Eternal Thief

The Sullivan Vampires, Book 3

by Bridget Essex

Synopsis:

Would you sacrifice everything so the woman you loved could be happy?

Rose Clyde knows she should never have fallen in love with a vampire, but love isn’t exactly something you can plan—or predict.  She came to Eternal Cove, Maine, for a chance to restart her life, but she could never have expected that the beautiful old Sullivan Hotel would be run by the captivating Kane Sullivan.  Or that, from the very first moment Rose met this enigmatic woman, she is spellbound by her.

But now, the love of Kane’s life, Melody, has returned, seemingly from beyond the grave, and the blossoming love between Kane and Rose seems to be put on hold.  Heartbroken, Rose must watch the woman she’s falling in love with in the arms of another…

And Melody isn’t exactly how Kane remembers her.  She’s dark, secretive and cruel.  Rose wants, more than anything, for Kane to be happy…but at what cost?

Does Melody have the power to keep Kane and Rose apart forever?

“Eternal Thief” is the third novella in the Sullivan Vampires series, a beautiful, romantic epic that follows the clan of Sullivan vampires and the women who love them.  Advance praise has hailed this hallmark series as “Twilight for women who love women” and “a lesbian romance that takes vampires seriously!  Two thumbs up!”

"Eternal Thief"

The Sullivan Vampires, Book 3

© Bridget Essex 2014

Rose and Star Press

First Edition

All rights reserved

No part of this e-book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Rose and Star Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews.  Please note that piracy of copyrighted materials is illegal and directly harms the author.  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Kane stood squarely on the sand, staring up at this impossible ghost from her past, this beautiful woman who stood above her on the path.  My mouth was still warm, still wet from our kiss, and my whole body was alive from that kiss…

But it seemed, as Kane stared at this woman, that Kane didn’t even know I was here anymore.

Standing above her, on the path down to the sea, stood a beautiful creature that I shouldn’t have recognized—but did.  She had long, flowing red hair, and she wore a gauzy, flimsy dress that was almost suicidal on this chill October night, with the ocean crashing away behind us, its frothing waves pounding against the unrelenting sand.  But as the chill wind blew, stirring the sea grasses and moving our clothing about us, this stranger didn’t seem to care about the cold, about her dress, about anything really—except for Kane.

She held one pretty hand out to Kane, palm up, long pretty fingers extended toward her, curling slightly as if she beckoned Kane forward, and Kane who watched this woman move with haunted eyes opened her beautiful, full lips and repeated the word, the word that had destroyed me:

“Melody?”  Kane’s voice, usually so smoky and smooth and low came out anguished, pained as she stood there with her legs apart, her hands curled into fists.  Though she stood with her usual graceful strength, though she leaned forward powerfully, she was shaking a little, I realized, in shock.  Kane looked like she saw a ghost, but the woman before us was too substantial to be anything other than real.  She wasn’t transparent.

She was…real.

And if this was Melody, the Melody who Tommie had told me about only that afternoon, then it meant that this was the Melody who Kane had loved with all of her heart, the Melody who had supposedly died, though I don’t know how long ago.  The Melody that Kane had sworn was her true love and soul mate, what Tommie had called “romantic garbage.”

But Melody was dead, or—at least—she was supposed to be, had been, and though Tommie hadn’t told me how long ago it was supposed to have happened, she seemed to imply that it had been at least decades, if not longer, since Melody had walked the earth.  And though Kane had, since Melody’s death, not even looked at another woman, when I’d arrived at the Sullivan Hotel…well.  We both started looking at each other.

And Kane had been falling in love with me, and I’d been falling in love with her, and now my entire world of possibilities was shattered by this beautiful stranger walking down the path to the beach, a sure smile on her lips as she held both of her hands out to Kane now.

To take back what had only been hers.

What had never been mine.

A single tear fell down Kane’s cheek from her too-blue eyes, eyes that were so often violently blue, icy blue, housing the deep power that thrummed through Kane, the power that had first attracted me to her.  But there was nothing but sadness, but confusion on her handsome face now as she stared up at Melody, as that one tear seemed to catch all of the starlight in the sky as it fell slowly over her perfect, pale skin.

Melody—if that was, in fact, Melody—took the last step down from the path, and she was finally standing on the sand of the beach itself.  She was about a head shorter than Kane, but power seemed to radiate from her like heat as she took one last lazy step forward to stand right in front of Kane.  She lifted her pale arms around Kane’s waist, and then she was drawing Kane closer.  Kane caved to her, pressing herself against Melody’s body, then, as she put her long-fingered hands against Melody’s face, cupping her fine cheeks in her palms, peering down into her eyes, searching them for some sort of answer.

“But…how?” Kane whispered, searching her face, her own contorted with anguish.  “You were dead.”  The word came out broken.

Melody gazed up at her adoringly as my stomach turned, as she shook her head, the red waves of her hair shifting lightly.  “We have a lot of catching up to do,” she promised, her voice as soft as a purr, and then one of her hands was at the back of Kane’s neck, and she drew Kane down to her.

And kissed her.

Revulsion roared up through me, though I should have felt nothing but happiness for them.  Melody, the love of Kane’s life, her soul mate, had supposedly been dead.  And now…she obviously wasn’t, because she stood there, pressed against Kane so tightly that there was not a molecule of space between their bodies as their mouths merged together.  And it was wonderful for Kane to have her back.  I loved Kane--I wanted her to be happy with all of my heart.  I should feel happy for her, should be joyful for her.

But I couldn’t.

And as I watched (I couldn’t tear my eyes away--I know I should have given them a private moment, but I couldn’t…too much feeling roared through me), Melody’s eyes flicked open, her long black lashes fluttering against her too-pale face.  She was positioned in such a way that she could just peer at me over Kane’s shoulder.

And she did.  As she kissed Kane, the woman I had, not a moment earlier, kissed myself, drinking her in as one of the best, gentlest and most beautiful experiences of my life, this new woman now, this new woman who was destroying anything I might have ever had with Kane, stared at me.

Her eyes flashed and narrowed in the darkness as if she was laughing at me.  She looked, in that moment, smug and confidant.

But there was something else there, something deeper.  My stomach turned as she stared at me over Kane’s shoulder, eyes wide in the darkness.

There was something…wrong there.  Something deep inside her that I only saw a shadow of.  But it was enough.

I couldn’t watch anymore.  I reached up, brushed my fingers over my own lips, felt a great sob begin to rise in me, and I couldn’t be there.  I couldn’t see it.  I was too upset to think clearly—how many people have just had their first wonderful kiss with a woman they think could be the one, and then any possibility of that gets snatched away almost immediately after?  Probably a very, very small number in the whole history of the world.

And here I was, lucky enough to be one of them.

I choked down my small sob, leaving Kane’s coat—the one she’d so generously and chivalrously put about my shoulders only a few short moments before—crumpled on the sand, like all my hopes, and I moved past Melody and Kane, Kane who was too wrapped up in the embrace and kiss to even notice I was leaving.

I ran the rest of the way up the path.  I didn’t look back once.  When I was far enough away that I thought they wouldn’t hear, I let out my breath in a great, rushing sob, pressing my hand against the side of the cliff face, almost doubled over with grief.

It felt like my heart was being squeezed.  “Breaking” wasn’t the appropriate word, really.

It felt more like my heart was being destroyed.

I wished terrible things in that moment.  I wished I’d never come to the Sullivan Hotel.  I wished I’d never left my plain, boring life in New Hampshire, the life where nothing exciting ever happened to me, where I could continue to live in the same apartment I’d lived in with my now dead girlfriend, keeping everything from when we were together, from when she was alive, constant so that I could never, ever, ever get hurt.  I wished, in short, that I’d never tried.

It’s because I came to Maine that this had happened.  It’s because I tried new things that this happened.  It’s because I’d tried to be brave, build a new and different life for myself, that this happened.

I ran across the gravel parking lot, the sprawling red stone walls of the Sullivan Hotel towering overhead seemed to leer toward me, utterly foreboding and not the least bit welcoming.  I’d thought this big red stone house was going to be my new home, full of possibility.

And all it had brought me was sadness.

I pushed open the front door, and there, in the large waiting area of the hotel, sat a woman I’d never seen before, lounging on one of the antique velvet-covered couches in the waiting area before the front desk.  She wore a short black pencil skirt and cream-colored blouse, and her dark blonde hair was swept up in a messy updo.  She looked like she should be behind a desk in a mahogany-colored office, but instead she was sprawled on the couch, the first few buttons on her blouse undone…and there was Tommie, practically straddling her.

Drinking from two tiny wounds in her neck.

Tommie’s fangs, exactly like when Kane had given me blood back in order to save me, were elongated and lengthened, and her tongue made little wet sounds as she suckled at the wounds, her eyes almost rolling back in her head as her hands squeezed the woman’s breasts like they were on a bed somewhere hidden away, instead of in an entrance to a hotel.

Unlike when Mags lured me out to try to drown and drink me dry in the ocean, this seemed like a consensual sort of thing, though it still turned my stomach as I watched the pretty woman writhe beneath Tommie’s administrations, the blood seeming so red beneath the hotel’s lights.  Tommie’s chin-length black hair was being held in the woman’s pink-nailed hands, and Tommie’s fedora was on the other side of the couch, as if it’d been tossed off in a hurry.

I walked past them quickly.  But even though Tommie was…occupied, she still noticed.

“Rose?”  She slurred the word as if she was about five or six beers in to the night.  I wondered if drinking blood did something for vampires, then realized that was probably a silly question.  Of course it probably did something for them, probably made them feel drunk or who-knew-what-else, or why would they ever do it if they didn’t have a reason to?  I still had a lot to learn about vampires.

No.

Maybe I had nothing more to learn about vampires.

Maybe I’d leave.

I walked quickly down the hallway, ignoring Tommie’s calls after me, but then she was trotting after me, buttoning up the last few buttons of her spotless white shirt, adjusting her plum-colored tie so that it was straight, and plunking her much-abused fedora on her head.  She was a very clean drinker, it seemed.  Her lips were a little redder than usual, and her incisors were descended, but other than that, there wasn’t a speck of blood on her.

“Hey,” she said, all but dancing in front of me, holding out her hands, her brows furrowed as she frowned down at me.  “What the hell’s the matter?”

“What do you care?”  It was a petulant, childish reaction, but I was too upset and too tired to be speaking to anyone right now.  I wanted her to go back to that pretty woman and keep drinking and to leave me the hell alone.

“Rose, what’s the matter?” she repeated, stepping forward, her strong hands closing around my upper arms.  I stood there, then, her skin radiating heat through my sweater.  Maybe it’s because she’d just fed that she was warm, I thought dully in the back of my mind.  Usually, vampire skin was freezing.

And why did she care?

“I thought you said Melody was dead,” I told her, then.  It came out a little dazed, and when I’d said the words, I looked at Tommie’s face.

She let go of me.  She stepped back as if struck.

She, too, looked like she saw a ghost.

“Rose, what do you mean?” she whispered, her eyes wide.  Around us, the hall of paintings stretched on with the little lamps over the frame of each, showcasing the piece of artwork, the only light in the hall, the red and black tile floor beneath our feet seeming to devour that sparse light.

“Good night,” I muttered, moving past her.  I didn’t know what else to say.  I was sure Kane was going to use the front door when she and Melody were done on the beach (done with what?  Oh, I was just hurting myself now to think of Kane’s hands on Melody’s body, to think of Kane’s mouth…no, no, no, I had to stop thinking about that), and then if Tommie kept sucking on that woman back on the couch, she’d see exactly what I’d been talking about.

I thought for a moment that Tommie was going to follow me, press me for answers.  But she, mercifully, didn’t.  I walked quickly to the far spiral staircase, and I ascended the steps until I reached my floor, and then I ran the rest of the way to my door, fumbling with my skeleton key at the lock.

It was very late when I finally entered my bedroom.  I collapsed on my bed.  I didn’t even take off my sweater or my shoes.  I pillowed my head in my arms, curled up my body like it was under attack, curling tightly in the fetal position, and there was no sobs, no sound, as the tears leaked quietly from my eyes, falling soundlessly to the coverlet beneath my arm.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Melody and Kane together, kissing, embracing, Melody’s eyes open and wide and staring at me with the exact same expression I thought a wolf must wear when it closes in for the kill.  I didn’t want to replay that moment over and over, so I tried to stare at my pretty turquoise walls, tried to keep my eyes open, tried to think of nothing.

