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  She was dead. I had killed her. My nightmare, come to life. So still. She was so still. Glorious, vibrant Alexa, turned to stone. The future disappeared.

  I could hear myself sobbing but the core of me, the very heart of me, was frozen just like her. There was only one course of action left to me: to kill the monster that had taken her life. Tears blinded me as I half staggered, half ran for the door. I wrenched at the handle and didn’t so much as flinch when the entire door came off its hinges. Shoving it to the side, I considered my choices. Not down, but up—up, to the roof. My hands were covered in her blood. It had been hubris to think that I could fight against the monster that was eating me alive. Why hadn’t I forced myself to stay away from her? Why had I given in? Selfish, so selfish, and she had paid the ultimate price.

  I hoped that hell was real. Just an hour ago, I had wished for lasting superpowers, but now I was obscenely grateful for my own fragility. I threw open the heavy door to the terrace. The cold December wind swirled around me, beckoning me to the parapet. I would follow it. The voice screaming shrilly in my head urged me on.

  I’ll follow you, Alexa. I’ll spend the afterlife in fire begging your forgiveness across the abyss between us. I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to let you go. I swear I wanted forever with you, but not like this. Why couldn’t you have loved me less why why why—

  Mercifully, it went silent as I climbed onto the wall.

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  alexa

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  everafter

  Chapter thirteeN

  Valentine looked pissed.

  I could see her reflection pacing back and forth across the living room from the small vanity mirror in our bathroom. Or rather, I could catch an occasional glimpse of her tall, tuxedoed form as she passed by the doorway and then I had to follow her trailing voice when she moved out of my line of sight. This was the second time I had ever seen Val in a tux and only the first where I’d be going as her date. The other time around had been a party celebrating her father’s second term as Secretary of the Treasury. That time, I’d explicitly not been invited. Today we were going to her cousin’s wedding. Despite her mother’s vehement protestations many months before, Val insisted that I go as her “plus one.”

  “So you’re saying that the vice president is more important than family?” Val’s reflection tugged at the loose end of her bowtie, undoing the half-formed knot. “Don’t tell me you can’t squeeze one extra seat in at the table when you really mean you don’t want to.”

  Val’s voice rose and she stopped pacing just outside the bathroom. I paused, mascara brush poised above my right eye. “Oh please. Pritchard won his election because he’s a Darrow and because the second congressional district has voted red for the last forty years. There are more gun stores than bookstores in that hillbilly town. I’m sure the vice president’s form-letter endorsement had nothing to do with it.”

  Val continued her angry striding across the room. I put down the mascara and moved to the doorway so I could keep her in sight. Val and

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  her father brought out the worst in each other and I wanted to be near in case she decided to make target practice out of our brand-new TV.

  “I don’t buy it. You put that closeted little prick on the phone so he can tell me himself. Hello? Hello?” Val stared down at her phone for an angry moment before throwing it at the couch. “The fucker hung up on me.”

  A kaleidoscope of emotions cascaded across Val’s face before she finally settled back on pissed. She stomped over to the couch and dug her phone out of the cushions. She glanced at me then, love softening the clench in her jaw. “I’m sick of being bullied by my family. If he wants to insult me, he’ll have to do it to my face.” With a parting snarl, she turned and stormed out the door.

  “Don’t let her go alone.” The voice was insistent. “Get up. Get up. She needs your support.”

  “Val is a big girl.” I reasoned with the voice. “If she needed my help, she would ask for it.” But even as I argued, my body flickered to life. I opened my eyes; the pale blur of the ceiling slowly coalesced into a light bulb, a water stain, an intricate web of cracks. Was I on the floor? What was I doing there? My limbs felt cold and heavy as I fought to get upright.

  My legs twisted awkwardly beneath me, impeded somehow. I looked down to find my jeans pooled down around my ankles, binding my legs together. Clumsily, I pulled them up. The inside of my left thigh stung sharply as rough denim chafed over the punctured skin. Valentine? I had the haziest recollection of Val’s mouth moving over me as her tongue teased the sensitive juncture of my inner thigh. But instead of warming me, the memory sent me into a paroxysm of shivering.

