Letters to Elise: Updated Edition, page 1
COPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
LETTERS TO ELISE. Copyright © 2010 by Amanda Hocking. All rights reserved.
Third Edition ©2022 by Amanda Hocking. All rights reserved.
www.hockingbooks.com
Table of Contents
Other Books by Amanda Hocking
A Note from the Author
Letter One
Letter Two
Letter Three
Letter Four
Letter Five
Letter Six
Letter Seven
Letter Eight
Letter Nine
Letter Ten
Letter Eleven
Letter Twelve
Letter Thirteen
Letter Fourteen
Letter Fifteen
Letter Sixteen
Letter Seventeen
Letter Eighteen
About the Author
Other Books by Amanda Hocking
My Blood Approves Saga
My Blood Approves
Fate
Flutter
Wisdom
Swear
Letters to Elise (Prequel Novella)
Little Tree (Short Story)
My Blood Approves: Complete Saga (eBook Bundle)
Seven Fallen Hearts
Virtue
Tristitia
Superbia (Coming Winter 2022/2023)
Trylle Saga
Switched
Torn
Ascend
Frostfire
Ice Kissed
Crystal Kingdom
The King’s Games: A Short Story
The Lost City
The Morning Flower
The Ever After
Watersong Saga
Wake
Lullaby
Tidal
Elegy
Forgotten Lyrics: A Short Story
The Hollows
Hollowland
Hollowmen
The Hollows: A Graphic Novel
Valkyrie Duology
Between the Blade and the Heart
From the Earth to the Shadows
Stand Alone Novels
Freeks
Bestow the Darkness
A Note from the Author
These novels were originally published in 2010. When I wrote them, I was still in my early twenties, and I had a lot of internalized issues that I hadn’t confronted yet. While much of the original book was a fun vampire romp, there were also unfortunate moments of misogyny, body-shaming, and ablism, among other problematic elements.
That led me to have a difficult relationship with these books. When I was first writing the My Blood Approves Saga, I loved it completely. After I published it, I read a few reviews that eviscerated the books. Some of the complaints were justified (calling out the problematic issues) but it was still a jarring experience for me.
It took me a long time to be able to feel the original love and enthusiasm I had for Alice and her complicated world of vampire. Especially once I knew there were legitimate issues with the books.
So, I decided to re-edit them. I have left the overall story intact as often as possible, but I re-worked so much of the internalized hatred that Alice feels and how she expresses herself. The largest changes take place in Alice’s friendship with Jane and with Jane herself. When I was re-reading the books and editing them, I was genuinely surprised by how cruel Alice (and I, as the writer) were to her. I tried to fix that and show that Jane is a three-dimensional young woman and decent friend to Alice.
These are still imperfect books, but they are definitely kinder ones now. I have fallen in love with them (and Jack and Peter and Ezra) all over again, and I hope that you will, too.
For you long time readers, thank you for sticking with me all these years, and for allowing me to grow and change.
For new readers, thank you for giving me a chance, and I hope you find some happiness in these pages
Letter One
April 19, 1836
I’m writing this in the corner of the room with trembling hands. The candle long since burned out, and I sit in darkness, yet I can see perfectly. I wanted to believe this was some parlor trick, that the man who found me was merely a magician or a doctor, but I’m unable to refute it any longer.
My name is Peter James Monroe, and I am a vampyre.
I’ve taken a few sheets of paper from the one who made me. I have to write this all down, as if to convince myself that I’m not mad.
It was only a few days ago that I was still human, but it feels like an entire lifetime has passed. I had been riding my father’s horse into the city. My younger sister Caroline had been bitten by a dog, and despite my mother’s best remedies, she was gravely ill. That morning, when I awoke, she could no longer move.
Father had me take Lysander, his fastest horse, and sent me to fetch the doctor. Lysander might be faster than our elderly mares, but he was a horse built for work, not speed. He must’ve sensed my urgency, though, because he pushed himself.
We didn’t make it far when a pack of wild dogs came upon us. They may have been the same dogs that attacked poor Caroline, because they acted nothing like a dog should. They appeared mad, and continued to give chase, even after Lysander kicked at them.
I turned Lysander off the road, hoping to lose the dogs in the thick trees of the forest, but I was mistaken. The smaller dogs were much better suited for dodging through the thick tree trunks than the big work horse.
The dogs bit at Lysander’s legs, and one of them managed to latch onto Lysander’s haunch. The horse couldn’t take it any longer, and he reared up, bucking me off him. I fell to the ground, cracking my head against a tree.
For some time, I could see nothing but blackness, and the sound of the growling dogs muffled in my ears. When I was finally alert, the dogs were already on me. One of them had me by the arm, dragging me away.
Lysander was gone, and from the echoed barks through the trees, some of the dogs gave chase after him. The rest of them stayed behind, stalking around me.
