by ERIN BEDFORD
“And you came to ask me what I thought about it?” I raised a brow forcing myself to stay calm and not panic.
“No, not exactly.” He grimaced and then let out a heavy sigh. “The attacks started around the time I brought you here.”
“So, you thought it had something to do with me?” I asked, making sure my voice sounded unsure and not accusing.
“Well, Clarabelle.” He huffed. “I didn’t know what to think. This was before I knew you were, you know ...” He gestured at me and then started to pace. “I hadn’t come to accuse you of messing with the animals. I just wanted to know if you knew something, or if there was some kind of thing in the Core that would make you do it. Now that I know you’re a vampire, I’m thinking the blood on the animals wasn’t a prank.” His eyes bore into me, but I didn’t shrink away from it.
Standing tall, my shoulders back and head held high, rage surged through my veins. I snarled, baring my fangs, “I’m a vampire. I feed on blood. Would you rather I grab one of the villagers? One of my childhood friends? Or maybe I could take blood from those you punish, then you wouldn’t have to make a public spectacle about it.” Anger colored my words as my blood pumped through my veins. I didn’t know what I looked like just then but whatever it was, it terrified my father.
His mouth dropped open, and he stumbled back from me. When I realized my mistake, I took a deep breath and sank back against the opposite wall. “I’m sorry. I’m still getting used to this.” I waved a hand to myself. “Everything is heightened, more extreme. Emotions. Wants. Needs. Everything. I didn’t mean to come at you like that.”
My father cleared his throat and nodded curtly. “I understand. It’s fine. It’s fine.” He licked his lips, and his eyes darted to the side before moving back to settle on me. “I get that you need to feed, and of course, I wouldn’t want you to feed on the villagers. I’ll just tell the herders it’s a new kind of tick or something.”
“I appreciate that.”
We exchanged a nod and then fell into an uncomfortable silence. It was strange. I’d never been so out of place with my own father. Once upon a time, I’d have said he was my best friend in the world. That he was the only one who understood me. But now? We were nothing more than strangers. I didn’t see an outcome for this intended uprising that ended with a happily ever after ... for either of us.
My father finally broke the silence. “What are you going to do now?” I glanced over at him. He tucked his hands into the pockets of his brown pants. “You are out of the Core, and as far as I can tell, no one is looking for you.” When I raised a brow, he added, “Believe me, I checked and checked. I even asked your stepmother if she’s heard any news of you, and she’s had nothing but good things to say. Of course, she’s also distracted by Lea’s latest admirer.” He snorted bitterly. “They don’t even know what is going on underneath their noses. That all their good fortune is because we sold you to the monsters.”
“You did no such thing,” I interrupted him before he could start a pity party. “Sure, it might seem that way, but it wasn’t you who put me on that list. I wasn’t supposed to be on the list in the first place.”
“What?” His brows shot up to his hairline.
My lips twisted into a wry grin. “Apparently, I’m special. A girl from the Glade mixed in with the chosen cattle to be sacrificed to our gods.” I muttered the last bit, something I’d been thinking about to myself lately. Shaking off those thoughts, I continued, voice stronger and clearer, “Patrick and his cousin - my guide - Asher planned this. They wanted me to be chosen. The game was fixed from the beginning.”
“But why? That doesn’t make sense.” My father shook his head, and I understood his sentiment. I still didn’t understand it all. “Why chose someone they know isn’t going to keep quiet?”
“Because they want me to stop it.” My words were profound and confident because I’d heard them over and over the last few months. I was the one that was supposed to stop the Crimson Fold. The one who would make everything better. But of course, that still brought the question of how.
“That doesn’t make much sense either. Why would the vampires want you to stop them?” My father voiced the same questions I’d have myself. “Are you sure you have it right?”
I nodded. “Yes. Patrick and Asher don’t agree with the way the other Fold members behave. Like we don’t matter at all. We’re just ants to them. They want me to help change that.”
“But how?”
It was my turn to shrug. “They never were clear on that part. Just told me to trust them.” I scoffed and kicked my boot against the ground. “Look where that got me.”
“So, what are you going to do now?”
I had been rash to take off without finding out the full extent of what we were up again. All I had was myself and my word. Both of those things would be dangerous to just present to the world. My father might be forgiving but the rest of them? I wasn’t so sure. I needed more information. At least, know how many vampires there are.
With my decision made, I glanced back up from the floor and met his gaze. “The only thing I can do. I have to go back.”
Chapter 6
Getting out of the Core was a lot easier than getting back into it. I couldn’t ride along with my father for a delivery because he didn’t have any. I also didn’t want him anywhere near the Core. I didn’t want to give them an excuse to use him as leverage against me.
I chuckled to myself as I darted across the darkened fields. A year ago, the idea of my father being leverage against me wouldn’t even have crossed my mind. If anything, I’d have been his weakness. Someone they could bully to make him do their bidding, but I half wanted someone to do that now. I’d rip their heads off their bodies and deliver it to their families in a neatly wrapped box.