  “Val?” Goose bumps prickled over my icy skin. I grabbed my sweatshirt from the couch and pulled it awkwardly over my head. The apartment door was hanging off its hinges and a sickly wedge of fluorescent light spilled into the foyer. Slowly, painfully, I got to my feet and stumbled out the door. The voice was gone, but the imperative was still there.

  Find Valentine.

  I started down the stairs toward the front door. It was an effort just to put one foot in front of the other, as though the cold had frozen the

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  synaptic messages from my brain to my legs. I had barely managed a few steps when a banging from above caught my attention. I squinted up the stairwell, trying to determine where the sound was coming from. That was when I saw the blood. It was on the banister and the steps, still fresh. I began to pull myself upward, hauling my clumsy, recalcitrant body up the flights of stairs with hands and elbows and knees until I reached the roof. The door was ajar and I nearly fell in my haste to get through it. I squinted into the night. A sudden cold breeze blinded me, and I had to blink back tears. I caught a glimpse of a shadow at the far end of the roof, an unmistakable silhouette against the bright, blinking lights of the cityscape beyond.

  “Val!” I shouted, willing my voice to carry over the gusting wind and the traffic below.

  The shadow lengthened and grew impossibly tall. Val had climbed onto the wall that encircled the roof space. I broke into a run, panic filling my heavy limbs with strength. “Oh my God, Val. Get down from there!”

  She turned, but didn’t seem to recognize me. “Don’t come any closer!”

  I pulled up short about six feet away from her, close enough to see the blood—my blood, I realized—trailing from the corners of her mouth and soaking the front of her sweater. I had never seen so much of it before. No wonder I had passed out downstairs. “Val, it’s me. Alexa. I fainted, that’s all. I’m okay.”

  “Alexa?” For a split second, recognition sparked behind her eyes and I was hopeful. But just as quickly, something dark and tortured extinguished it.

  “Val, love, please come down from that wall. Please?”

  “Go away.” Like her eyes, her voice was flat and distant. Desperation made my voice shrill. “I need you to get down from there.”

  “I—I can’t. It’s not working. I can’t do this anymore.” The wind gusted around her, ruffling her hair and whipping at the shirttails peeking out from under her sweater. She swayed precariously, rising to the balls of her bare feet and then rocking dangerously back on her heels.

  “We can, Val! We can. We can do anything if we do it together.”

  I couldn’t help inching closer to her. There was a wildness in her expression that I didn’t trust.

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  Nell Stark and Trinity Tam

  “Stop! Stop it! I told you to get away from me!” She backed up toward the edge of the wall and I immediately froze. My hands rose, an instinctive gesture of surrender. “Okay. Okay. I won’t move.” My heart was hammering in my chest, pushing adrenaline in waves through my body. I felt nauseous but I clamped my jaw down and swallowed the dry heaves that snaked their way up my esophagus.
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  “It’s getting worse. The need, the thirst. I can’t control it.”

  The wind, the traffic, the other sounds of night retreated as I focused my attention on her tense stance. I willed her to believe with my words, my heart, my soul. “We’ll figure something out. It’ll be okay.”

  “I thought I killed you!” The rawness of her pain tore through the darkness and stabbed at my heart. Self-loathing crept behind her eyes like a predator and it dared me to try to wrench her back from the abyss.

  “You didn’t, sweetheart. I’m right here. Touch me and see for yourself. I’m right here.” Slowly, carefully, I reached my hand out to her. I watched anxiously as a series of emotions rifled through her system. Her misery was electric and her despair suffocating. Even the need that showed so starkly on her face metamorphosed between hunger and desire and love. It felt like Russian roulette. When she spoke again, her voice was low and sad. “This is no way to live.”

  “Neither is death, Valentine.”

  She stared at me for a full minute as I held my breath. The words had just tumbled out. Dumb, dumb, dumb, I berated myself. I wanted to take it back and apologize. This was far too important a moment to make light of. How could I be so callous?

  I saw her tense and then a fine tremor passed through her body. She began shaking. Impulsively, I took a step toward her. I couldn’t reach her in time from where I was standing but by God, if she jumped, I was going over that wall with her.

