“Th-Than?” My heart had stopped, my mind spinning with a million different questions, and yet, the most stupid one managed to escape my mouth first. “Is-is it really you?”
His shoulders relaxed. “Yup, last time I checked.”
I lowered my sword, leaving it to hang at my side.
“What-what are y’doing here?” I moved the light over his form. “Why t’hell are you half undressed?”
His frame was athletic, arms made up of slender muscles, a subtle six-pack. All in all, an indication of a healthy guy who looked after himself to an extent. But right now, he looked like shite. He looked drained, as if he hadn’t slept in a year, his gaze too dark and sad, not how I remembered him. His steel-blue eyes had always shone with such mischief, so very fitting for him as he had been a typical lad, always up to no good. Always joking and laughing.
I’d seen photos of him over the years on social media, but right now, he looked like a ghost of himself. His brown, cropped hair was tatty and flat, smudges of dirt marking his temples, his neck—heck, everywhere that skin was visible, which was pretty much everywhere since all he wore was filthy, ripped jeans. No shoes, no top; he had to be freezing.
“What t’hell happened t’you?”
Nathan moved his arms. That metal scrape sounded, and that’s when I noticed the thick cuffs around his wrists, the chain dangling from them. This had to be a lucid dream or the start of some weird nightmare. I was tired and a little amped up on caffeine, clearly worried about Than more than I was letting myself believe because somehow, he was standing right in front of me looking like death in irons.
So surreal that it just couldn’t be real.
Lifting my gaze from the chains, I looked back at his sickly face. “Why are you in— I don’t understand. Are those actual shackles?”
“Oh, you mean my new accessories. Well, more like extremely old.” He lifted them. “Yeah, the salesman wouldn’t take no for an answer.” A dry laugh escaped him. “I-I was actually hoping you might be able t’help me with these?”
I shook my head, my eyebrows surely colliding at the top of my nose from the frown. Even my temples had started to throb. “Wait, I don’t understand. How are you here right now? Your mother said you were missing.”
He took a step forward, his eyes widening. “You’ve spoken t’my mamai?”
“Aye.”
“Is she okay?”
I blinked. “She’s worried sick about you, naturally. She said she hasn’t heard from you in six weeks, that you and a friend were backpacking and—”
“Six weeks?” He slumped forward, his face a picture of shock. I moved the light to follow him as he wandered over to the outer wall of the friar’s house. His shoulder hit the stone, his wide-eyed focus lost on the ground below. “Six. Weeks.”
Unease set in my stomach along with fear and relief, a jumble of emotions that even made my heart feel woozy. “Than, what happened t’you?”
“I, erm—” He lifted his head and looked toward me ... no, not toward me, past me, and he shook his head.
The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. My grip on the hilt of my sword tightened as I cautiously turned, half-worried I was going to find another half-naked person standing behind me, but as I moved my phone torch around the space, I could see nothing, just gravestones.
When I moved the light back to him, he was sat on the grass, his head pressed against the wall, staring off into space.
“Than?” I took a step toward him.
“Truth is I-I do actually need your help, Elle.”
“You need my help?”
“I had no one else I could turn to.” He looked past me again, giving empty space a pointed look. His brow furrowed, and he shook his head once more. “No, scratch that, you’re the only person I could come to like—” he flicked his hands up and down his chest. “—like this.”
“And how exactly did you get like this? A casual hook-up gone wrong? Or perhaps you joined a travelling renaissance fair?”
“What? No.” His gaze was firmly fixed on me. “I-I was attacked, Elle. Me and my friend Freddie, we were attacked in London. I-I woke up in this place, in this dark room and, well, we were—” His jaw was trembling; he couldn’t get the words out fast enough or without tripping over his own tongue. “—we were fucking kidnapped, fucking experimented on, and now, Freddie’s dead—”
“What?”
His eyes grew wide. His words held too much weight, too much clarity, as if he was not only trying to convince me but himself.
