A SYNOPSIS OF BOOK 1 BLOOD HEIR

Her whole life, Maeve Sparrow thought she was a normal girl. Mortal. Average. Not living a normal life, perhaps, because her mother, Eliza, moved them around from city to city and state to state—not just a few times, but at least once a year and sometimes more than once in a year, for as long as Maeve can remember. They never lived anywhere for more than a few months at a time. Why? It's a question Maeve never got an answer to…at least not while her mom was alive.

But then Eliza Sparrow died. Suddenly, and tragically. A car accident, she was told. With no other living relatives—or any relatives at all, as far as Maeve knew—her mother's sudden death left her alone, cast adrift in a huge, strange, scary world. Still, the familiar world she knew, with normal people. A world where vampires, fairies, shapeshifters, and magic were firmly within the purview of fiction—movies, comic books, and novels. None of it was real, certainly.

She hadn't even come to grips with the news of her mother's death, however, when someone knocked on her door: a detective from a little town in Northern Michigan. Andreas Burke: "Tall, lean, sharp-featured. Very, very handsome. His hair is dark, not quite black, clean cut…everything about him screams law enforcement."

He claimed to be her father. As for proof, he had a digital copy of a photograph of Eliza as a younger woman—the only such photograph Maeve had ever seen. His story was believable—they were engaged, and then one day Eliza simply disappeared without warning and without reason, and he never knew where she went or why, until he received an anonymous email alerting him of Eliza's sudden death. His explanation rings true and aligns with what little her mother had told her—which is next to nothing. When pressed for details, Eliza would shut down and refuse to speak on the topic. And even Andreas doesn't seem one hundred percent sure he IS her father, just that "‘it's the only thing that makes sense. I was about to leave for the police academy at the time. We'd been…arguing, I guess, about our future. Where we would go if we did get married…she didn't want to hold me back from my future…she was worried if we got married we'd…it'd hold me back.'"

"‘And then she came up pregnant and decided…what?" Maeve had asked. "To leave without warning, without telling you she was pregnant? Without even giving you an option?'"

"‘Maeve. I…I loved your mother. I never stopped. Even after she left…but your mother was…flighty. Easily spooked. She never wanted to stay in one place for long, you know? Like, she couldn't sit still. She changed apartments every few months, never took out a lease, and only rented month to month. Before we got together, she moved around the country—even lived in Europe for a few years. She lived in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Norway, Finland, Iceland. She was just…nomadic. And all I wanted was to be a cop. Which meant staying in one place. And having a baby with me? Let alone getting married? It scared her. So yeah. She left. With you. And never told me.'"

She doesn't have many options, Maeve realizes. Stay in LA, alone…finish her senior year, alone…with no income, no way to support herself, no relatives, no friends she can stay with—because she's never lived anywhere longer than six months, making friends doesn't exactly come easily.

Her mom was her only friend. Her only constant at all, as a matter of fact. And now that one anchor in a turbulent world was suddenly and inexplicably just gone.

Which leaves this stranger. Andreas Burke.

He invites her to come to Michigan with him. "‘I might be wrong,'" He says. "‘Maybe I'm not your father. Without a paternity test, there's no way to know for sure. But honestly, I don't really care. I loved your mom, and I think a part of me always has and always will. You're part of her. And I know she'd want you taken care of.'"

She has so many questions.

So many things just…she can't even put words to it. She's confused, scared…and angry. At her mom. For keeping the truth about her father from her—if he even is her father; for moving her around so much. For dying. At herself for not being able to cry.

She doesn't exactly agree to go with Detective Burke, but it's assumed she will. It's scary, but it's better than trying to figure out life on her own when she doesn't even know how to pay rent, how to get to school…

Later that night, Maeve has a hard time falling asleep, and when she does, she dreams of her new guardian. "His eyes, watching me, smiling at me—in the dream, his eyes seem to glow, almost. The dark rings around his pupils are backlit, brown and amber and golden, warm light from within. His features are sharper, more angular…not quite normal. Something off, something different. There's something off about his ears, but in the way of dreams, before I can figure it out, the dreams shifts.

"I see Mom.

"She's wearing…the outfit she was wearing the day she…the last time I saw her. Her feet are bare. Her face is in shadow. Her eyes glow like Andy's—her eyes are pale blue, almost white, and glow incandescent.'"

Her mother is different, in this dream that doesn't feel like a dream. It's not a dream, or too real of a dream. She doesn't have a self, or hands, or anything. Just awareness, and her mother, faint, distant.

You're not you yet, her mother tells her, in the dream that's not a dream. You're not you yet.

Like most people, the dream fades upon waking. You're often left with impressions, ideas, fragments of images, and the overall feeling the dream left you with. This time, though, Maeve remembers EVERYTHING. Every detail. Every word. Every feeling. Even as she wakes, it feels more real than reality.

"One detail in particular stands out: in the dream, Mom's ears curved back into delicate, arched, pointed tips. In life, she had tiny round ears."

The dream left her unsettled, uneasy, and even more confused. It leaves her with only one clear option: go to Michigan with the detective. She calls him upon waking from an odd, and seemingly significant, dream, and tells him she will go with him.

And so begins a whole new adventure for Maeve Sparrow.

She starts a new school, gets a new wardrobe—because Michigan in the fall is quite a bit cooler than LA, and winter is coming, and Maeve has never experienced a real winter before, as her mother always moved them to warm, southerly places.

Elk Rivers is a small town on a bay in northwestern Michigan, not far from Traverse City. Rural, with a small downtown area. Cute, quaint, and utterly unlike the large cities she's always lived in.

She gets settled. Tours the new school and enrolls—same old same old, for Maeve, who started at new schools on a bi-yearly basis.

It's all pretty normal.

At first.

The only weird thing, so far, is a strange, unsettling, and unexplainable frisson of energy she gets around Andreas: "He chuckles again; that weird buzz in my chest is ever-present around him, I've just learned to tune it out."

Then, something absolutely normal happens. A truck drives by. Not weird at all. But…it is. Because for some reason, Maeve is struck dumb at the momentary glimpse she gets of the driver. He's "the most beautiful human being I've ever seen. My heart stops. My mouth goes dry, my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.

"His features are hard, rugged, hewn from marble by the hand of Michelangelo himself…his hair is longish, artfully messy, strands draping over his eyes and temples, down his cheekbone, curling at his collar. Dark, almost black, but not quite…his skin is pale, almost like ivory, as if he doesn't get enough sun…

"My chest vibrates, almost violently, as if I've put my hand on a speaker stack at a concert. My gut twists, leaps. My skin seems too tight…

"An eternity curls around us, framing us together in this moment, me and this boy."

It's the real beginning.

Of what, she has no idea.

The boy is in school. "Folded into a desk that's two sizes too small for his build…wearing those aviators again…

"He turns his head ever so slightly, and I feel his gaze lance into me, prickling my skin like needles. The humming and vibration in my chest and the tightness of my skin are almost unbearable.

"I want, in equal measure, to run away and to be as close to him as I can."

His name is Caspian Taylor.

He intrigues her and terrifies her in equal measure. His scent…his presence. He exudes menace and threat, and she knows she should run away from him but she can't. "His skin is pale; he radiates cold."

He always vanishes at lunch and comes back less pale, icy, and standoffish.

She can't get him out of her mind.

In gym class, Caspian displays otherworldly athleticism—truly freakish speed and reflexes that decimate the other team.

Maeve, never exactly coordinated, goes flying and hits the gym floor, opening her elbow so it bleeds. When the game is over and Caspian has won for their team with a display of athletic wizardry that should have been impossible, she accidentally reaches for Caspian with a bloody hand— "he recoils sharply at the sight of my bloody palm, hissing." He dismisses his reaction with a smile, but she can tell he's bothered by the blood. Not in a squeamish way, but…something else.

She dreams of him.

"His eyes are black pools in his face. No whites, no iris, no pupils. Feral. Alien. Hungry…

"He sees me. Bares a mouthful of sharp white teeth—his eyeteeth are longer than the rest and needle-sharp."

