I don't know what it's like to feel.To hurt.The ability was stolen from me in my youth.I consider that theft a gift.Feelings got in the way when you were building an empire.Amassing power.I had the empire.I had the power. One moment in an alley changed everything.What took over a decade to amass was snatched away in a second.He killed for me.But he didn't save me.
I may be the villain of the story, but at least I get a leading role.Evil is a term thrown around history and literature as if it's something so easily definable. A concept to fight against.Evil doesn't exist.Neither does 'good.'Vampires do, though.I just happen to be one.I've cruised through the centuries managing to avoid all the wars, supernatural and human, but still going to all the best parties.I would say I avoided bloodshed, but it's kind of part of the whole 'vampire' thing.I've lived on the fringes of a society that considered cruelty and sadism favorable character traits for almost five hundred years. Now I'm in the middle of a war that might just put my nonbeating heart in a lot of danger.Battles, I can handle.The impossible attraction between me and the vampire slayer, not to mention the penetrating gaze of the king of our race, on the other hand?I might not get out undead.
There's a phrase: Still waters run deep.But there's more to it than that.Because "still" doesn't denote peace. Nor calm. Nor happiness.It's an illusion. It's chaos.The only way to handle chaos is to become it.That's what Lucy did. She created stillness out of the chaos tumbling inside her and called the most chaotic motorcycle club in the United States her family.The Sons of Templar gave her chaos, friendship, family, danger and death.But she wouldn't want it any other way.Then he came. The one who showed her that her handle on chaos was tumultuous at best.Showed her how to stand still.And how good it could be.And how drowning in those waters comes as easy as breathing.
My life was never black and white.Heck, it wasn't even black, white and gray.Lines were not drawn between good and evil, and if they were, I would have jumped those suckers for fun.But now it was simpler. It wasn't black and white. Or gray. It was only one thing.Blood.A crimson-tinted world. That was all I needed.All I wanted.Him.Despite the war raging around us, or the secrets between us, there was nothing simpler than blood.It didn't matter that it would be fatal.After all, it's the things we're not undead without that will kill us in the end.
My story isn't unique.Isn't rare.Which is, I guess, what makes it so sad.The story about a girl who falls in love with the wrong man, lured by tender gazes, devoted promises and gentle touches. The gentle touches disappear and she's held captive with ugly insults and brutal beatings.It's common, this story. My past.I can't change the past.I wouldn't even if I could.The ugliness of my past gave me a future worth living for.Worth dying for.It gave me a reason to fight. To escape.That was my mistake. Thinking girls like me could have a choice.I wasn't given many promises in my life that weren't broken, but chaos is a constant promise, always kept, never broken.He comes amongst the chaos. Amongst the ugly.He doesn't promise a way out. He definitely doesn't promise peace. But he gives me the opportunity for a different ending to my story.
I give myself to strangers.When I'm on stage, and when I'm off it.Whether it's throngs of screaming fans or just one man, it's always outsiders. People who don't know me. Not the real me.It's easier, because then it's not so obvious that there is no real me. Just layers of lies. Then I'm peeled back to the nerve. Showing the world my ugly. Everyone sees me for what I am.Rightfully so, they hate me.Almost as much as I hate myself.I'm willing to hate myself for what I've done. To wither away into some washed up old rock star.But he doesn't let me.I want to hate him.He doesn't let me do that either.
He collected beautiful things.Rare things.Ripped them out of their natural environment and preserved them in all of their dead splendor.The problem was I wasn't beautiful. I was all of the hideous and ugly realities of the world packaged into one broken human being.He came to kill me.That was his business.Death.He ripped me out of my natural environment, the prison I'd created, and locked me away with all of his beautiful dead things.I hated him.I still hate him.But if I was given the choice and the ability to leave this cage, come back to life, I'd stay dead.In all of my hideous splendor.Because my murderer can only possess dead things.And I can only be possessed by someone more broken and ugly than me.
