Chapter 17: The Crying Woman
The coven moved through the suburban streets like a ribbon of shadow, their footsteps silent on the cracked pavement. Samantha walked at the front beside Nancy, her new senses crackling with information she was still learning to parse. Every rustle of leaves, every distant car engine, every sleeping heartbeat in the houses they passed, all of it bloomed in her mind like a garden after rain.
She felt drunk on it. Alive in a way she never had been as a human.
Then she caught it. A scent so sharp and raw it cut through the ambient noise of the sleeping neighborhood. Fear, yes, but deeper than that. Desperation. Loneliness so thick it hung in the air like smoke from a dying fire.
Samantha stopped mid-step, her head turning toward a modest two-story house set back from the road. The windows were dark except for a single light burning in an upstairs bedroom. A woman's crying filtered through the glass, muffled but unmistakable. Her heartbeat was a ragged drum, skipping and stumbling like it was trying to escape her chest.
"What is it?" Nancy's voice came from beside her, low and warm with approval.
"There's a woman," Samantha said slowly, tasting the air. "She's crying. She's been crying for a while, I think. Her heart sounds... broken."
Nancy smiled, and the moonlight caught the curve of her fangs. Behind them, Carol and Jenna exchanged a knowing glance, and Denise guided Emily, Ivy, and Rachel to a halt nearby. They all watched, patient as wolves, while Nancy stepped closer to her newest daughter.
"A mother's first lesson after the hunt," Nancy said, her hand coming up to cup Samantha's cheek, "is learning to choose who is worthy of the gift. The hunt feeds us. It satisfies the hunger. But what we offer, the change itself, that is not for everyone. Do you understand?"
Samantha nodded slowly. She had read about this in a hundred books, but the reality of it, the weight of the decision, felt different. It felt like responsibility.
"I want you to go and see her," Nancy continued, her crimson eyes blazing softly in the dim light. "Investigate. Learn her story. And then you will decide. Bring back a meal if that is what she is meant to be. Or bring back a new sister if you find something deeper in her."
The coven stirred behind them, a soft ripple of interest.
"You're giving me the choice," Samantha said, and it was not a question.
"I am giving you the gift of discernment," Nancy replied. "Go. We will wait."
Samantha slipped away from the group, her movements already fluid and silent despite her newness to this body. She crossed the street and moved along the side of the house, her bare feet barely disturbing the grass. The crying grew louder as she approached the window, and she peered through the gap in the curtains.
Inside, a woman sat on the edge of an unmade bed, her shoulders shaking with sobs. She was in her late forties, perhaps, with dark hair streaked with gray pulled back into a loose ponytail. She wore an old bathrobe, and beside her on the nightstand sat a framed photograph, facedown. A wedding ring gleamed on her finger, but the absence of another presence in the house told Samantha everything she needed to know.
Widow. Or newly divorced. Someone who had lost the center of their life and was drowning in the silence.
Samantha watched her for several minutes. She felt the hunger stirring in her belly, the pull of the woman's warm blood singing through her veins. It would be so easy. One bite, a moment of ecstasy, and the woman would be just another forgotten meal in a long line of forgotten meals.
But there was something else there. Something that made Samantha's newly awakened instincts pause.
The woman reached for the photograph, turned it over, and looked at it through her tears. She pressed it to her chest and rocked herself, whispering a name Samantha could not quite catch.
This was a woman who had been loved. Who had loved deeply. Who was now alone in a world that didn't care.
Samantha pulled back from the window. The decision was hers, and it hung in the air like a blade waiting to fall. She thought about what Nancy had said, about the gift of discernment, and she thought about her own desperation, the years she had spent obsessing over vampires, dreaming of this exact moment.
She slipped around to the front door. It was unlocked. Of course it was, no one in this neighborhood locked their doors. The woman inside was too lost in her grief to notice the approach of death, or perhaps, something far more than death.
Samantha stepped inside and let the door close softly behind her.
The hallway smelled of dust and old photographs, of a life that had stopped being lived. Samantha moved through it without sound, her new senses painting the house in layers of shadow and warmth. The crying had quieted to a wet, shuddering breath. She reached the foot of the stairs and paused, listening.
The woman was coming down. Her footsteps were heavy on the treads, the drag of an exhausted body. Samantha did not move. She stood in the dark, letting the woman come to her.
The light from the upstairs bedroom spilled down the stairwell, and then the woman saw her. She stopped halfway down, one hand gripping the railing, her breath catching in a gasp that was not quite a scream. Her eyes were red-rimmed, swollen from crying, but they widened now with something else.
"You're not..." the woman started, her voice cracked and raw. "You're not human."
It was not a question. The woman knew.
Samantha tilted her head. Her crimson eyes caught the light and glowed faintly, slitted pupils narrowing. "No. I'm not."