They speak, in the nothingness of the dream. He tells her she shouldn't be there. In the dream. That she doesn't belong. Tells her to wake up. Wake up. Tells her he's a bad dream and one she'd do well to forget.

As if she could.

Now awake at 4:30 am, she can't get back to sleep. She's drawn outside, to the forest behind Andreas's home. She shouldn't go out there, she knows. She's a city girl and isn't usually a brave person. But something pulls her outside. Out into the pre-dawn dark, into the cold, shadowed woods. The "weird, inescapable hum starts in my veins, in my blood. He's here."

She smells him. Feels him. Feels like she's back in the dreamscape, where she's nothing but a spark of awareness in an endless dark.

"‘The woods are no place for delicate little sparrows,'" he tells her.

He inhales her scent, nose at her neck, and tells her she smells like honeysuckle and sunlight.

She never quite sees him, except for his face, pale in the shadows, with crimson lips.

They talk in the darkness. He admits he's dangerous, that she should stay away from him for her own safety, but won't say why.

The truth prickles at her, just beyond her ability to grasp it, to comprehend it.

For a while, things develop into a routine. Caspian at school, in some of her classes, becoming slowly paler, crankier, and broodier as the day wears on, vanishing for lunch, and returning more normal.

He always wears his mirrored aviators, even inside, even on the cloudiest day, claiming a severe sensitivity to light.

Weeks pass this way, taking them into winter.

A teacher in-service means a half day, and Maeve decides to brave the wintery roads to go shopping at the mall by herself…only to have her car die, leaving her stranded on the side of the road—Andreas is working a case and can't leave.

Who should come to her rescue, of course, but Caspian?

He mentions his brothers: Fin and Stirling.

Caspian drives her to town, and they discuss loss—her inability to properly cry for her mother and Caspian's understanding of loss.

And then there's a crash.

One second they're cruising through a green light, and the next…the world is turned upside down as a car T-bones them.

Maeve is jerked in a million directions at once, and then passes out.

She comes to alone, on the side of the road, being attended to by a medic, who claims she was alone when they showed up.

More unusual still is the fact that she's lying in the snow far from the wreckage—too far. And other than a headache, disorientation, and dizziness, she's unhurt.

The wreck should have killed her.

Caspian's truck is mangled into an unrecognizable wreck, nothing but a twisted hunk of smoking metal. Nothing, no one could have survived such a crash.

Yet…there she is. And no one can explain it.

More to the point, where is Caspian?

She has no answers because she can't remember anything other than the initial impact and then being airborne.

But then, that night…

She dreams of him. Not a dream—the dreamscape. The weird, realer-than-real place where Andreas's eyes glowed and her mother had pointed ears and Caspian had totally black eyes and sharp, pointy eyeteeth.

In the dream-that's-not-a-dream, she's back in the truck with Caspian.

She relives the crash.

The impact, so fast even Caspian couldn't have avoided it, sends them spinning through the intersection, and then another car hits them, sending them the other way, and a third impact rolling them airborne…

Time distorts, and she can catalog each individual moment. She sees Caspian, upside down as they tumble through the air, ripping his seatbelt apart as if it's made from paper—a seatbelt which can withstand several tons worth of force—and then hers. He yanks her out of her seat and into his arms as they rotate and twist in the air.

He twists, shielding her from flying glass, taking the impact of the ground as they hit on his own body…and then they're airborne again and flying, twisting, tumbling, and Caspian punches through the roof of the car, through the metal and rips it open with his bare hands. Leaps through it with her in his arms.

He sets her on the ground. A touch of his finger on her cheek is colder than the touch of snowflakes. So cold it burns.

"‘You're safe now, little sparrow."

She wakes up, and where he touched her cheek, ever so briefly, ever so gently, there is something like a scar, a glitter of ice.

And where his fingers dug into the skin on her back as he cradled her through the impacts? Fingerprint bruises.

For the first time, Maeve begins to gingerly, hesitantly, put the pieces together.

"The mystery of him. Those fangs in my dream. His reaction to my blood, in gym class. I can't think the word that my subconscious offers up for what Caspian is, or could be. That's crazy. They don't exist. Edward, Lestat, Dracula…they're just fictional characters. Made up. But there've been stories and legends for centuries, maybe even thousands of years. Could those legends and myths and stories be based on some kind of truth?

"I must have hit my head harder than I thought, to be considering it."

Once she returns to school, it's only a matter of time before she is reunited with Caspian. She confronts him about what happened—shows him the bruises, and reveals that she dreamed of him. She demands the truth.

"‘What if you learn the truth and wish you hadn't?'" Is his only answer.

This is when Maeve meets his brother Fin: "a burly young man wearing dirty, faded jeans, heavy boots, and a white T-shirt…he's huge—Caspian's height but built like a bull. Huge round shoulders, heavy with muscle, and thick arms stretching the sleeves of his T-shirt. He looks like he could bend horseshoes with his bare hands. His hair is the brown of a grizzly's fur, short and thick and messy. His skin is as pale as Caspian's, but his has the ruddy tint to it that Caspian gets after lunch."

Fin references Alistair, the boys' guardian, a father figure, sort of, who adopted Fin, Stirling, and Caspian. They don't call him Dad.

In the presence of both Fin and Caspian together, the humming buzz in Maeve's chest is almost painful, distracting. Until she's wedged in the car between the two, at which point the hum seems to gain something like awareness. It approves of Caspian's proximity, his eyes on her, Fin's size and power, the scent of them.

"My whole being is on fire, a vibration so powerful it takes my breath away. Heat flames in my face, flushing my skin till it tingles, prickles, wraps too tightly around my bones. An emptiness yawns inside me—a need for…something. I don't know what. Just a need. A hunger."

She's not the only one affected—both Fin and Caspian are so tense the cab crackles with it.

The brothers bring her to their house—which, perhaps ironically, perhaps not, is quite close to the home she shares with Andreas.

She performs an experiment with the hum she feels around Caspian, Andreas, and now Fin—she has Caspian stand close behind her and tells him to back up, keeping track of the hum. It fades slowly as he backs away from her, and she finds him twenty feet away from her; she never heard him move.

She turns away from him once more, and in the space of that pivot, he's moved, silently, appearing directly behind her.

Close enough that The Purr, as she calls it, goes into overdrive.

No human could have moved that fast, that silently.

But then, she knows, at this point, that, at the very least, there's something highly unusual about Caspian Taylor.

She's drawn to him, to his eyes. Reaches up to remove his sunglasses—Fin warns him to not let her, but Caspian allows it.

When she removes his sunglasses, she discovers that his eyes are blacked out, like they were in the dreamscape.

He and Fin have a brief argument, and Caspian vanishes.

Not metaphorically, as in stomps off to whereabouts unknown—he literally vanishes between one eyeblink and the next.

Instead of letting Fin drive her the rest of the way to their house, she opts to walk and discovers Caspian's footprints. Except…even these aren't normal.

Each footprint is fifty feet apart.

Her gaze is drawn upward, to the trees…where she sees evidence of footprints in the fresh snow on the branches…

Further evidence that Caspian isn't at all normal.

Once inside the Taylor home, she meets Alistair: "A man of medium height, and build…nut-brown hair cut in a timeless style, cropped nearly to the skin on the sides and clipped short on top, swept back and to the side…I'm struck, as several times before with other people, that he is stunningly, almost otherworldly handsome…he may well have stepped out of history at any point in the previous hundred and fifty years…his skin has the same marble appearance as Fin and Caspian, but his is ruddy, tinted with life.

"‘Miss Maeve Sparrow. Welcome. Welcome.' His voice is stentorian, with a crisp British accent; he didn't just step out of history, he stepped off the set of Downton Abbey."

He too elicits The Purr.

All three of them…Alistair, Caspian, and Fin?

"The yawning, aching void within me threatens to swallow me whole from the inside out."

