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  And what had she meant…that she hadn’t saved me from herself?

  I opened my mouth, angry enough to ask her to explain her cryptic statement—she had no right to talk to me like that, and I wasn’t going to stand for it—when the corners of her mouth turned upward, and she leaned toward me.

  She didn’t say anything. Only bent her gorgeous head and brushed her lips against the skin of my neck.

  She was so cold, her mouth freezing against me. But then the coldness of her skin disappeared in an intense moment of heat as pain blossomed on my neck where her mouth touched me. It was like a bee sting, but worse, how crystalline and sharp that sensation was against sensitive skin.

  I opened my mouth; I tensed my muscles to take a single step back. But I blinked. And like the average person, my blinks are instantaneous. But from one quarter of a second to the next, in that tiny flutter of time that my eyes were closed…

  The woman disappeared.

  Elle absolutely disappeared. Vanished into nothingness.

  I breathed out slowly, realizing I was shaking. I lifted my hand to my neck, wiping my cold fingers over my skin, surprised that there was a touch of warmth against my fingertips. I brought my hand away from my neck, looked down.

  There was a single drop of blood on my nail.

  I opened and shut my mouth. I walked slowly and stiffly to the mouth of the alleyway, glancing up and down the street.

  There was no one there.

  The woman had vanished into the night like a shadow, like a dream.

  Elle was gone.

  Chapter 2: Marked

  I went straight home and called the cops.

  Let me tell you, explaining inexplicable things to cops at three o’clock in the morning when you’re tipsy and in a state of shock is a little bit difficult—to put it mildly. I mean, the cops believed my story about the four guys stalking me down the alleyway. But as I opened my mouth to tell them about the woman and the steel girders, I realized that they were going to think I was nuts and immediately dismiss my case.

  So I ended up elaborating on the truth: I told the police that the four guys who had come after me had gotten startled in the middle of the attack and had left me in the alleyway because they didn’t want to get caught. The cop on the phone took my statement, and then he told me that he'd call if any suspects turned up.

  But I think both he and I knew that no one was going to turn up. Because nothing had really happened to me. I was a little sore from being manhandled, but to be honest, I was sorer in the hips from where Elle had gripped me, digging her fingernails into my startled flesh.

  When I stepped into the bathroom for the longest, hottest, most necessary shower of my life, I peeled off my t-shirt and bra, jeans and panties and stared at my naked reflection in the mirror.

  My skin was already well on its way to displaying the side effects of my evening: ugly colors blossomed under my skin, brown and dark blue. It looked like I’d be bruised pretty badly.

  I sighed for a long time, staring critically at myself in the mirror under the fluorescent lights of the bathroom fixtures. My eyes were wide, I had a bruise under my jaw, my thick brown hair was tangled and made me look even paler with its halo of frizz around my head, and—to be perfectly frank—I looked scared senseless, battered, and pretty darn confused.

  I was trying to figure out what, exactly, had just happened.

  And I couldn’t put all of the pieces together into any order or shape that made any sense to me.

  I leaned forward, and my reflection screwed up its eyebrows as I frowned and touched a tender place on my neck, poking at the two tiny wounds there. Two small cuts, right where Elle kissed me. The little wounds were already sealed, but I’d seen the drop of blood on my finger.

  Elle had drawn blood.

  I shivered as I remembered the teeth of those men, but I hadn’t noticed whether her teeth were sharp, too. And that’s something that’s kind of hard to miss. I poked at the punctures in my neck gingerly and made a little hissing sound that turned into a small moan of pain. They were tiny, those wounds, but they hurt terribly.

  How had she made them? She was kissing me when I’d noticed the pain.

  And, well, you know what the wounds really looked like? They looked exactly like...

  I gripped the edge of the sink and stared at my reflection in the mirror with wide eyes and an open mouth.

  I couldn’t believe I was even thinking it, but there it was, staring back at me, in living, breath color:

  I looked as if I’d been bitten by a vampire.

