Eternal: More Love Stories With Bite (21 page)

It moved out of her sight, but when it returned moments later, Tarrah's eyes locked on the instrument
in
its hand. Two large needles, attached to two
long
tubes. The monster was going to drain her, the way it had drained Corey. It was a miracle he'd survived as long as he had with that much blood loss. Tarrah screamed and strained against her restraints, but it was a useless fight. These beasts had this procedure down to a cruel science. She watched in horror as the monster brought the needles to her neck. She was going to die. There was no fixing it, no changing it. Her life was as good as over.

The
monster whispered, "I hope you can understand. I
wish I didn't have to hurt you. But it is necessary. I'm sorry. Take a deep breath. It'll all be over soon."

The tips of the needles pricked Tarrah's skin and she screamed.

Impossibly, she saw a familiar face appear behind the monster. It was pale and looked exhausted and sickly, but she'd never been so happy to see it, to see him. Even if she was wondering if he was only there to welcome her to the afterlife.

Then Corey opened his mouth, baring
his
fangs. He bit down hard on the monster's neck, and Tarrah watched
in
morbid fascination as the monster's skin paled and Corey's regained color. The monster breathlessly shouted something garbled, but Tarrah couldn't make out what it was supposed to be. It fell to the ground and Corey pushed the plastic dome away from her head and undid the straps that held her. She sat up and clung to him, reveling in the sensation of his heartbeat thumping gently against her chest once again. Her tears soaked his shirt, but after a moment, Corey pulled back and smiled into her eyes. His crystalline blue eyes were unmarred, so perfect with the lack of the black center the monster's eyes had. She couldn't ever remember being so happy to see them.

"You were dead. You looked dead, Corey. I
thought—"

"It doesn't matter now. All that matters is that I'm not dead, and that we're together." He nodded toward the thing on the floor. It was gasping and struggling uselessly to crawl toward the door. The black circles in its eyes had grown huge. "I told you I had a plan. Luckily for us, feigning death worked. It didn't even bother to close the door when it carried you out."

She hugged him tightly, swearing never to let him go. He pulled back just a bit, brushing her hair from her eyes. "You should feed, Tarrah. And then we'll get out of here."

Slipping from the table, Tarrah crouched by the monster and opened her mouth to reveal her fangs. She couldn't remember ever being so hungry before. She looked into the beast's mouth as it gasped for air, at its strange, flat teeth. "It's weird, isn't it? I thought humans were just a myth. I mean, they were supposed to have died out so long ago. Who would've thought that they were real, and still around?"

Corey shrugged and licked his lips. "It is weird. Tasty though. Come on, babe. Drink up and let's go."

"Corey," she groaned, and looked up at her boyfriend of a hundred and fifty-three years. "Don't call me babe."

Then Tarrah bent over the terrified beast and bit into the warmth of his jugular vein.

A meal had never tasted so sweet.

Drama Queen's Last Dance

A Morganville Vampires Story

Rachel Caine

My name is Eve, and I am a drama queen.

I don't mean like any old garden-variety teen throwing a tantrum, oh no. I am a Drama Queen, with big initial capital letters and curlicues on top. I work hard at it, and I resent anybody lumping me in with a bunch of wannabe poseurs who haven't even qualified in Beginning Pouting, much less Champion Fit Throwing.

So when I had a golden opportunity for launching a big, fat, drama-filled scene, and ended up acting like an actual adult, perhaps you'll appreciate just how important this was to me. But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

First, let me explain the drama that is my life—and this is just the background, broad strokes, you know, for I am
epic,
I tell you. I am a Goth, but mainly for the fashion, not the 'tude. I had an emotionally abusive father and a checked- out mom. My little brother turned out to be one step short of either the asylum or federal prison.

Oh, and my boyfriend is a sweet boy, a gifted rock guitarist—and just happens to have an allergy to sunlight and crave plasma on a regular basis. However, in our hometown of Morganville this is not really all that unusual, since about a third of the citizens are vamps. Yes, vampires. Really. So you see why my life was generally a nightmare from an early
age ...
the monsters under the bed really existed, and the pressure on all of us growing up was to give in. Be a good Morganville conformist.

Give up our blood for the cause.

Not me. I had a pact with all my other rebel friends. We'd never, ever be part of that scene.

And I mentioned my boyfriend is a vampire, right? Yeah. There's that.

Given all that, when I say that today was a
crisis
. .
.
well. Maybe you get the legendary scale of which
I
am speaking.

