I bit my lower lip. “And what if someone comes in and sees me anyway?”
Lucius smiled. “I’ll deal with that if it happens. For now, we need to start the training. We’ll do just a couple of lessons today and then get you home, because I’m not convinced that Richard actually trusts me to keep you safe and the last thing I need is him laying siege to Castle Wings all by himself just because he’s worried about you.”
I nodded, but then suddenly realized that my mouth was dry. “Um, Lucius? Can I get something to drink first? I’m really thirsty and haven’t had anything to drink since yesterday.”
Lucius looked at me in surprise. “You haven’t drunk anything at all?”
“I did have some water, but …” I shrugged. “It didn’t sate my thirst. I need … blood, and I need it as quickly as possible.”
I hated saying that aloud, because admitting that I needed blood felt like condemning myself to eternal damnation, but I wanted to make sure that Lucius understood what I wanted. He probably already did, what with being a vampire himself and all, but I still felt it was important to say that aloud in order to avoid making any confusion.
Lucius, thankfully, did not look at me with judgmental eyes. He just nodded and said, “Yes, how could I forget? Now that you’re a half-vampire, you need blood to sate your thirst. Vampires can drink anything humans can, and even to some extent enjoy it, but blood is what we actually need in order to gain nourishment for our bodies.”
I nodded, but then paused and said, “Dad said you’re a Pure, which means you don’t drink human blood, right? So how do you deal with this craving?”
“I didn’t say that vampires needed human blood in order to survive,” said Lucius. “Human blood is the best, of course, but we can drink blood from any living creature. Here, let me show you what I use.”
Lucius pulled two small bottles out of his pockets and held them out to me. I took one of the bottles and looked down at it, but it was unlabeled, though I could see the red blood through its clear surface.
I looked up at Lucius. “Lucius, what kind of blood is this?”
“Monkey blood,” said Lucius promptly. “It’s not quite the same as human blood, but it works for us Pures, mostly because of how similar humans and monkeys are.”
“Where do you even get monkey blood in the first place?” I said, looking at the glass bottle in my hand again. “Do they sell it on Amazon or something?”
“There are certain vampire merchants who specialize in obtaining and selling all kinds of blood,” said Lucius. “I’ll probably introduce you to my merchant at some point so you can know where to buy your own. For now, drink up. Take off the lid and drink the whole thing. Trust me, you’ll feel a lot better after a swig of blood.”
I looked down at the bottle uncertainly. My vampire half craved it, but my human half—which, thank God, still seemed to be the dominant half—resisted. The idea of drinking blood, even if it wasn’t actually human blood, seemed like exactly the sort of thing the Bible would condemn. Of course, I didn’t know any Bible verses, Old or New Testament, that addressed blood lust, but still, for a moment I almost handed it back to Lucius because I didn’t think I’d be able to drink it.
But then my vampire half took over and I twisted the lid off the bottle and started drinking it. It tasted awful. Bitter, warm, and sticky, it was kind of like drinking melted licorice, except without any sweetness at all. I wanted to gag and spit it out, but my vampiric instincts were still working in overdrive, so I just guzzled the entire bottle, letting the blood enter my mouth and through my body.
Though the taste was awful, I started to feel different as I drank more blood. A fatigue I hadn’t even noticed went away, leaving me feeling fresh and energized. My surroundings suddenly became clearer and even more colorful, as if I was watching things in HD. I became far more aware of the power in my body, a new found strength I hadn’t even realized was there. I felt like I could lift a car over my head and break it in two with my bare hands and then run a mile and half without breaking a sweat.
Finishing off the bottle, I gasped and dropped it accidentally. The glass shattered against the floor, sending pieces of bloody glass scattering against the stone. That would have made me feel sick just looking at it, but I was so absorbed with my new intense sensations that it barely even registered on my radar.
“Are you all right, Tara?” said Lucius with a slightly amused smile on his face. “Did you enjoy the drink?”
