Frost (Midnight Ice Book One) - Preview!

Chapter Three

Pandora didn't stop running until she reached her studio apartment, closed the door behind her, and fell back against it. Lifting her hands, she realized her fingers were still trembling.

I'm a vampire, for god's sake, she thought, annoyed. I'm tougher than this.

But was she?

Seeing Jax had brought back a lifetime of feelings she'd spent the past few years trying desperately to forget. Obviously, she hadn't been as successful as she'd hoped.

Obviously, I haven't been very successful at all.

But that was about to change.

Because today was her twentieth birthday, and it was time to finally move on. Like she'd said to Jax, she was never going back, and it was time to start acting like it.

Spurred on by new resolve, Pandora ripped open her closet door and dug through the shoes and clothes bundled on the ground. A sharp metal corner pricked her palm. She yanked the photograph of Jax out.

But that wasn't the only thing it was time to destroy.

Swallowing deeply, Pandora stretched her hands farther into the closet. She pulled out the only other thing she still had from her life before-a tote bag that was flattened and smashed against the ground. Resting the cotton on her knees, Pandora fingered the broken strap, the mud-stained spots, the zipper that refused to close. The bag was completely unusable-she'd pretty much destroyed it during her escape from the enclave. But for some reason, she'd never been able to let it go. On the night she'd left, she was pretty sure she'd grabbed it just because it was the biggest one she owned, could hold the most stuff. It was only after, when she'd woken up alone and as a vampire, realizing for the first time that there really was no going home, that she remembered what the tote really was. A present her father had gotten her for her thirteenth birthday, special because it was the only thing he ever bought that had required any bit of thought, that wasn't related to titan life. Knives from the armory when she was ten. Her mother's secondhand combat boots at fifteen. A worn-out, plastic bow-and-arrow set when she was seven. But this bag was something she'd torn from the pages of a magazine and left on the kitchen counter, a subtle hint she never dreamed he'd notice. But miraculously, he had.

Good grief. Pandora sighed, eying the two items in her hands. What sort of life had she lived that the photograph of a boy who'd broken her heart and the ratty old gift of a father who'd never once told her he loved her still meant so much?

I've got to get out of here, she thought, shaking her head and standing. Freaking birthday!

And she knew just the place to go.

Bound.

It was a blood bar in the meatpacking district. And no, the irony wasn't lost on her. One of the rules of being a vamp was that only human blood did the trick-no animals, no way to cheat. So even though the trendy area had once been New York's personal slaughterhouse, only human blood was served there now.

Tatsuya had funded the bar, one of the head vamp's many efforts to keep the mass murdering a little more under control in his city. Vampires weren't known for being especially careful with their food, but this had helped. The cocktails were crafted with the blood bags Tatsuya secured from the Red Cross, and there was a room in the back with willing victims, but Pandora had never seen it. Just the idea made her shiver. She'd fed on people before, out of desperation in the early days, and she remembered those vacant, exalted human eyes all too well. She couldn't erase the memories from her mind. The volunteers were little more than junkies searching for their next hit, and unfortunately, there were plenty of vamps all too willing to comply.