Twice Bitten (Love, Lust & Magic #1)

Uriah

“So I see,” replied Ada as she ran her hand across the vampire’s face. “Back to your deviant ways of betrayal, I’m guessing?”

“What are you talking about?” asked.

“I have eyes everywhere,” Ada seductively whispered in his ear. “Or is that something you forgot, too?”

Ada slid her palms over his eyes, an act that brought forth a series of memories the vampire knew must be his. His body swayed uneasily as he recalled walking into a seventeen-hundreds village encampment late at night, his clothes missing and his face covered in blood. The English settlers he once knew as neighbors and friends whispered amongst themselves, scared and frightened by what they saw. He stumbled forward, reaching forth a helpless hand to his acquaintances. Instead of offering help, they backed away in fear.

“ Your entire life ,” whispered Ada, her voice sounding far away.

Another flash and he saw those faces again. Now dressed in the finest attire to be found in Massachusetts at the time, walked down the same dirt road as the villagers whispered amongst themselves. He stopped in front of two young children dressed in rags.

“ Your entire existence,” Ada continued, her voice haunting even his memories.

He recognized their mother, a weeping woman known to him as a widow and a beggar. “A very important person would like to meet these two,” he told her.

“Please,” the woman cried, grabbing for her children. “No.”

“They will be well-taken care of. You have my word,” said with a devious smile.

The woman’s pupils shined an ominous and memorable purple as her free will faded away—one of the vampire’s very first acts of compulsion.“Take them.”

He headed toward the forest from whence he came, walking hand-in-hand with the same children on either side of him. And when he reached the tree line, the visuals melted away to reveal the audience of Witch’s Brew the night he performed there. He was back on stage, microphone in hand, but this time he realized that those watching him had the same purple pupils.

“ I have controlled you,” Ada’s voice melted into one that sounded more like Odessa’s, rough and old.

He now felt the familiar warmth of Griff holding him tightly from behind as they raced through town on his motorcycle. As the bike came to a halt at a stop sign, noticed two college girls standing on the corner watching them. Their eyes were like the mother’s, like the ones in the audience, and—as he looked in the rearview mirror mounted on his handlebar—his pupils shined purple, too.

“ I will control you forevermore, ” came Odessa’s voice, a wicked cackle following her words.

As Ada moved her hands away from his face, the vampire was back at Mystic Stadium in the present. quickly reached up and put his hands on Ada’s shoulders. His grip wasn’t friendly. “Why’d you do it, Odessa? Make us monsters?”

“Monsters?” Ada said with a gasp. “Only the most powerful and most sacred of magics could change a mere peasant like you into an undead superhuman. A life of poverty, of dying from starvation like the rest of your family. That was your story—and I helped rewrite it.”

“So, what? I could end up here, now? Why did you erase my memory? Pruitt’s?”

“Shh.” Ada smiled as she put her finger to ’s lips.

Fangs out, bit into it.

“You dirty fucking farmhand!” Ada howled, doubling over in pain from the vampire’s bite.

“We shouldn’t be here today, and you know that. We should have had normal lives and died like normal men,” hissed. “You, of all people, deserve the grave the most.”

“Oh, please ,” Ada said with a chuckle as she lifted her hand to reveal a healed finger. “Just because I’m in a human body doesn’t mean I can’t still use magic to protect me.”

?Not if we kill her with one hit , ? Pruitt’s voice echoed in ’s head.

?Easier said than done,? replied .

?Give me a second . ?