Several seconds passed, counted out by the thump in my chest.
“Mike?” I slowly pushed up on my hands and turned my head to the dark space he’d been standing before. He was gone.
“Oh no.” A small cry of panic quivered in the back of my throat. I reached forward, my hands trembling so viciously my elbows shook, and felt for a wall or the bars—anything. But all I found was cold dirt.
The panic rose another octave. I shuffled back further into the cell, tucking my knees to my chest, seeing that dead woman in my thoughts as my eyes scanned the darkness.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, my gut expanding then shrinking quickly back in when I saw a silhouette in the corridor. It stood there, three feet high, immobile as death—looking right at me.
A bubble of dread burst open in the middle of my chest.
“What do you want?” I asked in a small voice.
The thing stepped forward, its slow steps clipped, a raspy, grating sound coming from its throat.
I jumped to my feet and grabbed the edge of the iron door, swinging it closed. The twang of metal echoed down the tunnel, and a small hand shot in through the bars, the horrid creature spitting and growling at me like it was some kind of rabid beast. It pressed its cheeks against the cage, the skin on its face pulling its eyes into tiny slits, showing bared, bloodied teeth and a long tongue, licking the iron.
I took a few slow steps backward, finding the wall with flat palms. But as I stopped, the child pulled back, turning its head slowly to look across from me. Then it disappeared.
I had no idea where Mike was, if he’d made it to the end of the tunnel before they got him, or if he was right outside that door being torn to pieces.
Thing is, I hadn’t had any intention of opening that damn door when I put the key in. I was just trying to make a point, and the worst part was, I couldn’t even remember what point I was trying to make in the first place. I wasn’t even sure it mattered.
Wiping my face, I ran forward and grabbed the bars, giving them a shake. But the door was stuck fast, trapping me in this cage with partially decomposed bodies, the scent enough to make me want to stick my fingers down my throat just to be sure I hadn’t swallowed any vestiges of rotten flesh. And somewhere under my fear of what was real, what was right outside this door, dangerous enough to rip me apart, I also wondered if the troubled ghosts of those who’d been killed so violently here haunted these cells.
But another thought occurred to me then: even if I did get this door open, how was I to know if the damned weren’t just waiting for me, hoping I’d be smart enough to escape so they could chase me, warm my blood with fear, then tear off my clothes too, and drink my blood. And maybe I wouldn’t die from that; maybe I could be regenerated, but I wasn’t too excited about being ripped apart.
Weighing options up in my thoughts, I paid no mind to the sound of a soft breeze until it started to take shape into what I thought were words. I stopped thinking, my whole body going rigid as I listened. But the noise stopped too.
Maybe it was just the wind. I had no way of knowing which sounds were normal down here, and which weren’t. It made me think more about the Damned—how frightening it must be for new children to come here, be thrown away, out of sight, out of mind, never to be seen or heard of again.
I stopped thinking as my ears pricked, the sound of the whisper spreading through the darkness. I tried to focus on it, make out words, but it stopped again.
After a few seconds of silence, I narrowed my eyes, seeing what I thought was an outline of a rock on the floor. There hadn’t been any rocks out there in corridor before. I wondered what that was, and as I looked closer, the object sharpened into a boot. A big black boot. Mike’s boot.
The sound of my shock echoed around me in a breathy gasp. I covered my mouth, trying not to squeal, but the air came back into my throat in a quivering high-pitched whimper. “Mike?” I reached through the bars, my pale white arm stretching as far as it would go, yet not far enough.
“Mike?” I said again, yanking my arm back and checking the space outside the bars for a small hand or set of teeth that might grab me.
All was still. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. But I could feel things around me—feel eyes on me, prickling the hairs on the back of my neck. It didn’t matter, though. Even if the Damned grabbed my hand and ripped my arm off as soon as I reached for Mike again, I still had to try—to see if I could wake him. Right now, with them out there and me in here, Mike was kind of my only hope.
