Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
although she still didn't understand what had happened.<br />
It was when they got back in the living room that she found her diary was missing.<br />
Stefan lifted his head from the velvet-soft neck of the doe. The woods were filled with night noises,<br />
and he couldn't be sure which had disturbed him.<br />
With the Power of his mind distracted, the deer roused from its trance. He felt muscles quiver as<br />
she tried to get her feet under her.<br />
Go, then, he thought, sitting back and releasing her entirely. With a twist and a heave, she was up<br />
and running.<br />
He'd had enough. Fastidious, he licked at the corners of his mouth, feeling his canine teeth retract<br />
and blunt, oversensitive as always after a prolonged feed. It was hard to know what enough was<br />
anymore. There had been no spells of dizziness since the one beside the church, but he lived in fear of<br />
their return.<br />
He lived in one specific fear: that he would come to his senses one day, his mind reeling with<br />
confusion, to find Elena's graceful body limp in his arms, her slim throat marked with two red<br />
wounds, her heart stilled forever.<br />
That was what he had to look forward to.<br />
The blood lust, with all its myriad terrors and pleasures, was a mystery to him even now. Although<br />
he had lived with it every day for centuries, he still did not understand it. As a living human, he<br />
would no doubt have been disgusted, sickened, by the thought of drinking the rich warm stuff directly<br />
from a breathing body. That is, if someone had proposed such a thing to him in so many words.<br />
But no words had been used that night, the night Katherine had changed him.<br />
Even after all these years, the memory was clear. He had been asleep when she appeared in his<br />
chamber, moving as softly as a vision or a ghost. He had been asleep, alone…<br />
She was wearing a fine linen shift when she came to him.<br />
It was the night before the day she had named, the day when she would announce her choice. And<br />
she came to him.<br />
A white hand parted the curtains around his bed, and Stefan woke from sleep, sitting up in alarm.<br />
When he saw her, pale golden hair gleaming about her shoulders, blue eyes lost in shadow, he was<br />
struck silent with amazement.<br />
And with love. He had never seen anything more beautiful in his life. He trembled and tried to<br />
speak, but she put two cool fingers over his lips.<br />
"Hush," she whispered, and the bed sank under new weight as she got in.<br />
His face flamed, his heart was thundering with embarrassment and with excitement. There had<br />
never been a woman in his bed before. And this was Katherine, Katherine whose beauty seemed to<br />
come from heaven, Katherine whom he loved more than his own soul.<br />
And because he loved her, he made a great effort. As she slipped under the sheets, drawing so near<br />
to him that he could feel the cool freshness of night air in her thin shift, he managed to speak.<br />
"Katherine," he whispered. "We – I can wait. Until we are married in the church. I will have my<br />
father arrange it next week. It – it will not be long…"