  I was so caught up in the surety of my intended self-annihilation that it took me an extra moment to register the low rumbling sound emanating from Val. I glanced up, cautious and confused. She was laughing.

  Tears streamed down her cheeks and mingled with the blood at her lips. Shaking her head, she lowered herself carefully from the wall.

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  Her bare feet hit the roof with a muffled crunch of gravel. Somehow, in the short time it took to get down from the edge, I had closed the distance between us. I collided against her long, slender frame and her arms wrapped around me instinctively, protectively. She was solid and alive. “Oh Val.” My body shook with violent, wrenching sobs. Tears flowed freely down my face. I couldn’t breathe or think or move. She held me. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so, so sorry.” Strong, comforting hands stroked my back and arms. She pressed a kiss into my hair. Carefully, she led me away from the wall toward the door. We stumbled back into the apartment, my arms wrapped possessively around her waist and her body pressed tightly against mine. Dazedly, I watched her pick up the entire door as though it were made of corkboard instead of solid wood and fit it back into place. A sense of pride filled me: I had done that. I had made it possible for her to be strong.

  But even as I opened my mouth to comment on how impressive her increased strength truly was, Val began to gently hustle me toward the couch. She sat me down and hurried into the kitchen. I felt the separation from her keenly and wanted to follow her, to keep her in my sight, but my head was a throbbing mess. The adrenaline kick that had propelled me up the stairs was finally wearing off and in its wake, a heavy, dull ache flared in my skull and reverberated painfully down my spine and limbs. I sat and waited for Val to come back, measuring the passing of time with the beat of pain that coursed through my body. A few minutes later, she returned with a large glass of orange juice and a handful of painkillers and vitamins. She had removed the bloodstained sweater and washed her face. I could see no trace of her feeding on the oxford shirt she wore underneath. If it weren’t for the ghostly look on her face and my splitting headache, this could have passed for domesticity on any other weekday night. She sat on the opposite end of the couch, fear furrowing her brow and regret glinting nakedly in her eyes. I scooted closer to her and put my hand on her thigh. I could feel her quivering as if she was fighting the urge to flee.

  “It’s okay, love.” I stroked her leg reassuringly. I took a sip of orange juice and forced myself to swallow around the gag reflex that spasmed in my throat as the sudden acidity washed over my tongue. I

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  forced myself to take another sip. “I’m okay. I’m feeling much better already.”

  I swallowed the handful of pills and washed them down with a gulp of juice. Val watched me silently, her worried eyes never leaving my face. I tilted the glass back and drained the rest of its contents. She immediately jumped up to refill it. I recognized the action for what it was, a guilt impulse compelling her to excessive solicitousness, and I allowed her the comfort of pandering to my needs. When Val returned again with a second glass of juice, I patted the cushion next to me and beckoned her close. She hesitated only a moment before sitting carefully by my side. Her thigh pressed against mine and my cold body hungrily drank in the warmth that radiated from her. I leaned against her, nestling my head against her shoulder.

  “I don’t know what to do.” She buried her face in my hair. “I—I just lost control for a minute and when I came to, you weren’t moving. There was so much blood. I thought…” A fresh wave of terror suddenly broke across her face. “Oh my God. What if I turned you?”

  My heart felt like a moth fluttering against a window, but I took a deep breath against the sharp surge of unwarranted panic. “I’m fine, and you know it. You didn’t take nearly enough. And your blood didn’t mingle with mine. All I did was have a fainting spell. Just like someone at a blood drive.”

  Val’s breathing was ragged. “I put you in danger. Not just today—

  every day.” Her voice hitched in her throat and I wrapped my arms around her torso to keep her from pulling away.

  “Shh. Val, sweetheart, we’ll make it work. I’ve been running myself ragged with extra courses and other stuff. If I drop Law Review and the women’s studies course I’ve been auditing, I’ll be in a much better place to take care of myself physically. It won’t happen again.”

  Val pulled away and stared at me with naked anguish. “You can’t quit Law Review! You worked so fucking hard for it! And you were going to ask that women’s studies professor to write you a recommendation for your summer clerkship. I can’t let you throw away your future for me. I won’t!”