  God. What? Really? Did I really have such an asinine thought? A vampire? This wasn’t a cheesy television show with big-busted actresses and a low budget. This was my life. And my life involved girlfriends who broke up with me for stupid guys; a terminally boring job; and deciding which movie to rent from the little video rental place across the street.

  My life didn’t involve vampires. It was such a stupid, ridiculous idea that I almost started laughing. But then I caught my eye in the mirror.

  There was a flicker of doubt there.

  Okay—obviously the breakup with Josie was affecting me more than I had thought possible. Was I seriously considering the possibility that vampires had attacked me on my way home from the bar? And that another vampire had saved me?

  I exhaled a long sigh and shook my head at myself in the mirror. I needed to sleep the booze off, because I needed to get up early to go to work. These were solid facts. I could deal with solid facts.

  I flicked off the bathroom light and dove into my wrinkled pajama bottoms and tank top slung over the bottom of the mattress. I switched off my bedside lamp and lay down on top of the covers, because no matter how chilly it was outdoors, it was always warm in my apartment building.

  I took another deep breath, staring up at the ceiling, folding my hands and placing them over my stomach. My pulse was racing through me something fierce, and every time I closed my eyes…

  Well—

  I kept seeing her.

  It was crazy. I didn’t even know her last name. Just Elle. Her name was Elle, and she had saved my life. And she had dug her fingers into my hips until they bruised.

  And she had kissed me.

  I turned over onto my side with another long sigh and a deep frown as I felt my fingers drift up to my neck. The tiny pinprick wounds there were throbbing, and it was difficult to get comfortable.

  I knew her name…but she didn’t know mine.

  I fell asleep thinking about her lips pressed against my neck, her mouth open and cold, her tongue tracing a path along the curve of my skin.

  So it’s no surprise, of course, that I dreamed about her.

  ---

  It started out as one of those nonsensical dreams. Ashley and Kara and Ben and a bunch of other work buddies were out drinking with me at Blue Wave, the martini bar a few blocks away from work.

  It was just like any regular Friday night gathering, except that I was naked and everybody else was wearing fancy suits.

  I actually have this dream a lot, which I guess is kind of cliché, but there it is: when I’m stressed out, I dream that I’m naked in front of the people I'd be most humiliated to be naked in front of. In college, it was always Mr. Tinner, my humorless Calculus professor, who saw me au naturale. Now it’s co-workers. I have this dream at least once a week, so I always know exactly how it’s going to go.

  And that it’s going to be pretty terrible.

  So I’m at Blue Wave, standing with my work friends in a close knot when I suddenly realize that I’m naked. Instant panic sets in. Apparently no one else has noticed yet, but it’s only a matter of time before they, too, realize that I’m naked, and then disgusted looks will transform their faces, their mouths opened wide. I’ll get into so much trouble—maybe I’ll be arrested for public indecency (even in a dream, this is how my mind works)—and I’ll lose my job.

  The worst part is that most of the time that I have this dream, even though I kn
ow how it’s supposed to go, what’s supposed to happen, I don’t know how I know. I never realize that I'm caught up in a dream. It feels too real, like the worst kind of nightmare, and I know it’s going to be awful, and I think it’s really happening.

  I think it’s real life. That these judgments are real. That they are happening to me right now.

  My co-workers still haven’t recognized that I’m naked, and there’s a slight pause in the conversation. That slight pause is all I need. I make some sort of an excuse, stumbling over the words, spilling some of my martini, and then I turn and race toward the restroom.

  I’m getting weird looks from the bartenders and from the other bargoers who are clustered in groups and around the tables. They know something’s wrong with me, but they don’t know what that something is quite yet. They’re about to recognize my nudity; I have to get to the restroom fast. I don’t know what I’ll be able to do in the restroom to save myself from the humiliating sequence of events that I’m certain is going to begin at any minute…but I just know that I have to get in there ASAP.