I looked at Lucius and could not help but realize that he was also clearer to me, just like everything else. I became even more aware of his muscular body and handsome features, and if I still wasn’t distracted by the awful taste in my mouth, I might have felt tempted to do something I shouldn’t.
As it was, I managed to say, in a slightly tired voice, “It was great. Tastes like crap, but I feel wonderful.”
“I know what you mean about taste,” said Lucius. He grimaced at his own untouched bottle of monkey blood. “You get used to it after a while, but it’s not the same as actual human blood. Still, as you’ve discovered, it makes a good replacement.”
I licked the blood off my lips. I still didn’t enjoy the taste, but the actual act of drinking blood hadn’t been nearly as awful as I thought it was going to be. I still wondered if I was damned or not, but the way I saw it, I was probably already damned anyway, given how I was a half-vampire. I would just have to drink blood for now, even with all of the doubts I had about the morality of it.
“Now, then,” said Lucius, “let me drink my bottle and then we can start your first—”
Lucius was interrupted by a pounding sound coming from the other side of the door. We both looked over at the door on the other side of the room to see that someone was trying to force open the old stone door, though so far they weren’t having any luck.
“Lucius!” came a guttural growl of a voice on the other side in between the intense pounding against it. “Open up! I know you’re in there, because I felt your presence in the Castle as soon as you showed up.”
Alarmed, Lucius looked at me and said, in a whisper, “Uh oh. I think that’s the Chief. He must have come back from his mission early.”
“The Chief?” I repeated in an equally low whisper. “What should I do? Hide?”
“Nowhere to hide in here,” said Lucius, shaking his head. “The Chief would just sense you anyway. You need to go into the Shadow Way.”
Lucius grabbed my wrist and dragged me back into the dark corner. Before I knew what happened, he shoved me into the Shadow Way and said, “Don’t worry! I’ll come back to get you as soon as possible. You just stay there until I convince the Chief to go away.”
I staggered forward, almost tripping over my own feet, and then turned around to ask Lucius how long I would have to wait here before the door slammed shut in front of me, leaving me all alone in the Shadow Way with blood on my hands and lips.
CHAPTER NINE
It took a moment for everything that had just happened to sink in. Once it did, I grabbed the doorknob and started twisting it, saying, “Lucius? Lucius, are you there? Hello? Lucius?”
But no matter how hard I tried, the door just wouldn’t budge. I eventually gave up and stepped backwards, realizing that Lucius had somehow managed to lock the door on the other side. I didn’t even know it was possible to lock a door in the Shadow Way. Then again, given how I hadn’t known about the Shadow Way until just a few minutes ago, there were probably a lot of things I didn’t know about it.
Stepping back from the door, I folded my arms in front of my chest and sighed. How could Lucius just shove me out into the Shadow Way like this all by myself? Granted, I was alone, but I still hated being shoved into such a strange and new environment like this by myself. It reminded me of how Dad used to treat me when I was a kid, like how he would throw me into the deep end of the pool and expect me to learn how to swim back when I was five. This situation wasn’t exactly the same, but I had felt a sense of security around L
ucius, due to his age and experience in being a vampire, but now I was all on my own and I had no way of getting back home or to Lucius without his help.
I told myself to calm down, however. Lucius would never abandon me in the middle of the Shadow Way like this. Clearly, he had just been taken by surprise by the appearance of his Chief, whoever that was, and had probably just shoved me into the Shadow Way without even thinking about it. All I needed to do was just wait a few minutes or however long it would take for Lucius to convince the Chief to go away. As long as no one else came walking down the Shadow Way soon, I figured I should be okay.
But my nerves were shot to hell and back when I heard a couple of soft footsteps behind me. I screamed and whirled around, holding my fists before me in a position I vaguely remembered from my martial arts class from high school, expecting to see another big vampire like that Bloodseeker standing behind me.
