by Marian Tee
Their eyes were the most terrifying part of them, completely empty and soulless. One look at those eyes and I knew they’d never hesitate to drink me dry and eat my flesh. I fought with them all I could, using everything I had learned in the survival training classes every Caro student was required to complete.
“Caylie!” Not more than a few seconds had passed when Luka somersaulted from the window and landing in a neat crouch between me and another vampire. Yet it had seemed like eternity and I was already limping and bleeding in so many places.
Luka immediately kicked the nearest vampire away. He turned to me swiftly, rapidly taking note of my condition.
“I’m okay,” I managed to gasp as I forced myself up and got back into a fighting stance. But even this proved too much and my injured leg crumpled under me.
“Caylie!” There were vampires heading toward us again. It was as if with every vampire we killed, two more sprung out from nowhere.
“No!” I screamed. “Fight them! Don’t worry about me!”
With a curse, Luka turned around again, just in time to avoid the vampire that was about to pounce on him.
“Luka!”
I twisted around towards the sound and Emilia Moretti came flying out, dressed completely in black and fully armed. She was hurtling steel stars toward the vampires, giving Luka the chance to recover and reposition himself. Riyu and Stefan came tearing out of the woods not a moment later, and the tides had turned.
It was over almost in a blink of an eye, the vampires retreating to wherever it came from.
I immediately looked for Luka, just in time to see him sway on his feet. “Luka!” I crawled towards him, unmindful of the pain that shot through my spine as I applied pressure to my broken knee. Oh God of Caros, please let him be okay. That’s all I ask. That’s all I need to know before I leave him.
Emilia had Luka’s head cradled on her lap when I was finally close enough to see his face clearly. Luka’s face was too pale. The sight of it was too much and I covered my mouth, feeling my fangs about to extend. How was I going to survive this?
Riyu’s eyes were on me, cold and as unfathomable as Luka’s. “Are you all right, Caylie?”
He knew.
I glanced at Stefan. His ever charming smile was on his lips, but his eyes were also wary.
They knew.
I willed my fangs to retract with all my might. “I had just taken blood from him when we were attacked.” My voice was still muffled by my hand. “Combined with his injury---”
Riyu knelt to the ground, slashed his wrist with his teeth and held it close to Luka’s lips. “Drink.”
When it clearly wasn’t enough, Stefan immediately replaced Riyu. But his face was near ashen and there still seemed no change in Luka’s extremely weakened state.
I crawled towards Luka when Stefan was forced to move away before he became low on blood himself and leave us more vulnerable to a possibly waiting ambush.
“You’re injured yourself,” Emilia said, her tone sharper than anything I’ve heard her use. “Let me do it---”
“No.” I tore my own wrist open, willing myself not to faint because the act alone exhausted me. “We are Caros. We take care of our own.” I pressed my wrist to Luka, and felt fainter and fainter as he began to suck. But his color was returning, and that was more than enough.
As Luka stirred, Emilia whispered under her breath, “Your fangs may be gone, but your eyes are still red-rimmed.”
~~~
Slipping away when Brethren forces arrived and before Luka could regain consciousness, I moved to the edge of the woods, knowing that no matter where I was she would hear it. I murmured her name, injecting in it all the need I had in my heart.
The Invisa appeared, dressed in a deep red coat, its overly large hood covering her entire face in shadows. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m turning vampire, Invisa. I love Luka, and he loves another.” I stopped, struggling to push down the rage that rose at the mere mention of the other girl who had Luka’s heart. “You have to take me into custody.”
Cold fingers clasped my face, turning it up as ageless eyes studied me. Time seemed to stop the moment she touched me and when she let go, I gasped, not realizing that I hadn’t been breathing all the while.
If I thought she could help me, somehow offer me a cure for what was happening, she slashed away my hopes with one word. “Yes.”
I dropped to the ground, not realizing that I still had a semblance of hope left until the Invisa had completely taken it away from me.
“You must make a clean break,” she advised.
“What do you mean?” I ask dully.
“You know of the seeds from which vampires are made of?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“A guilty heart can still be a seed. If you do not want him to share your fate then you must break his heart before he breaks his for you.”
~~~
The headlines were more horrible than I could ever wish them to be. The press had somehow painted Luka into a possible traitor, saying that the ambush which took place at the Brethren hideout had been an alibi to prevent him from being tied with what was now known as the Screamless Massacre.
The first time I saw the carnage in the hospital we had escaped from, I had thrown up, unable to fathom how such violent destruction could help the vampires’ causes. What could they gain from this but more enmity from all the races?
But then the clues started piling up and we all realized that it would be to the cost of our lives to underestimate our opponents.
Every Caro’s tongue had been cut out before they were tortured while the humans were swiftly disposed. With murder of this magnitude, it was impossible to keep the human investigators away and the worst questions were being asked. What did those without tongues have in common and what made the other group of victims different?
The human world thought of Caros as a group of wealthy individuals, but once they learned that there were those who led normal lives among us, that in our midst we also had teachers, housewives, and firefighters, it would be the start of the end.
“Caylie, did you hear what I just said?” Sabina snapped her fingers.
