No. I won’t. Just let me die. Just cut me into pieces and place me in jars around the world.

“Okay, you’re clean.” Emily held her wrist in front of my lips. “No more excuses—bite.”

“Em?” I pulled away.

“Ara, you need blood. Bite.”

“Emily, don’t you know? My bite can kill you.”

“No, it won’t. I’m immune.”

“How—how can you be immune?”

“Because I’ve been drinking Mike’s blood, Ara, it gives me immunity to your venom, too.”

“Only as long as you keep drinking it,” Morgaine added.

“Well—” Emily chuckled once, “I’m pretty sure I’ll be covered, then. I’m the one refusing him lately.”

“What? I thought Mike hated blood?” I said.

Emily smiled. “Yeah, but it’s funny what a case of vampirism can do to change your outlook.”

“Oh, right.” I folded my arms, closing my eyes.

“Yeah. It’s pretty cool really,” Emily said. “Well, it is now—wasn’t a few weeks ago though.”

I frowned, not wanting to but unable to resist asking “Why?”

Morg and Emily laughed, a kinship showing between them that seemed ages old. “So, it was, like, the day Eric came to see us—told us about you being kidnapped—”

“Eric told you?” I cut in, still feeling his cold, tight hands blocking the passage of air to my throat.

“Yeah.”

“But...but he was helping Jason.”

“We know, Ara. Eric’s on our side,” Emily said. “We sent him back to the castle to find out your location.”

“That’s why he was there?”

“Well, there were a number of reasons, but that was why we had him there.”

“So anyway,” Emily continued, “when Mike found out what happened to you and David, he asked me to change him into a vampire—so he could rescue you.”

Emily and Morgaine laughed again. The sound warmed the room.

“I don’t know the exact method, so I just followed what Jason did to me. You should’ve seen the look on his face when nothing happened.” Emily folded her arms and smiled at nothing.

“Did he get sick? Or go into a coma?”

“Nope. Nothing. Didn’t even feel the sting of venom, or a numbing sensation.”

“Why? He’s like me. How can he have escaped a coma?”

“When you were bitten for the first time, you had no immunity. See, a created vampire gets stronger from the first bite, blood or none,” Morgaine said, “but a born Lilithian is only as strong as the accumulation of blood in her lifetime.”

“So, if I’d been drinking more blood, I wouldn’t have gone into a coma?”

“No,” Emily said. “It takes only a week of blood to build immunity—”

“And only a week to lose it,” Morgaine added

“The more blood you have, Ara, the stronger you’ll get.” Emily smiled and offered me her arm again.

“But I’m not strong.” I turned my head, pushing Emily’s arm away. “I’m pathetic and weak; I couldn’t even try to escape when he gave me the chance.”

“He gave you a chance to escape?” Emily gasped.

“No, he just—” I shut my mouth and crossed my arms. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

They went quiet; probably exchanging glances of concern. They all want to know what happened, but as long as I keep it inside, it’s not real. None of it will be real. Not Jason’s betrayal, not David, not immortality and not what happened to me, either.

“Ara.” Emily rolled the taps off and wrapped a towel around my shoulders. “I need you to drink blood, okay. Or I will have to pin you down and force it in, and I—”

“Don’t!” Eric appeared behind Morgaine. “What ever you do—don’t do that.”

“Eric? That was quick.” Emily moved as Morgaine stood up.

“I know.” He stared back at me, his eyes wide, face pale, then squatted beside the shower and untucked my hand from the towel—holding it gently; “Amara, please. Drink blood.”

“I can’t, Eric.” My eyes watered, looking into his. “I can’t. I don’t want to be a vampire. I just wanna go home—to my dad’s, back to normal life.”

“But Amara, my beautiful, most dear friend, you are a vampire. And you must drink blood, or you will wither away. I don’t want you to suffer any more than you already have.”

The care and concern masked behind his liquid eyes forced me to hold a breath. There was a connection between us now; a secret connection—forged by a journey that only he and I shared. Things would never be the same between us again. We both watched the story unfold in each other’s eyes, torn and tearless on the outside, destroyed and pleading for mercy inside.

“Please drink. If for nothing else in the world but to do it for me, please. Just, drink blood, Amara.”

“Yeah—” Morgaine stepped in, “—then I’ll tell you how to save the Immortal Damned.”

“Is there really a way?” I looked past Eric. “Or are you just lying to me to make me want to live?”

“Would it make you want to live?” she asked.

I don’t know. Perhaps. More than I do right now. I nodded slowly.

“Amara?” Eric smoothed his hand down my face and rested it on my shoulder. “I’m going to carry you, okay?”

I nodded. Eric scooped me out of the shower and swiftly glided along the floor until we reached my bedroom, then placed me gently on my feet. I clutched my towel to my chest as the familiar, enveloping scent of my room struck me with a harsh internal blow.

I can still smell him here. I was supposed to be gone, on a plane to Paris, coming back here only when I was immortal—immortal with David.

Now, I’m here, I’m immortal, but I don’t have him.

The bed—it looked just the same as the way we left it when we woke the morning before our wedding and made it with fresh sheets, cleaning away the blood from the night before.

If I’d known, on that last night together, when he held me so close, touching every inch of my body with widespread fingers, memorising my human skin, kissing my beating heart, feeling the warmth that would soon belong to immortality, that that memory would be our last, for eternity, I’d have savoured so much more.