Author's Note: My sincere apologies for waiting so long to update- I became ill and then had a horrid case of writers block- fortunately the story is flowing again so updates should be closer together. In the meantime, here we go:

Chapter Seven

Marie's unceremonious scream upon opening the front door the next night informed me in no uncertain terms of Lucas's arrival at the Fifth Avenue house the next night. She escorted him in to my heavily curtained rooms with no color whatsoever in her face, but she did not flinch when he mockingly kissed her hand before she fled the room She did not have to be told what manner of creature she'd left in my suite.

He languorously arranged himself in a chair before the still-cold hearth, casually brushing flecks of snow off his tailored coat and settling a decorative walking cane in the crook of an armrest. I, for my part, could barely stand.

I hungered.

The hunger gnawed at me, ate at my innards, crawled its way up my chest and flooded my mouth with the warm, imagined taste of blood, raping my senses with a blind need for food.

He saw it, and said nothing.

Several minutes ticked by as he merely sat in his chair, passively watching me shiver and clutch at the bedclothes in a wasted attempt to stifle my hunger.

"And there she gazed and sighed deep, and there I shut her wild, wild eyes…"

I wasn't expecting Yeats to come spilling out of his mouth, his voice so achingly familiar, but when it did I forced back an obscenity. "What sort of stupidity is that?"

"Yeats." His eyebrow rose.

"I am…" Struggling, twisted in hot bed sheets, I sat up little by little, folding my knees into my chest in a vain hope of stemming the tide of nausea and hunger that came with physical movement, swallowing the bile in my throat, and began again, my voice frozen, ice cold. "I am familiar with the poetry. Why in God's name are you just sitting there quoting some damn poem?" I was fast losing my sense of propriety, and in truth I no longer cared to act like a lady. The time of being a timid mouse was long past.

He leaned close, his breath smelling curiously of cloves. "This is your first lesson, Christine. What do you want to know?"

"I want to feed." It sounded childish, petulant, and I knew it.

He sighed expansively, adjust the set of his coat and fixing me with the knowing stare one would give a three-year-old, as if he'd dealt with this a thousand times and quite enjoyed watching his students writhe under the agony of hunger. "Knowledge first, little one."

Inwardly, I cursed. He had control over me, and I did not want him to. I did not want someone to dominate me again- I could not let that happen once more.

Horror, horror, horror…

I turned to him, my words ash in my mouth. "Then tell me everything."

I saw nothing more of roses in the remaining months of that year, no indication that Erik watched me, though I believe that somewhere in the back of my fevered mind I knew that he did. Marie watched me nightly as I broke from my internal reveries to make sure the windows were securely fastened and blinded before I slept during the day, and though she gave voice to her bewilderment as to what I could possibly wish to keep out, she did not try to stop me. Her innocent comment was met with my mirthless laughter. "There are creatures in this city worse than I, Marie."

It was during that period of intense paranoia following the appearance of the rose that Lucas proved invaluable to me.

During my six years as Raoul's wife I had no one I could confide in, no one I could share the torture of my increasing pain with, my lust for the very fluid that sustained the lives of those I loved. Lucas was, if only my instructor, at the very least a confidante, a shield against a reality I did not want to accept. For too long I had tried to convince myself that I didn't need someone with me- even my six years with Raoul had felt empty. And as much as I railed against having that kind of leadership again, Lucas insinuated himself into my life so thoroughly that I failed to notice the gradual loss of my independence.

Despite this, he remained distant, treating me with no affection, no tenderness beyond a cool assessment of my needs for survival, encouraging my dependence on his knowledge but always holding me an arms length away. He was a poor substitute, I suppose, for what I craved- a true companion, an equal. But I had, in my weakness, no other choice.

To this day I do not believe Lucas showed me everything. Oh, he taught me well enough, taught me how to shield my mind from other vampires who walked the streets how to disappear and reappear at will; he even taught me what could kill me- beheading, sunlight, staking, all the various forms of dismemberment that ensured that my daylight dreams were nightmares. But he never kept me from killing my victims.

For six months, I starved.

For the first few weeks Lucas fed me from his own veins, slashing his wrist and putting it to my lips, letting me drink until he could lose no more with out losing consciousness as well. As I began to require more than he could give, I woke to find victims in my bedroom, lying senseless on the floor-starved, homeless creatures or disease ridden streetwalkers that no one would miss- and would drink my fill, leaving Lucas to dispose of the corpses. And though these sated my hunger-if not my conscience-well enough I knew and my body knew that I was starved for something more than blood.

The idea that I could take anything more-need anything more-than the life of my victims terrified me.

Soon after this new revelation of mine I approached Lucas about it, and to my utter horror he refused to answer me; it was the only question he had ever denied me an answer to in the six months we had known one another: What did I need more than the blood?

I starved for two more weeks for this nameless thing, starved for a cessation of my ache and pestered him like a stubborn child for knowledge he had deemed forbidden to me. More than once I had watched him in the last few hours before sunrise, reading a newspaper, his cravat carelessly tied, dressed down to his shirtsleeves as was his wont after a long night, and catch a glimpse of sadness, almost…pity there, concealed behind his usual façade of emotionless, mocking superiority.

Perhaps it was the pity I feared the most.