by Robin Thorn
“Oh.” I bristled. “So, what does he say?”
“He did come up with a solution if you’re interested.” I saw the hopefulness in Sam’s gaze, and I felt sick all of a sudden, almost as if my body knew what was coming before my brain did.
Then his words spilt out into the quiet night, “What if I turned you?”
I stared back at him, silently.
He rubbed his knuckles over his mouth, almost as though he’d mistaken my silence for consideration. Like I was sitting there pondering the pros and cons. Oh sure, turn me into a demon so we can live immortally together, forever. I adored Sam, I was obsessed with him, addicted, in love with him, even. But I’d never willingly hand myself over; I would never turn into a demon for him.
I swallowed down a sudden pain in my throat.
“How could you even ask that of me?”
Something in the air changed, and I picked up the energy of a vampire nearby.
“Hold on,” I whispered to Sam. I sprung to my feet.
“Phoebe…” he said my name.
“I’ll be back,” I promised him. Frankly, I was glad to have a distraction; I was glad to have an excuse to walk away. My mind was whirling as I numbly trailed the movement through the cemetery, leaving Sam behind at Maura’s grave. Tears began to burn down my cheeks.
My sights locked on the vampire prowling amongst the headstones. It was a newbie, I could tell from its hollow eyes and loose-limbed gate. I targeted it, closing in. It swung for me, and I threw a punch harder than I ever had before. Without missing a beat, I drew my stake and plunged it into the creature’s chest, harder than ever before, almost as though I was vanquishing everything—mortality, immortally, and the cruel fate that had brought Sam and me together, only to kill us off in the end.
To hell with fate.
As the vamp turned to dust with a piercing scream, I let out a rough breath. Tears spill down my cheeks, uncontrollable, soundless.
“Pheebs?”
I turned quickly. Sam was standing behind me, bathed in moonlight. His dark hair stirred in the midnight breeze. He just looked at me, his expression sober, as though he’d realised what I’d realised.
I ran to him, pressed my lips to his and kissed him as though I would never kiss him again.
I knew at that moment that this would be the last time. My mind was made up.
His arms closed around me. “Please,” he whispered. “Please forget I said anything. We can keep going, just like this. Please don’t leave me, Pheebs.”
But it was too late. I was already gone. For both of our sakes, I had to be.
I arrived back home that night just as dawn was beginning to rise over Briarwood. My whole body ached, my eyes swollen, and face damp from crying. The moment I walked through the front door, I was met by my parents.
My mother hugged me. It was a strange feeling. We weren’t a ‘hugging’ family, so I bristle beneath their embrace. Not wanting to feel love or weakness ever again. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe, as though the life was squashed from my lungs.
I let out a choked sound.
“Sit down,” Mum ordered, guiding me to the living room.
Trembling and fragile, I lowered myself onto the sofa. Dad hovered at a safe distance, while Mum handed me a lavender tea.
“This will calm you,” she said.
I wanted to throw the china teacup at the wall. I wanted it to shatter as I had. Into many tiny, unfixable pieces.
Dad watched from afar, I knew he felt my pain, but he had no words for me. That was okay. I had no words, either.
“Poor girl.” Mum sat down beside me and folded her hand around mine. “I knew tonight would be the night.”
Numbly I processed her words. Sam, I realised instantly. She’d known about Sam all along, right up to the point where we would reach our demise. So my mother was privy to my break up with my secret boyfriend? That alone was another steel blade to the abdomen.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she whispered. “Truly, I am. I hate seeing you so hurt. But you know this is the way it has to be. It is for the best.”
“I know, Mum,” I reply through gritted teeth. “That’s why I did it.”
Dad gave me a pained look. “We’re both so sorry that you’re going through this.”
“It’ll get easier.” Mum squeezed my fingers.
Right. How would she know? She married her childhood sweetheart.
I tried to nod, or speak, or even just smile, but the expression couldn’t form yet.
