“God taught us to love, and I love you. There is no evil I could not overcome! What is this, what is this beast you call yourself?”

* * *

“Vampyr!” Charles Godwin, the German professor, asserted. He had come to the Montgomery house that night along with Gene Courtemarch, the aging Creole doctor, and young Master Robert Canady, who so adored Jason Montgomery’s beautiful young daughter.

Canady was new to this; a disbeliever. Godwin and Courtemarch had been touched by things of darkness before, and for many years they had kept up a vigil with Montgomery. Beautiful Marie was long gone, but darkness remained, and always would, and so, Magdalena had always been in danger.

“Yes, so I believe,” Jason said, exhausted with worry and pain. He had sent for his friends soon after Magdalena had gone upstairs. He had feared the evil forever; he had known it existed. They had all waited and watched. They had prayed it would not come. And now ...

“We must go for him with the dawn,” Courtemarch said. “Then we may discover the truth.”

“Gentlemen,” Robert Canady said firmly, “I cannot condone this mad, rash action you propose! They will hang us all, one by one! And though I would gladly die for your daughter, Jason, I would have my death serve her well. The comte is newly arrived, mysterious if you will, but he has been a gentleman on all occasions—”

“Are you daft, young man?” Godwin, white-haired and white-mustachioed, exploded. “He takes the woman you love.”

Robert exhaled slowly. “God help me, yes, I love her! But I cannot murder a man for loving the woman I would have— and having her love him in return.”

“Don’t you understand?” Jason Montgomery cried in exasperation.

They were disrupted as heavy footsteps came running hard down the stairs.

“Mr. Montgomery, Mr. Montgomery!” Tyrone shouted, Hack knuckles white as he gripped the stairway. “She tricked us, sir!”

“Tricked us—?”

“Her sheets cover her pillows; she is gone.”

“Gone!” he gasped.

“We follow!” Godwin cried. “We follow! Tyrone, it is time. Bring the stakes, the swords. Quickly. God help us, let us be in time!”

“Gentlemen! Even if she chooses to love him, we still cannot commit murder!” Robert Canady said, trying in vain to reason with the other men. Dear God, didn’t these old fools realize? No one felt this betrayal more than he did. He loved her, wanted her. She would have been his wife. The pain was like a knife twisting again and again inside him.

But she loved the Frenchman.

“Damn you, Robert!” Jason protested. “You do not listen!”

“To a bunch of old fools—”

“To the wind. To the moon, to the mist, to the sound of the surf! Have you looked above you? The sky itself cries tears of blood. You do not understand.”

“And you must!” Godwin asserted.

“For the love of God, you must!” Courtemarch insisted.

“He is—” Jason began.

“Vampyr!” Courtemarch finished. “By all that is holy, you must realize. Her lover is vampyr!” Her lover rose above her, straddled her. Sleek, powerful, beautiful, she thought, his features so masculine and yet defined and aligned, his eyes so dark they seemed to glitter with the strangest fire.

“Vampire,” he said very softly.

She smiled slowly at first. Then she shook her head. “No. Someone has made you think that you are evil.”

“I am a creature of darkness, of the night,” he insisted.

A shivering began in her. He watched her so gravely. He trembled as he touched her face. “Perhaps love can set me free: that is the promise, the legend. And I love you so fiercely. As if I have waited a hundred years to hear your softest whisper, to taste this sweetness. You must understand, I’m afraid, afraid that the legend is a lie, that the promise is false. I could not bear to hurt you—”

“My love, I don’t understand you, you must quit this!” She sat up against him, pressing a finger to his lips. “You cannot be evil, you cannot! I will not believe it, I will not!” She pushed him from her; rose upon her knees to press herself against him. She kissed his face, his throat, his chest. Her fingertips fell upon him, adored the smooth feel of his flesh. An agonized groan escaped him; again he crushed her to himself.

“I may bring hell’s fire, damnation—”

“Then bring them on, my love, for I will not leave you, I could not bear to leave you! They will not keep me from you, I care not what comes!”

She cared not ...

No, she cared not. The world was gone with his harsh, ragged cry, and she was encompassed with the cool, sensual feel of the satin again as she was pressed back into it. Ah, dear God, the sweetness of his touch, as light as a breeze, a whisper, then fire. His arms, hard, demanding. His lips, everywhere, along her limbs, within the heart of her. Drumbeats tatted, pounded, escalated. Her blood grew molten. He touched her with intimacy until she shrieked and pleaded and swore she would love him forever and ever.