After another few breaths, each one building confidence, I reached out slowly through the bars again, my shoulder pressing past the limits, my chin going with it, making my fingers longer. I held my breath, biting my teeth together, and finally touched the tip of his boot, celebrating a quiet moment of victory before getting up on my knees a little more. I sent my hand back out into enemy territory, the top of my arm sore and burning from the force of the metal, and this time my nails caught the sole of his boot. I tugged a little, but my fingers slipped, falling to the ground as the shoe disappeared, leaving a trail behind in the dirt where something dragged Mike’s body deeper into the darkness.
I jerked back, tucking into a ball as I landed against the wall, squeaking to myself. They were out there; the Damned were out in the world, and they had Mike. I couldn’t see him or hear him breathing. I tried to listen for the sound of vampires feeding, but it was like they’d just disappeared, locked me in and thrown away the key.
Wait, key! That’s it. The key. Maybe it was still in the lock.
After a little feel around in the dirt to make sure it wasn’t there, I got up and headed for the door. It had to be there. But my swift movement woke something that had clearly been sleeping—something still in the cage with me. It groaned, becoming a solid figure as it crept out of the shadows, moving by its hands like a crawling dog dragging its legs loosely behind it.
I sat very still, covering my mouth to block the scent of fresh vampire blood and urine coming off its body like heat. Whatever it was hadn’t seen me yet, but it would smell me soon enough.
My thoughts left my mouth in a whispering curse, and the thing turned its head, looking right at me. Its dark eyes fixed on mine, growing wider inside its head as it hissed, shifting direction quickly and snaking toward me.
“Shit!” I jumped for the bars and climbed, hooking my foot in a hold on the second rung. But it slipped, sending my body into a spin, my toes nearly touching the ground again. I quickly glanced back at the thing, but it was gone, leaving only a trail where it’d dragged its limp little body through the dirt, toward me—its next meal. My eyes darted across the floor, the world freezing around me when I spotted it less than an arms-length away.
“No!” I squealed, pulling myself up higher, clutching the bars in a bone-white grip. “Mike! Get up. Please, Mike!” I grabbed the top of the cage, angling my head away from the stone roof, my shoulders hunched against it. When I looked back down, a small hand shot up at me, just missing my foot as I jerked away. The child growled in the back of its throat, the sound coming out through teeth that were caged in what looked like an eager grin.
“Mike! Please!” I screamed over at him, aiming my voice down, as if mere volume could wake the dead. But my breath stopped short of my lips when several heads lifted from the aura of his body, smearing blood across their mouths. And under the dead silence, as each eye turned to find me, every fear I ever had—every creature under the bed, every man in my closet—became apparent in that one breath.
If I stayed here, my fingers wrapped around the bars, toes edged out into their side of the tunnel, they’d grab me. But if I dropped back down into the cage, the demon at my feet would own me—rip me apart.
My limbs went tight with tension. I’d never been good at decision-making. But they were closing in, slowly creeping toward the cage, while the demon under me fastened its fingers around the bars and pulled upward, its legs dangling behind it like dead meat.
“Get off!”
I thrust my foot into its head, feeling its hair under my bare toes.
It went down, its tiny hand shooting up and catching my ankle.
“Please. No.”
“Get back in your cage!” A thunderous voice broke through the darkness, and like a dragon scorching the night sky, hunting for its young, the children shrieked, their entourage breaking apart and forcing the cage door open beside me.
I fell to the floor with a thud so hard my teeth knocked together inside my mouth, and the child’s hand locked around my foot. There was nothing to grab—no time to roll over and crawl away; it pulled me closer as the chaos of bodies moved past us and opened its mouth, its tongue rolling out over my toes.
But my foot came loose suddenly, sending me, with all my fight, tumbling back on my elbows—the keeper’s stick coming down and spearing the demon’s shoulder. It screeched, scrambling around to find ground with its hands.
