They’re actually kind of cute,Cora thought, staring at her new baby fangs in the mirror. In and out they slipped, like tiny mouth daggers. She barely even felt the pinch when they emerged.
She scanned her face, noting the zit on her chin was gone and the space on her forehead where wrinkles had started to develop was now just a smooth expanse of perfect skin. Running a hand through her hair, she marveled at how much more lustrous and shiny it was. She’d thought Tressa and Raven just used exorbitantly expensive hair products, but nope. All it took was a little Essence of Undead.
To her immense relief, the myth about vampires and mirrors had turned out to be false. She could barely make herself look presentable even when she could see her reflection. Though, if the subtle glow to her cheeks and vibrancy of her eyes planned to stick around, she may never use makeup again.
It had taken at least an hour or two for her to calm down enough for Tressa and Raven to help her acclimate to her new senses. Everything was still a touch too bright, and she didn’t like hearing people moving around down the hall, but the earplugs and sunglasses they gave herdid help quite a bit. The girls said she would get used to everything relatively soon since vampires were nothing if not adaptable. You probably had to be when you lived forever.
Forever.
There was a concept she’d put on the backburner in her brain, deciding it would be best if she waited until later to dive into that can of worms.
But the worms had escaped and were now wriggling around in her mind, demanding she address them. How do you even face the concept of eternal life?
Would she need an alias when she got too old to match her driver’s license?
Would that tiny ‘REDRUM’ tattoo on the back of her neck ever fade?
Should she invest in stocks or something?
Should she tell her father? Did she even want to tell her father?
Could she tell Jinx?
Could she still make movies?
So many questions bouncing around in her mind that remained unanswered. Granted, Tressa and Raven had spentsometime going over what it meant to be a vampire. Yes, she needed blood but no, she didn’t need to bite anyone because something called the Ruling Coalition controlled enough blood banks to keep them stocked up. She could determine when she needed to feed by the beating of her heart. If it was strong, her organs were getting all the necessary nutrients. Once it started to slow, she needed a top off. Like a car low on oil. It had been the best analogy they could come up with, apparently. As long as she kept all her parts lubricated and undamaged, she would run forever.
And no illness could ever touch her again.
She was still struggling with that more than anything. How the Huntington’s—the thing that had defined her for so long despite her best efforts to the contrary—was just gone. Vanished without a trace as if it never happened. Only the painful memory remained, like a really bad one-night stand.
She should be ecstatic. She recognized that anybody else in her shoes would be shouting their joy from the rooftops, but she wasn’t anybody else. It had taken her so long to come to terms with her impending demise, so many nights holding a razor and wondering if she should just get it over with, that it felt wrong to live forever now. Like she was cheating death.
It was ultimately what had driven her and her father apart. He wanted her to try every experimental treatment he could find, regardless of side effects or how it would destroy her quality of life. He would have seen her confined to a bed and hooked up to a feeding tube if it gave her an extra six months.
Cora didn’t want any part of that, though, and it drove them apart in the end. It made her sad when she thought about him, but not enough to pick up the phone. He would only try to press his agenda on her again, and she wasn’t interested in whatever new cutting-edge treatment he just discovered. All she cared about was the quality of her remaining years.
Life only mattered because you died. Knowing that the end was out there forced you to live your life while you could. Forced you to chase your dreams and find your happiness. Horror movies kept you glued to your seat because you knew the characters were in danger. Their story mattered because it could end at any second. The plot wasn’t interesting if there were no stakes involved.
Her die had been cast, her fate accepted, only now the entire game board had been dumped on the floor. It just felt… wrong.
Her mind drifted off to Saiden while she continued to poke at the sharp little teeth that appeared and disappeared with only a thought, as effortless as sticking out her tongue.
She had said some pretty awful things after she found out what he did. She remembered screaming at him that she would rather claw out her eyes than continue to look at him, and she would rather stab her eardrums with knives than listen to anything else he had to say. And those had been the kindest words.
Horror directors could be viciously creative when pissed off.
A hand rapped softly against her door, but she didn’t bother getting up. The vamps here would do whatever they wanted, regardless of her wishes.
She didn’t even need to turn around to know that it was Raven who entered, the British vamp’s scent acting as an identifier. It was strange because none of them wore perfume or any kind of artificial fragrance, and yet they all smelled different. Tressa, unsurprisingly, smelled like bubblegum. Raven, however, smelled like moist dirt and dying flowers, reminding Cora of a graveyard after it rained.
“Why do you smell like death?” Cora asked before she could stop herself. Good to know even as a vampire she was still socially awkward.
Raven sat on the edge of the bed and folded her hands as she carefully regarded Cora. “All humans have a unique scent that only other vampires can detect,” she began tentatively as if afraid to set Cora off on another spiral. “Once they become a vampire, that scent is amplified. Unmated vampires usually smell like something bright or hopeful. Sunshine or ocean breezes, things like that. Saiden smells like fresh bread or pastries if you hadn’t noticed yet.”
Cora had definitely noticed. It was like she had only been catching faint hints of Saiden’s vampire scent buried under his masculine smell before, but when she woke up in his bed a vampire, she’d brieflywondered if his family had just opened a bakery in their home. It had been the furthest thing on her mind to ask about at the time, though.
“Once a vampire meets their mate,” Raven continued, “their smell starts to change. Blends with that of their beloved. All mates have complementary scents, you see. I used to smell like roses and my mate smelled of open grassy fields. When he died, so too did my scent. I’ve been told I now smell like an abandoned greenhouse.”