The saga started out a normal day—don't they all? I
mean, surely one morning back there in prehistoric times a dinosaur woke up, yawned, chewed some coffee beans, and thought his day was going to be dead boring, just before a comet slammed into his neighborhood. "Normal day" in my life means that I wake up late, yell at my housemate Shane to get the hell out of my way as I
dash to the bathroom in my vintage dragon-embroidered silk robe, and spend forty-five minutes doing shampoo, body wash, conditioner, blow dry, straightening, makeup, and clothes while
I listen
to Shane bang on the door and complain about how he is going to go pee all over my bedroom floor if I
insist on living in the bathroom.

This morning I blew
him
a mocking black-lipsticked
kiss
on the way out, checked the time, and winced. I was late for my job at Common Grounds, the best local coffee
shop
of the two
in
town.
(I also
worked at the second best, but
on
alternate days.)
I didn't mind
dragging my ass in
late
to the University Center java store, but at Common Grounds, the boss was a little more
of
a leg-breaker—probably because he'd been making people show up on time since before the invention of the pocket watch.

I tried sneaking in the back door of Common Grounds, which seemed to work all right;
I
ditched my coffin purse
in
my locker, grabbed
my
long black apron, and tied it on before I went to grab a clipboard from the back. I took
a
hasty, not very thorough inventory, and toddled out to the front. . .

. . . Where my boss, Oliver, fixed me with a long, cold
glare that had probably been terrifying underlings for hundreds of years. Oliver = vampire, obviously, although he did a good job of putting on a human smile and seeming like Mr. Nice Hippie Dude when he thought it would get him something. He wasn't bothering today, because the counter was slammed three deep with people desperate for their morning caff fix, and his other help, what's-her-name, Jodi-with-an-i, hadn't shown up yet. I held up my clipboard and put on my best innocent expression. "I was doing inventory," I said. "We need more lids."

He growled, and I could hear it even over the hissing brass monster of the espresso machine. "Get on the register," he snapped, and I could tell he wasn't buying the inventory excuse for a second. Well, it had been thin at best. I mouthed
sorry
and hurried over to beam a smile at the next harassed person who wanted to fork over four fifty for their mochachocalattefrappalicious, or whatever it was they'd ordered. We made things easy by charging one price for each size of drink, whatever it was. Funny how people never seemed to appreciate that time-saver. I worked fast, burning through the backlog of caffiends in record time, then moved to help Oliver build the drinks once the register was idle. He'd stopped growling, and from time to time actually gave me a nod of approval. This was, for Oliver, a little like arranging for a paid vacation and a dozen roses.

We'd gotten the morning rush out of the way and were settling into the slow midmorning period when a door in the back of the store opened, and a girl came strolling out. Now, that wasn't so unusual—that door was the typical vampire entrance, for those who wanted to avoid the not-so-healthful effects of a stroll in the sun. But I'd never seen this particular vamp before. She was . . . interesting. Masses of curly blonde hair that had that salon sheen you see in commercials but that hardly exists in the wild; porcelain-pale skin (without the benefit of the rice powder I was using); big jade-green eyes with spots of golden brown. She was wearing an Ed Hardy tee under a black leather jacket, all buckles and zippers, and she looked pretty much like any other twenty- something in any town
in
the U.S., and maybe in a lot of the world. Shorter than most, maybe. She was five foot three, tops, but all kinds of curvy.

I
took a cordial dislike to her, on principle, as she meandered her way toward the counter. Oliver, who'd been wiping down the bar, stopped in mid-motion to watch her. That seemed to be a male thing, because I noticed pretty much the entire Y chromosome population, including the table of gay boys, watching her, too. She didn't seem that sexy to me, at least in an obvious kind of way, and she wasn't vamping (no pun intended) it up . . . but she got attention, whether she was demanding
it
or not.

I wasn't used to being the wallflower, and it kinda pissed me off.

Still, I forced a smile as I went to the register. "Hi," I said, in my best professional welcome voice. "Can I help you?"

"I'll take this," Oliver said, and nudged me out of the way. He was smiling, which normally would be a bad sign, but this one went all the way to his eyes, and all of a sudden
he
didn't look like a vampire who would kick your ass, ra-a-a-ar,
he
looked
like ...
a guy. Just a guy, kind of handsome in a sharp sort of way, although too old for me for sure.

The girl smiled back at him, and wow.
I
mean, it knocked me back a step, and I was (a) not male, and (b) not any kind of interested. "Oliver," she said, and even her voice was cute and small and sweet, with some kind of lilting accent that made her sound exotic and mysterious. Well, for Morganville, Texas, but then we find people from
Dallas
exotic and mysterious. "My dear friend, I haven't seen you in dark ages."

"Gloriana," he said.
"I feared
the worst, you
know. It's
cruel
to keep
us
in
suspense.
Where were you?"