But I must have closed my eyes eventually, because I fell into a deep, dark sleep.

---

Somewhere, in the back of my head, I knew I was dreaming.

Because Kane was kissing me again.

Melody wasn’t there.  Perhaps she’d never come.  I could hear the ocean behind us, but it sounded…different, the sibilant hiss as it pounded against the shore taking on a different cadence then what I was now used to on that stretch of Maine coastline.  Even the stars overhead, where the constellations had swung low, toward the water, were also different, as if it was a different time of year.  But I wouldn’t know what the sky looked like there at any other time of year because I’d only been at the Sullivan Hotel a few days, had never experienced it in other seasons.

But still, the stars were different.  And it was strange.

Kane backed away from our warm, passionate kiss—I could feel my heartbeat strongly in my lips, surging through me, the softness of her mouth, the warmth and brightness of her body against mine, how sharply I noticed each sensation, her breasts pressing against me, the angle of her hips hard against mine.  She backed away, and she looked down at me with those bright, violently blue eyes with a deep longing that moved through me, captivating me, pinning me in place.

She wore different clothes, older clothes, I suppose.  It looked like she was dressed up for a costume party in her long velvet coat (I couldn’t tell the color in the dark) with the lace-edged sleeves, the high collar and the plunging neckline.  But draped over the collar and against her cream-colored neck was a looping black necklace, all shiny black beads and bright silver chain that flashed in the starlight.  My eyes were drawn to that, to the rise in her chest, and she laughed a little, a low, growling sound that made my skin rise with goosebumps, made me shiver as I stared up at her, then.

We were no longer on the beach.  Or perhaps we’d never been there, and I’d imagined everything else.  For now we stood on red and black tile in a large, impressive-looking room complete with chandeliers covered thickly with guttering tapers and candelabras and floor to ceiling length mirrors, and women and men in long gowns and long coats, danced together to a piece of music that was vaguely familiar and classical.

Outside of one of the tall windows, the stars continued to burn as Kane took my hand with her icy fingers, began to lead me in the dance.

We passed a mirror, and as I glanced at my reflection, I began to feel cold.

It wasn’t me in the mirror.

---

I breathed out, eyes open in an instant, but as I panted in and out, trying to calm my racing heart, bits and pieces of the dream began to disintegrate.  The harder I tried to hold on to them, to remember them, the faster my impressions of the dream disappeared.

I lay there for a very long moment, aware that there was sunshine pooling warmly on the floor, that it was morning.  I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds of the house waking up.  Somewhere on this floor, someone was playing a classic rock station, and I could hear a much-muted guitar riff.  There was the clank of pipes and the white-noise of running water rushing through the old walls.  They were all good, comforting sounds, and as I stretched in bed, I brushed a finger against my lips.

And then I remembered Kane.  I blushed as I lay there, remembering our kiss, remembering her cool mouth against mine, how I’d felt, in that moment, so completed, so undone by her.  She’d told me before she’d kissed me that I compelled her, that she was drawn to me.

I was so purely happy in that moment.  All of my feelings for Kane…she’d felt them, too.

And then everything else from last night came rushing back.  And I remembered that I had nothing at all to be happy about.

Because somehow, impossibly, Melody had returned.  And she had taken Kane from me.

It wasn’t true, though.  I had to be honest with myself.  Melody had, of course, come long before me.  Kane was hers, had always been hers.  She had never been mine.

But true or not, I felt it fiercely.  It felt, to me, that Melody had taken Kane from me.

And it felt very wrong.

There was a sharp, bright knock.

I eyed my door warily, but I had no choice but to push off my covers, shove my feet into slippers, wrap my robe around me and shuffle toward the door.

Gwen stood there, decked out in new, low-riding jeans and a pretty blue blouse that plunged dangerously low at her neckline (too low to be around vampires, I thought wryly, but I knew that my best friend had no idea what this house was currently inhabited by).  Her little traveling purse was on her shoulder, and her feet were currently being tortured by bright blue high heels that not even a stunt walker would probably try.

“Rose, you’re not even dressed!” she sighed in exasperation, casting her eyes heavenward in a what-am-I-supposed-to-do-with-you expression of longsuffering.  She pushed past me into my bedroom and began pulling out drawers on the antique wardrobe.  “There’s a ton of stuff I want to show you in Eternal Cove, and we don’t have all day!” she muttered, pulling out jeans and underwear.  “Well, actually, we do have all day,” she announced brightly, throwing a shirt in my direction.  I caught it without thinking.  “But there’s a lot of stuff to see.  Chop, chop!  Put this on!  Five seconds or less, missy!”

Oh yes.  Right.  Gwen and I had decided last night that we were going to go to Eternal Cove together so that she could actually show me around the little town I was now calling home.

But that was before…everything.

“Gwen, I don’t actually think…”  I began, but Gwen turned to me, putting her hands on her hips and raising an eyebrow.  Her crazy brunette hair was teased even more than usual, and stood out from around her head as if she’d stuck her finger into an electric outlet.  It was not without its charms.

“You are not backing out on me, missy—I don’t care if you’re hung over or whatever,” she said with no sympathy, placing her hands at the small of my back, shoving the jeans and other things she’d chosen for me into my arms and then shoving me through my small bathroom door.  She shut it behind me with a thud of finality.  “And don’t come out until you’re ready!” she announced from the other side.

As much as I love my best friend—and trust me, she’s saved my life a couple of times, and I love her a lot—I couldn’t fathom gathering enough energy for a girl’s night—or day—out.  After all, let’s be honest:  Gwen wanted to show me a town I wasn’t even certain I should be living in anymore.

As I stared at myself in the small bathroom mirror after flicking on the light, I saw my reflection’s eyes narrow.  Mirrors.  That was odd.  I sort of remembered something strange that had happened with mirrors, something like a dream…

“I don’t hear you moving around in there!” was Gwen’s utterly ridiculous comment from the other side of the door.  “How hung over are you?”

Gwen had rearranged heaven and earth to help me move to Eternal Cove, including getting me the job at the Sullivan Hotel sight unseen—I hadn’t even had to interview, Kane had trusted her so completely.  Yes, I was miserable, but it would only be a human thing to do to keep my promise to her.

I sighed, washed my face and brushed my teeth, and threw on my clothes, pulling my hair into a ponytail.  My auburn hair, usually fine and tangled anyway, was especially tangled after such a restless night, so I yanked a brush through the finalized ponytail and adjusted it in the mirror.  I didn’t have the heart to put on any makeup, but at least I didn’t look—after I’d scrubbed my face—like I’d cried all night.  Which I most certainly had.  So I guess that was a start.

I opened the door and Gwen wrapped an arm in mine, practically dragging me to the door.  I snatched up my skeleton key from the table beside the door and snatched up my coat, and then we were out in the hall and practically to the stairs before I could blink.

“I’ll drive!” she sang out.

As we began to descend the spiral staircase, my heart seized.  I didn’t want to run into Kane.  Frankly, I didn’t want any possibility of running into Kane, and if I saw Melody first thing that morning, with her smug smile and dark eyes and hands all over Kane, I figured I’d probably die on the spot.  Though Kane had certainly not paid any attention to me last night after Melody had showed up, I didn’t want to talk to her about the events of the evening just yet.  And I would do anything not to see the smirking, self-assured Melody ever again.

“Is there a way out to the parking lot from the basement?” I murmured quietly to Gwen.

This was the first moment that she cast a sidelong glance at me oddly—I think she was finally realizing that something wasn’t right.

“Yeah, there’s a couple of doors out from the kitchen,” she said, wrinkling her nose as she stared at me with wide eyes.  “Rose, what’s going on?”

“Oh, you know,” I muttered, glancing ahead and down the staircase to see if anyone else was on it.  Thankfully, there was no one.  “The usual,” I sighed.

“Huh,” is what Gwen snorted, but made no other reply.  When we hit the ground floor, we kept going all the way down to the basement.

The kitchens—empty the night before—were now bustling with the impressive energy of only one woman.  She stood a little shorter than me, her petite body curvy and very pretty beneath her knee-length pink dress with a scooped collar, showing off her pearl necklace.  Her blonde hair was in two ponytails that dangled around her face as she stuck a finger in a metal bowl on the table and licked it with a thoughtful expression on her face.  She wore a little makeup, and her full, bright pink lips seemed like they turned up at the corners pretty often.

“Molly, this is Rose,” said Gwen, as we passed through the kitchens, toward the far half-glass door that seemed to be radiating sunshine from down concrete steps.  “Rose, this is Molly—she’s our cook and does a ton of other stuff at the hotel.”

Molly snorted at that, licking her finger completely clean before offering me her hand to shake.  I grinned a little and took it—her smile was infectious.

“It’s so nice to meet you, Rose!  I’ve heard so much about you, all good things, I promise,” she winked.  “So how are you enjoying yourself here so far?  It’s an easy job, isn’t it?” she continued, steamrolling over anything I might have said.  “They’re so easy going, those Sullivan women, and they’re just the nicest, the whole lot of them.  I know you haven’t been here long, but I want you to hear from me first, so I’ve got to tell you: I’m pretty sure they’re all gay, and that’s pretty great, I think, and I’m trying to get at least one, maybe two to give me a go, because I only took this job here because a friend of mine told me a rumor that they were all lesbian, and who wouldn’t want to work at an all-lesbian place if you’re a lesbian?  I mean, it’s—”

“Molly, we’re kind of late—but we’ll come back for dinner, yeah?” asked Gwen, all but shoving me at the small of my back again as she continued to push me through the kitchens and toward the door.

“If you’re going to the Cove, for the love of whiskey, get me a latte!” Molly called over her shoulder as she took another finger-full of whatever she’d been whipping up (I was pretty certain it was cake batter), and licked it again with a thoughtful expression on her pretty face.

“I love her,” Gwen murmured as she shut the door behind us and began trotting up the concrete steps toward the parking lot, “but she will literally talk your ear off if you let her.  Literally.  I don’t even know if I have ears anymore, can you check for me?”  She turned her head to me with a laugh.

I chuckled a little at that and drew my light jacket tighter about myself.  It was a beautiful October day, the kind that people say you only get in Vermont, but I know that’s not true.  We had plenty of beautiful fall days in New Hampshire, too, and Maine was proving to be pretty similar in all the rich, gorgeous fall colors, crisp breezes and brilliant blue skies that contrasted so well with the breath-taking crimson of all the maples.  The maple trees around the edge of the Sullivan Hotel were that bright red, now, and as we moved through the gravel parking lot toward Moochie, Gwen’s beat-up blue van that had somehow survived several years as her only transportation, a brisk wind began to move through the trees, making them shake their leafy heads and bringing with the wind the distinct nippy chill of a brisk fall day.

As Gwen unlocked her driver’s side door, I drew the jacket even closer about myself, stood on tiptoes and peered over the far hedge wall that I knew separated most of the parking lot from the cliff path and the ocean.

The rolling blue far out to sea had high white breakers that seemed to roll endlessly, and the prick of salt tickled my nose.  It was beautiful—breathtaking, even, that view.

But it held no joy for me today like it should have.

“Okay,” said Gwen, one brow up imperiously once I was in the passenger’s side seat, clicking my seatbelt on.  “You’ve got to spill.”

“Spill what?” I asked.  My voice sounded falsely bright, even to me.  Gwen rolled her eyes so hard, her head seemed to roll with them.

“What.  The hell.  Happened?” she asked, dropping her van keys with a metallic jangle onto her jean covered lap and folding her arms with an expectant sigh.

I gazed out at the ocean again, working my jaw.

Well.  I didn’t really have to mention anything about vampires.

“Remember…”  I cleared my throat when it came out like a croak.  “Remember how I told you last night that I was attracted to Kane?”

“Yes,” said Gwen, drawing out the word as her other brow rose to accompany the first one.  “Whoa…did you…”  She trailed off, blinking.  “Did you get together with her?” she whispered.

“Yes.  No.  No…”  I muttered miserably, placing my face in my hands and massaging my forehead with my fingertips.  “There was a…complication.”  I licked my lips and thought, ruefully, like the fact that she’s a vampire, and I’m a human, and if you’ve ever seen any sort of television show or read a book about a vampire and a human together, when has that ever really worked out for the best?  “Her…her ex came back last night.”  I wracked my brains as I tried to figure out the easiest way to translate the fact that Kane’s long dead ex-soul mate had seemingly come back from the dead to make out with her on a beach last night, just moments after I’d had that remarkable pleasure.  I moved my hands down to massage the back of my neck and grimaced as I glanced sidelong at my best friend.  My best friend who was staring at me with her mouth open.

