Chapter One:

Wedding Bells

The ivory wooden doors of the town hall burst open to make way for the new Mr. and Mrs. Damon Leonardo Moretti. My husband and I raced out through the threshold, hand in hand, and hopped into our precious, dull blue classic Mustang convertible, a car I was irrevocably convinced he had stolen during our time back home. Something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.

"I do" was still on the tip of my tongue as we left the building. I do want to be with this man for the rest of my immortal life, want to see him beside me looking handsome and young and sweet for all eternity. And he would be as handsome as he was today for the remainder of our perpetual lives.

He wore a tuxedo that complemented his thick, dark hair and his pale blue eyes. In comparison, my white, knee-length dress seemed insignificant. He was the only thing I could settle my eyes on.

The two of us smiled, simply happy to have sealed our love with a kiss, as Damon started the engine. There isn't another sound in the world that I would ever want to hear as much as that purr when the key turned in the ignition. Vroom. Vroom towards our house, our home.

Damon parked the car in the parking loop at the front of the house and we stared into each other's eyes for a moment. The feeling of renewed life, however intangible, was in the air. It was a brilliant, blue sky kind of day and we sat in the sun, soaking it all in. When we entered through the front door, Damon scooped me up into his arms and brought me to the kitchen to celebrate. He had asked me a hundred times if I would rather go somewhere special but I liked the home setting. We decided, also, that we were not going to delve into the O-positive on this occasion either. This was not a celebration with blood. It was a celebration with love, for all three of us—Damon, the baby, and I.

He placed an ear on my stomach and listened for the sound he was most anxious for. I didn't need to read his mind to know what he was thinking. We were both going to be parents! The thought of two vampires procreating in general was an odd thing to wonder about, but to actually be those two who had the opportunity to bring a life into this world, it was overwhelmingly spectacular. It had never been done before, not that anyone knew of anyway. The fact that it happened for us was a complete accident, but a joyful one. Damon wanted to give me everything in the world that I could ever desire and so he had us try, without telling me that was his intention. With our willpowers combined—and a little magical power—we were able to conceive, and it was a miraculous feeling. So much of my life was falling into place that it made me wonder what our future as a family was going to be like.

That night, we spent the hours of darkness in each other's arms. When Damon had said that he would never leave my side again, he was absolutely serious. Wherever I went, he followed. Every time the baby forced me into sickness, he was there to cradle me while I was weakened. Even for a vampire, this baby-carrying thing was rough. It was as if all of my strength was washing out of me because, while I was strong, my baby was stronger. I often questioned if this was how human mothers felt. I imagined it would be something similar, right?

Many times I have wondered if our baby was actually going to survive the nine months or so that I was going to have to carry it inside of me. Damon wasn't a doctor but he seemed to think that, thanks to my witchy side, my baby-making organs were functioning at top notch like any other human being. I hadn't made myself human—my heart remained unbeating—but certain parts inside of me were working in a way that would produce a beautiful, healthy baby. When I asked him about what we were going to do when it arrived, all he could say was, "We will love it, cherish it, and give it the best life any little boy or girl could ever ask for." He knew what I really meant, but he wasn't willing to think too much about it. Another death, another loss, another life taken away by fate and misfortune, it would force him to rip his heart out of his chest and tear it up into a billion tiny pieces.

There was a possibility that our baby could be human. If it was, what was going to happen when both of its parents never aged as it grew up? Damon and I could pass for college students, around thirty years old—tops—for him, and mid to late twenties for me. What were we going to tell our child when he or she suddenly looked older than the both of us combined? What would we tell everyone else? Those random people on the street who were curious or those people who would grow close to us as was natural. What would we say? Would one of us become our child's "child" to those human outsiders, posing as relatives but in a switched order of roles?

As I slept, I dreamt. Eyelids shut, I could see better than I ever could before, vampire or not. I was sitting on the edge of a cliff, my feet dangling off the side. The drop off was about a mile high and all there was below was the grass and the trees, above only sky. As I looked around me, there was a range of mountains in the distance. The longer I watched, the more petrified I became. A great darkness was sweeping over the land in front of me, headed straight for my cliff. Give me a lion or a vicious man-eating beast any day. I could tear it to shreds in a second. What could I do to a heap of dark, devastating smog?

Without even thinking about where Damon might be, I got up and started running in the opposite direction at full vamp speed. This thing wasn't going to catch me. I wouldn't let it.

Not too long afterwards, Damon finally caught up to me and we sprinted through the woods together, hand in hand. I was glad to have him by my side and grateful that he couldn't hear my thoughts which meant he couldn't find out I had purposefully left without caring about his safety.

