Destined For a Vampire

by M. Leighton

  I knew what was coming next, and when it did, I welcomed the razors that sliced at me, welcomed the exquisite agony of my skin pulling away to let free the power that prowled inside me. I shook with it, trembled with it. It vibrated through me, forcing Heather’s hand away from my mouth.

  I closed my eyes as a glorious laugh spilled from between my lips. It was followed by the scream that had been brewing in my chest. I felt my love for Bo pouring through me—the desperation of it, the overwhelming force of it. It promised to save us both and I let it flow.

  When I opened my eyes, they found Bo’s like a magnet. My body, my life, my soul was attached and attracted to him, finding him with an undeniable certainty.

  Through the heavy slits of his weary lids, Bo’s ebony orbs watched me.

  From across the room, I saw in them understanding.

  I turned my gaze on Sebastian, ready to unleash the wrath that swelled within me. He stood near the stairs, with Heather by his side, but when I saw him, my anger died instantaneously. I couldn’t bring myself to hurt him as he was.

  He held Lilly in his arms.

  I looked at her peaceful, still-sleeping face and then back up to Sebastian’s.

  He was wearing a smile that reeked of satisfaction, one that silently proclaimed his victory.

  “Bravo,” he said facetiously. “You’ve just proved that you are the one.”

  As the anger and the power burned off, my mind reeled with confusion.

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  “You’ve given me the one true weakness of the boy who can’t be killed: his soul mate.”

  Far beneath all the tragedy of what was going on, a bright light of pure pleasure beamed within me, hoping upon hope that he was right, but only about the soul mate part. Then, quickly, I forced my focus back to the present.

  “But I’m not his weakness.”

  “Oh, but you are. Heather here has made sure that you have enough venom in your blood to turn ten beautiful young girls into monsters, which leaves Bo here with a decision to make.”

  My blood ran ice cold and drained away from my face. What had she done?

  What had he done?

  I felt panic clawing its way up inside me, threatening to have its way, but I tamped it down, knowing it was something I couldn’t afford to worry about right now.

  I looked back at Bo. He was glaring murderously at Sebastian from his place against the wooden support beam. Judging by the look in his eye, I was the only one who failed to understand what Sebastian was talking about.

  “What decision?”

  “You’re soon to be a vampire, sweet Ridley. Bo here is smart enough to know that if he kills me, he will become mortal, and that means that he’d leave the love of his life to walk the earth for eternity…alone. Once he attains mortality, there is no going back. Your misery, your heartache, your loneliness—it would all be his fault.”

  My head swam as if it were filled with hazy liquid and nausea sloshed in my stomach at the mere prospect of the future that he described. I shook my head, literally putting my fingertips to my temples in an effort to control what was happening inside it. And then, with a determination I didn’t believe myself capable of, I violently shoved those selfish thoughts aside.

  “And what makes you so sure that I won’t kill you? Maybe I’m the weapon that will take your traitorous life.”

  “Well, if that’s a theory you wish to test, then I suppose there’s not much I can do about it. But let me warn you of this, Ridley. If you were to try such a thing, I would be forced to take innocent Lilly’s life.”

  I gasped.

  “You would do that to your own child?”

  “You ask that when I just put a dagger through the heart of my beloved son?

  But the answer is yes, I would it again, only I wouldn’t have to.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Because Lilly isn’t my daughter.”

  “Then who’s—”

  “Lilly is more closely related to you than she is to me,” Sebastian interrupted gleefully. He was obviously alluding to a secret juicy enough to find great pleasure in revealing.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t suppose it will hurt to tell you that my Iofiel has found out some very interesting, very valuable information in the past few hundred years. For instance, did you know that the blood of a child born a vampire holds unique power?”

  I shook my head. “No, but what does this have to do with—”

  “With you? Well, I would’ve thought that your niece’s life might mean something to you—the last little piece of your sister—but I guess I could’ve misjudged you.”

  “My niece? But I don’t have a- a…”

  I trailed off as silver blue eyes floated through my head. A bell-like laugh and gleaming auburn locks, only these didn’t belong to Lilly. They belonged to Izzy.

  “But Izzy died. And so did the baby,” I muttered quietly, still befuddled.

  “Did Bo happen to mention that his ‘mother’ worked at the hospital?”

  My mouth dropped open, working fruitlessly to wrap my lips around words that I couldn’t find.

  “You’re lying,” I whispered.

  “Heather, let’s give Ridley here a little memento of what she stands to lose…

  again.”

  From her pocket, Heather pulled out a silver rectangle and tossed it to me. It landed on the floor with a clatter and skidded to a halt in front of me. I looked down and recognized Izzy’s cell phone where it lay at my feet. This was why it had never been recovered. Sebastian had stolen the phone when he’d turned the baby inside her womb.

  “Amazing what the blood of an angel, a vampire angel, can do for a fetus, isn’t it?”

  I had nothing to say to that. I let the tense silence stretch on as I stared numbly at the phone, searching for some other kind of explanation, but finding none.

  Sebastian voice penetrated the quiet like a sharp arrow, finding its target in the center of my chest.

