“Here’s my darlin girl,” said Fletcher as he approached with Norm. Standing behind me holding onto my shoulders he asked, “So, who will you be shagging tonight?”

I almost choked on my drink. “Say again?”

“Oh come on, you can’t tell me you’re not horned-up to death. I can sense it coming off you like fumes.”

“Max will definitely be up for it,” said Norm.

Fletcher nodded. “The way he’s glued his body to you all night he practically has shagged you.”

“Sam’s got a complex about being someone’s consort,” said Jared, not seeming to like the topic of conversation.

“Doesn’t mean she can’t have one of her own,” insisted Fletcher with a giggle. He squeezed my shoulders. “Or just a nice jump to keep you going for another week.”

A jump with Max sounded good to my body, but not good enough. It completely ached for someone else. However, with Jared not being an option that meant a night with Max was on the cards. Why did the idea of it make me feel off inside? “I need alcohol,” I told Fletcher. “None of these alcohol flavoured NSTs, I need real alcohol.”

“Good idea,” he said. “It’ll settle your body a bit and then you won’t end up assaulting the bloke.” Fletcher patted my upper arm and then disappeared, returning seconds later with one gorgeous, muscled, brown-haired human bloke who had several teeth marks in him. Drinking blood from intoxicated people was how we vampires got drunk. “Here we are.”

The bloke looked at me and grinned. “A Sventé? I haven’t been bitten by a Sventé in years. I’m going to enjoy this.”

Well of course he would. Our saliva did a good job of getting our prey all hot and bothered and could make them orgasm on the spot if we drank from them for more than ten seconds.

“You’ll have to hold my hands still,” he told me, high on anticipation.

“Why?” snorted Jared.

“Because it’s that good I’ll end up fondling her if she doesn’t. I’m used to getting bitten and standing the pleasure but when it’s a Sventé bite there’s no way of keeping still.”

I grabbed his hands and held them firmly behind his back. I was more or less embracing him. Although some vampires were content to drink from the same bite mark that others had made, I wasn’t. It was like sharing a cup that had been passed around a load of strangers. Not for me, thanks. As I ran my lips down the curve of his neck he shuddered. Content with a certain spot on his neck, I paused.

Now, here’s something you might not know. A vampire bite is a lot like a kiss; there are different styles. For instance, there’s the firm bite; clamping your eyeteeth abruptly down and making the suction fast and hard and greedy. Then there’s the softer approach; tenderly popping the skin with the tips of your eyeteeth and then feeling the blood rush into your mouth, keeping the suction gentle and slow. Of course there’s a bite that is somewhere between the firm and the soft style that some vampires prefer to do.

My personal favourite is a style I developed myself. First I nick the skin with my eyeteeth, which tickles the human, and then I lap up any blood that surfaces. It’s more or less teasing but Sventés are like that. Then I do a double bite; letting one of my eyeteeth pierce the skin slightly first, and then sliding them both down into the neck.

When I nicked his neck the human instantly quivered. Then he felt the double bite and moaned in pleasure, I hadn’t even started sucking yet. When I did, gulping slow but taking long pulls, his arms strained against my hold and he tried grinding against me. I had to ensure to keep it shorter than ten seconds or else I’d probably make him come in his pants – something that wouldn’t be great for either of us. Not right here right now anyway.

Opening my eyes as I began to draw back from him, I noticed that Jared was watching intently. The human wasn’t so easy to shake off so Evan and Jared helped.

The bloke shook his head as if clearing his foggy thoughts and smiled. “It’s on the house. I’ll come back later.”

I returned his smile. “You do that.” When I turned my focus back to the vampires around me I found four sets of eyes fixed on me, two glinting red, two glinting amber. “What?”

Fletcher swallowed hard then said to Norm, “Now I’m even more curious.”

The others nodded and suddenly I understood. “None of you have ever been bitten by a Sventé? Oh come on you can’t be serious.”

“You’re a Sventé so you travelled in Sventé circles, none of us did,” explained Evan.

“There has to be some Sventés here.”