All of a sudden, he got the strangest notion to stop and face the darkness.

I probed his mind to get an idea of what the heck he was thinking, but all I heard was silence. It wasn't just a silence in his mind, but a complete and utter lack of sound everywhere. All of the animals that normally lived in that forest were long gone, afraid of the approaching danger. My ears rang with an emptiness from the total absence of sound.

The moment I blinked, we were somewhere else. I recognized a few bits and pieces of the landscape but otherwise I had no idea where we were, only enough to know that it was somewhat familiar to me. The place in which we stood was a large patch of grass. Around the edges of the irregular rectangle were tons and tons of rosebushes and hedges. Somewhere along one of the walls of shrubberies, a fountain sat proud, even older than the man whose father had the property built for him. Could we be here? It was as I suspected. Damon and I were standing in the middle of the Moretti's garden, a yard that stretched from here to kingdom come.

Holding hands, we stood valiantly as the great darkness came closer and ever closer. As it reached the edge of the clearing, my instincts kicked in again and I wanted to run, run for my immortal life. But Damon held me as tightly as his lesser form could manage, denying me the right to flight. In no time at all, the darkness swept over us. As the smog blurred my vision, making it impossible to see, I could hear crying from a small voice in the distance calling for his mother.

Immediately, I tugged away from Damon's feeble grip and searched for the one who made that sobbing noise. He sounded so scared, I wanted to help him, to hold him tight and tell him that everything was going to be okay. In the abyss of black, I could hear his heartbeat. I followed it, promising myself that no harm would come to this boy.

Just as the thought had crossed my mind, the boy let out a squeal and the heartbeat was no more.

I woke up screaming, tears flowing down my cheeks.

Damon cradled me in his loving arms and waited until the crying stopped to ask what was wrong.

I took in a deep, staggering breath and shook my head as if that would help get the sounds and images out of my skull. "Nothing. Just a nightmare."

He believed that about as much as he believed that I really wanted to go to England for our honeymoon—which I actually didn't, but if I got to spend time with him, the location didn't really matter to me. Don't lie to me, Evie. I know you well enough to know that you're faking it. Tell me what's wrong.

Ignoring his mental pleas, I got up, got dressed, and headed for the door. We were leaving for England today and I wanted to visit Leo, the college student I had saved towards the beginning of the week, one last time before we went away. Naturally, Damon was blocking the entrance as I attempted to escape him.

"Evelyn," he scolded.

I simply pushed past him and ran out to the car. As I turned my gaze to the passenger's seat, I saw him sitting there in a dark purple button down and a pair of dress pants. He knew where we were going and he wanted to look as good as he thought I did. I don't know if he was trying to be funny or if he had even really put much planning into it, but we matched, he in his outfit and me in my black dress and dark purple stomach belt and accessories.

Now that everyone who wanted to go was in the Mustang, I started the engine and sped down the street until we reached the hospital. The moment the car was in park, Damon was by the door to the driver's side, opening the door like a proper gentleman. I got out and walked alongside him into the building, gently catching his hand as we strolled.

"Evie!" Leo called to me as we stepped through the sliding doors. He was sitting in a wheelchair out in the lobby, enjoying his morning stroll around the complex. He wheeled over to us and smiled. "You must be the new husband I heard very little about. I'm Leo, Leo del Lenora." He thrust out his arm for a handshake, calculating in his mind if the man standing beside me actually deserved to call me his wife. I had to seal my lips tightly to keep myself from laughing.

Del Lenora? He shook my friend's outstretched hand as he replied, "My name's Damon. Damon Moretti."

"Evie Moretti, huh? That's a very Italian last name."

"Speak for yourself," he mumbled.

I elbowed him in the side and grinned back at Leo. "Do you mind if we join you on your…walk?"

He eyed my husband suspiciously. "Not at all. Right this way." Leo turned his wheelchair around on the spot and headed off down the nearest corridor. He was trying to show off, to impress me. It was working. He must have really been practicing with that thing and I was just as proud as any fake sister would be.

We quickly followed him down the hall until we caught up to him. He was going a lot faster than I had anticipated he would be able to go. I would have thought that he wasn't allowed to do a lot of strenuous things to avoid busting his stitches open or something.

A ways down the wide and lengthy hallway was a patient courtyard. Leo slammed the handicapped button and wheeled himself outside among the greenery. In the hospital's garden there were so many bright flowers; tulips, orchids, daffodils and cherry blossoms were all nestled in the giant square. When I looked up I realized that there was a skylight. We were inside an indoor greenhouse.

