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Once the sunlight goes to bed, that's when darkness wakes the dead.
When a series of grisly deaths devastate 19th-century New England, sixteen-year-old farm girl Faith must outsmart the Undead to ke...
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With blood-red lips, My eyes ascend toward the Heavens. I am consumed.
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Of the Blood: Identifying an individual as a vampyre.
(Taken from the Religious Tolerance Glossary of Terms about Vampyrism.)
South Harbor, Connecticut — October 1886
Even from the doorway, the room smells of death. I'd recognize it anywhere. A sickly-sweet odor, like rotting fruit, with the hint of something more.
Candles burn in every corner, flames twitching above half-melted columns of wax, but it's too benign to mask the scent. I breathe through my mouth to escape the stench but it clings to the back of my throat like mold.
I step inside the bedroom. Honor is next to me, fastened to my hand, his grip so tight my fingers pinch between his. At eight-years-old, he's half my age, and has already seen his share of grief. If cutting off my circulation brings him comfort it's a small price to pay.
There's a window across from us with a bed underneath, wide enough to fit two children if they were lying close enough. An uneven lump juts out from the center of the mattress, the rise and fall of breath stirring the quilt.
Honor shifts, the lock of his hand growing tighter. When he looks up, his brows knit in confusion.
"Sissy?" His voice is low; his amber eyes, so similar to mine, too big for his face. He's gnawing at his bottom lip, a habit he picked up last spring. Some days his teeth peel away so much skin he bleeds. I do as Papa says and ignore the anxious tic. "Is Andrew going to get better?"
An ache invades my throat. For a moment I think about lying, but I can't. I won't. "No."
I could sugar coat the truth the way Papa does, but my brother deserves better than that. He won't be a child forever and there are things he must learn. Knowing when a person is between life and death is one of them.
"The Lord is calling Andrew home," I tell him. "Do you know what that means?"
Honor blinks up at me. "Like he did with Mama and Grace?"