I couldn’t watch. I didn’t want to see this again.
“You foolish little girl.” The keeper grabbed my wrist and dragged me across the dirt, hooking his toes around the cage door to close it as he shoved me into the bloody heap that was my best friend.
“Mike?” I whimpered, rising up on my hands to touch his face. “Mike. Please be okay.”
But he wasn’t okay. His chest, his neck, his whole shirt was drenched in the sticky, thick paste of redness they’d drained from his veins. I shook his shoulders, slapping his cheek, listening for breath.
“Do something!” I yelled at the keeper.
“Nuttin’ to be done now, missy. You got what you came here for.”
“And what’s that?” I spun around to look at him, spite littering my upturned lip.
“A lesson.” He turned away.
I was about to find the nearest rock and ditch it at his head, but Mike grumbled, his hand moving to grasp his neck.
“Mike?” I sat back on my heels, giving him space.
“Argh. You”—he groaned, rolling up—“never. Listen.”
“I’m so sorry, Mike. Are you okay?”
“Is that a joke?” he said, thumbing a massive gash on his elbow. “I’ve just attended a three-course meal, Ara, and I was the bloody main.”
“I’m so, so sorry.”
I was about to say I should’ve listened to you, but Mike cut in with “No, you’re not” and stumbled to his feet, leaving me on the ground to look up at him. “You’re bloody lucky those Damned were just fed, or I’d be in the regeneration chamber right now.” He winced, wiping his jaw. “That really freakin’ hurts.”
“So?” The keeper looked down at me, leaning on his metal stick. “Learned any valuable lessons today, Your Royal Pain in the Ass?”
“Hey!” I scoffed. “You can’t call me that.”
“I’ll allow it this time,” Mike said, shaking his obviously very sore arm. “After all, he was right about you.”
“Right?”
“Yes, right—that you’d come back down here and let those Damned out,” Mike said.
“Why do you think I left the keys on the hook?” The caretaker pointed to the wall.
“You set me up?”
“Baby, I’m sorry, but you always have to learn the hard way.”
“You mean…?” I clambered to my feet, using the wall to steady myself. “You knew they’d do that?”
“Of course, Ara. Did you think I was stupid?” Mike shook his head and clapped the keeper on the shoulder, like they were best buds. “We had you figured before you even came down here today. The doors were barricaded at the other end so the Damned wouldn’t get out.”
“And, what, you were just gonna let them rip me apart?” I screeched, heart still in my throat.
He shrugged, half laughing and half folding over in agony, resting his hands to his knees. “If that’s what it takes.”
“Argh!”
“What? You’d heal,” he said simply.
“Unless they ate my heart or took off my head!”
He stood up, wiping a hand across his nose. “I was watching for that.”
“What, you mean you were conscious?”
“Yep. Ate onion this morning just to make my blood less appealing.” He rubbed the gaping wound on his neck. “Had extra blood too, so I’d heal faster.”
“You asshole.”
“You’ll thank me one day,” he said smugly and picked up a lantern. “You needed to see that people generally do things for a reason, Ara. Just because you don’t agree, doesn’t make it wrong.”
Mute with bewilderment and disappointment, I looked back at the children. “I really thought they were—”
“I know what you thought.” Mike wrapped a heavy arm over my shoulders. He smelled of blood mixed with dirt and sweat and, now I thought about it—onion. “You thought exactly what the last person who talked to them thought too, and now she’s dead.”
“I thought you were making that up to scare me.”
“Why would I do that, Ara? Honestly.” He shook his head again, his new favorite move when it came to me. “She was all too real, baby.”
I looked at the bloodied mess of Mike’s face and felt absolutely no pity for him. “Well, you deserve every scratch you got.” And with that, I folded my arms and stormed past him. “Jerk!”
“It was worth it,” he called after me.
“Why?” I stopped, livid with rage. “So you and your pal there had another chance to beat those children?”