“Freddie’s dead. He’s really dead, like dead-dead.” His face fell into his hands, his words muffled. “Shit. Shit, fuck, shit. I’ve spent the last six weeks locked in a cell in some fucking facility in the middle of a goddamn forest—”
His words became a jumble of curses and broken information beyond comprehensible. My head hurt, my eyes riveted on this mess of a man crumbled on the ground in front of me. This wreck of a man was Nathan. He was safe—well, at least he was now, but he had been locked up for six weeks? What? Why? His friend was dead due to experiments?
I suddenly felt like the scrap of caffeine-fuelled energy that had been circulating in my body the last half an hour had been absorbed. My legs felt like dead weight as exhaustion hit me right in the face. My temples were hurting, and I felt sick as all the built-up worry and frustration I’d had for the last couple weeks dropped to the pit of my stomach.
None of this made any sense. Nathan was no longer missing, but who would have kidnapped him? Why would they lock him up? Did he have enemies? Was he mixed up in something bad, drugs, or maybe he owed someone money? Why hadn’t he gone straight to the police? Why had he come here? Why to me? Why—
My thoughts ground to a halted as his hands dropped to his lap.
“That’s why Ma hasn’t heard from me, why no one has.” Black blood streaked his pale skin, seeping from the corners of his dark eyes.
The blood in my own veins froze. I couldn’t move. I could hardly breathe. “You’re ... you’re crying—”
“Grown men can cry under times of stress, Elle. It’s not that unusual.”
I wasn’t sure if I was about to throw-up or pass out. I felt like I had a typhoon in my stomach, and my head had grown light. Maybe it was due to the early hour. Maybe it was the five-hour nap I’d had—short bouts of sleep often made people feel funny, didn’t they? And I really was freaking exhausted right now. Maybe it was the unexpected shock of seeing an old friend for the first time in a decade, or more how he had approached me after apparently being missing—naked, ill, and rambling like a mad man.
God, if only it could have been any of those reasons, but it wasn’t, and without having to think about it, I’d already tightened the grip on the hilt in my grasp. Despite the tension seizing my muscles, I had already dropped down to one knee, my left arm held high so that the white light of my camera coated his upper body and face.
“Blood.” The words were acid on my tongue, the tip of my sword a mere two inches from the Vampire’s jugular. “You. Are. Crying. Blood.”
***
~ Nathan ~
I don’t know why I ended up at the Monastery. I knew the sun would be rising soon and that I needed to find somewhere safe to hold up for the day, but the place seemed to call to me. Or perhaps it was the memories, the ones I had been playing repeatedly in my mind; memories of when I was younger and innocent, and Vampires were just scary, sexy creatures in films. Whatever the reason was for my feet to lead me there, I certainly hadn’t been expecting to find a very grown-up Elle lurking in the dark.
Vampire sight was a funny ole thing because I could see her quite clearly. She was made of shadows, but I could make out the angles of her face, the line of her lips, her eyes even though I couldn’t see the colour. Not that I needed to. I knew they were moss-green. Her hair was tied up at the back, and she wore a thick scarf round her neck. She smelled of cigarette smoke and lager—not scents I would associate with her, but I didn’t know her
anymore. A point she was making very clear with her distance.
I couldn’t say I knew exactly how she would react to seeing me. I had hoped she’d have been happy in a surprised way, even if it was hidden by anger. A bit of anger was expected, but instead, she was cautious.
“You appeared out of nowhere, it’s dark, and you’re both in a graveyard. Anyone in her shoes would be cautious,” young Elle said in the distance where she leant against a nearby gravestone, arms crossed.
I don’t know why I expected her to be bothered about seeing me, why I’d expected a bigger reaction than the one I was currently getting.
Maybe because we were friends ... because she’s all I’ve thought about for weeks? My thoughts and words had run away with me the moment she’d mentioned my mother, told me I had been missing for six weeks.
Despite feeling like I could run for miles or that I could easily lift a truck, I found myself needing physical support. My feet had stumbled over to the nearby wall, shoulder hitting the rough, cold stone as another dose of harsh reality made it through my skull.
