Two weeks ago, Dr. Aubrey Hart had still been alive. Now shes a vampire, undead and starving, with a maker who shows no interest in helping her adjust to her new abilities.
Forced to either feed or die, Aubrey is drawn to her former supervisor Dr. Gavin Thibodeaua man who arouses both hunger and desire. Her irresistible cravings lead them to an explosive erotic encounter and her first feeding. But when her attempt to erase the memory of their night together from Gavins mind fails, it becomes clear that their passion may have unleashed a force she never could have ever predicted.
The Darklings Surrender
Lauren Hawkeye
www.millsandboon.co.uk
MILLS & BOON
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Chapter One
Aubrey pressed the cold metal against her heart and heard nothing.
She knew that shed placed the stethoscope in the right place because she could feel the chill of it against her skin, right over her left breast. But there was no comforting thump-thump of her heart, no whoosh of warm blood as it moved through her veins.
Shed played this game before, as a resident at the local hospital. Thumpthe stethoscope found her warm, human heartbeat. Remove the metal, remove the sound.
Now it didnt matter if the device was against her skin or not. All that she could hear either way was silence.
Yet the silence was different with her new undead senses. It had a sound, of sortsa never-ending reverberation, as if she could hear the very molecules of the air vibrating.
It wouldnt have surprised her. She could hear everything else, from the tiny, scurrying steps of the spider creeping up her slick bathroom wall, to the beating heart of the human walking by outside.
Bored of the game, Aubrey let the stethoscope fall to the floor. Listlessly she pulled herself to a sitting position, and she could have counted the threads in her sheets, so sensitive was her skin against them.
They were the same sheets that shed had two weeks earlier, when shed still been alive. They covered the same bed that shed slept in, which sat in the bedroom shed had for over a year.
Not that shed actually slept in the bed that much. Shed been almost finished her residency at the local hospital, had almost been fully accredited. Dr. Aubrey Hartshed had the title already, but hadnt felt like a real doctor, not yet. Shed been so looking forward to it.
Instead, she was dead. Undead.
Undead and starving.
Malcolm, her maker, had come by earlier that evening. Hed peeled the covers away from her newly translucent skin and eyed her with disgust.
Get up, hed told her. Go out. Feed. I wont bring you blood any longer.
Aubrey knew that he wasnt lying, just as she knew that he wasnt sorry hed turned her. To be sorry he needed a conscience, and that was something that Malcolm didnt have.
Not all vampires were jerks, just like not all humans were good.
It was her luck that shed been turned by an asshole.
His voice berated her as she sat there, staring blankly across the room at the mirror. The woman that looked back at her was familiar, and also looked like a complete stranger.
Gone was her golden tan, the one vice that shed allowed herself throughout med school. In its place was skin the color of milky cream, threaded through with a webbing of amethyst veins.
Her hair was still flaxen, and her eyes still sky blue. But both were brighter and better now, despite how worn she felt.
It was the allure that came with her new life, or so Malcolm had said. She now had the power to draw the unsuspecting in, to draw them close, without them ever knowing why.
Not to mention that she was very nearly gorgeous. She would have considered herself plain at best, before.
But even with all these advantages, she was unable to adjust. Shed hidden in her bed for weeks, poking her head from beneath the sheet only when Malcolm visited. Hed taped aluminum foil over her window the second day, when streaming sunlight had burned a vivid ruby stripe across her arm.
She hadnt known any better.
Hed also brought bags of blood, viscous cardinal-red blood, and had pinched her nose closed and poured it down her throat when shed rebelled at the thought of drinking. Hed awakened the hunger, and now she had two choicesfeed or die.
She still wasnt sure which shed choose.
She had to choose before sundown tonight, or shed grow too sick, too weak to make the choice. And if Malcolm didnt come backand shed believed him when hed said he wouldntshed slowly wither away to nothingness.
Aubreys new, sharply tuned eyes fell on the framed photo that sat on her dresser across the room. Though the gleam of the brassy frame was brighter than ever before, and though the grain of the dark wood swirled in an intricate dance that shed never before noticed, it was the girl in the photo that caught her attention. With a mortarboard on her head, and pale hair falling in a curtain around rosy cheeks, the young woman looked fierceready to take on the world.
Aubrey felt that that young woman was a million miles away from where she was right now.
But the longer she looked at the picture, the more she could feel a sense of dissatisfaction growing. Shed sat here for nearly two weeks, stewing in anger and misery. Anger at Malcolm for thrusting this life, or unlife, upon her when she hadnt wanted it. For stopping her dead when shed almost achieved her dream.
The girl in the picture would have simply crinkled her nose and crunched the anger and misery into submission if they stood in the way of her goals.
Aubrey wondered if she had enough gumption left to channel that girl back into her empty shell.
Suddenly wanting a closer look, Aubrey pushed back the sheets that had tangled themselves around her legs. Shifting her weight, she placed one foot flat on the prickly carpet, then the other. Then she tried to put her weight on those feet for the first time in two weeks.
She wobbled and nearly fell. And it was the struggle that awoke some of the old Aubrey in her.
If she was going to wither and die, it would be by her choice. Not because Malcolm had made choices for her.
She hadnt sampled this new existence yet, hadnt seen if she could bear it.
Tonight, she decided, she would. She would hunt. She would drink.
Then she could make an informed decision.
Though shed pretended not to listen, Malcolms words had actually sunk through the undulating waves of grief, when hed bothered to talk at all, that was. Hed given her the most cursory of explanations of her new life, the minimum that he could get away with without setting some council down upon his head for abandoning a newborn.
