Bloodline

“Would you recognize it if you heard it again?”

I lifted my brows. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“What about the car? Would you recognize that?”

I swallowed, closed my eyes, tried to remember. “It was a big, black SUV. The windows were tinted so dark that I couldn’t see who was inside. But I know it was a Cadillac. A black Cadillac Escalade.”

“That’s very good.”

I smiled slightly in response to the praise and opened my eyes. He still looked troubled. “I want you to close your eyes and relax, and just think about when you first woke up under the bridge.”

I leaned back on the sofa, letting my eyes fall closed again, relaxing my body. “I remember waking up.”

“Do you remember sleeping?”

My brows drew closer. “I was exhausted. I’d been running and running and—it was almost dawn, and I remember thinking I had to find a place before then.” I frowned and squeezed my eyes tighter. “What an odd thing.”

“It’s not so odd,” he said. “Do you remember anything before you started running? Do you remember what you were running from?”

I tipped my head to one side as images assaulted me in tiny, insignificant bits that told me nothing. “I remember a tall fence. I remember thinking, ‘Don’t touch.’ I remember jumping it.” I smiled a little and shook my head. “That part had to be a dream.”

“Maybe. Go on. What about before the fence?”

I saw another flash, but it was brief. “A white room. Like a hospital room. And I…I have a blade. I’m…” My eyes flew open as shock jolted through me at what I had seen. The blade. My flesh. A spurting stream of blood.

“I cut my wrist!” And even as I said it, I turned my palms upward and stared at my wrists in search of the scars. “I must have been in some sort of…of asylum! I tried to kill myself. And then I ran away.” I searched his face. “I’m an escaped lunatic, Ethan. And where are the scars? There should be scars on my wrists, where are the—”

“You didn’t escape from an asylum. And you didn’t try to kill yourself, Lilith.”

“I didn’t?” I shook my head, looking again at my wrists. “But…why would I cut myself like that? And where are the marks?” Meeting his gaze again, I said, “I’m not an ordinary person, am I, Ethan?”

“No. You’re…like me.”

“I’m not like you. I’m not like anyone. I can outrun a deer. I did, when I ran away. I can see perfectly in the dark, and over vast distances. I can hear so well I think I can hear the grass growing. Seriously, sometimes I hear things…that aren’t…audible.”

“Like…thoughts?” he asked.

I nodded. Then I blinked. “How do you know that?”

“Because you and I are the same, Lilith. We’re not…exactly human.” He came to me, sat beside me on the sofa and took both my hands in his.

“And there’s more about your new nature that you don’t yet know. Bigger things than you’ve had a chance to figure out yet. It’s going to be hard to understand, but I want you to hear me out and just try to keep an open mind.”

“All right.”

He nodded, licked his lips and held my hands more tightly. “We don’t—well, we don’t age, Lilith.”

I frowned as that statement sank into my brain and I tried to understand what it meant. A simple phrase. We don’t age. And yet it couldn’t mean what it seemed, on the surface, to mean.

“We only die if we bleed out, or if we’re burned. Our bodies are extremely flammable. Open flame is dangerous to us. The sun, too, will roast us to death.”

“The sun?” I sat up straighter, pulling my hands free of his and letting the blanket fall from my shoulders. “That’s ludicrous.”

“Any wounds we may suffer heal during the daytime. That’s when we sleep. It’s not by choice, mind you. We just lose consciousness when the sun comes up. We have to sleep where we’re protected from it.”

I blew air through my teeth, relieved as I realized he was joking. It wasn’t very funny, but maybe he just had a twisted sense of humor. I shook my head and smiled. “Next you’ll tell me we subsist on human bloo—” I broke off there, as my eyes shot to the empty stein on the table. And I knew. I knew. I gagged and clapped my palm over my mouth.

“Don’t,” he said. “You won’t throw it up. There’s some part of your mind that’s repulsed by the notion, Lilith, but it’s the part you let go of when your mortal life ended, the night you slit your wrists and let yourself bleed nearly to death before ingesting the blood of one of us to replenish you. To transform you.”

“That’s insane. Where would I get the…the blood of one of you?”

“Some sort of lab—not from a living being, or you wouldn’t have had to cut your own wrists or go on the run on your own. Of course, I’m only guessing. How you got this way, I can’t be sure. But I know what you are, Lilith. You, the woman you are now, are not sickened at the thought of drinking blood. You need it. You crave it. You relish it.

“You’re a vampire, Lilith. And so am I.”

A vampire. It was insane. It couldn’t be real.

But even as he said it, he pulled something from one of his pockets and held it out to me. It was a small round mirror, with a little wire hanger on it. He must have gotten it when he’d been in the kitchen getting me my…beverage.

I didn’t move as he offered it to me.

“Go ahead. You’re not going to believe me until you see proof. So take a look, Lilith. You cast no reflection. And while you’re at it, feel your incisors. Or just take a look at mine.”

He bared his teeth, and I sucked in a sharp breath and jerked backward. But even as I did, my tongue was exploring my own teeth and finding the same thing I’d seen in him. My eyeteeth were slightly elongated, pointed—and razor sharp. I met his eyes and had the feeling he knew what I had just discovered, and then I stood and reached for the mirror with a trembling hand.

I held it away from me and looked into it to be sure it reflected other things. The throw pillows, the dancing flames, the painting of Lilith above the hearth. It did.

Swallowing hard, I tipped the mirror slowly toward my face. And then I blinked, because I wasn’t there. The mirror reflected the wall behind me, but not me. I lifted a forefinger and moved it back and forth in front of the mirror. But there was no image reflected there.

My hands went numb, and the mirror fell to the floor and shattered.

4

Ethan had watched the reactions cross Lilith’s beautiful face as he’d revealed, bit by bit, the truth to her. First there had been confusion, followed quickly by amusement when she finally got the gist of what he was trying to tell her—but thought he was making a joke.

But even then, there had been something more, something lying beneath it all. Some instinctive, living part of her being that recognized the truth when she heard it. And as he went on, slowly, ruthlessly, convincing her, showing her, her expression had turned to one of disbelief and then, as she gaped at the glass, to one of horror.

As the mirror fell, her body sank heavily, all at once, onto the sofa. She didn’t fall, but she didn’t sit down, either. She just…let go, landing hard on the cushions, her head hanging, eyes unfocused, gazing at nothing.

“Lilith…” he began as he moved closer, knelt in front of her, wished he could have found an easier way to tell her what she was.

“I knew,” she whispered. “I mean, part of me knew. It didn’t even sound untrue when you said it.” Then she snapped her gaze up to his, focusing at last. “How did you know? Do you know me, Ethan?”

He averted his eyes. “Vampires can sense other vampires. I knew what you were before I ever set eyes on you in the stable. What I didn’t know was whether you had come here to kill me.”

“You keep saying that. Why?” she asked.

He sat in the chair again and let his own head fall forward as he rubbed the back of his neck and wrestled with his conscience. How much should he tell her? Because the thing was, he did know her. Though they’d had almost no interaction at The Farm, he knew her. He’d watched her, seen her, learned her nature. Her reaction, once she remembered, would be as predictable as her need for blood, her aversion to sunlight.