I’ve been like this for six fucking weeks?
My mother knew something was wrong. She was probably worried sick ...
“And there’s nothing y’can do about it.”
I slid to the floor, my butt hitting the damp grass. My sight blurred slightly, a trail of moisture staining my cheeks. Six fucking weeks.
“Get over it, you big cry baby.” Young Elle snorted.
I dropped my hands to my lap and scowled at her. “Grown men can cry under times of stress, Elle. It’s not that unusual.”
My eyes smarted as the harsh white light of real Elle’s mobile torch moved closer to me. My gaze darted to her face as she crouched down in front of me. With the light held at an angle, her face was illuminated, and despite the bags that sat under those large eyes ... she looked amazing. Her creamy pale skin was flushed due to the cool air, a scattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her jaw was tense, her cute button nose flared.
“You’re crying blood,” she bit out.
“Oh, shit, you really are.” Young Elle appeared beside her, wide-eyed.
My brow furrowed as I glanced between them. I reached up to my cheeks which already felt moist, my tears no doubt already dry due to the cool morning air. True enough as I looked down at my fingertips and palms, they were smeared with blood, though it wasn’t a watery red as anyone would expect blood to be. No, the liquid was thick and black, tar-like.
Something glinted in my eye. “What the fuck?”
I feebly pushed back, into the wall, trying to get away from the knife which was currently pointed at my throat. No, not a knife.
“Is that a sword?” I glanced down the long strip of sharp metal, stopping when my eyes met hers. “Where the hell did you get a sword from?”
“It’s what I use to kill your kind.” The words had been ground out, her expression stone-cold as she stared at me.
“My kind?” A nervous laugh fluttered from my throat. “Elle, it’s me. It’s still me.”
“I don’t know you. I have no idea what kind of person you are anymore.” She shook her head. “Scrap that. You’re not a person anymore.”
Something inside me sank at the truth or her words. It had been one thing to have a Vampire tell you that you weren’t human; it had been another for my own fucked up mind to keep reminding me, but to hear someone else clarify it ... Having Elle look at me as if I were a stranger, not even a stranger, just as if I was nothing ... It actually hurt.
“No, you’re right. I’m not a person anymore; they’ve taken that from me.” I dropped my hands to my lap. “I know I had no right to come t’you. I’ve been a lousy friend—”
“A shite friend,” she interjected.
“I’ve been the worst, and believe me, I understand your reluctance t’help me for that reason alone, but I need your help.”
“I don’t help Vampires. I kill them.”
“Even ones that didn’t ask to be Vampires in the first place?”
Her jaw flexed, a crinkle forming at the bridge of her nose. “Yes.”
“You’re jokin’ right?”
Her grip tightened on the hilt of her sword. “I never joke about Vampires.”
I pressed a little further into the wall, ignoring the sharp pricks of the rough, uneven stones on my back. “See, I always thought y’did and then I became one ... Could we just talk without you holding that sword in my face?”
“No.”
“Look, up until six weeks ago, Vampires were just folklore t’me, and then I was attacked, Elle. They kept me tied up.” I lifted my bound hands up to the side of my face, being careful to not knock her sword. Her gaze moved to the shackles and then back to my face. “They force-fed me, experimented on me. They had a file on me. I’ve left it by the wall round the corner. I don’t understand most of it, but if you read it, you can see what they’ve done.”
“Do you really think I’m that stupid?”
“No, you’re smart, and you’re the only person who will understand what all the jargon in that file means.”
“I turn my back on you and you attack me or run off.”
“I’d never attack you, Elle. As for running off, I’ve spent days trying t’get here, t’you. I’ve got nowhere t’go, Elle. You’re the only one I can trust.” My shoulders sagged. “They injected me with something, Elle, and they-they fucking castrated me. Please—”
“Vampires don’t do shite like that.”
“They do. I swear t’God they do. Just look at the file. Please, you’re the only one I know who knows about this stuff, and the only reason I haven’t thrown myself off a cliff is because I spent every second thinking about you.”
