Chapter 7

“Tell me about how we met,” I requested more confidently as I made myself comfortable on the large couch in the house where he had brought me.

“It’s a long story,” he warned, “I don’t know if there’s time for everything.”

He had chosen the perfect setting. I felt so much better curled up on the couch, trying to piece things together in relative privacy than I had felt before. Even if I was holding a wine glass of blood that he expected me to drink and I didn’t want.

“Give me the highlights, then. How did we start dating and fall for each other?”

“I saw you first when Warren first brought you home. We didn’t actually speak then but I remember your face. You were terrified and confused.”

“What changed that? I thought you said that I could be scary sometimes.”

“Bloodlust changes most vampires. You start out as the human you were and become something else after that first taste of blood.”

That raised more questions, but he continued before I could ask.

“We officially met at Warren’s club, Nyctophilia. It’s kind of his home base. Warren had asked me to help keep an eye on you because you were easily angry that first year. You liked to tease me about always doing what Warren asked, so we had our share of adventures before you met Kris and decided to learn to fight.”

“Who’s Kris? You said before that he found me when all of this amnesia began.”

“He’s Warren’s commander of the guard. He’s in charge of making sure that the vampires follow Warren’s rules and stuff like that. He’s a bit dry, but he liked you so you got along even when he pushed you in your training.”

I took a sip of the blood, trying to make a show of it but trying to hide my gag reflex at the same time. Apparently, I didn’t do a very good job of it.

“You don’t like the blood?” he wondered.

I wanted to deny it but he read me so well. Debate raged in my head before I finally answered him. “I’m fine. I’m just not used to it yet. Tell me about the training. What was it like?”

He looked at me as if I were wearing a bad fake mustache. I hadn’t thrown him off the scent like I wanted to.

“Raven, your body runs on blood. You don’t need to get used to it, you just drink it. Tell me honestly, do you like it or not?” His tone was stern and scared me enough to send a shiver through me.

I shook my head nervously. What did it mean to be a vampire that didn’t like blood?

“Are you sure it’s not just the temperature?”

I swished the blood around in the glass--if you could call the motion of the thick liquid a swish at all--watching it move and wrinkling my nose involuntarily. What I had already drunk had coated my throat in its thickness, now making me gag even though I hadn’t drunk anymore. The temperature had nothing to do with it.
I didn’t have to say anything. He could see it in the grimace on my face as I looked at the blood in the glass.

“What happened while you were gone?”

That wasn’t what I thought he was going to say. “I’m sorry,” I tried meekly, no longer comfortable.

“Raven, have you drank vampire blood?”

I thought back to what the woman had said to me. “‘He fed you his blood to help you calm down…’” I breathed.

“What?” he exclaimed, now sitting on the edge of the chair he was on.

“I- I thought it was a dream…” I stammered, worried that all of this was wrong. I thought that I might be talking myself into a whole lot of trouble.

Seeing my hesitation, he began rolling up his sleeve. I didn’t understand what he was doing until he held out the soft, slightly lighter skin of his forearm.

“Leo, I don’t need to drink from you. It’s okay, I can drink this blood. It’s really fine. I haven’t drank vampire blood,” I said nervously, trying to make everything stop and go back to the way it was.

He came across the space slowly as if approaching a wild animal. He took the glass of blood from me and set it out of the way before he pounced on me, trapping me against the couch. I tried hard to wiggle my way out of his grip but he was clever and flipped me around with one quick move. He trapped my legs with his, making me feel like I was fighting with a snake. He had one of my arms trapped against his chest and the other trapped next to my body with the arm he had around my middle. The more I fought, the tighter he held on and there was no escape.

“Hold still,” he grunted. “I’m not going to hurt you, we just have to try this experiment. If you can resist the blood then we know for sure.”

“Leo, I don’t… we don’t have to do this… I swear… please… just…”

My argument stopped when he bit his wrist and the smell of his fresh blood hit me. It was what my body wanted this whole time. The human blood was edible and could take the edge off but this was a different urge altogether and I knew that it was wrong.