“Are you serious?” asked Gwen quietly.  “I thought her ex was…well.  Dead.”

Why was I always the last to know about everything?  I sighed in exasperation and shook my head, leaning back against the plush softness of Moochie’s seat.  “Yeah, well,” I muttered, “I guess she wasn’t as dead as everyone thought she was.”

“Honey, you know I love you, right?” asked Gwen after whistling lowly.  “But you attract trouble like honey and picnic baskets attract bears.  What the hell?  Her ex, who—by the way if I remember correctly—she pined over for years comes back from the dead when--”

“When I was kissing her on the beach,” I groaned, putting my head in my hands again, pressing my palms to my eye sockets so hard I began to see purple.  “God, it was terrible,” I groaned again, but then tears began to force their way between my sore eyelids, and I was holding back a sob.

“Honey, honey…” said Gwen, leaning over, and then she was squeezing me tightly, her warm arms wrapped around me with the same fierce strength she’d had when Anna died.  “I mean, it was just bad luck, right?  It’s okay…I know you really had a thing for Kane, but you just got here, yeah?  Lots of other fish in the sea.  Er.  Hotel.”

I sighed for a long moment.  Gwen was understanding and wonderful and the most caring best friend that anyone could have ever asked for.  And I know she’d been wanting me to move on with my life—and my love life—after an acceptable mourning period following my girlfriend’s accident and death.  But I wasn’t like…that.  I wasn’t the type to jump from woman to woman—I’d never been that type.  There had been something in Kane that had spoken to me, and she’d said the same on the beach last night, that there’d been something in me that had spoken to her.  I drew in a shaky breath as I remembered:  From the very first moment I met you, touched you, there has been something in me that is answered by you…

Though I had learned that the women (the vampire women, I reminded myself with a small sigh) in the Sullivan Hotel were lesbians, it didn’t mean that I could move from Kane to someone else, quick as you please.

My brain and heart were subdued, for a small moment, by an image of Tommie that flashed before my eyes.  Tommie with her smug grin and confidant eyes and how she’d straddled that woman last night, licking her lips as she licked her neck…

I sat back in the passenger side seat as Gwen straightened, too, searching my eyes.  Tommie was gorgeous, and she was sexy, but she wasn’t Kane.  Yes, my body responded to Kane—I think anyone’s body would have responded to Kane.  But my heart called to her, and somehow, impossibly, a deeper part of myself called to her, too.

And now that would never be.

“I’m sorry I’m a little maudlin today,” I told Gwen by way of apology.  “I’m going to try to have a good time, but I…have a lot on my mind.”

Gwen’s mouth twisted into a frown.  “I’m going to force you to have a good time,” she promised, picking up her key ring and starting Moochie’s engine.  It grumbled to life, the van shuddering beneath us.  “I want you to count your blessings,” said Gwen, then, as she began to roll the van out of the parking lot.

I snorted in spite of myself.  I…really couldn’t think of anything to be grateful for.  I hadn’t exactly had an incredible or amazing life before moving to Eternal Cove, but at least it had been my own.  Now I was living in a hotel full of vampires, the vampire I was drawn to desperately had just had her dead ex-lover appear out of the blue…

What, really, did I have to be grateful for?

“It’s a beautiful day?” I tried, thought it came out a little grumbly as I stared out the window with a sigh.  “Gwen, do I really have to—”

“What else?” asked my relentless best friend sternly.

“I’m grateful for you,” I muttered, but this came out with a little bit less of a grumble.  Gwen shot me a sidelong smile and nodded, prompting me to continue.

“I really can’t think of anything else,” I told her, watching the brilliant trees roll past.  It really was a beautiful day, but I was in no mood to enjoy anything.

“Can I tell you something?” asked Gwen in that conspirator’s little voice she’d had back in college when she’d try to set me up with the sexy female bartenders at one of the local dives.  I sighed.  I knew that tone.

“Yes?”

“When you came to me last night and told me that you were attracted to Kane…”  She trailed off and put on her turn signal as she crawled to a stop before Eternal Cove’s first light.  The trip down the hill had been shorter than I’d remembered it.  “I really thought you were going to tell me you were attracted to Tommie…not Kane.”

I snorted with laughter before I realized she’d been serious.  I was speechless then, flustered, as I tried to come up with a verbal reason of why absolutely, positively Tommie wasn’t right for me.

As if she’d want me anyway.  I remembered the blonde last night, practically writhing beneath Tommie.

I probably wasn’t her type.

“I want a relationship,” I pointed out to Gwen, then.  “I don’t want a one-night stand.”

“Why do you think Tommie’s not capable of a relationship?” Gwen snorted.  The town of Eternal Cove spread out before us with its colorful, quaint shops and myriad of open parking spaces, even on a Saturday.  She eased into an empty parking spot along the main street.

“Because I don’t think she is,” I said adamantly, shaking my head as I swung my purse up on my shoulder and hopped out of the passenger side, shutting the door firmly behind me.

“Rose, you’re kind of old fashioned,” said Gwen, then, trotting forward and putting an arm around my shoulder, gesturing with her other hand at the town.  “And you’ve come to a sort of old fashioned place, which is great.  But you want this sort of old fashioned love, with a woman coming along and sweeping you off your feet, the kind of love they put in storybooks.  I’m not saying it can’t happen,” she interjected, holding up a finger when I began to protest, “but I don’t know if you’ll be satisfied with any woman.”  Her voice dropped to a whisper as she searched my eyes.  “You told me, once, that you weren’t even satisfied with Anna.”

I remembered that conversation, even as the blush rose on my cheeks.  Anna had been away for the weekend to visit her favorite aunt in the Bay, and Gwen had come over for a “weekend-long girl party,” which was really only an excuse to drink a lot and try to make home-made ice cream from a recipe she’d found on the internet.  I’d had one too many mixed drinks, and then I was pouring out my problems to Gwen, because she’d always been the one I could tell anything to.  And yes—I’d told her that I loved Anna, and I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Anna…but sometimes, in the dead of night, I’d wake up from a dream I couldn’t quite remember, glance over at my girlfriend who lay, sleeping and beautiful and breathing evenly, and think that being with her wasn’t quite right.

Gwen was searching my face as she stepped forward, as she placed her fingers on my shoulders and shook me a little with a small frown.  “Rose, you can’t spend the rest of your life waiting for something perfect.  ‘Perfect’ will never actually happen.  Find a woman who makes you happy and settle down with her.  Life’s short.  Don’t spend it waiting for a storybook romance.  There’s no such thing.”

I didn’t agree.  I knew that, as I stared into her eyes, too, unflinchingly.  She was right, of course.  I did want perfect.  I wanted the type of love that would make every morning, no matter what it was doing outside, beautiful.  I wanted the type of love that grew with time, that never waned.  I wanted the type of love that made my heart rush ten years from now, twenty years from now.  I wanted the type of love that made my body turn when she entered the room, that made every cell in my being drawn to hers.

I’d always wanted that.  And I wouldn’t stop wanting it.

And, if I was being perfectly truthful, there had been something in Kane…something that seemed like that sort of love was starting.

But I shook my head as Gwen stepped back, as we began to walk along the old, uneven sidewalk.

“Tommie told me you were cute this morning.  She was in the kitchen, and we ran into each other,” said Gwen quickly when I glanced at her with wide eyes.  “She wanted to know if you were taken.  And I took the liberty to tell her you weren’t.”

I worked my jaw, biting at my lip hard enough to keep my mouth shut.  I loved Gwen, heaven knew I loved her, but she’d always been a meddler in my love life.  “But I’d just told you last night I was attracted to Kane—”

“Well, yes,” said Gwen, smiling innocently.  “But it’s not like you’re in a relationship with her.  And, if Melody has really come back…”  She trailed off, gazed into a shop window.  “Then you’re not going to be in a relationship with her.”

It was painful and honest, that truth.  I gazed into the shop window, too.  It was a vintage clothing shop, and the old mannequin in the window was sporting a beautiful aqua-colored dress with a wide yellow belt, a pair of yellow pumps discarded at the base of the mannequin, as if the woman wearing them had tossed them off and run off barefoot.  My brain noticed those details, but my heart didn’t.

My heart was thinking about Kane.  About her full, cold lips, her violent blue eyes.  The tilt of her head as she stared at me across the room, her gaze so intense that it burned with cold fire, taking a pull from her cigarette, clasped in long, elegant fingers…

“It just doesn’t seem right, somehow,” I told Gwen softly, fingering my purse’s strap without thinking.  “I don’t understand why Melody came back.  Tommie told me yesterday that she was dead.  I mean, that’s not something you really come back from.  So what happened?  Why is she back?  And why did she come back at the exact wrong moment?”  I swallowed back the tears that immediately threatened to erupt from my eyes.  I took a deep, quivering breath, as Gwen and I began to walk down the sidewalk again.  “It just doesn’t make any sense.  There was something about Kane…” I murmured.

Gwen walked beside me silently for a moment.  She didn’t have a good explanation for the coming-back-from-the-dead thing any better than I did.  So she steered the conversation away from it.  “Well, we’re using today to forget about your troubles,” said Gwen, affectionately draping an arm around my shoulder again.  “Welcome to Eternal Cove, honey!”

It really was a beautiful, quaint little town.  There were old shops and buildings lining the main street that was filled with the scent of salt.  The buildings were painted in bright colors, and though things were pretty shabby, they also seemed remarkably charming.  The little book store we passed, a hand-written sign in the window proudly declaring that science-fiction was half off today, had the book store’s name hand-painted on a piece of driftwood that swung in the wind over the main door to the shop.  The sign was hand-painted, like I remembered the sign welcoming us to Eternal Cove had been.  It was little details like that that made me like the little town almost immediately.

Technically, I shouldn’t have liked it, I shouldn’t have relaxed my guard enough to like it, because I should have been deciding if I wanted to stay here or not.  But I knew I shouldn’t bring up that consideration to Gwen.  She’d done so much to get me to move here, to restart my life, and I knew she’d be hurt and more than a little displeased that I was considering uprooting myself yet again to return to a place that had nothing for me either.

Maybe Eternal Cove had more surprises in store for me, I thought that day, gazing into the shop windows, eventually chuckling (though only a little) at my best friend’s jokes as the lovely October sun swung lower in the sky.

But I really had no idea what surprises were yet to come.

---

“Are you sure you don’t want to head back to town, go bar crawling?” asked Gwen as she shut down Moochie’s motor, palming the beat-up blue van’s ring of keys and glancing sidelong at me in the dark.  Her eyes were wide and imploring.  “It’d only take a few minutes to go back down to town, and you could meet some of the people who live here—it’d be great, make new friends, have fun,” she offered.

I knew Gwen wanted, more than anything, to go out drinking, and though I’d been trying for the past couple of hours to get up the energy to visit a couple of bars and drink away all of my most recent sorrows (which would probably involve more alcohol than a body could take), it had been a very long day.  I was even a little sunburned because the sun had been out in very full force for an October day, but that’s the problem with auburn-headed women:  we burn easily.

What I really wanted was my slippers, a cup of tea, a good book and a plush chair after a probably revoltingly long bubble bath where all my fingers and toes pruned.

I was turning into an old woman.

“I’m bushed,” I told Gwen, shaking my head and offering an encouraging smile.  “I had too much fun today!” I teased her with a grin.  “But that doesn’t mean you can’t go have even more fun, I mean, isn’t that what Saturdays are for?  Why don’t you leave Moochie here, walk back to town—it’s less than a mile or so, isn’t it?  You can go to the bars—weren’t you saying that that one bar, you were friends with the bartender?”

“Free shots,” Gwen sighed wistfully, staring in her rearview mirror at the lights of the town rolling away below the parking lot of the Sullivan Hotel through the trees.

“You should totally go,” I told her resolutely, unlocking my seatbelt, and fishing around behind me for my one lone shopping bag, a paper bag containing a scarf I’d found at Eternal Cove’s little second hand shop.  Winter was on its way, and the bright purple scarf would go well with my red winter coat.  “You’ll have fun,” I told her firmly, “and I don’t want to be a wet blanket.  I want you to go have fun—we had a really awesome day, and you deserve the cherry on top.”