“Only a few,” said Fletcher. “Antonio and Luther have them as consorts.”

The curiosity was still shining from their eyes. Their mouths were twisting to the side and they seemed to be debating whether to say something, looking to each other for cues.

“You want me to bite you?” I asked all of them. Their smiles and arched brows all said ‘hell yes’. “You can all sod off, I’m not biting any of you.”

“Why not?” whined Fletcher.

“Because it would turn you all on.”

“That’s why we want you to do it,” said Norm, sounding horny already.

I grimaced. “I am not biting my best friend, my best friend’s boyfriend, someone who I consider a brother, or my co-worker who I have to work close with every day.” Suddenly my head felt a little heavy and I almost swayed. Oh yes I was now tipsy! It’d been a while. A hand caught my elbow. Oh, I had swayed. It was Jared’s hand. My body automatically reacted, pining for him again and I found myself automatically clenching my thighs. I had to move away from his touch, and now.

I did. But his hand only moved to my back as if ready and waiting to have to steady me again. Making matters a gazillion times worse, he spoke down my ear again, close enough that he was nibbling on it as he spoke. I just about managed to hold back a shudder.

“You’ve got the Dutch courage now. Shall I go get Max?” His tongue lightly flicked my earlobe. “Or are you ready to admit that it’s not him you really want?” Discretely his hand teasingly travelled slowly and lightly down to the small of my back, fingers splayed.

Oh God. Another shudder began to crest. I tried holding it back but a tremor still ventured through me. Jared felt it and giggled. It wasn’t so much the contact that was causing the shudders, it was more to do with the fact that it was Jared who was touching me.

Desperate for some kind of distraction, I glanced around the club; concentrating on how bright the flashing, colourful lights were and how drunk humans were prancing about waiting to be bitten and how –

Oh my God. The sight my eyes found made my brain fail for a second. My cheeks and hands burnt; something they always did when I was irate. My breathing became short pants as I felt the anger swirl around my lungs. The contents of my stomach curdled and my pulse was practically out of control. Familiar voices were talking to me but my brain didn’t interpret the words; every part of me was far too fixated on the spectacle before me. Approximately eight feet away from me, dancing and giggling like he had a right to walk the Earth, was someone I never thought I’d see again. Someone I swore to one day find. And now he had more or less fell in my lap.

At that moment his eyes incidentally found me through his fuzzy, red, unruly hair – as if sensing he was being watched. He tensed and his eyes widened. Abruptly he swung his arm in my direction and a ball of black fire came zooming at me. Without even waiting to see if his aim had been successful, he darted toward the exit. I drew in the energy around me and then released a gush of water from my palms to cancel out the black flames. Then I chased after him, ignoring the complaints of the people around me who were now a bit wet.

Outside the club I halted and scanned the street. Further along the path, passing each of the stores with an admirable speed, was the tall, scruffy bugger. Sucking in more energy, I manipulated it into the form of my whip and then cracked it like I’d never cracked it before. It wrapped around his ankle. I ragged the whip hard, dragging him along the pavement and over to me.

“Throwing fire balls at me? That’s not very nice, is it.” He didn’t struggle or try to free himself. He just gazed up at me, a mixture of shocked and incredibly anxious. I realised something then. “You thought I was dead, didn’t you. I hate to disappoint you, but Victor spared me.”

“I should have known that the Sventé Feeder everyone’s been talking about was you,” he said in a shaky voice.

“Yes, you should’ve. You never were very bright.” I became aware that there were crowds of people around. I picked up the scents of Jared, Evan, Chico and Max close behind me. But I didn’t care to answer their questions. “Is this where you’ve been hiding for the past few years then, Clark, hoping Victor wouldn’t still come after you just for the fun of it? Turns out that Victor was the least of your worries, eh. No wonder I couldn’t find you. Just how did you get accepted here?”

“My Sire got a security-guard position. He was permitted to bring along two of his guards.”

“And the stupid bastard thought you’d be loyal?” I leant over him, eyes almost bulging out of my sockets. “Well I hope he’s not going to miss you too much, because your life has now reached its expiry date.”

