Free Moonlight by Amanda Ashley

handsome Navarre, still so much
to learn. You are already dead.”
    “No.” He shook his head, refusing to believe.
    “Yes. I told you as much the night I brought you over. Did
you not believe me?”
    He shook his head again. “No.”
    “You are vampir ,” she explained. “One of the undead.
You cannot die by being stabbed, my Navarre, because you are already dead. But,
be warned, even the strongest vampires can be killed. A wooden stake through
the heart will kill most of us. Fire and beheading will most certainly destroy
you. Young ones, like yourself, must avoid the sun.”
    “Vampire.” He spoke the word slowly. In all the scrolls and
manuscripts he had read, he had never come across the word.
    “There have been vampires since the beginning of time,”
Shaylyn said. “I have made and destroyed hundreds of our kind.”
    Navarre swallowed the knot of fear that had lodged in his
throat. “And have you come to destroy me?”
    “No. I only came to see how my youngest fledgling is doing.”
    “I’m lonely,” he confessed, not meeting her gaze. “I long
for…”
    “Katlaina.” The word hissed past Shaylyn’s lips. “If you
want the woman, Navarre, why not take her? Use her as you will, then destroy
her.”
    “Destroy her! Are you mad?”
    “You cannot live like other men. You can no longer father a
child. If you desire the woman, take her and be done with it. But you must not
tell her what you are. She will hate you for it. If people suspect what you
are, they will hunt you down and destroy you.”
    “Why didn’t you just kill me?” Navarre asked bitterly.
Surely that would be better than the life she described, better than the life
he had been living. He stared into her eyes. Sitting there, her hands folded on
the table, she looked human, though he could sense she was not. Vampire. One of
the undead. What did it really mean?
    “If you don’t want to take the woman, then leave this place.
Go to the city, Navarre. Find yourself a place to live. Don’t shut yourself
away from mortals. Laugh, my handsome one. Dance. Find a woman to love, and
then, when she begins to age while you remain the same, move on and love again.”
    “Is that what you do?”
    “Yes. I’ve hunted the world over in my time. I have known
many mortal men. The world is a very big place. There is much to see. Much to
do.” She shrugged. “If living in the city doesn’t appeal, then go find yourself
a small village in the mountains and be a god. The peasants will revere you.
They will build you a place to live, and sacrifice virgins to appease your lust
and your thirst.”
    “No!” He shuddered as he imagined Katlaina being brought to
him as a sacrifice.
    “Do what you will, then,” Shaylyn said irritably. “Forever
is a long time. You must find a way to fill it.”
    “And if I don’t wish to be part of the world?”
    “Then bury yourself in the ground, my Navarre.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Dig yourself a hole deep in the earth and go to sleep.”
    “What will that solve? I sleep every day.”
    “Not the day sleep, but the long sleep. You can take your
rest for a year or a century. But beware, when you wake, you will be too weak
to feed off any but the smallest, most disgusting of creatures.”
    “Have you done this?”
    “Once, shortly after I was made.” She stared past him, her
thoughts turned inward. “It was like sleeping. I dreamed things, heard things.
Strange things. And when I woke, I realized the things I had heard and seen were
the voice of the earth, changing.”
    She looked at him then, the light of desire glowing in her
eyes. “Come, hunt with me, Navarre.”
    “No.”
    “Still determined to travel alone, I see.” She stood up, a
vision of dark beauty. “Mayhap we will meet again, my handsome one.”
    “Wait.” He rose to his feet, a feeling of emptiness coursing
through him as he followed her outside. He hated her for what she had done to
him, but she was the closest thing he had to