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  Elizabeth stamped her foot on the floor, like a much younger child. “None of you can help me! I’m going to turn into a bloodsucking freak and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. And if Sebastian thinks he can waltz in here to save the day after we haven’t seen him for God-knows-how-many years, well, he can just think again!”

  With that, the girl spun around and tore from the room, stomping back up the stairs. Her bedroom door slammed, the sound ricocheting through the house.

  Serenity and Vincent exchanged a glance.

  Vincent gave her a tentative smile. “A teenage vampire. Just what the world needs.”

  Chapter Seven

  Elizabeth burst into her room, a red haze of fury descending over her vision. How dare they act as though they understood what was happening to her! The idea of her father coming home stirred up so many emotions she thought they might consume her. She paced around her room, her fists clenched, wanting to pick up things and throw them, slam her fists into the walls, kick the door.

  How could her mom possibly think they’d be able to do anything to help her? No one understood what she was going through. No one! When other little girls were told they were special and one of a kind, they were told so because of their personalities. For her, she realized, they’d literally meant she was an original. And if such a thing was true, how would anyone ever know how to help her, how to make this thing happening to her stop?

  It made her mad that Vincent was downstairs acting like he was her father, and with her mom only encouraging him. She was angry on her father’s behalf, but her conflicting emotions only confused her further as she felt mad with him as well. They’d been without him for so long, and now he was going to swing back in as though he planned on saving the day. What would happen when he left again? Would her mom go back to that awful state of depression she’d been in after he left the last time? Would she have to spend her nights listening to her mom crying through the walls of their bedrooms?

  She reached up and grasped the necklace her father had given her for her birthday. The stone seemed to heat in her hand, and she was torn between wanting to tear it from her neck and wanting to hold it closer.

  She didn’t even have her friends to confide in any more. Her stupid vampirism had seen to that. No one understood her. How could they when no one existed in the world like her?

  The walls of her bedroom felt like they were closing in, making her anxious and claustrophobic. Her muscles burned with energy and she longed to do something to release the buildup of emotions and power that seemed to be trapped inside her.

  Needing fresh air and space, she went to her bedroom window and pulled up the sash without even noticing the weight. Rain and wind tore into the room, sweeping the drapes back and battering at her face, wet and cold. Elizabeth didn’t even feel it. The world smelled so alive out there, primal and raw, and she wanted to be part of it.

  Just like when she’d been in the bathroom at the mall, her senses sharpened, the darkness receding to allow her to view the storm without needing to squint. Though she knew it was still night, the world before her seemed more to be caught in an external dusk rather than pitch black.

  Her body moved on its own accord, her foot stepping up onto the window ledge, drawing the rest of her up with it. She looked down at the drop to the gravel driveway and her mom’s SUV parked out front. Where normally the sight would make her head spin and stomach lurch, she now viewed it only as her escape route. With both hands pressed against the frame for support, she lifted her other foot so she sat crouched in the open window. The wind and rain ripped at her skin and clothes, whipping her hair back from her face, threatening to push her off balance, but no fear clutched at her heart. Instead, she removed her hands from the window and stretched them out into the night, lifted her chin and laughed.

  A wildness, a freedom like nothing she had every experienced before, overwhelmed her. With no thought, Elizabeth leaped from her bedroom window. She fell through the air and hit the ground, landing in a crouch, her muscles jarring under the impact, though she felt no pain. Instantly, she sprang to her feet and ran, increasing her pace until she reached the tall wall surrounding her home. Right before she collided with the solid wall—and acting purely on instinct—she lowered her center of gravity, her thighs tightening with power, and jumped. She soared though the air with total control, one hand briefly touching the top of the wall as guidance before she dropped to the other side and landed on the sidewalk.

  The storm had grown worse around her; palm tree fronds danced and skittered across the sidewalk. Her nostrils flared, seeking out one scent and one scent alone.

  Blood.

  Elizabeth felt as though she was trapped inside her own body, as a coma patient or a person suffering from a degenerative disease, watching the world from within a glass case, with no control over this overwhelming need and desire that drove her now. She wanted to hammer her fists on the sides of her head, to scream at herself to stop, but she couldn’t. The bloodlust was too strong.

  With the storm growing more intense by the minute, people had shut themselves inside their homes, hoping to wait it out in safety. She didn’t want to break into a home to get what she wanted, but she would if she had to. Simple doors and windows stood no chance of keeping her out.

  But her luck was in. She smelled him before she saw him, a male of middle age. Then he came around the corner. He held a briefcase in one hand and a ruined umbrella, its metal spokes bent, the covering torn, clutched in the other.

  Briefly, she wondered why he kept carrying it. He walked bent double against the wind, his thinning hair wet and matted to his forehead, his suit sodden and clinging to his arms and legs. With the city on lockdown, there had been no cabs to pick the man up.

  Elizabeth bent her legs and, with a couple of soaring leaps, landed in front of the man in a crouch. She rose to standing. He didn’t notice her until he was almost on top of her, too focused on sheltering his face from the extremities, but when he did he let out a yelp of surprise and drew to a stop.

