Dinner With a Vampire (61 page)

Authors: Abigail Gibbs

BOOK: Dinner With a Vampire

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‘Violet, I want you to know something. My blood might give you eternity, but I can’t save you from the pain of living forever. As far as I’m concerned, you’re worth living all those millennia for, but when people go their separate ways or pass away, going on is as horrendous as dying. Do you understand what I mean?’

I nodded, although the mounting dread in my chest threatened to squeeze all the air out of my lungs. He lowered his eyes, picking up the knife again and wiping it clean with the cloth.

‘Then don’t worry about it. It won’t trouble you for a long time yet.’

He clenched his free hand, bringing the knife to the inner part of his wrist, tracing a vein. Without so much as a wince, he dragged the blade across his skin, drawing blood from a long, deep wound.

I knew we had to act fast: he would heal quickly and if we didn’t do it soon, I would lose my nerve. So I pushed my arm into his grasp and he pulled it up to his lips, inhaling the scent of my blood beneath my skin. Kissing my balled fist, a smirk curled the corners of his mouth as he unfurled my fingers.

Unable to watch, I looked away and stared at the portrait of the Queen – watching us, I was sure, as oil and in spirit – as he bit down. I gasped, gritting my teeth to try and stop tears from escaping
.
It wasn’t as painful as when he had bitten my neck, but it still sent a shudder right through my body. He felt it and paused, lapping at the blood that flecked his bottom lip.

‘Violet, are you truly sure about this?’

I nodded. ‘I don’t have any choice.’

He raised my wrist to his lips again as I took his hand in mine, bringing his blood to my own quivering lips, swallowing back a whimper. But just before he began to drink, he paused, breaking out into his characteristic smirk.

‘I love you, Girly,’ he said.

‘And I love you, leech,’ I replied.

Acknowledgements

I sincerely wish I could thank each and every single Wattpad fan of
Dinner With A Vampire,
but 16 million reads boils down to a lot of people, so I will have to settle for saying that you are all utterly and entirely kaspary. You catapulted this story into the spotlight on the wide expanse of the Internet, coached me in my grammar, made me laugh with your crazy comments and after a year of absence, stuck around and proved to be the loyalist fans a girl could ask for.

Much love and gratitude, Canse12.

A special thank you to Joanne (blazing_dreams4) for so much: acting as an informal PA, beta reading hundreds of thousands of words, creating some beautiful artwork to bring my world to life, and of course, introducing me to new and awesome bands. Edmund is eternally yours.

No acknowledgement section would be complete without thanking my long-suffering family and friends: my parents for (finally) recognizing that staying up all night to write and becoming devil’s spawn the next day is acceptable because I’m an artist; my best friends Stefan and Becky for listening to endless writer-talk but somehow managing to withstand vampire-indoctrination; and to Chris, for soothing me through the times I was frustrated, stressed and worried.

Thanks to my editor, Amy, who came all the way down to Devon to help me cut a massive manuscript down into a shorter massive manuscript, and ultimately, create a better novel. Also, for introducing me to vanilla latte and helping me to never look at stickers on books the same way ever again.

Lastly, a massive thank you to my agent, Scott, for being crazy enough to take on a vampire book and being an awesome negotiator. Scrub, scrub.

About the Author

Abigail Gibbs was born and raised in deepest, darkest Devon. She is currently studying for a BA in English at the University of Oxford and considers herself a professional student, as the real world is yet to catch up with her. Her greatest fear is blood and she is a great advocate of vegetarianism, which logically led to the writing of her first novel,
Dinner With A Vampire.
At age fifteen, she began posting serially online under the pseudonym Canse12, and after three years in the Internet limelight, set her sights towards total world domination. She splits her time between her studies, stories and family, and uses coffee to survive all three.

Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers

77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Abigail Gibbs asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 9780007503674

Version 1

FIRST EDITION

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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