Was this the end?
It seemed that no matter what I did, history was bound to repeat like a cold winter storm that drained one’s soul of warmth and light.
I would find her, my Anna, the woman I fell in love with five hundred years ago in a house of horrors, only to lose her again. First, to Charles’s thirst.
Anna had been carrying a baby when he took her in, and I, as his human slave, warned her again and again to leave that place. However, she had been rejected by her family, thrown out into the streets. Pregnant. Branded a whore.
Anna refused to run from the only home she had, and part of me did not wish her to go. I lovedher. From the very first moment I saw her. Those wide eyes. The feistiness. The light inside her. It was why I hoped Charles might let her live, as he had done with me for years.
But I’d been wrong. So very wrong.
Charles drank her as soon as she gave birth. Perhaps to punish me for having a heart to love her with—something he did not possess.
At least little Leonardo survived, though given away as a gift to another vampire. Future slave. Future food?
Several years later, after I became a vampire myself, I bought Leonardo and made sure he would have a comfortable life. A free life.
Fifty years went by, and I traveled back to London to see what had become of him, only to find a beautiful woman living in his home who looked exactly like my Anna. Leonardo’s daughter. The oldest of six children.
After a few days of interactions, I realized that the similarities were more than skin deep. She recalled me. She knew me. Itwasher, reborn in a new form.
And then she died like the other times to come. To war, violence, or by another man’s hands.
One time, she would die despite becoming immortal, as was the case when she became a queen who struggled with the weight of her crown, her dreams, and her heart.
“A life apart from mychild,” she’d said, “is no life at all.” But it had been far too dangerous for Persimmon, her daughter, to be anywhere near Anna. The queen’s enemies were everywhere.
As I had done in her past lives, I attempted to help Anna find peace and happiness despite her pain. I tried to protect her in her state of vulnerability. After all, she meant so much to her followers. Almost as much as she meant to me—this woman who had multiple lives, each time becoming something more. Like a complex stew, tastier than its simple ingredients.
But death found her anyway, through the hands of my brother, Lazlo, who could not stand the thought of not having her for himself.
Oh, how I understood. Yet, ironically, ending Anna’s life had accomplished the exact thing that had tormented Lazlo all along. Only deeper. Colder now.
I’d allowed Lazlo to live so that he might suffer an existence with his pain, completely unaware of my secret: Anna would return again.
To me.
For a while, anyway.
It was why I kept track of Anna’s now twenty bloodlines, looking for signs of her hidden away inside a new body.
Each time I found her, however, I was faced with the same challenge: how to keep her alive.
I disclosed the truth, kept the truth, forced her to do as I said, allowed her to choose her ownpath—abhorring!—got close to her, and kept my distance. Nothing I did mattered.
She always died. Unexpectedly. Violently. Before her time. And then it would start all over again.
Five hundred years of this fucking nightmare, only to end up in the same, dark place without her.
If it were not for the marks on my arms, I would have lost count. My past had become a blur, vines of misery stretching over time. Anna, my only reason for continuing on.
Which was why I told myself that this time would be different. This time would be the last. The very fucking last.
If I found her again and Anna died, I would die with her. Or perhaps I would snuff out my life before she met her fate. I only knew that this was the end of the line. The end of our joint story.
Then I came across Masie.
A smart-mouthed, sassy, defiant, and sweet as hell young woman. There were similarities in their personalities, yes, but was it her inside? My Anna?