  “Hey, kid. What the hell are you doing out here?” He had to yell above the wind, thinking it was needed for her to hear him, though with her heightened hearing she would have heard if he’d whispered the words from a mile away. The man’s blood pounded through his veins, adrenaline from fighting his way through the storm sweetening the scent.

  She smiled.

  He leaned in toward her. “Where are your parents? Damn it, you’re not even wearing a coat.”

  She pointed to her right ear and shook her head, indicating she hadn’t heard him. He moved closer to speak against the side of her face, one hand placed on her shoulder.

  In a flash of movement, Elizabeth twisted her face so her lips pressed against the man’s throat. His skin was cool from the night, but she sensed the blood, hot and vibrant beneath.

  She opened her mouth wide and sank her teeth into his flesh.

  He yelled in shock and tried to straighten up and back away, but she wrapped one hand around the back of his neck and held him firm. He kicked out at her, but his motions were slow and clumsy compared to hers and she stepped easily out of the way while maintaining her hold on his neck.

  Blood flowed thick and potent, pulsing down over the back of her tongue and throat, racing through her veins. She felt like a back draft of fire was tearing through her, heat and strength surging to every extremity.

  But, like before with the two girls who had once been her friends, she was ever mindful of the man’s reaction to her taking his blood, monitoring the rate of his heart and how he felt in her grip. Somehow, instinctively, she knew how to take him to the point where she’d had her fill but not caused him any permanent damage, allowing him to be able to walk away from his ordeal.

  She suddenly became aware of someone watching her. With a frown, she lifted her face from the man, though she kept her hold on the back of his neck. He groaned, his hand clutching the side of his throat, and staggered slightly.

  E
lizabeth narrowed her eyes, her gaze raking the street. The storm had not let up; if anything, it had grown more vicious. A ragged streak of lightning split the night sky, shortly followed by a rumbling boom of thunder. The rain dripped from her long dark lashes, and she blinked the liquid away to clear her vision.

  There! She spotted a figure standing farther down the road, his body shielded by the tall fence running alongside the property it protected. Her keen eyesight narrowed in on the figure—his dark red hair, darkened further by the rain, and his tall, lean body. From this distance, those features alone could have been anyone, but she couldn’t be mistaken about those eyes. The almost white-blue of the pupils were bright enough to catch even a modicum of street light in these horrendous conditions, reflecting like mirrored pools. She didn’t doubt that he was watching her.

  Elizabeth hesitated for a moment, torn between her desire to take after him and her need to finish what she’d started with the man. She couldn’t have him wandering home with tales of a girl-vampire attacking him in the street. That wouldn’t be cool at all.

  Decision made, she forced the man to lift his head by manipulating the back of his neck. He stared at her with wide, terrified eyes, gibbering words she couldn’t quite make sense of. Foamy spittle had gathered at the corners of his mouth, repulsing her.

  Licking the tips of two fingers, she applied her saliva to the bite wounds in the man’s throat. Despite the deluge of rain threatening to wash the fluid away, the wound quickly healed.

  “Go home now,” she told him, boring into his frightened gaze with her own. “You got lost and disoriented in the storm. This never happened.”

  The man nodded frantically and she let him go. Without bothering to check the man did as he was told—she didn’t doubt that he would—she lowered to a crouch and sprang away, heading down the street to where she’d seen the boy standing, watching her.

  She stood in the spot where she’d last seen him, turning a slow circle, her nostrils flared. With the man’s blood racing through her veins, every sense was on fire and she could distinguish the slightest scent, knowing what each smell was, who it belonged to and how long ago it had passed. The stink of a flicked cigarette butt, long since extinguished by the torrential rain, but still with the saliva of the smoker—a young man in his twenties, she could discern—saturated into the filter. The pass of an urban fox an hour earlier. The oily tread of a tire where a vehicle had mounted the sidewalk.

  And underneath all those scent was a different one—human, but something else as well.

  His scent.

  Elizabeth lifted her face against the lashing rain, her hair sodden and clinging to her face and neck. “Who are you?” she yelled against the storm. “Why are you following me?”

  But no response came back to her. Whoever the strange boy was, he was gone.

  The magnitude of what she’d just done sweeping over her, her legs gave way and she slumped against the fence. The rain beat down on the top of her head and shoulders, hard and insistent. The wind seemed to have increased in speed. A ‘For Sale’ sign hung in the yard of the house opposite, creaked and strained ominously against its constraints.

  A wave of nausea barreled over her and she managed to twist her body around onto all fours, right before she vomited her stomach full of blood onto the sidewalk. The blood ran in a river of red down the street, quickly washed away by the rain.

  As the last few hiccups of blood escaped her mouth, she became aware of an imposing form standing over her. She turned her head to see Vincent. He crouched beside her and placed a hand on her back, but she sat up and shrugged him off.

  “Leave me alone.”

  Tears streamed from her eyes, partly from the force of vomiting so violently, but also from shock.

  The sound of her mother’s feet came pounding down the sidewalk toward them.

  “Oh, Elizabeth! Thank God you’re okay.”

  Elizabeth shook her head, crying, “I’m not okay. I’m not!”

