Knowing it was useless to argue, Sheree made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a cup of tea.
Mara sat across the table from her while she ate. “I wish I could tell you not to worry, but we’re all afraid. If I lose him . . . I don’t think I’d want to go on.”
Sheree stared at the other woman, startled by her words. Mara was strong, the oldest, most powerful vampire ever known. It was somehow hard to imagine the world without her in it.
“What kind of talk is that?” Striding into the kitchen, Logan stood beside his wife, glaring down at her. “The two of you are sitting here acting like he’s already dead.”
“You don’t understand,” Mara retorted. “You’ll never understand!”
“Don’t give me that crap. My blood might not run in his veins, but he’s my son as much as yours. Now, both of you, stop with all the doom and gloom.”
Mara pushed away from the table, then threw herself into Logan’s arms.
Cupping her face in his hands, he gazed into her eyes. “I don’t ever want to hear you talking like that again, because if you destroy yourself, you’ll be destroying me, too, and I’m not ready to go.”
Sheree glanced away as they kissed. She couldn’t help envying the two of them. They were deeply in love. They would never grow old or sick or helpless. Mara would always be as beautiful and powerful as she was now, Logan as handsome and strong.
As quietly as she could, she left the kitchen and returned to Derek’s bedroom. Almost, it would be worth becoming a vampire if it meant spending centuries with him instead of a few short years.
Resuming her place on the foot of the bed, she tried to imagine what it would be like to be forever young and in love.
Sheree was still there when Derek woke that night. Frowning, he sat up, his gaze darting around the room. “What are you sitting here for?”
She shrugged, her gaze sliding away from his.
“Is everything all right?”
“You tell me.” The moon would be full tomorrow night. “How are you feeling?”
“Restless.” He looked at her throat, then jerked his gaze away. “Hungry.”
She turned her head to the side. “Drink, then.”
“Not now.” Muscles tense, he pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and stalked out of the room.
Sheree followed a moment later. She found him downstairs, along with Mara, Logan, and Pearl.
The brown case lay open on the table. She tried not to stare at the bottle of red liquid, or the pistol beside it.
Sheree didn’t know which unnerved her more, the sight of the vial, or the weapon. The thought of pointing the gun at Derek sent a chill down her spine. The thought of pulling the trigger, even to save her own life, made her sick to her stomach. She would rather die herself than take the life of the man she loved.
“I’m here,” Derek said flatly. “Let’s get it over with.”
“You need to feed before you take the serum,” Pearl said. “And with that in mind, we brought you a gift.”
Derek’s head jerked up, nostrils flaring, when Edna entered the room, pushing a young girl in front of her. The girl’s expression was blank; she couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen.
“No!” Derek backed away, his expression stricken. “Get her out of here.”
“You must feed,” Pearl said.
“I’ve been hunting on my own since I was fourteen,” he snarled. “I don’t need you to do it for me.”
“Derek . . .”
“I said no!” His anger filled the room in a swirl of crackling black sparks. Before anyone could stop him, he shoved the vial into his pants pocket, grabbed the gun and Sheree, and transported the two of them into the hills above the castle.
Setting Sheree on her feet, he shoved the gun into her hand.
“No! I don’t want it!”
“You might need it.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know how to use a gun.”
“It’s easy. Just point the damn thing and pull the trigger. I’m a big target.”
Sheree glared at him, then threw the pistol down the hill. “You can’t always have everything your way.”
He snorted. “You think I can’t find it?”
“I’ll just throw it away again.”
With a shake of his head, he turned away from her.
Sheree glanced around. There was nothing to be seen for miles but acres of forest. And the moon slowly climbing higher in the sky.
“Derek, what are we doing here?”
“I had to get out of there. All of them watching me, waiting for me to . . . to . . . hell, I don’t know what.”
She nodded, every instinct she possessed urging her to flee even as the rational part of her mind told her that was the worst thing she could do. He was a predator. She was prey. If she ran, he would give chase.
He paced back and forth, restless as a caged animal. Tension radiated from him like heat from a blast furnace. When he glanced her way, his eyes were tinged with red.
She cringed when he grabbed her hand. “Come on.” His voice was rough, like sandpaper dragged over stone.
“Where are we going?”
“You wanted to see me feed, didn’t you?”
Before she could reply, they were on a dark street in a city she didn’t recognize. Keeping a tight hold on her hand, he tugged her along behind him, lifting his head now and then to sniff the air.
A short time later, he scented his prey. She knew it by the feral gleam in his eyes when they began to follow a middle-aged woman. Sheree wanted to cry out, to warn the woman she was in danger, but found she couldn’t.
Helpless, Sheree trailed behind Derek as he followed the woman out of the town square and down a deserted street. When he called to her, she stopped walking.
“You will stay here,” he told Sheree.
Nodding, she whispered, “Pease don’t kill her.”
He didn’t answer, only growled softly before going to the woman.
Sheree couldn’t be sure, but she thought he spoke to her, and then he folded her into his embrace, his head lowering to her neck, his hair falling forward so Sheree couldn’t see what he was doing. But she didn’t need to see to know. Almost as if it were happening to her, she knew what Derek was feeling as he drank from the woman. It was more than nourishment, though she had no words to describe it, only a sense of fulfillment, as if she had been empty before.
It was over in minutes. In her mind, she heard him tell the woman to forget what had happened, to go home and rest.