“We can figure this out together, Raven. Just drink it.”

I swallowed the saliva that had built up in my mouth nervously while staring at the blood seeping from the bite. With a heavy sigh, I closed my eyes, digging deep for my willpower. I wasn’t going to drink his blood. I was going to be normal.

I turned my head so that I would see his face and not the blood when I opened my eyes. I was sure that I could resist but something changed and the smell of his blood overpowered me. I couldn’t resist. I needed his blood more than I needed air to breathe but I fought back with everything I had.

“You can’t hide this without help, Raven. Your willpower isn’t that strong. Stop fighting it and drink my blood,” he demanded, shocking me enough that my willpower slipped and the fighting stopped.

As soon as I quit fighting, my eyes snapped open. I looked Leo in the eyes for a moment, noting the hint of fear, but needing to drink all the same. There was nothing that could have stopped me from getting to his blood at that point except my own demise. I would have fought armies just for a taste.

Unlike the human blood that was thick and stuck in my throat, his blood was like water. It was cool, crisp, and so very refreshing with only the slightest tang of iron. Like an energy drink moving through my system, after a moment, I felt ready to run across the country or take on a giant half-crazed animal.

One sip of his blood made me feel grounded. The hunger disappeared completely and my mind had a new clarity despite the missing memories. I was a vampire in a coven run by a man named Warren. Leo was my boyfriend and now my protector of secrets. Kris, head of the vampire police, had been training me to join him. That explained my toned muscles and the escape strategies that I wouldn’t have come up with before. I was powerful.

Licking my lips, I finally looked back up to Leo again. His expression said that he was afraid of me, but it also had some apprehension about that.

“Your eyes are black,” he whispered.

I blinked a few times until I felt the subtle change. “Is that better?”

He nodded nervously.

“I feel better,” I sighed, relaxing into him. His blood gave me such a feeling of security that I didn’t doubt my trust in him any longer. We were in this together. “Thank you.”

He matched my sigh and slowly relaxed. I sat silently in his lap with my head leaning back on his shoulder, now comfortable with his closeness and the connection between us.

“Do you remember anything?” he asked finally, breaking the silence.

I dug through my brain trying to find any memory at all that might be helpful. There was nothing there. Not even a scrap of a memory. So I shook my head, keeping my eyes closed and my head leaned against his shoulder. “I want to remember, but it’s like the memories were just taken out of my head. I don’t remember anything about being a vampire.”

He let out the breath he had been holding. “I don’t understand that, but I guess at least we know that you don’t need much blood to function. We’ll just have to stick together and hope that no one pushes too hard about things you don’t remember.”

He let me stand up out of his lap and look him over. He looked tired but overall in one piece. I picked up the glass of blood that I hadn’t drunk and put it in his hand carefully. “I think you need to drink this.”

He nodded in thanks and things went quiet again as if we were both waiting for the other to say something. I paced a circle around the room until he finally spoke.
“You have to stop. You’re making me dizzy.”

“Are we going to talk? The silence is making me anxious.”

“Ask me something.”

“Tell me about you,” I replied after a moment of consideration. “I feel like you know me and I don’t really know you.”

He nodded. “That’s a fair point.”

He painted a beautiful picture of his childhood even though he said that he didn’t remember much of it. His parents weren’t made of money but they didn’t want for anything either. He went to good schools and had a head for numbers, but fate decided to intervene before he earned his master’s degree. There was a car accident that nearly killed him; he could remember the lights flashing and the water coming in but not how he got out. Warren had picked him up from the morgue and introduced him to Kris, who trained him. He was one of Kris’s most trusted captains.

He worked hard but could party hard also. He liked to get in trouble with me and go on adventures. We had gone all over the island together, terrorizing humans and laughing when Warren covered it all up again. His favorite were the quiet nights, though. The ones we would spend lying around his house.