Eliza Ford: Cause of Death: Unnatural

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Nick was a good guy, Em thought, but not so good he wouldn't fall for her big eyes, a few well timed sighs and her fluttering lashes. She didn't even have tug at his hand all that hard when she dragged him over her doorstep and into her bedroom.

Her dress was off before either of them knew it, and soon Nick was in nothing but his socks too. He kissed her hungrily, she pulled him down onto the bed and they wrapped themselves around each other.

Em was close to tears. Everything that had been going on recently had upset her more than she liked to admit. She wasn't used to feeling so out of control and she certainly hadn't liked Jarek turning up to remind of her the contrasts between this life and her old one. A beautiful afternoon watching Nick play with his family had just about topped it off. She was a wreck. She felt a little guilty using Nick for sex just to cheer herself up, but...

That thought made her feel even sadder. As their bodies writhed around each other Em discovered she'd opened up her heart and was leaving little whispers of dark energy all over the place. Small clouds of energy clung to their skin, to the sheets. Em pulled Nick into her and held on to him fiercely.

"Em, babe," Nick whispered. "I've never felt this close to you before."

And finally, there it was. Laid bare willingly in front of her. Nick's soul.

Em was astonished. Nick's soul was beautiful. In all her nine hundred years, she thought, she'd never seen a soul so beautiful. Then she realized why. All the souls she'd drained up til now had been taken forcibly from their owners, ripped apart in Em's hunger. She ate their fear, their despair and their horror. The only flavours she'd ever known.

You're a monster, Emilia, she told herself.

Nick's hands were on her face, brushing away her tears.

'What's the matter, babe?"

She kissed him and nuzzled into his neck. His throat. She realized she was lost. She was a creature of the dark, a member of the Family above and beyond everything else. How could she possibly have even dreamed of a normal life with Nick? How could she have imagined a life with children and laughter, and Sunday barbecues? And what the hell was she doing today, saving the life of his nephew like some guardian angel or a fairy-godmother? She was a monster - the daughter of one of the oldest and cruellest monsters alive.

Who had himself loved a human woman.

Em sighed. Life was never easy, even for the immortal. Is this what being human was all about? Doubt and confusion.

"Babe?" said Nick.

Em reached out for Nick's soul. She wrapped it slowly and carefully in a thin veil of her own dark energy. Nick shivered a moment.

"Nothing," she said soothingly. "Nothing's the matter. Everything's fine."

Nick stared at her and smiled, and Em looked deep into his eyes and loved his simplicity. How trusting he was, how confident, how ... loving. Feeling like a bitch she allowed the veil of energy to become thicker, stronger. She felt Nick's soul begin to flutter against the edges of the embrace she'd wrapped it in and she tilted her head back as the feeling spread like butterflies through her chest and down into her belly.

Nick cuddled her closer and shivered again.

She wasn't sure why she was doing this. When she'd chosen to live amongst humans she'd also realized she didn't have to take souls to sustain her own life. She did though, from murderers, drug dealers, pimps and rapists, the lowlifes she met around the city who had never deserved a soul in the first place. Had she drunk too much hatred and filth lately? Was it rubbing off on her?

But here was Nick's soul still open and trusting, and pulsing gently against the walls of dark energy she'd built around it. She was so, so tempted to tear that soul away and gorge herself on it and enjoy the goodness she knew she'd find in it. Could she do that? Could she do that to Nick?

She looked at his face and the kindness that glowed out of it. No, she decided, of course she wouldn't do that to Nick. She loved him. What a mess she was in. She was more rattled by this headache and Alina's mystery killer than she thought. She was losing her grip.

She smiled at him and he kissed her, and she couldn't help herself. She slipped.

It was divine. Nick's soul was a million times deeper than fear, sweet in a way that revenge could never be, richer and fuller than hatred, more luscious than any horror she'd ever known. So this was what love tasted like. She couldn't stop herself. She drank and tugged hard at Nick's soul, pulling it into her.

Suddenly Nick stiffened in her arms. His body straightened out in a rictus of pain, he moaned low and frightened, and in her mind his soul suddenly screamed in fear.

The sudden taste of fear in her mouth was hideous. That old flavour she'd grown up with suddenly tasted like ash. What had she done?

She sprang away from Nick, letting both his mind and his soul fall back into his body.

'I'm sorry," she said, without thinking. "I'm sorry, babe. I was never going to hurt you. Are you okay?"

His body relaxed, and he sucked in a lungful of air, then curled onto his side like a baby. When he looked at her, it was with fear still in his eyes.

"What was that?" he said, his voice hoarse and low. And then a horrified realisation dawned in his eyes. "You're sorry? What does that mean... You did that?" He sucked in the air in big petrified gulps. His fear was physical, heaving at his chest. "What did you do?" He looked at her like he didn't know her. He looked at her like she was a monster.

Em hated herself.

She reached out a hand to touch his arm and he jerked his body away retreating to his side of the bed in a panic of movement.

She stretched out her mind again, letting her dark energy uncoil a little less subtly than before. She could clean this up, she thought. She jumped into people's minds all the time and rewired things to suit her. She could do it now. She could make Nick forget this.

He was rolling over to get away from her and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Her mental energy hit him like a wall and he stopped moving and sat staring at the window on the opposite side of the room.

Inside his mind she smoothed out some memories. She gathered up the fierce bundle of anger, fear and disgust that had formed at the front of his thoughts and gently massaged them until they subsided into confusion.

"Honey," she said softly, projecting all the calmness should could into her voice. "Everything's fine. Come back to bed."

She could feel his emotions beginning to yield, his mind beginning to listen to hers again. Now he was open to her once more she could rewrite the story the way she wanted it to go. His mind became easier to shape.

The tension went out of his back. His shoulders slumped and his breathing slowed. With a sigh he turned his head back to her and slowly laid back down on the bed.

She reached out to touch him, and with a few more mental nudges she made him want her again. He grabbed for her and began kissing her greedily, almost violently. She decided she didn't mind at all. She had him now.

She relaxed her hold on his mind just a little and stretched out in the bed, her arms above her head, her body rising to his heat.

She let go.

He kissed her for a moment longer and then she felt something snap back into place inside his mind.

Shit.

"Em," he said, his voice low with horror again. "What are you?"

She threw Nick out after that. She'd been on the verge of saying something dumb, revealing her true nature, but as she opened her mouth to explain she'd realized there wasn't anything she could say that made any sense. "I'm sorry darling, but I'm actually a thousand year old vampire halfling and I just needed a snack" wasn't going to go down very well. She'd stuffed up, and she knew it.