“I went to sleep,” Arwen said. “She put me to sleep or something.”
“No, my love.” Iro cupped her cheek again. “She killed you.”
Arwen swallowed as she pulled out of Iro’s embrace and dropped her hand as well.
“I am so sorry. I tried to get to you, but I was too late.”
“She said you wanted this,” she remembered.
“This is thelastthing I wanted, Arwen. I was going to tell you about me. Not tomorrow, but when we were ready. And, at some point, if you wanted to know what it was like, being a vampire, I would’ve told you, and you could’ve made that decision for yourself. I would’ve been by your side always if you decided to remain human until you–”
“Died,” Arwen said.
Iro nodded.
“I did that already.”
“Yes. But now, you’re immortal.”
“I’ll always be this age?”
“Yes. You will never get sick. You’ll never get old. You don’t usually get cold. Your eyesight, hearing, and sense of smell all improve. When you touch things, you really feel them. Good food tastes better, but bad food tastes worse. You’re stronger than humans. Not like you see in the movies, but youarestronger.”
“That’s the good. Well, except the bad food part.”
Iro smiled warmly at her and said, “You have to watch the people you love die over and over again. You have to leave every so often, or people will wonder why you aren’t aging. Doing that was a lot easier even last century than it is today. You’ll have to change your name and maybe your appearance now to help cover it up or disappear altogether for a while. Then, there’s the really bad part.”
“What?”
“Wanting to kill people.”
“I don’t–”
“It’s our nature, Arwen.”
“Do you kill people?”
“I did decades ago, yes.” Iro sighed. “I stopped a long time ago, and I’ve worked hard to train my body. I don’t drink human blood, and I tend to stick to pig and cow blood, not even blood bags from the hospital, which is what some vampires do, but it took time. I suspect, had I not been influenced by Cassia, I would have been able to do it faster, but with my help, you can. You don’t have to be how I was, Arwen.”
“Blood,” Arwen said.
“You feel it now, don’t you?”
“I feel hungry, but hungry in a way I’ve never felt before.”
“You’ll feel that most of the time now.”
“Most of the time?”
Iro nodded and said, “I’m sorry. A downside of being a vampire is that you never really feel sated. You’ll always crave blood. Even if you’re full, your body will want more. It will be on your mind in one way or another all the time now, but you can learn to push it to the back of it.”
“How do you handle this?”
“All in good time, love,” Iro replied and took Arwen’s hand back in her own.
“There’s something else, though,” Arwen added. “I get everything you just said. Idofeel like I can hear better, and my vision seems sharper, but there’s something else. I can’t describe it.”
“It’s my touch,” Iro replied.
