LITMIR.BIZ

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was worth a chance. It had to be. Everything in my heart told me that Lucas deserved another chance, and that we deserved another hope of being together.

      I traced a finger across Lucas’s face: his forehead, his cheekbone, and the outline of his lips. The heaviness and paleness of his body reminded me of a carving on a tombstone—fixed, unliving, unchanging.

      “It’s close,” Balthazar said. He came closer. “It’s time.”

      Ranulf nodded. “I sense it as well. You should step away, Bianca.”

      “I’m not letting go of him.”

      “Just be ready to move, then. If you have to.” Balthazar shifted his weight from one foot to the next, steadying his stance like a fighter preparing for battle.

      It’s going to be okay, Lucas, I thought, willing him to hear me past the divide between this world and the next. Wasn’t he about to cross that divide to return to me? So maybe we were close enough for him to listen. We’re dead, but we can still be together. Nothing matters more than that. We’re stronger than death. Now nothing else ever has to come between us. You and I never have to be apart again.

      I wanted him to believe that. I wanted to believe it, too.

      Lucas’s hand twitched.

      I gasped—a reflex of the body I’d created, more a memory of what shock did to a living being than anything else.

      “Be ready,” Balthazar said. He was talking to Ranulf, not to me.

      Shakily, I laid one hand upon Lucas’s chest. I realized only then that I was waiting for a heartbeat. His heart would never beat again.

      One of Lucas’s feet shifted slightly, and his head turned a couple inches to the side. “Lucas?” I whispered. He needed to understand that he wasn’t alone, before he realized anything else. “Can you hear me? It’s Bianca. I’m waiting for you.”

      He didn’t move.

      “I love you so much.” I wanted so badly to cry, but my ghostly body created no tears. “Please come back to me. Please.”

      The fingers of his right hand straightened, muscles tensing, then curled back in toward his palm.

      “Lucas, can you—”

      “No!” Lucas shoved himself away from the floor, from me, stumbling to all fours. His eyes were wild, too dazed to truly see. “No!”

      His back slammed against the wall. He stared at the three of us, his eyes displaying no recognition, no sanity. His hands pressed against the wall, fingers curved like claws, and I thought he might try to dig through it. Maybe it was a vampire instinct for digging your way out of a grave.

      “Lucas, it’s okay.” I held my hands out, doing my best to remain completely solid and opaque. It was better to look as familiar as possible. “We’re here with you.”

      “He doesn’t know you yet,” Balthazar said. “He’s looking at us, but he can’t see.”

      Ranulf added, “He wants only blood.”

      At the word blood, Lucas’s head tilted, like a predator catching the scent of prey. I realized that was the only word he’d recognized.

      The man I loved had been reduced to an animal—to a monster, I realized, the sick, empty, murderous shell that Lucas had once believed every vampire to be.

      Lucas’s eyes narrowed. He bared his teeth, and with a shock I saw, for the first time, his vampire fangs. They altered his face so much that I hardly knew him, and that more than anything else tore at me. His posture shifted into a crouch, and I realized he was about to attack—any of us, all of us. Anything that moved. Me.

      Balthazar moved first. He leaped—pounced—toward Lucas, colliding with him so forcefully that the wall behind them crunched and plaster dust fell from the ceiling. Lucas threw him off, but then Ranulf was on him in an attempt to push him into a corner.

      “What are you doing?” I cried. “Stop hurting him!”

      Balthazar shook his head as he rose from the floor. “This is the only thing he understands right now, Bianca. Dominance.”

      Lucas pushed Ranulf backward, so hard that he thudded against me, and I stumbled into the old projector. Sharp metal jabbed into my shoulder. I felt pain, real pain, the kind I’d experienced back when I had a real body instead of this ghostly simulation. When I put my hand to my shoulder, I felt a lukewarm wetness beneath my fingers and pulled them away to see blood—silvery and strange. I hadn’t even realized that I still had blood now. The liquid gleamed like mercury, almost iridescent in the dim light.

      The three-way fight in front of me was growing more violent—Balthazar’s foot to Lucas’s gut, Lucas’s fist to Ranulf’s jaw—but Balthazar saw that I was injured and shouted, “Bianca, stay back! You’re bleeding!”

      What was that supposed to mean? Surely vampires didn’t drink wraiths’ blood, so there was no danger of my driving Lucas further into a killing frenzy. At that moment, I wasn’t sure he could become more frenzied than he already was. Younger and weaker he might be, but desperation goaded him on, made him fierce. It was possible he might defeat Ranulf and Balthazar both. I couldn’t bear to see that, but I didn’t think I could stand the alternative either. My fear sharpened—and became anger.

      Enough of this.

      I pushed myself toward them, blood on my fingertips, and flung out my hand as I cried, “Stop!”

      Droplets of silvery blood spattered through the air as all three of the guys shrank back.

      At my side, Balthazar whispered, “Don’t get into this.”

      Ignoring him, I stepped directly in front of Lucas. He had backed against the wall, glancing around wildly as though he could think of nothing but escape—or, perhaps, in search of living prey. Death had sharpened his features, making him both more beautiful and infinitely frightening. The only features that remained the same were his eyes.

      So I focused only on his eyes. “Lucas, it’s me. It’s Bianca.”

      He said nothing, just stared at me, utterly motionless. I realized he wasn’t breathing—most vampires did just as force of habit, but it seemed that death had claimed him entirely. No way was I going to let that happen.

      “Lucas,” I repeated. “I know you can hear me. The guy I love is still in there. Come back to me.” Once again, I longed for the release of tears. “Death couldn’t keep me from you. And it can’t keep you from me, not if you don’t let it.”

      Lucas didn’t speak, but some of the tension left his body, relaxing his hands and his shoulders. He still looked edgy, almost crazed, but some semblance of control had returned to him.

      What could I do? Was there anything I could say that would get through to him? Something he would remember . . .

      When Lucas had first learned that I was born to two vampires, he had to overcome his revulsion of the undead in order to hold true to his love for me. If he could remember what it had meant for him to accept me for what I was, maybe he could begin to face what he, too, had become.

      Haltingly, I spoke his words as they came back to me: “Even though you’re a vampire—it doesn’t matter to me. It doesn’t change how I feel about you.”

      Lucas blinked, and for the first time since he had risen from the dead, his eyes seemed to fully focus. I realized that his fangs had retracted, leaving only the unearthly pallor and beauty of the vampire. In every other way, he looked human. He looked like himself.

      He whispered, “Bianca?”

      “It’s me. Oh, Lucas, it’s me.”

      Lucas clutched me to him in an impossibly tight embrace, and I wrapped my arms around his shoulders. I felt hot tears against my shoulder; I wished I could cry, too. Our legs gave out at the same

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