CHAPTER ONE
Lev glided through the hallways, darting around the human slugs—the unfortunate nurses and orderlies working the midnight shift. He made it to Carly’s room undetected and he’d made it just in time; his nostrils picked up the acrid stench of death, disease and misery better than a blood hound’s keen nose ever could.
He sat beside his lover in the dimly lit room, thankful she had no roommate. The bed beside Carly had been recently vacated and the scent of death still lingered.
Lev took her delicate hand in his. A monitor clipped to her index finger tracked her pulse and heartbeat. Her heart beat slowly, though he didn’t need a monitor to tell him that. Its weak throb pulsed like a dying battery.
Still, relief settled on him because he was the first to arrive after the accident that left her comatose. It would take hours for Carly’s family to get there from the other coast. He had time and plenty of it. Lev glanced into the hallway from his perch in the darkened room. Occasionally, a nurse strode past, but it was late; perhaps the better term was early. In the wee hours of the morning, there were fewer staff than during the day.
A sigh full of dread escaped him as he took Carly in. Her blonde hair, matted and dirty, was tucked behind her head. Her face though, was still perfect. Not a single scratch had sullied her beauty.
His shoulders deflated and a knot twisted in his belly. Why hadn’t he known? He could have saved her if only he’d known what was about to befall his love. But even Lev couldn’t know everything. It had been his older brother, Alexei, who’d given him the news just moments ago.
“Brother,” he’d said, “there’s been an accident. Get to the hospital or you’ll never see your precious Carly again.”
Lev hadn’t asked the how, the why, the when. He didn’t have to—Alexei had dropped his mental barriers letting Lev into his head. It was easier than speaking and Lev gleaned all he needed in an instant. But with the facts of Carly’s accident came the realization his brother was happy for the turmoil. A hint of a smile had curled Alexei’s lips, and his eyes brightened. Lev had no time to waste on anger. He’d deal with his brother later.
He pulled his thoughts from his nuisance of a brother and looked down at his beloved’s hand in his. The pallor of it matched his own. Lev listened to the slow pulse of blood pushing through her veins, willing it to grow stronger. He put his lips to her ear and whispered, “I can save you.”
There would be no reply, he knew and so he imagined it. He imagined Carly uttering words he knew she never would. “Yes, my darling, do what you must to save me.” Lev pressed her wrist to his lips. She smelled like the musk of freshly turned earth. Death was coming for her. His fangs pricked at her delicate skin, drawing a bead of crimson. It tasted of iron and copper and of her. Carly’s essence was in that droplet.
He stopped, knowing she wouldn’t want him to go through with it despite his imaginings to the contrary. They’d talked about the possibility of him turning her so they could be together, not for just the blink of an eye that was a human lifetime, but for eternity. If he turned her now, she’d be furious, and he couldn’t blame her. Lev knew only too well the agony of a life as a monster and how it felt to be turned against one’s will.
But at least she would still exist. We could still be together. He shook off that small but inviting thought. No, he would not make a monster of his beautiful Carly.
With a flick of his tongue, he lapped up the droplet and a shudder of pleasure spiked through him sending all rational thoughts away. He pushed her wrist to his mouth, like a child ready to bite into a peach.
The monitor blared a warning, setting his teeth on edge and his ears ringing. It was the sound of a heart that had stilled, but the silence of blood no longer pulsing through veins and arteries was somehow louder. Hesitation had cost him. Compassion, as his brother always said, would always be Lev’s downfall.
Two nurses and a doctor were in the room now, buzzing frantically around Carly. Lev had disappeared unseen through the pane of the window, and watched from outside where the moonless sky hid him. His jacket flapped in a breeze that also tousled his long black hair. It whipped and slapped against his cheeks.
It was thought that creatures like him could feel no pain. That they existed only as predators—takers of life—but Lev’s world had just crumbled. If he had a beating heart, it would be broken in two. Tears welled in his eyes, and he longed to let them fall. No, more than that, he wanted to scream, wanted to rip his cold, dead heart from his chest and crush it.
He gathered himself as best he could, pinching the tears from his eyes and staring up to the heavens, but there would be no help for him there. There was no God for Lev Baranovsky, only perpetual hell. Love may come for him again in time, though he wasn’t sure he wanted it to. Would he ever get over losing his precious Carly? The vicious cycle of love and heartbreak was enough to drive him mad.
Carly was gone. There was nothing more he could do. Even though his brother would be home, he needed the comfort of his own space in which to grieve.
He looked down at the ground two stories below, and when he peered back up for one last glimpse of his beloved, his brows lifted in surprise and his dark eyes grew to the size of poker chips.
Carly was dead, but she wasn’t gone! There were two Carlys. One lay prone on the bed where the doctor and nurses worked on her but somehow, the second Carly was standing on the other side of the window smiling at him.
