I shake my head. No. I can’t go there. These people may seem pathetic and lost, but hell, am I really so different? They may be down on their luck, but they still have brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers. Who am I to steal them away from their loved ones simply to satisfy my vile emptiness?
Then again, a little voice inside chimes in, why should they be spared when my sister was not? They’re untouchables—drug dealers, murderers, alcoholics, abusers, child molesters—the lowest of the low. Why should they walk the streets, thumbing their noses at the law and hurting innocent people? Why should they be allowed to live, when my innocent sister had to die?
I watch in the dark shadows as a scantily dressed woman stumbles into the alleyway, her fingers grasping a bottle wrapped in brown paper. Hunger surges at the sight of her. If I could just take one sip… I know it would soothe me. Take the edge off the unbearable pain that smothers me like a heavy blanket. Just one sip—she wouldn’t even miss it. She wouldn’t even remember the next morning that I’d come to her, in the dead of night, seducing her with my vampire scent before indulging in her essence.
After all, why should I be so empty, when she is so full?
I take a step forward and my nose catches a whiff of her scent. Sweat mixed with alcohol and spicy perfume. But it doesn’t matter. Her blood will be sweet. Sweet and soothing.
“Hello,” I say, stepping into the glow of a nearby streetlight after wiping away my blood tears. My voice sounds strange, after having not spoken for so long and I know I must look a mess. But it doesn’t matter. I could be the Crypt Keeper himself and she’d still only see a beautiful, immortal she can’t help fall in love with.
Sure enough, her eyes widen and she clumsily falls to her knees, looking up at me with a hollow face full of rapture. “Are you an angel?” she whispers. “Have you come to save me?”
Guilt knots in my stomach at her questions. An angel. Sunny was the angel. A perfect creature of light with feathery wings and a beautiful soul. I’m more like a dark demon, set upon the world to cause pain and suffering to those who dare try to love me.
“Sure, yeah, an angel. You should have seen my wings,” I mutter, forcing the guilt back down inside. After all, there’s plenty of time to worry about regret later—after my meal. I lower myself to the ground, pulling her close to me and cradling her in my arms, stroking her hair. As she closes her eyes, my fangs slide easily from my mouth and I lower my head to take that first juicy bite of her.
But before I can make the puncture, my eyes fall upon the tattoo seared into her shoulder. More precisely, a tattoo of Race Jameson, vampire rock star.
My cohort in rehab.
I shove her away and she goes flying across the alleyway, her bony body taking the brunt of my horror. What am I doing? I’m not this person anymore. I went through the twelve steps—I’m clean. I’m sober. I can’t go back to what I used to be: a blood-hungry monster who stole Corbin’s mortal life and forced him to live a nightmare, so I could have a mid-afternoon snack.
It takes three attempts to wrestle my phone from my pocket, my hands are shaking so badly. But somehow, eventually, I manage to do it. To call the number I was given on the day I left rehab. The number they promised would give me help if and when I needed it.
And, oh boy do I need it now!
“Please!” the woman begs, crawling back toward me, blood dripping from a cut on her forehead. “I beg of you. Don’t leave me.”
My stomach roils at her pleas even as it growls at the sight of her thick, syrupy blood. I force myself to avert my eyes, disgusted at my weakness. “Please, just go away,” I beg her, reaching into my pocket and thrusting a wad of bills in her direction. “Go find yourself something to eat or something. Leave me alone.”
But she doesn’t. She’s too sucked in to my vampire scent. She just sits there, quavering before me, crying her eyes out, begging me to take her, to give her my eternal kiss.
I’ve never felt so low in all my life.
“Hello?” the English-accented voice chimes from the other end of the phone.
Thank God. I let out a sigh of relief. “Race? It’s Rayne McDonald. I need your help.”
15
It’s very lucky for me that Race is currently in town for a concert at Madison Square Garden and not halfway around the world. But even so, it seems like an eternity waiting for him to show up in his limo. In the meantime, it’s not easy fending off the advances of the woman in the alley, who’s begging and sobbing without relent. I do my best to keep my distance, to act like an upstanding member of Blood Coven society, but I feel like a drunk in a bar with a fistful of hundred dollar bills. I could sate my hunger in an instant, but could I live with myself in the morning?
“One day at a time,” I whisper, over and over again until a shadow looms in the alleyway and the woman looks away from me for the first time since I vampire scented her.
“Race? Race Jameson?” she cries, her eyes widening. “Oh my God. You’re really here. I’ve got all your albums! Well, I mean, I did. Once upon a time, before my mom kicked me out of the house.”
I cringe. In the haze of my bloodlust she looked old and wrecked, but now, as the limo’s light shines into the alleyway, I see she’s probably not even seventeen. What did I almost do?
Race smiles his rock star smile, leaning down to kiss her softly on the forehead. “Thanks for the support, luv,” he says, taking her hand in his own. His bodyguard hands him a Sharpie and he scribbles his name up her dirt-caked arm.