by Keary Taylor
Break it?
Break it?
What if?
What if it really works? What if I don’t have to die in the burn and starvation anymore? What if this is finally, finally over?
But what happens when I’m human, when I live out a normal lifespan and die? Would I ever be reborn again? Would the cycle just start over? Or would that be it? Would it really be broken?
What if I die at the end of my human life, and Cyrus is left alone as an immortal? Alone. Forever?
“Do you think it would work?” I ask. I look at Henry hopefully. With a million questions. “Do you think there is any chance it would break the curse?”
I don’t know what I want his answer to be. But there’s something in his eyes that tells me quite clearly that no, he doesn’t think it will break the curse.
It will only put off this death.
“Have you ever tested this cure?” Cyrus asks, ignoring the fact that he didn’t vocalize a response. “Are you sure it works?”
Henry doesn’t look up at Cyrus, he looks back toward the window. “This strain? Only once.”
“And did it work?” Cyrus asks, his tone getting a little more demanding.
“Yes,” Henry responds, looking up at Cyrus. “It has been ten years since then, and he has resumed aging, just like he had never been a vampire.”
“Who was it?” I ask, curious.
Henry’s eyes are telling, yet reveal no secrets. He looks from Cyrus, to me, and then back to the window. “It doesn’t matter. He was no one important to either of you. I simply did it for his family.”
Yep, Henry is an annoyingly vague person. I think he likes being mysterious. But it’s just obnoxious.
“If it works, what are we waiting for?” Cyrus says, stepping forward.
My grandfather looks over at me, and we study one another for a long moment.
My stomach is tied up in knots. My brain actually hurts. It’s tired. Because it’s running through a million scenarios, trying to figure out all the ends to this path.
And I just don’t know.
Henry’s eyes flick to mine. He pins me with those intense eyes. They’re probing, like they can will the truth in me to the surface and read it from my skin. “What do you think of all this, Sevan?”
Sevan.
Logan.
I don’t know who I am right now. Usually there are moments where I’m more one or the other.
But I think in this, I am the perfect blend of both.
I am…Segan. Lovan.
Cyrus eyes cut to mine, and I can feel his urgency. He doesn’t understand why I am not answering right away. He sees no reason to hesitate.
But there are so many questions that I don’t know the answers to.
“I want you to think about it,” Henry says. He crosses the room, grabs his bag, and slings it over his shoulder. “The brain needs time to process information. You’ve been given a huge, life-altering choice. You need time to process it.”
“What?” Cyrus demands with a growl as Henry walks toward the door. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Cyrus reaches out, grabbing Henry by the arm. But I reach out and touch his shoulder.
“Don’t,” I say quietly.
My husband looks back at me, and his eyes are brilliant red. I knew they would be.
But I also knew he would let Henry go.
“I will meet you back here tomorrow at noon,” Henry says. Without waiting for another word from either of us, he cuts through the apartment and heads for the door. “Think about what you want for your future. What is best for this changing world.”
We didn’t follow him. So I only hear when he shuts the door, and his footsteps as he makes his way down those rickety stairs.
The silence between Cyrus and I is deafening. He takes three slow breaths through his nostrils, before slowly turning to fully face me.
“Why?” he demands. “Why did you do that? What if he leaves? What if he doesn’t come back? What if he’s changed his mind now? The man has a reputation for being unreliable and disappearing!”
My face is cold and numb as I look back at him. At the man I chose to be with. Over and over I have chosen to be with him.
If I don’t take that cure, I know I’ll come back. I’ll be reborn again, and who knows, maybe this next time I’ll get to live for a thousand years.
Cyrus is better when I’m with him.
He’s going to need me.
What if this does break the curse? What if I don’t come back?
“What about you?” I say quietly.
It’s like he was a balloon and I just deflated him. His shoulders sag. The red in his eyes dies. His lips turn downward.
“What about you?” I repeat.
I see emotions well in his eyes and he looks away from me. He’s wound tight. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know how to argue against that.
“Let’s go back to our room and we can discuss this further,” he says. His words are tight and clipped.
It’s an aversion. It’s a stall. Because he doesn’t know what to say. I don’t know what to think.
I don’t protest. Silently, we leave the little apartment, we survive those stairs once more. We go back to our hotel room.
I didn’t want to spend the rest of this day arguing with Cyrus. But in the end, that’s exactly what we do.
He says he doesn’t care what the outcome is, he’ll take the risk. It’s the way it should have been in the first place.
But what about him?
I can’t leave him.
It breaks everything in me, but round and round and round we go with the same words and the same arguments.
Until finally, that night, we’re both just emotionally drained and exhausted.
I lay down on my side of the bed and Cyrus on his. Our backs are turned to one another. We’re out of words. We’re just so damn tired.
So we don’t say anything else.
Chapter 21
The flames around me are burning so hot. So hot that hot isn’t even a word anymore. It isn’t real. It could never fully capture what this burn is.
I burn and I crisp and I scream and cry.