Mike grabbed my arm, appearing beside me at vamp speed. “No, Ara—it was the only way to teach you a lesson. Maybe now you might start to realize that, sometimes, what your heart tells you and what’s right are two different things.”
“My heart tells me they wouldn’t have hurt me if you weren’t here.” I poked his chest. “It’s you and that… that thing they’re afraid of.” I pointed at the keeper. I meant the stick, but calling him a thing served my point too.
Mike groaned, rolling his head back. “There’s just no getting through to you, is there?”
“Not when it comes to what I believe is right and wrong, Mike.”
“Ara, you’ve been so bloody sheltered your whole life, you wouldn’t know the complexities of right and wrong if they came up and ripped your hair out.”
“There are no complexities, Michael! Black and white. That’s it. And the black of it is, those Damned are children.” I pointed a straight arm at their cage. “And the white of it is, I’m going to help them.”
“And what are you gonna do?” He leaned forward, towering over me. “Let them loose? Give them a bedroom and a dolly to play with?”
“I don’t know. But one way or another, I will find a way to make their lives better. I know what they’re capable of now, but that changes nothing.”
“Ara, they’re like the Children of the Corn, baby. They haven’t been changed by compassion for humans. They see killing in black and white, whether you wanna believe that or not.”
“That may be so, but desperation and loneliness will turn even the sweetest kitten into a savage beast.” I started walking again but stopped and looked down at the little boy, now sitting by the bars again. “We have no right to create monsters and then punish them for monstrous behavior, Mike. We start making plans for a new home for them today!”
5
Petey sat by my feet, well, on my foot, while I leaned on the balcony, elbows on the railing, trying to spot the lighthouse through the orange glow of sunset. Below my balcony, the summer smell of the forest mixed with the briny salt of sea spray on the breeze, making me thirsty.
“Where do you think he is, Petey?” I asked, scratching him on the head. “If he doesn’t call soon, I think I’m just gonna jump over this balcony and go see him. He promised. He said ‘every day. I will call you every day. Six, no, nine times a day’. What happened to that?”
Petey whined, licking his chops.
“Ara?” Mike’s voice made me cringe, because I knew why he was here. “Why aren’t you at dinner?”
I looked down at Petey. “Told ya we’d get in trouble.”
“You’re blaming the dog?”
“It was his idea,” I said, and Petey groaned, moving to sit by Mike’s feet.
“Right. Looks that way,” Mike said, a little smug.
“Okay. Fine. I just… I’m too depressed to go down there and pretend I want to listen to everyone argue.”
“Too bad,” he scoffed. “A part of our tradition is to dine in community each night. And you’re the princess—you don’t get to hide in your room and throw a tantrum because the world isn’t going your way.”
“Mike? I just got attacked by a gang of bloodthirsty kindergarteners and I haven’t heard from the man who’s supposed to love me, for nearly a week, because he doesn’t want to speak to me.”
“Doesn’t want to, huh?”
I nodded.
“Look”—he scratched just beside his eye—“I’ll talk to him for you, okay? But I know he’s just feelin’ it pretty deep—this whole being apart thing. His way of dealing with that is to distance himself.”
“How would that help?”
“Ar, you know how it is: like when you talk to a friend on the phone that you haven’t seen in ages. It always hurts more right after you hang up.” He tugged softly on a strand of my hair. “He still loves ya, baby.”
“Well, until he tells me that in his own words, I think I have a right to feel a bit sad.”
“Yes, you do, but you don’t get to sit here and wallow in it. You have a responsibly to your people, and a part of that is maintaining rituals, even if you don’t feel like it. Now suck it up and get downstairs.”
I watched my door swing closed behind him, lip quivering. “I just can’t go down there, Petey. I’ll cry. I know it. If I have to sit through another stupid argument between Vampires and Lilithians, I think I’ll just burst into tears.” I covered my face. “I’ve had enough. I’m not going.”
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