We stepped out of the rows of shelves, not to the gruesome sight I had expected, but into a space with an overstuffed black leather couch and two matching recliners, a coffee table on a Turkish rug in the middle of it all. It looked like a living room, not a torture chamber. Only, on the coffee table there was a large mason jar, lid screwed on tight, with what appeared to be a human heart trapped inside. I shuddered and tried not to think about it.
There was a huge bay window at the far end of the room that let light pour into the space. I hadn’t seen the sun in so many days, I practically rushed forward out of the shadows.
And facing that bay window, looking away from us, was the man I would soon know as Caleb.
The first vampire that had ever been created, and therefore the oldest.
His name, he later told me, meant ‘The Chosen One’, because a demon had chosen him alone to carry the vampire virus into humanity.
I held my breath in terror as he turned from the window, looked into my eyes, and smiled. In every other respect he looked like a normal man. But his white–blue eyes – they were as flat and cold as a frozen lake. They were beautiful and terrifying all at once. He blinked, and his eyes turned pure black, like his pupils had swallowed all of the light.
“Mia” he said pleasantly, allowing his true age to seep into the echo of his words. “I’m Caleb. It’s so nice to finally meet you.”
The pounding. It reverberated inside my skull, reaching fever pitch, and I felt sweat starting to collect at my temples. What the hell was that noise?
Caleb stepped forward and held out a hand in greeting. Those eyes, Jesus, they were so black and so big, you could lose a lifetime inside of them and not even notice. And it wasn’t just the eyes that were terrifying. I had noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye and turned instinctively towards it, only for my eyes to land upon the heart in the jar.
It was moving. It was beating. It was the pounding noise that was getting louder with each passing minute.
I put a hand to my mouth and stifled a scream.
Ryan dug a finger into my back and I shot my hand out instinctively, where Caleb grasped it much too gently – with affection, even. His hand was hot, much hotter than mine or even Ryan’s. It was large and smooth and reminded me of my father’s hands. I wondered if his hands had been the ones to rip that beating heart from the chest of whomever it belonged to.
He tilted his head to the side, taking in my face, my body, and seemed to like what he saw. A slow grin spread across his tanned face, showing regular, straight teeth. His canines looked pretty sharp, but certainly nothing like what I had seen in horror movies. And yet, I had never been so terrified in my entire life. The eyes. I wanted him to go back to the ice–blue eyes.
“Sit.”
I did as I was told, choosing one of the overstuffed single recliners. I didn’t want anyone sitting next to me. He perched on the coffee table directly in front of me. Man, have you ever heard of personal space?
“Your eyes,” I said involuntarily.
He smiled, blinked, and just like that his eyes went back to normal. I sagged a little, relieved.
“You can go now.” He addressed Ryan, without tearing his gaze from me.
My heart sank as I heard Ryan’s footsteps fade into the distance, then the thud of the door.
I studied Caleb’s face with a mixture of revulsion and wonder. He appeared to be in his late thirties, with smooth, tanned skin that stretched over attractively angular features and a wide, arrogant mouth that seemed to delight at my terror. A face that was old in experience, but still retained the patina of youth. And honey–brown curls that added a boyish charm to his hurtful gaze.
“Where are we?” I asked when I could bear the silence no longer.
“We are in my house.”
“Where is your house?”
He gestured to the open window. “Take a look for yourself.”
I took the chance to put distance between me and those freaky eyes, edging out from his gaze and tentatively stepping towards the window.
It was breathtaking – like someone had painted a picture of paradise and stuck it to the window frame. We were at least two storeys up, overlooking lush, green forest. In the background, three snow–capped mountains rose from the earth. Between the forest and the building I stood in, a massive, cerulean blue lake stretched out further than my eyes could follow.
My breath caught in my throat as a voice sounded out directly behind me.
“It’s a beautiful place.”
I spun around to find Caleb had soundlessly moved across the polished concrete floor, and now stood inches from me. I cowered, pressing my back against the thick glass that separated me from beautiful freedom.