With a gasp, I sit up in the bed, my hands going to my throat. My fingernails claw down my flesh, because it hurts, it hurts so bad and I need to make it calm down.
“Sevan,” Cyrus says, and he’s instantly at my side, his hands on my thighs.
I gasp. It’s hard to breathe. Everything hurts. It burns. I suck in another deep breath, but it’s so, so painful.
“Wait here,” he says. I know there’s panic in his eyes, but I can hardly focus on anything. I’m blinded by the burn. “I will be right back. I will make this better.”
Then he’s gone, and I’m alone with the burning in my throat.
I stagger to my feet and make it to the bathroom. I turn on the water in the sink, desperate for anything to cool the fire in me. I put my mouth under the spout, guzzling water.
But it does nothing. If anything, it makes the burn worse.
With an angry hiss, I shut it off. Bracing my hands on the counter, I look up at myself in the mirror.
I shouldn’t have done that.
I hardly recognize myself.
I wither when I’m in the final slope toward death. I literally shrivel. My skin all looks tighter on my bones. I look like I’ve lost twenty percent of my muscle mass.
And my eyes. They look sunken. There are dark circles around them. I look like I haven’t slept in ten years.
I hadn’t meant to fall asleep last night, but I did. After all the arguing with Cyrus, I was just exhausted.
Just one more evidence of what is happening to me. Being a vampire, I don’t need that much sleep. I had slept so recently, too.
My nostrils flare as the burn in my throat intensifies. My eyes are bright red when I turn away from the mirror. I stalk toward the door, even though my knees wobble. I hardly have the strength as I walk across the room and reach
for the doorknob.
I can’t wait for Cyrus. I have to feed now.
But the door swings open just as I go to grab it. Cyrus steps inside with a terrified looking, wide-eyed man with a uniform on that says he works for this hotel.
My humanity is gone. I don’t even care about what I’m going to do. I grab him the second Cyrus pushes him inside and I sink my fangs into his neck.
With a frantic moan, I grip him and walk us back into the room. I hear Cyrus close the door, and he stands there watching me.
I pull and I pull. The man stands utterly still and silent, paralyzed by the toxins my fangs release into him. His blood is the best thing I’ve ever tasted. It’s so sweet and so tangy.
But the burn. It says this is not enough. It’s still too hot, still too wild.
“Another,” I barely get the word out between pulls.
Cyrus knows exactly what I mean by that one word. He opens the door and leaves again.
I pull and pull again and again. I take his blood. It fills me up. There’s the faint sensation of being full, but almost just as quickly, I feel my body burning through that blood. Like it evaporates inside of me. I use it up almost as quickly as I can consume it.
I pull, so greedy, but then there’s nothing left. I suck out the very last drop.
With a frustrated grunt, I let his body fall to the floor. My human self is gone right now. I don’t even acknowledge that I’ve killed a person. He might have had a family. He certainly had friends. He will be missed.
I ended a life.
But right now, I’m only impatient for Cyrus to return with another body for me to drain.
Exhausted from the effort of supporting the man as I drained him, I sink onto the bed. I lie on my side, closing my eyes.
Think of something else, I tell myself. Think of anything else.
Henry.
The burn.
The cure.
The burn.
Do I want to take it?
The burn.
Burn.
Burn.
I let out a frustrated and anxious sound, and two seconds later, Cyrus walks back in the door.
I instantly find my energy, but only enough to sit up. And my exhaustion must look evident, because Cyrus guides the woman to me. And I don’t know what’s wrong with her, but she doesn’t even fight me as Cyrus sits her on the bed beside me, and I sink my fangs into her flesh.
It takes me longer this time to drain the body. My exhaustion is kicking in. Even sucking feels tiresome. So it takes me four minutes to drain this woman instead of the two it took to drain the man.
When I’m finished, I just let her body drop to the ground. I lick my lips.
The burn is better. It’s just like glowing coals now, instead of a raging fire.
But already I can feel my body going through the mass amount of blood I just drank.
I’ll be in pain again in just an hour or two.
Cyrus crosses the room again and kneels in front of me. He reaches up, caressing my cheek. “Better?”
I feel numb. Tired. But I force my eyes to find his face and focus on his eyes.
It was his eyes that I first fell in love with.
I nod.
He slides his hand around to the back of my neck and brings my forehead to his. “I’m so sorry,” he breathes. There’s so much pain and grief in his voice. I believe every syllable. “I’m so sorry that I did this to you, Sevan.”
I reach up, lacing my fingers through his hair, but even that exhausts me.
I want to say that it is okay. That I forgive him. And I do. But I feel so awful right now. I feel so wrecked. I feel like death.
“Just hold me,” I say. But speaking makes my throat hotter, makes it feel cracked and dry.
He nods. Carefully, he climbs around me. He tucks himself in behind me. I fold into him, and breathe a little sigh of relief. We fit perfectly against one another. Like he and I were molded to fit like this.