Alistair sends both Caspian and Fin out of the room, and the moment she's alone with Alistair, fear fills the room, fills Maeve. Darkness swallows her, radiating from Alistair, cold, dark, cold, cold, cold, and his voice is low and hard and sharp, and he accuses her of playing a game, and she smells blood on his breath. He scents her throat and asks what she is. Not WHO she is, but WHAT she is.

He doesn't seem to believe her answer, that she doesn't know what he's even talking about.

In this moment, she realizes that despite Alistair appearing to be a man of forty-five years or so, at most, he is much, much older: "The aura which chokes the air around him is ancient…

"Staring up at him, I feel like a day-old gazelle fawn looking into the eyes of a hungry lion…for whom I am no more than a midday snack."

The moment passes, but she is even more certain now that things are not what they seem, and that Caspian and his family are very, very far from being anything like normal.

Alistair seemingly confirms this in a subsequent conversation: "‘I think it is not lost on you, Maeve Sparrow, that there is more to this life and this world than may initially meet the eye.'"

More telling is that Alistair, perhaps accidently, uses the word "mortal".

She is telling him of her mother's death, and her inability to grieve properly—Alistair asks if she has had any odd dreams, which, of course, she has. She asks if the weird voidspace dreams are real.

His answer: "‘But I would think yes, to a degree, your dreams are quite likely more than merely your subconscious spinning away the detritus of your day, as most mortal dreams tend to be.'"

Mortal?

Which begs the question: as opposed to what?

Immortal?

And then, she meets Stirling. The third and final Taylor: "The individual who appears in the doorway is very tall, taller than Fin, even, lean and hard, without a spare ounce of flesh or muscle or fat on his body. His features, like the rest of his family, are superhumanly perfect, symmetrical, sharp, angular. His eyes are dark blue, cerulean, shading toward nearly violet, set deep in his face. His hair is dark, dirty blond, pulled back into a neat ponytail. As with the others as well, there's not a hint of facial hair, not even stubble…the button-down is open three buttons, showing a wedge of ivory skin; a necklace hangs in the opening, a platinum cross glittering with diamonds…

"If he is what I think they are, then popular fiction has some serious explaining to do."

He seems to hate her, for reasons she cannot begin to understand. Later, he corners her, sniffs her, flirts with her…in a threatening, dangerous sort of way that pisses off Caspian—and which only seems to turn Maeve on all the more, which serves to confuse her all the more.

Now that all of the Taylors are in the same house together with Maeve, The Purr is manic, gone haywire.

"It's too much. The reaching, hungry void inside me doesn't know what to do, what to want. The sensation is familiar yet alien—it feels like…like sexual need. Yet MORE."

All she knows for sure is that she NEEDS Caspian: "The desperation I feel for Caspian? Human language cannot encapsulate or express the feeling. Not even close."

Later, once she's home alone, doing homework, she finds she's doodled the truth in the margins of her calculus notes: "CASPIAN IS A VAMPIRE."

And then…nothing.

She spends time with Caspian at his house, talking to Alistair, who is a history professor.

There's no weirdness.

For weeks, almost a month.

She gets no answers to the questions she hasn't outright asked.

Winter passes this way. She spends time with him and the others. Grows close to them. The Purr is always there, especially powerfully around Caspian.

He rarely touches her, but his care for her, his affection for her is shown in other ways. And other times…he's moody.

And then, one day toward the end of winter, it all changes.

He invites her to go hiking with him. He's moodier than usual, in a dark, terse mood…yet he sought her out, seeming to need her company.

It comes out that it's the anniversary of the day he lost someone—his mother. She was murdered, but he won't explain any further. The day puts him in a black mood, but he craves her company, even as he admits he's terrible to be around.

But if anyone could understand, it's Maeve.

He tells her he can't stay away from her, even though he knows he should.

He craves her, he says: "‘When you touch me…I can almost taste you. The sunlight in your veins…I crave you. Your touch. Your scent. Your warmth.'"

Her instincts war within her:

Run—

Touch him—

She makes contact, briefly, intensely…and then he breaks it.

The hike itself is peaceful, quiet.

They share a moment on the trail: touching, questing, closing in…he inhales her scent at her throat—

And snarls like a lion, but instead of pulling away, he pulls her closer, and she can feel him…ALL of him…

And then he's gone. Twenty feet away in a heartbeat.

It's obvious he's…

Affected by her.

The Purr is EVERYTHING, that close to him.

He tells her to walk, that he needs a minute to compose himself. So, she does. She walks alone in the forest—except she's not alone. She can feel him following her from the shadows.

She knows, she knows, she knows he's more. He's different. She knows what he is, but can't bring herself to fully acknowledge it, yet.

And then…

She trips.

An innocent accident.

She trips on a root in the path and falls, cutting her hand. A deep cut, a bad one, blood pouring freely.

And then there's Caspian, eyes blacked out, hunger in his features.

"No longer just pale, he's white as the snow around us. There is no mistaking his inhumanity. He's no more human than I am a bird or mouse."

He grasps her wrist.

She feels fear, but also…excitement.

Desire.

He smells her need, her arousal…

Pressing his lips to her cut palm, he drinks her blood.

It's a sexual thing. Intense, intimate, pleasurable. Each pull of her blood into his mouth pushes Maeve closer to orgasm, which remains stubbornly out of reach, yet closer and closer as he sips, drinks. She feels his manhood as he drinks, burgeoning to hardness, as if he too feels the same explosion of arousal.

She cares for nothing but MORE. MORE.

She reaches for him, grasps his erection…

And he vanishes, abruptly.

Reappears yards away, on all fours in the snow, panting as if winded, gasping, fighting for breath and control.

Tells her to stay away.

She ignores him. She's not afraid.

She wants more.

He pins her to a tree, and for a moment, it seems as if the situation might escalate right there in the woods.

He tells her she has to leave before he does something they'll both regret, and she answers that she'd never regret that.

She's still bleeding profusely from the cut to her palm, even as he tears himself away from her…

He licks her cut…

The cut heals itself in real-time right before her eyes…

And then he vanishes again…

This time for good.

She can feel his absence as an inversion to sensing his presence.

At that moment, she understands two things:

One, she's utterly alone in the forest, in a blizzard.

And two, Caspian is, incontrovertibly, a vampire.

Panic sets in, but then she feels The Purr—a vampire is near. But it's not Caspian.

It's Stirling. The mercurial brother who went from hating the sight of her to nearly devouring her on the spot. He's "debilitatingly gorgeous" and senses that she and Caspian did…something. He knows that Caspian fed from her, and tells her that Caspian sent him to fetch her from the woods—that he left her there on her own for her own sake.

As they walk in the woods together, she notes that Stirling has "fed" recently, a turn of phrase that seems to say everything there is to say, in her own mind; she also notices that the falling snow sticks to his clothes, normally enough, but doesn't melt on his hair, abnormally: "…we don't GET cold. We ARE cold,'" he tells her.

She asks Stirling if he could walk without leaving footprints…and he does, seemingly without effort. He explains it as a kind of proprioception—one's innate ability to know where your body is without seeing it, e.g. closing your eyes and touching your nose.

He tells her no, of COURSE she can't learn to lighten herself and not leave footprints—it's biology, and they have different biology.

But Maeve is nothing if not stubborn, so she tries anyway.

And succeeds.

Instead of being impressed, however, Stirling scolds her: "‘You play with things you do not understand, in a world with rules you are unaware of, and consequences you cannot imagine, Maeve Sparrow. Be careful with Caspian. Not only for your sake but his.'"

And with that cryptic response, he leaves her at her car and vanishes.

When she arrives home, Andreas is freaking out and angry—worried. She can't very well tell him what actually happened in the woods she makes up a lie, and he counters by cautioning her about Caspian—that not everyone is what they seem. This exchange has a feel of neither side being entirely honest with each other.

She dreams again—not routine REM sleep dreaming, but the voidspace, the dreamscape, where everything seems somehow realer than reality.

She dreams of her mother.

"‘It's coming undone,'"her mother says. "‘You should not be here.'"

