Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 116618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Something like resignation comes over her eyes until finally I release her.
“I think you know what happened,” she says quietly. “Part of you has always known, even if your conscious mind refused to accept it.”
“Known what?” I cry out softly, throwing out my arms as if God will finally bestow me with an answer to this mess.
“What I am.” She takes a deep breath, as if preparing for rejection. “I’m a vampire, Callahan. I was born this way, my abilities manifesting when I turned twenty-one. That’s why I can heal so quickly, why I’m stronger and faster than humans. That’s why I can compel people, most people anyway, except for you.”
I blink at her.
Vampire.
The word echoes in my mind, colliding with fragments of forgotten folklore, pulp fiction, and childhood nightmares.
Vampire.
The stuff of horror films and penny dreadfuls. Yet I’ve just witnessed the impossible with my own eyes—her face regenerating, her inhuman speed as she disarmed a trained thug.
“That’s insane,” I say, though without conviction.
“Is it?” She leans in closer, her scent—that distinctive jasmine—enveloping me, her eyes becoming darker and darker. “Haven’t you felt it from the beginning? The connection between us? The recognition?”
“Recognition of what?” My voice sounds distant to my own ears.
“Of your own kind.” She reaches up, touching my face with cool fingers, her gaze searching. “You’re a vampire too, Callahan.”
I blink at her, harpooned by her words.
“That’s what’s happening to you,” she goes on. “Why you’re having blackouts, why you killed Marco without remembering. You’re in transition, your true nature emerging at thirty-five, just as it does for males. But you never knew what you were…until now.”
The world tilts beneath my feet, reality shifting like quicksand. Memories flash through my mind—the taste of blood in my mouth after blackouts, the heightened senses, the hunger…the hunger.
“That’s not possible,” I whisper, but even as I say it, I know it’s true. Some deep, buried part of me recognizes the truth in her words, accepts it with a strange relief.
It explains everything. It explains the connection I felt to Lena from the first moment I saw her—recognition of another predator, another immortal walking among humans.
But no, no.
How the fuck can this be?
“I can help you understand what you are,” Lena says gently. “I have friends, other vampires who can teach you to control your hunger, your strength. Who can figure out how to bind yourself so you’re always in control. You don’t have to face this alone.”
Vampires. Other vampires. A society hidden within human society, invisible except to those who know where to look.
And I’m one of them.
Have always been one of them, though I never knew it.
“Did I kill Elizabeth Short?” The question escapes before I can stop it, the fear I’ve been carrying since my first blackout finally voiced.
Lena hesitates, then shakes her head. “At first that was my worry too. But I don’t think so. Her murder was a ritual, planned. We think it could be the work of other vampires—a Russian family called the Ivanovs. They might be the Europeans she talked about.”
“Other vampires,” I repeat, still struggling to accept the reality unfolding before me. “How many of you—of us—are there?”
“Not many, not compared to humans. We’re born, not made. Each generation smaller than the last.” She takes my hands in hers. “But none like you. None who didn’t know what they were until their awakening. It shouldn’t be possible, but if you were adopted…”
I think back to what little I know of my birth parents—adopted at age three, told only that they had some rare medical condition, nothing contagious. Had they known? Had they hidden me among humans for some reason, denied me the knowledge of my true nature? Didn’t they know one day this would happen?
“We need to go somewhere safe,” Lena says, glancing at the street. “The police might be looking for you after what happened at the hotel. And Cohen’s men won’t be far behind.”
I nod, still reeling from revelations that have shattered my understanding of myself, of the world. “Where?”
“I know a place. People who can help you. Help us both.” She squeezes my hands. “Do you trust me?”
I look at her—this woman who has somehow become the center of my existence in just a few short weeks. This woman who has just told me that everything I believed about myself was a lie. This woman who is, apparently, the same kind of creature that I am.
“Yes,” I say, surprising myself with the certainty in my voice. “I trust you.”
Relief washes over her face. “Then let’s go. There’s a lot you need to learn about what you are. And what we’re up against.”
As we step back onto the street, blending with other pedestrians as if we hadn’t just killed two men, hadn’t just upended the foundations of my existence, I realize that nothing will ever be the same.