“Bones.”

“Yes?”

“Make me a vampire.”

Certain things I knew I’d always remember. The look in his eye when he lowered his head. That slow, deep piercing of his fangs into me. His hand pressing me closer while the other one curled around mine, lacing our fingers together. That rush of blood spilling into his mouth from a bite far deeper than I’d ever received. The flush of warmth sweeping over me. My heart, beating so fast at first, then gradually, inexorably slowing. Growing sporadic as the life and that warmth began to ebb from me.

My thoughts became chaotic. The buzzing’s not as loud now. Can’t see much anymore. Funny, there were lights a moment ago, thousands of tiny little specks. Pretty. Where’d they go? Colder. Where’d that wind come from?

What was that? Something’s pulling me. Where am I now? Can’t talk. Am I moving? Can’t see. Why can’t I see? Why can’t I move? Where am I? Where am I? WHERE AM I?

What? I can barely hear you…yes! Yes, it’s me, I’m here! I can see you now. I’ll be right there, I’m coming. Wait, don’t go away. Come back! Stop, please, I haven’t seen you for so long.

No, take me back! I need to see them one more time…

I was in hell.

The fire that ravaged me burned with a ferocity that told me the stuff we had on earth was just a tame impostor. This fire was pitiless, and it was everywhere. Burning me without killing me. Tormenting me with unspeakable agony. I couldn’t scream, though I didn’t even know if I had a mouth anymore. The only thing I could focus on was the pain. No more stop stop hurts HURTS HURTS!

And then—something cool washed over me, slowly extinguishing the flames. With all the desperation of the damned, I strained for more of it, since at last the pain began to lessen. More, oh God, it still hurts, please give me more, more, oh please, need more, a little more…

Sound again, like a drumbeat. Light. Voices over that sluggish, banging drum. So many different smells.

I opened my eyes and saw not a flaming lake of fire but plain concrete walls. It took a second to recognize the people staring at me, then cognition hit. That’s right, I was at Bones’s house, and he’d turned me into a vampire. I wasn’t in hell, I was changed into a vampire, and everything was okay, because the pain was gone. I could see, hear, feel, smell, taste, oh God, taste—

Something delicious was in my mouth. Oh, yes, that was good. So good.

The last lagging bit of reality clicked into place. Holy shit, I had someone in my arms. I hadn’t been drinking a bag of blood, but a person. My mouth was pressed to their neck and blood dripped from my fangs—fuck me, I had fangs!—and there was no pulse under my lips.

“Jesus!” I shouted, shoving the person away with a rush of horror. “I told Bones no people! Where is he?”

I looked around for Bones, sickened that he’d let me kill someone, but Spade’s expression stopped me. He looked almost dazed.

“You just threw Crispin to the floor.”

I looked down. The corpse I’d flung away from me pushed himself into a sitting position and stared up at me with disbelieving brown eyes. A full, untouched bag of blood was in Bones’s hand.

That’s when I became aware of my second problem.

“Uh, guys…” I began hesitantly. “Why do I still have a heartbeat?”

TWENTY-EIGHT

THE STEADY DRUMBEAT I’D HEARD BEFORE was coming from my own chest. For a second, I was confused. Didn’t it work? Those two new fangs jabbing me in the lip seemed to indicate otherwise, but why was my heart still beating?

“Is it going to stop soon or something?”

Had they forgotten to tell me an important detail? Like, “Oh, you’ll hear some thump thumps for the first few minutes, but then it’ll quit.” And from the expressions aimed at me, this wasn’t normal.

“Anytime one of you wants to answer me, that’d be great.”

“Don’t you want the blood?” Spade blurted.

I gave the purplish bag in Bones’s hand a cursory glance. “Not really.”

Bones got to his feet. He looked at me in the strangest way, then he ripped the end of the blood bag with his teeth and held it out to me.

“Drink.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Just take a swig out of the bag!” Bones demanded.

Making a face, I put my mouth around the torn edge and took a tentative sip.

Yuck! Like a mouthful of old pennies. I spat it out. “What were you giving me before? That stuff was excellent, but this is crap.”

Spade actually whitened. Bones took the bag back and drained it in with a few powerful swallows.

“Not a thing wrong with it,” he pronounced. Then he took a knife from his pants and sliced open my arm without warning.

“Ouch! What was that for?”

I clutched my injured arm, but almost at once, the pain turned into only an itching tingle. Bones pulled my hand back, revealing red-stained but unbroken skin underneath. There wasn’t a wound anymore. My forearm had healed completely.

In spite of everything, I began to grin. “That’ll save me a world of grief in a fight.”

“Are you aware that you’re not breathing?” Bones asked.

He was right. I wasn’t—and I hadn’t even noticed! How can you miss that you’re no longer sucking in air? When you don’t need to anymore, that’s when!

“Her heartbeat,” Mencheres said, speaking the first time since I’d opened my eyes. “Is slowing down.”

I looked at my chest, as if that could tell me anything. Sure enough, what had started out as an even pace of buh-bump, buh-bumps was winding down to a sluggish buh…buh-bump……buh with longer intervals in between. It felt…well, it felt goddamned weird, is what it did. Like listening to it, I should be panicked or something.

“That’s a good thing, right? Maybe it just needed a minute to realize its services were no longer needed.”

Bones put an arm around me. “Kitten, how do you feel?”

“Fine. Good, actually. You know, you smell great. Really, really, nnnghghh.”

When I came to, it was with more of that wonderful taste in my mouth. This time, however, I was being restrained, with one arm around my waist and the other under my neck. Since I could still see Bones and Spade, it had to be Mencheres who held me.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You bit me,” Bones said.

“Huh?”

Spade nodded in confirmation. I was aghast. “I’m sorry, I don’t even remember doing that…” Then I trailed off, inhaling near Mencheres’s arm. That smell. Mmmm.

The next thing I knew, Mencheres’s wrist was in my mouth and I was shaking it from side to side like a shark. When I realized what I was doing, I spat it out.

“Will somebody tell me what the hell is wrong with me?”

Even as I shouted it, I couldn’t quit licking my lips. That taste. It was so perfect. God, nothing had ever tasted half this good before!

“You feed on undead blood.”

Mencheres made the pronouncement with his usual impenetrable aplomb. Bones arched a brow. Then he came closer, drawing blood from his wrist with a fang and waving it under my nose.

“You want this?”

I lunged forward with a compulsion that I didn’t even have time to think about. Mencheres flicked his free hand, and an invisible wall suddenly smacked me in the face.

“Stay still.”

I didn’t have a choice—I was frozen in midcrouch, with my knees bent, my hands extended, and my mouth open in a rapacious snarl. What was worse was that I didn’t care.

“Give me that.”

I knew it was my voice, but I didn’t recognize the savage sound of it. That pain began to return, the awful one that felt like I was burning from the inside out.

“Give it to me!”