  She let her mother gather her up in her arms, clinging to her and crying into her shoulder. All the feelings of power, strength and rage that had been so prevalent only minutes earlier evaporated. Now, she was just a frightened girl who needed her mom.

  “Come on, baby. Let’s get you home.”

  Serenity’s heart clenched for her daughter out of fear, love and pain. She tried not to let her shock at the sight of Elizabeth’s face show on her own. The girl’s skin was deathly white, the shape of her jaw and chin thicker, and Serenity caught a glimpse of sharp teeth just below her upper lip. But her eyes had shaken Serenity the most. Even blurred with tears, Serenity had recognized that same yellow glow she’d seen so often in Sebastian’s eyes.

  She so badly wanted to take this infliction from her—she’d bear it herself if she could—but for the time being she was helpless.

  She tried to lift Elizabeth, but the girl, already tall for her age, seemed to have doubled in weight, as though this thing that had taken hold of her somehow changed what she was inside.

  She lifted her face and yelled to Vincent above the wind and the rain. “Can you help me?”

  Vincent nodded. He reached down and easily lifted Elizabeth into his arms. She didn’t struggle or protest this time as Serenity thought she would. Instead, she allowed herself to be held against his massive chest as though she were a baby.

  At human pace, he walked back down the street, toward the house. Serenity found herself bent double against the wind and rain, the storm’s power threatening to lift her off her feet. The wind whipped past her head, unusually cold for the season, making her ears hurt.

  Where had this storm come from?

  The big vampire beside her must have seen her struggling for he managed, with his inhuman strength, to hold Elizabeth against him with one arm, and then reach out to her. His huge bicep wrapped around her shoulders, his hand finding position against the curve of her waist, and he pulled her close. Vincent took the brunt of the gale, his strength propelling her along, his size protecting her from the wind and rain.

  The lid of a trashcan skittered toward them along the sidewalk as though it weighed no more than a paper bag. The big metal disk was heading directly for Serenity, too fast for her to move out of its path. The arm around her waist tightened and lifted, whisking her from her feet mere seconds and inches from where the lid banged past.

  Vincent put her back down again and she tried to not tremble. Jesus. If that thing had hit her, it would have broken both her legs.

  Through the driving rain, she found herself looking up at Vincent, grateful for his presence. What would she be doing right now if he wasn’t here?

  Sebastian …

  Sebastian was on his way home, heading to them right now. She dreaded to think of what was going to happen when the two vampires came face to face. Yet she couldn’t send Vincent away. She needed him. She didn’t know how to handle what was happening to Elizabeth on her own. Plus, now this storm was raging around them and it only seemed to be growing more powerful by the minute. She didn’t want to face it alone. What had been an overcast sky only a couple of hours ago had now morphed into something far more terrifying.

  They reached the house. Serenity had left the gates open wide when she’d run from the property in search of Elizabeth. Earlier, she’d given her daughter a few minutes to calm down before following her up the stairs and into her bedroom. She’d only found an empty space with the window wide open. A search of the other rooms in the house had proven fruitless. She knew Elizabeth had not come past them downstairs, so that had left only one other explanation—that somehow she had jumped or climbed from the window. Without a second thought, Serenity had run from the house and out into the night in search of her daughter, Vincent hot on her heels.

  The gates were under attack from the gale force wind. Though controlled by electric hinges, they creaked and groaned. She didn’t want to get hit if they broke free and swung open. She made a mental note to close them again as soon as she got El
izabeth settled.

  As if sensing her discomfort, Vincent lifted her again and raced them all to the house. They banged in through the door and he set Serenity down and carried Elizabeth to the couch. He went to lay her down, but the girl pushed him away.

  “You don’t need to baby me. I’m fine.”

  Serenity inspected her face. Elizabeth’s color had returned to her cheeks. Even though she was naturally pale, a slight blush rose high on her cheekbones. The strange glow to her eyes, together with the bloodshot whites, had faded, her face returning to something more human. But still, the man’s blood splattered her face in tiny drying droplets, the protection of being held against Vincent’s chest having prevented the rain from washing it away, and her hands and the knees of her jeans were darkened with blood.

  “Do you think you can manage a bath?” Serenity asked.

  Elizabeth looked up at her mom and shivered, but managed to nod. The rain had soaked her down to the skin and that, together with the shock of what had just happened, must have left her chilled.

  “Okay,” Serenity said, forcing a small smile. “Let’s get you upstairs.”

  Outside, something came loose and banged against the outside of the house with a staccato rhythm. The weather didn’t seem to be letting up any. If anything, it was growing worse. She’d get Elizabeth into the bath and then check the local news. If this thing was building into a tropical storm, however rare such an event might be, they needed to know about it.

  Elizabeth swung her legs off the couch and Serenity took her daughter’s arm, giving her additional support. Vincent stood in the background, his face serious.

  “You don’t need to stay here if you have somewhere else you need to be,” she said, feeling like she needed to offer him a get out. Her and her family had done nothing for him, yet he stood watching over them as though he felt it were his duty.

  “I’m not going anywhere.” His eyes darted to the front door. “Especially not with what’s going on.”