“You may not be aware, ma douce, but not all vampyre have a kindred, some will live out their existence without such beauty in their lives. I have waited five hundred years for you.”

“His lips met mine again, this time in a slow, soft caress, conveying everything he had just said in those beautiful words that had reached my very soul. I could have drowned in that kiss. I could have lived there for eternity. It filled me up with everything I needed to survive. He gave me life through his lips and I treasured it.”

“I watched as he comprehended what it was that he saw on my face, in my eyes. And I watched as a part of him shut down, locked away from me forever. And I hid the fact that my heart was breaking even as I lied to him, even as I broke his. And I swore I would never let him know otherwise, or I would truly be lost and the war would be over.”

“I dreamed I saw you dead in a place by the water. A ravaged place. All flat and empty and wide open. And you were covered in some kind of binding. Like a mummy. Something white and reflective, from head to toe. And the light shone on you. Oh, how it shone on you! It glanced off you, and it was like a pure, bright silver. The wind was singing. It sang: you have suffered enough. You have suffered enough. Then death came and he kissed you. Lightly. Gently. Upon the lips. There is nothing beyond, he whispered, only me, only me. There is nothing beyond. Only me.”

“Sebastian stretched. Clara stared. She could not help it. He was still in his breeches and shirt and she was riveted by the deliciously tight fit of the buckskins over his thighs."You could avert your eyes," Sebastian said mildly. "I could," Clara agreed, "but I am not going to."He smiled. "Hussy.""I know. But I have waited a long time--”

“You think it's all rather too "New Age" to be taken seriously, eh?''Not at all.''But it's an ancient discipline...''New Age disciplines invariably are,' Beede said, disparagingly, 'but in the modern world they lack context - we just pick them up and then toss them back down again, we consume them. They have no moral claim on us. No moral value. And without that they're rendered meaningless, fatuous, even.”

“You thought I didn’t notice the way you two looked at each other? I may be old but I’m not blind. I remember thatfeeling. The spark, the electricity... ”I had to interject before I got the unabridged version of Anjali Does Mumbai.”