The patient kept on going until we were at the very center of the gardens near a large fern. Then he spun around and smiled at me. "I'm glad you came. Don't married people normally go on honeymoons after they get hitched?" he asked. Maybe she doesn't want to be alone with him for that long so they decided to stay.

I chuckled. "Yes they do. We're actually leaving today in about an hour. I just wanted to say goodbye before we left." I sat on the bench a couple feet away and invited my husband to sit down as well. "How are you doing, Leo? Do you need anything?"

A kiss would be nice. "I'm okay. I'd be a lot better if I wasn't stuck in this stupid thing," he sighed, slamming his fists on the arms of the wheelchair.

An idea struck my brain like cannon fire and I shot up from my perch. "I'll be right back. Would you like something to drink? I'll go get you something while I'm there."

Evie, what are you doing? Damon called to me with his thoughts. Evie. Evelyn!

"You two play nice." I walked back the way we had come, in search of the café. Not too far down the hall, I found a sign that led me in the general direction thereof. I continued to allow the signs to guide me the correct way and went through the threshold.

Right through the door, there stood a line of refrigerated containers along the right wall. The chefs served hot food along the left wall while straight down the middle were the cashiers. I quickly grabbed a bottle of red fruit punch out of one of the refrigerators and ran over to the register to pay for it. I must have been acting strangely because the cashier seemed to note my odd behavior, wondering if I had escaped from the psychiatric wing. On the way back, I stopped at the restrooms. Without thinking too much about it, I emptied out a third of the bottle, grabbed my pocketknife out of my purse, and sliced my left palm. Blood dripping, I squeezed my fist over the juice and let it fall into the bottle, drop by drop, until it could hold no more. Then I closed the bottle and shook it up like there was no tomorrow—because if Damon realized what I had done, there would be no tomorrow for me.

When I came back, no one asked where I had been. At least, not out loud.

What the heck is wrong with her all of a sudden? She's acting really strange, noted Leo.

Evie, what's going on? Tell me right now.

"Nothing," I whispered under my breath. "Here, I brought you some juice. I figured the sugar and extra vitamins would be good for you." I handed Leo the bottle and returned to my seat.

Strange, he repeated. "Thanks…" He didn't even notice or care that the seal on the bottle was broken. He just opened it up and chugged away knowing that, if he didn't drink some, it would probably hurt my feelings. That's weird. It kind of tastes like it expired… Well, bottom's up! In a single chug, he finished off the liquid and grinned. "Much better."

If only he knew how much better he was going to feel. Seeing as the blood would take time to enter his veins and take its effect, I decided Damon and I would leave in no more than ten minutes. I wanted to witness his partial recuperation for his real sister back home. Speaking of which… "Have you had a chance to contact your family?" If I, a meager substitute for the real people who loved him, was so worried about his condition then I couldn't imagine how terrible his parents and sibling would feel.

"Yeah," he replied. "My mom and dad are driving up next weekend. They don't want me traveling home by myself but they want me to come home for the break." Even though I told them I'd rather stay here… To recover, of course. I guess I'm glad they're coming. "I haven't seen them in a while."

I grinned. "I'm glad to hear you'll be able to see them again soon. What about your exams? How did you do on those? I still can't believe you asked the doctor to let you leave. You really shouldn't have put so much stress on yourself." I was going to complain some more about how foolish it was for him to have made that decision, but I really wanted to hear his answer to my question. Plus, I felt too much like a mother scolding her child. It didn't seem natural though, in a weird way, the real problem was that it felt too natural.

He shrugged. "It wasn't a big deal. It was definitely worth the all A's I got on my finals." The smile that crossed his expression spoke just as loudly as the thoughts that shouted at me in his mind. It was so plain that Damon picked up on the emotions and glared while Leo wasn't looking.

Keep your hands and face off my woman, peach.

I couldn't understand why he would result to name-calling using a type of fruit, but at least he appeared to be thinking of something other than what I was up to.

As if he was suddenly the mind reader in this relationship, he added, Don't think you're off the hook just yet, Evelyn. And that was the last thought he had on the subject until the moment I decided we were ready to leave.

"Well, we better go. We have a flight to catch, but I'll see you again when we get back." If you even need to be in the hospital when we get back, I added internally.

Damon kept on glaring at me as we said goodbye to Leo and I gave him a kiss on the cheek and an awkward wheelchair hug. We left him there in the greenhouse and returned to the parking lot.

