Vampires Never Get Old: Tales With Fresh Bite by Zoraida Cordova & Natalie C. Parker

Author:Zoraida Cordova & Natalie C. Parker [Cordova, Zoraida & Parker, Natalie C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B07Z2KSSNR
Publisher: Imprint

* * *

THEO: how come you only have one selfie?

BRITTANY: i think i’d rather take pictures than be in them.

THEO: i used to think that if i took enough pictures, i’d learn to love myself more.

BRITTANY: have you?

THEO: i dunno. maybe i’m getting close.

* * *

BRITTANY

I didn’t choose to become what I am.

I was made during a lawless time of vampires, when consequence was a thing only for mortals. I was hardly older than Theo when I met my—well, I’ve never quite determined what to call him. Sire is hardly the right word, though it bears some piece of the truth. In two hundred years, I have failed to find a word that encompasses both the immaculate violence of his actions and the transformative power I found in their aftermath. Offender. Trespasser. Malefactor. They all lack some piece of the horror I experienced during the attack and after.

He may have been the catalyst of my transformation, but I was the architect. Every choice I made thereafter was a response to his opening argument. If his argument was something along the lines of being more powerful than me by virtue of his sex and his circumstance, then I have been crafting my answer ever since. Not everyone I bite becomes like me. I have to choose. I get to choose. And over the years, I have chosen women like me. Women who were told they were less than, unworthy, weak. Women who were hungry for the world. Women with fangs. My petits crocs.

My phone chimes softly, reminding me that it is 10 p.m. and I am missing an appointment. I dismiss the reminder without looking at the words.

There’s an unfamiliar feeling spreading beneath my ribs. Not hunger, but something close enough. As I button my frock coat to my chin and step out onto the streets of New York City, I push Theo and the disappointment she is surely feeling now as far from my mind as I am able.

I may not have chosen the path of the moon and shadows, but I did choose New York City. One hundred years ago, I left the windswept valleys and rolling mountains of Virginia for the frenetic energy of a city. It’s easy to become a drop in the ocean when the ocean is so unimaginably vast.

I turn away from the river and aim for the park. We don’t hunt here. We used to, soon after it was established in the late 1800s, but I outlawed it decades ago. Now hunting here would put us all at great risk. There are too many eyes on this park, too many stories birthed from its rolling hills and dark corners. Anyone who hunts here now will be expelled from the city.

I don’t have many rules. Just a few. Each is meant to protect my flock from a world that seems increasingly capable of understanding creatures like us and accepting that we are real. But the most important is this: No siring.

The city may seem large, but that could change in an instant.

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