by Sofia Daniel
My heart thumped a sluggish beat, and a voice in the back of my mind urged me to walk out and leave the hostile stares, but my legs couldn’t move. If I left now, I’d be the target of any offended vampire wishing to avenge the insult. It took an eternity for the vampires’ glares to stop boring into me, and they turned back to their sangria and resumed their conversations.
When the girls at Micalla’s table rose, and the blue-haired girl wrapped an arm around Zarah’s waist, I jumped to my feet. I had to get her away from those girls in case they would hurt her. Hurrying over, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Zarah, could you help me with my Refined Communication homework? I didn’t write down the assignment.”
Relief crossed her features, and she gave me a tiny smile.
Micalla giggled behind her hand, acting nothing like the wild beast who had throttled me the night before. “You need all the help you can get!”
Zarah turned to the vampire girls. “See you tomorrow?”
They all gave her sweet smiles. The blue-haired one winked. “Can’t wait.”
As we left the dining room, Zarah’s posture slumped. I knew better than to ask her about the girls, so I said, “How did it go with Nathaniel? I spoke to him today, and he seems nice.”
She gave me a sad smile. “My aunt is in a better place. At least this way, hunters won’t torture her for information on me.”
“Is that what he told you?”
“Kush did,” Zarah replied.
“Who?”
“The twin who wears her hair in pigtails.”
All four vampire guards stepped out of the room after us and blocked the doorway. I gaped at their broad backs. Were they preventing people from following after us? I gulped. In the space of a single day. I shook my head. Night. I’d managed to make everyone despise me. If I didn’t find a way to leave at sunrise, I’d have to face an academy of angry vampires.
Kat and Annette weren’t in our room when we returned, and I rifled through my wardrobe, looking for the burgundy leather jacket I had worn yesterday. The jacket, the jeans, and the tank top were gone. I was about to ask Zarah if her things were also missing, when she tied her blonde hair back, revealing a bruise on her neck.
My eyes bulged. “Is that a love bite?”
Her cheeks turned pink. “Um… No. Kush was demonstrating how vampires feed.”
“And you let her?”
She dipped her head. “It wasn’t like she would go too far with the others around.”
“The girls are just as deadly as the boys.” I spluttered. “Don’t you remember what Micalla did to me yesterday?”
“But you were rude.” Zarah shouldered off her blazer and placed it in her into wardrobe. “It’s like that Gates boy who keeps fighting. If he just sat in the classes and kept his mouth shut, he wouldn’t need a guard. Stop antagonizing Micalla, and you’ll be fine.”
I folded my arms across my chest and leaned on the side of the wardrobe. “From your point of view, what am I doing wrong?”
Zara unzipped the back of her skirt and let it fall to the stone floor. “She thinks you’re flirting with Dante and Raphael.”
A flush of anger heated my cheeks. “But I don’t even—”
“I know you don’t approach them, but you keep making them come back to you with your back-talk. She believes you’re challenging their authority.”
“Is that what you think?”
She cast her gaze down to the buttons of her shirt and pressed her lips together.
“I’ll take that answer as a yes.” I stormed out of the room. How could Zarah take the side of vampires who were using her for her blood over a fellow captive, and one who had been watching her back? Mesmerism, I would guess. There was no point in telling her that I planned to hide outside our room before we were locked in for the day. She’d probably rush down the tower and warn the vampires that I was trying to get away.
If I stayed any longer, the vampires might brainwash me, too.
Chapter 8
As I stepped into the hallway, a female knocker holding a pile of linen strode past and through a wooden door. I followed her. The knockers had to know some places I could hide until sunrise when I’d make my escape.
The door led to a wooden staircase filled with the scent of beeswax polish. After three flights, she exited through another door, but I continued down to the bottom and found a door that I supposed was at a basement level. It led to a laundry room of industrial-sized washing machines and dryers operated by a pair of male knockers dressed in a white version of their uniforms.
“Excuse me?” I said to the nearest one, a slender man in his twenties.
He walked past, holding a laundry basket and opened one of the machines. I turned to his companion and tried to get his attention, but he was also in that same trance. A sigh slid from my lips. Talking to these people would be as futile as trying to reason with Zarah. The vampires wouldn’t program them to help frumosi escape. I had to continue and find a way out for myself.
At the end of the laundry room, I pushed open the door and became engulfed by air so cold, it made my skin prickle into goosebumps. After an initial shudder, I stepped into a pantry full of industrial shelves laden with supplies. Huge jars of preserves stood among massive packs of oats and sacks of potatoes. I hurried through the shelves to another door and stepped into a warm kitchen.
It was a vast space of vaulted ceilings and exposed stonework with earthen floors as solid as concrete, but around the edges were freestanding, professional units.
Knockers roamed the stainless-steel counters, preparing ingredients so pungent, they made my eyes water. I wrinkled my nose. That had to be their food because the meals they served us in the dining room were gourmet quality. One of them, an older woman about Mom’s age, stood at a workstation cutting onions.
She stepped away from her work, shook her head, and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “For fuck’s sake.”
My heart exploded into action, and I rushed across the room. “Hello?”
