Embrace the Night

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"Nothing's happened to me," he had replied. "This is what I am."

He had bared his teeth and she had seen his fangs, sharp and white and deadly… And the unearthly red glow in his eyes.

"Now will you go?" he had growled, and she had replied, "No, Gabriel, I'll not leave you again."

He had been in pain, needing nourishment, needing blood, and she had offered him hers, but he had refused, begging her to go away. And she had, but only for a moment. She had gone upstairs, found a sliver of glass, and slit her wrist. He hadn't wanted to take it; she had seen the horror struggling against the hunger, and she had pressed her bleeding flesh to his lips. With a low growl of despair, his mouth had locked on her arm…

Sarah gasped as a sudden heat pooled in her right wrist, and with it, the sense of someone sucking her flesh, drinking her blood. It was a strangely sensual feeling.

"I must have loved him a great deal to do such a thing," Sarah murmured, unaware that she had said "I" instead of "she."

She sipped the chocolate, oblivious to the fact that it had grown cool.

Gabriel. He had been the loneliest man she had ever known, doomed to live in the shadows of life, to dwell on the edges of humanity, always alone, forever in darkness. And she had been his light…

She wandered aimlessly through the house, then went back into the parlor and sat down on the sofa again, the blanket wrapped around her, her mind in turmoil as she tried to accept the fact that she had lived before, that she had willingly given up all hope of motherhood, of a normal life, to be with a vampire.

Chapter Six

He stood on the balcony, his hands braced on the wrought-iron rail, watching the dark clouds tumble across the sky. It was going to rain. He could smell the moisture in the air, hear the distant sound of thunder as the storm drew closer.

It was a night that suited his mood perfectly—dark and restless.
He had lost her and found her and lost her again.

He cursed viciously for not forcing the Dark Gift upon her. She might have despised him for it, but she would have been his. Forever his. He wouldn't have to watch her grow old and die a second time…

Three weeks had passed since he had gone to her house. Ten days since he had last fed. Without her, he'd lost the will to go on, but the hunger burned bright within him, sharp as a Spanish dagger, as constant as the sun. He could feel his body weakening, feel his mind growing dim. But it didn't matter. Nothing mattered. And tomorrow it would all be over.

He wondered dispassionately how long it would take for him to die, if his body would burst into flame at the first fiery touch of the midday sun, or if he would writhe in agony like a worm on a hot rock. And what of his soul, if he still had one? Would it find rest at last? Or would it burn forever in the inferno of an