I tried to pick up a stick or a rock, anything to fight off the animals, but my right arm wouldn’t move at all. The dog had begun to gnaw on my left arm, and I couldn’t even pull it away from him. My body was paralyzed.
I called for help, relieved to find that I could still make a sound. I was breathing and I could yell, but those seemed to be the only things I could do.
A dog howled in the distance, maybe in victory at conquering Lysander, I’m not sure. The dogs that had stayed behind realized that I wasn’t going anywhere and ran ahead to see what the rest of their pack was howling about.
Even when they were gone, I knew they were coming back, and they would certainly finish me off when they returned. The dogs had already begun eating me, and they’d left me with chunks of flesh missing and open wounds spilling my blood in the dirt.
I lay in the cold ground, unable to move and feeling weaker as my life drained from me. I yelled as long as I could, until long after my voice had gone hoarse. My throat was raw, and it ached to even swallow.
It wasn’t that I believed anyone could save me, but my sister needed a doctor. Caroline wouldn’t survive much longer without one, and my family thought I was getting help. They needed to know that I hadn’t made it so they could go fetch a doctor themselves.
I wasn’t sure who they would send in my place. My father shouldn’t leave my mother and sister alone at the house, not with the mad dogs on the loose, and both of my brothers had moved and lived too far away to get help soon enough.
My younger brother Joseph lives in New York City caring for an elderly aunt, and that is almost a full day’s ride from our house.
My older brother Daniel lives half a day away from us, but he has a wife and two small children to worry about.
The thought of Daniel makes me grimace. Every time I speak to him, he lectures me about how I need to grow up and be a man. He never fails to remind me that when he’d been seventeen — two full years younger than I — he’d gotten married and built his own home.
Last year, he and Father had been intent on me wedding Hettie. Her father owned the general store, and since Hettie was his only living heir, I would be set to inherit it if I married her. Hettie was a plain girl and too soft spoken for me to even know what she might think.
But that’s not why I refused to pursue her. I simply felt nothing in her presence, and I had no urge to take over the store.
I want to run the farm, and I had long hoped that Father would hand it down to me when he became too old to care for it himself.
Lying in the forest, watching the sky darken through the branches, I regretted not taking Father’s proposition. If I had married Hettie, I would be safely in town, learning a trade. Our life would be quiet, perhaps even boring, but it would be a life.
When it grew dark, I began to feel better even as I approached death. Father would’ve realized something was wrong and went to fetch the doctor himself. Since I hadn’t come back, he’d be careful and smart enough to bring his gun, something I would’ve done if I hadn’t been in such a rush.
Father would get help for Caroline. Mother would lock up the doors to the house, and she wasn’t a bad shot herself, if the dogs came around. Father would have to take Helena, who was a slower mare than Lysander, but she w as younger, so she had more stamina.
Caroline would survive, even if I didn’t.
I imagined I could hear the hoof beats of my father’s horse on the rode past the forest. They pounded heavily in the dirt as he raced to the doctor. I could’ve called for him, but I didn’t want to slow him.
Then the hoof beats became louder. They grew closer, crunching on the twigs and leaves. This was all wrong. Father needed to help Caroline. He didn’t have time to worry about me.
I tried to yell out, tell him go back and leave me be, but my voice only came out in a croaked whisper. I sounded like a dying toad.
The horse stopped next to me, snorting loudly. The moonlight cast splotches of light through the tree branches, so I could only see bits of the brilliant white horse and the rider. Helena was a dark brown, and Lysander was black. This wasn’t my father’s horse.
The rider dismounted. I saw his legs swing down, but his feet didn’t make a sound when they landed. He walked over to me, still silent when the ground should’ve crunched beneath them, and he crouched down beside me.
His face was hidden in the darkness, but I heard him sniffing the air, inhaling deeply. He touched my arm, covered in drying blood, and then put his hand to his mouth.
“Can you move?” he asked finally, his voice deep with a heavy accent. Something about it made me feel strangely comforted.
“No,” I whispered, barely making a sound at all.
“You’re dying.” It wasn’t a question or filled with pity. He was merely stating a fact. “Do you want to live?”
I was surprised by his question and didn’t know how to answer it. Of course I wanted to live. I had so much that I still wanted to do, so much I hadn’t done yet.
But it didn’t matter whether I wanted to live or not. My body wouldn’t move, and it wasn’t getting hard to breathe. I didn’t have a choice whether I lived or died.
“Do you want to live?” he repeated, this time with more force.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Very good.”
He pulled something out of his pocket, and the moonlight glinted on the blade. He ran it down his arm, slicing it open, and I smelled the blood mixing with the pine and dirt around me. But his blood smelled unlike anything I’d ever encountered. It was sweet and tangy and… delectable.
He put his arm to my mouth, and the hot liquid poured down my throat. It tasted even better than it smelled, so rich and sweet. I swallowed it so quickly I nearly choked. Some part of me knew I should be disgusted about drinking this stranger’s blood, but I couldn’t help myself.