I flushed, mumbling an apology, embarrassed at being caught once again zoning out by my friends. We were in a public Caro library, like most everyone were, poring over every book we could find about vampires.
For so long we had thought they were nothing to be afraid of, but now we knew better and now we were preparing to fight.
“Give her a break,” Jeff urged. He had been surprisingly supportive in a really good way since I came back, never asking the wrong question or saying the wrong word. “She’s been through a lot.”
Seeing Sabina getting ready to shoot him down with a verbal flaying, I said hastily, “It’s all right, Jeff. It’s my fault really when I was the one who wanted to come here.”
Still fuming, Sabina turned to Phillip, who seemed to immediately understand her unspoken message. “Come along, Jeff. I think these books are garbage. We need to get flirty with the librarian and see if can give us better ones.”
“I swear, Caylie, did you really have to bring him with us?” Sabina exploded the moment Phillip dragged away a bemused Jeff.
“He’s my cover-up, you know that.” My friends knew about my plan. They had to. If I ever turned vampire before everything pushed through, they were my contingency.
“I’m not even sure what you’re doing is the right thing to do,” Ever said worriedly. “I’ve read everything I could about the legend of the twins, but none of it had suggested what the Invisa told you.”
“I trust her,” I said softly. “And if there’s any chance that Luka may turn, too, because of me, I’ll do anything to stop it.”
It was almost six in the evening when we decided to call it quits. I turned down Jeff’s invitation to go out for dinner, like I had always done for the past few days. He had been increasingly insistent about it but I chalked it down to fru
stration. I knew I was leading him on, and I knew I would have to pay for it one day.
“Home now, Ms. Caylie?” The family chauffeur asked politely as he opened the door for me.
“Yes please.” I climbed in and leaned back against the seat, eyes falling shut immediately.
“Tired?”
My eyes shot open to see Luka gazing at me with a raised eyebrow.
“Luka,” I breathed. I didn’t think. I just threw myself in his arms and I could have cried when his own arms wrapped around my body tightly, his lips immediately taking mine in an almost brutally possessive kiss.
“I missed you.” I couldn’t make myself not say it for some reason.
His lips curved in a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “So much that you spent every minute of the day with that boy?”
“What else could I do to save face when you only let Emilia Moretti visit you?” This time I tried to sound flippant, but my voice still broke in the end.
Luka cursed. “Listen to me, Caylie.”
I backed away from him. “No.” I covered my ears, not sure I wouldn’t turn vampire in a heartbeat if I heard him confess his love to the Lyccan princess.
Luka forcibly pulled my hands down. “Look at me.”
I reluctantly obeyed him even as I hissed, “I hate you.”
Luka smiled mirthlessly. “The last few days had started to convince me of it.”
“Then what are you still doing with me?” I tried to struggle away but he didn’t let go. “Go back to your precious princess and live a fucking happily-ever-after---”
“Caylie, shut up.”
Coming from Luka, the rude command was shocking enough to shut me up, but I couldn’t stop glaring at him.
“Everything had been a ruse from the start,” Luka bit out. “We first spread the rumors of our engagement because we wanted all eyes on us while Riyu and Stefan worked behind the scenes. Everyone knew that I was the type to never let Riyu take a risk since he’s the only pureblood we have left.”
My eyes widened at the realization. “And that was why you two were successful in becoming red herrings.”
“When the need for us to became betrothed came out, we decided to twist things a little bit by making everyone think I was dating her behind your back. We all knew that vampires were on my tail even if we didn’t see them. We also knew that if they were led to believe I was having secret trysts with Emilia, then it would only make sense that I’d discard all my guards so that not even the smallest rumors would reach your ears.”
“So when you were attacked in the past? Shouldn’t you secretly have guards then? I mean, that’s the point, right? To fool them into thinking they were ambushing you when in reality you were waiting to ambush them?”
“A miscalculation,” he said after a beat.
“Luka,” I said evenly. “You don’t do miscalculations.”
His lips twitched. “You know me that well?”
“Don’t beat around the bush either. It doesn’t become you.”
“That night…”
That night you first rejected making love to me…
“My visit to Emilia wasn’t planned.”
I sucked my breath. Then why did he go to her? Had he wanted to beg for her forgiveness? Ah God of Caros, I needed to be sent to the dungeons now. It was getting harder and harder to stay myself when everything in me just wanted the world to hurt as much as I did.
My lips curving in a smile, I said with vicious sweetness, “It’s great, really, how everything seems to fall so neatly into place.”
Luka smiled back. “But it’s strange, mi vavli, how I get the feeling we’re talking about two different things,” he said mildly.
“So smart of you,” I cooed even as my heart continued to harden, the walls of ice surrounding it thickening.
“Caylie---”
“I bet you were the one who thought the whole thing up. You realized that you could use this undercover mission to get closer to Emilia and have her fall in love with you.”
The car was slowing down as it passed the gates of our home. I leaned forward and placed a kiss on Luka’s cheek. “Congratulations, Luka. That was very brilliant of you. I hope after everything, when we finally put an end to our betrothal, I wish you the most wonderful life with your princess.”