This makes it seem as if she's not just dreaming, that she really is, somehow, in a real place, just not, you know, in her body.

She sees Andreas…and he's like her mother: pointed ears, almond eyes which glow, an aura of energy. "‘You should not be here,'" he tells her, as well.

She feels…something. Something alive in the darkness, something huge and titanic and dangerous…something hungry and predatory.

She can't wake up.

She tries to summon the energy she used in the forest which lightened her steps, to no avail…

She calls out to Caspian.

And he answers, telling her to wake up, wake up, wake up.

She smells him, feels him—his heat, his cold, his cold so icy it feels like heat. And then she's waking up and he's there and he's real—but no, she's not awake. She's still dreaming, but he's there with her.

He coaches her to focus on her bedroom in the real world, on the details. She reaches for his hand, in the dream…and touches him.

Realer than reality, indeed.

She focuses on her room, as Caspian instructed, and is able to reach wakefulness, the darkness dissolving, the coiling, constricting THING trying to eat her fleeing as if frightened off by Caspian…

She wakes, and Caspian is there in her room with her, and she flings her arms around him, seeking comfort in his embrace.

He can't explain the dreamscape, or the thing in it, only telling her to focus on her room and the details next time she ends up there.

She asks him who he is, and he tells her she knows who he is.

So, she asks WHAT he is, and he answers, "‘I think you know.'"

The calculus notes with CASPIAN IS A VAMPIRE doodled in the margins are on her desk, and she looks at it, drawing his gaze to it.

He does not deny it.

"‘Are you going to kill me?'" She asks.

"‘I'd sooner kill myself,'" he answers.

She asks why he left her in the forest: to protect her from himself, he tells her.

The hunger, the need in his eyes set her pulse to racing, sends thrills not just through her blood, but through her sex, turning her on, turning her ravenous for Caspian, for all of him, for what she wants that he continues to deny her.

Before she can do anything, he's gone, out the window, standing on a tree branch just outside her room.

She knows what he would have done—feed from her, and in so doing, give her the sexual pleasure she so desperately wants.

She wants him. And she's not afraid of him. She's not afraid of what he could—and would—do to her.

She wants it all.

After this, Caspian is aloof toward her. Cold, distant, and terse.

She understands perfectly well that he's only doing it in an attempt—misguided, as she sees it—to protect her.

A week passes.

Two.

Christmas.

Three weeks.

She may understand WHY Caspian is going cold turkey with the avoidance, but she doesn't like it, and as time goes on, it hurts more and more—it feels like rejection.

A month and a half since the day in the woods and the dreamscape rescue.

Hurt turns to anger.

Even The Purr is put off and restless.

Her need for Caspian is reaching a breaking point.

Spring arrives, and Caspian has cut her out of his life entirely—transferring out of any classes he had with her. No contact.

She has wet dreams of him—regular, normal, mortal dreams leaving her waking up in a puddle of desire, sex throbbing—always the same dream, and she always wakes up right before the best part happens, leaving her a snarling ball of sexual frustration.

She decides she's had enough, and goes to the Taylors' house after school some two months after the day in the woods—two months of no contact, two months of rejection, two months of frustrated need and desire.

They're not home.

She goes back home, stewing, restless, worked up. She has to do SOMETHING.

All she can think of is Caspian. She HAS to see him, touch him, smell him.

There is no other option.

So, she goes outside into the cold of a late winter afternoon and tries to FEEL him.

She does. Just a glimmer, a little tug at her awareness.

She moves on autopilot, blindly following the feeling.

Her eyes seem to pierce the gloom and darkness of the forest—a darkness her mortal eyes should not be able to see through. Yet she does.

Odd.

She doesn't trip like she usually does.

She follows the tug in her belly through the forest, for a mile, or two—she neither knows nor cares.

Through the woods… and back to the Taylor residence.

She walks right in, and Alistair is not surprised to see her—he's lounging in a chair in front of the fireplace, sipping something suspiciously like blood from a crystal goblet.

He directs her to Caspian's room.

He's fresh out of the shower, wrapped in a towel and dripping wet.

She may be furious at him for icing her out when she never asked him to protect her from himself, but all she can feel, for a moment or two at least, is raw, unadulterated, wickedly potent arousal for the physical perfection that is Caspian.

But very quickly, the anger returns.

She uses a tactic her mom used on her: wait in silence, and the truth will come tumbling out.

He knows.

He fumbles his words, I can't explain, I already let you see more than I should have…all the while hoping she'll pick up the thread and finish for him.

She doesn't.

Desire and anger are at war within Maeve.

"Despite my hurt and anger, the seething, snarling need for him burns white-hot in my veins, in my muscles, in my soul. I want to rip the towel off him and grasp him in my hand and show him pleasure and let him drink from me—"

"‘Stop that!' He growls, turning away from me. ‘Resisting you is fucking hard enough as it without you doing…THAT.'"

She claims she wasn't doing anything, but he begs to differ. Can he read her mind, she wants to know.

"‘I drank from you…my venom is in your veins. You've metabolized it.'"

The explanation he gives is that he can't read or hear her thoughts, but he can feel her, her aura, her energy. So when she gets turned on and starts imagining everything she wants him to do to her, he can feel it. It's pheromonal, he says.

He has feelings for her, and they're not innocent.

"‘So you just cut me out of your life because FEELINGS are HARD?'"

"‘I cut you out of my life because my feelings for you aren't SAFE for you, Maeve.'"

She tells him to show her what he means, instead of merely telling her—inviting him to do his worst.

"‘I'm not afraid, Caspian.'"

And just like that, she's on her back on his bed, and his eyes are blacked out and inhuman.

Her blood is effervescent, he tells her. Like honey and sunlight. Like no other blood he's ever tasted, human or animal.

His fangs emerge, and he teases her with them, at her throat.

What ARE you, he asks.

Just me, she answers.

No, she's far, far more than merely human, he claims.

"‘You should run away before I lose my will and taste you again.'"

"when you…tasted me…before…It felt…incredible.'"

Would he drink until she died? She doesn't believe that—he told her he'd kill himself before her hurt her. Would he turn her into a vampire?

He could, but it doesn't work like that, not like she thinks, as informed by popular fiction.

He warns her, again, that if she doesn't flee now, she just might find out what he means when he says he won't be able to stop, once he starts.

"‘I WANT to find out, Caspian.'"

He finally explains. He calls it the mating frenzy—feeding is an inherently sexual process, as dictated by biology. When a vampire feeds from a host, the vampire secretes a pheromone that triggers the human host's sexual desires, turning them on in a way that cannot be turned off. A mating frenzy is a far more powerful version of the need to feed. It's sexual arousal, feeding imperative with its sexual accompaniment, plus a deeply emotional connection.

Furthermore, the venom he mentioned is part of the feeding process, secreted in vampire saliva, which facilitates the feeding process—it numbs against pain, heals the wound when the feeding is done, causes the human body to overproduce blood to protect against blood loss sickness, and flushes the human host with sexual hormones and pheromones.

He shows her.

Finally.

His lips touch her skin, arousal blasts through her, and then he's finally at long last feeding from her, letting her touch him, touching her.

It's not quite fully penetrative sex, yet. But close. And in a way, almost MORE intimate for all that.

He makes her come as he feeds from her, and tries to fend off her own desire for him, her need to give him pleasure. Tears himself away, leaping across the room…

She doesn't care about the danger, whatever it may be. All she knows is need.

He claims she'll die.

She ignores his warnings.

She triggers something inside herself, pulling some strange light and energy from Caspian—akin to how he fed from her, but more metaphysical. She pulls this light, this energy from him, and she touches him, strokes his cock, takes her pleasure from his perfect body.

She makes him come—again and again…

He begs her to go, promising to explain everything later if she'll just GO.

She can tell he's fighting something, fighting some instinct tooth and nail—fighting to protect her from a danger he can't explain other than to say it means her death.

"‘For me, go. For me. Go.'"

She flees, then.

She dreams of him.

Every night.