Gwen pocketed her keys and nodded, opening up the driver’s side door.  “You know, I think I’m going to do it,” she said, shoving her hands into her pockets, too with a grin.  We both got out of the van, and Gwen locked the doors, pulling her jacket snugly around her shoulders.  “Are you sure you don’t want me to head back with you?” she asked, wavering, jerking her thumb up at the impressive red stone structure.  The Sullivan Hotel seemed to be glaring down at us in the half-full parking lot.  More guests seemed to have checked in while we were gone that day.  “We could get food from the kitchens, paint our toenails…”  Gwen trailed off.  She didn’t sound excited about these prospects at all.

“Go back to town,” I urged her, crossing my arms against the chill wind that blew off the ocean.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay,” she said with a big smile, already walking away across the parking lot and toward the road.  “It was a great day!  We should do it again!” she called over her shoulder.

“Have fun!” I yelled back, and then I turned, staring up at the Sullivan Hotel.

I hadn’t exactly forgotten my troubles that day, but the innocence of shopping, of laughing in the coffee shop…it had made me misplace my worries, if only for a little while.

It had been…nice.

But now here they were again, all wrapped up in the nice, neat little package that was the Sullivan Hotel.

I sighed, hitching my purse strap up higher on my shoulder, and began to make my way toward the entrance to the hotel, with its shadowy columns and gargoyle-bedecked red marble planters that were sized just big enough to contain dead bodies.  That had been my very first thought upon entering the Sullivan Hotel, and it wasn’t exactly forgotten now that I knew the hotel was full of vampires.  I skirted the sprawling planters and ascended the few steps.  The front lamp over the door was on, and a bright glow filled the porch as I made my way toward it.

A soft, sweet salt breeze angled its way in front of my nose, spiraling up from the ocean, and, for a moment, I had half a mind to make my way down the cliff path and take a night stroll on the beach.  It would be very cold, but probably worth it—the moon was out, and it wasn’t full yet, but its gibbous bulk swung low in the sky, illuminating everything with a soft, heavenly light.  It’d be so easy to put off facing my troubles for a few minutes more…

But I squared my shoulders, laid my hand on the antique doorknob, and opened the front door of the Sullivan Hotel.

There was no one in the front entryway, which was a sort of relief.  I hadn’t exactly expected Tommie with another woman, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d seen her.  The entryway itself with its lush, comfortable couches, was empty, but there was a woman I didn’t recognize behind the front desk.  She had short brown hair, as short as a man’s, but she wore a soft, feminine blue dress that clung against her hips and flowed out around her knees.  It was much too summery to be worn in such cold temperatures, but she looked perfectly comfortable, as she glanced up at me over the edge of the novel she held in her well-manicured hands.  She wore a little makeup, and her glasses, perched on the bridge of her nose, looked designer.

“Are you Rose?” she asked me with an easy smile, shutting the book and setting it on the counter as she hopped off the stool.

“I am, yes,” I told her, returning the smile.  I’d met a few vampires, and for some reason, this woman struck me as absolutely, positively human.

“I’m Clare, one of your new co-workers—it’s really great to meet you,” she gushed enthusiastically, and I thought she meant it.  She pushed her glasses further up her nose and glanced down at a post-it note next to the guest book.  “I was told to tell you that the minute you come in, Kane wants to see you—it’s kind of urgent.  She’s been in her office all day, and she’s probably still there,” Clare said, gesturing down the hallway toward the stairs.  “So…”

My heart leapt up into my throat, and I paused for a moment, my hands forming fists, the plastic from my shopping bag handle practically cutting into my palm.  “Where is her office?” I asked her, trying to keep my voice carefully neutral.  I think I failed at this, however, because Clare’s eyes widened, and she put her head to the side as she considered me.

“You go down the hallway, up the stairs, and she’s on the second floor, first door on the right.”  Clare rattled off the directions as if she’d had to tell them to a few people recently.  Then she leaned forward over the desk a little, her palms flat against the antique wood, as she frowned.  “Rose, are you all right?  You look a little pale.”

“I’m fine,” I lied automatically and straightened my shoulders.  I had no idea what Kane wanted to say to me.  That she wanted me to leave the hotel?  That was the first thing that crossed my mind.  That, after the awkwardness of kissing me and then having her lover come back from the grave, she didn’t want any distractions around.  But if that’s what she wanted to tell me, maybe that was for the best.

Because being around Kane, around this impossible woman who drew me to her like a flame lures a moth…maybe this wasn’t so good for me, too.

I breathed out, nodded to Clare and tried smiling at her, but it came out as a sort-of grimace.  I slowly began to walk along the corridor of paintings, across the red and black tiles, toward the far staircase.

I climbed each step like I was heading to my death.  I didn’t want to leave the Sullivan Hotel.  I did, but I didn’t.  Part of me knew that it would probably be for the best if I left this place, left it and all of its vampires and secrets and beautiful women behind.  But the other half of me cried out at the very thought.

I loved Kane.  I knew that.  I was falling in love with her, and I wanted to be near to her.

But did I?  Did I, when I knew the consequences of it?  That she would never be mine, that the both of us weren’t meant to be, that I could pine after Kane in these hallways and rooms for the rest of my life, wishing for something that was impossible, because she was somewhere in the same beautiful old building, with the woman she was meant to be with?

I knew I was torturing myself, circling the questions over and over again, but there were no easy answers.

I reached the second floor and walked woodenly, stiffly, to the first door on the right.  Like the other doors on this floor, it was impressively carved with vines and tiny cherub faces peeking around carved violets in the well-polished dark wood, and as I stepped close to it, placing my knuckles over the wood of the door, I inhaled, my heart beating even faster.

I smelled the rich, earthy scent of cigarette smoke, and that beautiful aroma of jasmine and cool, intoxicating spice that seemed to cling to Kane’s skin.

“Come in,” came the velvet voice from the other side of the door.

I hadn’t even knocked.  Somehow, she simply knew I was there.

I opened the door.

Kane had stood, behind her desk, and she was staring at me now in the dusky confines of the room that was fogged with smoke.  Smoke from countless cigarettes, the ends of which littered a cut-glass dish on the side of the ornate, mahogany desk.  Behind her rose massive dark bookshelves, covered with thick, old tomes, the metal words stamped into their bindings almost glowing in the dark.  A Tiffany lamp with a lampshade covered in cut dragonflies that glittered with light, was the only source of illumination in the room.

And though the lamp was very beautiful, though the bookshelves were very impressive, and there were probably hundreds of antique books here, I hardly even saw any of it.

All I could do was stare at Kane.

I’d had thoughts, on the way up the stairs, that I could be around her without being irresistibly drawn to her.  After all, I wasn’t a prepubescent boy.  I was a grown woman in her thirties, and I’d been around the block a couple of times.  I knew self-control, and I happened to have quite a great deal of it.  It was ridiculous to think that I couldn’t be in the same room as Kane and not want her.  But the room we were in now, her office, seemed smaller than I thought it’d be, and the space between us, even with the heavy antique desk between us, seemed to shrink, even though I didn’t move, though Kane didn’t move, though we stood, frozen as statues, gazing at one another.

She stared at me with those violently blue eyes that seemed to flash, like lightning over the ocean before a storm, all crackling, intense energy that could destroy so much in an instant.  My God, she was beautiful.  The men’s suit jacket lay along her curves and lines that I couldn’t help but follow, her tapered, pale fingers gripped the edge of the desk, and her long, sweeping ponytail was swept over her shoulder, brushing against the arm of her jacket, the white-blonde hair looking so soft, so inviting, I wanted to step forward and touch it.

But then she was striding out from around the edge of the desk, and the door was shut behind me, and my purse and my shopping bag fell to the floor as Kane’s cold, long fingers curled around my upper arms, and her beautiful, fierce gaze pinned me to the spot.

She searched my eyes as I stared up at her, as my heartbeat, burning too fast through my body, made me shudder beneath that gaze.

I couldn’t speak.  I knew that if I did, if my mouth tasted her name, it would all be over.  And I wouldn’t do that to her.

I already loved her too much to cause her any pain.

Instead, Kane was the one who spoke.  She let go of my arms, even as my heart cried out for the loss of that brief contact.  She took a step back, and then she was leaning against the desk, raking those long fingers through her long white-blonde hair as she gazed at me with that same fierce expression.

“I’m sorry,” was what she told me, then.

And her voice was so low, so sad, it tore me apart.

“Kane,” I said, because I had to.  My lips spoke her name, and my heart sank in me as I held out my hands to her, palms up.  “What we…what we had.  What we were beginning…”  The words sounded strange to me.  I didn’t know exactly how to phrase it.  What we’d started?  What that kiss, last night, had started?  I cleared my throat, breathed out for a long moment, closed my eyes, because I couldn’t look at her anymore, couldn’t look at those piercing blue eyes that seemed to pin me in place, couldn’t look at the curves of her hips, half-hidden beneath her suit jacket, but that I’d felt last night, my fingers curling around them as if it was the most natural thing in the world for my hands to be against her skin.

“Is it over?” I whispered.

I opened my eyes after a long moment in which there was only silence.  My cheeks had begun to burn.  Had I been projecting?  Had the kiss been nothing more than a kiss?  But no, she’d said things last night, and it didn’t matter if Melody had come, she’d still said them.  I would have their memory forever, no matter what.

And despite Melody’s appearance, last night something had begun, and I had a right to know if it was over now.

She stared at me as she worked her jaw, the muscles clenching beneath that too-pale skin.  Those devastating eyes were wet, and she glanced away from me, blinking back tears as her pink tongue darted out and wet her lips.  Kane leaned back on her hands against the desk, her shoulders curling toward me, even as my own eyes were drawn to her chest, to the creamy shirt beneath the suit jacket, the tie that seemed to curve toward me, over her breasts.  I swallowed, breathed out, curled my hands into fists and let them fall to my sides.

My entire body angled toward her as if she was the sun and I was the earth, caught effortlessly in her gravity.

“Rose,” she whispered, and I stared at her, felt my own eyes filling with tears, but I blinked them back furiously.

I stood, and I waited.

“Rose, it’s…”  She trailed off, glanced sideways, her jaw working again as she cleared her throat.  “Melody and I…we have a history,” she said then, pushing off from the desk, taking a single step toward me with a hand out to me.  She paused when I didn’t take it, when I stood still and listened.  She dropped her hand, the fingers brushing against her pant leg as she sighed.  “I thought Melody was dead,” said Kane softly.  “She was supposed to be.  But she is no longer, it seems.  She is, in fact, a vampire,” she said, and there was a slight chuckle to the end of the words, but there was no humor in it.  She continued to search my face, my eyes, as she spoke those words.

Melody had become a vampire?

If she hadn’t died when she was supposed to, then where had she been all these years when Kane had been in mourning?

Something felt not quite right.

Kane shook her head, took another step toward me.  Her cool body was now close enough to touch if I could gather the courage to sweep up my hand, tuck a loose strand of impossibly soft white-blonde hair behind the luminous shell of her ear.  But I stayed still.  I listened, even as I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood.  I tasted metal in my mouth, and Kane stared at me with those perfect blue eyes.

Stared at me, and pinned me into place.

“I wasn’t toying with you,” she said then, and it sounded so tired, even to my ears.  “I want you to know that.  Nothing about what I said last night wasn’t true.  It was all true.  How drawn to you I am.”  Her voice had dropped even lower, was husky and smoky and smooth, and my entire body shuddered beneath that sound, even as she took a step even closer, close enough now that when my breath came out, shaky and small between us, I could see it uncurling and unfurling in front of us like a ghost.  Kane was so cold that I could feel the chill of her, even a few inches away.  I could breathe in the scent of her, the scent of the cigarettes, the spice of her.

“I know you weren’t toying with me,” I said softly, the words coming out broken.  I closed my eyes.  It hurt too much to look at her, at her handsome, hard beauty.

Then, my hand in a fist at my side, felt too cold.  Her fingers were curled around my wrist, and they burned there, against my skin, but then she was raising my hand toward her mouth, and I was gazing up into those too-blue eyes again as she brought those perfect cold lips against the skin of the back of my hand.

And she kissed me there, as she gazed down and into my eyes with a gaze so fierce and full of longing, I found that I could no longer breathe.

“I must tell you,” she said then, her smoky voice so quiet, I strained to hear her, even as those full, lovely lips moved to the words.  “Every night,” she said, and a low, broken sob seemed to be caught in her throat as she blinked back tears again.  “Every night,” she tried again, licking her lips as I watched her, mesmerized, “I have dreamed of this impossible thing.  Of Melody finally returning to me after all those years.  Of how it would be when I picked her up, lifted her and held her to me as I turned around and around like a slow motion reunion scene from a movie,” she choked back a laugh, but it was partially a sob.  “It was a nightly dream,” she whispered, searching my eyes.  “Every night since she was taken from me, Rose, I dreamed of her returning,” she said.