As soon as we made it passed the doors, Damon grabbed my arm and pushed me up against the wall. "What did you do, Evie?"

"Nothing, Damon. Stop!"

"Don't lie to me, Evie! I could smell the blood on his breath. You gave him your blood, didn't you?" When I didn't answer he repeated his question. "Didn't you?!"

"Yes, I'm sorry! I just couldn't stand to see him so helpless."

He took a deep breath and stood back to more calmly assess the situation. Then he took me in his arms and sighed. "I'm sorry, but you have to be more careful about these things. I know you're just trying to help, but it's dangerous to just start handing out your blood to every human that you feel bad for. One of these days, something is going to happen to them while the blood is in their system and one of your friends will become a vampire who we won't be there to care for." He stroked my cheek and gave me a kiss. "Come on," he said softly. "Let's go."

It didn't take long for us to be on good terms again. Damon took us to the airport and did that thing with the charming look and the smoldering eyes; I couldn't help myself from melting and then we forgave each other. After all, we had only just gotten married and our love was stronger than any of that human nonsense. Vampires mate for life so we weren't going anywhere without the other any time soon.

After hours and hours of plane riding, Damon and I arrived at the Heathrow airport. Great Britain was a spectacular place to visit, especially during the winter. Soon it would be Christmas and that meant that the whole of London was lit up like a Christmas tree. The streets, sidewalks, and buildings were all lined with snow and many of the main roads had a ceiling of blue and white lights overhead. It was beautiful.

Ah, the many sights that England had to offer. There was the Tower of London with its nine hundred years of history all enclosed inside a magnificent fortress. In the bowels of the tower, there was said to be one of the scariest prisons and torture chambers in existence, make the building as whole one of the most haunted places ever built. Then there was the Peter Pan statue in Hyde Park, which was going to be one of our ticks on our to-do list tomorrow along with the British Museum, the changing of the guard, Westminster Abbey, the London Aquarium, and seeing Big Ben up close! You couldn't possibly drown my excitement for all of the things that we were going to be able to see while we were out there. London was such a foreign place to me, the unknown city, but that didn't stop me from wanting to get a closer look. Even after seeing all of those places, many more would have to follow: the London Eye, the science museum, the Royal Opera House, the London Zoo, Kew Gardens, and all of the other things that would make this list so much longer. All of the gardens, cathedrals, museums, animal exhibits, and theaters would take a lifetime to see at a leisurely pace. But our first stop, of course, was Buckingham Palace. Like the proud Americans we were, we decided that we would follow tradition and try to make the nutcracker soldier laugh.

We didn't even wait to go to our hotel room first to get out of this early morning air. Vampires didn't even care about the cold because it didn't really alter us. Instead, we sent our suitcases ahead to the hotel as Damon had already arranged with the staff and the taxi driver. Then it began, the challenge of the century. Could we do it? Who would be the reigning champion?

"Ladies first" meant that it was up to me to take the first crack at the guy. I thought of the funniest joke that I had in my repertoire and grinned as I rattled it off. "Three girls walk into a bar—a brunette, a red head, and a green-haired chick. The bartender asks the brunette how she keeps her hair so brown. The brunette combs her hands through her hair and says, 'It's natural.' Then the bartender asks the red head how she keeps her hair so red. She combs her hands through her hair and says, 'It's natural.' Then he asks the green-haired girl how she keeps her hair so green. She sneezes into her hands, combs her hands through her hair, and says, 'It's natural.'"

The soldier remained unaltered.

"My turn!" Damon beamed as he took his place in front of the man with the tall, poufy ebony-feathered hat. "What are the two sexiest farm animals? Brown chicken, brown cow!"

Still nothing.

"There were three men on a hill with their watches. The first man threw his watch down the hill and it broke. The second man threw his watch down the hill and it broke. The third man threw his watch down the hill, walked all the way to the bottom, and caught it. The other two men were puzzled and asked the third man how he did it. The third man said, 'Easy. My watch is five minutes slow!'"

"A wife told his husband to whisper her dirty things. The man then replied, 'The kitchen, the living room, the conservatory, and the dining room.'"

"What do you get when you cross a panther with a hamburger? Really fast food!"

"The worst place to have a heart attack is during a game of charades, especially if the people you are playing with are really bad at guessing."