But now, the dream is filled with details—his fangs in her skin, his cock in her hands. The sound he makes when he comes.

Yet despite the intensity of the dreams, she always wakes up before she can reach climax on her own—and an urge she can't explain even to herself prevents her from finishing the climax herself upon waking.

As if to finish it herself with her fingers would be…not morally wrong, but just nowhere near enough.

He goes back to cutting her out—a day, then two, then a week. More weeks. More misguided attempts to protect her from something she doesn't want to be protected from.

She gives him a few weeks and then decides it's time to take matters into her own hands. Force the issue.

She shows up at his house…but he's not there. Stirling is, and warns her that she doesn't understand what she's risking by coming to their house.

She knows, she says, and no one will explain.

There are rules, Stirling explains. Laws they are compelled to obey, and Caspian risks breaking them all. Not human, mortal laws…THEIR laws.

Stirling incites The Purr inside Maeve…she's been a frantic mess of arousal for weeks, a raging inferno of pent-up, frustrated sexual need.

And here's Stirling, gorgeous and unavailable and intense. She's in a mating frenzy of her own, even though normal mortal girls like her shouldn't be able to go into a vampiric mating frenzy.

Stirling senses it, and his instincts take over—he yanks her inside the house, pins her against the door, fingers digging into her hips over her clothing, cupping her ass, pressing against her…

She knows it's Stirling, but she can't make herself care, in the moment. Her body doesn't care.

He touches his fangs to her throat…pierces, sips…just once, and then he closes the wound with a flick of his tongue and repeats Caspian's description of her blood: honey and sunlight.

She can feel his arousal—metaphorically, mentally, as well as physically, pressed against her belly.

She craves it.

More.

And then, as they seem to do, Stirling is suddenly six feet away and snarling at her to get the fuck out: "‘I see now why Caspian had to leave. You, Maeve Sparrow, are fucking dangerous. Whoever, WHATEVER you are.'

"‘I'm not—‘"

"You can lie to yourself, or maybe you don't even know. But your blood can't lie. Not to the likes of me.'"

He roars at her to get out, and she does, running home, more confused than ever.

How could she feel that way for STIRLING? Was it pheromones? Real desire? What was it?

No answers come.

She dreams again, and once again enters the dreamscape, where she encounters Caspian.

She's safe with him, even if he doesn't believe it.

In the dreamscape, she's naked with him, and he's his vampire self.

Wake up, he insists.

No, she counters…

He scents her and knows someone else touched her. Demands to know who.

Stirling.

She explains what happened.

Instead of jealousy or anger, he sinks to his knees in the dreamscape and he inhales her scent, touches his lips to her belly, her hip, turns her to face away, touching her backside…

Scenting her everywhere Stirling's hands touched her.

Can Caspian smell the fact that she liked it when Stirling touched her?

No, he answers. We are not like humans, he says. Our morals are not like yours.

She begs him to come to her, in the real world, to make love to her. She can't live without him. She doesn't care about the risk.

She should, he insists.

She doesn't, she insists right back.

She wakes up…

And he's there.

In her room. Real. Solid. Hers.

He goes down on her. As she comes, he nips her thigh right next to her sex, and drinks from her there, and the orgasm is more potent than ever.

Again and again, he makes her come until she loses count.

When she can't take anymore, he pulls her into his arms, holds her, and tells her to sleep.

Are you angry about Stirling? She asks.

No, he answers. "‘There is much you don't know about vampire culture.'"

It's the first time any of them have said the word right out loud.

She tells him, as she falls asleep, that she can't live without him.

It's just the venom, he says.

No, it's more. She felt that way before she ever met him, the first time she saw him. She feels him, the way he feels her.

She falls asleep in his arms.

The next day, Caspian isn't in school.

Stirling is at her car when she gets out, saying they have to talk.

She casually drops the word "vampire" into the conversation, and Stirling seems surprised—and is more shocked yet when she tells him that Caspian has fed from her on three different occasions; Stirling is shocked that he was able to stop—that he fed from her, but they didn't have sex.

Is there some secret she's not supposed to know about?

Yes, Stirling says. Us. Our very existence.

Well, Caspian kind of fucked that up, didn't he?

The conversation produces more questions than answers, as usual.

Finally, she badgers Stirling into explaining vampire culture.

He explains that contrary to popular fiction, vampires do not prey on humans and drink until the human is dead. Not never, but very rarely, mostly because it's seen as wasteful—a dead human cannot provide blood or pleasure. She wants to know how vampire culture feels about sharing. All Stirling will say is that neither Caspian nor Stirling find it amiss that Stirling tasted her blood the way he did—they're not upset about it, so she shouldn't be. No, not even that he was touching her intimately.

The more she pesters, the less he tells her, claiming that vampire culture is secretive and reclusive and that he shouldn't tell her anything, that she doesn't understand.

No, she yells, she doesn't, and no one will explain, and she's sick of it.

So Stirling sends her to Alistair's office at the college where he teaches, with one last warning to be careful of getting what she wishes for.

For her part, she leaves Stirling with her own parting shot: "‘That day at your house? I don't think I would have been the one to stop you. But I'm only human, you see. So it's a bit confusing for me.'"

Stirling seems to be barely able to restrain himself, saying, as he leaves her, finally: "‘You are the most dangerous female I've ever encountered. You'll be the death of us all.'"

Alistair is wearing glasses, which leads her to question if someone with his dietary preferences would need reading glasses. No, he answers, but it's not a dietary PREFERENCE, it's a requirement, something they're BORN with.

Born.

Not created.

Now they're getting somewhere…

But he says this isn't the time or place.

"‘I didn't ask to be pulled into your orbit, Alistair. But I am. And now that I am aware of certain truths, I can't be asked to simply forget. And I think I'm owed some kind of explanation, don't you?'"

Unexpectedly, Alistair agrees and invites her to dinner at their house the next night at nine—promising a thorough explanation of their race and culture.

She goes home, somewhat mollified by the promise of a real explanation, but all she can think about is the idea of being SHARED by Stirling and Caspian.

She doesn't WANT to think about it, but she can't not.

Her human, mortal morality tells her she shouldn't want that…

But she does.

When Caspian picks her up for dinner, she wonders why he put on a seatbelt, if he's a vampire and thus can't die…he explains that he may not die from being thrown through a windshield but it's still not fun; he explains that they feel pain when freshly blooded—meaning recently fed.

"‘Let me see if I'm understanding this right. When you're freshly blooded, you're more…human?'

"‘I AM human, Maeve. Meaning, our base DNA is the same as yours. It's just…different. So, I'm always human, I'm just a very, very different race of human…when I'm blooded, I'm more ALIVE…'"

‘So how do you differentiate between humans like me and vampire humans like you?'

‘We call your kind mortals.'"

‘As opposed to?'

"Immortals.'"

Caspian reveals that he's not eighteen as she thought, but rather two-hundred and thirty-six.

The discussion that follows brings them to the topic of vampire babies, and Caspian stops the questioning there because Alistair is more suited to the explanation than Caspian, and the answer directly involves her and the subject of their relationship.

Once inside, things begin innocently enough. Until she gets too close to Fin, and The Purr kicks on, and turns her on, which turns him on, making her envision him drinking from her, feeding from her, touching her—

Which makes Fin go feral, eyes blacked out, voice inhuman, forcing Caspian and Stirling to hold him back until he can regain control.

He feels terrible—says there's something about her scent that just…he can't explain it.

Alistair, out of curiosity, presses his nose to the side of her neck, behind her ear…and he immediately turns away, visibly struggling for control. He says he thinks he can explain what's going on, to a degree.

After dinner, he finally begins explaining. First, he states that he, Fin, Stirling, and Caspian are all vampires, which of course, means that vampires do indeed exist. Furthermore, there aren't JUST vampires, there are three races of immortal humans: vampires, shapeshifters (werewolves, but he cautions her to never use that word around one or she'll be dead faster than she can blink), and fae. All three races can be found in all parts of the world, and the secret of their existence is intentional, and a closely guarded secret at that.