  “Know this,” Sebastian said, his tone turning deadly serious. “I am more powerful than you can imagine. I have beings at my disposal that can bring you and Lilly pain that there is no description for, creatures much worse than Lars. This is the only warning you’ll get: don’t try to find me or you’ll spend the rest of eternity regretting it.”

  He paused to drive his point home, his eyes boring holes first into Bo and then into me. Then, in a swirl of dust, he disappeared, taking Heather and Lilly with him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A silence fell over the room, a silence filled with fears so loud I could barely hear myself think. The loud patter of Bo’s blood dripping into the puddles on the floor finally roused me from my dumbfounded state.

  I hurried to his side, my hands flitting from knife handle to stake and back again. I had no idea how to help him, what to do first.

  “The knife. Get the knife out,” he groaned weakly.

  Wrapping my trembling fingers around the cool hilt, I pulled as hard as I could, but it didn’t budge. Inhaling, I held my breath and tried again. Nothing.

  “Bo, I can’t get it out. What are we going to do?”

  His chest heaved with his efforts just to breathe and remain conscious.

  “We’ll try together,” he said, his cooling fingers brushing mine as they curled around the hilt, too. “On the count of three. One. Two. Three.”

  I pulled as hard as I could, as Bo did and, thankfully, the dagger’s tip sprang free of the wood behind Bo’s back and slipped out. I pitched it onto the floor and turned my attention to the stakes that protruded from Bo like pins from a pin cushion.

  I began with the one in his knee. I could see that it was not embedded in the support beam, so I grabbed it and yanked, pulling it easily from Bo’s body. Blood began to flow from the open wound.

  Of the three remaining stakes, I was dismayed to learn that only one was not stuck in the wood behind Bo. The one at his shoulder had
caught the edge of the beam, but I could see the tip sticking out of Bo’s body. It was clearly not embedded.

  Bo’s wide shoulders had saved him from being further pinned to the thick column.

  After I’d pulled that one out, I looked once more at the other two stakes. I was afraid that the one in his thigh had gone through Bo’s bone to stick into the wood. The one in his side was stuck as well.

  I noticed that the skin of Bo’s side was becoming less apparent as his injuries, coupled with the stress of the whole ordeal, burned through the blood he’d fed upon.

  The poisonous coloring had not receded either, and I knew that wasn’t helping his condition. I knew I had to hurry.

  “Bo, you’re going to have to help me with these last two, ok?”

  Bo nodded his head feebly. His fingers dropped to the stake at his side. “On three.”

  On the count of three, we tried to remove the dense piece of wood, but it didn’t budge.

  “Let’s try again,” I suggested.

  Bo shook his head this time. “I can’t. I’m losing blood too fast.”

  “Then drink from me.”

  Again, he shook his head. “No. The more blood you lose, the faster you’ll turn.”

  I couldn’t help the pause. I couldn’t help the fact that Drew’s tortured face flitted through my head as he begged for us to kill him. He would rather have died than live as a vampire.

  I shook my head against the thoughts. They had no place here now. My fate was sealed. Fear and regret couldn’t matter. They no longer held any sway.

  “I don’t care. We have to get you out of here.”

  “No, Ridley. It’s too fast.”

  To my way of thinking at that moment, ever was too fast.

  “What difference does it make?” Even as I asked the question, I felt a pang of sickening dread.

  “Loving me has cost you so much. The least I can do is give you a few more days,” Bo said miserably.

  Having a few more days of humanity felt like a stay of execution to me, but I couldn’t tell Bo that. He needed me and that was all that mattered.

  “A few more days doesn’t matter. Here,” I said, picking the long thin knife up off the floor.

  I stared at the blade, slick with Bo’s blood.

  Giving my flesh to Bo, my blood to Bo, was quite different than purposely slicing my arm open with a sharp knife. Reluctantly, I looked back up at him. He was watching me, his eyes already turning that milky green in his disappearing face.

  “Ridley, you don’t have to do this.”

  “I know.”

  Closing my eyes, I drew the razor-sharp edge across the tender skin of my wrist. I bit my lip against the sting of pain.

  I opened my eyes to Bo’s pale ones watching me closely, hungrily. But behind the hunger was pain—the pain of what was to become of me, the pain of what he felt like his love had cost me, the pain of having little choice other than to drink from me, to take from me.

  I straightened my spine and smiled. “Besides, this is the last time you’ll get to taste this human blood,” I said pluckily, determined to hide my distress from him.

  I held my wrist to his lips. “Here, for old times’ sake.”

  The battle waging inside Bo was plain to see. It was there in his tormented eyes, in his forlorn expression. But in the end, his thirst won out. His need. As his teeth pierced my skin, holding me tightly to him, I realized that I would soon know what that overwhelming hunger felt like. Soon, I’d require blood to live, too.

  For the first time since she’d bitten me, I felt the fiery burn of Heather’s venom radiating from my neck down into my chest. It was killing off all that made me human, changing me forever, and now, forever had a much different meaning.

  Pushing those thoughts aside, I closed my eyes on the world around me and concentrated on the feel of Bo’s soft lips and cool tongue as they moved against my skin.