Clark held up his hands, palms out. “No hang on a minute, Sam. Let’s talk about this.”

I straightened up and sniggered. “Trying to negotiate? This isn’t a hostage situation. It’s called retribution.”

“Come on now. Killing me won’t bring Bryce back.”

“Oh I know that. But it’ll feel bloody fantastic.” It wouldn’t bring me peace, but it was the next best thing. “Just how does it feel to know you’re the reason you’re best mate’s dead?”

“He wouldn’t want this. He wouldn’t want you bitter like this, he loved you, he -”

“Oh do me a favour and stop with all that.” I shook my head; amazed at his nerve. “Do you know what, Clark? I told Bryce not to go to you for help. I told him I didn’t trust you. You know what he said to that? He said he’d known you all his years as a vampire, that you were his best mate and you’d never betray him, and that he trusted you with his life.”

Clark’s face was even paler than before. I doubted I’d ever reach the tiny conscience he had, but he was getting the lecture all the same. Clark was like Victor in many ways; he was good at politics and manipulating people. He would know exactly what you would want to hear and then he would tell you just that. If you had a compassionate side, he would appeal to it. If you had a weakness he would pounce on it. If all else failed, he would barter.

“I didn’t betray him. It wasn’t like that.”

“He went to you for help, for somewhere to hide out for a couple of days, and you handed him and me over to Victor on a silver bloody platter!”

“I had no choice, Victor would’ve killed me if he’d found out I was hiding you and Bryce.”

“Bryce wouldn’t have gone to you if he’d thought you’d have been in danger because that’s the kind of person he was. Was.” I spat the last word. “Now get up.” I allowed my whip to fade away, freeing his ankle, and watched as he struggled to get up.

“What’re you going to do?” he asked.

“We’re going to duel. There’s no sport in just killing you outright.”

“I can’t fight you, Sam,” he said, shaking his head.

“Why’s that?”

“I can’t hurt you. Bryce loved you, I can’t hurt you.” The words couldn’t have been more false. The people around me sensed that too, a part of my brain registered.

I snorted. “It wasn’t five minutes ago that you threw a fireball at me, and then you legged it like a rat up a drainpipe. I think what you really mean is that you don’t think you can defeat me, and now you’re just saying all this shite in the cause of self-preservation. Well you’re only stalling the inevitable.”

Backing up a little, he said, “Sam, it won’t bring him back.”

“Yeah, I believe you already said that.”

“I’ll leave here. We don’t have to duel, I’ll leave The Hollow and I won’t come back. You’ll never see me again, I swear to you.”

I had to laugh as we reached the bartering stage. “I know that if I let you walk off now the second I turn my back there’ll be more fireballs coming at me.”

He looked exasperated now. “Okay, we duel,” Clark finally said, snarling. His expression was so different now that he had dropped the fake crap. The innocence and fear had all vanished from his eyes only to be replaced by the callousness and spite that usually resided there.

Apparently Clark had no intention of duelling, however. He hadn’t even fully turned before he abruptly swerved, hoping to catch me off-guard, and launched more deadly fireballs at me. I absorbed the energy of the natural element air, releasing it as a forceful wind that not only sent Clark careening backwards but sent his pretty fireballs with him. When his back reached the wall of one of the buildings he crashed to the floor. His fireballs then crashed into him and he disappeared, screaming, in a large ball of black fire. A black fire that was meant for me.

Both mine and Clark’s suspicions were right; his death hadn’t made much difference to how I felt inside. Bryce was still gone, he had still been betrayed, and it still hurt to even think about. But the whole thing now seemed more balanced. The people responsible for his death weren’t living the life that he should have had. Victor had once told me that it wasn’t anything personal to Bryce, that he’d just had to die because he loved me. ‘Wrong girl, wrong time,’ Victor had said. But Bryce had met me and loved me before Victor even knew me. By loving me and wanting to be with me, Bryce had been living exactly as he should have been, and exactly when he should have. It was Victor who had wanted the wrong girl at the wrong time, and it was Clark who had made it possible for Victor to get what he wanted.