Prologue

I glided around the corner in tatters, panting although I needn't. What use is breathing to a vampire? Just another comfort I couldn't have, like crying. I crumbled to a heap on the floor; a pain stabbing through me like a knife... I wish. I yelled out in pain and fury and anger and that onlymade the pain worse. I needed to cry. Just let the tears flow thick and fast and have some feeling of release, but nothing came. Nothing would ever come. The knife went on stabbing relentlessly at my chest,and the pain multiplied tenfold asmore knives came, all over me, piercing my broken heart - and there was nothing I could do. It was like the transformation, all that time ago, it seemed. I was trapped, with pain like fire ripping me apart from the inside and out; but I could not move, just sitting there on the stone floor like there was nothing in the world anymore, like there was nothingthere.

But there was. And they'd come for me soon. I couldn't let them see me like this. Not after everything I had done to keep my half self from them before. I mustn't. I wouldn't.

They found me seconds after I had fallen. I was leaning against the wall of the cave like it was the only thing keeping me from disappearing into nothingness; clutching at the hole inside of me and rocking slowly side to side. I didn't even register them properly until I felt the tiny, wafer thin arms around my shoulders. I leant into her; the wave of dry sobs that racked through my body was magnified by hers, and she put her tiny head on mine.

I died that day.