“Phoebe…” Mum went on. Her tone had shifted, turning businesslike. She was May now, the Guardian. “I know this is hard, but we need you to tell us where the lair is…”
The lair?
“They’re colonising,” she continued. “I’ve foreseen it. We need to stop them before their numbers get too great.”
Suddenly the tick of the grandfather clock seemed deafening loud. Her words sounded jumbled in my ears.
“A new Incubus is forming a colony,” she said. “Their leader goes under the name Leonard. We need to take him down before he recruits more.”
I stared blearily into my lavender tea, watching the sprigs dance on the murky surface. “I can’t,” I murmured. “I don’t know.”
My parents swapped an exasperated look.
“Please, Phoebe,” my mother implored. “This isn’t a game. We need to act fast. Where is the Incubus hideout? Your friend, the boy, he must have told you.”
The words were stinging, rupturing my heart. I was supposed to tell them where Sam lived, so they could go and slay him?
“Mum,” I choked out a sob. “Please. I don’t know where the lair is,” the lie tumbled from my lips, fractured.
“He’s killing, Phoebe. They both are. And they’ll keep doing it until we stop them.”
“Phoebe,” Dad spoke softly. “Please.”
Phoebe, please. The words stung, and I never wanted to hear them again.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
But that was then. That was the past. Now, Stefan was paying the price, hiding out at our house while we all waited for the inevitable.
I wished I had told my parents where the lair was that night.
The warehouse, I should have said. It’s just outside of Briarwood.
I wished I’d told them that back then.
And I wished I had the strength to tell them now.
But in my heart, I hoped to spot Sam there. I didn’t see him, but I knew he was watching. I’d felt it like cold fingers trailing down my neck.
Phoebe was already asleep on the single mattress in her childhood bedroom. It didn’t take her long to fall asleep, although the timing seemed convenient to me like it was preferable to my incessant questioning. What can I say? I had a lot of questions, and she had a lot of answers.
I lay in the spare bed, staring up at the ceiling. I could hear movement in the room above me—May and Michaels’ room—it sounded as if someone were pacing, opening drawers with aged creaks. I lay awake, fighting the hunger pains in my stomach and the wild thoughts tearing through my mind.
Demons. Guardians. Me.
May had explained that Leonard was one of Lilith’s children three offspring. Lilith, her name echoed in my mind. The mother of demons, child of the fallen, and queen of the underworld. All titles that chilled me to the core. It turned out I had met two of the three in a matter of moments today. Leonard, born of lust. Amerie, a vampire created from Lilith’s spilt blood. And the third, an unnamed demon whom the guardians know very little about.
I rolled over and glanced at Phoebe’s peaceful face. Guardian. All this time, I’d never seen past the veil of what she and her family truly were. Protectors.
And then there was me, the infected. The dammed, as Michael had put it. Trapped halfway between life and death.
Collette, Leonard, Amerie, Lilith. These names had meant nothing to me twenty-four hours ago. Now they meant everything.
I watched with intent as the shadows in the room danced. Was it m
e? I wondered. Were the stirring shadows a result of my affliction? The hunger, the rush of blood in my veins, the shadows.
Answers. That’s what I hungered for most. And yet no question I asked seemed to get me to the core of this living nightmare.
May dropped us off at the campus the following morning. It was Friday, and classes were drawing to a close for Christmas break. Since most students had left already; we were only wasting hours watching films in class and finishing up on overdue projects. Already the snow-dusted campus was looking more desolate, fewer cars in the parking lot, fewer people strolling along the walkways.
I grimaced as we passed by the same walkway that had resulted in my run-in with Amerie and Marcel.
Honestly, I wasn’t even sure I could face coming back here. But Phoebe and I had one more Bio Chem class before we finished the year, and somehow the distraction of it felt welcomed. My mind was jumbled, and I didn’t know why I was going to class, pretending like everything was normal. Well, maybe that was just it. That was what I needed right now, for everything to be normal. So I was willing to pretend.