Now, I have to add that up until this point, I had never really believed in anything supernatural. I didn’t believe in ghosts or magic, and I definitely didn’t believe in vampires. My closest association to the fanged creatures was an unhealthy obsession with watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a fifteen–year–old.
“Are you really a vampire?” I blurted out.
He didn’t say a word, just stared into my soul with those endless black eyes, and that was the moment that I realized all of the scary creatures under the bed really did exist. This guy was not just a regular human psychopath, as I had previously guessed. He really was a vampire.
“How long will you keep me?” I asked suddenly.
He didn’t have to think about it. “Forever.”
I believed him.
SEVEN
The next morning I caved in. I was dirty. There was dried blood on my shirt. And I was pretty sure I was starting to smell really bad.
I snatched the faucet handle from Ryan’s outstretched palm and stalked into the rotting bathroom, slamming the door behind me. The faucet handle was difficult to screw on over the thick rust that had built up, but I managed. Pretty soon drabs of brown, dirty water glugged out of the shower head into the filthy tub. I took off my two–week–old shirt and turned it inside out, using it to loosen some of the caked dirt and dust from the porcelain. When I had cleared a patch big enough to accommodate my feet, I balled the disgusting shirt up and threw it into the corner of the room.
The water was hot and luxurious and slid down my body like liquid velvet. There was no shampoo, so I used the bar of soap to wash my body, then lathered suds into my stiff, bloodied hair. I was exhausted. I had been plagued with a killer headache since I woke up from my uncomfortable sleep on the floor, and I’d had nightmares about the beating heart in the jar all night long.
I thought about home, just like I had been every day and night as I paced my own personal hell. I thought about Jared, about Evie. I even missed my mom. I would have done anything to get back to them. I thought back to every animal attack I’d ever heard of, every abduction, every person who’d given me the creeps. I was starting to realize that the relatively normal world I had been a lifelong member of didn’t actually exist.
Then cold water cut in, freezing my nerves and making me cry out. “Jesus!”
I shut the water off as quickly as I could and dried myself with the towel I’d so generously been given, then slipped into clean clothes. The black t–shirt and jeans were mine, probably taken directly from my car after I’d been knocked out. I wrapped the towel around my wet hair, feeling calmer and a little bit more like myself than I had in days.
I grabbed my silver ballet flats, the ones covered in snow and mud that I had discarded the night I awoke in vampire hell, and tried my best to clean them up with damp toilet paper. It was a small comfort having shoes on my feet again. The morning felt almost ... normal.
I was snapped out of my somewhat serene state by a loud crash in the adjoining room.
I could not have imagined the hell that awaited me on the other side of the door.
I yanked the bathroom door open, rushing into the room Kate and I shared. Kate was crumpled in the corner – nothing new there – but she wasn’t alone. Caleb
was there, clutching her narrow shoulders, dragging her back up to her feet.
“Let her go!” I yelled, pummelling his back with punches that did absolutely nothing. Someone grabbed me from behind and bent my arm back until it was ready to snap like kindling. “Ahh!” I screamed as my shoulder joint crunched out of its socket.
“Shut up,” was forcefully breathed into my ear. Ryan. I should have known.
I wriggled out of his half–hearted grip and leaned against the wall, using my good arm to hold my useless one. I snuck a glance at my paralyzed arm. It was too long to belong to me, hanging by stretching tendons. I had the sudden urge to throw up again. And it hurt like a bastard. Waves of pain slammed into me.
I stared on in pain and despair as Caleb put his mouth to Kate’s ear. He whispered things too low for me to hear, but his black gaze and twisted grin were clearly directed at me. I looked away, trying not to feel the terror that was encircling me like a bunch of snakes tightening around my useless limbs, trying not to fall into those bottomless eyes that promised an eternity of torment.
Kate’s child–like screams tore at my heart until it threatened to break in two. I started to hyperventilate.
“No, no, no!” she protested. “You promised you wouldn’t!”
Promised he wouldn’t what? Kill her? But hadn’t she wanted to die?