The woman's fingers tightened on the railing. Her bathrobe hung open at the collar, showing the hollow of her throat, the pulse fluttering there like a trapped bird. She should have been afraid. Samantha could smell the fear beneath the grief, acrid and sharp. But there was something else in her scent now, something that cut through the fear like a blade.
Relief.
The woman took a step down, then another. She moved slowly, her eyes fixed on Samantha's face, searching it like a woman reading a letter she had waited years to receive.
"I knew," she whispered. "When I heard the door open, I knew. I felt... I felt something change in the house. The air got colder. The shadows got deeper." She reached the bottom of the stairs and stood before Samantha, close enough to touch. "I've been praying for something to come. I didn't know what. I didn't care what. I just wanted it to end."
"It doesn't have to end," Samantha said, and the words felt strange in her mouth. They felt like a beginning.
The woman laughed, a broken, watery sound. "What are you, then? Some kind of angel? Or the other thing?"
"I'm a vampire."
The woman's breath left her in a rush. She did not flinch. She did not step back. Instead, she reached out and brushed her fingertips against Samantha's cheek, tracing the cool, pale skin, the subtle point of her ear.
"You're beautiful," she said. "I thought I was imagining you. I thought the grief had finally cracked my mind open. But you're real, aren't you?"
"I'm real."
"Then do it." The woman's hand dropped to her own throat, her fingers pressing against the pulse there. "Whatever you came here to do. Feed on me. Turn me. Kill me. I don't care. Just make the silence stop."
Samantha felt the hunger surge at the offer, a wild animal that had been pacing behind her ribs. She could taste the woman's blood already, imagined the hot, sweet burst of it against her tongue. It would be so easy. So good.
But she had been given a choice.
"What's your name?" Samantha asked.
The woman blinked, as if the question had caught her off guard. "Margaret. Margaret Ellison."
"Margaret." Samantha let the name settle on her tongue. "Who did you lose?"
Margaret's face crumpled, and fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. She did not try to hide them. "My husband. Forty-two years we were married. Forty-two years, and then one morning he just... didn't open his eyes. The doctor said it was his heart. Just stopped. No warning. No goodbye."
The wedding ring on her finger caught the light as she twisted it.
"And now the house is so quiet," Margaret continued, her voice trembling. "I can't sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see him. Every time I open them, I remember he's gone. I thought about joining him. I thought about it every day. But I couldn't. I was too afraid."
Samantha listened. She remembered what it had been like, sitting in her dark apartment, devouring books about vampires, dreaming of a night that could end her loneliness. She had been so desperate. So hungry.
She understood this woman completely.
"If I give you the gift," Samantha said slowly, "you won't be human anymore. You'll be like me. You'll hunger. You'll hunt. You'll never see the sun the same way again. And you'll live a long, long time. Can you live with that, knowing he won't be waiting for you?"
Margaret's eyes were bright with tears, but her voice was steady when she answered. "I've been dying a little every day since he left. Whatever you're offering, it can't be worse than that."
Samantha reached out and took Margaret's hand. The woman's skin was warm, alive, and Samantha felt the pulse in her wrist beating against her own cold fingers.
"Close your eyes," she said.
Margaret obeyed without hesitation.
Samantha leaned in. She did not bite her neck. She moved with a gentleness she had not known she possessed, her lips brushing against the soft skin of Margaret's throat, tasting the salt of tears and sweat. Then her fangs sank in.
Margaret gasped, her body arching against Samantha's. The blood flooded Samantha's mouth, hot and sweet and laced with the sharp tang of grief. It was delicious. It was everything. Samantha drank, and as she drank, she felt Margaret's tears against her cheek, and she felt something else. A warmth. A connection forming in the space between their bodies.
When she finally pulled back, Margaret's head lolled, her eyes fluttering open. They were dazed, unfocused, but they found Samantha's face.
"Don't stop," Margaret breathed. "Please. Don't stop."
Samantha raised her own wrist to her mouth and bit down, hard enough to draw blood. The wound welled dark and rich against her pale skin. She held it to Margaret's lips.
"Drink," she said. "Drink and become one of us."
Margaret's lips parted. Her tongue touched the wound, and Samantha felt the electric shock of contact shoot through her body. Then Margaret drank, and the transformation began.
Her skin paled first, the warm flush draining away until it was cool and gray. The lines around her eyes and mouth smoothed, decades of grief and care dissolving into perfect, unmarked flesh. Her ears drew to gentle points. Her canines lengthened into sharp, gleaming fangs. And her eyes, still wet with tears, filled with a crimson glow that matched Samantha's own.
Margaret gasped and pulled back, her hands flying to her face. She touched her fangs, her pointed ears, the smooth skin of her cheeks. She stared at her hands in the dim light of the hallway.
"I can see," she whispered, wonder breaking through her grief like dawn through clouds. "I can see everything."
Samantha smiled. It felt strange on her new face, but it felt right.
"Welcome to the coven, Margaret," she said. "You're going to live a long time after all."