had…” She closed her eyes, but tears squeezed through her thick lashes all the same. “I love you, James.”
“I love you, too.”
“I wish I could stay with you.” She closed her eyes briefly, then flashed them open again. “I get it now. I do. I get it. I’ve felt so guilty all this time that my parents died and I lived. But now…now I understand they couldn’t have borne it any other way. Now…I know what it is to love someone more than you love your own life. To be willing to sacrifice everything for another human being. I couldn’t have lived if I had let you die, James. I am so happy, so proud, that I was able to prevent it. To be the hero for once in my life.” She smiled through her tears. “I know how they felt, dying for me. They were happy. They were happy they managed to save me. And it feels so good to finally understand that. To understand what they did. Thank you for that, James. Thank you. I’m not a coward after all.”
He felt hot tears running down his face. “You never were.” And then she was fading, and he shook his head. “You can’t leave me,” he whispered. “I don’t want to go on without you, Lucy. I don’t know if I can. You’re like…the part of me that’s been missing. You understand me like no one else ever has…. I can make you one of us. One of them. You’re one of the Chosen. That means—”
“I know what it means.”
He nodded. “I’ve never…but I can try.”
She opened her eyes and stared into his. “I trust you. I trust you with my life, my eternal, immortal life, James. And I would be honored to join your people.”
James closed his eyes and summoned forth the vampiric part of his soul. He felt his jawline shift, felt his razor-sharp incisors extend, felt a powerful hunger piercing his awareness. And as he looked downward and she met his eyes, he saw the glowing red reflection of his gaze in hers. For the first time he thanked his stars for the part of him that was preternatural, undead. Vampire. For the first time he truly and completely loved and accepted the part of himself he had formerly rejected and tried to ignore. The part he’d hated all his life. The part he’d thought he was too good for.
The bloodlust raged, and for the first time he welcomed it, rather than meeting it with disgust and forcing it into submission. He surrendered to it, embraced it. He let it take him over, make him hard, aroused, hot, hungry. He was, in that moment, entirely vampire. And he relished it fully, as he had never ever done before. It and it alone was going to save Lucy’s life. The vampire in him was the only reason he could have her now. And for that, he loved it.
He bent to her throat, a low growl of desire and hunger rising from deep within him. Opening his lips, he sucked her neck, taking the skin into his mouth, between his teeth. Pressing just slightly, he felt the thrum of that river of blood rushing through her veins. He felt it pulsing faster as she anticipated what was to come. Her heart raced like a frightened rabbit’s, and he relished that, too. And then he sank his fangs into her flesh and he fed from her, drinking.
And it was good. It was so, so good. Her blood filled him, warming his body, thundering through him, becoming power, becoming energy, becoming strength. He lifted his head from her neck, tipped it back and roared like a lion celebrating a kill. And then he lowered his gaze to her again.
She was white as a ghost, and her heartbeat had slowed to almost nothing. He’d drained her, imbibed her, and every time her heart thudded against her chest he felt it, heard it. It stuttered. It paused. It stopped.
He picked up the ax he’d dropped beside her and drew his wrist over the sharp edge, slicing a vein. Forcefully, he pressed his flesh to her mouth.
“My blood, your blood. My life, your life. Drink, Lucy. Drink me into you and come back to me, my love.”
Epilogue
Everything was different when Lucy opened her eyes to find herself in James’s arms. He was different. Stronger, deeper, sadder—and also wiser—and it showed in his eyes. He’d acknowledged and incorporated the beast within him. Embraced it