Hazed by pleasure, Nix still had to know. This could be his last chance. “Nikolai,” he said thickly. “Tell me about Nikolai.”Roark’s hand drifted down over Nix’s pale torso. He eyed Nix wryly. “You have his persistence,” he allowed wryly. His eyes flickered on Nix’s hot face. Everything hidden behind them even as he spoke. “Very well. He was a genius. He was a … thug. He was night and day. He could be kindness itself to a stranger, and yet the next day would bathe in that stranger’s blood. And if you tear the shirt from Henley’s back, you will doubtless find Nikolai’s name carved there. Nikolai became mine, and I his, for five hundred years.” Roark’s striking face was smooth, expressionless. Enigmatic. “They were five hundred years of heaven. Five hundred years of hell. I can tell you no more. Not right now. Is that enough?

We want you to tell us about vampires."Simon grinned. "What do you want to know? Scariest is Eli in Let the Right One In, cheesiest is late-era Lestat, most underrated is David Bowie in The Hunger. Sexiest is definitely Drusilla, though if you ask a girl, she'll probably say Damon Salvatore or Edward Cullen. But..." he shrugged, "You know girls."Julie's and Beatriz's eyes were wide. "I didn't think you'd know so many!" Beatriz exclaimed. "Are they... are they your friends?""Oh, sure, Count Dracula and I are like this," Simon said, crossing his fingers to demonstrate. "Also Count Chocula. Oh, and my BFF Count Blintzula. He's a real charmer...." He trailed off as he realized no one else was laughing. In fact, no one seemed to realize he was joking. "They're from TV," he prompted them. "Or, uh, cereal.""What's he talking about?" Julie asked Jon, perfect nose wrinkling up in confusion."Who cares?" Jon said.

Tears fled her eyes as she ran, and they slid into her ears, but she did not wipe them, no, she pressed forward through the many trees, keeping her eyes upon the large shadow that flew forward, almost guiding her out of the woods, but that was preposterous – so why am I following it?What do you mean why are you following it? It’s the only thing that’s putting distance between you and those...monsters back there!But what about Lord Delacroix?What the devil about him?He tried to keep you safe – he truly did attempt to save you—And what did that get him? Crushed by a damned Lycan – again!But I should still go back to save him....I should keep moving!But he’s saved my life – I can’t let him die!Technically, he’s already dead, Alexi....Goddamn it all!Run – run now – come back when you’re safe!Come back? With who?!Help, of course!Where on Earth am I going to find help?!

She opened her eyes to find a strange man above her."Ahh," he sighed. "Your eyes are the color of jade. I imagined them to be dark, like your hair. How strange."She continued to stare at him without a word. His figure loomed over her, and he stared at her with large, black eyes, like those of a bird, she thought. His thin, black hair fell past his chin, making him appear delicate, almost beautiful. His lips curved to a smile."I find you just as beautiful, my dear," he said. His statement shocked her; it was as if he'd read her thoughts."Yes, I know what you think presently, but…." He paused for a moment. "Not all of them. You keep something hidden from me. Hmm, how strange. Very well. It seems you are more interesting than I first thought.""What is it that you want?" she spat out."Oh, please do not start with that nonsense," he chided. "My plans are not for you to know. However, I will assure you that now I have seen you, I plan to keep you, at least for a while.

The Anne Rice books are a lot about infection. I read "Interview With the Vampire" a million times when I was in seventh and eighth grade. Also, [writing Gavriel's backstory] definitely came from those books: I sat down and reread them all and thought a lot about… the way in which vampirism is pushing away from humanity in interesting ways, and creating something new from humanity. I imprinted on those books pretty hard.Tanith Lee's "Sabella or the Blood Stone" was a big inspiration. I absolutely loved her books; when I was a kid, I wrote many bad Tanith Lee pastiches. Susie McKee Charnas' "The Vampire Tapestry." Poppy Z. Brite's "Lost Souls." Nancy Collins' "Sunglasses After Dark," which sounds like the most '80s title ever. It's about a vampire named Sonja Blue, and she goes around killing vampires. She's the only vampire who's half-alive. It's a really fun, blood-filled romp. It's very "Blade" before "Blade"--with a lady.

My view of writing "Coldest Girl in Coldtown" was to take every single thing that I loved from every vampire book I had ever read and dump it into one book--everything I like--trying to evoke some of the decadence… Vampires are a high-class monster: They want to dress up. They want to drink a lot of absinthe, or force their victims to drink a lot of absinthe. They have big parties and have elegant rituals. I think that's a thing we associate with vampires--they are the royalty of our monsters. We expect them to be rich, we expect them to be well-dressed. I wanted to have some of that be true because I like it, and have some of it not be true because it's kind of weird.I wanted to put in the idea of infection, which I was really interested in and which was a big feature of the vampire books I read growing up. And, the fear and desire for infection--the way in which our urge towards loving vampires is nihilistic. Our fear of them is our survival instincts kicking in.

