Iro didn’t say anything.

  “Fine. Nothing? Then, I’ll give you the short version. I woke up as a teenager. I was naked in the dirt, and there was a boy next to me. This Adam, in this harsh world where we were the hunted, came upon me and wanted something I didn’t want to provide, so I fought him off me and ran. He found me much later, and we knew we needed each other to survive. We understood very little, but we knew that when we didn’t eat, we got weak. One day, years later, we ran out of food. We’d killed everything we could find and consumed it already. Adam found a snake in a tree. The Bible says it was I who brought hell to paradise, but I did not touch the snake. I didn’t take a bite of the apple, Iro. Adam killed the snake, and he then took on the characteristics of a beast. I ran, but he caught me, and he drank my blood. I died, but he made me drink his blood, and I became what we now call a vampire. Later, I killed him when he continued to try to take what I would not give.”

  “You’re trying to tell me that–”

  “I am the first woman of the Earth, Iro. I killed the first man. We became the first vampires, yes. New people arrived, but I don’t know when or how. I survived on my own for centuries. I survived on any animal I found until then, and eventually, I began making people in my image because I’d been alone for so very long. If you had been the only person in the world, alive before time itself existed, and understood nothing of your own origin or reason for being, would you not crave company? Would you not want to have people made to be like you? Would you not surround yourself with them?”

  “You don’t have to kill people, Cassia.”

  “That I do because I want to, but sometimes, they deserve it. You have to admit it. That man, attacking the prostitute in the 1800s… He deserved what we gave him.”

  “Cassia, you can’t have me. I don’t want you. I don’t want this anymore.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you want. It matters what I want. And I want you. I want you, and I want power. I am tired of hiding in the shadows, Iro. I am tired of letting humans run around acting like they’re the superior species when they are anything but. I want you to rule at my side. You can keep Arwen for whatever you want, but you and I will rule together. Fuck her every week, if you want, but it’s my bed you’ll be sleeping in every night. I will be your love. She will be a toy you keep for occasional fun unless I decide that it’s time for you to say goodbye.”

  “What are you talking about? You can’t rule the world.”

  “Oh, I can. I’ve been turning all the right people in all the right places for years, Iro. A prime minister, a president, a king or two, some Queens as well. One of them got down on her knees for me, promising to worship me, and this was only three days after turning her. Yes, they only last for so long because they stop aging, but then, their children take over, or a new one is elected, and I turn them, too. I have people in major corporations ready for my command as well, and all I have to do is tell them that it’s time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “Time for vampires to rule. Humans will be food and our servants, how it was meant to be. The Earth will finally be ours, and you’ll be right there beside me to reap the rewards. I saved your precious Arwen.” Cassia stood up. “The least I deserve is your appreciation.”

  “I don’t want to kill you, Cassia.”

  “Of course, you don’t. I made you. It’s in your nature to protect me, not kill me.”

  “Then, I have no choice but to try something else,” Iro said, causing Cassia to tilt her head in confusion. “Cassia, listen to me. Listen to the sound of my voice.”

  Cassia felt dizzy, which wasn’t something she had felt in centuries, since before Adam had turned her into what she was today. Things went blurry in front of her, though, and she could no longer see Miranda’s body or even Iro. All she could focus on was the woman’s voice.

  “What are you doing to me?” she asked softly.

  “What I should have done a long time ago,” Iro replied.

  Cassia fell backward and landed on the floor while Iro continued to talk. Cassia didn’t register what she said. Then, her eyes closed, and everything went black.

  CHAPTER 31

  Arwen

  Arwen had never been the best listener. She’d stayed in that room for a few minutes after Iro had left, but then, she listened as hard as she could, and, hearing nothing outside the door, she opened it. Making no move to exit just yet, she concentrated again and heard people walking outside, cars passing, and birds in the trees, but nothing inside the house. She shifted the box Iro had put to block the door out of the way and took a few hesitant steps into the closet and then into the room. There, she waited a minute before going any farther, and finally, she was back downstairs, looking carefully out the windows, feeling more tired than she’d ever been in her entire life but also wide awake at the same time.

  She couldn’t just stay in hiding while Iro went to Cassia’s, but she also didn’t know where Cassia’s house was exactly. She just knew it couldn’t be too far from here because her regular café was nearby, and she remembered the short drive from there with Gigi, who hadn’t revealed her name or said anything to her, really, except that Cassia would love her now or something to that effect. Arwen knew this city well, though, and as she exited the house, she breathed in the air and was able to still smell Iro, which was both frightening and amazing. Taking off in the direction of the scent, she tried to recall what she could about the drive, too, until not that long after she had started walking, she was standing in front of the house that she’d been taken to earlier that day. She listened again and was able to pick up Iro and Cassia talking inside. Cassia said something about wanting Iro, and Iro replied that she wasn’t going to sleep with her. Arwen felt bile rise inside her just at the thought. Then, Iro said something she hadn’t expected to hear.

  “I don’t want to kill you, Cassia.”

  “Oh, God,” she said to herself and moved quickly up the stairs, expecting Cassia and Iro to fight.