Fate was a fickle mistress. She gave Sophie immortality, magic, and a great tolerance for whisky. She also made sure Sophie tasted death, made sure it clung to her bones, sank into her marrow. She gave Sophie power that came from death and brought death with it. Her own. And everyone she knew and loved. If she didn't learn to control it, that was. She had been meaning to pencil it in, but the apocalypse had been licking at her combat boots and she got busy. But she was kicking magical butt, because she was awesome. Then the witch discovered the one thing she couldn't handle, the one thing that would offer complete destruction. A wolf. Her wolf. Broken. Dangerous. Wild. His life tangled up in hers, without a choice from either of them. A fault in fate, bringing two broken, wild, and dangerous immortals together. Sophie quite literally screwed the pooch on this one.
Heartbeats had a pesky way of complicating things.They almost always came with the nasty side effect of humanity and finally... death.Since Thorne came into my life, I'd been plagued with both.Heartbeats and humanity.Both of these things were going to be the death of me.One way or another.And the death of everyone I knew and loved, a list growing longer with every beat of my newly repaired-and irritating-heart.That pesky humanity was almost as toxic as the most debilitating illness on this hunk of rock, killing more humans than any vampire could.Love.And there I was, attached to a slayer who I couldn't be undead without.Friends who I was becoming increasingly attached to.All things-people-he would take away from me. Then he'd take me too.But if it came to that, I'd yank out my beating heart and crush it in my hands before he could touch me.It was lost anyway. If he won, my eternity would come to an end. As it happened, so would the world.That only meant I couldn't lose.
Souls are interesting things.Not something you can prove you possess. Not something that can be measured, like a heartbeat.But something that can be destroyed by the absence of a heartbeat.No, you cannot prove you possess a soul.But once that soul dies, there doesn't need to be proof that you don't have one.Once that blackened pit opens inside you, the world can see it. The world cowers from it.Gage knew this because his soul was long gone.He was glad to be rid of it.He was filled with depraved satisfaction that he could make the world cower from him.That he could burn the world to the ground and he didn't have anything-like a soul or a conscience-to stop him.Until her.The woman who proved to him that she had a soul.That he might have something left of his.The woman who tricked the world, blinded it to the truth. Hid expertly what was broken and ruined inside her.Though he was about to prove that there was nothing more broken than him. No one more broken.He'd prove that by destroying them both.
Gina: Freshly brewed tea. Earl Grey, loose leaf.Rain on the windowsills. The smell of library books. Escape into worlds greater than this.Solitude.Invisibility.A quiet life. Maybe boring, but boring was never dangerous. Until I saw what I was missing out on. Who I was missing out on. The man who shattered my boring, safe life and lay it to ruin.The man I'd been in love with since I was a teenager. Who I'd been invisible to since I was a teenager.The man who just happened to be a world-famous rock star.Sam: Whisky. Neat. Leave the bottle.Crowd of hundreds of people. No, make it thousands. All shouting my name. Live fast. Die...Die? I'm too young, too famous and far too badass to die. Death doesn't happen when you stop breathing, it's what happens before that. Death is the monotony of life. The grave? Well, all the greats live there. You're not a rock star until you die before you're thirty. The grave doesn't bother me.Just the quiet.That is death in the life of rock.But then... her.She'd been there all along and I'd been too blind, too obsessed with the fast, loud life to realize where the real Nirvana lay.In the silence.Even the grave couldn't hold me if I didn't get her.And I'm a rock star.And a badass.And as stubborn as I am good-looking.I know how to get what I want.I also know how to kill anyone who gets in my wa
My name's Rosie and I come from a dynasty of sorts... the Sons of Templar, maybe you've heard of them. I just happen to be the daughter of one of the founding members and am the sister of the current president. The fact I'm a woman means I don't wear the patch, but it'll never change the fact that I'm a Templar by blood. We're known as royalty in the outlaw world. Though, the dynasty is dancing on the right side of the law these days. That doesn't mean that the law and those who enforce it are friends. It will remain the one constant in my tumultuous life. The one rule in our law-free existence. Befriending the law and those that enforce it is a betrayal. Which means me being one half of a doomed love is that much more comical when he's a cop. Or was. Before I went and ruined it all. Before he shattered that shield he wore to protect society in order to protect me. He saved me and I damned him. I damned myself too, but to be honest, I was damned long before that.