“Quiet!” he hissed forcefully, and she stopped whimpering all at once.
The vampire smiled. “That's a good girl,” he said. He took his long fingernails and pressed them into the creamy flesh at her collarbone. Kate’s eyes went wide in horror as her skin broke apart under the pressure, ruby–red blood rising up from the punctures. I watched helplessly as she tried to push him away.
I wanted to yell, “Stop!” But it was useless. I held my breath, squeezing my eyes shut, my last vision of the vampire sucking greedily at the girl’s shoulder. I held my good hand to my ear and turned my uncovered ear to the wall, but I couldn't block out the noise entirely – the sucking, slurping noise of warm tomato soup being hungrily drawn through a straw. The straw being poor Kate, and the soup being her blood.
I resisted the urge to curl up in a ball, to try and run away, to scream. I was just there, frozen and pathetic and unable to do a damned thing to help.
Eventually, the slurping ceased. I opened my eyes to see Kate dead, drained of blood, and the vampire rising from her lifeless form. He wiped his mouth and turned to me. A low wail grew louder and louder and it took me a minute to realize that it was coming from me, that I was screaming. I abruptly shut my mouth, and the noise stopped.
I was shaking inside, and my knees threatened to buckle underneath me. Anger blossomed inside my chest. Nobody had the right to take life by force.
“Don't you dare!” I cried as he came closer. “I'll scream. I'll hurt you.” As if I could.
He stopped, a peculiar look on his face. He smiled, blood still smeared on his teeth.
“What did you say to her?” I demanded.
“I said –” he spoke in a voice that was older than time, six little words that made tears spring to my eyes “– do you want to die today?”
But it was a lie, he hadn’t asked her that. He was asking me, did I want to die today?
A burning hand rested heavily on my throat, so hot I wondered if it would melt my skin. He was clearly waiting for an answer from me.
I shook my head NO. The burning hand squeezed harder, the black eyes grew wider, imploring a response. “I didn’t hear you.”
“NO!”
He loosened his fingers and let his arm drop slowly from my throat.
“Don’t worry,” he said cruelly. “You will soon enough.” He looked down at Kate’s lifeless body with those demon–black eyes. “She did.”
I stumbled and sank to the floor next to Kate, nursing my arm in my lap. There was blood, so much blood. Too much blood, more than one person could ever forget. I held my hand in front of my face, the one I could still use. I couldn’t stop shaking, and I didn’t think I ever would.
I said nothing as Ryan followed the older vampire out of the room. The door slammed, and I heard bolts sliding shut on the other side of the wall.
And then, it was just me and the dead girl on the floor.
***
I cried until salty tears burned my cheeks, and watched that door, and I was hurting so intensely I couldn’t even muster up some sympathetic thoughts for the dead girl who lay less than three feet from me.
I wanted so badly to leave my body right then. I wanted to fly away home, to be with Evie and Jared and my mom. I’d even hug my idiot stepfather. But I couldn’t leave, I could never leave. So I did the next best thing. I closed my eyes and remembered a time before I was taken, a time when I was just a regular girl falling in love.
EIGHT
I lived practically my whole life with the boy I would fall in love with right under my nose, both of us blissfully unaware of what magic – and horror – would occur as a result of our union. When we were in kindergarten together, we fought like hell over whose turn it was to take the class hamster home over the summer. When we were fifteen he and his idiot friends crashed Evie’s birthday party, stole all of our carefully stashed beer and smashed her front window. And in sophomore year, I took great delight in defacing his yearbook photo in the library’s only copy.
Was it love, even then? I’m not so sure. But I do know that the summer before senior year, Evie and I took jobs at a local kids’ Summer Camp to earn some cash. We were saving for the amazing condo we were going to rent together when we both got accepted into Harvard – me into photography, Evie into print journalism. After college, Evie was going to move to Paris and write for Vogue, and I was going to travel the world, take a whole bunch of photos, become the next famous photographer, and then live in a warehouse loft conversion in Tribeca. Plus, we were both going to use our athletic talents to our advantage, using track and swimming scholarships to help us make the big time. Jared was poised for great things, too; he was going to study medicine and become a surgeon. His parents weren’t rich so he was working at camp, trying to earn a few bucks to bankroll his medical degree.