Vampires are not mindless beasts, or savages bent on devouring human flesh, or drinking blood until their victim is dead. They are not created by another vampire. Garlic, crosses, stakes, all of that is fictional nonsense. Only decapitation, certain fae magic, and possibly a powerful shifter can kill a vampire.

He explains that, according to one popular source of popular fictional knowledge regarding vampires, draining a human of blood and then feeding him or her blood from the parent vampire will create a vampire—this is true, he says, but only sort of. It will create a vampire, but not a thinking, conscious vampire—it will create a nosferatu, a savage, mindless, bloodthirsty monster, and the source of most myths regarding vampires. Creating one is also considered the most heinous and unforgivable crime in vampire culture.

Vampires are born. They have their own anatomy and biology, genetics, family structure, politics, history, art. Their own entire culture. They are immensely powerful and immortal. They can see in the dark. They are fast, impervious to just about everything.

This is all true of shifters, as well, and shifters can, of course, turn into predatory animals.

It's true of fae as well, but fae, rather than physical strength, are quick, lithe, and graceful, able to dance along treetops, run across newly fallen snow without leaving a trace, and they can work magic, which they call "glamours." A glamour is largely magic which works upon the natural world—rendering themselves invisible and manipulating plants or the elements, as well as things like mind tricks upon mortals, bending the laws of physics to a limited degree, and walking in dreams. Glamours are, basically, only limited by the talent, creativity, and power of the fae in question. They must, however, have vitality, the energy that gives them magic.

Nature loves balance, however, and this is true of immortals: first, immortals must draw their life force from another being—vampires, obviously, drink blood; shapeshifters draw life force from some external source, but Alistair doesn't know the details; and fae must draw vitality, or the raw energy of life, that which gives humans of all kinds the spark of life, of consciousness. Drawing lifeforce is a biological imperative—they may not die, exactly, but existence is pure agony without it.

The second balancing factor is reproduction. And this is where it begins to involve Maeve. Immortals cannot reproduce with their own race. A vampire cannot create a baby vampire via mating with another vampire: they must have a human host. Same goes for shifters and fae.

They do mate with their own kind, of course, and form nuclear families, and engage in sex for physical and emotional connection, but in order to reproduce, there must be a mortal host. Which is why blood drinking is so inherently sexual—vampires are the perfect predator.

"‘We can see perfectly in the dark,'" Alistair tells her. "‘We can cloak ourselves in shadow, and we can move without a sound or leaving tracks. When we have located and chosen our prey, we exude a powerful pheromone that causes sexual excitement and desire—so intense that it is all but uncontrollable. It can even cause a kind of hypnosis.'"

He then demonstrates that vampires even have direct control over the pheromone release, having her stand twenty feet away, restrained by Caspian. She feels a tidal wave of sensation, a rush of sexual arousal, a desire to go to Alistair and—

Alistair releases her, and it clears.

But it's not without its effect on Alistair himself—he is again fighting desperately to control himself—"‘I underestimated YOUR influence on ME, it would appear,'" he says.

There's something unique about her that he can't quite pinpoint. But, like the others have each stated, there's something intoxicating about her. She exudes her own pheromone, he theorizes. Like a mating frenzy, perhaps. Which would make sense, if she wasn't a mortal human…as far as they know. SHE doesn't know, that's for sure.

There's evidence that she's not just a human though: the day she lightened her footsteps. The weird dreams.

Alistair explains the mating frenzy concept. "‘When we need to feed, we feel arousal—feeding is an intimate experience. You taste the whole of the person—her thoughts, her desires, her memories, her emotions, the flavor of the individual. Add in the biological factor that when we prepare to feed, we cause sexual excitement in our host, which functions to lessen the fear response, muddle the memory of the experience, and dull any sense of pain, and you have a recipe for a sexual encounter. So, when we feed, it comes with sex. Not always penetrative, mind you. To us, penetration is the highest intimacy one can experience and is not to be undertaken lightly, and only for reproduction with a human, or in the sacred space of bloodmating with a vampire.'"

A mating frenzy is different from normal feeding, however. It's a compulsion, centered on a particular individual. It's not just sexual desire or the need to feed, it's significantly more, it's a need to mate, to produce offspring. He explains that female vampire venom causes an unending erection, guaranteeing a mortal male will be able to impregnate the female.

The big caveat to the whole mortal host thing is that pregnancy in a mortal caused by an immortal always results in death for the mortal. It is a fatally parasitic process, he says. Once the child is born, the mortal mother always, ALWAYS dies. There has never been an exception. If the mother is a vampire and the sire is a mortal male, the female vampire is compelled to end his life, like mantises or black widows. There have been a few, rare cases of a mortal male progenitor surviving the mating frenzy, but NEVER a female host. An immortal also ALWAYS knows when conception occurs.

Now, Maeve understands what Caspian was trying to protect her from.

Furthermore, Alistair explains that there are no such things as half-breeds, no half-mortal, half-immortal. Any union between an immortal and a mortal ALWAYS results in an immortal. Contraception doesn"t work, nor does birth control. He says it is possible to tamp down the sexual component to feeding, but it's reserved for desperate, emergency situations, as how a modern American would feel about eating bugs to survive in the wilderness, except for a vampire, denying the sexual component comes with literal pain.

From here, they discuss how Maeve's blood in particular is utterly unlike any other blood. It's unique and addictive.

Maeve asks about consent, in terms of the pheromone response.

"‘For most of history, unfortunately,'" Alistair says, "‘the matter of consent has not been…considered. And this is true of mortals and immortals, I must point out. I feel compelled to defend my race, in this. We drink blood, and when we do so, yes, we cause the host—and we prefer the term HOST to VICTIM—to feel a sexual excitement he or she cannot and truly does not WANT to ignore. The experience, then, is one of pleasure. For most hosts, all that is remembered of the experience is a vague memory of pleasure, like a night of overindulgence in spirits and engaging in sex. There is no memory of pain because the pain is negated by both the venom and sexual pleasure. There is no physical after-effect connected to blood loss either…it is more of a synergistic relationship than parasitic or predatory…but one could—and I do—argue that it is far more palatable and mutually beneficial, than, say, what I know many mortal females have experienced with other mortal males. That being rape.'"

There is a brief aside as Maeve is made aware of the particulars regarding…sharing. Meaning, there are rules surrounding the practice of sharing a host. It only happens in group settings, and the vampire who first "claimed" the mortal must express permission for anyone else to feed from the mortal. So, what Stirling did was, in a sense, against the rules. There are nightclubs, designed to attract mortals specifically for feeding frenzies. In the clubs, it's more anything goes, but in personal, private settings, the rules change. It would be fine if Caspian invited her over and they all fed from and played with her, but for Stirling to seek her out away from Caspian and feed from her…that's a no-no.

Maeve defends Stirling—it wasn't like that. Caspian cut her out, and she was going crazy, and it just sort of happened. He nicked her, tasted her, and then stopped himself.

Stirling says stopping himself was the hardest thing he's ever done, like trying to rip off his own fingers. Which Caspian says he understands.

They explain more of the details regarding vampire culture and sharing. They show her pouches containing blood, which can be heated to the exact temperature of human blood via a fae glamour.

It is divulged that Caspian lived off of animals for a long time, after his mother was murdered—he was a child at the time, by mortal and immortal standards. Vampires age like a normal mortal until the end of physical adolescence, so eighteen or twenty for males and fourteen to seventeen for females, and after that, their bodies slow the aging process to a crawl, which is why Alistair looks middle-aged even though he's five hundred years old.

A vampire baby requires blood as well as milk, which is how the mortal female host dies—the baby cannot control the urge to drink blood—Alistair explains the particulars of the process, and the variations depending on the race and sex of the host.

The upshot of the conversation is that Caspian is afraid for her life, knowing what happens to mortal females impregnated by a male vampire.

"‘The first time you mate with each other, you WILL become pregnant. You will carry his child, and you WILL die. And there won't be anything we can do to save you,'" Alistair explains.

