Chapter 1

• He visited again that night.
• I didn't know who he was, or why he really did. Just that he came...
• To do wicked things to me.
• Like wisps of air, his fingers glided over my heated skin until I started to feel a throb between my legs. He bent with deliberate slowness, his broad shoulders shielding the faint moonlight pouring into my cramped room.
• A dark and menacing air surrounded him, but that did nothing to tamp the desire turning my blood to liquid fire.
• His large hand slid beneath my shirt.
• My hips shot off the bed when he rolled a nipple between rough fingers and I pressed the back of my palm to my mouth, subduing my moan.
• I wasn't to make a sound. It was an unspoken rule, and I obeyed it because for one thing, I was scared he might go away. And for the other, I didn't want mum marching down to my room, her signature look of anger stamped on her face as she looked at me.
• I've disappointed her enough. I couldn't bear to add more to the ever-growing pile.
• Like a whisper I felt his hot breath dance along the skin of my neck, making my nerve ends sizzle to life. The masculine hand on my chest slid lower.
• With every inch of my skin he touched, my breathing increased until my erratic pants were all I could hear.
• He fingered the waistband of my shorts.
• My core throbbed harder and I fought to still my hips from moving. He would not give me my release if I so desperately wanted it.
• He opened his mouth over my neck and hot desire sizzled down to my core. I grew damp. When his fangs grazed my neck, I lost it.
• Short moans tore out of me and I bucked into the hand on the waistband of my shorts. "Please..." my voice was a loud whimper in the quiet room.
• Suddenly, like a candle, he flickered away, leaving me shrouded in complete darkness, cold, alone.
• As if he had never been.
• __
• I awoke with a gasp, my heartbeat pounding in my ears. I whipped my head around the bright room. "Shit," I breathed out, my hand going to my chest. Behind it, my heart raced wildly. "Shit," I whispered. "All a dream."
• All a dream, I'd said. But for the life of me, I couldn't remember what it was I'd dreamt about.
• It didn't register to me something had been ringing in my ears until it stopped. My heart seized. Slowly I turned toward the alarm clock on the worn headboard. 7:50 am stared back at me.
• "Shit." Was all I said before I went springing out of bed. I was a stumbling mess. I hopped free of the sheets that had tangled around my legs, furiously tucking my red hair behind my ear as I leaned over to slam a hand down on the alarm.
• Silence filled my ears. I tried to calm my breathing, stepping out of the sheets slowly. Any moment now Charlotte would c--
• The door flung open and Charlotte's flushed face pushed into my line of vision. "Eleanor. Marie. Johnson! In case you didn't notice"--she thrust her wristwatch at me--"Lectures start in about ten minutes."
• Instead, I replied, "How do you keep getting in?"
• Her right eye twitched.
• I bundled into the shower. Once the first spray of water hit me, I released a sigh, feeling the knots in my muscles loosen.
• For a brief moment, I tried to dredge up a memory from my dream. Why I bothered, I didn't know. Could be because I was always left with the most unsettling mixture of excitement, want, and... fear.
• The memory was flitting, though. Just when I started to have an idea of what I'd dreamt, a feel; it flitted away from my grasp completely.
• I turned off the shower with a frustrated sigh, getting out to put on a pair of skinny jeans and a tank top.
• In front of the mirror, my blue eyes stared back at me as I wore a string of plastic beads around my neck, the only reminder of a former life. A former me.
• I took my medications, grabbed my bag, and headed out of the room with Charlotte in tow. The blue-haired girl was the only friend I'd made since coming here two years ago--much to the displeasure of mother. My eyes flickered from the piercings on Char's face to the full-sleeve tattoo on her arm. Yeah, that had given mum a seizure.
• I guess she was scared I would stray again.
• We broke out of the narrow hall and started for the staircase. The wooden floorboards creaked under our feet as we went down. A glaring reminder of the vampire invasion.
• I was some thirteen years old when, stamped on thousands of newspapers, pasted on large billboards and read out on TV by an anchor in a stuffy suit, was the news that there was a new world order. One governed by a deadly, immortal species we'd all thought was a myth.
• We saw our lives change, our lands, businesses, schools, corporations, everything we knew; thrust under the iron rule of the vampires. I and my mum, particularly, had lived in a luxurious mansion in England. She'd purchased it using money from her once-successful hotel business.
• And in our bright, sweet-smelling glass house, I used to spend hours painting, or stringing up rows upon rows of colourful beads...
• It was all different now.
• The only thing that wasn't?
• My past. Sweet Eleanor, who wasn't capable of hurting a fly, even to save her life; had done something utterly incorrigible.
• Noise from the living room hit my ears before I reached the landing. On entering the room, I saw the television was left on.
• My eyes roved the small space before they landed on mum. She had fallen asleep watching a soap opera.
• So unlike her.
• I was reminded of how much she'd changed since the Invasion. Where once she'd been confident, assertive, determined and practical, she now... wasn't.
• It was as if she had shed the skin of her former self, and in her place was someone who was paranoid, spiteful, constantly angry, and always watching over her shoulder for monsters both real and unreal.
• I didn't recognize her. But since what happened four years ago, she didn't recognize me either. So I guess we were on the same page.
• Char's impatient voice drew me out of my thoughts. "Come on, Ellie, we're late."
• Just as I turned, mum moved. She blinked repeatedly, her groggy eyes settling on me. They hardened.
• A moment passed before she asked, "Did you take your medications?"
• It was the one thing she seemed to really care about. "Yes," I replied.
• Her gaze briefly settled on Char before she looked away, saying nothing.
• We turned and went out the front door. Locking it behind me, I wondered, not for the first time, how Char kept getting in, because mum would never open up for her.
• I didn't know what she thought of that, what she thought of mum. She never complained when mum ignored her knocks on the front door, didn't bat an eye when she left a scathing side-remark about the colour of her hair or her tattoos.
• I wondered if that said a bit about her, or about her background. If she'd experienced something similar growing up, or just had a lot of self-restraint. I found myself wondering what her life was like before the Invasion. She never told me, I never told her mine. We weren't that close.
• I didn't think I'd ever be really close to someone again.