Consume. Melissa Darnell

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      CHAPTER 1

      SAVANNAH

      I stared at the surrounding forest on Rich Mountain, one hand braced against the trunk of a leafless hardwood tree at my side, my too-quick breaths making puffs of fog in the afternoon air as the feeble sun edged beneath the winter-stripped branches of the tree line. The air was smoky, acrid with the false promise of comfort from the chimney of a cabin several yards behind me, which I was struggling to ignore during my few blessed minutes of solitude outside.

      It should have been perfect.... Tristan and me and a remote log cabin with a crackling fireplace nestled on a west Arkansas mountain in December. No Clann or vampire council nearby to bother us. No more rules or secrets to keep us apart. No more risk of accidentally draining and killing Tristan with a kiss.

      Instead, it was all wrong, and I was staggering under the weight of what we now faced.

      We weren’t alone here. My dad had come along, not for Tristan’s safety or even my own, but for anyone else who might come too close and trigger the bloodlust within Tristan. If not for Dad’s holding him back last night, Tristan might have slaughtered his own family in the Circle, the Clann’s clearing and primary meeting place in our hometown woods where so much Clann and vamp blood had been shed only hours ago.

      Just the memory of how Tristan had looked there—his once soft emerald eyes turned white-silver with need, his normally full lips stretched thin and baring newly formed fangs as he snarled with rage—forced a shudder to ripple through my body. Until that moment, I’d never seen a vampire lose control to the bloodlust. Now that I had, I would never forget it.

      Coming to this isolated cabin hadn’t been optional, and staying here promised to be anything but fun or peaceful. We’d had to load up Dad’s car last night and come here immediately after the battle in the Circle just to get Tristan away from all humans before the bloodlust drove him crazy. Even stopping for gas had been a nightmare. Thank heavens Jacksonville, our East Texas hometown, was only a day’s drive, so we hadn’t been forced to stop often. Now that Tristan was a full vampire, his strength was far beyond my own thanks to his years of playing football and strength training before being turned. The one time we had stopped, I’d had to fill the gas tank so that Dad could hold Tristan inside the car and away from the humans in the gas station.

      And afterward, the new mind connection had made it all so much worse, allowing Tristan to pick up my every thought while I silently struggled not to freak out.

      Before I had turned Tristan, the ESP between us had been a one-way street and I hadn’t had to worry about his hearing my every thought. Because vampires and Clann were natural-born enemies, mental blocks had evolved in both the vamp and Clann species so that neither side could read the others’ minds. But because I was a dhampir—born from a human mother and a vampire father—I could read both sides’ minds yet was shielded from their reading mine.

      Unfortunately now that Tristan was half Clann and half vampire like me, we suddenly had zero trouble reading each other’s every thought. This would have been great if there had been some sort of off switch to the ability. But for now, at least, there didn’t seem to be one, turning the new ability into more of a curse. The only way we could block each other’s thoughts was to be in separate rooms. Walls with closed doors and windows between us thankfully seemed to cut off our brain waves from each other.

      It used to make me feel so alone, this ability to read but not be read by all the open minds around me. But now that Tristan had become the one person on this planet who could read my every thought as soon as it formed, I realized how spoiled I’d become by having the freedom to think anything I wanted. I had no idea how to discipline the panicked, guilty chaos inside my head while around him. And because of my lack of mental self-control, I was hurting him over and over.

      Which was why, after Tristan had fallen asleep inside the cabin still hurt and confused by my reaction to him at the gas station, I’d snuck out here to the woods to catch a breath. And to finally give in to the thousand and one worries I had fought so hard not to think when he was awake.

      What had I done to him? To us?

      I wrapped an arm around a nearby tree and leaned against it, allowing it to hold me up. I was so tired, but my mind refused to shut off and let me rest.

      The cabin door creaked out in warning, and another chunk of tree bark crumbled under my fingers as I twisted to look back over my shoulder.

      Dad walked over to join me, and my shoulders sagged under a wave of relief. I’d almost forgotten that I wasn’t alone in this. Thank God I had Dad to turn to for advice on how to train a fledgling, because I was completely clueless here.

      “Come to get some fresh mountain air?” he said.

      “No. Just...needing some space to worry about Tristan. He can hear my every thought now, whether I want him to or not. But he doesn’t remember anything except the memories he got from my blood. He’s so lost and confused, and he doesn’t understand why I’m freaking out.” My voice was rising. I took a breath and struggled to bring it down to a murmur so Tristan wouldn’t hear us. “How are we going to tell him about everything?”

      Dad had said the biggest danger for all fledglings was in the first few months after they’d turned, when the human mind struggled to adjust to the vampire DNA. During this phase, he said the brain tended to react as if after a concussion, shutting off the memory center and operating solely on the baser levels of senses and instincts. The memory would return in time, but it could take several months.

      In the meantime, Tristan might be highly emotional and possibly even irrational sometimes, and it would be hard for him to concentrate for long periods of time. In addition, he would have the impulse to feed on humans with no understanding of why he felt such cravings, and he’d have the speed, strength and reflexes of a full vampire.

      “We cannot attempt to hasten the recovery of his memories in any way,” Dad said. “We must be patient and allow his memories to return to him on their own. Telling him what he has forgotten will only stress and confuse him still further. He will never truly believe what he does not remember himself, and right now he is in much too volatile a state to handle all the ramifications of our current situation. You will have to continue to protect him from your thoughts as much as you are able to.”

      Easier said than done.

      “What if he never remembers it all? What if I’m not strong enough, or smart enough, or we don’t train him right or fast enough...?”

      Dad rested a hand on my shoulder. “Now you know all that I have gone through with you. Becoming responsible for another’s continued existence is the heaviest responsibility there is. But it does grow easier with time.”

      Time. How much did we even have? “Will the council try to find us out here?”

      He shook his head. “They trust me to be truthful in my reports to them by phone. The Clann, however...”

      I frowned in confusion. “Tristan’s mom is leading them now. Why would they be a problem?”

      “We СКАЧАТЬ