Rising, she walked back and forth beside the mattress, her brow furrowed. “I can hear noise from outside. Why? I never could before. And I can smell the grass and the trees, and…” She stopped pacing to look at him. “Even you look different, as if I’m seeing you more clearly.” She glanced around the room. “Everything looks brighter, clearer, more distinct, even in the dark…”

She looked at him once more, her gaze riveted on his face. “What’s happened to me, Ronan?”

she asked, a tremor in her voice. “What have you done?”

He couldn’t sidestep the truth any longer. Expelling a deep breath, he said, “I’ve given you what you wanted the day you first came to see me.”

She digested that a moment, and then she slapped him with all the force at her command. Even though she was a newly made vampire, her strength was considerable.

The sound of flesh meeting flesh echoed like a gunshot in the room. His head snapped back from the force of her blow. He could feel the blood rushing to his face, knew her handprint stood out in vivid relief against his cheek.

“Tell me,” she said, her voice rising. “Tell me that you didn’t make me what you are.”

He stared at her, his silence condemning him.

“Tell me, damn you!”

“I couldn’t let you die. Hate me if you wish. Destroy me if it will make you feel any better.”

“How could you?” She slapped him again, harder this time. “How could you?” Rage and anger bubbled up inside of her and spewed out in a vitriolic hiss. “You knew how I felt about it. I told you time and again I didn’t want to be what you are.”

He said nothing. Indeed, what could he say in his defense? Except, “Would you rather be dead?”

“Yes! No! I don’t know, I only know I’ll never forgive you for what you’ve done to me. Never!”

“Then may be it a long and healthy hatred.”

“I’m going out,” she said, striding toward the stairway. “And I don’t want you to follow me.”

He said nothing, only stared after her as she walked up the stairs. He heard the sound of her footsteps overhead as she moved toward the front door.

He listened as the door opened and then closed.

She was gone, perhaps for good, and he had no one to blame but himself.

Shannah left the house with no destination in mind other than the need to be as far away from him as possible.

She was a vampire. Undead. A creature of the night. Forever lost, forever damned. Nosferatu.

She walked down the street, deaf and blind to her surroundings, her rage and confusion growing with every step. How could he have done such a thing to her? He had known how she felt about becoming a vampire. They had discussed it often enough. She had made it clear that she was dead set against it. She laughed mirthlessly. Dead set. A poor choice of words.

She would never be able to enjoy a summer day at the beach again. She would never be able to have children. Never be able to go shopping with Judy, or out to lunch with her mother. Her mother! How could she ever face her parents again? What could she possibly tell them? The truth was out of the question. She could only imagine their reaction.Hi, Mom. Hey, guess what?

I’ve decided to come back home. Oh, there’s just one thing. I’m a vampire now. Right.

Maybe she could tell them that the doctor had discovered a cure.Oh, but there’s just one little drawback. I can only be active at night. She frowned. That just might work. She could tell them her sudden aversion to the sun was a side effect of the cure.

A sudden pain deep in her gut put everything else from her mind. She knew instinctively what it was. It was the need to feed. On blood. Even as the thought was born, her fangs pricked her tongue. Opening her mouth, she explored her teeth with her fingertips. Her new teeth were very sharp indeed!

I am a vampire. I have fangs. What will my dentist think?

A bubble of near-hysterical laughter rose in her throat.Guess what I’ll be next Halloween?

There was a bar on the corner. Taking a deep breath, she went inside, and almost gagged. The smell of liquor, humanity, perspiration and lust was overpowering, the noise almost beyond bearing. And the blood…she could hear it pulsing with the beat of a dozen hearts, smell it, almost taste it on her tongue. She lowered her head, afraid someone would see the bloodlust in her eyes, the way she had seen it in Ronan’s.

A young man approached her. “Hey, baby, wanna dance?”

She shook her head and turned away, then practically ran out of the bar.

The pain in her belly grew worse.

She stopped halfway down the block. A man was walking toward her, alone.

She knew Ronan called his prey to him, that he took what he needed and sent his victims on their way, leaving them blissfully unaware of what he had done, but she couldn’t do it, didn’t want to do it. She didn’t want to drink human blood, not now, not ever.

Passing the man by, she walked for miles without tiring or getting out of breath. Amazed by her new powers and abilities, she jumped over a six-foot fence just to see if she could do it, and cleared it with ease. It was like being reborn, she thought, like being Superman. But it wasn’t right. It wasn’t natural. She was an abomination.