She blinked. Uncertainty swirled in her eyes. A strange look crossed her features.
“TMI, Than.” Teen Elle coughed.
“I mean, knowing that you would believe what had happened to me—”
“You thought wrong.” Her fingers flexed on the hilt of the sword. “The only thing I believe is what I see with my own eyes. You’re a Vampire, and I kill Vampires.”
“Jesus Christ, Elle, it’s me. I didn’t ask for this, and I have no fucking idea why they chose me.” My eyes felt clogged once more, the hint of something slithering down my cheeks. “I don’t know what t’do, Elle. Please, for old times’ sake, if not for our childhood for my Mamai. I can never see her again, Elle. Not like this. Please just read the file and tell me what it means, and I will go and leave you in peace. I just want t’know what is going on. Why all of this has happened.” My voice cracked. “What I’m supposed t’do. Please?”
Silence stretched out before me. Our eyes locked, hers not giving anything away. Suddenly, she straightened, standing with the sword still in my face. “Crawl and get the folder.”
She took a couple steps back, the light of her torch following my every movement as I twisted on to my knees and crawled through the grass alongside the crumbled building until I got to the corner where I had stopped earlier. Reaching round, I felt for the manila folder, taking hold of it. I fell back on my knees and held it out to her.
“Open it.”
I did as she asked.
Squatting back down, sword now pointed at my midsection, she scanned the first page of my file, her eyes widening slightly when they landed on the autopsy photo. “This has t’be a-a hoax.”
“It isn’t a hoax.”
“None of this makes sense. This isn’t how Vampires are created.” She looked between me and the folder, her brow furrowed. “Is this a joke, Than? Are you playing a game?”
“What?”
Her eyes seemed to hold a million questions. “People have been worried about you and—”
I shot up, quicker than intended. She fell back, butt hitting the grass, sword slipping from her grasp. I grabbed her wrist.
“This isn’t a fucking joke.” I pulled at her arm, flattening her hand against my chest. “I have no fucking heartbeat.”
The tension faded from her arm. She relaxed her fingers and pressed her palm firmly against my chest. Her eyes met mine, a hint of moisture hiding in their corners.
“This is not a fucking hoax, Elle,” I said slowly. “They killed me.” I could feel the tears seeping from my eyes, and the mixture of horror and pity that claimed her features only made it worse. “And turned me in to this.”
A moment passed. Her big, beautiful green eyes searched my face over and over as if she were searching for some vital clue.
“Let me go.” The words were practically whispered when she finally replied.
I let go of her wrist. She pushed herself to her feet before leaning down and collecting her sword from the ground. The tip appeared in my face once more. “Y’try and bite me and I will kill you, old friends or not. Are we clear on that?”
Relief crashed down on me as I stared at her. “Crystal.”
She glanced at her mobile. “The sun is due up in half an hour. I need t’get you somewhere safe.”
I just wanted to sink at her feet and cry some more.
“Jesus, you need t’man up.”
I slid a scowl to teen Elle who was draped over a nearby headstone. “Thank you, Elle. Thank you—”
Real Elle held up her hand and cut me off. She nodded at the file on the ground. “Bring that and explain as we go. Start from the night you were attacked, and don’t spare any details.”
Chapter Four
~ Danielle ~
9.08am
I dropped the file on the bed beside me. My head also wanted to drop that way into my hands … I had brought a Vampire home with me, and not to torture. I’d clearly lost the fucking plot.
No not a Vampire. Nathan.
He’s still a Vampire. You still brought a Vampire home with you.
Fuck.
I’d brought Nathan home. Well, he was still resting in the storage space under the backseats of my Range Rover parked on the drive, and he would be staying there until sundown. There was enough physical proof that he was a Leech—crying blood, ice-cold to touch, and the no-longer-having-a-heartbeat was a no-brainer. But the file he had given me, his file, backed up what I could see with my own two eyes, backed up everything he had told me.
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