Page 12 of Sleeping With the Vampire

I was impatient to withdraw and not in the mood for her gloomy visions. They tended to be so negative these days. I was feeling more positive, more optimistic.

“It can wait,” she murmured, starting to back away.

“No, no!” I called her back, impatiently. “What is it?”

“The girl, the bounty hunter? The blood of the Guard is stronger in her. Even though her looks resemble the Beauty of the mother, it is the blood of the father that courses through her veins.”

I thought about that.

“That is why you feel so revitalized.”

“Only two drops of her blood?”

“It is enough,” she confirmed. “If you were to drain her…” she didn’t finish her sentence but I knew she didn’t have to. “That is why she will push you away now, fighting for her survival. It is built into her, and you have become both lover and enemy in one night.”

“Thank you, Cassandra,” I said dismissing her.

I didn’t want to hear any more of her witch’s tales. I would bring Izzy round one way or another. I knew her character was strong and upright but she had never been with a man before and what I had showed her had been no ordinary rite of passage. It had been a night of the highest pleasure, a dance of bodies and minds, an intoxication of elemental beings merging in the spirit world. This was not something she could turn away from.

I had been around long enough to know a few things, and this was one of them.

What had happened between us was not ordinary or commonplace.

It happened once in a lifetime, even a very long lifetime.

Chapter 5

Izzy

I find my mother in her glasshouse, tending to her orchids. This is where she spends most of her time, surrounded by these gigantic blooms with their delicate stems and wondrous flowers. As a Beauty, she was always drawn to the natural world, to plants and animals, with great healing powers and ability to coax growth out of even the hardiest seed.

She has lost so much weight over the years, her hair almost white now to make her appear far older than she actually is. This came after the attack in which my father and brother were killed, leaving her with injuries from which she would never recover. A healer said there had been an incurable tear inside her head, through which her life essence was leaking. It sounded kooky, but as time went on, I could see it happening. She was dying slowly. My mother said this was another way of describing the process of life, but in her case, it was faster. There was less of her every day, but this was a good day.

She smiled at me and there was light in her eyes.

“Izzy,” she reached out a cool hand and touched my wrist. “How are you?”

“Oh, you know,” I sighed and then said, “Just lost my virginity to a vampire, but apart from that, nothing new.”

She laughed at that. “Wonderful! I had sex with a vampire once, it was quite exhausting! Their appetite for pleasure is so vast!”

I had to laugh too. Part of being a Beauty was being non-judgmental and uncritical, so I had always been able to talk to my mother about anything.

“Did Father know about that?” I asked thinking about his loathing of vampires.

She chuckled. “There is a place for all of us in the new world.”

I wondered if she was right.

It was hard for me to come to terms with the fact that I had slept with Lucca. I had waited for so long and then to give up my virginity to someone like him, felt wrong somehow. I couldn’t get over the idea that vampires were evil, loathsome creatures.

“Was it good?” my mother asked and I blushed, because it had been. I’d heard of some friends who’d had painful experiences their first time, but mine had been fantastic in every way.

“They have had a long time to perfect their technique, usually, and it is one of the few pleasures they still have,” my mother mused.

“So, you wouldn’t mind it if I saw a vampire?”

I could see the energy fading from her face, it came suddenly, almost like a cloud shifting before the sun. Our conversation had been too much for her, I feared.

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