Infinite Days by Rebecca Maizel Page B

defiance. I didn’t realize I was showing him my neck.
    “The problem, for you…is that I’m in love with you,” Rhode said, though it sounded more like a confession.
    “You can’t be in love with me,” I said stupidly. “You do not know me.”
    “Don’t I? I watch you carefully tend to your father’s orchard. I watch the way you braid your hair in your bedroom window. That when you walk, you glow, as bright as a candle flame. I have known for some time that I must have you near me. I know you, Lenah. I know how you breathe.”
    “I don’t love you,” I said without a clue why I said it. My chest shuddered with every breath I took.
    “Oh, come now,” Rhode said, and cocked his head to the side. “Don’t you?”
    I did. I loved that he looked rugged though his skin was flawless and completely polished. He could have told me he slayed a dragon with both hands tied behind his back and I would have believed it possible. Perhaps it was the allure of being in the presence of a vampire. I didn’t know at that moment that Rhode was a vampire, but the more time passes, the more I am sure that I fell for him in that very instant.
    Rhode looked me up and down and I realized he could see through my sleeping gown. He ran a fingertip from my throat down through the middle of my breasts and ended at my belly button. I shuddered. Out of nowhere, he hooked a hand around my waist and brought me against him. It all happened so languidly, as though it were choreographed. The slap of our wet bodies when Rhode brought me close, and the feel of his palm on my forehead as he wiped a string of hair out of my eyes. He groaned when he met my eyes. And in that instant, Rhode sunk his teeth into my neck so fast that I didn’t notice the sound of my skin breaking.

    The rain fell in gorgeous patterns outside the art tower window. The campus was drenched, and once my eyes refocused I watched students run for shelter or jump over puddles. There were dozens of students outside. But the ones closest to me, two girls and a boy about my age, were smiling, holding their hands over their heads. The boy linked his arm around the waist of one of the girls, and they ran into the shelter of Quartz dorm. I stepped back from the window into the darkness of the art tower stairs and looked at my inner wrist.
    In moments of passion Rhode dug his teeth into my skin. “Just a taste,” he would say. It was as if his lips were touching my ear. How his voice moaned at me in the darkness. I sighed and rubbed at my wrist unconsciously. My chest hurt, my muscles ached from the transformation, and I wanted to punch my hand through the stone wall of the tower until my knuckles bled.
    “Oh…,” I said aloud, and my knees gave way. I collapsed on the tower steps.
    This was grief.
    It was odd how much more acutely this emotion affected me in my human state. Human grief wasn’t muted by other pain as in my vampire existence. As a vampire, grief was muddled by the presence of every imaginable sadness. I took deep breaths until the adrenaline running through my lungs and stomach subsided. Would I cry? I reached to touch my cheeks, but they were dry.
    I continued down the stairs, pushed out of the main foyer of Hopper, and stepped back into the meadow. I walked away from the building, and soon the raindrops were patting my head. After a few moments, my arms were drenched and Rhode’s sweater was, too. I could barely see in front of me though I knew I was headed for the walking pathway at the other side of the meadow. I wiped the rain from my eyes.
    Having an adventure?
    See, the problem is I’m in love with you….
    I stopped in the center of the green. I kicked off my sandals and placed the bookstore bag onto the ground. I put my arms out and let the rain fall. I thought of my mother’s face, my father’s laugh, Rhode’s blue eyes, and the coven’s comfort.
    The will and the desire to give up your life in order that another may live. It’s the intent,