I could feel his heartbeat in his blood, pouring through me. I could feel him. His intelligence and strength filling me, radiating through me. It was like warmth and love, only so much more powerful.
He pulled his arm away much too soon, and I suddenly felt cold and small. The pleasure and contentment of his blood had been ripped away, although a haze of it still lingered around me, making me drowsy.
“Please…” I whispered, begging for more of his blood. My voice had already grown stronger.
“You’ve had enough,” he said.
He reached out, taking me in his arms, and I hung limply. I couldn’t even lift my head. He climbed onto his horse, letting me hang over his lap so I didn’t slide off. I was fighting to stay awake, but once the horse started moving, almost rocking me to sleep, I passed out.
The next time I awoke I was in horrible pain. Worse than anything I had ever felt in my life, worse than I had even imagined pain could be. I lay on a cold dirt floor, writhing in agony and screaming at the top of my lungs.
My insides were moving around. I could feel them squirming inside my belly. I wrapped my arms around my stomach, and I didn’t even care that I could move my arms again. I would gladly take the paralysis and numbness for the torment that overwhelmed me.
When I opened my eyes, the dim light from a nearby candle shown too brightly. It scorched my vision, and I squeezed my lids shut again. I curled up onto my side, trying to hold myself together, but nothing I did eased the pain.
I couldn’t hold it back any longer, and I struggled to get to my knees. I leaned over, vomiting up everything inside me. A long black string of my own intestines came up, covered in something dark that almost resembled blood. It spilled out all over the dirt floor as pain ripped through me.
“Shh,” a man said, the same stranger that had given me his blood before. He knelt down next to me, setting a pail of water on the ground. “Screaming will only making it worse.”
“What have you done to me?” I wept. I wanted to stay on my knees, but I collapsed back on the ground.
“I saved your life.” He reached into the pail, pulling out a rag soaked in cold water, and he began to wipe my face of sweat, tears, and my own blood.
“You didn’t save me,” I groaned, gripping onto my chest. My heart felt like it was about to pound out through my ribcage. “I am dying.”
“It only feels that way,” he said, his voice deep and comforting as he wiped my brow. “You’re turning. You’ll feel much better soon.”
I knew I should be terrified of this man. He’d fed me his blood and made me feel this horrendous pain. But I couldn’t fear him. I trusted him implicitly, and I even felt a longing for him. Not the way a man longs for a woman, but something more basic and primal. The way I longed for spring after a terrible winter or water after a lengthy drought. I needed him.
“Who are you?” I asked, peering up at him through half closed eyes.
“My name is Ezra.” His dark brown eyes rested on mine. “Go back to sleep. This will all be over soon.”
I tried to sleep, but I never seemed truly asleep or fully awake. I existed in an awful nightmare place between the two. The pain only intensified, and I begged for death. My dreams were filled with insects and snakes eating my flesh, and even that was a reprieve from how I actually felt.
I’m not sure how long it lasted. It might have been days or even weeks. It felt like eternity when it was happening.
Then I opened my eyes, and I realized I wasn’t in pain anymore. I didn’t feel like anything. I’d been asleep, my cheek rested against the cold floor, and when I awoke, I’d never felt better. Even the dirt against my skin felt amazing.
I sat up, looking around the darkness. I appeared to be in a cellar, a small room dug in the ground. The walls were packed dirt lined with shelves, and an old staircase led out of it. The doors at the top were shut, leaving me trapped in total blackness, but I could see clearly.
A thirst grew inside me, and it was unlike any thirst I’d ever felt before. It was like a hunger, only deeper. Like it came from the very heart of me, and every part of my body needed to feed.
“Hello? Ezra?” I called out for him.
I moved towards the stairs, and I tripped over my own feet. I’d meant to take only one step, but it happened with a strange ease.
“Ezra?” I repeated and got to my feet again. Somehow, I knew he was nearby. I sensed it, but even that small distance felt too great. “Ezra!”
The doors at the top of the stairs opened. Before I saw him, I could smell him – the same tangy smell I remembered from drinking his blood, only stronger and mixed with something heady, like sandalwood.
I heard a gently thudding, and I realized with some dismay that was his heartbeat. I could hear it, and stranger still, the sound of it made my mouth water.
I stepped back as he came down the stairs, but not because I was frightened of him. I was frightened of myself, of what I might do to him, and I could never live with myself if I hurt him.
“What’s happening to me?” I asked with a tremor in my voice. I reached out, touching the wall to steady myself. “What am I becoming?”
“It’s already happened,” Ezra said. “You’ve already became what you are.”
“And what is that?”
“A vampyre.”
“What?” I gasped. It seemed unreal, but I believed him as soon as he said it. I trusted him far more than I trusted myself. “I’m a demon?”
“No, nothing like that,” he said with a small smile. “We’ll discuss it more later. But now, I see the thirst is getting to you. You must feed before it grows too strong.”