The three of us had always ended up at the same school – first grade school, then junior high, and finally Blair Academy. But the academy was a big place, and after sophomore year we never really hung out in the same circles as Jared. Jared studied, swam and played football, I ran track and went to too many parties, and Evie studied too much, partied too much, was on the swim team and still managed to top every class she was in.
So back to our cushy little summer jobs. Evie and I were both on the swim staff for the summer. We had to teach swim classes in the mornings, supervise the kids at lunch, and then do lifeguard duty in the afternoons. On the Saturday after our classes had finished for the year, Evie and I drove to the camp to take our lifeguard and swim instructor tests and get our first aid cards updated.
I sat in the passenger seat while Evie drove my car, a pretty common scenario for us. Her ancient VW was about to fall apart and I swear the only thing keeping it together was sticky brown rust, while I was still driving the car my dad had bought for me a month before he died. A black Honda Element that nobody could ever convince me to sell.
Evie was at the wheel while I frantically read through the first aid guide in case we got tested. “Fifteen compressions between breaths or thirty?” I looked up in time to see a familiar pink donut reaching into the sky. “Stop, stop!”
Evie slammed the brakes on, just making the turn into Dunkin’ Donuts across from Jefferson Lake. She parked and we got out, the cool morning air forming goosebumps on my bare legs. I tugged at my frayed denim shorts, trying to make them cover as much skin as possible. I detested the cold, even when it was only moderately cool on a summer’s day that would probably reach the nineties before sundown.
We ordered flavored coffees – French vanilla for me, caramel for Evie – and sat at a plastic pink booth while we waited.
�
�I hope there are at least some hot guys there,” I remarked. My last relationship had ended three months before, and apart from a few mediocre make–out sessions at parties, I was starting to get a little bored. It was time to move on and find a new boy. Our coffees were called and we grabbed them, wandering across the road to the lake.
Since Jefferson Lake was fifty acres across, all the smaller neighboring camps sent their new swim staff to testing day at our larger camp. All up there were probably a hundred or so new swim staff milling around, dressed in bathing suits, goggles perched on foreheads, and the smell of sunscreen and coffee draped across the chilly morning. Evie and I dropped our stuff at the bleachers and wandered over to the lake in just our bathing suits, towels wrapped around our waists.
A girl dressed in a lifeguard uniform with SUPERVISOR emblazoned on the breast pocket was calling out names in alphabetical order.
“Cheryl Anderson.”
“Miles Barker.”
“Mia Blake.”
I handed my coffee and towel to Evie, whose last name – Montgomery – meant that she wouldn’t be called for a while. I was familiar with the drill from the year before – eight people called up at a time to swim their twenty laps and dive for the weighted buoy under the water.
Taking my place at the third lane, I turned to my right to see the other five swimmers in my round wander up to their lanes. The guy next to me was facing the other way, but I was sure I wanted to do a lot more looking at him regardless of what his face looked like. His body was sweeeeet – tanned and firm in all the right places.
I absent–mindedly dipped my right foot into the water and squealed. “THAT’S FU– THAT’S FREEZING!” I yelped, yanking my leg away. “How are we supposed to swim in there?”
The supervisor didn’t look impressed. “You’ll be saving children from drowning come Monday. You’ll get used to it.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. I wanted to tell her to jump in the water, but I bit my tongue and focused on the task at hand. Pretty soon we were being told to stay next to the water and wait until time was called. Somebody had thought to cordon off eight lanes with rope, which was handy. I sat down at the edge and waited. I looked to my right again and hot guy in lane four flashed me a dazzling smile that made me forget all about swimming tests and cold water. He was yummy. The body sure did match the face, with big eyes the colour of bamboo, a mess of sandy blond hair, and dimples on both cheeks.
Wombstone (The Vampireland Series) Page 3