He caught my wrist just as I was about to step out of the car. “And you?” he demanded in a chilled voice. “What would you be doing?”
Tossing him a seductive smile over the shoulder, I answered lightly, “What do you think?”
Chapter Fifteen
The Season of Golden Galas marked the start of spring, the days that signaled the end of our freedom. As the sun would spend longer and longer hours in the sky, it meant hiding longer and longer behind walls. Whereas the Season of Crimson Fetes was an endless chain of celebrations purely meant to lavishly underscore the beauty of our lives as Caros, this season was the very opposite, a stark reminder that we would never be free from dangers and thus treaties and alliances were made and broken.
The First Night Ball was hosted by Luka’s grandfather, and it was a bittersweet homecoming for the last time I had been here Luka had given me my first kiss.
We arrived in courtly attires and elaborate masks for all Caros knew that the patriarch of the Georgiades clan was terribly fond of masquerades. The lilting notes of the orchestra playing from the balcony reached me as I climbed the grand staircase leading to the majestic front doors of the Georgiades’ mansion. A red carpet had been laid out, a long-standing tradition for the clan’s devotion to the courtly arts.
Luka stood next to his grandfather, receiving guest after guest with a smile that never quite reached his eyes. But those violet ones lit up like amethysts when they rested on me. I curtsied, murmuring the traditional niceties.
Luka’s grandfather waved it away and drew me close for a hug. “I have missed you, child.”
“As I missed you, Grandfather.” He had insisted I call him that ever since I was a child.
Then it was Luka’s turn.
“You look ravishing,” he murmured as he offered his arm. The way his eyes caressed my body told me it was no lie, the heat of passion in his gaze making me swallow as he slowly took in my outfit from head to toe.
I had dressed to make a statement even though I knew in the end I wouldn’t be the one winning. My gold colored gown had a tight-fitting strapless bodice that was made entirely of silver lace at the back. Whereas the skirt was full at the back, it was extremely short in front, displaying my long legs and crimson sky-high heels blatantly.
I smiled at Luka as I took his arm then surprising him by running my fingers on his lips. “You look like you’re meant to be ravished, too, Luka.” And he was.
Again he was in suit and tie, the most elegant I had seen, a white and lace combination that should have made Luka look gay or an Elvis impersonator. But instead it made him stand out, sophisticated beyond his nineteen years and oh so mouth-wateringly sexy I could hear the women around us whimpering silently in hopes that he would glance at them, even just once. If he ever did, I had a feeling many of them would spontaneously orgasm.
“Shall we?”
I nodded, and Luka guided me into the ballroom. It was as wondrously and ethereally opulent as I remembered, with everything larger than life but tastefully so. The chandeliers sparkled, candlelight swaying in rivalry with the brilliance of diamonds that studded its metal branches. Huge thick eight-foot-tall velvet curtains in midnight black were drawn to the sides, revealing ornately stenciled frames for doors that led out to terraces overlooking the gardens, courtyard, and pool surrounding the house.
A new song played, a darkly whimsical tune with notes so complicated only Caro fingers could play it. “Would you care to dance, mi vavli?” Luka asked.
“It would be my pleasure,” I answered just as formally before laughing freely as Luka stunned me with a little twist that had us whirling to the other end of the room. Applause thundered around us,
but we didn’t really hear it, caught by the magic of our own brand of waltz, a dance made romantic and erotic by our race’s sheer love for pleasure.
When he slowed down as the music ended, the clock struck twelve and I felt like my time had ended. Fear made me clutch his shoulders tightly. “Luka?” I whispered, failing to keep my voice from shaking.
He looked down at me with sharp concern, tensing. “What is it?”
I knew I shouldn’t say it, but I did anyway. “You won’t leave me alone tonight, will you, Luka?”
Frustration burned in Luka’s gaze. “Caylie, it’s not what you think.”
My heart sank at his inability to say what I wanted to hear from him. I twisted my head away. “I understand.”
“Caylie---”
A flash of midnight black caught my vision, and my breath stuttered in my chest.
The pretense had begun.
I tiptoed to kiss him lingeringly on the lips. “Be happy,” I whispered. “Please, please be happy for me.”
Luka tore his lips away, his eyes wild. “Don’t speak like that,” he gritted out. “It’s almost like you’re saying goodbye.”
But I was already drifting away, knowing that in seconds a tiny dark-haired princess would be taking my place. Her scent was unmistakable, sweet and exotic, but to me it had the stench of my death.
The whispers started even before I reached the other end of the ballroom and my hand started shaking as I accepted a flute of champagne made potent with iron-rich blood from one of the roving waiters.
When I turned around, I caught sight of Emilia smiling up at Luka. The smile brimmed with mystery and sensuality, so much so it made me shiver with a mixture of terror and rage.
Luka took Emilia’s hand.
No, don’t. Don’t leave me.
His head twisted around to face me, as if he had instinctively heard my cry. I wanted to reach out to him, to call him to my side but remembering the Invisa’s words stopped me. Instead, I turned my back on Luka, smiling at the first man I saw.
When I looked back, they were both gone.