I waited, my heart beating so fast that its thunder and her voice were all I could hear, the gravity of her deep blue eyes the only thing I could see.

The pain and hope unfurling in my heart the only thing I could feel.

“But last night, for the first time in a very long time, I did not have that dream,” she murmured.  I realized, at that moment, how close her face was to mine, how close those perfect lips were to my own.  I closed my eyes and inhaled the scent of her, inhaled the coolness of her mixing with my own heat.

“Last night,” she whispered, her cold lips against my cheek, my body trembling beneath that feather-light touch.  “Last night,” she repeated, voice low and husky and strong, “I dreamed of you.”

My breathing came too quickly, my heart beating too fast.  Her fingers were curled around my wrist and against my hand, and her cheek and lips were pressed to the side of my face as she breathed.

I wanted to stay in that moment forever.  That one, singular, perfect moment where nothing in the outside world with all of its troubles and problems could reach us, where we stayed in the small, dark sanctuary of her office and we were the only two people in the entire universe.

But moments come and go, and perfect moments leave us even faster.

The door behind me opened, the hinge creaking as the heavy wood was pushed inward slowly.

Kane straightened, gazing over my shoulder as her brows, furrowed from her confession, smoothed, and as I gazed up into her too-blue eyes, I saw her gaze shift, saw her expression change.

Pain passed over her face unmistakably.

“Melody,” she whispered, and the pain was replaced, smoothly and easily, with an expression I could not quite read as I turned, taking in this beautiful creature who stood behind me, glaring daggers into my back.  I’d wanted so much, after last night, to never see her again, but it was a childish want.  If we were both going to be living in the Sullivan Hotel, we were probably going to be seeing more of each other than we would ever want.

In the light of the lovely Tiffany lamp, Melody was more beautiful than I remembered her on the beach last night.  Of course, last night, I’d had only the light of the stars to see her by.  Here, now, in the lamp light, I could clearly see her soft, creamy skin, her long, wavy red hair, and her sumptuous red mouth.  Now, her curvy body was encased not in a flimsy, gauzy nightgown, but in a bright red dress that was knee-length, but low in the front, showing off her womanly assets with curvaceous abundance.  Her soft arms were crossed in front of her, and her long red nails were painted the same red as the dress, and glittered dangerously in the light.  It was so strange, looking at her face, at her gracefully curving nose, her wide mouth with its full lips and her flashing green eyes.

It was like seeing a ghost.

She was beautiful, but there was something so strange about her.  I couldn’t place my finger on what about her made me uncomfortable…I just was.

Maybe it was how oddly familiar she was…

“Melody,” said Kane’s smoky, smooth voice.  The woman, whose bright green eyes were pinned to me, straightened a little, her brows raising as she walked past me into the room, her hips swaying.  She walked past me as if I wasn’t even there, her hip brushing against mine not in sensual contact, but rather a bump.  A bump that was crystal clear:  leave.

“I missed you, baby,” Melody whispered, her voice feather-soft as she reached up her lovely arms to wrap them around Kane’s neck, drawing the tall vampire down into an immediate kiss.

And it was a very…heavy kiss.

I backed up.  I could think of nothing else to say to Kane, and it was quite obvious that our talk was over.  My eyes blurred by tears, I backed out of the room and pulled the heavy door shut behind me with a click.  The last image I had of the two of them was Melody wrapped around Kane, of Kane’s eyes closed and Kane’s cold, long-fingered hands on Melody’s hips.  And of Melody’s eyes open and narrowed in a grim smugness as she stared right at me, drinking the vampire in.

It made me sick.

With a hand over my stomach and trying to calm the fact that I wanted to sob, I began to walk briskly down the corridor.  I needed some air.

Why had Kane wanted to speak with me?  Hadn’t it just made things worse?

She’d apparently dreamed of Melody every singe night since she’d gone.  But if Melody was a vampire and had loved Kane so desperately, where the hell had she been all these years?

And if they were really soul mates, that sort of love doesn’t just…stop.  And it’s certainly not put on pause for a couple of decades.

So why, after all these years, had Kane not dreamed of Melody last night?

Why had she dreamed of me?

There were too many questions and too much pain, and I was beginning to drive myself crazy with all of the uncertainty and hurt swirling in my heart.

I was walking so quickly and in such a haze of upset that I, of course, wasn’t exactly paying attention to my surroundings.  When I briskly rounded the corner in the hallway, I had no thought other than Kane.

Which is why I ran into Branna.

Literally.

“Oof!” said the vampire, still standing, even as I threatened to teeter backward.  She grabbed my arms and held me steady, keeping me from reeling backward, as she gazed down at me with concern.

From the very first moment I’d met Branna, or Bran as she’d told me with a smile to call her, I’d felt that she was one of the most wonderful women I’d ever meet in my entire life.  Yes, she was a vampire, but there was something about her.  She seemed so kind, and it’s as if we’d known each other all our lives, how easily we fell to talking.  Here and now, seeing her friendly face gaze down at me with concern, her brows drawn together and her kind eyes wide, it was more than I could take.

Slowly, softly, tears began to leak out of the corners of my eyes.

“What’s the matter, Rose?” asked Bran, her mouth curving downward into a frown as her cold hands tightened around my arms.  “Are you all right?”

“No,” I told her.  It was impossible to lie to Bran.  “I’m not all right.”

“Hm,” she sighed, her head to the side, concern making her brow furrow.  “Is it anything a good glass of brandy could cure?”

“I don’t think so,” I told her, shaking my head.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

I gazed into her large, brown eyes, my own wet with tears.

“Yes,” I said simply.

---

“…I want to be happy for Kane,” I finished, my hands curling around a large mug of tea, the steam curling off its surface bringing the fragrance of peppermint to my nose.  “And I am,” I added hastily.  “But…”

Branna lounged easily in the red plush chair, her legs crossed at the knees, one long calf resting on her thigh like she was at a gentlemen’s board meeting.  She’d loosened her bowtie, and had set it on the mahogany table beside her chair, and her creamy shirt’s top few buttons were undone.  She was handsome and graceful, like Kane, but when I gazed at her, I felt nothing but admiration.  It was strange, really.  Bran was really my type, but there wasn’t a bit of attraction there.

She’d just listened as I’d poured out my heart to her, making tea over the fire in an old-fashioned kettle and pouring the water into a generous blue pottery mug and over the peppermint leaves that had lain, curled in the bottom.  We’d gone to her apartments to talk, and we’d remained in her living quarters, a beautiful room with tall ceilings, and very old wallpaper covered in faded blossoms.  Everything in the room was antique and well cared for, and I’d felt immediately at home here.

Branna sighed and uncrossed and recrossed her long legs, working her knuckles under her jaw as she thought for a long moment.  “I must admit,” she said quietly, “Melody is quite different from how I remember her.  Kane brought her to our study this morning, and it…”  She trailed off, her brows furrowed as she grimaced.  “It wasn’t exactly like old times.”

“I just want Kane to be happy,” I said again, leaning forward, resting the mug’s bottom in my lap as I adjusting my grip on the handle and, raising it, took a sip.  “And Melody was supposed to be so important to her.  Her…soul mate.”  The words went sour in my mouth.

Branna straightened at that, a wistful smile curling her lips.  “Well, yes.  Melody was Kane’s soul mate.  I’ve never seen two people more in love.  They had this sort of…well.  Electricity between them.”  Branna’s head was to the side as she shook it.  “That’s why this isn’t adding up.  Melody has given us no explanation as to where she’s been all these years other than ‘detained.’  The Melody I know would never have been ‘detained’ for so long and apart from Kane for so long.  And she wouldn’t be so…smug about returning.”  Branna frowned again.  “I feel strange about it.  I’m glad that you came to me.  Kane didn’t tell me about the fact that she didn’t dream about Melody last night.  She normally tells me everything…”  She trailed off, her long fingers drifting around and around her own mug’s rim.

“How long have you and Kane known each other?” I asked her, then.

Branna looked up, her lips curving into a smile.  “Oh,” she sighed, leaning back in her chair, her eyes gazing over the top of my head.  “For a very long time,” she told me.  She glanced back down into my eyes again.  “A very long time,” she whispered.  She gazed at my face, but she wasn’t really seeing me.  Her eyes were unfocused.  It’s as if she was staring into a window of memory…

She blinked, suddenly back in the room as she smiled.  “Would you like me to tell you how Kane and I came to be…”  She gestured down at herself and tapped her lips with a little chuckle, “the way we are?”

“Yes,” I told her, the cool scent of peppermint unfurling in my mouth as I took another sip.

Bran leaned back in her chair, gazing up at the ceiling for a long moment.

“It began the day I died,” she whispered.

---

A very long time ago, over three hundred years ago now if you’d believe it, we lived in Ireland.  Kane and I had grown up in a very small village near the coast where everyone knew everyone else, and it was such a hard life full of dawn to dusk work to survive, but we were content in it.  Kane wasn’t called Kane back then.  Her mother had named her Mercy, the very last thing Kane’s mother did before she passed, having brought her only child into the world.

Back then…well.  It wasn’t so easy to love women if you were a woman yourself.  Mercy and I knew the truth of each other, and in the very beginning, when we were teenaged girls, we’d kissed one another in my father’s thatched barn during a rainstorm, our very first kiss.  We both agreed that this was what we wanted, but oh how we’d laughed after kissing each other.  We both knew we wanted women, but we did not want each other.  We became so close, after that.  We were both comrades in a secret sort of society that contained only each other.  And we kept those secrets close.

One day, I was out in the fields with Mercy.  We were breaking up the sod, for it was March or so, and the winter had been treacherous and we needed to begin the planting, or there would be nothing to eat that year.  I still remember those wants and worries.  If you didn’t plant your own food, you would be so hungry that winter, you might perish.  My mother was a drunkard, and my father had gone on to meet his god when I was very small, so Mercy helped me with my fields often.

I remember that day.  The sun was bright, but wan in the sky.  There was the scent of spring in the air, of a quickening of green that I could almost taste, and energy surged through me as we methodically broke through the chunks of sod, making the dirt ready for the seeds.

Our village was out of the way of most of the major roads, so there was little more than a footpath that connected our village to the next one.  But still, we heard the tell-tale creak of carriage wheels over tussocked meadow, and we both straightened, squinting into the sunlight.

There was a coach coming along that footpath.  Two massive black horses pulled it, and the driver was cloaked and hooded in black, even in the fine daylight.  The coach was black, black as Death’s own coach, and as it trundled over the rutted earth, a chill passed over me.

We had stories, in old Ireland, of banshees—dark spirits--coming to scream at us when death approached, and it seemed, at that moment as we both straightened and looked at that black coach, that a faint scream came, shrill and sharp, into the air.

But there was no one around to have screamed it.

The massive coach with all of its fripperies and ornamentation creaked to a stop beside our stretch of field looking so wildly out of place that in any other situation, I might have laughed at it.  The driver dismounted with a great leap from the top of the coach, which seemed almost impossible, as it was a good almost ten feet to the ground.  It was almost otherworldly, the way that he leapt and then straightened, too, and he was opening up the door of the coach before we could even blink.

And out of that door was thrust a delicate, expensive black boot.  And attached to that pretty little boot was a woman.  She descended down onto the ground in a swirl of black cloth, for she was clothed in black from the top of her head, covered in a black veil, to those pointed black boots.  She wore the sumptuous, massive black gown of a gentlewoman or lady, and I knew by the big black horses and coach, coachmen and gown, that this was a very rich women.  And rich women never came to our part of the country.

I felt a violent chill descend over my skin as she all but drifted over the broken sod, over the uneven ground that anyone would have had a difficult time walking over, as if she was as light as the angels themselves, her pretty, useless boots getting stuck in not a single rut.  I’d been walking the fields my whole life, but I still tripped over them like a gangly calf.

She floated across the ground like the devil himself..

I could not see her eyes behind that heavy black veil.  But I knew from the angle of her body, the way she curved across the earth, that she was not looking at me.

She had eyes only for Mercy.

We didn’t really have nobles, as you might call them now, in that area of Ireland back then.  It was mostly very poor peasants, Irishmen trying to make their living by being a little more stubborn than the stubborn land itself.  A lot of folk were heading over to America, even back then, and our own village had lost quite a few people to the lure of easier times in the golden land of opportunity.  As such, we were only used to being around fellow peasants, weren’t used to being around anyone of higher rank than us, which is why Mercy stood her ground as the woman drifted ever closer to her.