He very obviously has personal experience with the loss of a mortal female mate, which leads to the explanation of the war, and the treaty that currently governs immortal society.

Mortals know it as the Revolutionary War. It was centered in America, in the mid to late seventeen hundreds. The mortal politics as taught were real, and part of it, but there was an additional element: immortals. Up to that point, it was sort of an open secret that immortals existed and that they took mortal lovers, and those lovers always died. There was a sect of immortals, however, who wanted to bring immortals out of the shadows and normalize their place in human society.

The war as taught was, then, about mortal politics, but also about the inclusion of immortals. The sect was driven out of Paris where it was centered, and they fled to New York and became more radical. They taught immortal superiority, and this inflamed the already tense situation here. The immortals were seen as evil, as monsters, due to the actions of the sect of malcontents, and this wove itself into the political turmoil of the rebellion.

The war, then, was complex and multi-faceted, with fae and shifters blaming vampires. The war wasn't merely mortal British against mortal Americans, but a tangled web of immortals and mortals, British and American.

And, when the war ended and the Americans gained independence, so too did the mortals triumph over the immortals—through a war of attrition. Despite immortals' greater powers, their numbers were no match for mortal technology, ingenuity, hate, and simple numerical superiority.

The reason current, modern history doesn't recall any of this is that in 1784, the Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the mortals' political war—known as The War for Independence; there was another treaty, however, the one which ended what is known as the Mortals' War, which ended the conflict between mortals and immortals. Known only as The Treaty, it dictated that the fae, supported by vampires and shifters, would work the most powerful glamour in history, causing all mortals to forget the existence of immortals. It dictated that no immortal could reproduce with a mortal, upon pain of death, enforced by immortals. Meaning, immortals would be left alone to live in peace…and slowly die out. Feeding is allowed, as long as it doesn't result in death for the mortal.

Obviously, this means that Caspian is risking not just killing Maeve through childbirth, but his own death for having broken the treaty.

It is also divulged that Caspian is the youngest known immortal—his mother bore him the year the Treaty was signed—AFTER the treaty, in fact, which is why she was murdered. His mother was the first immortal to be executed by the newly formed Immortal Tribunal.

As Alistair continues to explain the intricacies and details of the war and its results, a thought percolates inside Maeve. A question…

"‘Is it possible…to be…immortal but not…but not know it?'"

Alistair doesn't think so, to his knowledge, but his understanding of fae magic is limited, but it seems far-fetched to him, if not impossible.

But, Stirling points out, it would make sense of why her blood is so strange.

They can't come to an agreement on it, however, because none of them know enough about fae magic.

Caspian tells her about the death of his mother. How he was left alone in the world at eleven years old, not in full possession of his vampiric powers yet, unable to understand himself. Coming into your powers as a vampire requires guidance, just like any other facet of growing up as a human. And he had none, so he ended up in the wilderness, alone, more than half-feral, living on animals…until Alistair found him and civilized him and taught him how to properly feed from a mortal host.

He explains Havens to her, the immortal nightclubs where mortals go to dance and drink…and to be fed from and played with by immortals—the mortals leave without remembering anything concrete.

The rules of such clubs are simple: No fighting, no draining mortals, no conception, and no divulgence of vampires' existence—the last one seems odd, considering the vampires are drinking from and playing with the mortals, but the function of blood drinking means mortals remember very little other than going to a nightclub, drinking, dancing, and engaging in foreplay sexual activity. Nothing of the blood-drinking is retained in their memory.

This leads Maeve to ask: since the Taylors have allowed Maeve, a mortal, to be aware of their vampiric nature…yes, Caspian answers, it means they have technically broken the Treaty, but as long as the knowledge goes no further than Maeve, and she keeps it to herself, no one should be the wiser.

And what about us, Maeve wants to know—her and Caspian, and their relationship?

She wants to be with him.

But…

The mating frenzy is still a problem. "‘…I fight it every moment I'm within fifty feet of you… I mean that literally. Right now, this very moment, every cell in my being is demanding I carry you to my room, strip you naked, and mate with you. Plunge my fangs into your throat and taste your golden, effervescent blood and sink my cock into you and take you until you know nothing but me, nothing but us.'"

His words, and the pheromones assaulting her, setting off her own mating frenzy—in a glut of desperation, she bites his neck, tasting blood and shadow and magic, and she PULLS, pulling vitality and blood at the same time, although she doesn't exactly realize that's what she's doing in the moment.

In shock, Caspian roars and throws her off—shocked, in pain, pale, blanched, and clammy, his eyes dull with pain, hollow, gaunt, and confused.

She stammers an apology and flees the Taylor home, ignoring Caspian's protestations that he was just surprised, he's not angry…

She's panicked—she drank his blood, she tasted him…and she LIKED it. She's horrified, terrified, and flees into the forest.

She doesn't trip.

She can see perfectly in the dark.

Her feet make no sound.

She does not tire.

What IS she?

And then, all at once, the exhaustion hits her like a freight train, and she collapses, sobbing, at the edge of Lake Michigan. This is when something unusual—or MORE unusual—happens: she can hear EVERYTHING, feel EVERYTHING. Each grain of sand under her hands, the scurry of mice in the forest, the silent winging of an owl between the trees. She feels the shadows pulling her, the starlight, the moonlight.

Alistair was very clear—true, real, sentient vampires are made, not born, and her mother was most assuredly NOT a vampire. But all available evidence points to her being a vampire. Right?

She muses on this for a while, until the inexplicable sound of music reaches her ears, a haunting, distant melody. A sorrowful, longing tune that strikes a chord deep in her soul.

The violinist plays faster than any mortal could possibly dream of, a furious and frantic sawing of the strings, a melody so complex and dizzying it defies comprehension.

Alistair.

The song touches her soul and unlocks her own grief—the mourning for her lost mother which she has not been able to broach…till now.

Alistair is shirtless and barefoot, leaping through the trees from branch to branch, a mad fiddler not upon a roof but in forest canopy, dancing and playing and mourning his lost mortal mate.

The song is too much. The grief is too much.

She begs him to stop. Something about the song he plays is driving wedges into the carapace shielding her from the depths of her grief.

He plays faster, deeper, higher, and the cracks deepen, widen.

Her grief bursts forth, his sorrow battering at her and unleashing her own.

Finally, the dam breaks, and she weeps for her mother—all the tears she couldn't shed in the preceding months coming out all at once.

They mourn, together.

She sees her mother in a flash flood of memories and realizes she never really KNEW her mother, the person, but in retrospect, she can see that her mother was burdened by her own sorrow, her own tragedy—of which Maeve knows absolutely nothing.

Her grief shatters her.

Breaks her open.

She hears her mother's voice: "‘It is breaking. I am with you. You are not alone, my love…I'm always with you…You will change the world, my love. But first, you must break.'"

What that means, she doesn't know.

Caspian comes to her. Holds her.

Alistair is there. Silent. Sorrowful.

He pierces her throat with his fangs and drinks from her, while Caspian holds her.

Ecstasy replaces the sorrow, and the pleasure burns away the grief.

"‘Grief is a living thing. It is a parasite. I had to draw it out of you,'" Alistair says.

Why? She asks.

So you can be you, he answers.

But who is she? WHAT is she?

They don't know, no more than she does.

Alistair drinks from her, and touches her, and Caspian is caressing her, and teasing her, and there is no right or wrong, only the moment, the perfection of the experience with the two men who have come to mean so much to her.

More, she begs. MORE.

They give her more.

Caspian takes more—her blood, her body.

Before it can become sex, they stop—much to her sharp disappointment.

"‘You always stop,'" she says. "‘I've never asked you to stop.'"

Even after what they told her about immortal-mortal reproduction?

She won't die, she tells them. She knows it to be true—HOW she knows, she can't say, but she knows it.

Alistair expresses amazement that she, a 19-year-old seemingly mortal girl, allowed him, a 500-year-old vampire, to feed from her. All she can say is that it just seems…right. She doesn't regret it. She isn't afraid.

