Melissa Darnell - Covet

A loud squeak made me hold the phone away from my ear. What the heck?

“Michelle? Are you still there?” I asked, wondering if her phone had died.

“Yep! I’m here,” she breathed.

Okay. “I know it’s weird for me to call you like this, but I was hoping you could do me a huge favor. Do you know Savannah’s new address? I need to talk to her father.”

“Say no more,” she said, her voice rising with each word. “I always thought you two would make the perfect couple.”

That made two of us.

“They bought that old haunted house across the tracks from the Tomato Bowl. You know, the green-and-white Victorian?”

“Yeah, I know the one you’re talking about.” I was already headed down the ramp to my truck in the back parking lot. “Thanks, Michelle.”

“You know, Savannah’s been really sad this week. Everyone says it’s because you two were secretly dating and then broke up, but she won’t talk about it at all. Did you dump her?”

“No. It was the other way around actually.”

Silence. Finally she said, “Well, I hope you get back together.”

“I’m sure trying.”

“Good luck!”

I thanked her, then ended the call, got in my truck and headed across town, trying to plan what in the world I could possibly say to convince her dad to turn me when I couldn’t even convince his daughter.

At the house, I parked by the curb, turned off the engine, then sat for a few minutes listening to the ticking of my truck’s engine as it cooled down.

Was I doing the right thing? Or should I do what everyone else wanted and let her go?

I closed my eyes, and as always Savannah’s face was right there in my mind waiting for me. I had a thousand memories of her…as a sweet little girl with flowers in her hair giving me the softest of kisses on the playground in the fourth grade… dressed as a breathtaking angel dancing barefoot with me in the leaves outside this year’s masq ball.... She feared she would lose control and kill me, but all I knew was the innocent, loving side of her. Everyone wanted me to see her as some kind of monster. But I didn’t know how to do that.

I couldn’t give up on her. Not yet. Not if there was one last shot at making everything right again.

I got out of my truck and walked across the front yard, still clueless as to what the heck I would say to her dad. The front porch creaked as I stepped onto it. I paused, my pulse pounding. Was I nervous about the creepy house, or talking to her dad?

Both, I decided, but kept going anyway. The loud whine of a saw started somewhere deep inside the house, and I froze at the front door. A chain saw? Oh man, this was like every horror movie I’d ever seen come straight to life. Still, I went ahead and knocked. A vampire would hear me even over the saw.

The noise stopped, and too soon, the door opened.

The only time I’d seen Savannah’s father was on the return trip from the vamp council’s headquarters in Paris. Mr. Colbert had appeared every inch the vampire then in a polished suit, his emotionless face set like carved marble.

Tonight, he wore a button-up shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, and jeans, both covered in dirt and sawdust. He seemed nothing more than an average guy hard at work on his house.

And I’d come to ask him to turn me into a vampire.

Mr. Colbert didn’t seem surprised that I was there. But he didn’t invite me inside, either. “Hello again, Tristan. How may I help you this evening? Savannah is not home.”

“I know that, sir. That’s why I’m here now. I need your help.”

He stared at me, unmoving. I’d hoped we could have this talk inside. Not that it would have been any easier there. I cleared my throat.

“I love Savannah. And this isn’t some teenage hormone thing, either. I’ve loved her since we were kids. I’ve never felt anything even close to this with anyone else. And I know she loves me, too.”

My heart pounded harder. It didn’t help that he could probably hear it. My hands turned hot and damp. I shoved them inside my front jeans pockets.

“You know the promises she has made.” He wasn’t asking me.

I nodded anyway. “The council and the Clann are afraid she’ll kill me and break the treaty. Savannah’s afraid of that, too. But I think there’s another option.”

A single thick black eyebrow rose in silent question. The way he was able to stand so still was more than a little unnerving.

If I was successful tonight, would I be able to freeze like that, too?

“You could make me a vampire.”

Seconds ticked by. A breeze kicked up, making the trees rustle behind me. The wind wasn’t strong enough to dry the sweat running down my back, though.

Finally, Mr. Colbert stepped away from the door. “Come inside.”

Was that his way of agreeing to turn me?

Heart racing, I entered the house, my every step making the hardwood floors creak and groan. He shut the door behind me then led the way to a dark maroon leather couch in the room to the right. Sawdust made the floor slippery and the air smell like pine, and tools lay all over the place.

He gestured toward the couch, and we sat at opposite ends, angled to face each other.

As soon as I was seated, he asked, “You are really willing to give up your humanity for my daughter?”

I didn’t hesitate. At least this much I was sure about. “Yes, sir.”

He studied my face. “You seem confident. But perhaps that is because you do not know what being a vampire is truly like. Shall I tell you?”

Less sure I wanted to hear this, I forced a nod. Might as well find out the gory details of what I was getting into. Though part of me would rather find out later once I was turned and couldn’t be tempted to chicken out.

“We vampires are an evolved species,” he began. “Things that were once dire problems, such as daylight, are no longer threats to us. It may seem that we are the perfect beings, able to walk among humans, appearing relatively normal, with only fire, staking or decapitation to worry about. We are immortals. No sickness will ever harm us, and we will never age past the point in life at which each of us is turned. We are able to read the minds of fellow vampires and humans, but not descendants. We gain great speed, strength and agility.”

He paused, letting silence fill the room so long I was forced to reply. “Doesn’t sound like being a vampire is all that tough so far.”

His silver gaze, a more intense version of Savannah’s, locked onto me. “Yes, it would seem so. But within hours of first awakening as a vampire, you feel a thirst that is like nothing you could ever imagine. It is the bloodlust clawing at your very insides, the craving for human blood, and any human’s blood will do. In the first few weeks, many vampires accidentally kill even their loved ones because of this blinding thirst.”

Okay, not so great to be a vamp in the beginning. “But it goes away, right?”

“The bloodlust lessens after a while. But it never completely goes away. And being around someone like yourself with such powerful, magic-laced blood in your veins presents special challenges. That power calls to even the oldest of vampires as strongly as if we have just been turned. Even at my age of over three hundred years, I find it difficult to be around a descendant for long.”

I shifted uneasily, making the couch creak. “But you can do it. I mean, you married Sav’s mom. And you were around a bunch of descendants in the woods a couple weeks ago and you were okay.”

His lips stretched into a cold smile. “With Savannah’s mother, I had the assistance of a charm her mother created for me—a spell that only Savannah’s grandmother knew, which dampened the bloodlust and made it bearable. And in the forest with the Clann, it is true that I managed not to attack anyone, but it was a great struggle not to. If I had been younger, I might not have had the control to stop myself.”