Page 1 of Taste of Death

Prologue

Amy

Iknew the exact moment I died.

It felt like a weight lifted off of me. Muscle and bone, breath and life were no longer burdens for me to shoulder. I was free from a body and all the sensory inputs of the surrounding world. Nothing hurt. No anxiety gnawed at me. It was a beautiful feeling to be released from it all.

Despite no longer having lungs, I could only describe dying as the freshest, sweetest breath of air.

Despite no longer having eyes or ears, I had some awareness of the world around me as I left my body.

My best friend in the world, Tavia, knelt at my body’s side. She pressed her ear to the chest of that empty vessel, her eyes squeezing shut as tears fell. Her hands moved frantically back and forth from the wrists to the neck, searching for a pulse that would never come. Her mouth twisted into a grimace as she sobbed.

I felt her grief, her heartbreak, like waves of heat. Her pain poured out of her, filling the air, the spaces between molecules where I currently was, somewhere in space above the body I’d once lived in. I wanted to hug her, to reassure her like she’d done so many times with me. But when I reached for her, trying to wrap my arms around her or wipe at a tear, I passed right through her.

“I’m so sorry, Tav. It’s not your fault.”

She didn’t hear me. I had no voice to speak with, but it seemed important to say. Our home had been attacked by vampires even though the ruling clan was supposed to protect us. Strangely, we’d been attacked in broad daylight. It was supposed to be impossible, but it happened. So many people had been injured. I couldn’t have been the only one that died.

Tavia hadn’t been here, so Robin must have used my secret cell phone to call her. Tavia had done so much for me before leaving to become a vampire’s blood pet. I never got the chance to tell her what an amazing friend she was.

I jokingly called her my bulldog. Tavia was strong and fearless, always putting herself between me and someone who wanted to push me around.

But she would have been no match for the vampire who gutted me like prey and drank my blood. The crazed monster would have killed her. So this time I was glad she was too late.

The memory of the attack was already distant and fading, like how a vivid dream becomes hard to grasp after waking up. I remembered the pain and horror in the moment, but now it was like sand through my intangible fingers.

I couldn’t see Tavia anymore; she was so far away. Or maybe it was me floating away, my soul or consciousness disintegrating now that I no longer had a body. What was my name again? Who had I been?

I was losing myself and that was okay. I’d become the oxygen from a tree, a breeze through someone’s hair, the pauses in someone’s laughter. Hopefully that someone would occasionally be Tavia, and she’d be comforted by some sense of knowing that I was with her.

With no body to fight with, no muscles to clench or anything to grasp with, I simply let go. If I had eyes, I would have closed them. Serenity washed over me, like the calmness and peace of floating on my back in a lake on a summer day. Death was a part of life. It was beautiful, and it justwas.

My consciousness, my sense of self, ofme, was on the verge of blinking away, when something changed.

All at once, the sense of floating, peaceful calm compressed. I couldn’t describe it any other way. If the particles of my soul had been spreading out, carried off by the wind, they were now being gathered and shoved into some kind of container.

I could feel things now, actual sensations as if I had a body again. A soft, fine sand shifted gently under my feet. I blinked as if I had eyes and could see the rough shape of a landscape spread out in front of me.

There were mountains in the distance and a sun in the sky. No, not a sun. The moon? This celestial body had a rocky surface, and the landscape was dark as if it were night. But the light reflecting down from this moon was an eerie red, as if shining through blood.

“Where am I?”

I heard no sound from myself or the strange world surrounding me. Oh God, was this Hell?

Movement in the corner of my vision prompted me to turn, where I saw a figure… dancing? There was no music but the motions looked rhythmic. Ritualistic, even.

The figure was bathed in the strange, red moonlight. It looked feminine, but moved so fast that I couldn’t be sure. It was barefoot and barely dressed at that. It wore a mask or some kind of headdress with a skull and long feathers. Stripes of white and black paint covered its body from head to toe in a pattern I couldn’t trace. A long necklace reaching down to its waist was the only thing making sound, reminiscent of a hollow clacking noise like bones.

The dance was passionate, hypnotic. Whoever this person was put their whole body and energy into it. Fingers stretched outward, feet stamped and kicked, and the figure’s long spine rolled fluidly like a wave. They carried on like I wasn’t even there.

But when the dance ended, the figure stopped, opened its eyes, and grinned at me as if it knew I had been there the whole time.

Long fangs jutted up from the figure’s top and bottom lips, and its eyes were blood-red. I could see that it was feminine in shape, with breasts and flared hips. The long necklace was a chain of small skulls.

This was a vampire, one that nightmares were made of. I’d never seen one as horrific as this.

Despair filled me. I really was in Hell, but why?

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