Instead, there was a small child of about five or six standing in the adjacent hallway, one hand on the stone wall, another hand touching its chin. The child—who seemed to be a boy—wore thin, dirty rags over his body, but from what I could see of his body, it was stick thin. His skin was pale, almost as pale as a vampire, and his black eyes shone from his skull-like face like bugs.
I recognized the boy as the one I had seen just a few minutes ago, when Lucius and I had been exiting the Shadow Way. I had thought that the child was just a figure of my imagination, but now that I actually got to see the boy, I knew he was as real as me or Lucius.
Lowering my fists, I said, “Sorry for screaming, but I thought I was alone and got surprised when I heard you. What’s your name? And where are your parents? Are you lost?”
The boy said nothing. He just stared at me with the blankest expression I had ever seen on a child. I wondered if this boy had been turned into a vampire recently or something, although his eyes weren’t red and his teeth were not fanged, from what I could tell. Yet there was definitely something off about the boy, something I couldn’t place, as if he shouldn’t exist at all, which was a rather silly thought. After all, just because he was creepy didn’t mean he didn’t deserve to exist.
Still, I wanted the boy to say something, so I said, in the kind voice I usually use when talking to kids in the Sunday school classes I used to teach, “Maybe I should introduce myself first. I’m Tara, Tara Lee. What’s your name?”
The boy just continued to stare at me and I thought he wasn’t going to say anything at all until he said, in a soft whisper, “Timmy.”
“Timmy,” I said, smiling. “Well, Timmy, do you know where your parents are? Do they know where you are?”
Timmy nodded. “Yes. My parents know where I am. Do your parents know where you are?”
I frowned. “What? I’m an adult.”
“I know, but you still have parents, don’t you?” said Timmy. “And do they know where you are?”
I paused, trying to make sense of this situation. Somehow, this little boy who couldn’t be more than six years old had managed to turn the conversation around where he was now asking me where my parents were as if I was a little girl who had gotten separated from her parents in the mall. Even stranger, Timmy seemed to understand the question. He wasn’t just parroting back what I said, like some young kids did. He actually understood what he was asking.
“Well, my Dad knows where I am,” I said. “But my Mom doesn’t, because she died ten years ago. She’s in heaven now, thank God, but I don’t think she’s paying much attention to what I’m doing here in the realm of the living.”
Timmy smiled, which made him look a thousand times creepier than he already did. “Are you so sure you’re in the land of the living, Tara? The Shadow Way has been described as bridging the gap between the living and the dead. Wouldn’t you like to see your mother again?”
“I’ll see her again when I get to heaven,” I said, though even I heard the doubt in my voice. Given my recent transformation into a half-vampire, I couldn’t be sure that I would be going anywhere nice once I died.
“You don’t sound so sure about that,” said Timmy. He held out a hand. “If you come with me, I can show you to the oldest parts of the Shadow Way, the parts that predate even the Origin and the Darkness. These parts will take you to the land of the living … or the land of the dead, where you can meet your loved ones again, no matter how long ago they passed.”
I hesitated. I now knew that Timmy wasn’t a six-year-old boy, that his name might not even be Timmy, but at the same time, I didn’t really care. There was something in his voice—in his tone, his choice of words—which awakened a desire in me I hadn’t felt in a long time: A desire to not only see my mother, but to let her hold me close like when I was a baby and tell me that everything was going to be all right. A desire to hear her read Bible stories to me again whenever I couldn’t sleep or hear her prayers whenever I went to bed at night.
“So?” said Timmy, whose voice was not even remotely human anymore. “What do you think, Tara? Do you believe me? More importantly, do you want to believe me?”
“I …” I hesitated, stumbled over the words, and then said, in a halting voice, “I want to believe you. I do believe you.”
Timmy’s smile widened until I could see his teeth were jagged and blunt, like the teeth of a rotting corpse. “I know you do. Everyone believes me after I talk to them for a little while. Everyone wants to see their loved ones again. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t, now, would you?”
“No, I wouldn’t be,” I said, barely able to hide the desire in my voice. “I would be just a vampire, a soulless, bloodsucking vampire.”
