The Darkling Surrender. Lauren Hawkeye

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

       Chapter One

      Aubrey pressed the cold metal against her heart and heard nothing.

      She knew that she’d placed the stethoscope in the right place because she could feel the chill of it against her skin, right over her left breast. But there was no comforting thump-thump of her heart, no whoosh of warm blood as it moved through her veins.

      She’d played this game before, as a resident at the local hospital. Thump—the stethoscope found her warm, human heartbeat. Remove the metal, remove the sound.

      Now it didn’t matter if the device was against her skin or not. All that she could hear either way was silence.

      Yet the silence was different with her new undead senses. It had a sound, of sorts—a never-ending reverberation, as if she could hear the very molecules of the air vibrating.

      It wouldn’t have surprised her. She could hear everything else, from the tiny, scurrying steps of the spider creeping up her slick bathroom wall, to the beating heart of the human walking by outside.

      Bored of the game, Aubrey let the stethoscope fall to the floor. Listlessly she pulled herself to a sitting position, and she could have counted the threads in her sheets, so sensitive was her skin against them.

      They were the same sheets that she’d had two weeks earlier, when she’d still been alive. They covered the same bed that she’d slept in, which sat in the bedroom she’d had for over a year.

      Not that she’d actually slept in the bed that much. She’d been almost finished her residency at the local hospital, had almost been fully accredited. Dr. Aubrey Hart—she’d had the title already, but hadn’t felt like a real doctor, not yet. She’d been so looking forward to it.

      Instead, she was dead. Undead.

      Undead and starving.

      Malcolm, her maker, had come by earlier that evening. He’d peeled the covers away from her newly translucent skin and eyed her with disgust.

      Get up, he’d told her. Go out. Feed. I won’t bring you blood any longer.

      Aubrey knew that he wasn’t lying, just as she knew that he wasn’t sorry he’d turned her. To be sorry he needed a conscience, and that was something that Malcolm didn’t have.

      Not all vampires were jerks, just like not all humans were good.

      It was her luck that she’d been turned by an asshole.

      His voice berated her as she sat there, staring blankly across the room at the mirror. The woman that looked back at her was familiar, and also looked like a complete stranger.

      Gone was her golden tan, the one vice that she’d allowed herself throughout med school. In its place was skin the color of milky cream, threaded through with a webbing of amethyst veins.

      Her hair was still flaxen, and her eyes still sky blue. But both were brighter and better now, despite how worn she felt.

      It was the allure that came with her new life, or so Malcolm had said. She now had the power to draw the unsuspecting in, to draw them close, without them ever knowing why.

      Not to mention that she was very nearly gorgeous. She would have considered herself plain at best, before.

      But even with all these advantages, she was unable to adjust. She’d hidden in her bed for weeks, poking her head from beneath the sheet only when Malcolm visited. He’d taped aluminum foil over her window the second day, when streaming sunlight had burned a vivid ruby stripe across her arm.

      She hadn’t known any better.

      He’d also brought bags of blood, viscous cardinal-red blood, and had pinched her nose closed and poured it down her throat when she’d rebelled at the thought of drinking. He’d awakened the hunger, and now she had two choices—feed or die.

      She still wasn’t sure which she’d choose.

      She had to choose before sundown tonight, or she’d grow too sick, too weak to make the choice. And if Malcolm didn’t come back—and she’d believed him when he’d said he wouldn’t—she’d slowly wither away to nothingness.

      Aubrey’s new, sharply tuned eyes fell on the framed photo that sat on her dresser across the room. Though the gleam of the brassy frame was brighter than ever before, and though the grain of the dark wood swirled in an intricate dance that she’d never before noticed, it was the girl in the photo that caught her attention. With a mortarboard on her head, and pale hair falling in a curtain around rosy cheeks, the young woman looked fierce—ready to take on the world.

      Aubrey felt that that young woman was a million miles away from where she was right now.

      But the longer she looked at the picture, the more she could feel a sense of dissatisfaction growing. She’d sat here for nearly two weeks, stewing in anger and misery. Anger at Malcolm for thrusting this life, or unlife, upon her when she hadn’t wanted it. For stopping her dead when she’d almost achieved her dream.

      The girl in the picture would have simply crinkled her nose and crunched the anger and misery into submission if they stood in the way of her goals.

      Aubrey wondered if she had enough gumption left to channel that girl back into her empty shell.

      Suddenly wanting a closer look, Aubrey pushed back the sheets that had tangled themselves around her legs. Shifting her weight, she placed one foot flat on the prickly carpet, then the other. Then she tried to put her weight on those feet for the first time in two weeks.

      She wobbled and nearly fell. And it was the struggle that awoke some of the old Aubrey in her.

      If she was going to wither and die, it would be by her choice. Not because Malcolm had made choices for her.

      She hadn’t sampled this new existence yet, hadn’t seen if she could bear it.

      Tonight, she decided, she would. She would hunt. She would drink.

      Then she could make an informed decision.

      Though she’d pretended not to listen, Malcolm’s words had actually sunk through the undulating waves of grief, when he’d bothered to talk at all, that was. He’d given her the most cursory of explanations of her new life, the minimum that he could get away with without setting some council down upon his head for abandoning a newborn.

      As she walked down the street, the soles of her boots clicking decisively on the wet pavement, Aubrey was suddenly grateful for the bits of information that he had imparted.

      Go hunting someplace where you won’t know anyone, he’d told her. It was harder to take what you needed when the victims were a part of your old life. Bite from the neck, the wrist or the inner thigh. That was where the blood flowed hot and rich.

      And most important, don’t drink too much from one