he took a deep breath, the anger washing out of him between one breath and the next. Bevins had said nothing that he, Rayven, had not said himself. If Rhianna were wise, she would leave his house and never return.
He had no illusions about what he was. He reeked of evil, of death. He had done things, horrible things, atrocious things, committed acts that had damned his soul forever. No matter that he had not chosen this life for himself. Once the deed had been done, he could have ended it. He could have walked into the sunlight and destroyed the creature he had become.
He gazed into the darkness that shrouded him, a distant memory rising up in his mind...
"I don't want it!"
He screamed the words as he struggled against her, but his puny mortal strength was as nothing compared to hers.
"But you will take it," she said, her black eyes wise with knowledge beyond his understanding. "You are a warrior, Rayven of Millbrae. You will not submit. You will not surrender. You will fight with every ounce of strength you possess to survive. " She laughed softly, confidently. "You would drink me dry if I let you."
"No! Never!"
"But you will." The certainty in her voice, the red glow in her eyes, had filled him with terror.
Effortlessly, she had held him close while she raked one bloodred nail across his cheek. "I have marked you," she said, "so that you will always remember me."
And then she pressed him back on the couch, holding him effortlessly in spite of his violent struggle to escape. He cried out as he felt the sharp bite of her teeth at his throat. Revulsion rose within him as he realized she was drinking his blood.
He wanted desperately to fight her, but he had no strength left. There was a buzzing in his ears, his heart was beating frantically, a hazy red mist rose up in front of his eyes.
"No, don't..." Weakness engulfed him, his heartbeat slowed and grew heavy, and he felt the blackness of oblivion descending. And with it a nameless fear, worse than the fear of death.
"Please..." He formed the word but no sound emerged from his lips.
"You want to live?" Her breath was hot against his ear. "Then drink."
He was too weak to move, to obey. He tried to see her face, but saw nothing at all. "Drink!"
He didn't want to submit, but the will to live rose strong within him. He was, after all, a warrior, born to fight, to conquer.
He opened his mouth, and she pressed her wrist to his lips. "Drink."
His mouth closed over her flesh. A rush of liquid flowed over his tongue, warm and slightly salty. It slid down his throat like liquid fire, and suddenly he was clinging to her arm, drawing the blood into his mouth, revulsion and delight warring within him. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, growing ever stronger, beating in rhythm with hers. Power surged within him, igniting a craving for more.
"Enough!" She wrenched her arm from his grasp. "Enough, I say!"
He stared up at her, dazed, his gaze lingering on the redness around her mouth, the blood oozing from the gash in her wrist. A gash that was closing, healing, even as he watched.
Horror descended slowly. Lifting his hand, he wiped his mouth, then stared at the scarlet wetness on his fingertips. Her blood. He had been drinking her blood.
Slowly, seductively, she licked the redness from her lips. "You are mine now, "she said, "always and forever mine."
"No." He shook his head, numb with the horror of what he had done, what he would become.
"You died tonight," she told him, her voice calm and detached, as if the words were of no significance.
"When you wake tomorrow night, you will be as I am."
He had not wanted to believe. Had refused to believe. Even when the violent tremors wracked his body, even when, with the sun's rising, darkness the likes of which he had never experienced enveloped him.
Even when he woke the next night and saw the world through new eyes, he had not wanted to believe.
But it was true.
He had become a vampyre, damned to spend his life in darkness, to be forever at the mercy of the Dark Gift, forced to live in the shadows, to exist on the blood of others, or perish...
Vampyre... the word echoed and re-echoed through the corridors of his mind as the familiar darkness encompassed him once more.