Her eyes narrowed. “What are you doing down here?”
“You can talk?”
“Sure.” Blinking rapidly, she waved her hands over her eyes, as though warding off the smell of onions. “But you still haven’t answered my question.”
Concerns writhed in my gut like a colony of caterpillars. If I told this woman I was trying to escape, she’d might raise the alarm. “I got lost.”
The woman pursed her lips. “If you’re looking for an escape route, you’re in the wrong place.”
“It’s a good thing I wasn’t then.” I folded my arms across my chest.
She smirked. “Do you know the secret to cutting onions without crying?”
“Ummm…” I took her knife, cut the bottom quarter off the onion, and whistled silently through my lips. It was one of Mom’s tricks, which had never failed for either of us.
A dozen questions forced their way to the back of my throat, mostly about escape routes, but I had to be careful. I didn’t know if she was some vampire’s consort or brainwashed by a vampire to watch out for frumosi trying to escape.
“The trick is to get rid of the part with the highest concentration of enzymes that irritate the eyes.” I glanced into her amused face, and a relieved breath eased out of my lungs. “I thought vampires didn’t like foods from the allium family. Why are you preparing them?”
“It’s for knocker porridge. It makes their blood taste and smell foul, rendering them unattractive to young vampires not in control of their urges.”
“Oh.” I swallowed hard. “Sorry if this sounds rude, but what are you?”
“Human.”
“A prisoner?”
She pursed her lips and exhaled an irritated breath through her nostrils. “If you don’t ask me questions about myself, I won’t tell the vampires you’re wandering around at dawn, trying to escape their clutches.”
The smile playing on her lips was supposed to make her comment sound ligh
thearted, but the steel in her eyes, and the way her knuckles turned white as she gripped the vegetable knife told me she didn’t want me sniffing around her business.
I licked my dry lips. “That’s fine with me.”
The woman popped a chunk of raw onion into her mouth and grimaced. “Knocker porridge is highly nutritious, anti-parasitical, and anti-vampire, but it tastes like shit.”
A large knocker in chef whites walked past, carrying a sack of porridge oats, and another followed with two handfuls of garlic.
I followed them with my gaze. “Something tells me that the knockers don’t notice the taste.”
“You’d be right, but it’s the best protection for them in a place like this.”
I longed to ask her more questions about the knockers and how they were made, but I needed to leave before sunset, and with no money, no transportation, and no clue of how to leave this accursed castle, my questions were better directed elsewhere. “How do I protect myself from vampires?”
She shook her head. “You can’t. Everything you’ve read about them is made up. Holy relics don’t affect them, garlic makes them wrinkle their noses, and they can walk in the sun, but it blisters their skin, making them easy for slayers to spot.”
“Slayers?”
She shrugged. “I only know they exist but have never actually met one.”
“Does the sun affect vampires at all?”
She tilted her head to the side. “An entire hour out in the sun will cause a vampire to self-combust. Any self-respecting creature of the night wouldn’t leave home without sunblock and UV protection.”
My shoulders drooped. It wasn’t as though I had pictured myself pushing Dante and Micalla out into the sun, but it was disappointing to know that running into the sun wouldn’t be much of a defense.
“So, they’re stronger than us, faster than us, and have no weaknesses?” I muttered.
Eyes softening, she reached into the pocket of her apron. “All knockers are armed with sunstone in case a vampire decides to break the rules and feed on a servant.” She pulled out a flat disc. “It’s a special compound that absorbs the sun. Holding onto it for several hours transfers the magic of the sun into your body. Any deliberate strike will give a vampire a nasty shock.”
My throat dried. “How do I get one of those?”
“Take mine.” She pressed the stone into my hand.
My fingers closed around the warm object. “But what if—”
“There are plenty more where that came from. For best results, charge it up once a week.” She placed a hand on my shoulder and bared her teeth. “Be careful when you use it and don’t tell anyone you got it from me.”
“I don’t even know your name.”
Her fingers gave me a gentle but warning squeeze. “Let’s keep things that way.”
I licked my lips and stuffed the sunstone into my blazer pocket. “Is there a way to contact the outside world?”
“None that won’t be traced back to you,” she replied. “Unless you can get an older vampire to lend you their phone.”
Raphael seemed the type who might be generous enough to let me make a call, but he would probably want something in return. Like blood. I could always make a call from a bus station or some other public place once I’d escaped. “Um… Are there werewolves in the forest?”
She chuckled. “There are Tamaskans and German shepherds bred to look like wolves, and their handlers aren’t the most cultured of people, but I suppose all the talk of werewolves is to stop students from wandering about during the day and causing mischief.” Then her face dropped. “But I’ve only been here for a couple of weeks, so don’t take my opinion as gospel.”
I popped a piece of onion into my mouth and crunched it between my teeth. Its pungency made me gag, and I spat the piece out into my hand. “What is that?”
“Allium cepa magicis. Magically bred to be completely repellent to vampires.”
“So, magic is real?”
She raised a shoulder. “Apparently. If you’re determined to make your blood unpalatable to vampires, you’ll have to dilute it until your body can stand the repellent compounds.”