As she walked down the street, the soles of her boots clicking decisively on the wet pavement, Aubrey was suddenly grateful for the bits of information that he had imparted.
Go hunting someplace where you wont know anyone, hed told her. It was harder to take what you needed when the victims were a part of your old life. Bite from the neck, the wrist or the inner thigh. That was where the blood flowed hot and rich.
And most important, dont drink too much from one person. If you drank too much, the person either died or was turned. And then either the humans fell into an uproar, or you were responsible for a newborn vampire.
Like many a person whod had an unplanned child and hadnt had the grace to accept it as a gift, Malcolm had been disgusted with the responsibility of an infant. Aubrey had had no idea that he was a vampireshed thought he was simply the man who made her mocha latte at the coffee shop she frequented every evening. His shift had ended; hed asked if he could walk her to the hospital. Though she had been reserved around many people, Malcolm had been both unassuming and sweet, and shed enjoyed his companyat least, she had until hed bared his fangs at her.
He hadnt meant to turn herhed simply taken too much from her wrist
Hed made it quite clear to Aubrey that siring a newborn was the worst thing that could happen in a vampires life.
Like a child feeling the sting of rejection from a parent, it had hurt Aubrey to hear it. And perhaps that was why she decided to disobey the first of her makers orders.
Instead of going to a place shed never been, she went to the hospital where shed been a resident. With every step closer that she took, the weaker she felt.
The hospital smelled of blood. Old blood, new blood. The bittersweet smell saturated the area for the entire city block, and Aubrey inhaled deliberately to draw the scent in.
It made her thirsty. It made her hungry. It made her want.
The thirst warred with longing as she stepped close to the automatic double doors of the front entrance. Shed spent so many hours there, closed inside the building where the smell of acrid antiseptic tried to wash away the delicious tang of blood. Shed spent more time here than she had in her own home.
The snaking hallways, the small, windowless rooms. She knew them all.
The people, too. So many familiar faces. It was comforting, a soothing balm on her grieving soul.
If she even had a soul anymore.
But surely amongst all the new faces that appeared in Admitting and the emergency room, she could find someone she didnt know. Someone whose scent appealed to her in the way that cinnamon rolls and freshly brewed coffee once had.
Maybe she could even find someone who was sick, sick enough that their fate was already decided. Then it wouldnt matter how much blood she took. She could drink and drink, drink until this dreadful, ever-growing thirst was finally assuaged.
Dr. Hart! Slowly, Aubrey turned her head. Shed just reached the front doors of the hospital, and the fluorescent lights that were placed around the perimeter of the musty brick building cast everything with a minty-green tinge.
A man sat on a dilapidated wooden bench that was set back into the grass. Huge goose bumps prickled his skin from the kiss of the chilly breezehe wore nothing overtop his flimsy hospital gown. An intravenous line carried something that smelled sickly sweet to his hand from a clear plastic bag, and Aubrey could smell the blood that was crusted around the tiny wound.
She recognized the man, but it was as if she was seeing someone shed once known a very long time ago. He had been a patient that shed tended a few times, and she couldnt remember his name.
She stared at him openly, fascinated with the changes in him. Or rather the changes in how her new eyes saw him, she supposed.
More than anything, she saw the flow of blood through his veins, moving with every beat of his heart.
Dr. Hart? The man lowered his contraband cigarette from his mouth slowly, and Aubrey admired the beautiful tangerine ember of the lit end. She cocked her head curiously, studying the man as he studied her.
He seemed to be growing uncertain, and slightly embarrassed with it.
Im sorry. He stubbed out the cigarette on the wood of the bench with nervous fingers, the lit stick burning a round circle into the grain. You just you look like someone that I havent seen in a while.
Aubrey nodded. The mirror had told her how different that she now looked, but it was still surprising to have it confirmed. But more curious was the knowledge that she could bite this man here, could drink from him, and it would be easier than anything shed ever done in her life. He was here, waiting, like a gift.
But she didnt want him. Something in the smell that wafted off of him was slightly distasteful to her senses, and she knew that she couldntwouldntdrink from him.
Dismissing the man, she turned, walked away from the entrance to the hospital and instead found herself compelled to walk around the side of the building to the poorly lit loading dock where the staff of the hospital made their way to and from work.
The concrete beneath her shoes was damp, and its dark tone seemed to swallow the flickering robins-egg light of the fluorescents and the silvery gleam cast by the moon.
She liked how things looked through her new eyes.
More, she liked the smell that intensified with every step that she took. There was someone back here. Someone who smelled like chocolate, rich, silky chocolate.
She could hear the steady thump of the persons heart, and the quiet fizz of that chocolate-infused blood as it was pumped through iridescent veins. She could already taste it, that first taste of blood from the vein, and she wanted it like shed never wanted the disgusting, congealed sludge contained in the plastic bags that Malcolm had brought her.
Could I get a hand with this? The voice attached to the cocoa smell was irritable. Aubrey was taken aback.
She recognized the voice. Unlike the fog that had clouded her memory of the man at the front entrance, this remembrance was like a scalpel through soft flesh.
Gavin Thibodeau. She didnt realize shed spoken aloud until the man himself whipped around and squinted through the night in her direction.
Hart? His voice sounded like metal shards, scrubbing away at the quiet din of background noise of a hospital at night. What the hell are you doing lurking around in the shadows? And where have you been? Do you know
He cut himself off as Aubrey stepped closer, and was more easily seen. The last time shed seen him, her locks had been lank and habitually in a long tail, and shed never bothered with makeup or jewelry. There had been no point when she wore scrubs all the time.
Now she was vivid, a colour image in a black-and-white picture, something that she had made an effort to accentuate, though she wasnt entirely certain why.