Whoa. I forced myself to clear the image from my mind. That was dark. I’d always had a pretty vivid imagination but decapitating someone had never been on my list of daydreams. Was Patrick’s blood making me crueler? Or was it there all along and the vampire in me had just brought it to the surface?
I didn’t let myself contemplate that prospect for long. I had other, more important things to worry about. Like how to get out of the Glade undetected.
There were four sections to the Glade, one for each point of the compass. My father oversaw the southern side. Each side also had only one way into Middleton. That entrance had guards with high powered weapons that would blow a hole through my chest. I’d seen it happen. Not a pretty picture.
The wall between the Glade and Middleton was a lot larger than that of the Core and the Inner Circle, probably because they didn’t expect those in the Inner Circle to want to escape. If anything, they’d be trying to get into the Core, not out of it. That was probably why it was so easy for me to get out.
I almost got caught by a few stragglers on their way home. I could only thank the tall stalks of grain in the fields that I was able to hide between, keeping me from their view. I watched them as they passed, my eyes trained on them.
Two men. Not much larger than my father. They were talking about the counts for the day. Boring stuff. Things that would have put me to sleep at a different time.
“Man,” one of the men cried out, looking down at his hand. “That thing really got me.”
“You need to be more careful,” the other man chastised him. “You don’t want to get an infection.”
The injured man grimaced.
If I hadn’t had such good eyesight, I might not have seen it. As it were, they were as clear as day to me. I could see every facial expression and movement, even the wrap around the injured man’s hand. Red colored the white fabric, and I tensed.
My nostrils flared at the hint of blood in the air. My feet moved forward of their own accord. I hadn’t fed tonight, there wasn’t time. Didn’t matter really, the animal blood didn’t quite satisfy the thirst for real, warm human blood. My fangs ached as I got closer to them. My foot cracked on a fallen stalk, making the two
men freeze.
“What was that?” The other man’s eyes shot to my hiding spot. I stayed as still as possible though my fangs ached to sink into his friend’s hand.
The injured man shook his head and kept moving. “It’s probably just a cat or something. Come on, I need to get some stitches in this thing. Think the medic has some of those pain-killing herbs left?”
The other man didn’t move his gaze from where I stood, his eyes searching for something. Finally, after what seemed like forever, he turned away from where I hid and started after his friend.
Smacking him on the back, the uninjured one said, “You know they won’t give it to you unless you’re dying. A nick on the hand isn’t dying. Suck it up.”
“You don’t know my pain,” the injured one complained, and his friend laughed.
I listened to them as they moved further and further away, my stomach growling at me for letting them go. I didn’t blame it. Working on an empty stomach was never good, but I wasn’t about to blow my cover by jumping the first person with a cut.
When I was sure I was in the clear, I crept from my spot and, in a whoosh, found myself pressed up against the inner wall. My speed still surprised me even though I’d had it for a while now. I’d never been a fast runner, nor a slow one. Anytime we had to exercise for school, I’d be in the middle of the pack. Just average. Nothing special.
Now, though, I’d leave them in the dust, even lap them a few times. The speed definitely was one of the better parts of my new condition.
No one sounded the alarm as I made my way across the wall. It was too tall for me to attempt jumping. Even my abilities had their limits. Plus, the spikes on top would hurt if I landed wrong. Impaled on steel spikes was never high on my ways to die list.
With going over a no go and a seeming lack of tunneling abilities to go under the wall, I had to go through the only gate. The heavily guarded gate. Oh, joy.
As I approached the well-lit archway, I hid behind a work shed. There were two guards as usual with none on the other side. If I could draw them away somehow, I might be able to sneak through. I had super speed. If now wasn’t the time to utilize it, I didn’t know when would be.
I glanced around me to see what I had to work with. There was a barrel with some pitchforks, I shuddered at the sight of them. The likelihood of me ending up on the wrong end of those was too close for comfort. Besides a few other farming tools - which wouldn’t really help me out in this situation, unless I planned to seed them to death - the only other things possibly useful were some large rocks.
Sighing, I reached down and grabbed one of them. Beggars can’t be choosers, I thought as I hurled it a few yards away from the guards.
Immediately, their heads jerked up and turned toward the sound. They didn’t move away from the entrance and, after a moment, settled back into position. I threw another one and then another one.
On that third throw, they ran toward the sound, shouting, “Hey, you there!”
Taking my chance, I rushed from behind the shed. I almost hesitated at the bright light filling the area around the entrance but forced myself to keep going as I made it through the open gate and into Middleton. I heard the guards coming back, so I quickly ducked between some metal structures.
With the Glade behind me and one step closer to the Core, I could relax a bit. No one in Middleton knew me, not unless they had seen me on the monitors, but from what I’d heard, the Moles had even less time than we did to watch those.
My nose wrinkled. The air here was thicker and had a tinge of coal particles to it. I wasn’t sure if vampires needed to breathe to live, but since it didn’t make me immediately go into a coughing fit, I assumed I was safe, at least from dying, if not from the smell.