"An Illinois man left the snow-filled streets of Chicago for a vacation in Florida. His wife was on a business trip and was planning to meet him there the next day. When he reached his hotel he decided to send his wife a quick email. Unfortunately, when typing her address, he missed one letter, and his note was directed instead to an elderly preacher's wife whose husband had passed away only the day before. When the grieving widow checked her email, she took one look at the monitor, let out a piercing scream, and fell to the floor in a dead faint. At the sound, her family rushed into the room and saw this note on the screen: Dearest Wife, Just got checked in. Everything prepared for your arrival tomorrow. P.S. Sure is hot down here."

"A girl asks her mother, 'What if a boy hugs me?' Her mother said, 'Say don't.' The girl asked, 'What if he kisses me?' Mom replied, 'Say stop.' The next day when the girl goes to school, her boyfriend hugs and kisses her, so she did as her mother told her to and she quickly said 'Don't stop!'"

Still nothing.

Damon and I stepped towards the curb, folded our arms, and collaborated what our next strategy was going to be. By now, people had gathered to watch the silly Americans do their thing and we weren't about to disappointment them.

Together, we stood in front of the soldier in red and grinned with absolute certainty that this was going to work.

"Knock, knock," I began.

"Who's there?" asked Damon.

"Banana."

"Banana who?"

"Banana, banana. Knock, knock."

"Who's there?"

"Banana."

"Banana who?"

"Banana, banana. Knock, knock."

"Who's there?"

"Orange."

"Orange who?"

"Orange you glad I didn't say banana?"

We both started busting up. "Isn't that funny?" asked Damon, his pupils dilating.

To everyone else's surprise, the royal guard started uncontrollably laughing. In shock, there was a moment of silence to appreciate the sound before they all began applauding.

Damon and I took our bows and sauntered off before someone came to reprimand us. Actually, it was more of a run—it's hard to tell the difference when my top speed is faster than the speed of sound. We didn't stop until we made it to our hotel. No one would suspect anyone that entered the most expensive hotel in Europe of petty crimes like disrupting the peace.

"Damon Moretti and wife."

The concierge typed his name into the computer and pulled up our reservation. "May I please see your documents?"

My husband grabbed our passports from his jacket pocket and turned them over to the man behind the desk after which they were promptly returned.

The Englishman twisted around to grab a key from one of the many slots and gestured towards the elevator. "Allow me to show you and your wife to your room, sir."

Up we went until there were no longer any floors above us. The elevator doors opened to reveal a short hallway. At the end of this hallway was a pair of doors. The concierge approached the double doors and quickly unlocked them so he could push them out of the way. "And here we are, the honeymoon suite."

Damon tipped the man who handed over the key and left us alone with a, "Have a good day, sir. Madame." I was a "Madame" now. How weird is that?

The room was amazing, like nothing I'd ever had the pleasure of seeing. The ceiling was at least twice the height of me and Damon put together and the walls had this gold paint coated on the designs that had been etched what seemed to be hundreds of years ago. The décor as a whole matched the eighteenth century look with the patterned gold loveseats and the colonial era fireplace. It was very romantic.

"Holy Moses! How much did this cost?"

"Does it matter?" Damon countered, wrapping his arms around my waist.

I would have said, "Yeah because if it costs more than the number I have in my head, I would have told you not bother with making a reservation and I would have done everything myself." It was his family's money but paying this much for a room seemed wasteful. Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to caution him.

He nibbled my neck to make me forget that I had ever asked such a question. It wasn't fair. He could always get his way and he didn't even have to try that hard.

And so the honeymooning part of our stay commenced and didn't stop until the following morning, Christmas Eve. Waking up in his arms was all I could ever ask for in a life without life. The connection, that bond, helped us to communicate in those hours that we spent just lying there without ever saying a word. We were exchanging words of love and longing stares and smiles. We were happy.

This was all I wanted. I didn't need the fancy room or the London view or the sights that sat on the other side of the wall. All I needed was me and him and this pose for the rest of eternity. I didn't need to be human either. I just had to be with him and the humanity came from the depths of our hearts, from the love that we shared every waking hour and those few that we slept through.

"No more secrets," he said.

"No more secrets," I repeated with a glimmer of joy. "Never, ever again." We could have plenty of them together. There should never be anything that we needed to keep from the other.

With a smile, he pressed his tender lips to mine and relaxed as I lay there still on top of him. If only life could be that simple all the time.

All of a sudden, his cellphone went off, playing one of the greatest Depeche Mode songs in existence. He flipped us over so he was on top of me, gave me one more lengthy kiss, and grabbed the phone.

"Hello?" he said, staring at my face with a smile.

As the other person spoke, his expression changed from blissful to stern and he looked away.

"We'll be right there," he replied to the person before he closed the phone and said the words that I had never imagined would escape from his lips. "We have to go back."