  And I do. I reach the restroom. While I still think this is real, there's something in the back of my head that’s telling me that it’s a dream...and that there is something very wrong. Because in every single one of these nightmares, it’s on the way to the restroom that everyone realizes I’m naked. I never go into the restroom. Not ever. An entire lifetime of these dreams, and they always play out in the exact same way. I don’t reach the restroom. Someone is blocking the hallway or doorway. And that’s when the jeering starts, because, all at once, everyone realizes that I’m not wearing any clothes, and it’s apparently the most scandalizing, repulsive, hilarious sight they’ve ever seen.

  But…not today.

  I stand, perplexed and in shock, inside of the bar bathroom. Blue Wave’s bathroom is pretty well lit, with big fishbowl-styled sconces over the fixtures that curve down from the ceiling. So when I turn and take in my appearance in the long line of mirrors on the wall, I can see my reflection in spectacularly illuminated detail.

  I can see the fact that, yes, I’m totally naked.

  I can also see that I’m not alone.

  She’s here. At the far end of the room, she’s here.

  Elle.

  She’s dressed in black slacks and a shimmery white blouse, with large diamond post earrings and a sparkling Swarovski crystalline belt at her waist. She’s wearing insanely tall black pumps. Her dirty blonde hair is pinned up on top of her head in a carefully controlled, messy up-do with tendrils of hair that sweep down to curls around the cream-colored skin of her neck. And though she’s beautiful and perfect, every last strand of her hair in place or very purposefully not in place, every inch of her put together in a way that seems supernatural, unreal…she seems to be having trouble with her lipstick.

  But—wait.

  It’s not lipstick, I realize in one ice-cold moment.

  It’s blood leaking past her lips, running along the side of her chin.

  Blood.

  She’s not looking at me. She’s leaning forward at the waist, gazing at her reflection in the mirror, and she has her left palm placed against the glass as she reaches up with her other hand and sensually, slowly curves her finger upon her chin, wiping off the stream of blood.

  She places that finger in her mouth, then, licking off the blood slowly, methodically, as she closes her eyes and breathes out with a soft sigh of satisfaction.

  I’ve never seen anyone move with such sensuality before.

  Her full lips are bloody. And I should be disgusted by that fact. But all I notice is the way her eyes roll up a little into the back of her head when she licks her fingertip. All I notice is the movement of her tongue and the slow, graceful curve of her body as she straightens.

  Her long lashes flick open, and she glances at me in the mirror.

  Her eyes are such a deep, dark brown that they seem to swallow me. I gasp for breath, because suddenly she’s pushing off the mirror, and she’s taking long, loping strides, aiming toward me.

  But...no. She’s not pointed toward me. She’s stalking after the door behind me, like she doesn’t even see me here.

  She brushes past, her side colliding with my side, her hip with my hip, her shoulder with my shoulder. It’s a hard shove, but I hardly notice it. I only notice that, as she moves past me, my body seems to follow hers. I’m not even thinking about it, but my entire body turns to face her, like a rose turns to face the sun.

  There is a longing so deeply buried inside of me that I don’t even feel it at first, and I can't put a name to it. But when she’s through the bathroom door, when she's leaving my line of sight, I know what it is: I need to follow her. Raw need has filled me up, and it’s her that I need. I want her. I need her. It’s the same sensation you get when you’re so thirsty and there’s no water and no possibility of getting water, and you wonder, if only for a heartbeat, if you’ll ever not be thirsty again. Or hungry. Or exhausted. You need water and food and sleep on such a fundamental, biological level.

  That’s how I need her.

  I push through the swinging restroom door, and I’m out in Blue Wave again. I’m still naked. But I no longer care if my co-workers see me. I need to find her. I need to speak with her. I need to grab her hips with the same wild want that she took mine, curling my fingers into her skin. I need to press her body against mine. And I need to kiss her.

