After Darkness Falls: A Vampire Romance
After Darkness Falls: Chapter 8

Whatever she imagined college dorm rooms to be, this wasn’t it. The small, second-floor room at the end of the right wing was charming and comfortable but stripped of bedding and decoration. The bare walls were painted purple and had wooden beams, and a four-poster single bed in the corner matched the furnishings.

‘That’s amazing. Everyone has a room like that?’

‘Not quite. Undergrads have to share rooms on the first floor, and we PhD folks have bigger quarters upstairs. Still, the master’s students have it good. You have an en-suite,’ she said, pointing to a door tucked on the opposite side of the bed, ‘and a small fridge, but if you want to cook something, that’s downstairs. We try to avoid setting the place on fire more than a couple of times per year.”

Somehow, Chloe doubted Blair was joking.

“The walls can be painted, and you’re free to hang whatever you want. There’s a service room on the first floor with a bunch of stuff you might need—carpets, lights, that kind of stuff. You should have bedding in the wardrobe.’

Chloe looked around. Her place in NOLA had been slightly more spacious, but definitely not nicer.

‘That’s amazing, thank you.’

Blair grinned. ‘You want amazing? Watch this.’

She sat down on the floor in the middle of the room, hands on her lap, eyes closed, and seemed to concentrate. Her pale skin emitted a warm glow. Chloe gasped as her hair moved with a wind she couldn’t feel.

‘Well? What do you think?’

Chloe was concentrating so hard on the witch that she hadn’t noticed anything at all. But when she looked around, her jaw dropped. The walls weren’t purple anymore; they were now beige, with blood-red flowers running through them.

‘A little too emo for you?’ Blair guessed. ‘I bet you’re a blue person.’

Chloe did, in fact, like blue. But she shook her head. ‘No, that’s absolutely perfect. Thanks again. You’ve been amazing.’

‘And now you want to rest,’ Blair guessed. ‘All right, so Intro is at ten tomorrow morning—mandatory for all newbies, be they freshmen or postgrad. Head over to the main court. You need to choose your courses by the end of the month—between now and then, you’re welcome in any classroom. As long as you don’t piss off the teacher.’

Chloe chuckled. ‘Levi said that too. Do teachers ban students when they don’t like them?’

Blair was too busy staring at her in horror, as if she’d sprouted a second head, to bother answering.

‘Blair?’

‘Did you just say Levi? You spoke to him? As in, the Leviathan? Or do you just know a random Levi? Like, Levi Smith or something.’

Chloe rolled her eyes. ‘Levi De Villier. I totally thought it was some sort of a nickname, by the way.’

Blair resumed her silent, horrified stare.

Well, as her mentor didn’t seem to be leaving yet, Chloe went to the wardrobe and found a duvet on a top shelf, as promised. She pulled it down, grabbed some sheets, and started to make her bed.

‘All right. Spill. Details.’

‘There’s nothing to say.’

Wasn’t there, though?

Chloe wasn’t inclined to share the things she’d put behind her. The bounty hunters, the witches, the bodies.

‘We traveled together from London, that’s all.’

‘You traveled from London with the fucking Leviathan?’

Chloe shrugged. ‘So what? And what’s with that stupid name?’

‘That’s his name, and whether or not he was born with it, trust me when I say he’s earned it. Whatever you heard about the demon of the abyss? That was Levi, having fun with sea familiars in the seventh century.’

‘Seventh century,’ Chloe repeated, slowly.

How old did that even make him? They were in the year forty-three of the Age of Blood, so…

‘He’s over fifteen hundred years old?’

‘No,’ said Blair.

Chloe sighed in relief. The thought of having met something quite that ancient was terrifying.

‘He’s over two thousand years old. Did you pay attention when I was talking about the first generation of vampires? Well, he’s the firstborn son of Arthur Davell, founder of those we now call De Villier.’

Chloe thought about how she’d recognized his otherness. She’d pretty much said that she didn’t think he was a run-of-the-mill vampire, and he hadn’t denied it. The revelation still blew her mind.

‘So, he was turned…’

‘He wasn’t turned at all. He was born, and then changed,’ Blair amended. ‘Most vampires have been turned from human to immortal at some point. But somehow, those who were turned by Ariadne directly are different. They can give birth to children—born vampires. They’re extremely rare.’

‘Born,’ Chloe repeated, trying to take it all in. ‘Sometime during the first century of the last era.’

‘Winter, year ninety-nine. Well, he isn’t sure whether it was early in the year one hundred or year ninety-nine. They didn’t keep close records in those days. We learn that in Advanced—’

‘Immortal History?’ Chloe guessed.

She was starting to feel like she should take that class if she wanted to get to know the neighborhood. Which was a crazy notion.

‘Right. But my point is, he lives on the hill, comes and goes from Oldcrest as he pleases, and occasionally pops by the Institute’s research facility…but he doesn’t talk to us. It’s like…’ Blair attempted to replace an equivalent that Chloe would understand but fell short.

‘Meeting the president?’

‘The president is a lot more accessible than the Leviathan, Chloe.’

She was starting to get it.

‘So, he’s vampire royalty.’

‘Technically, yes. The vamp queen who rules the northern half of Europe is one of his nieces, Bella De Villier. But even she defers to him. Very few things as old as him are alive in this world.’

Chloe grinned. ‘Do I detect a crush?’

‘No.’ Blair was adamant. ‘I have a crush on a history and a combat teacher, on a bunch of actors, and the prince of Spain. Levi is practically a god. I’m fucking terrified of him.’

Chloe could tell she wasn’t kidding.

She paused, wondering about her own sense of self-preservation, because after the first moment in front of Rose’s Coven, when she’d rightfully believed he might want to harm her…she hadn’t been afraid of him.

Not at all.

‘Interesting,’ was the only reply she could bring herself to make.