Chapter One
I satup with a scream on my lips and my eyelids snapped open. I was in a room I didn’t recognize, but the two figures hunched over my bed were terribly familiar.
The first thing I noticed was my throat felt like it was made of sandpaper and my head burned like it had been sliced open.
Luka and Liv stared at me in shock, eyes red-rimmed like they’d both been crying. Memories flooded my mind then: Morgana shooting and killing me, my body floating into the beautiful peaceful light. Luka … biting me, feeding me his blood.
Changing me?
I clawed at my throat, feeling like I might die all over again. Then Luka snapped into action. Walking over to a refrigerator, he pulled out two bottles of dark crimson fluid.
“This will be easier to—” His words barely registered as I flew across the room and snatched the bottles from his hand. Ripping off the lid, I pressed the rim of the bottle to my lips and tipped it backward.
The second the thick cold fluid hit my tongue, an explosion of flavor burst across my mouth. A deep moan ripped from my throat as I gulped it down. It was like chocolate and strawberries and …sex.Or at least what I imagined sex would be. My brain wasn’t really thinking. All I needed in this entire world was for this overwhelming thirst to be quenched.
“Okay this isawkward.” Liv’s voice brought me back to the present and Luka chuckled.
“The first drink is the best. It will dull over time but not completely,” he responded.
Then I noticed it: the lack of heartbeat, no longer needing to breathe, the thick crimson fluid having the slightest metallic iron taste.
I looked at the empty bottle in my hand and my fingers went up to probe my teeth. “I’m a bloodsucker,” I mumbled against my fingers.
Two sharp points pressed against my fingertips and I gasped, dropping the empty container to the ground and lifting my clean shirt to stare at my abdomen. No holes. No scars to even show where the bullets had entered my body.
“I mean you were good looking before… but dayuuuuuum,” Liv declared.
I blinked rapidly at my best friend. It had worked. Luka had turned me into a vampire.
“I need a mirror.” I scrambled out of the room and into the adjoining bathroom.
“Take it easy! You’re still changing, you don’t know your—” Luka’s voice was stopped by me flipping the light switch up so fast and hard that it snapped off, the little plastic nub falling to the floor.
“…strength,” he finished.
With the light illuminating my face, I looked up into the mirror and froze.
“God help me,” I breathed.
I was a vampire: paper white skin, red-tinged lips, pointed canines, eerie stillness, but it was the eyes that freaked me out. My eyes were no longer human. Yellow rings stared back at me.
“Youaskedme to, remember? You gave me permission,” Luka hedged, looking at me frightened, like I might attack him or something.
I nodded, my head still reeling. I should cry, I should pray, I should have some sort of reaction, but all I could think about in that moment was how thirsty I was. “Need more,” I growled, and Luka nodded to my hand.
Oh. I was still holding one of the bottles. I popped the lid and tipped it back, before looking at Luka expectantly.
“Right.” He rushed out and returned with two fresh bottles.
I took them inside the bathroom and shut the door on Luka, leaning back against it and sliding down to the floor as I chugged blood from some unwitting donor.
What was my mom going to say? Maple? What about freaking Ruby, who was due here today? This was a mess.
My stomach burned with hunger, and dizziness washed over me.
“More!” I yelled, and two seconds later there was a knock.
I opened the door a few inches and Luka pushed two more bottles through.
