You’re going to be so happy…he says from the mist around me and I laugh. It’s a high, hysterical thing—more like what I imagine a banshee’s wail would sound like—and I stop myself before I can be lost in it.

When? I snipe back, angry that he won’t even leave me alone in my mind. When you unmake me a vampire, or when you get the hell out of my head?

Neither, the bastard’s tone is too-well contented. Supremely confident in his own power, even here—in my dream—Jarvis whispers, You’ll be so happy when you stop fighting me and be grateful for what I’ve given you.

GRATEFUL? I howl into the fog, a wind kicking up around me. GRATEFUL? You’ve taken EVERYTHING from me, you son of a bitch!

Everything, Solaine? his dismissive tone enrages me even further and unleashes years of pent-up sorrow. That sad little apartment that you called your own? That pointless job that was your way of marking the days before your death? You’re angry that I took away your nothing, and gave you a whole new world to conquer? I’m so engulfed by misery, enraged by his blatant disregard for me, I don’t even think as I shout back,

Yes, everything! You’re the one who revealed to the world that there are monsters in it! You’re the one who so frightened my parents that they killed themselves! You’re the one who tore the world apart and rebuilt it to suit you and your kind! It was you, YOU who destroyed my future, YOU who took away all my choices! You took away all my dreams and even now you seek to destroy the ones I dare to have…It would have been better if you’d Enthralled me and made me your slave; at least then I wouldn’t have to KNOW what you’ve done and I wouldn’t have to care!

I fall silent but the damage has already been done. He knows. Jarvis knows what I kept so carefully hidden from every social worker and psychiatrist they threw at me in the three years it took to reach maturity, after the Unveiling. I’ve just handed him the secret keys to my damaged little soul and if there’s anything I’ve learned about vampires it’s that they like to cut right to the heart of you.

Would you like that? If I made you my slave? Jarvis taunts and if he’d shown himself right then no force in creation could have stopped me from ripping his throat out with my teeth. Instead of revealing himself, the mist grows thicker, darker, and he whispers from behind me, I could blank your mind for a hundred years…use you in whatever way I wanted…and I believe you’d still be fighting me when I allowed you to awaken.

Try it! I shout back and he laughs, a menacing chuckle that shakes the world apart.

Groaning, I roll over—then sit straight up as I realize I’m no longer in a cold stone cell, but wrapped in layers and layers of downy-soft bedding. The world spins and I slump back against the headboard, an inadvertent groan escaping my lips.

“It amuses me to watch you fight,” Jarvis rumbles from across the pitch-black room. Unlike my apartment, this darkness is complete and stars explode in my vision as my eyes try to manufacture sight. I can FEEL him shifting about in the room but I’m as weak as a newborn kitten and can do nothing to either impede or stop him.

“I’m glad I amuse you,” the words are almost incomprehensible through my grinding teeth. A sudden headache has wrapped iron bars around my brain that are constricting with every breath. I imagine that this feeling used to be a favorite torture mechanism of sadists; if Jarvis asks me a question and promises to make the pain stop I’ll tell him ANYTHING at this moment. Anything to make the piercing agony in my head even a fraction less intense.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, every intonation a perfect study in solicitude. “After as long as you were in the DreamScape, I’d imagine the pain is quite unbearable.”

“What,” I pant, before taking a deep breath and continuing, “the hell is a DreamScape?”

“It’s where you go when you sleep. Are you quite finished torturing yourself, or shall I let you writhe a bit longer?” I feel the bed dip down under his weight and suddenly the darkness is pierced with the clean, bright, new-penny scent of fresh blood.

“What…are…you…doing?” I ask, even as I feel my hands fisting in the sheets, dragging me closer to him while some part of me screams to run as fast and far as the world will let me.

“Stop fighting me, Solaine,” Jarvis barks and I feel the long bones of his fingers wrap around my head, “As much as your struggles entertain me, you’re doing yourself more harm than good.” He drags me out from under the covers and into his lap, cradling me gently as he rolls my head into the muscular part of his torso where shoulder meets neck. I feel the velvet tendrils of his shoulder-length, sable hair caress my face and it’s more sensation than I’ve ever felt before. I cry out and my mouth is forced against his neck, against the small cut there.

I would like to tell you that I pulled back; that I screamed “NO!” and denied him. But there was no resisting that sweet, sticky honey. Just as a sunflower cannot help but turn toward the light; I could not help but fasten my new, elongated teeth into his sinew and flesh. Could not stop myself from pulling at the sluggish river that was his life and I would not have stopped—even had I been able. Drinking from Jarvis was better than hot chocolate on Christmas morning, better than champagne on New Year’s Eve. Better even than receiving roses on Valentine’s; it was like devouring a fresh aspen midnight or swimming over white sands tinted by perfect, crystalline blue.

And it was horrible. I could FEEL his delight in my reckless abandon, could sense his desire in the way his raw scent changed. Terrified of myself, of the strength returning to my limbs and twining around him, I scream in my head,

THIS IS NOT MY WILL!!!...and he answers me, inside my own mind,

It may not be your will, but it IS your desire. Jarvis chuckles, a masculine rumble that makes me tighten around him. If it were not so, you would have walked into the sun that first morning. Instead of hiding in your home you would have waited for the dawn.

God help me, but he’s right. Sucking down his blood, I cry because I know he’s right. I promised myself I’d never be a vampire—never give myself over, choose death over dishonor—and I’m still drinking his blood as if I can drink down the moon.