“Right.” I held the sunstone in my pocket and nodded at another door. “Is that where you get deliveries?”
“It leads to another set of external doors, but you can’t leave the premises without a vampire. Armored guards patrol the perimeter of the building, and the hounds patrol the forest day and night.”
“But knockers can walk outside undetected?”
“The porridge changes their scent. Hounds are trained not to attack them.”
I eyed a group of vats bubbling at the far end of the kitchen and licked my lips. “What’s in it?”
“Something that maintains their accursed state.”
My stomach clenched as I threw away the idea of dining on knocker porridge. Maybe I could get away with rubbing that crap on my skin. I was about to ask about other escape routes when a noise beyond the doors made the woman stiffen.
Within seconds, her features slackened, and her eyes gained that blankness I’d only seen on knockers. The sound of metal doors opening made my heart jump into my throat, and I rushed to the other side of the kitchen, through the pantry, and into the laundry room.
By the time I raced up the tower steps and reached my room, the door was bolted shut, presumably by a knocker. I spent hours exploring the hallways and the few open rooms for means of escape, but the only ideas that presented themselves involved me jumping through glass and leaving a trail of blood for the hounds to follow. Gates and people like him had probably tried to leave the academy multiple times, and the guards had likely plugged up each escape route, leaving only the most ridiculous and suicidal of options.
After exhausting everywhere on the ground and first floors, my eyes drooped, and my limbs became heavy with fatigue. Maybe something in our food made us tired during the day, but I fought against the lethargy and forced myself to continue walking.
I returned to the kitchen to look for the onion woman, but she had left, and the entire space stank of onions and garlic. None of the knockers showed any signs of lucidity, making me wonder if the woman had been a projection of my fevered imagination. But the sunstone warming my blazer pocket told me she’d been real.
It took an eternity to return to my floor of the tower, but I sat on the floor of a storeroom and closed my eyes until shuffling footsteps outside and the sounds of sliding and clicking locks woke me from my sleep.
“Where did you go?” Zarah stretched up in her bed and yawned.
My chest tightened. How much of what I said would Zarah pass on to her new vampire friends? “Got locked out when I went for a walk, so I slept in the hallway.”
I picked up a fresh uniform and headed for our bathroom.
“Did you find any escape routes?” she asked.
“I wish.” The onion woman hadn’t wanted me to tell anyone of her presence.
“That’s a pity.” She rubbed the side of her neck. “Maybe next time, we can go together.”
Warmth spread across my chest, and the tightness across my lungs loosened. After our conversation at sunset, I’d been convinced Zarah had sided with the vampires.
By the time I had finished my shower, Zarah had already left, as had Kat and Annette. Neither of them was at breakfast, either, and nor were the Stryx Brothers or the Coven of Bitches.
Our first class of the day was Hunters 101, the only one so far frumosi shared with both male and female vampires. The Stryx Brothers occupied a corner at the back of the room with Micalla and Ponytail, each following me with their gazes as I walked across the classroom.
Zarah sat close to the front between Pigtails and Blue-hair, whose name I learned was Juno. Her new vampire acquaintances had dressed her in a hiked-up version of the uniform skirt and a shirt obviously altered to skim every curve of her upper body and to show off her neck.
Bile rose to the back of my throat. Had she left on her initiative to
report the night I’d spent outside the room? I didn’t understand why she had left while I’d been in the shower.
I snatched my gaze away and sat next to Kat and Annette, who stood and walked to the other side of the room. My heart sank. Not only was I stuck in this academy, but no one seemed to want to speak to me. With a sigh, I focused on Captain Tanar, our black-haired male teacher with a hawkish nose and eyes the color of amber. He wore a lightweight version of the guards’ armor, complete with weapons.
“Last week, the House of Cuza was attacked by hunters. Can anyone explain why?”
Dante’s hand shot up. “Vampires want to live out in the open, but they don’t keep up with the times,” he drawled. “Social media makes it easy for anyone with a smartphone to upload a picture or video clip of someone who casts no reflection or shadow. With millions of humans serving as unwitting sentinels, it’s no wonder hunters find our kind easy to locate.”
“But that doesn’t mean we have to stay in hiding,” said Ponytail. “Your answer to everything is isolationism.”
“How many vampire communities have been attacked in the past century?” Without pausing to give her an answer, he said, “None.”
“Why is that, Mr. Striga?” asked Captain Tanar.
Dante straightened and announced to the rest of the class, “The Kingdom of Stryx surrounds itself with a range of supernaturals able to detect suspicious people before they even get the chance to report back and launch their attacks. It’s a far better safety measure than the individual vampire living in a penthouse with a few retainers or somewhere just as indefensible.”
I watched the debate between the pair and held my churning stomach. Did this mean werewolves and other beings like ghouls were real? While Ponytail stood her ground against Dante, Raphael watched me with curious eyes. He leaned over to Nero and whispered something, only for the other vampire to tilt his head to the side and give me a scrutinizing gaze.
My stomach clenched into a tight knot. I didn’t care what the Stryx Brothers thought of me. As long as they stayed away and stopped casting me reptilian glances, I was happy to pretend they didn’t exist.