Bloodline. Maggie Shayne

lowered his head quickly. “How could I?” As he said it, he crossed the room, and then he left entirely.

      I rested my head on a russet pillow, listening as he rummaged around in the next room. When he returned, only moments later, he brought with him a huge ceramic stein. He pressed it into my hands. It was warm.

      I smiled, thinking of hot cocoa, and immediately brought it to my mouth for a long drink. And yet the moment it hit my tongue, I knew it wasn’t cocoa. But it was exactly what my body needed. What I craved. It was rich, thick, tasting slightly of sulphur and salt, and yet I found it irresistible.

      He stood watching me as I tipped the stein upward, drinking and drinking and drinking, until I’d drained it all. I lowered the stein and wiped the back of my hand over my lips.

      It came away red.

      Blinking down at my hand and then up at him, I asked, “What was that?”

      “Just a favorite of mine. Call it a—protein shake.”

      “What did I just drink, Ethan?”

      “Close your eyes and relax, Lilith. There are things I have to tell you, and you’re going to need that inner strength you don’t know you have—you’re going to need all of it.”

      I didn’t close my eyes, and I didn’t relax. Instead, I sat up straighter on the sofa, planted my feet on the floor and held the blanket around me like a cloak, watching Ethan as he paced away from me.

      “You said you’d tell me,” he said. “Everything you remember.”

      “I hope you don’t expect that to fill the evening.” My attempt at levity fell flat, and I drew a breath, wished to hell he would stop pacing and lifted my head.

      To my surprise, he did stop pacing—just when I thought it. He met my eyes and moved to the overstuffed chair beside the sofa. As he sat, I organized my thoughts, going back as far as I could remember.

      “I woke up on a hillside underneath a bridge. It was raining. I didn’t know who I was or what I was doing there. I still don’t. A car came along, and I ignored my instinct to run and instead stood there waiting, hoping they would stop and help me. They did stop. And then the window went down a little, and someone poked a gun out of it and ordered me to get in.”

      His expression grew tighter, more troubled, with every word I uttered.

      “A man’s voice? Or a woman’s?” he asked.

      “Man’s.”

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

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

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

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

      “That’s very good.”

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

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

      “Do you remember sleeping?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      “No. You’re…like me.”

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

      “Like…thoughts?” he asked.

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

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

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

      “All right.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      “You’re