To Breathe

by Larkspur Quince

Not all vampires have the strength to defy temptation. These are the recollections of a young European prodigy who is made a vampire in 1822. A century later he meets a wonderful Italian soprano, but is he strong enough to resist her pungent pepper scent?

1. Chapter 1

PROLOGUE

—

Her face is in the stones. It's in the reflection of the water in the lake, the golden light of the dying sun against the mountains. When the wind twines itself around the trees and dances through their leafy hands, I can smell her. I hear her voice in the birds' voices, her song bursting forth from them. I feel her presence in the air; her skin touches mine through the long fingers of the waterside grass. She is everywhere. I can find no place where her memory does not live.

It doesn't matter how long it's been. One year, ten, fifty, a hundred. I wake up to the memory of the indentation her body made on the other side of the bed, but when I turn to see her, she isn't there. The bathroom is cleared of her things—her cosmetics, her slippers, her robe. I have a box full of memorabilia from our life together, her career, mine. There were those who knew her and they asked me if I have kept anything sung by her, and I told them that I had, but I that did not know where that chest had gone.

But I do. I remember where it is, I do, try as though I might to forget it. I put the things of hers I kept in one of the empty rooms of the house—it seems that I can't let myself lose the remembrance of her, even if I desperately, hopelessly want to. I can't disentangle myself from what she was to me. She is everywhere. I cannot escape.