I may be the villain of the story, but at least I get a leading role. Evil is a term thrown around history and literature as if it's something so easily definable. A concept to fight against. Evil doesn’t exist. Neither does ‘good.’ Vampires do, though. I just happen to be one. I’ve cruised through the centuries managing to avoid all the wars, supernatural and human, but still going to all the best parties. I would say I avoided bloodshed, but it’s kind of part of the whole ‘vampire’ thing. I’ve lived on the fringes of a society that considered cruelty and sadism favorable character traits for almost five hundred years. Now I'm in the middle of a war that might just put my nonbeating heart in a lot of danger. Battles, I can handle. The impossible attraction between me and the vampire slayer, not to mention the penetrating gaze of the king of our race, on the other hand? I might not get out undead.

My life was never black and white. Heck, it wasn’t even black, white and gray. Lines were not drawn between good and evil, and if they were, I would have jumped those suckers for fun. But now it was simpler. It wasn’t black and white. Or gray. It was only one thing. Blood. A crimson-tinted world. That was all I needed. All I wanted. Him. Despite the war raging around us, or the secrets between us, there was nothing simpler than blood. It didn’t matter that it would be fatal. After all, it’s the things we’re not undead without that will kill us in the end.

Heartbeats had a pesky way of complicating things. They almost always came with the nasty side effect of humanity and finally... death. Since Thorne came into my life, I'd been plagued with both. Heartbeats and humanity. Both of these things were going to be the death of me. One way or another. And the death of everyone I knew and loved, a list growing longer with every beat of my newly repaired—and irritating—heart. That pesky humanity was almost as toxic as the most debilitating illness on this hunk of rock, killing more humans than any vampire could. Love. And there I was, attached to a slayer who I couldn't be undead without. Friends who I was becoming increasingly attached to. All things—people—he would take away from me. Then he'd take me too. But if it came to that, I'd yank out my beating heart and crush it in my hands before he could touch me. It was lost anyway. If he won, my eternity would come to an end. As it happened, so would the world. That only meant I couldn't lose.

Death. For everyone, even immortals, there is nothing after death. No takebacks, no comebacks. It's a full stop. The end of a story. The end of everything. For Sophie, it's little more than a comma. A prelude. A footnote in her true destiny. She was fated to die. Many times. To know what lay beneath in the underworld. To bring the darkness back with her. It has been patient, that power that brought her back. But now, it's ready. She is ready, for her true beginning. For the end of everyone standing in her way. Starting with a wolf she once loved. A vampire she once treasured. Destiny will wait for her no longer.