  I didn’t know that I needed this. Something just…woke up inside of me. Something that I can’t control, that is so desperate, so hungry, that there’s an ache inside of me as strong and as ever-pulsing as my blood.

  I wander through Blue Wave, but I don’t see her, can't find her. People converse together; there’s laughter, the clink of glass… Everything’s normal, like any other night out with my co-workers, but it’s not normal, perhaps was never normal.

  I need to find her.

  It’s not until I’m standing right in front of the bar that I see it. It’s not until I’m staring at my reflection in the glass wall behind the bar that I see what’s happened…

  The two tiny pinprick wounds in my neck? They’re so much bigger now. And they're wide open. And blood is pouring down my neck in rivulets, dark red under the low lights of the bar, shimmering over my skin like red satin.

  She approaches me from behind. I can see her reflection in the mirror.

  I have an odd thought when I stare at her, at her smiling mouth, at the wickedly sharp teeth she reveals when she opens her lips…

  I shouldn’t be able to see her in the mirror. Right? This must be a dream, because you can’t see a vampire’s reflection in a mirror.

  Dream logic. I’m using dream logic to try and explain away the fact that I’m staring at a vampire. And, as everyone knows, vampires don’t exist. So this must be a dream. Obviously.

  But it doesn’t feel like a dream as she presses her cold mouth to my neck, her full lips pressing over the wound that she made herself. It doesn’t feel like a dream as she traces her tongue over the wound, as she licks up the blood from the wound with a small, satisfied moan.

  She glances up at my reflection in the mirror and smiles as a single drop of blood makes its way past her lips and drips over her chin.

  She reaches up with her other hand and sensually, slowly curves her finger upon her chin, wiping off the stream of blood.

  She places that finger in her mouth, then, licking off the blood slowly, methodically, as she closes her eyes and breathes out with a soft sigh of satisfaction.

  The moment earlier in the bathroom and this moment, here and now, seem to merge instantaneously, and I tilt my neck back, offering up my wound, my blood to her so that she can drink. My co-workers gather around us in a small circle, staring in horror, but I don’t care about them.

  Elle, the woman who saved my life, has her arms around me as she kisses my neck, drinking hot, red blood from me as if this is the most natural way for the two of us to interact.

  And I do
n’t want her to stop, I realize. I want to stay in this moment, her arms wrapped around me, her cold body against me, every inch of her melting into me. I want to stay right here.

  She’s everything I’ve ever wanted or needed. I know that now.

  A thrill runs through me, unfurling like a blossom somewhere deep inside of me.

  “Cassandra,” she whispers into my ear, her voice deep and rich and velvet.

  She does know my name.

  ---

  When I finally managed to wake up, sleep so heavy in my eyes and head that I wondered if I’d ever feel rested again, I realized that somehow—impossibly—I’d overslept my alarm. It was still going off, the insistent buzzing sound so loud and jarring that I have no idea how I didn’t hear it, even if I was deep in dreams. I groggily clunked my hand against the top of the alarm clock and managed to switch it off with a sigh before I glanced at the clock face itself.

  Oh, shit.

  I tumbled out of bed and dashed to the bathroom, going through my routines at top speed.

  I was over an hour late in waking. Which meant that I had to be at work in twenty minutes.

  There was no way, of course, that I was going to make it, since I’d overslept the bus and the subway, and I was so out of luck. I groaned at my reflection in the mirror and then was about to turn away, about to flick off the bathroom light when I paused.

  Because the tiny wounds that had been on my neck from last night…they looked strangely dark in the light of the bathroom. I leaned forward at the waist over the bathroom sink, looking closer at the marks on my skin.

  I wiped a finger over them, and my fingertip came away red.

  Blood. The wounds were leaking blood.

  Well. That wasn’t good.

  I stared at my fingertips, feeling my breath start to come a little faster, unable, really, to take a deep breath. I was beginning to panic.