I had lied to myself from the very beginning, deceived myself into believing that I was being fanciful and overly imaginative. Surely such monstrosities only existed in nightmares? Yet I had lived through a nightmare these past months, and that was no dream at all.       I was still fighting against the awful truth, not wanting to give in, searching my mind for a logical explanation—but there was none. And the most horrible realization of all was that I had known, somewhere deep inside, ever since the day I first set eyes on Vladec Salei.       Plague carrier.       Living death.       Drainer of life.       The phrasing did not matter. No euphemism could strike fear into the hearts of men the way that single word could.       Vampire.        And for me, the uninitiated, that single word meant death.

He barely heard the gasp escape her lips, but he did see her brilliant brown eyes, how they danced with alarm at his presence, how her lips trembled slightly with what she had done, yes, and now for the glare in his eyes. He knew she could see the hunger they held, he knew she could see, in that moment, just who he truly was...what he was. Yes, Christian knew she could see all these things, knew she could do nothing but bask in the monster that he was.Which was why he was not surprised when she stepped toward him, her shaking lips moving, allowing the low sound of her voice, her sweet, drawing voice, to enter his terribly haunted ears, the ears that caught every breath, heard every pulse of scared heart:“My Lord...your eyes....”“Yes,” he barely whispered, the word hardly escaping his throat. The hunger was all he could feel, her blood all he could smell, the pulse of lust just there beneath her skin, calling him, drawing him ever closer.... And yes, he felt the skin of her neck, felt the blood just there, her blood...his food.

You haven’t fed for several days. And you refuse to drink from me…so go…and come back soon.”He shook his head, his dark eyes bleak as he gazed upon his wife. “I can’t leave you,” he whispered. “Last time I left you alone…” he couldn’t even finish…totally devastated. He knew he needed to feed, but how could he leave her unprotected?Jenera moved close and took his hands in hers, peering up into his face. “Shall I come with you?” She smiled impishly, threading his hands with hers—palm to palm, relishing their skin-to-skin contact. Would she ever feel enough? Want enough? No…never she realized.He paled and snorted a small laugh, “God no! It’s not something for my wife to witness.”Still smiling, she lifted a brow over her branding tattoo, “Why? Is it gruesome? Carnal? Sexually explicit?”Darién’s mouth dropped open in shock, “Uh…none of the above, kelis. It’s impersonal like eating a hamburger would be for you.

I don't know that he said a thing. He smelled strange, I noticed that right away, not rotten like you and Roticella said, more complicated, like an apple that the wasps are flying around, musty, but autumny... I can't explain. But he hissed, and those awful red eyes, like red fire, coals. God, they were anything but dead the way they are in his picture. I could see the iris was dark brown, almost black, and the whites were bloodshot lines... The lashes were thick and Harry I just can't say this right, but the eyes, they weren't repulsive. Evil, evil, but not to turn you away. I... I couldn't stop looking at him. It was like some sort of spider sucking out all my juices. Destroying me right there on the sidewalk.'And I felt I was going to faint, and I tried, I tried to break out of that stare of his, but I couldn't. He was drawing everything out of me - my job, that you were trying to trap him, even things about me, even personal things. Then... then he was gone.'I was conscious of myself again, it was like I had been left hollow, worthless. I mean something of me went with him and the rest of me wanted to go with him. I'm ashamed, Harry, so ashamed...' She sobbed for a moment, then with difficulty regained her control.

Imagine you are Siri Keeton:You wake in an agony of resurrection, gasping after a record-shattering bout of sleep apnea spanning one hundred forty days. You can feel your blood, syrupy with dobutamine and leuenkephalin, forcing its way through arteries shriveled by months on standby. The body inflates in painful increments: blood vessels dilate; flesh peels apart from flesh; ribs crack in your ears with sudden unaccustomed flexion. Your joints have seized up through disuse. You're a stick-man, frozen in some perverse rigor vitae.You'd scream if you had the breath.Vampires did this all the time, you remember. It was normal for them, it was their own unique take on resource conservation. They could have taught your kind a few things about restraint, if that absurd aversion to right-angles hadn't done them in at the dawn of civilization. Maybe they still can. They're back now, after all— raised from the grave with the voodoo of paleogenetics, stitched together from junk genes and fossil marrow steeped in the blood of sociopaths and high-functioning autistics. One of them commands this very mission. A handful of his genes live on in your own body so it too can rise from the dead, here at the edge of interstellar space. Nobody gets past Jupiter without becoming part vampire.