I’d only been to Middleton once before. When I was ten, we had a field trip to tour Alban. Something about making sure we understood how important our part was in the workings of the whole country. All it did was show me how less fortunate we were to those in the Inner Circle. Thinking about it now, that was probably what the Crimson Fold wanted, to pit us against each other and make us resent those they have favored.
I snorted. Little did they know.
My eyes scanned the dusty area. Where the Glade was green and full of life, Middleton was a world of gray. The buildings were cold, hard metal of different shades of gray, some rusted beyond repair. The ground wasn’t much better. Where we had grass and sometimes pretty flowers, there wasn’t any sign of life. Dirt and gravel decorated the ground.
The most significant difference was the silence.
In the Glade, we worked in the fields or with the animals. So, there was some form of talking or sometimes even singing as we worked, but in Middleton, there was no sign of ... anybody. No children playing. No workers.
Of course, it was after work hours, but even in the Glade, there were stragglers. I could barely hear the hearts beating in the metal shacks. Were they so much more repressed here than we were? It was hard to believe, but it was possible. I wouldn’t want to live in Middleton, working underground, rarely getting to see the sky. It seemed like a horrible way to live ... if you’d call breathing in this filth living.
Walking down the obvious path, my eyes scanned around me. I didn’t believe I would get through the whole section before coming across someone. It would be too easy.
Then, as if reading my mind, a woman came stumbling out of one of the houses. She coughed and fell to her knees, coughing harder. No one went out of their homes to check on her. If anything, Middleton became quieter, as if the entire population was holding their collective breath.
The woman’s coughing turned into a fit. She braced herself on the ground and gagged. Thick black gunk spilled out of her mouth and fell to the earth, and I looked away. I’d never had a strong stomach. Just the sight of vomit usually made me want to throw up as well. I looked away until it sounded like she was done, but when my eyes went back to her, she had collapsed on the ground. I almost walked away but stopped. She wasn’t moving.
My feet quickly moved toward her, and I knelt beside her, being careful not to kneel in the vomit. Her hair was thrown over her face, and I pushed it back to check the pulse on her neck. At first, I thought she just had dark skin but soon realized it was dirt or coal dust. It was so ingrained in her skin that she probably couldn’t get it out anymore.
I glanced down at my hands. They were clean and perfectly manicured. Not how they were when I first arrived in the Core. Back then, my fingers had been like hers, except mine was from digging and planting in the fields rather than working in the mines. When I first met Asher, they had soaked my hands in some kind of solution that had removed all traces of my home, leaving behind only what they wanted to see.
Brushing the thought away, I felt her pulse. Nothing. She’d coughed herself to death. Probably inhaled too much coal dust or whatever other horrid things filled the air here. I stared down at her. I wanted to be sad. I really did, but I was just tired. The revolution hadn’t even started yet, and I was ready for it to be over.
I sniffed and shook my head. What did that say about our chance?
No one came out to collect the body. It probably happened too often for them to care. I glanced back at the woman, wondering if there was anything I could do. I didn’t have anything with me to clean her up with. I didn’t even know how they gave burials here. Even if I had a whole vat of that cleaning stuff, I didn’t think it would bring the woman back to life.
Not that it would do any good. She’d just end up breathing in more of the stuff and die all over again. Sometimes, there was really nothing you could do. Sometimes, the only option available was to walk away. Which was what I did. I stood up, dusted my pants off, and walked away, not looking back no matter how much I wanted to.
Chapter 7
The wall separating Middleton and the Inner Circle was identical to that of the one around the Glade, except there were a lot more guards. Apparently, not a whole lot of people wanted to get into Middlet
on, but a lot more wanted into the Inner Circle. With what I’d just seen, I could understand why.
I didn’t trust that I could use the same trick I did on the other guards. Two guards were easy to fool. Four? Not so much.
Instead of heading toward the gate, I searched along the line of the wall for some way over. There was a rickety old structure that must have been a watchtower at some point, but now it looked like it might fall over at any moment. The ladder had broken off halfway up, probably another factor as to why the guards didn’t care much about it.
Hazardous to humans. Not so much for vampires.
I crept over to the structure, my eyes locked on where the guards stood. The light was busted over here, so I was cloaked in shadows. Unless one of them was an owl or I made a lot of noise, they wouldn’t find me.
Placing a foot on the bottom support beam of the tower, I lifted myself up. It creaked loudly, and I froze. When the guards didn’t even glance my way, I put my foot up on the next one and then the next one. I dragged myself up the side of the tower until I could grab hold of the bottom rung of the ladder. The tower swayed with my weight, and I didn’t wait to see if it would hold. I just had to get a bit higher and then I could launch myself over the side of the wall.
Or at least that was the plan.
The tower creaked and wobbled as I hurried up the side. Just as I reached the height I needed, something broke, and I was falling. I clutched the side of the tower as it descended toward the wall. The guards’ shouts and the pounding of feet told me my time was almost up.
Falling sideways, the watchtower fell toward the wall. It was now or never. Taking a deep breath, I jumped off the side of the tower. Metal clanged and crashed as it smashed into the wall. I barely skimmed over the top of the wall, the spikes on top ripping my shirt and nicking my skin.