Then, suddenly he rose above her, stared into her eyes, entered her body. Slowly. She shuddered against the pain, holding him, meeting his eyes, writhing with the wonder even as the knifing pain escalated ... and subsided. “Kiss me ...” she whispered.

He lowered his head, seized her lips. The sweet pulse began anew with his surging movement. His lips fell upon hers. He kissed her open mouth. His fingers threaded into her hair, his lips brushed across her cheek, down her throat.

The drumbeats were explosive. She soared in magic flight, she writhed in a strange anguish, wanting more. She could almost reach it, touch it. Each time he moved.

She felt his teeth against her throat. A sharp, shattering little pain ...

A cry tore from her lips as she shuddered, gasped, convulsed. Pain and pleasure combined, and tempest reigned, sweet, delicious. So good that she saw velvet darkness, the red of the night sky, a burst of stars against it all. Everything went black for seconds, then the stars returned. The pain, the pleasure.

He had invaded her body, made it his own. Drawn hunger, drawn life, drawn blood.

Vampire ... he had told her.

Vampire . ..

If she touched her throat, she would find blood. By God, perhaps ...

He was not evil! her heart cried. Oh, God, she could still feel him, feel it, the wonder, the excitement, the fulfillment of the hunger. It swept her, it rocked her. It had brought her so high, cradled her downward in such a gentle, sublime caress. Shudder after shudder seized her. She felt him, his body, giving her heat, giving her life.

She had almost died of pleasure. She had reached such ecstasy that she had blacked out. She had tasted his searing fires of hell, and they were splendor. Sweet bliss had enwrapped her, shaken her, exploded in her. His whisper still seemed to be all around her, his weight and strength bore her down.

“I love you!” she whispered.

He started to reply. She saw his ebony eyes with their striking glitter, the handsome planes of his face, the slow, sweet, sensual curve of his smile ...

Then he was silent, still.

Dead still.

She stared uncomprehending for long seconds, then saw the sharpened stake. It had been run into his back. It protruded through his chest. A crimson stain now spread across his flesh and dripped downward.

Upon her.

“Vampyr!” someone shouted.

Then the scream that had welled inside her wrenched hysterically from her, high, shrill. Alec had begun to crumble toward her; then he was stopped. From the corner of her eye she saw him wrenched backward. She saw the glitter of a broadsword, saw it swing.

They were decapitating him!

Mercifully, instinct warned her to close her eyes. She did so.

She felt his blood, hot and sticky, spill over her, and she began to scream again.

The body was pulled from her. She inched up against the bed in amazement, shocked, stunned, screaming in disbelief. Seeing now, unable to believe what she was seeing. Her father was there, with his funny little cronies—white-haired Godwin, tall, skinny Courtemarch. And Robert was there. Grave, sad, his heart in his eyes as he watched her. Robert, reaching for her now, arms strong, determined.

It was a nightmare, it could not be happening. But she could feel her lover’s blood upon her breast, just as she could feel her own, trickling from the wound in her neck. This was too horrible to be comprehended; perhaps she wasn’t comprehending. And yet the blood was real.

Alec’s death was real.

“Magdalena, Magdalena!” Robert cried, pulling away to strip off his frockcoat to wrap around her, then draw her close once again. She was cold, so cold, but she couldn’t accept his comfort. She kept screaming. He held her more tightly.

“She is vampyr now, too!” Godwin insisted, his hands tightening upon his broadsword.

“Leave her be!” Robert cried hoarsely, fiercely. “Damn you all, would you hurt her more?” His voice was a roar, powerful, like the sound of rushing water.

“She is my daughter, she is not dead, she is not vampyr, I can heal her!” Jason roared.

Heal her ...

Nothing could ever heal her. Not after this night. She had known love, and now they were calling her lover a monster, and he lay dead just feet away, covered in blood, his head severed from his neck. They had slain him, and this awful little man Godwin, with the broadsword, meant to sever her head from her body as well, as soon as Courtemarch had impaled her with one of his stakes. She didn’t know if she cared or not.

She had known such magic, and the magic lay dead. Life didn’t matter ...

In fact, it seemed to be flowing away. Flowing away in the trickle of red that seeped slowly down her neck. It was good. She was becoming numb. Only numbness, only death, could wash away the awful agony. She tried to rise, to push from Robert, tried to see her love one last time.

Her father came beside her as well, holding her. “No, Magdalena!” he whispered to her.

But she could see.

Oh, God.

There was no corpse. No corpse.

No body, no blood. Where her lover should have lain, the floor seemed burnt, with only black ash in the shape of a winged creature remaining.