Charity’s face lit up in a giddy smile. “He has vampire strength? You’ve drunk his blood, Bianca. Was he sweet? He looks sweet. I wouldn’t mind a taste.”

“Don’t you bite him,” I said, and my voice shook now.

“Don’t.”

“If I bit him, and drank all his blood, and he died,” she singsonged, “Lucas would become a vampire. Would you drink willingly then? To join your lover?”

I slapped her. Her head jerked sharply to the side, and most of the vampires froze in their tracks, like they couldn’t believe anyone had dared strike Charity. She pressed her own delicate hand to her cheek, which was flushed red from my blow. Otherwise, she acted as though it had never happened. “You will ask me to join my tribe,” she said. “You will beg me.”

“Why would you think I would ever—” The words choked in my mouth as I realized why she thought that, what she was planning to do.

She whispered, “You’ll beg me for it, and you’ll open your throat to me. If you don’t, I’ll kill your boy.”

Lucas tried harder to free himself, but they had him fast, and another of the vampires was duct taping his wrists and then his ankles together. Then Shepherd threw Lucas over his shoulders, like he wasn’t even a person, just a bag or a thing.

“Climb the ladder,” Charity called, and Shepherd began ascending to the diving board, Lucas still in his grasp. She walked to the edge of the empty pool, and I followed, unable to understand what was going on. But when I looked in the pool, my stomach turned over. The pale-blue surface was horribly stained with blood, splash after splash of it, dark brown with age. Glimpsing the terror on my face, Charity whispered, “Sometimes, the ones that bore us, we give them a chance to get away. If they can survive the fall, we tell them, we’ll let them go. It’s so much fun to watch them on the diving board. They cry and they scream and they beg, but eventually they all decide to jump. They all fool themselves that they have a chance. Then they fall. So messy. All that wasted blood.”

“You’re disgusting,” I said.

“Sometimes it takes them hours to die. Days. One poor fool kept whining down there for nearly a week. How long do you think Lucas would suffer?” Charity’s dark eyes glinted with pleasure at the memory of others’ pain. “Beg.”

“It wouldn’t work anyway. I can’t become a vampire unless I take a life.”

“If I drink your blood—if I drain you far enough—you’ll become so desperate for blood that you’ll attack the first human you see. I promise to keep you away from your darling boy, though it wouldn’t make any difference to you, not in that state.”

I thought about how crazed I’d been for blood at times, especially during my captivity with Black Cross. Even then there had been times I’d been in danger of losing control with Lucas. I didn’t doubt that Charity was telling the truth.

“Don’t do it,” Lucas said. “She’ll kill me anyway.”

“I won’t. Cross my heart. You did me a favor once—I do remember, you know.” The small hesitant smile on her face was as girlish and trusting as ever. “You really can choose. You can walk out of here right now, safe and sound, and live out your life as a—well, as whatever you are. We’ll let you get far away before we drop him, so you don’t have to hear.”

I closed my eyes tightly, willing myself to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

Charity continued, “Or you can be a good girl and beg me nicely, and we’ll let your boy go. He’ll have to watch you die, of course. Otherwise he wouldn’t believe us. But we’ll let him live. On my word.”

The crazy thing was, I believed her. Charity believed in bargains and debts. Also, she was a sadist. If she were simply going to turn me into a vampire and then kill Lucas anyway, or have me kill Lucas anyway, she’d say so and take pleasure in watching me scream. No, I had a real chance to save Lucas’s life. That meant I had to take it.

Slowly, I forced myself to say, “Please.”

“Bianca, no!” Lucas thrashed in Shepherd’s grip, but there was nothing he could do.

Charity gave me the most tender smile, like I was a prodigal child who had come home. “Please?”

“Please—make me part of your tribe.” Was that enough? No. I hated every word. Every single heartbeat felt precious, because I knew I wouldn’t feel that much longer. Brokenly, I thought that I would die on my birthday—just like Shakespeare, I remembered. My life was being stolen from me, and I had to beg. For Lucas, I would beg. “Please turn me into a vampire.”

“Do you want to stay with me forever?” Charity’s hands framed my face. “Will we be sisters? Then Balthazar will see that you’re mine instead of his. We’ll show him. Please say yes. Oh, please say that’s what you want.”

That was why she wanted me to beg; so she could convince herself it was true and that she was building a family again. She didn’t want me to get back at Balthazar; she wanted me to replace him.

I’d begun shaking so hard I felt like I couldn’t stand up, but I managed to say, “Yes. That’s what I want. Please.”

She stuck out her bottom lip, a spoiled little girl. “If you really wanted, you would plead. You would go down on your knees.”

It was impossible for me to hate anyone more than I hated her at that second. I thought of Lucas and sank to my knees. The broken tile floor scraped my skin, and I put one hand over my coral bracelet, the last token of love Lucas had given me. “Please, Charity. Please take my life.”