She kisses Alistair, briefly, softly.

She glances at Caspian, wondering at his reaction to her kissing his parent figure—it's not like that, he says. And furthermore, he says he can FEEL her more powerfully…a deeper, stronger connection. The more they interact and the more he drinks her blood, the more he can feel her thoughts and emotions.

He explains that Alistair is not really a parent figure at all, in vampire culture. He poses as that for mortals, but vampires form covens, a chosen family separate from the parents they were born to—the parent who sired or bore them, and that vampire's mate. Covens are a family, but not by relation—by choice. Alistair took all three of them in, helped them, taught them, and they feel love for him, but it is not parental.

Meaning, Maeve kissing Alistair is not weird or inappropriate to any of them.

Caspian brings her home, and the excitement and frustration from getting so close to what she really wants rages inside her, leaving her desperate for Caspian in a way she can't handle, can't fight, can't stop. It's not even him, his vampiric pheromones—it's her. Her body, her instincts. It's an uncontrollable NEED.

Caspian tries to resist, but she won't let him. He pushes her up against the front door of Andreas's house and goes down on her, claims her as his and reassures her that he is just as much hers.

She still hasn't gotten what she wants, what she needs, and every time they're together it's hotter, more erotic…and more frustrating.

The eruption of her grief, courtesy of Alistair's mad, sorrowful violin playing, has changed her, broken some dam loose.

It's more than that.

She suspects she's…like them—the Taylors. She can't even think the word in reference to herself yet. But there's just something inside her… "a yawning, aching need. The hunger. The emptiness. The craving, yearning for MORE. For. Caspian. For us. For Stirling, and Fin, and Alistair. To feel. To feed. Blood rushing. Heat and skin and fangs. Completion. Union. More and more and more."

As is becoming habitual, following the dinner and the scene in the woods and then at Andreas's house, Caspian is notably absent—this time, at least, he leaves her a note saying he went hunting.

She dreams of Caspian, of Alistair's haunting fiddling, of their hands on her, mouths, fangs, and she grows more and more desperate. Yet she still dares not pleasure herself—it won't help. It won't be HIM.

She dreams of pulling that weird magical energy from him again.

Andreas is gone a lot, working.

Days pass, and Caspian is still gone. She knows he's gone—she can feel his absence—the distance between them.

She's now in a constant state of "confused, absent-minded arousal…a fever burning inside me, devouring me from the inside out."

The Purr can feel him returning to her, she feels the distance closing.

She daydreams of him, sending him wave after waveof need.

Her blood feels like it's on fire.

Then, two weeks later, she's in math class, and she's abruptly assaulted by a single intense wave of orgasmic arousal, so strong an involuntary moan is ripped from her—she leaves school and makes a beeline to him—she doesn't need to think or try to find him, she just knows.

She finds them at home, waiting for her in the clearing in front of their house in the woods.

They hustle her into a car and drive away—north, to a cabin in the woods in the UP, an isolated place…private…

A teasing bit of sexual banter between Maeve and Fin reveals that not just Caspian received her incessant waves of broadcasted need—all of them did. When a vampire feeds from a host, a kind of psychic connection is created. The deeper and more long-lasting the relationship between vampire and host, the clearer the communication between them—the vampire can also choose to sever or keep the connection. With most mortal hosts, the vampire usually chooses to sever it, unless they intend to take the mortal as a lover and not just a temporary blood donor and plaything.

In the case of Maeve and the Taylor coven, they've obviously all fed from her, and have all kept the bond, but furthermore, Alistair says she seems able to create her own bond with them, resulting in a two-way communication that is not at all normal, and far stronger and clearer than anything any of them have experienced.

More evidence that Maeve is…something. Not a mere mortal. She doesn't know WHAT she is exactly, but she's SOMETHING.

They arrive at a log cabin in the woods—truly remote, and truly private.

They discuss the vampires' involvement in various wars and the intricacies of surviving as a vampire during a world war—a poor distraction from the real reason they made the journey to the Upper Peninsula.

Caspian takes Maeve for a walk in the woods. Caspian admits that the reason he left the last time was because he saw Alistair's grief and knew he couldn't handle it if that happened to her—she's not a mortal, and their connection goes far deeper than a mating frenzy need.

"‘This isn't a frenzy. This isn't a vampire thing or an immortal thing. Me, wanting you? It's a HUMAN thing. You're a vampire and I'm…I'm not sure. But I'm a nineteen-year-old human girl, and I'm horny, and I'm in love with you.'"

Finally…finally…he seems ready to accept what she needs, ready to give it to her.

What about the others, Caspian wants to know.

She can't explain it fully, but she's aware of the difference. Caspian is the center and focus of her need. She wants to mate with him, make love with him. She wants more of them all feeding from her and playing with her, but Caspian is hers and she is his, and she just instinctually understands where the lines are.

He explains that if she continues with the others, the connection will continue to deepen, but it could be neutralized if needed. But the link between Maeve and Caspian cannot be broken, not without ruining their minds.

"‘If you choose to allow anything further to happen with the others, you would, in a sense, be choosing to be a part of our coven, though you are not a vampire.'

‘It feels right, Caspian. You and me, we feel right. The others—your coven—they feel right.'

‘What if you get pregnant? You're too young, even for a mortal. And far, far too precious to me.'

‘I can't give you evidence or proof, only a strong feeling. But I know, down to my bones, I KNOW that won't happen.'"

And so it begins.

He carries her in a supernatural, vampiric run back to the cabin.

Desperation for him is a living thing inside her, and it will not be denied a moment longer.

"‘There's something inside me, Caspian. Something huge, powerful.'"

They go inside, and kiss. Strip each other in a frenzy of need.

She knows only him, his mouth, his touch, the scent of his blood.

She mentally beckons the others.

She pulls at Caspian's vitality, and he drinks her blood—it's a synergistic cycle—her blood renews his vitality, and vice versa.

Caspian brings her to the edge of orgasm, but she fends it off.

Not yet.

Not without the others.

They come to her.

She's primed and ready.

They each touch her and taste her in their own ways, according to their personalities—Alistair last and most hesitantly of all.

Fin feeds from her breast, Stirling kisses her, Alistair strips her the rest of the way.

It's endless and wild, their venom and their touch igniting her, teasing her, sending her to the edge, and then, finally, she comes.

Again and again as Caspian goes down on her.

All four of them feed from her at once, and she's coming as she feels their minds and souls all wrapped up around her…

She touches them.

Makes them come, as well, with her hands—Stirling and Fin, at least. Alistair doesn't allow her to touch him that way.

And then she and Caspian are alone, and he carries her up to their private loft.

And there, at long, long last, they make love.

They repeat together, in a ritualistic chant: I'm yours, and you are mine.

Her teeth ache as something long constricted and pent up inside her breaks free, and she finds his jugular, feels her fangs descend and she drinks his blood and pulls his vitality as they continue to make love.

I am yours.

You are mine.

They chant it together.

One last breaking, within Maeve.

A shattering.

Pain unlike any other woven in with the purest pleasure she's ever felt.

Destruction and rebirth.

Caspian feels his own pain, his own breaking—and then, suddenly, she can feel ALL of him, not just vestiges and hints, but every detail, every thought, every intent and sensation.

The agony fades and is replaced by orgasmic pleasure.

Connection.

Union.

Once they can speak again, Caspian is shocked—at her.

He shows her a mirror: her hair glows, as does her skin, glowing with an inner light—like her mother in the dreamscape.

Her ears are pointed.

Her eyes are pure white—like Caspian's but the inverse.

And…fangs. A vampire's fangs.

She's…somehow, both vampire AND fae.

She is not a mortal, and she never was.

She is, to his knowledge, the first of a new breed of immortal: a hybrid, something thought impossible heretofore.

The others come up, then, and join them in the loft, there in the cabin in the woods of the UP, and upon seeing her new appearance, Alistair speaks the obvious truth:

"‘Well. This changes everything.'"

The End of Part One.