I don’t think Phoebe was in quite the same mindset because she fumbled over a lame excuse about cleaning her dorm room, an excuse to ditch class, or to avoid me, I wasn’t sure anymore.
So, alone, I made my way to the main building. As I ascended the concrete steps, I felt the burning existence within me, a poisonous feeling. Something was inside of me now, something alien.
I arrived at Professor Markell’s lab a little before class was due to start.
When I opened the door, Professor Markell was at the front of the room, peering down into a microscope.
“Oh!” he looked up with a start. “Stefan. You’re early.” His snowy eyebrows shot up in surprise.
I summoned a smile. “Yeah, well, I figured I should be early at least once this semester, right?”
He chuckled pleasantly. “It’s good to see you. I know this end of semester class can be considered a throwaway to a lot of my students.” He slipped on his glasses. “How have you found this as a major? I know you’ve been absent a few times this year.”
I shifted under his gaze. “Yeah, I owe you an apology Professor.”
He waved off my apology. “I’m glad you’ve decided to stick with it. Bio-Chemistry is a fascinating subject, and you show great potential. The last thesis you wrote blew my expectations out of the water.”
I drew in a deep breath. “Can I ask you something?” I glanced over my shoulder into the empty lab. I could perpetually feel eyes on me these days. Paranoid? Most definitely.
“Of course.” He folded his hands together on the desktop.
“Is it possible to alter the molecular structure of a human?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “Genetic mutation has proven that.”
“Okay, so what if a person, was infected with blood or salvia, could that change the genetics?”
His brow furrowed.
I elaborated, “If an animal bit me, for example, could part of that animal then transfer into me, affecting my DNA?”
He rubbed the white stubble on his jawline. “If a dog bit you, it would be biologically impossible to transfer part of the dog’s genetic makeup into you. However, if a dog bit you with rabies, then you would be infected with the rabies virus.”
“So it’s the virus,” I surmised. Whatever Collette did to me has given me a virus.
“Stefan?” Professor Markell stared fixedly into my eyes. “Is everything okay? You seem a little…unwell.”
Unwell? Now there was an understatement.
I almost told him. I almost just blurted it out right there and then, like he was a parent and I was a helpless child needing comfort. But the words never reached the surface.
“And a virus can be treated?” I questioned, “Reversed.”
Professor Markell made a face, tilting his head like a confused pup. “What do you think would happen if a dog had a bad case of rabies? If it became a threat to others around it?”
“It would be sectioned?” I replied.
He shook his head, “It would be put down.”
The change in his tone was sudden. I took a step back, smiling awkwardly as I stumbled to my seat. Professor Markell didn’t take his eyes off me until the room began to fill with students.
Chatter began to spread through the room, everyone in high spirits with Christmas holidays around the corner. I was in a daze, though. I just kept my head down and tried my best to focus on the lesson plan.
We were studying ion-exchange, methylene and haemoglobin, and since Phoebe had bailed today, I’d joined a temporary lab partner.
I poured a phial of methylene blue liquid into a tube and lifted a sample of PH7 phosphate. My muscles spasmed as I reached up, almost making me drop the phosphate. The muscle spasms had started this morning. What had once felt like a dull hunger pain, now felt more like a bout of flu, turning my stomach and making my limbs ache. May had assured me that she was working on a tonic to help ease the pain. I could only wonder what that meant.
“A little at a time,” my lab partner snapped, prizing the methylene tube from my fingers. He was a thin boy, with blond hair and a narrow, crooked nose. “It’s eluted already. Now we have to add the PH 5.5.”
“I know,” I muttered, watching the blue chemical split from the red in the tube. “I understand the experiment.” I selected another phial and raised it.
He snatched the phial before I could tip it. “I’ll do it,” he grumbled.
“I can do it,” I replied, frowning.
“You’re doing it wrong.” His angular face pulled into a scowl. “How did you even get accepted into this major?”
I bit down on my tongue.
