,” I said, words flat, “because Mags took most of mine.”
“You would have died if Kane had not sensed it,” said Branna, standing too, brushing off the knees of her once-immaculate pants. The sound of the grains of sand falling to the beach sounded like pebbles plinking against one another. “She came immediately to…well. Save you.” She gazed into my eyes with her own unblinking ones, the brown so deep and dark, they seemed to swallow me for a moment.
“Are you like her?” I asked, then. But I wasn’t asking Branna. I turned to Kane, I always seemed to be turning to Kane, but I couldn’t help it. There was something about her body, her face…every part of her, inside and out, that seemed to incite in me a longing that my heart and body obeyed, even if my head did not. Okay—to be perfectly truthful, my head wanted to obey, too. But I was having a hard time letting it. She gazed down at me, her blue eyes flashing, so bright, so piercing as they seemed to see down and into the deepest, darkest parts of me.
“I was, once, like her,” Kane murmured then, the words spilling past her full lips so softly, but I could hear them as clearly as if she’d whispered into my ear, her mouth against my skin. “But I’m not like Mags anymore,” she continued, her face growing hard, her eyes distant as she thought of Mags. “And I haven’t been. Not for a long time. I’m sorry, what she did to you…it was unthinkable. She will be taught a lesson.” Her jaw clenched at that, and I couldn’t help it: I shivered, the shake moving from my legs up to my shoulders in one powerful motion. I breathed out, placed my hand over my heart. It was beating much too fast.
“Am I going to…” I searched my head, thinking back on all of the ridiculous pop culture notions I had about vampires. I was, admittedly, taking this much better than expected, but dying and coming back to life gives you a pretty strange perspective on things. “Am I going to become like you?” I asked, looking deeply into her eyes, trying to see if I could find some sort of admission, some sort of flinch to my question. But she gazed into my eyes unwavering.
“No,” she said, finally, heavily.
Kane turned from me, as Branna continued to gaze at me, one brow up, the corners of her mouth turning up, too, as she considered me.
“Do you want to become like us, Rose?” she asked softly.
Kane stiffened at that, gazing at the other woman with those sharp, piercing eyes, but Branna was still considering me, gazing me up and down as if she was weighing pros and cons in her head.
“I don’t…I don’t…this is too much,” I managed then, my head beginning to whirl. The sounds of the ocean, of the world around me, the scents and sights of it, were too heightened and sharpened, and I knew how much I was in over my head then.
“You need to rest,” said Branna softly, soothingly, as Kane stepped forward, the nearness of her body making my own curve toward her. I felt so lightheaded, suddenly, and I seemed to be falling, but there was solidity all around me as Kane lifted me up, holding me close to her.
“I’ll take you back up to the hotel,” whispered Kane into my ear then, as darkness be
gan to rise in me.
And then, right before I lost consciously and so softly I might have imagined it, she breathed: “I’ll keep you safe.”
---
When I woke up, it was difficult for me to remember anything other than the fact that I was probably late for my shift.
My shift at the Sullivan Hotel.
The…Sullivan Hotel.
Kane Sullivan.
Kane Sullivan is a vampire.
I blinked and stared up at my ceiling as all the details began to spill back into me, one by one. If Kane and Branna and Mags were all vampires—and I remembered, now, that the reason Branna had seemed familiar to me was because I’d seen her in the drawing room the previous day, the room with the wreaths of smoke, filled with women who had not, not even remotely, looked related, but who all seemed to bear the last name of “Sullivan.” I’d wondered, then (jokingly), if “Sullivan” was a code word I’d never heard for “lesbians.” Gwen had, after all, seemed to be under the suspicion that every single one of the Sullivans seemed to be attracted to women.
But the reason none of the Sullivan women looked similar and unrelated, I realized, was that they all were probably unrelated…and all vampires.
I breathed in and out, pushing down my inherent fear that seemed to rise in me, making my breath come short. It was stupid to be afraid of them. Yes, Mags had wanted to drain me dry, and as I replayed the moments in the ocean, trying to save what I had believed to be a drowning woman, I realized that she’d probably used that as a ruse to lure me out into the water. Great. So, it seemed that she’d actually been hunting me. If that was any indication, then yes—I should absolutely be afraid of them. Utterly, mortally terrified.
But as I closed my eyes, weakly leaning back on my too-plump pillow and taking deep, calming breaths, the vision of Kane Sullivan came unbidden into my head. The beautiful skin of her neck that led down to the starched white collar of her suit, the perfect, simple knot of the tie at the delicious curve of her neck as it spilled down onto white skin that led to other, more beautiful things that I could only imagine. The curve of her jaw, that handsome curve that was so strong, those full lips and handsome nose and her eyes, my God, her eyes…
Meeting Eternity (The Sullivan Vampires, Volume 1 Page 7