Love at First Bite by Susan Squires Page B

Mr. Rufford lay back, obviously exhausted.
    She wanted to know now. Davie was leaning against the window frame as though defeated. She turned to the Arab. "You tell me."
    The Arab glanced to Davie. "We have a thing in our blood, miss. It changes us."
    "How?" She crossed the room to him, slowly. "How does it change you?"
    "We are strong. We heal and live long. Sunlight is painful. We can move unseen."
    Davie turned from the window, his expression fierce. "I don't think you're doing it justice, Fedeyah. It's a disease, Emma. We're vampire. We're immortal unless we're decapitated, and we drink human blood. No way around that. And Fedeyah forgot to mention the fact that we can compel weaker minds. We can make people do things they don't want to do."
    They were vampire? The word echoed in her mind with horrible reverberations.
    "God in heaven," Davie continued, rolling his head, "we can't even commit suicide! Rufford knows; he tried often enough. We're monsters, Emma, once we're infected. Monsters." This last was said on a note of such despair, her heart went out to him.
    She stood, blinking stupidly, wondering what to do, what to think. Vampire, human blood, immortality. And Davie, her Davie, was condemned to this? She glanced to Rufford, who seemed only half-sensible, his wounds slowly resolving themselves. The red trickling from the corner of his mouth was human blood. How could she think that so calmly?
    "Who did you kill tonight?" It was as though someone else asked the question.
    "Others of our kind, made by an evil woman. Not pretty." Davie's mouth was grim.
    Decapitation. She would wager it wasn't pretty.
    "They want to rule the world," the Arab said. His voice grew incredibly sad. "They make more vampires. It would destroy the balance. We make jihad against them."
    "Balance? What balance?"
    "We do not kill humans for our blood," Fedeyah explained. "We don't make others of our kind. There are Rules. Rules they do not obey."
    "And these Rules wouldn't condone marriage to a woman who isn't like you, would they?" She turned to Davie. Anger boiled up out of her belly uncontrolled. Davie drank human blood and was going to live forever unless he was killed in some horrible way fighting a war against monsters like him. "You knew that last night. And you let me think we could be happy together." Tears sprang from nowhere.
    "Go back to your room, Miss Fairfield," Davie said. His voice was distant. He turned back to the window.
    She whirled and ran down the corridor and up to her room. The damned door was locked, so she went into her original room and pushed the door back into its frame, no matter how silly that was. She couldn't lock out the creatures downstairs. With their strength they would just push through an unlocked door or a locked one. She remembered how Davie had burst into the room.
    She threw herself on the bed, sobbing, because all her innocence was lost and all her future, and the world held monsters and one of them was Davie.
    She came out of a sleep feeling drugged and groggy. It was twilight. The sky outside the window was purple, edging into indigo.
    Someone was knocking at the door.
    "Miss Fairfield?"
    One of the monsters , she thought dully. Mr. Rufford . "Come in." What did it matter?
    He pushed the door in gingerly. He was clean, shaved, no blood in sight. He wore a shirt open at the neck, black trousers, and riding boots to the knee. His brown, curling hair was tied back in a ribbon, just as it had been in St. James's Church when he had married Miss Rochewell. Hmmm . Emma thought about that.
    He made a small bow. "Are you well? I thought you might be hungry." She got up on one elbow. He carried a plate: cold roast beef, horseradish, some radishes and small tomatoes, a chunk of bread. She was famished. How could her body betray her emotions so? Without waiting for an answer, he set the plate down on the table beside the bed. She sat up and touched her hair.
    "You look fine." He hesitated, looking as though he