  “Of course, you don’t. I made you. It’s in your nature to protect me, not kill me.”

  “Then, I have no choice but to try something else,” Iro said just as Arwen got to the door and pulled it open.

  She watched Cassia, who was standing there in a silver robe, turn her head to the side.

  “Cassia, listen to me. Listen to the sound of my voice,” Iro said.

  “What are you doing to me?” Cassia asked.

  “What I should have done a long time ago,” Iro replied.

  Cassia fell backward and landed on the floor.

  “You will not do this,” Iro continued. “You will leave Arwen alone. You will leave Zara alone. And you will leave me alone. In fact, you will forget you ever met me. Cassia, listen to me. I want you to go back to Florence. Forget about your plans. You never made them. Open your eyes, Cassia.”

  Arwen watched as Cassia’s eyes opened, and they were all white. Her irises and pupils were gone. Arwen gasped, and Iro turned around and held her finger to her lips before she turned back to Cassia.

  “Cassia, you will go home to Florence. You’ll take your friends here with you. You will never kill again. Say that to me, Cassia.”

  “I will never kill again.”

  “You will forget about Iro and Arwen.”

  “I will forget about Iro and Arwen.”

  “You will forget about your plans.”

  “I will forget about my plans.”

  “Now, when I tell you to, you’ll go to sleep, and when you wake up, you’ll get on a plane and go directly home to Florence.”

  “I’ll get on a plane and go home to Florence.”

  “Good. Now, sleep.”

  Arwen stood there, dumbfounded, as Cassia closed her eyes and fell asleep on the floor of her living room. Iro turned quickly, grabbed her by the hand, and pulled her outside and then into the car. She said nothing as Iro drove them home, and Iro said nothing, either. It felt to Arwen as if neither of them knew what to say at all. She didn’t know what had happened and how Iro had gotten Cassia to agree to everything she’d said. She didn’t know how they’d made it out of there with neither of them getting hurt. Iro either didn’t want to talk on the drive back or couldn’t. Arwen wasn’t sure which, but something inside her told her not to ask.

  Iro steered them down the streets, sometimes running red lights and other times, just making it through yellow ones, but clearly, she was in a hurry to get them far away from Cassia and the vampires in that house. When they arrived at her house, Iro let them inside, and when Arwen sat on the sofa, Iro slowly moved to sit down next to her as if delaying the inevitable could be done by not sitting down at all.

  “What do you want to know?” Iro asked her softly.

  “Everything,” Arwen replied.

  Iro nodded slowly and said, “First, why did you leave the house, Arwen? I told you to hide.”

  “Because I was worried about you.”

  “You haven’t eaten since the blood bag I tore out of your arm, which still had some in it, and that is not enough. I know you don’t know this stuff, which is what makes what you did so dangerous. I told you her people could be here.”

  “They weren’t. They were there. I could hear them.”

  “And had Cassia ordered them downstairs, they would have done whatever she asked, including kill you. She would have loved that, Arwen. She has no real reason to keep you alive if I keep assuring her that I don’t–”

  “Iro, what did you do to her?”

  But Iro cleared her throat, stood, and walked into the kitchen.

  “Iro, tell me.”

  “I am. I just need something first. I got cut earlier, and it’s still healing.”

  “Cut? You–” Arwen stood and breathed in.

  It was only then that she noticed the smell of Iro’s blood. She hadn’t ever been able to smell blood before, not from this far away, and now, she was thinking about it. She could feel it on her lips, running down her throat, quenching her thirst. It was Iro’s blood, and Arwen’s instincts already understood that it wasn’t vampire blood that she craved, but she could and would drink it all the same.

  “You can sit. I’ll be fine. It’s silver, so it’ll take a while, but I need to eat, and so do you.”

  Arwen watched her open the pantry and walk inside, so she moved around the couch to see what she was doing. A door slid open then, and there was a refrigerator.

  “How many hidden rooms do you have here?”

  “Three. This one, the one you stayed in for all of thirty seconds, apparently, and there’s one in my closet, where Zara hid before. The one upstairs is the most recent build. I thought I might want the bedroom upstairs at some point but wasn’t sure. There was space to do it, and it was easy enough. The one in my current closet is better, more well done than the one up there, though. I haven’t gotten around to–”

  “Okay. Three. I get it,” she said as Iro pulled out two large, round containers that looked like the soup containers Arwen had gotten from a deli once before she’d gone vegan and could no longer go to because they didn’t have any options for her.

  “Here,” Iro said. “It’s better hot, but I need mine now. If you want to heat it up, go ahead.”

  She flopped down on the couch, and Arwen noticed it then.

  “Iro, you’re really hurt. I smelled the blood, but I didn’t realize how bad it was. It smells wrong.”

  Iro lifted her shirt and looked down at the infected cut.

  “It’ll heal. I need to eat. That will help. Then, I have to sleep and stay out of the sun tomorrow if I can.”

  “Can I do anything?”

  “No. It’s not really something you can disinfect and put a Band-Aid on. It takes care of itself. Is the smell bothering you?” she asked, pulling her shirt down.