  Time does this funny thing where it sort of disappears when Bo’s feeding from me, so I don’t know how much had elapsed when he released my wrist. I felt myself sway and his hand slide around my waist to steady me. I felt my lips curve with the pleasure of being wrapped in his strong arms. For all of eternity, there was no place I’d rather be. But if Bo fulfilled his destiny, it was the one place eternity couldn’t offer.

  ********

  That was the last memory I had before I ended up in the woods, running for my life, fleeing from the vampires. Now I was stuck in a hole in the forest with no one around to help me out.

  All my senses reached out and took in my surroundings. I could still smell the dankness of the earth that enveloped me. I opened eyes I didn’t even remember closing and looked around. The darkness was almost complete. I could barely make out the mouth of the shaft into which I’d fallen.

  I was cold and achy and I knew I was hurt. Probably very badly. Everything was throbbing dully, as if to the beat of my heart. But strangely, considering that it was my legs that had taken the brunt of my fall, it was my chest that hurt the worst.

  It felt like everything behind my sternum was shriveling up and dying. It was excruciating, so painful in fact that I was amazed I was still conscious.

  And my throat hurt, too. It burned like I’d sipped acid. My mouth was dry as cotton, but I swallowed what little saliva I had. It did nothing to relieve the discomfort. The fire persisted.

  A familiar sound teased my ears. I stilled, listening as closely as I could. It was Bo’s voice, pouring over my raw senses like warm honey. He was calling my name, over and over. But he sounded far away, too far to be coming for me.

  I tried to open my mouth to call out to him, but no words left my tongue. I felt something warm on my cheek and the walls of the shaft began to shake, dirt crumbling from the sides and sprinkling my face and hair. I felt the panic of the world falling in all around me as bigger chunks of earth started to come away from the sides of the tube.

  Again, I heard Bo’s voice and the warmth at my cheek became an annoying tap. I reached up to brush at my face and I felt something there. It was a hand.

  A terrified scream gurgled in my burning throat as I flailed my arms, slapping at the air around me, at whatever was touching me.

  “Ridley,” I heard Bo say. I stopped moving, reaching out for his voice and holding on tight.

  “Bo?” I managed, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth.

  “I’m here,” he whispered.

  “Where? Where are you?” I squinted into the darkness, searching desperately for his face in the tiny circle that was the mouth of the hole, far above me.

  “Right here, Ridley.”

  I felt the hand at my cheek again. When I reached out, I could feel Bo’s fingers, his wrist, his arm. But still, I saw nothing.

  “It’s ok. You’re ok,” he said softly, his voice right at my ear.

  I reached out with my other hand and I could feel Bo’s chest in front of me, where he leaned in to speak to me.

  “Bo, I can’t see you.” I felt an irrational fear tremble in my gut.

  “Open your eyes, baby.”

  “They’re open.”

  “No, they’re not, Ridley. Just open your eyes.”

  “I’m trying. I can’t see you.”

  My voice quivered with emotion, my chin drawing up, tears wetting my lashes.

  “Come to me, Ridley. Wherever you’re at, come back here to me.”

  Bo’s lips brushed mine and a calm stole over me.

  “Bo, what’s happening?”

  “You’re turning too fast, baby. You’re hallucinating. You need to wake up.”

  “Turning? What?”

  The dirt walls finally fell, giving way to reality as it rushed in. My lids fluttered against the bright, white light that blinded me. Holding my hand up to shield my face, I squinted. A sob clogged my throat when I was able to make out the glorious sight of Bo hovering over me.

  He pulled me up into his arms and buried his face in my neck. I inhaled, the odor of damp eart
h replaced by Bo’s fresh, tangy scent.

  Gingerly, I opened my eyes wider. The ceiling of Sebastian’s den hung above me, the same one I’d awakened to the night I’d lost time. Bo’s hair tickled my cheek and I could hear the steady thump of his heart.

  A gushing, flowing sound interrupted my cataloging of my surroundings. It seemed to be punctuated by Bo’s heartbeat. I listened more closely, but couldn’t identify it as something familiar, as something I’d heard before. And then Bo’s words came back to me, words he’d just spoken.

  You’re turning too fast, baby.

  The pain in my chest worsened, nearly stealing my breath, and the swishing noise grew louder and louder. My throat seemed to seize around a knot of dry dust lodged there and I leaned back to look at Bo. Something was wrong.

  I pushed at Bo’s shoulders and he obliged by pulling away from me. My fingers were still twisted in his hair, which meant that my arms were stretched out in front of me. Only they weren’t. I fisted my hands, feeling the undeniable tickle of Bo’s hair against my palms. That’s when it all hit home.

  My arms were invisible. I was invisible. Because I was turning into a vampire.

  TO BE CONTINUED IN BOOK 3

  BLOOD LIKE POISON: TO KILL AN ANGEL

  COMING SOON

  WINTER 2011

  Other books by M. Leighton

  Blood Like Poison: For the Love of a Vampire

  Caterpillar

  The Reaping

  Wiccan

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  Every Last Kiss

  by Courtney Cole

  Chapter One

  Pasadena, California