Chapter One

The Interview with a Vampire


The girl was beautiful. Lucas couldn't take his eyes from her. He couldn't quite believe she was even real.

Yet there she was, standing before him in the flesh, and why he was utterly terrified of her, he couldn't say.

He stumbled over his words. "I'm a writer, you see."

"A writer."

Even her voice was beautiful, melodic and rippling, words almost hummed rather than spoken.

A tilt of the girl's fine-boned face from where she stood by the window gazing down upon the bright lights of the supercity. "What form of media?"

There was a formality to her words, an antiquated quality to her American accent, hearkening back to the ancient movies of the twentieth century.

Luc's words felt clumsy and crude stumbling over his lips. "In this case, short stories."

"In other cases?"

A light flush heated his cheeks. "I'm hoping to write novels."

The girl's gaze sharpened upon him as though she had just seen him for the first time.

"What?" said Luc.

A ripple of amusement passed over her face as her pointed chin tilted negligibly upward.

"I was once quite a reader." Her smile grew rueful. "Sadly, the art form of the novel is hard to come by in the modern age. Modern attention spans never recovered from the invention of the cell phone. And once the neuralink grew widespread, well... The internet-of-minds seemed to kill the last spark of human creativity, and certainly its capacity for attention to anything at all."

For a moment, Luc was thrown by how she spoke of such ancient events like she experienced them first-hand.

And then she lowered herself into the bench by the window, and once more Luc was struck by the lethal grace with which she moved. She had to be a ballerina. Nothing else accounted for the quality of fluid grace of her every movement, like he was gazing upon a tiger.

The grace. That's what he'd seen - from behind - on that crowded evening street. It's what inspired him to pick up the pace and close the distance to that swishing head of long raven brown hair. When he caught up to her, and her gaze snapped to him, he'd already known she'd rebuff him. Most people did when he approached them as a young writer out and about hunting about for intrusive questions. On occasion, Luc had more luck asking older people, males in particular, because they were all pleased to weave a yarn about their lives to a curious young person. Not the women his own age, though.

It made sense. They probably thought it was a line he was using.

When he'd caught up to the girl and pitched her on telling him her story, he'd expected rejection. Instead, she smiled slowly, and suggested: "Let's talk somewhere more private."

His head had been spinning ever since. He was in equal parts hopeful and terrified that perhaps she suggested this hotel room because she was hitting on him.

But that didn't seem her intention, either. That meant Lucas Garza had found an anomalous young girl with no suspicion of a strange man approaching her on the street..

"I heard you asking someone before me," the girl told him. "I was hoping you'd approach me about this. I'm glad to support a young artist. I can't remember the last time I read a new novel."

Luc gave a tiny start at this girl – who looked no older than eighteen, perhaps at most, twenty – referring to him as 'young'.

Those dark lines of eyebrows arched. "Where do we begin, then?"

Luc's mouth dried a moment as his mind went strangely blank, captive once more to the unearthly reality of the stunning beauty of that heart-shaped face. Yet mesmerized as he was, he also felt a strange near-panic... A screaming of his instincts like he was standing before a tiger in truth.

And the girl awaited him with a benevolent and patient stillness as Luc recovered his wits and managed:

"Let's…" His voice cracked on the words for some odd reason. He cleared his throat to hide it. "Let's begin with, uh, what you'd like me to call you?"

The strangest smile curled over those wide and full lips. Her gaze went foggy and unfocused as though she gazed inward.

"Of course," she breathed. "Of course you would ask my name."

Luc blinked. Was that a hard question for her to answer for some reason?

As though the girl read his mind, she gave a soft laugh. "I've had so many of them." She looked inward and then she smiled. "Very well. I'll go with my most recent one."

Then her dark-eyed gaze fixed on his and for the strangest moment in the dim light of the hotel room, he'd swear - he'd swear - they looked crimson red.

"Bella Volturi."


TBC