But there was something not quite right about the woman, and though I’d never been a superstitious person, I felt that there was more than a little something of the devil about this stranger.  So I stepped closer to Mercy, tugged at her shirtsleeve.

“It’s all right, Bran,” she told me smoothly, her mouth in an insolent smile as she gazed at the stranger.  “It’s only a high and mighty lady come to see those who are beneath her.”

The woman in her relentless approach of us paused.

And then, from beneath that black veil, came laughter.  High, piercing laughter that made my head ache, that sounded so sinister with its musicality and cruelty.  It didn’t sound human.

Mercy, beside me, stiffened, but didn’t remove her gaze from the approaching woman.  If possible, my friend’s eyes flashed even brighter as she stared at this strange woman who floated across the rutted land toward us.  Mercy’s stance was wide, her hands at her sides curled into tight fists.

She was ready to fight if she had to.  That was just Mercy’s way.  There had never been a single thing in the world that frightened her.

I wasn’t exactly quaking in my boots, either.  But there was fear in me as I stared at this stranger.

“Don’t be afraid,” the woman whispered, then, as if she could hear my very thoughts, and my knees grew weak at the sound of her words.  My legs quaked, but I tried to be as strong as I could as the woman finally stopped, close enough to reach out and touch the lace of her garment.  Mercy stood, leaning forward, her shoulders back, as she gazed at this woman with flashing eyes, defiance radiating from her.

“Who are you?” she demanded, and again, the woman laughed.  I felt light-headed, as if I would fall against the sod, but I tried to stand firm.

But the sound of the woman didn’t affect Mercy one bit.

She stood and did not waver.

“In all of my many years,” the woman whispered, the sound sibilant and hissing like a snake as she stepped closer, as she wrapped her long, gloved fingers around Mercy’s wrists, tugging her forward, “I have never met a girl I could not seduce with a single thought.  There is something in you.  Something special.  I would have you come to me and be mine.”

Mercy and I had often thought about the sort of girl we would want to have if we could even dream of such a thing.  Mercy had told me, often, about a dream she had about a red-headed girl.  There were a lot of red-headed girls where we lived, so we really thought nothing of it.  But in all that Mercy had ever told me, she’d never spoken of this type of woman being something she was attracted to, someone dark and sinister and otherworldly.

And Mercy held true to this.  For she did not budge.  The woman tugged on her wrists, but Mercy stood where she was, feet planted firmly against the earth and shoulders back as her nostrils flared.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said with finality.

“You love women.  Do not deny it,” the stranger hissed as she tugged on Mercy’s wrists.  “And here in this miserable little cesspool of a village, this loving women will get you killed.  If you come with me, I will take you to a place where that’s not even a consideration.  Where you could be safe to be yourself.  In my home, you can be anything you want to be.”  Her words were dripping with charm, and they made sense to me.  I wanted to go with this woman, even though I hadn’t even been asked.  I would have followed her into the depths of hell if she’d asked, as my earlier thoughts about her, my bad feelings about her, seemed to have evaporated.

“No,” Mercy persisted.

“Three times,” whispered the woman, then, her voice darkening to a dangerous hiss.  “Three times will I ask if you will come with me of your own free will.  Three times will I ask, and only three, and if you do not say yes, I will simply take you.”

Mercy leaned forward then, leaned forward with such crackling energy, I took a step back.

“You will never have me,” was what she whispered.

It was then that the coachman stepped forward with his whip and his strong hands.  He dealt a blow to the back of my head, and I do not know what they did with Mercy.  But when I came to, we were in the coach with the strange woman.

And I no longer felt as if she was there to help us.  Or that she was lovely.  For the leather flaps had been rolled down over the coach windows, and in the darkness, she had removed her black lace veil.

She had long, unkempt black hair that did not shine in the subdued light but seemed to swallow any light that came near to her, and there was dried blood around her small, wrinkled mouth.  And when she stared at me with her bright blue eyes that seemed to flash with raw power, I felt a shudder go through me.

Mercy though, beside me, was unafraid.

“Return us now,” she growled.

The woman tilted back her head and laughed and laughed, a snarl at the end of ever chuckle.  “Why should I return you?” she told us.  “There is not a soul who will miss you, not a soul you have left behind that would not jump at the idea of having one less mouth to feed.  Now you both belong to me.”  She leaned forward then, and she smiled.

Her teeth that had been such perfectly normal, human teeth before, seemed to…grow, even as we watched, the old ivory color against her blood-red tongue lengthening, sharpening.  And her incisors became as deadly and as sharp as a wolf’s as she licked her lips and stared at us with evil, triumphant eyes.

We sat across from her in the coach, and she crossed that space between us in a heartbeat, as quick as death.  In another heartbeat and without me even seeing the movement, she had her arms around Mercy’s shoulders, hanging there, but it was not the passionate embrace of a lover.  It was the sort of embrace an insolent cat does to a half-dead mouse right before it’s about to devour it.  She snapped back her head, and in the dull light of the coach, I saw her wet teeth flash as she opened her mouth wide and darted forward.  She sunk her teeth into Mercy’s neck, even as Mercy kicked and screamed, even as Mercy fought as furious as she-devil.  I fought, too, but two girls against one monstrous woman was no match.

She bit us, and we bled, and she drank until there was nothing left to drink.

She drained us dry.

We were meant to die.  She drained us on the way back to her castle like a light afternoon snack, and her evil coachman dumped our bodies down into the depths of her cellar when she returned, kicking out our corpses into a shaft that led down to the lowest cellar, which might be more appropriately dubbed her dungeon.  So we fell there, but we were not alone, for our bodies collapsed beside the other, rotting corpses of the woman’s gluttony, all young girls she’d lured with different stories, all young girls killed in the prime of her youth so that she could be satiated and satisfied and drunk from the blood of the innocent.

So we fell among the dead girls after we’d been drained dry, and we should have died.

So we did.

During the fight in the carriage, we had bit and scratched and kicked and punched, and a little bit of the woman’s blood had spattered against our mouths and the ragged wounds in our necks that she’d inflicted with her teeth.  Now, vampire blood is very strong.  The cells seek a body like hunters themselves, for they crave to be inside a creature.  We were drained dry, not a single drop of human blood remained with in.

But a few drops of vampire blood had gotten inside of us.

A few drops of vampire blood alone is not enough to save a human being or turn them from human into vampire.  It needs to be a great amount of blood given from a vampire into a human in order to turn that human into a vampire.  But sometimes, when people are very, very strong or the will to live and fight again is raging through them, there is the slimmest of chances that a few drops of blood is enough to begin the change.

When Mercy and I woke a few days later, in the dark and the stench of that terrible, rotting cellar, we did not know what we were.  We were hungry, I remember that.  We were starving, and we were weak, but we were not really afraid.  Not even when the pitiful bits of sunlight we could get fell down on us from a grate far above, and we saw that we were surrounded by the bones and bodies of countless dead girls.  That these bodies, in fact, were all that the cellar contained.

That is when we knew who had taken us.

For years and years, the local villages had a bogeyman story that few adults believed, but what was always whispered to the children—especially the girls.  For there were rumors that a gentlewoman named Darcy was stealing away girls from surrounding villages.  There were rumors of what happened at her castle, rumors that she was using the blood of these innocents to bathe in, that she was eating their flesh as a cannibal.  So mothers and fathers would tell their daughters to be good, or Darcy would get them.  We’d heard the stories ourselves, growing up, but had never, ever believed they could be true.

But we knew the truth of it now.

Darcy was a vampire.

And she had drained us dry because she wished to kill us, to drink us up and satiate her desperate lust for blood.

And that meant, since we had died and come back to ourselves with this raging hunger in our bellies, that we had become the damned, too.

Mercy and I were now vampires.

I wanted to leave that place.  We knew what we were when we trembled and stumbled into the light, up and out of that cursed dungeon, alongside the crumbling stone walls of the castle, when the sunlight burned us as we stayed in it, burned us gently, but burned us nonetheless.  When a deer crashed through the underbrush, and our incisors lengthened, we knew, truly, what we had become, then.

Vampires.

We followed and felled that deer and drained it dry, the two of us ripping into its warm muscles with sharp teeth, lapping at the blood like newborn kittens, unsure of how to drink.  And then, full, I stood shaking and told Mercy:  I wanted to leave.  I asked Mercy for us both to go, for us both to run away, far away, where our parents would never see what monstrous creatures we’d become, where we might be able to start again, hidden from the world who would never understand us.

But Mercy stood there, in the woods, blood dripping down her chin, her piercing blue eyes wide and wild.

“We can not leave,” she whispered, rubbing the back of her hand over her mouth and smearing the blood.  She was shaking, but not with fear.

She was shaking with rage.

“We can not leave until we stop her.  She will not do this again to another girl,” said Mercy, then.  “We will stop her.”

Oh, how Mercy was angry.  Her life had been taken from her, her future, every possibility of happiness in the life we’d known and expected to have.  We did not know at the time how much the world would change, but we did not know, at the time, what would become of us.  We thought we had become damned.  Cursed.  That our very souls had been given to the devil in exchange for tormented immortal life.  For all we knew were the stories of vampires, and we did not yet know the truth of the matter.

In all of this, we knew nothing.

But Mercy knew that we must stop Darcy.

So we went back into the dungeon, finding our way up through broken staircases and cracked doors as we rose ever higher into the castle itself, and we sought out the evil woman who had done this to us.

And we found her, about to kill another girl.

The vampire Darcy sat in one of the tall, crumbling towers that once must have been beautiful, back when this castle had been full of lords and ladies who ruled this area.  Perhaps Darcy had even seen that time, for she sat before a long table in a massive dining hall as if she’d lived here her whole life, as if she was still the lady of this place.  Her big black skirts billowed around her as she leaned back, gazing at the long table before her with narrowed eyes and a wickedly smiling mouth.  She was the only one seated at that table, and tied to the table’s surface as if she was the main course (and indeed, she was) lay a beautiful young girl, stripped of almost all of her garments save for the chemise that had been pushed down her shoulders.

This young thing had long, brunette hair and such a pretty face, but it was contorted in horror as she screamed and screamed.  But these were not cries for help.  They were the desperate strains of fear, because this poor thing knew how far Darcy’s castle was away from any village or people, and she knew there was no one to hear her or save her.

No one but us.

Darcy had not been expecting us, and her coachman—her only servant—was down feeding the coach horses and bedding them down for the evening.  So when we entered the room, bold as you please through the wide archway to the hall beyond and Darcy rose, standing slowly and turning her body to us, her bright blue eyes growing icy and wide and angry, she knew she was caught.

And that she was at an end.

Mercy was strong, and Mercy was angry as she strode forward so quickly, I almost didn’t see her move.  It was Mercy who killed Darcy.  It was savage and ghoulish, but how else do you kill a vampire other than removing its head?

But when Mercy was done, blood covering the front of her, her hands dripping as she held the gory head before her, the girl who had been tied to the table began to scream again.

“No, no, it’s all right—you’re safe,” said Mercy gently, and with a flick of her hands she’d cut through the ropes and untied them from the girl’s body, but the girl leapt off the table and backed up against the far wall, shaking as she gazed at the two of us.

“You’re monsters,” the girl whispered.  And then, over and over again like a mantra:  “Please don’t hurt me.”

“We won’t,” Mercy promised her, but the girl was sobbing, was repeating the word “monsters” over and over again, then.  She turned, and she fled past us out into the hallway.

Mercy dropped the vampire’s head in disgust on the floor where it rolled to a standstill away from us.  She knelt there, then, in the warm blood that pooled upon the stone floor, and with her face in her hands, Mercy began to weep.

I tried to console her.  I tried to tell her that we were not the monstrous ones.  That we had saved this girl’s life, and the girl was upset, had just experienced a nightmare world that she could never understand.  But there was something of truth in the girl’s words, something that we both had to acknowledge.

We had become irrevocably changed.  We were no longer human.  We were vampire.  And there was something in us that had made destroying Darcy so very easy.

There was something of Darcy in us, whether we wanted to admit it or not.

Mercy decided to change her name to Kane.  Kane means “fighter,” and she had fought so hard to live that it seemed appropriate.  We took from the vampire’s storehouse some money, some jewels, and we fled that land.  We left Ireland, sailed on to England, and we changed our lives irrevocably, as they had been changed for us.