  “It’s infected, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can tell,” she said as she watched Iro open the container and take a long drink, nearly finishing half of it before taking a breath. “Oh, my God…” she added and covered her mouth when she felt them.

  “Fangs.” Iro nodded sympathetically. “They come out when you’re around blood unless you work on restraint. You should drink that. You’ve got to be hungry.”

  “Iro, what did you do to Cassia?” she asked and opened her own container, the smell nearly overwhelming her.

  Fangs emerged from her teeth, and her mouth salivated at the smell, while at the same time, she knew it wasn’t going to be as good as the real thing. Her brain registered wanting to bite into something warm, and she felt a pulse between her legs.

  “You’re turned on, aren’t you?”

  “How did you–”

  “That’s how it works,” Iro said, shrugging a shoulder. “Blood and sex are very linked for us, which can complicate things, but you can feed and not have sex with the person you are drinking from. It’s not like you have to. It just feels really good.”

  “Sex?”

  “Sex while feeding,” Iro corrected and finished her container. “Sex feels really good, too, though. I don’t remember much of it from when I was still human – it was so long ago now – but I do remember thinking about how much better it was once I was a vampire. You’ll probably feel that way, too. The orgasms start to feel extra strong and are usually longer. Plus, you can have as many as you want.”

  “Most women can.”

  “No, I meant there would be no soreness or anything like that. You can have rough sex and no consequences because you just heal right away. A moment of pain, and that’s it. Cassia and I once had sex for seven days straight. We only stopped to eat when we needed to, and we fucked the rest of the time before we finally had to flee where we were staying. That was the only reason we didn’t keep going. That was… God, that was in 1713.”

  Arwen swallowed, and her fangs seemed to disappear at the sound of Iro talking so matter-of-factly about having sex with the woman she’d spent so many years with.

  “In the movies, vampires sometimes have special abilities,” Iro continued. “In reality, very, very few have anything all that special about them. Most vampires just have what I’ve already told you about: strength, better hearing, all of those things. I only know of maybe twenty vampires who had some kind of ability. One could fly, but only about five feet in the air or so. I’m not sure how useful that would be. One could walk in the sun without issue and didn’t need to recover from the UV rays. There was one I heard of a long time ago who had retractable claws that worked kind of like fangs but were poisonous to vampires. Every power or ability was unique. I have never heard of the same one twice. And I didn’t know that Cassia had an ability, either.”

  “Cassia?”

  “She can, apparently, shape-shift.”

  “She can do what?” Arwen asked as she stared down at the blood in her hand.

  Then, no longer able to resist, she took a hesitant sip and recoiled.

  “You get used to it,” Iro told her.

  “This is what you eat?”

  “We can still eat regular food. You’ve seen me do it. It just doesn’t keep us alive. And I don’t drink human blood at all, Arwen. I don’t want to risk hurting anyone. Even drinking from a blood bag would only undo all the work I’ve put in.”

  Arwen took another drink and tried to be a little more open-minded. Then, something happened. Her fangs came back out, and she guzzled.

  “Good. You need it,” Iro said. “And Cassia can become any human, apparently. I only found out about it from Zara, so I don’t know all the details, and there could be more to it than that, but she shifted into you when she showed up here earlier. She must have already had you at her house. She pretended to be you and broke up with me.”

  “She did what?” Arwen asked before she licked her lips.

  “It’s a long story,” Iro said. “I went to her with weapons in case I needed them, yes, but Cassia wasn’t the only one with a secret. I never told her mine because I didn’t know about it myself until about a hundred years in, and by then, I was growing tired of our lifestyle. We were hurting people, and I didn’t want to do that any longer. Cassia did, so I left, and I thought it would be okay, but when I went back, she was still the same. It continued like that, and I regret not doing anything sooner, but you… this was the last straw. She hurt you.”

  “Iro, what did you do–”

  “I found out, by sheer happenstance, that I can make people do what I want them to do with my words alone,” Iro professed. “There was a woman. We were engaged in…”

  “You were having sex,” Arwen finished for her and set her container down.

  “Yes. I accidentally bit her and drank from her before I stopped myself, and she was screaming and scared. When I told her to stop screaming, though, she did so instantly, and it was strange, the sudden quiet. I wiped up her neck and told her that she had fallen and cut herself, but that she was fine, and she repeated it after me. Her eyes were white, and I knew something was going on. We stopped, and she was laughing and told me to call her when she was leaving. I checked on her the following day, and she seemed fine, so it happened a few more times after that. Mostly, I would just try it out when it didn’t impact anything important. Telling someone that I was before them in line, for example. Their eyes turned solid white, and they let me go in front of them. Talking to someone about something inconsequential and seeing if I could get them to repeat it. I don’t practice, which is important with any ability, and I haven’t used it in years, but tonight, I told the woman I thought I loved for three centuries to forget all about me.”

  Arwen now understood why Iro appeared to be so unaffected. She was in shock, or whatever version of being in shock hit vampires, at least.

  “Here, drink this,” she said, handing her the container that still had a small amount of blood in it.

  Iro took it from her and finished it.

  “Iro?”

  “Yes?”