The Darkling Surrender. Lauren Hawkeye

a newborn vampire.

      Like many a person who’d had an unplanned child and hadn’t had the grace to accept it as a gift, Malcolm had been disgusted with the responsibility of an infant. Aubrey had had no idea that he was a vampire—she’d thought he was simply the man who made her mocha latte at the coffee shop she frequented every evening. His shift had ended; he’d asked if he could walk her to the hospital. Though she had been reserved around many people, Malcolm had been both unassuming and sweet, and she’d enjoyed his company—at least, she had until he’d bared his fangs at her.

      He hadn’t meant to turn her—he’d simply taken too much from her wrist

      He’d made it quite clear to Aubrey that siring a newborn was the worst thing that could happen in a vampire’s life.

      Like a child feeling the sting of rejection from a parent, it had hurt Aubrey to hear it. And perhaps that was why she decided to disobey the first of her maker’s orders.

      Instead of going to a place she’d never been, she went to the hospital where she’d been a resident. With every step closer that she took, the weaker she felt.

      The hospital smelled of blood. Old blood, new blood. The bittersweet smell saturated the area for the entire city block, and Aubrey inhaled deliberately to draw the scent in.

      It made her thirsty. It made her hungry. It made her want.

      The thirst warred with longing as she stepped close to the automatic double doors of the front entrance. She’d spent so many hours there, closed inside the building where the smell of acrid antiseptic tried to wash away the delicious tang of blood. She’d spent more time here than she had in her own home.

      The snaking hallways, the small, windowless rooms. She knew them all.

      The people, too. So many familiar faces. It was comforting, a soothing balm on her grieving soul.

      If she even had a soul anymore.

      But surely amongst all the new faces that appeared in Admitting and the emergency room, she could find someone she didn’t know. Someone whose scent appealed to her in the way that cinnamon rolls and freshly brewed coffee once had.

      Maybe she could even find someone who was sick, sick enough that their fate was already decided. Then it wouldn’t matter how much blood she took. She could drink and drink, drink until this dreadful, ever-growing thirst was finally assuaged.

      “Dr. Hart!” Slowly, Aubrey turned her head. She’d just reached the front doors of the hospital, and the fluorescent lights that were placed around the perimeter of the musty brick building cast everything with a minty-green tinge.

      A man sat on a dilapidated wooden bench that was set back into the grass. Huge goose bumps prickled his skin from the kiss of the chilly breeze—he wore nothing overtop his flimsy hospital gown. An intravenous line carried something that smelled sickly sweet to his hand from a clear plastic bag, and Aubrey could smell the blood that was crusted around the tiny wound.

      She recognized the man, but it was as if she was seeing someone she’d once known a very long time ago. He had been a patient that she’d tended a few times, and she couldn’t remember his name.

      She stared at him openly, fascinated with the changes in him. Or rather the changes in how her new eyes saw him, she supposed.

      More than anything, she saw the flow of blood through his veins, moving with every beat of his heart.

      “Dr. Hart?” The man lowered his contraband cigarette from his mouth slowly, and Aubrey admired the beautiful tangerine ember of the lit end. She cocked her head curiously, studying the man as he studied her.

      He seemed to be growing uncertain, and slightly embarrassed with it.

      “I’m sorry.” He stubbed out the cigarette on the wood of the bench with nervous fingers, the lit stick burning a round circle into the grain. “You just… you look like someone that I haven’t seen in a while.”

      Aubrey nodded. The mirror had told her how different that she now looked, but it was still surprising to have it confirmed. But more curious was the knowledge that she could bite this man here, could drink from him, and it would be easier than anything she’d ever done in her life. He was here, waiting, like a gift.

      But she didn’t want him. Something in the smell that wafted off of him was slightly distasteful to her senses, and she knew that she couldn’t—wouldn’t—drink from him.

      Dismissing the man, she turned, walked away from the entrance to the hospital and instead found herself compelled to walk around the side of the building to the poorly lit loading dock where the staff of the hospital made their way to and from work.

      The concrete beneath her shoes was damp, and its dark tone seemed to swallow the flickering robin’s-egg light of the fluorescents and the silvery gleam cast by the moon.

      She liked how things looked through her new eyes.

      More, she liked the smell that intensified with every step that she took. There was someone back here. Someone who smelled like chocolate, rich, silky chocolate.

      She could hear the steady thump of the person’s heart, and the quiet fizz of that chocolate-infused blood as it was pumped through iridescent veins. She could already taste it, that first taste of blood from the vein, and she wanted it like she’d never wanted the disgusting, congealed sludge contained in the plastic bags that Malcolm had brought her.

      “Could I get a hand with this?” The voice attached to the cocoa smell was irritable. Aubrey was taken aback.

      She recognized the voice. Unlike the fog that had clouded her memory of the man at the front entrance, this remembrance was like a scalpel through soft flesh.

      “Gavin Thibodeau.” She didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until the man himself whipped around and squinted through the night in her direction.

      “Hart?” His voice sounded like metal shards, scrubbing away at the quiet din of background noise of a hospital at night. “What the hell are you doing lurking around in the shadows? And where have you been? Do you know—”

      He cut himself off as Aubrey stepped closer, and was more easily seen. The last time she’d seen him, her locks had been lank and habitually in a long tail, and she’d never bothered with makeup or jewelry. There had been no point when she wore scrubs all the time.

      Now she was vivid, a colour image in a black-and-white picture, something that she had made an effort to accentuate, though she wasn’t entirely certain why.

      She felt like a different person. She was a different person, one who could attract someone like Gavin.

      Yes, she could attract him. She could have Gavin if she wanted him.

      She found that she did. That, at least, hadn’t changed when she’d died.

      “Hello.” Even her voice sounded different than it had. It was warm and smooth, like thick, creamy honey.

      Gavin—she’d never thought of him as Dr. Thibodeau, though she’d always called him that to his face—had been her preceptor, her supervisor, at the hospital. He was tall, had spiky hair the color of espresso and eyes of glacial ice. A silver bar pierced his eyebrow, one that he took out when on duty, and she knew from the clothes that he wore to and from work that when not in scrubs he preferred skinny, low-riding denim, studded belts and fitted T-shirts.

      She’d had a yen for him even before she could smell the intoxicating aroma of his blood.

      “Where the devil have you been, Hart? It’s bloody unprofessional to just take off without a word. You’ve screwed up your residency but good.” Aubrey watched as he raked a hand with long, skilled surgeon’s fingers through the gelled spikes of his hair. He was wearing a pair of those skinny jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt.

      Her mouth watered, and she felt the sting of her fangs as they began to descend. They pricked her tongue, and she tasted the salt of her own blood, but it held no appeal.