And we stayed together, Kane and I.  And we vowed that though there was something monstrous in us, never again would it rise and consume us.

We would never become like Darcy.

---

Branna tilted her head as she gazed at me, as her eyes lost the soft focus of the past and saw me clearly again.  “Though our past is steeped in blood, we have stayed true to that decision for our entire lives.  Kane and I traveled the world together gathering women to us who were like us—that we would never become like Darcy.  We knew that we would never again hide the most essential part of our natures.  We would love women and there would be no shame in that, not like there was shame of being a vampire,” said Bran with a sigh.  “And, over time, we lost our shame of that, too.  We know that we are not damned.  We hurt no other creatures.  We do not take what is not freely given,” she murmured.  “And eventually, Kane found Melody.  And I am, perhaps,” she said with a small smile, “still waiting for the woman who is right for me.  And I think I shall find her.  Someday.”  She bit her lip, cleared her throat.  “But the love Kane and Melody had for each other…it is not what is reflected in what I see between Kane and Melody now.  There is something rotten in the state of Denmark, my dear Rose,” she whispered.

I thought about the story as I sank back in the plush chair, as I set my empty tea mug beside me on the little table.  I thought of how strong Branna and Kane must have been to survive an ordeal like that.

But it didn’t surprise me, this story of their strength.

Kane had always struck me as a fighter.

It was unfair the feelings that Branna’s tale had invoked in me.  I felt, deeply, that I wanted Kane to fight for me now.  But, really, fight against…what?  Melody?  Melody was her soul mate.

Why would Kane ever chose me over a woman she had professed once was her soul mate?

Branna still watched me with appraising eyes that narrowed.  “There was something between you, Rose.  Between you and Kane,” she whispered, then.  “My question to you is…what are you going to do about it?”

I stood slowly, shook my head, smoothed out my skirts.  “Thank you so much for the tea, Bran.  And for the story.  I loved hearing it,” I told her sincerely.  “But I’m not going to do anything about…about Kane and me.  There’s nothing there anymore.”  I worked my jaw and swallowed, but I had to say it.  So I did.  “Melody’s back.”

Branna stood, bowing her head to me.  She looked as if she was going to say something else, but then she shook her head sharply, folded her hands in front of her.  “If that’s how you feel, Rose,” she said simply.

It wasn’t how I felt.

But there was nothing else I could do.  I’d told myself that so many times that I was almost beginning to believe it.

But there was some small part in my heart that cried out against that.

If I was being honest with myself, I would have admitted that if Kane couldn’t fight for me, then I wanted, more than anything, to fight for her.

---

“Did you hear?” whispered Clare when I came to stand beside her behind the front desk.  It was the next day, morning, and I was well-dressed in a navy-blue blouse and black pencil skirt, ballet flats over tights, my hair up in a wavy ponytail.  I didn’t know exactly who I intended to impress anymore—the woman I was falling in love with, who I could no longer have, or the rest of the vampires.

I guess that was a little uncharitable.  It seemed that most of them couldn’t help that they were vampires.

But I’d gotten up on the wrong side of the bed that morning, so I was feeling a little less than charitable.  Last night I’d been tortured with dream after dream of Kane, Kane in clothes I’d never seen her wear, antique clothes, her long white-blonde hair done up in antique hair styles, as if we were in another time.  The dreams were full of Kane kissing me passionately, her cold mouth against mine as she drank me in.  Kane had whispered in these dreams, over and over with her perfect smoky voice that she loved me.  So many different dreams and situations, but always the same thing.  A long, sweet, hot kiss.

And then:  “I love you.”

I was completely driving myself crazy.

“Did I hear what?” I asked Clare, trying out a smile.  It felt like a grimace, but it seemed to make Clare happy, for she returned the smile and looked a little relieved.  She seemed like a nice woman, my new coworker.  I liked her, even though I hadn’t spent that much time with her.  We were supposed to share a shift that day, so I thought I’d get to know her a little better.

It was Monday, and the Conference was supposed to begin that night.  The Conference, I realized, that was supposedly the big meeting of vampires.

I doubted, though, that Clare’s secret was telling me the Conference was full of vampires.

“Kane’s ex-lover is back,” she murmured out of the corner of her mouth with wide eyes.  “And supposedly, she’s starting to help Kane run the hotel again.”

“Oh, joy,” I muttered with a long sigh.  I was a pretty easy-going person, and I’d once prided myself with the fact that I could get along with almost anyone.

I could not, however, imagine getting along with Melody.

Clare began to prattle on about hotel gossip, about the Sullivan women and normally this would interest me immensely—the mysterious Sullivan women were captivating to me with their interesting stories and, of course, the unexpected fact that they were all vampires.  And it’s not that I didn’t want to listen to Clare or contribute to the conversation, but my mind was in other places, and my eyes had strayed to the painting on the wall by the front desk of Kane.

I knew it was Kane, now, the woman who lounged with the big, black cat—possibly a panther or a jaguar.  And though the cat was impressive and big and beautiful, you weren’t looking at the cat when you glanced at the painting.

You were looking at the naked woman sitting regal and calm and utterly comfortable in her own power.

It was done tastefully, the woman’s nudity, as classic art tended toward, with Kane in a classic pose, her back to the viewer, but as my eyes swept over the taut curves and lines of her body, even painted by a master’s deft stroke, and knowing it was only paint, it was still bewitching to me.

I hadn’t noticed that Clare had grown silent.  I did notice, however, the elbow lightly jabbed into my stomach.

And then, as if summoned by my thoughts themselves, Kane was there, standing in front of the desk.

Clare elbowed me again, and I straightened, smiling wanly at the handsome vampire who leaned against the front desk lazily, her palms pressed against the wood and her upper body leaning toward me with a sort of languid ease, as if her entire body wasn’t raw, incredible power.  I’d not yet seen her power utilized, but it seemed as if I already knew what she was capable of.

I stared at her, at her bright blue eyes that seemed to be gazing into the deepest, darkest parts of me.  We stayed that way for a long moment, long enough that Clare shifted her weight uncomfortably and cleared her throat.

“Clare, I’m sorry to interrupt you,” said Kane smoothly, softly, an unlit cigarette suddenly in her long, tapered fingers.  “But I need to borrow Rose just for a moment.  Rose, if you don’t mind.”  She straightened, and put the cigarette to her lips, drawing a lighter out of her pocket.  It was a little absurd to see such a mundane contraption in her beautiful hands that all I could do was stare for a long moment.  Then I straightened, too, and cleared my throat.

“I’ll be right back,” I told the open-mouthed Clare, and I walked woodenly around the edge of the front desk, falling beside Kane.

And we left through the front door, my heart racing.  We walked together like we’d been doing it all our lives, Kane’s hands in her jacket pockets, her shoulders rounded and her head bent, me keeping pace like my body knew what to do, even when my heart didn’t.

The door shut behind us quietly, and then it was just Kane and me on the porch between the red columns and the red stone walls of the Sullivan Hotel itself.  I realized I was disappointed with how beautiful the day was—I wanted it to be atmospheric, to be night with all its stars overhead, swinging bright and full of possibility in the sky again.  But it was only morning, and the sun was out, almost hot and shining as already-fallen leaves skittered across the full gravel parking lot, and the sea breeze rose up from the chill ocean, making me taste salt.

Kane remained in the shadow of the marble column, leaning back against it as she inhaled deeply on her cigarette and let the breath out into the air like smoke, her nose pointed to the sky.

“I told Melody,” she said, then, dropping her gaze and watching my face with her own inscrutable blue eyes as she flicked the ash off the end of the cigarette slowly.  She took another long pull.  The smoke curled out of her mouth as she said murmured:  “about us.”

I went cold.

“There is no ‘us,’ Kane,” I whispered almost immediately, my first reaction.  It hurt to say it, and it twisted the knife in my gut to see Kane’s gaze darken, to see her clench her jaw, but it was the truth, wasn’t it?

There was no “us.”  Only Melody and Kane.

I’d never gotten a chance.

“What did you tell her?” I whispered, wrapping my arms around my middle.  Though the day was warm, I felt a cool chill descend over me as Kane straightened, as she stepped forward toward me.  My body betrayed me as it leaned toward her, but she moved past me, taking another long pull on the cigarette before stubbing it out against the side of the closest marble planter and depositing it in the cigarette post on the side of the door.

She stood so close, I could reach out and press my fingers against her cheek, press my palm there, and she might turn, might if I was lucky, and she would press her lips against my skin.

Slowly, as if we were in one of my dreams again, she took a step forward, working her jaw, swallowing, wetting her lips as she searched for the words, her violently blue eyes pinning me into place.  My body shuddered with surprise and delight even as her cold fingers curled over my hips, even as I closed my eyes, breathing out in pleasure.  It was such a simple touch, but it was more than I’d ever expected again.

I should never have expected anything.  But here we were.  And the leaves danced across the parking lot as the low wind blew, and the scent of Kane swirled all around me, that bold note of jasmine, the intoxicating spice of her.  I breathed her in as my heart ached, as every bit of me cried out for me to reach forward and touch her, too.

But then she spoke.

“I told her…”  Kane’s voice was low, gravelly, smoky as she struggled with the words, as the anguish spilled out of her mouth.  I opened my eyes, gazed up at her as she breathed out, as she searched my eyes, tightening her grip on my hips as if I was the only thing that held her to this place, as if I was the only thing that anchored her to this world.  “I told her that I am drawn to you.  That there is something about you that calls to me so strongly I can not ignore it.”  She gazed down at me with such violent longing that I almost moaned as her fingers dug into me.  I wanted her, wanted her in ways I couldn’t even understand.  She whispered:  “I told her that that, after all this time, I don’t understand what has happened…but what was within Melody that connected me to her.  It’s gone.”

Kane searched my eyes and took a shaky breath, her own blue eyes wide and wet with tears.  She pushed away from me, then, and all I was instantly ached as she straightened, shaking with self control as she tugged down on the hem of her jacket, transforming almost instantly from the vulnerable Kane who’d gripped me tightly, her voice and her body filled with desire, who told me with that perfect, smoky voice that she was drawn to me…to the Kane who ran the Sullivan Hotel, strong and electric and completely without weakness.

But there the vulnerable pain remained in her, and I saw it clearly when she gazed into my eyes, searching to the very heart of me.

“This isn’t going to work,” she whispered, shaking her head as she turned away from me, her profile outlined by the brilliant sun as she turned toward the door.  She brushed past me and for a brief moment, her fingers curled around mine and then were gone.  “I can’t be around you.  Not without…”  She choked on the words, straightened again, cleared her throat.  “I’m not good for you.  Please go,” she murmured, her hand on the doorknob.

She paused for a long moment, her back stiff beneath my gaze, the lovely slope of her shoulders pain-filled and tight, and then Kane opened the door and was through it.

I hadn’t even realized that tears leaked steadily out of my eyes.  I reached up and brushed them angrily away.

Not good for me?  Couldn’t I be the judge of that?  She’d made the decision to be with Melody—I’d been given no choice in this.

I followed her angrily.  There were so many words that wanted to tumble out of my mouth, so many feelings raging through me, but mostly what I wanted was to stand up on my tiptoes, wrap my arms around her shoulders and kiss her so deeply that we’d merge, the two of us together.

But when I entered into the front lobby, Kane was, of course, already gone.

As I stood in the entryway, as my hands curled and uncurled into fists, anger moved through me.  And of course I was angry.  I had every right to be.  Kane had told Melody about us?  Why did she say, again, the words that pained me so much?  That she was drawn to me.  She’d made the choice to be with Melody.  She had chosen Melody absolutely, and the pure and honest truth of the matter, the painful truth, was that she hadn’t chosen me.

And we both had to live with that decision.

Clare watched me with wide eyes as I all but stomped around the edge of the front desk, pushing up the sleeves of my blouse as I cleared my throat, lifted up my chin placed my hands flat on the surface of the front desk.

I stared at the front door and dared it to open with guests.

And, surprisingly, it did.

I hadn’t even seen a car pull up when Kane and I were out there, but now on the front step, wheeling two taupe designer suitcases in behind them, were two women.  One had hair the same color as Kane’s, but it was much longer, descending to curl beneath her hips, and a cruel, insolent smile on her beautifully made-up face.  She wore a stylish blouse and pencil skirt ensemble that seemed out of place with her long, unbound hair.