  “It’s not just my future, it’s ours. Besides, it won’t hurt me at all. Dropping a couple things from my schedule will put me at the exact same level as most of my classmates. I’ll just be trimming off some extracurriculars.”

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  “But you are not like most of your classmates! You are Alexa Newland. You are extraordinary. I want you to be able to be fucking extraordinary!” New tears overflowed and streamed down her cheeks. I leaned in and kissed them away, one by one. “My life is extraordinary because you’re in it. I will never give you up. Everything else is just going to have to bend.” Val started to protest and I stopped her with a finger on her lips. “No, Val. This is not negotiable.”

  She nodded once, reluctantly, and I kissed her softly on the mouth.

  “Come on. Let’s go to bed.”

  Tenderly, lovingly, Val helped me up from the couch. The dizziness was gone but I leaned against her anyway for the comfort. We stripped silently and took turns brushing our teeth and washing up in the bathroom.

  When we crawled under the sheets, I immediately curled into her warm embrace. I let the strong, steady beat of her heart lull me toward sleep. Just as I skirted the edge of unconsciousness Valentine spoke, so softly I could have dreamed it. “What if I need more?”

  I continued to breathe deeply and evenly, feigning oblivion. Eventually, she relaxed against me, surrendering to her own exhaustion.

  But sleep did not come to me that night.

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  • 154 •

  everafter

  Chapter FOurteeN

  Istayed in bed listening to the even rumble of Valentine’s slumber. Even though sleep eluded me, it was calming just to feel her breath against my neck and her warmth along my back. But as th
e hours ticked by, I couldn’t stop my mind from racing and my muscles were starting to cramp from holding still for so long. The glaring red LED lights of my alarm clock told me that it was half past three in the morning. Carefully, I extracted myself from Val’s embrace. It wasn’t easy. Even unconscious, she tightened her arms around me as I started to pull away. Slowly and gently, I inched my way out from under her and when I was finally free, I slipped my pillow into her arms as a placeholder until I came back.

  Something Val had mentioned earlier was weighing heavily on my mind. She said that the thirst was getting harder to control. I knew that today’s incident was partly my fault for wearing myself so thin over the last few weeks. I felt no guilt for offering that to Val as an excuse for my fainting spell. But I also knew that she had taken quite a bit of blood. I wasn’t sure if I could have held up through that, even had I been fully rested and healthy. The fact was that Val’s control over her thirst would always be tenuous. I knew that she would fight it as hard as she could, but that didn’t have to be the only solution.

  I pulled my laptop out of my bag and plugged it into the outlet by the sofa. I rearranged the cushions into a comfortable nest as it booted up. My first inclination had been to flip through Val’s medical texts for some kind of inspiration, but the last time I had tried reading over her shoulder, I think I’d understood maybe two out of every five words I saw. I was hoping the Internet could dumb it all down for me. I spared

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  a glance toward the bedroom. My heart stuttered painfully in my chest as I remembered just how close I had come to losing her. If there was an answer out there, I would find it.

  I shook the morbid thoughts from my head and focused on the matter at hand. How did one research becoming an unending blood bag for one’s lover? I typed “blood production” into the search engine and called up a page of mostly technical-looking Web sites. I clicked on the Wikipedia entry for red blood cells at the top of the list. About halfway down the page I sat up and grabbed a pad and pen. Excitement seared through me like wild electricity. I had to force myself to calm down. I’d only been at this for five minutes; I couldn’t let my anxiety cloud my objectivity or else I’d be tilting at windmills all day. I wrote down the word “erythropoietin” and circled it emphatically. Erythropoietin, I learned, was a hormone synthesized by the kidneys that stimulated red blood cell production and was most often connected with doping in sports. While plasma replaced itself within a day or two after blood loss, red blood cells took up to five weeks to be completely replenished. The low levels of hemoglobin in my blood could explain the exhaustion and fainting. If the Web site was correct, use of erythropoietin could decrease my recuperation downtime between feedings. If Val fed more often, she should be able to control her thirst better.