His eyes widened at my request. I’d taken him off guard. “Did I just hear you right?” he asked, whispering too.
“It’s the only way we’re getting out of this,” I replied urgently.
His hand came up to caress my face. “Do you know, I never even considered …” he trailed off, hunger blazing in his eyes as thoughts of drinking from me took over.
I glanced quickly at Rita, but her attention was latched on one of Whitfield’s men, who looked like he was struggling not to faint under the force of her magic. Theodore and Whitfield were still talking, not paying us any heed. This was our only chance.
Ethan pulled me close, brushing my hair away from my face. “Are you sure?” he asked. “If I do this, it will change everything.”
“Look around you, Ethan. The city has gone to ruin. Everything has changed already.”
He fingered my throat with one hand, the other gripping me firmly at the waist. I couldn’t keep my eyes off his mouth as his fangs descended, mesmerised by how sharp they were. I swallowed hard, and my body came alive. Before I’d feared being bitten by a vampire, but at this moment, I welcomed it. With every fibre of my being, I wanted Ethan to drink from me. I wanted to feel his fangs cut into my skin and his mouth to suck the blood from my veins. I want to see him take a part of me inside him so that we were bonded forever.
He kissed me then, just lightly on the lips, but because his fangs were out, he nicked me. A tiny trickle of blood ran down my lip, and a violent shudder went through him at the sight of it. Ethan kissed me harder as he licked it away. His body gave a powerful tremble, and his mouth pulled away from mine. He gazed down at me, and I was suddenly aware of the fact that this was the last time I’d ever see him as the Ethan I knew. Once this was over, I wasn’t sure what or who he’d be. All I knew was that doing this was our only hope of survival.
He leaned down to me, scraping his fangs along my earlobe, and breathed out those three little words, “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I blurted, the response automatic.
A sea of emotions swirled in his golden irises as his mouth moved to my neck. I was practically shaking with the anticipation of his bite. Then, from one second to the next, his fangs clamped down on me. There was a brief second of sharp pain, but it quickly transformed into pleasure. My eyes closed, and I fell limp in his arms.
Every moment we spent together flashed rapidly through my mind as he drank. I wondered what my blood tasted like to him. Was it as delicious as his was to me? A second later, his mouth was off me, and I slid to the ground. With my hands braced against the cold, hard concrete of the roof, I stared up at Ethan as his body shook. His eyes and skin turned silver, just like Eliza’s had. His body seemed to be hardening, his skin resembling flawless marble even more so. It happened so quickly, and then the silver died down. His skin returned to its normal colour; although, his golden eyes were now edged in silver.
Rita’s head whipped around when she sensed the change in Ethan. She aimed her palms at him now, instead of Whitfield’s men, but her magic only seemed to bounce off him, causing no harm at all. She made an angry, frustrated noise at this, which drew Theodore’s attention. His eyes flickered over us, and within seconds he deduced what had happened. Instead of his usual, confident expression, his pale face suddenly seemed even more colourless.
“No …” he whispered, his voice filled with dread as he took in Ethan’s transformation.
In the blink of an eye, Ethan zoomed to Whitfield, took the vampire governor’s head in his hands, and pulled it straight off his shoulders. He held the decapitated head in his grip for only a second before tossing it over the edge of the building. His new eyes gleamed viciously at Theodore as he took a step toward the sorcerer. Undiluted fear seeped from Theodore as he backed away, and before I could blink, he and Rita disappeared in the same way they had arrived, in a cloud