Born in Twilight: Twilight Vows Read Free

caressed my face. Every pebble and piece of trash that lay beneath me. I could identify each vile smell. And my hearing…I could hear the conversations of people passing on the street. The roll of tires on the wet pavement. The squeaking of snow-dampened brakes.
    I heard the traffic light turn green.
    â€œWhat is this?” I cried, and my own voice was so shockingly different, so vivid and rich and clear, that I pressed my hands to my ears and squeezed my eyes shut tight.
    â€œYou’ll learn to control it,” he told me. “You can close it out, hear only what you wish to hear. You’ll learn. I’ll teach you.” He removed my hands from my ears, pressed them to the rubbish at my sides. “I’ll teach you. You’ll live forever, Angelica. You’re not mortal anymore. You’re like me now.”
    I opened my eyes. “Like you?” I was horrified.
    â€œYes.”
    And my heart seemed to stop beating as I realized what he had done, what I had allowed him to do. “I’m damned,” I whispered.
    â€œCome. Your first lesson awaits.” He hauled me to my feet, dragged me toward the mouth of the alley, though I pulled against him. My habit was torn as he grabbed at me. “Strong,” he whispered. “Already, you’re very strong. You’ll be even stronger, Angelica, after we feed.” He stopped, holding me there at the mouth of the alley, and I watched his odd, black eyes scan the passersby.
    â€œFeed?” I whispered, terrified.
    â€œYes,” he said, and he smiled. I saw his teeth then, his fangs, razor sharp and glistening. “On them.” He nodded toward the people who passed.
    Horror enveloped my heart. He was a monster! A demon. A… a vampire. I shivered as the word whispered in my mind. He’d made of me another creature just like him. And I’d allowed it. I’d even taken part in it. I’d—
    He caught me up in his arms, though I fought, and he carried me back into the alley. Slinging me over his shoulder, he clutched the side of the building and began to climb. Like a spider, he made his way to the very top, and I stopped my struggling for fear I would fall. Higher and higher he went, and the wind blew stronger here. My beloved snowflakes became weapons. Tiny arrows slung by the Angel of the Lord to punish me. Cutting my face with their biting touch. And yet I did not shiver or suffer from the cold. Only felt it more acutely than I ever had.
    He climbed onto the roof, and then raced over rooftops, leaping from one to the next. I think I screamed as we seemed to sail through the night sky like true demons. I think I screamed. If so, the sound of it is only a vague memory now.
    We made our way to the ground again, to the streets, and I knew where we were. Not far from the shelter where I’d been so arrogantly going this night. Oh, why had I been so rebellious? Why?
    He pointed, and I looked. A handful of the city’s homeless stood around a fire barrel, warming their hands near the dancing flames. Red-orange light painting their haggard faces and illuminating their tattered clothes.
    â€œThere,” he said. “Our victims…ours for the taking, Angelica. Their lives will be no great loss.”
    The people I’d spent years trying to help. This man intended to feed on them, to use them in order to sustain his own cursed life. “No,” I begged him. “No, please, we mustn’t. It’s a sin to kill!” For I knew that murder was exactly what he had on his mind.
    He left me free to run if I chose. He must have known, animal that he was, that I could not. Like a great, stalking wolf, he crept up on them. But quickly. So quickly there was no time for me to shout a warning. And then, without hesitation, he grabbed one. There was a shout of alarm, and then the others scattered, vanishing in the night. And he held the man he’d chosen. A terror-stricken, aged face that I