No! She was Shannah Davis.

Vampire.

She walked for hours with no destination in mind, the pain in her insides steadily growing worse, but she refused to give in to it. Gritting her teeth, she walked until a tingling under her skin warned her that it was almost dawn and she realized she had nowhere to hide from the light of day.

For a moment, she thought of waiting for the sun to rise and putting an end to her pain and her new existence. She wondered how long it would take, but the thought of burning to death, whether it happened quickly or not, was more than she could bear and she began to run, not stopping until she found an abandoned building in a town far from North Canyon Creek.

With remarkably little effort, she pulled a board away from one of the first-floor windows and climbed into what had once been a warehouse of some kind. Moving away from the bank of windows, she made her way down a rickety stairway to the next level. Streaks of sunlight filtered through a broken window. She was running now, driven by her fear of the unknown.

Spying a dusty canvas tarp on the other side of the room, she dove underneath, hoping it would shelter her from the sun’s light.

She huddled in the musty darkness, fearful of the death-like sleep she knew was coming.

Tremors wracked her body, her stomach cramped with the sharp pangs of vampiric hunger.

Murmuring, “This can’t be happening,” she tumbled into the dark sleep of the Undead.

Ronan sat on the mattress in the basement, his face pressed against the blanket that had covered Shannah the night before. He drew a deep breath, inhaling the scent of her hair, her skin, her very essence. They had been parted for one night and it already seemed like a lifetime.

It had taken every ounce of self-control he possessed not to follow her when she left the house, but he had failed her once, he would not fail her again. If she wanted to be alone, he would accept her wishes, even if it meant he would never see her again. And even though she was now far away, he found some small comfort in knowing that she was still alive, that she still walked the earth, even if she no longer walked with him.

Where was she now, he wondered. Would he ever see her again?

Rising, he left the house. Her scent still lingered in the air. Unable to help himself, he followed it, curious to see where she had gone. He followed her scent down the street and into a bar and then into an abandoned warehouse located in another town. It pained him to know her anger had driven her so far away.

He walked around the outside of the warehouse. Her scent was strong but his senses told him she was no longer in the building.

Was she, perchance, on her way back to his house?

Had she fed? He remembered all too clearly the agony he had endured as a fledgling. Unless she fed, the pain would grow steadily worse until it was excruciating.

If only she had stayed, he would have guided her through the transition from mortal to vampire, a change that was often difficult, especially for those who were brought across against their will or without knowing what to expect.

But there was no help for it now.

When his own hunger rose within him, he put Shannah from his mind and prowled the city streets in search of prey. Finding none to his liking, he went into a night club where he found a woman sitting at the bar, alone. She was a lovely creature, with short blond hair and large brown eyes. She smiled when he sat down beside her.

He returned her smile. “Good evening.”

She lifted her drink. “Hi.”

He nodded at the dance floor. “Would you like to dance?”

She tossed off her drink. “Sure, why not?”

He took her hand. It was small and soft, warm and pulsing with human life. She went into his arms, easily following his lead. The music was slow and he held her close, wishing all the while that it was Shannah in his arms, Shannah smiling up at him.

“I’ve never seen you in here before,” the woman said.

Her words were slightly slurred, making him wonder how much she’d had to drink.

“I’ve never been here before.”

“I’m Anne.”

“Ronan.”

“A distinctive name,” she remarked.

“A very old name.”

His nostrils filled with the scent of her blood, arousing his hunger. It would be easy to take her away from here, he thought, easy to seduce her, but it wouldn’t be right, nor would it be fair to the woman, not when he was worried about Shannah. Worried and angry.

But he had no scruples when it came to taking the woman’s blood. Mesmerizing her with a look, he took what he needed, there on the dance floor, and then he wiped the memory from her mind and escorted her back to her seat at the bar.

A thought took him out of the night club and back into the darkness of the night. His thoughts immediately turned to Shannah. She had so much to learn; how to dissolve into mist, how to transport herself from one place to another, how to travel with preternatural speed so that her passing was invisible to mortal eyes, how to block the constant barrage of sights and sounds and smells that he knew were pummeling her senses every hour of the night. All that, and so much more he would have taught her if she had only stayed and given him the chance.