It was Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the television series, 1997-2003, not the lackluster movie that preceded it) that blazed the trail for Twilight and the slew of other paranormal romance novels that followed, while also shaping the broader urban fantasy field from the late 1990s onward. Many of you reading this book will be too young to remember when Buffy debuted, so you'll have to trust us when we say that nothing quite like it had existed before. It was thrillingly new to see a young, gutsy, kick-ass female hero, for starters, and one who was no Amazonian Wonder Woman but recognizably ordinary, fussing about her nails, her shoes, and whether she'd make it to her high school prom. Buffy's story contained a heady mix of many genres (fantasy, horror, science-fiction, romance, detective fiction, high school drama), all of it leavened with tongue-in-cheek humor yet underpinned by the serious care with which the Buffy universe had been crafted. Back then, Whedon's dizzying genre hopping was a radical departure from the norm-whereas today, post-Buffy, no one blinks an eye as writers of urban fantasy leap across genre boundaries with abandon, penning tender romances featuring werewolves and demons, hard-boiled detective novels with fairies, and vampires-in-modern-life sagas that can crop up darn near anywhere: on the horror shelves, the SF shelves, the mystery shelves, the romance shelves.

He squeezed my shoulder and smiled at me.I realized that I hadn't kissed him hello, I always kissed him hello. Of course, I was still covered in blood and other bodily fluids, and none of them were his, but he might not understand that that was why I hadn't wanted to get too close. Some of my confusion must have shown on my face, because his smile widened. He turned me around by the shoulders, gave me a little push towards the bathroom, and slapped me on the ass. "Get cleaned up, I'll take care of things here.""I can't believe that you just did that," I said."Did what?" he said, and he was grinning at me.I could probably count on one hand the number of times Micah had grinned at me. His eyes were sparkling with laughter as if it were all he could do not to let it out. I was happy to see him having a good time, really I was. But I wasn't sure what was funny, and I didn't have the courage to ask. It was probably something that would be at my expense, or something I'd just done that he found cute. I was not cute. Confused, fucked-up, bruised, but not cute. Nathaniel and Damian knew better, but as I passed Gregory, I had to say, "If you touch my ass, I will rip you a new one." I said it as I moved past him, not even pausing."You're no fun," he growled.I looked back just before I turned out of sight of him. "Oh, I'm a lot of fun, just not around you."He snarled at me. "Bitch.""Woof, woof," I said, and finally made it into the bathroom.

What's that you're holding?" he asked, noticing the pamphlet, still rolled up in her left hand. "Oh, this?" She held it up. "How to Come Out to Your Parents."He widened his eyes. "Something you want to tell me?""It's not for me. It's for you." She handed it to him."I don't have to come out to my mother," said Simon. "She already thinks I'm gay because I'm not interested in sports and I haven't had a serious girlfriend yet. Not that she knows of, anyway.""But you have to come out as a vampire," Clary pointed out. "Luke thought you could, you know, use one of the suggested speeches in the pamphlet, except use the word 'undead' instead of--""I get it, I get it." Simon spread the pamplet open. "Here, I'll practice on you." He cleared his throat. "Mom. I have something to tell you. I'm undead. Now, I know you may have some preconceived notions about the undead. I know you may not be comfortable with the idea of me being undead. But I'm here to tell you that the undead are just like you and me." Simon paused. "Well, okay. Possibly more like me than you.""SIMON.""All right, all right." He went on. "The first thing you need to understand is that I'm the same person I always was. Being undead isn't the most important thing about me. It's just part of who I am. The second thing you should know is that it isn't a choice. I was born this way." Simon squinted at her over the pamphlet. "Sorry, reborn this way.

Nico looked very tall and thin wearing a opaque black sweatshirt hoodie and dark inked skinny jeans. His outer physical structure was handsome and gaunt, straight jet black hair razored and clipped in angles, a few purple highlights, and his white skin toned the color of alabaster. She had always liked the slender salamander type. He totally looked punk rock tonight, and that made him look absolutely awesome! A curtain of fog parted in front of him, giving him even more of the illusion as if he was part of a rock band at a rock band concert. Katty now saw Nico with exaggerated clarity. Nico Rocket looked so freakin' hot! He looked so good-looking at times, especially within the dark scenes of rolling fog and a pitchy darkness. She randomly wondered what he looked like before he was bit and turned into a Vampire. Had he been a Renaissance geek just like her? Before she could really examine him and fantasize of what he must have looked like before turning into a Vampire, the fog closed in all around him again, surrounding him with a ring of solitary imprisonment. He now lurked as a shadow among the shadows, disappearing into the illusion of gray’s. She didn't like him for not showing up on time, but all had been forgiven as soon as she had seen him all dressed up in his Gothic best. So what if he didn't believe in punctuality? His hotness sure made up for the rest! Through the fog, she saw his bright red eyes pierce through the heaviness of the darkness. He then broke free from the fog, leaving a trail of the thickened smoke lingering far behind, and wide.