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truly was asleep. So I had her where I wanted her, I guessed. But what the
hell was I going to do with her?
I paced the room, from the fireplace to the writing desk. I thought of Cyrus
sitting there the night I'd come to him. Dahlia's laptop was there now, but
the gold-plated desk set was, too, albeit covered in a layer of dust. I pulled
out the letter opener and wiped the blade on my shirt, not entirely sure what
I intended until my gaze rested on the empty glass at the bedside.
If I had seen Cyrus's and Nathan's pasts in their blood, could I see
Dahlia's? Or did it only work if there was a blood tie? I supposed there was
no time like the present to find out. I wouldn't drink directly from her. It
would be too weird, considering she was the first person I'd ever fed from,
and now we were enemies. Plus, things hadn't gone so well for me that first
time. I wanted to escape this with as few stab wounds as possible.
I wiped the inside of the glass with my shirttail, hoping the residue of the
drug wouldn't knock me out and I rolled back the rubber bracelets on Dahlia's
wrist. I took a deep breath, dosed my eyes, and stabbed the point of the
letter opener into her arm.
Blood squirted out, and I wiped some from my face, gagging, before I managed
to direct the flow into the cup. WhenIt was full enough for a few swallows, I
set it aside. I ripped a strip from the sheets and wrapped it tight around her
wound. Lifting the cup to my lips, I caught the scent of her blood. It had
changed, just as she had, from human to vampire, but beneath the stale, dead
scent of vampire blood I caught the smell I remembered from the night I'd fed
off her. You never forget your first time.
I swallowed the blood quickly, concentrating on the taste of it, willing
myself to access the cellular memory it might carry. The room spun as if I
were drunk, and I slid to the floor, my head lolling back to rest on the
mattress. Slowly, my vision blurred and a rushing sound built in my ears.
Dahlia's memories seeped into my consciousness without any goading from me.
Was this something that happened with all vampires? Human blood didn't affect
me this way, at least not often. It had happened when I'd fed from Ziggy, but
he'd been trying to communicate with me then, I think. Was Dahlia conscious
enough to manipulate my brain now?
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I became too absorbed in the pictures flashing through my mind to think
further on it. Dahlia's thoughts were concerned mainly with Cyrus, a fact that
didn't surprise me. A noisy club packed with writhing bodies the club where
I'd met Dahlia? seethed around me; the monotonous pounding of industrial music
filled my ears. The crowd parted like something out of a movie perhaps Dahlia
embellished this part and she caught sight of Cyrus across the crowded room.
This was the first time she'd seen him. And she'd wanted him at first
sightShe approached him purposefully, and when he noticed her, I recognized
his expression.Hunger, and deviant lust. He'd wanted her, too.
It made me oddly jealous to know he'd felt this way for her. I wanted to
believe she'd been more passionate for him than he had been for her, but there
was no mistaking his intent as he rose, took her hand and lifted it to his
lips.
"I'm Cyrus. And you are?" he asked, and she had to strain to hear him, as he
didn't raise his voice over the loud music.
"Going home with you tonight," she responded boldly. Then I was rushing
forward in time, to the car where Dahlia sat in Cyrus's lap as he tugged her
head back by her hair and bit her neck, not to feed but to arouse.Then to his
room, where he pinned her to the bed and showed her his true face. She feared
him, but she didn't show it, and he liked that. That's why he didn't kill her
like the other girls. That, and when he held her down and fed from her while
he fucked her, she invaded his mind and gave him a sense of her true power. If
there was one thing Cyrus hadn't been able to resist in his former life, it
was the promise of power.
I lost track of time as I watched her short life unfold from that moment. It
was like watching a movie on a broken projector. Sometimes the images moved
too fast to comprehend, sometimes so slowly it seemed they would burn up.
Still, I wasn't frightened. I felt I could pull myself out at any time, though
I couldn't control what I saw or heard.
Then I saw Max, standing in the parlor of what used to be my room, and I
jolted. This must have been the night we came to kill Cyrus. I knew he'd been
delivered to Dahlia's room. But why would she remember him? That had been
months ago, and as I'd witnessed, Dahlia was fairly Cyrus-centered then.
The guards who'd wrestled him up the stairs pushed him through the door and
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