“Only two more hours,” Cyrus says quietly.
My eyes find the clock. Only two more hours until Henry agreed to meet with us again.
A pit forms in my stomach. Because I have no idea what I’m going to do when we meet with him again.
* * *
There’s a strange look on Cyrus’ face as we make our way back toward the apartment. I think that’s hope in his eyes, but there’s also fear, maybe. But those two emotions don’t fully describe how he looks. I’ve never been good at reading people, so I can’t tell exactly what it is he’s feeling.
But I can’t even focus on that right now. Not when the burn is back with so much force, it’s all I can do to not grab every human who walks past me and drain every last drop of their blood.
I wouldn’t have the strength. I can barely walk down the road. My knees shake. My hands tremble. There’s sweat on my brow.
I could lie down right here in the street and take the world’s longest nap.
We’re two blocks away from the apartment when my knees give out.
A woman and her child who were walking by see how fast Cyrus moves as he catches me. They take a long look at the sunshades we wear. But Cyrus doesn’t notice. He’s whispering in my ear as he carries me toward the apartment. He’s telling me he’s going to make everything right. He’s going to fix everything.
I like hearing his voice. I love hearing him speak.
But my head is pounding right now. Every sound he makes sends another wave of pain flashing through my brain.
I think of the death that is coming for me. It can’t be far off. I think of how peaceful it is, once the dark takes over. I think of how quiet it is. It’s comfortable, death.
I’m not begging for it yet. But it won’t be long.
I hear the creaking of those stairs and we’re rising. I worry about our combined weight being too much for them, but only in a very small corner of my brain.
The smell of abandoned space hits my nose and the world grows darker, to my every ounce of relief. Cyrus steps inside with me, and closes the door behind us.
“Everything will be okay,” Cyrus coos into my ear again.
My grip on his shirt tightens, and I nod my head.
He can’t make it better. This is death. This is the end. But I love him for saying it.
Even through my pain, I can hear someone back in that bedroom. Cyrus carries me and goes toward it.
Staring out that window once more, is Henry.
His hands are held behind his back. His shoulders are tense. He looks out over the water, staring out into the brilliant sunshine like it doesn’t bother him at all.
Henry is a man of science, I remind myself. He’s created a cure for the Bitten, a cure for any kind of vampirism. Who is to say he didn’t find a way to fix his permanently dilated eyes so he can enjoy the sun again?
“The country of Moldova has become a mecca for vampires, overnight,” Henry says. He doesn’t turn away from the window. He keeps talking, almost as if he’s thinking out loud. “Their government welcomed them with open arms and guaranteed they would be treated as with unique, high regard. And the state of Kansas is now crawling with thousands of vampires, all converging in the center of the States. The furthest point from any House, so they think they can get away with anything.”
In my brain, I’m picturing a map, finding Kansas.
They fall under the jurisdiction of the House of Sidra, but they’re nineteen hundred miles away from where it is physically located.
“The reports of the number of Bitten being created every day are astounding,” Henry continues. “Thousands by the day.”
My stomach feels sick. The Bitten are similar to the Born in that they drink blood. But they’re not as strong as a Born. They aren’t as fast. They don’t have the same kind of control over their thirst. And they continue to age. They grow old and die eventually.
But the worst part is the Debt. A newly created Bitten is compelled to obey its creator. They cannot say no. They would follow them to the
ends of the earth. Kill anyone they were asked to. They would fight any war for their master.
It’s the reason Cyrus outlawed their existence. They have no control. They can’t help it.
Now there are thousands of them being created every day?
The human population could be hunted down and eradicated very quickly.
When Cyrus and I envisioned our exposure, we never pictured it going this way. We never thought of the mass numbers that would stoop to being Bitten in order to try and be like us.
I can’t even imagine what the world is going to look like in a year. In five. In ten. I don’t think it will even still exist in a hundred.
Moab and Lorenzo were successful. They brought us into the light. And they’re erasing all the lines between Bitten, Born, and Royal.
We’re all just predators now.
“I tried to stop it,” Cyrus says, bringing me back into the present. He walks over to the bed against the wall and gently lays me down on it. “I did everything I could to ensure this would never happen.”
Henry takes one breath, and turns partially back toward us. “That you did, Cyrus.” His eyes are dark, and there are a million accusations in them. But also credit. “For all your faults, for all your bloody mistakes, you did try to keep the world safe from you.”
My eyes slide back to my husband, and as if he can sense it, his meet mine. His lips are set in a firm line. His shoulders are tense.
I reach up, searching for his hand, and he gives it to me. His touch is gentle. Tender.
“I tried my best,” he says. And I don’t know if he’s still talking to Henry, or admitting this to me. He falls to his knees, kneeling at the bed beside me. “I created something I could not control. In my thirst for knowledge, I cursed the world. I was selfish, in so many ways, for so many years. But I know now. All I ever wanted, all I ever needed, was right by my side.”
He brings my hand to his lips and he gently presses them against the backs of my knuckles.