“And you don’t want to be that,” said Timmy in a satisfied voice. “And I don’t want you to be that, either. So take my hand, Tara Lee, daughter of Richard Lee, and I’ll take you to see your mother. Just take my hand and you won’t have to worry about anything else ever again.”
I took one step after another toward Timmy, holding my hand out the entire time. I could barely think. It was like I was in some kind of trance, which I was vaguely aware of, yet I didn’t feel even remotely alarmed about it. Part of me felt like I was doing the right thing, but the thought of seeing Mom again drove all other thoughts from my mind. I was going to see Mom again, no matter what.
I stopped in front of Timmy, who still held out his hand. I reached toward him, my fingers drawing closer to his with each passing second. Timmy’s mouth was twisted in the ugliest grin I had ever seen, but I didn’t care because I wanted to see Mom again.
When my fingers were just a couple of inches away from his, two large, powerful hands clasped my shoulders and shoved me aside. I hit the floor hard and the fog that had clouded my mind immediately evaporated, making me all too aware of the fact that I was now lying on the cold, hard stone floor of the Shadow Way.
“Huh?” I said, shaking my head and looking up. “Who—?”
It was Lucius. He stood between me and Timmy now, an ugly, beast-like scowl marring his handsome features. Timmy had stopped smiling and was instead glaring at Lucius as if he had seen him before. Lucius was growling like a wolf, growling so loudly that even I felt afraid.
“Lucius?” I said. “What are you doing here?”
Lucius didn’t seem to hear me, however. His focus was on Timmy, who, despite being less than half Lucius’s height, nonetheless didn’t show any fear toward him.
“Lucius Red,” said Timmy, who sounded more annoyed than afraid. “I thought I would get a chance at the girl when you left her alone, but I suppose I should have seen this coming. You’ve always been protective of your partners.”
“She’s not my partner,” said Lucius in a voice full of barely disguised hate. He pointed over Timmy’s head. “Get out of here, now, before I decide to rip off that ugly grin of yours and shove it down your throat.”
Timmy’s smile returned when Lucius said that, except it was more amused this time. “Ah, but if you did that, you’d bring down the full wrath of the Strangers upon you and you would nev
er be able to walk the Shadow Way again, at least without having to look over your shoulder the whole time.”
“I know,” said Lucius. “And I don’t care. You’re nothing more than a sneak and a liar. The world won’t hurt if you cease to exist.”
Timmy sighed. “All right. I’ll just find another naive human girl to manipulate. Sadly, there aren’t too many of those here, but perhaps, if I look hard enough, I will get lucky and find one. Maybe I’ll convince an equally naive vampire to bring one here.”
Timmy turned and walked away, but he did shoot me one last glance over his shoulder before he turned a corner and disappeared. I wasn’t sure, but his expression looked like one of pure lust, which looked disturbing on the face of a body that couldn’t be older than six.
CHAPTER TEN
Lucius held a hand toward me. “Here, let me help you up. You look shocked.”
I took Lucius’ hand and he brought me up to my feet without any effort at all. He let go of my hand, even though I really wanted him to keep holding it.
But even without him holding it, I felt a whole lot safer now that I was in his presence. I looked in the direction Timmy had gone and said, “What was that all about? And who is Timmy?”
“I’ll tell you back in the training room,” said Lucius. “It’s not safe to stand around in the Shadow Way for too long, especially talking about the Strangers. I don’t want any of Timmy’s friends to overhear us and attack. We got lucky with Timmy, but not all Strangers are willing to walk away from prey as easily as he is.”
Lucius walked back over to the door to his training room and I followed. We passed through the doorway and Lucius closed it shut behind us, even making sure to lock it. I was grateful that he did. I didn’t think Timmy would follow us into Earth, necessarily, but I liked knowing that there now stood a very sturdy door between us and that creep.
As Lucius locked the door, I looked around his home gym and noticed that we were the only two in here.
The Vampire Sword (Vampire Sorceress Book 1) Page 6