The other woman, like many of the people who had checked in, wore a plain black dress and a plain, black hat that reminded me of something women might have worn in the seventies on a beach.  Her big, movie star dark sunglasses hid her eyes, but her face looked old, lined and wrinkled.  Her thin slash of a mouth was still covered in red lipstick, however.  She reminded me of an aging starlet, clinging to something she’d lost long ago, but when she angled her face toward me, I took an involuntary step backward.  I couldn’t see her eyes, but her face seemed, somehow…hungry.

“Magdalena and Cindy,” said the white-blonde woman, her lips curling up at the corners as she watched my reaction.  Startled, I gazed back at her.  She was tapping the surface of the desk with an expensive looking manicure.

Clare gave me a glance, but she began the necessary arrangements to find their reservations as I turned woodenly, stepping toward the back wall with its rows and rows of hooks and keys and fished two keys off the wall.  The blonde woman signed “Magdalena” with a flourish of the pen and then handed the pen to her companion as she put her head to the side and smiled charmingly.

“Can someone help us with our luggage?” she asked, switching her little purse to her other arm and grinning a bit wider as Clare paled beside me.

She might not have known they were vampires, but I was beginning to realize that you didn’t need to know someone was dangerous for your instincts to kick in and tell you that this certain someone was bad news.

“I can do that,” I said quickly.  I knew they were vampires, and I didn’t happen to fear pretty much anything right now.  I stepped quickly around the front desk, and then I was on the other side, grasping the smooth handles of their designer rollerboard luggage without even thinking.  “Please follow me, ladies,” I told them briskly, and then I was pacing quickly ahead of them down the hallway of portraits.  I’d put them on the first floor, so at least I wouldn’t have to deal with the stairs while trying to tug the luggage behind me.

I had no idea how the guests had gotten their luggage up to some of the higher floors without an elevator.  It was quaint not to have one, and lent to the atmosphere pretty handily…but it wasn’t exactly practical.

“Do I have this right—does the Conference begin this evening?” the blonde woman asked, pushing her own sunglasses up and onto the top of her head.  The other woman said nothing as we walked down the corridor.

“Yes, you’re right on schedule,” I told them, not because I knew the fact myself, but because Clare had told me earlier.

“Wonderful!” the blonde woman, Magdalena, took a slim phone out of her alligator handbag and pressed its face, typing something into it.

The other woman, even though she was wearing sunglasses I couldn’t exactly see through, seemed to be staring at me.  I felt her gaze against me, and despite my earlier bravado, it was unnerving.  I pressed my shoulders back and walked as quickly as I could toward the far door next to the spiral staircase.  It had an old “Exit” sign lit overhead, and when I pushed it open, holding it for the two women, the first floor room hall stretched on ahead of us, covered in a lush red carpet the exact same shade as drying blood.

I found their rooms, one thirteen and one fourteen, side by side.  “Keep the change,” said Magdalena once I’d gotten the bags inside each and ducked outside with forced politeness.

She pressed a crisp, unfolded hundred dollar bill into my hand, and then closed the door in my face with a wide smile.

Huh, I thought, staring down at my hand.  Vampires were surprisingly good tippers.  I could never have predicted that.

For a long moment I debated about folding the bill up and tucking it under my shirt and safely into my bra.  But then I realized how close I was to the spiral stairs.  It’d be the work of only a few moments to trot up them, deposit the money in my room, and then return to the front desk to continue helping Clare.

My mind wasn’t really on the hundred dollar bill—though it was nice—as I walked back down the hallway and began to climb the steps.  I slowed down, my hand gripping the railing, as my thoughts turned, as always, to Kane.  To Kane who’d leaned toward me as if she needed to be close to me.  To Kane who had invaded my constant dreams, to Kane who I wanted to be with more than anything.

I paused on a step before the spiral turned completely and my hallway would be in view.  If I closed my eyes, which I did, and concentrate, I could almost imagine that I inhaled the scent of her.  The intoxicating blend of jasmine and spice and vanilla, and the woody tang of her cigarette smoke.

I was becoming pathetic.  No woman should have that much hold over another.  Why was I so drawn to her?  Why did I love her?  It made no sense, none of it made any sense…

I breathed out brokenly and took the last few steps.  But as I rounded the last bend of the spiral staircase, I paused on the landing, gazing down the hallway to my room.

A woman knelt in front of my door.  She had short black hair, wore overalls and a plaid shirt, and—with a screwdriver—was fiddling with the lock of my door.

But that’s not what made me pause.

Standing beside her, over her, as if supervising her actions with micromanaging precision, was a form I would be grateful to never see for the rest of my life.  With her hands on her hips and her toe tapping, Melody stood tensely in her bright red dress, the scarlet fabric moving restlessly by her leg as she tapped her toe with aggravated, jerky motions.

Even though I hadn’t made a sound, Melody straightened just then, and she turned to look down the hallway, her eyebrows raised as if she was surprised to see me at such an early hour.

But then that surprise faded almost immediately, and over her beautiful face a malicious glee began to spread as wide as her wickedly grinning mouth.

“Ah, Rose,” she all but purred, crossing her arms in front of her chest as she chuckled a little.  “You have perfect timing.”  She straightened to her full height and angled her chin up, looking down her nose at me as her words grew sharper.  “Your suitcases have been taken down to the front desk.”

Her final words were a knife in my heart, sharp and twisting:

“Your services at the Sullivan Hotel are no longer required.”

To be continued…

Will Rose lose Kane forever to a woman who should never have returned?  Experience this epic romance as it unfolds in the fourth Sullivan Vampire story, Eternal Dance, coming soon!

Sign up to be notified when the next Sullivan Vampires novella is released!

If you missed the first or second Sullivan Vampires novellas, you can get Eternal Hotel (Book 1) and Eternal Kiss (Book 2), available now.

If you enjoyed Eternal Thief, you’ll love Big, Bad Wolf, Bridget’s first novel!

The following is an excerpt from Big, Bad Wolf.  Part heart-pounding mystery, part epic romance, it follows the story of Megan Upton and the mysterious, enigmatic, hungry-eyed woman she finds herself falling in love with…

I wasn't ready for it, what happened then, how it happened so unexpectedly.  But isn’t that how these things tend to go?  You can never expect something like this...

Because this is the day I met Kara.

I noticed her first between the biography shelves, prowling down them in soft boots that made no noise against the linoleum.  I noticed her because I felt someone’s gaze on me, and when I turned, I saw she was staring at me, eyes that seemed to see all the way into me.  I looked up and she didn’t lessen her gaze, only intensified it, deep blue eyes sharp points that left me speechless, they were so powerful.

“I need a little help,” she said then, smile soft, hands spread as she gracefully moved to the desk.  Her eyes were a sweet blue, like cornflowers.  I opened my mouth and closed it.

“How…how can I help you?” I tried to ask, but I stuttered over the words, and then tried again, after I cleared my throat and blushed and the woman had screwed up her features in a curious expression.

I wished I was under the desk.

“Art books,” she said, then, her head to the side.

Okay.  I could help with that.  “They're all over here,” I said, standing, smoothing my skirt, allowing my inner librarian to take over.  “Any title, author, specific art that you had in mind?”

“Nah,” she stuck her hands in pockets and fixed me with that startling gaze again.  It was…a hungry look, I realized.

I showed her art technique books and art history books and she gave me a luke-warm shrug until I put a slim volume of da Vinci's sketches in her hand.  Her eyes lit, and she flipped it open and thumbed through it carefully, like the binding would break if she turned the pages too quickly.

“Is this what you wanted?” I asked, unnecessarily.  I was almost preening, she was so clearly delighted with it.

“Well.  Almost,” her smile was warm, honey dripping off a spoon.  “Do you have any more?”

Moments passed, and she walked up to the check-out desk with an armful of art books, all different periods, all different artists.  She’d been so happy with each volume I'd given her, and it didn't seem to matter that we had an empty shelf in our tiny art section...because she was happy.

I sat down in my swivel chair and grabbed the rubber check-out stamp approvingly (other libraries have mostly computer check outs—but we’re so tiny, we still do everything the old fashioned way.  Which I kind of prefer).  She set down the books in front of me smoothly, and we locked eyes.  That expression again, that dark hunger as she gazed deep into me.  I knew I was blushing as I stared up at her.

There was something about her that captivated me utterly.

“Can I…can I see your library card?” I asked, not because I wanted to ask it, but because it slipped out of my lips.  Default words came while my mind wandered to other places.  I was on autopilot, pinned beneath her gaze.

“Library card?” she asked, surprised.

“Don’t you have one?”

“No,” she looked abashed, mouth open.  “My goodness, Megan, I'm sorry.”

“How did you know my name?”  I stammered.

“Your name tag,” she stared at my breast pointedly, grin chasing her features.  “It's a beautiful name.”

I was blushing again as my heart began to beat insistently through me.  “I'm afraid you have the upper hand.”  I said then, because I had to say something.  “I don't know your name.”

“Kara,” she said, the two syllables sounding rich and warm on her tongue, like she was saying a line of poetry.  I realized that I was leaning over the desk, as if my entire body was drawn to her.  I swallowed, leaned back, glanced down at the stack of books.

“Well then, Kara—it’s no problem,” the name was rough in my ears, sounding not nearly so nice in my own mouth.  “We can outfit you with one.”

“One...?”

“A library card.”

We stared at one another in frustrated silence for a moment.  She had a strong jaw, delicate hands.  I was distracted and flustered and I didn't understand why I was.

You find her attractive, a distant part of my mind practically sang.  I silenced it, but still took in this incredibly beautiful woman.  Kara.  (It did sound like a poem.)

She was saying something, and I hadn’t heard her.  Guilty, I tuned myself back as she repeated:  “...ID, right?”

“I'm so sorry,” I muttered, licking my lips.  They were suddenly dry.  My mouth was a desert.

“Do I need an ID to get a library card?” she asked again, patiently.

“Yes?”  My mind blanked as I watched her shift her weight, saw her hips move in the other direction.  I stared at her, and I couldn't remember if you needed an ID or not.  Did you?

“I don't have an ID,” her hands were in her pockets, now, not touching her glorious stack of art books.  I felt her posture shift, her slight shoulders starting to curve toward the door.

No one, in all of my years of being a librarian, had ever responded to the library card question like this, and my mind was grappling, trying to catch up to this strange turn of events, already made…different by her very presence.  She wore dirty jeans, and a black shirt...I could see the hint of finely formed black tattoos on her forearms, and a thin gold chain hung at her neck...her neck, which was long and curved up beneath the tousle of jet black hair, flecked with gray.  She was probably thirty-something.

And I was so attracted to her, it was all I could think about.

“Just…just take the books, Kara,” I whispered, caught again in her gaze.  It was gentle now, her eyes downcast, but still she pinned me in place with the beautiful blue of them.  “Just...take them,” I told her again, pushing the stack of books toward her across the counter.  I swallowed and gazed up into her eyes.  “I trust you.”

More silence.  And then:

“Thank you,” she murmured, her voice low, husky.  She gave me an easy smile so bright, so intense, I felt my heart skip a beat.

“Don't mention it,” I called after her.

But the door was already swinging.

She was gone.

You can get Big, Bad Wolf, Bridget’s first novel, available now!

About Author Bridget Essex

Bridget Essex has been writing about her beloved vampires for almost two decades.  She has a vast collection of crochet hooks and teacups, and likes to listen to classical music when she writes.  Her first date with her girlfriend was strolling in a garden, so it’s safe to say she’s a bit old fashioned.

Bridget has a black cat she loves very much, and a brown dog who actually convinces her to go outside.  Her little house is often much messier than she’d prefer, but she has the perfect excuse:  she’s a writer.  This excuse doesn’t work nearly as well on her girlfriend as she’d like.

About the Sullivan Vampires, Bridget has this to say:  “I was very frustrated by the lack of serious romance concerning lesbian vampires.  Most lesbian vampire stories are erotica, and erotica is wonderful, but I wanted to write something that was romance focused.  I wanted to write a sweeping epic love story between two women involving all of the great stuff you can play with when you’re writing vampires.  Their immortality.  The fact that to be with them is incredibly dangerous if you’re human.  I wanted to write a love story you could fall in love with.  And I hope with all of my might that I’ve done this with my Sullivan Vampires!  I’ve loved writing them so very much—I hope that you enjoy reading them!”

You can find out more about her work at http://BridgetEssex.wordpress.com

Learn more about Rose and Star Press, publishers of lesbian romance and fiction of distinction, at http:///www.LesbianRomance.org