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PROLOGUE
There’s one thing you need to know about heartbreak—it will make a monster out of you if you let it.
I did.
My fangs rip into the flesh of the innocent man below me as he screams for mercy.
His blood fills me, fuelling my body and making me crueller as his cries only grow.
You see, I’m not the hero of this story, I’m the villain, but maybe I should start at the beginning. That’s where all good stories start after all. With a hopeful, young girl whose future is laid out before her with grand plans and hopes . . .
Before it is all taken away.
CHAPTERONE
ALTHEA
“They never get vampyrs right,” Simon, my closest friend, complains as he tosses popcorn into his mouth, groaning when one catches on his new fangs and sticks there like a hilarious Vlad the Impaler.
I turn away in jealousy, running my tongue along my teeth, wishing I already had mine.
Soon, I remind myself.
“Yeah, but Wesley Snipes sure is hot,” I reply.
“That he is.” Simon sighs, and we cheers to that.
You see, vampyrs are born, but we do not become true nightwalkers until the change. For sixteen years, we are neither human nor vampyr. We are stronger and faster than humans, but we have no fangs or thirst.
At sixteen, we either change or die.
Well, either way we die, but if we are strong enough, then we come back as a full-fledged vampyr or, as we call ourselves, sangui, which means blood in Latin. It’s not very original, I know, but what can I say? Our race is a dramatic bunch.
My sixteenth birthday is only two days away.
Two days until I either die or am reborn and plunged into the night world, just like Simon.
They call us halfies until then, and we are not permitted to attend gatherings held by full-fledged sangui. We do not see that side of our society—well, he does now. He went to his first one last night, and I can already see the changes wrought by drinking blood.
He’s now almost six feet tall, where before he was a measly five feet, and where he was once wiry, muscles are now growing. His blond hair is darkening and growing, becoming thicker and luscious, and his lips are plumped up.
Simon is becoming the perfect hunting machine, made to seduce and kill.
If he didn’t like men, I’d jump him.
Foolish, I know, but I’d do anything for a taste of that life.
“Althea, you’ll be fine,” he murmurs, taking my hand like he knows my thoughts. “Two days of unimaginably agony, sure, but then life will be amazing, you’ll see, and we’ll spend our nights hunting and partying with the others.”
“Until we turn eighteen, that is.” I huff, and he rolls his eyes.
“You don’t want a mate?” It’s not the first time he’s asked, and until now, I haven’t really explained why. Maybe it’s my impending death, but I finally do.
“No, I do. It’s just . . . eighteen is so young to have to choose who to spend the rest of your life with,” I mutter, not telling him my deepest fear, which is that I might not make it to eighteen, so why worry about who fate may or may not pair me with?
“Hardly anyone finds their mate that early, sausage.” Simon grins, making me groan. “Some go hundreds of years and still never find their mate, so think of yourself as lucky if you find them that soon.”
“I know, I know,” I mutter, listening to the lecture I’ve heard a million times, but whereas Simon desperately wants to find his mate, I have reservations.