“Must have been a short waiting list,” my lab-partner uttered under his breath.
“I’ve got a lot on my mind,” I managed.
He cackled out a laugh. “Maybe you’d be better off in a different class, something a little less complex.”
A rush of anger bubbled inside of me. Who did this guy think he was? The last thing I need is to have to deal with jumped up asshats like—
Suddenly loud popping sounds started around the room. Beakers exploded in showers of glass and water, and the lab erupted in screams.
I could still feel that same growing presence inside of me, but this time in every inch of my body, from my feet to the tips of my fingers. The burning energy twisted within me. Pain, all I could feel was pain. Burning, hot, stabbing agony that flooded through me.
I staggered out from my workbench and stumbled for the exit, just as the safety sprinklers set off, raining water from the ceiling.
I ran out of the lab and ran down the hall. My vision started to speckle and blur. I slipped into an empty office and the next thing I knew, I was on the floor, fighting the urge to pass out. I saw double, two desks, two cabinets and two sets of windows… My head was spinning.
I reached into my jeans pocket and pulled out my phone. My hands trembled as I tried to focus on the screen, then blearily found Phoebe’s number and pressed call.
I gripped it tightly as the dial tone began in my ear.
“Stef?” Phoebe’s voice sounded across the line.
“Hey,” I choked. “Something happened. The lab…I…”
“Whoa, Stef,” her voice was soothing. “Slow down. What happened?”
“I…I don’t know. Something’s changing, Phoebe. Something’s in me. I don’t understand,” I groped for words. “I don’t understand what happened to me that night, with the girl. With Collette.” Saying her name aloud sent shockwaves through my system.
“Stef…” Phoebe’s voice returned to me.
“Please,” I begged her, staring up at the window, where snow had caught in the edges of the pane. “Please just tell me what happened? Tell me what they’ve done to me? Trapped between life and death, but what does that mean? I’m changing, Phoebe. I know I am.”
“Stef, you’re dying.”
The words hit me like a tidal wave.
“Stef, I’m sorry,” Phoebe was crying on the phone. “I didn’t want to keep this from you. Mum and dad told me it would be easier if you didn’t know, and to just carry on like everything was normal but…”
“I’m dying?” I breathed.
“You’ve been infected. We can’t reverse it.”
Professor Markless words flooded back to me.
My fingers fastened tighter around the phone. “How long?”
“A few days.” I could hear her shattered breaths. “I … I wanted to tell you. You have to believe me.”
“A few days?” I echoed numbly.
“Four. Maybe five.”
I wanted to laugh, to accuse her some sick practical joke, but the words died on my tongue.
I forced myself to sit upright. “Phoebe,” my voice was stronger than it had been a moment ago. Stronger than it had been for days. “This can’t be it. There has to be another way…”
There was silence on her end of the phone.
“I have to go,” I said hoarsely.
“Stef,” she cried, “where are you going? Tell me where you are, I’ll find you. We can talk about this.”
I didn’t answer. I wouldn’t.
There was one place I was certain to get answers. Collette.
I picked myself from the floor, ran down the corridor and left the building without a glance behind me.
I didn’t stop running until I saw the warehouse in my view.
“Hello…?” I called.
My voice echoed across the barren warehouse, loud and distant. Each time I called out, I stilled my breathing, listening for any signs of movement. I gritted my teeth when a rat scurried out from beneath a pile of crates and shot across the floor into the shadows.
I placed my hand on my heart, feeling the uncomfortable beat. Aimlessly, I forged on through endless rooms with their graffiti-covered walls and burlap sacks and rubble. I was so far into the maze of the warehouse that I didn’t think I could find my way out again, even if I’d wanted to.
“Collette...” Saying her name aloud was still strange. Only yesterday her presence had terrified me, but she seemed to be the only one willing to talk. Everyone else, Phoebe and the so-called Guardians, were happier to keep me in the dark. And hell, I was a monster now, right? Maybe the dark was where I belonged.