by Myers, AJ
What?! Like most people, I have a healthy human aversion to pain, you know? Oh, all right! And needles!
“How often?” I asked—more to take my mind off that needle than because I really wanted to know—as he prepped my thigh using an alcohol pad he had pulled from his pocket before he sat down. “How often do I have to get the injections?”
“Three times a day for the first week to build up the effects in your system,” he said as he tossed the first alcohol pad in the trash. “Twice a day for the first year. Then once a day after that. Once you’re stronger and have more control over your demon, you won’t need it as often. Some darklings have even managed to only need their injections once or twice a month. I have to admit, though, I do have to wonder if they aren’t supplementing with the real thing here and there.”
The real thing. Meaning they were taking the energy they needed to survive from other people. But how did one do that? Not that I ever planned to indulge myself, but I would have to ask Tyler about the mechanics of the whole thing.
I was so busy coming up with more and more disgusting ways someone might suck the life out of someone else that I didn’t notice when Tyler picked up the syringe again. I definitely noticed the needle jabbing into my muscle, though. With a half-shrieked curse that Grams would have washed my mouth out for, I tried to bat it away, but Tyler caught my hand and held it still.
“I’m sorry, beautiful,” he crooned as he pulled the needle out of my leg. “It hurts the first few times, but, as terrible as it may sound, you do get used to it.”
“Yeah, right,” I muttered, rubbing my leg to ease the burning, stinging muscle there. “I highly doubt that.”
“It’s true,” he insisted as he sent the syringe sailing into the wastebasket after the alcohol pad. “Just ask any diabetic who takes insulin injections. It’s not pleasant, but eventually it’s not so bad, either.”
“If you say so,” I agreed doubtfully.
Tyler turned around again to let me get dressed. “Trust me, you won’t mind them so much after a while. It’s either the shots, or the kind of hunger nightmares are made of.”
“But how does that work, anyway?” I asked as I pulled my jeans back on, trying to work it all out in my mind. “I mean, people eat with their mouth. Vampires bite people to feed. How does a darkling feed?”
Rather than answer, he just turned around and looked at me. I could practically see the gears in his mind turning, trying to find the right way to tell me without actually telling me anything. In the end, though, he finally gave in.
“Most darklings feed by sucking the essence out through their victim’s mouth,” he said with a sigh. “They’re very seductive, darklings. It’s easy for them to lure their prey into a simple kiss.”
“So…I’m like a succubus or something?” I asked, wincing when I heard how high my voice had become.
“That’s one way to look at it,” Tyler mumbled, looking uncomfortable. “Actually, a very good way.”
I just sat there, speechless, as that sank in. A kiss would never just be a kiss for me again. What did that mean for me and Nathan?
I felt my eyes start to burn like someone had squirted lemon juice in them at the thought of Nathan, but there were no tears. There never would be. Never again would I be able to show emotion like that. I would never be able to find that release again. Yet another thing Bastian’s sorry ass had taken from me.
Along with my dreams. Like my tears, dreams had just become a thing of the past. Darklings don’t sleep. Ever.
Speaking of which…
“And the whole dream thing?” I asked, trying not to wince. “How does that work?”
“Feeding on a dreaming victim is actually the easiest way for you to feed,” Tyler explained. “It’s safer than feeding on a conscious victim. For one thing, it dampens the connection between you and your prey. For another, they don’t know you’re feeding. But you should only do it if you absolutely have to, Em. It’s still dangerous, especially for a young darkling.”
I nodded, but didn’t say anything. Suddenly, I wished he hadn’t bothered to save me. Even facing the monsters of the lost plane would have been better than facing an eternity without dreams. The thought of those ghoulish arms reaching for my energy wasn’t as bad as knowing that even if my heart shattered a million times I would never be able to shed a tear.
The heartbreak that was about to begin in ten…nine…eight..
Of all the things Tyler had explained to me, he had left out a few important things. The questions had to be asked, but the words lodged in my throat. I didn’t really know if that was because I didn’t know how I was going to voice them or because I was afraid of the answers.
“Ty? Can I ask you something else?”
“Anything, beautiful.”
“How’s Jack?” I finally managed to choke out. “I mean, is he okay?”
“I don’t know, Em,” he sighed, not quite meeting my eyes. “It was a shock for him, coming around and realizing he’d missed a couple of months of his life. Rumor has it that the first time he got a glimpse of himself in the mirror he kind of lost it. Last I heard, his parents had sent him to a hospital for psychological treatment.”
So I had done it for nothing. I had died for nothing. I hadn’t saved him. Sure, I might have kept his soul from being consumed by those ghouls on the lost plane, but he was still gone. He would never be the same guy I knew, the charming guy who’d driven me crazy and made me laugh. He would only be a shell of that guy.
“I’m sorry, Em,” Tyler murmured, taking my hand, when I dropped my eyes to my lap.
I was sorry, too. Sorrier than he would ever know.
“Ty?” I said again after a few minutes.
“Yeah, beautiful?”
I had to literally force my next question out, but I finally managed to whisper, “Why are you here? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you are, but why you and not Grams…or Nathan?”
“I was afraid you were going to ask me that,” he sighed. “I know how confusing this all must be, but you have to know they would be here if they could. This separation will be as painful for them as it will be for you, but after the first time you woke up—”
“The first time I woke up?” I asked, cutting him off. “What do you mean, the first time?”
“I think it might be better if you see for yourself. Give me a second.”
He stood and left the room quickly, and I wandered blindly toward the window. I watched as the wind blew the leaves across the yard, wishing I could go out there and chase them the way I had as a kid. It was going to snow soon. I closed my eyes and imagined it, big soft flakes that would brush against my cheeks like kisses as they fell around me.
The thought of kisses brought thoughts of Nathan. And thoughts of Nathan put a hairline crack in my walls, allowing just a little bit of my pain and anger to slip out and flow through my veins like poison.
I had trusted him. I had believed him when he told me he would always be there. I had loved him. And what had I gotten in return? Betrayal, that’s what. He had left me.
Hell, he’d probably been happy to do it. Being with me had been one disaster after another. Four lifetimes of it. If I was honest—and I wasn’t about to be, not right that second—it was kind of hard to blame him.
I caught sight of myself in the window and flinched when I saw the look on my face. It was inhuman, my expression, and my eyes were glowing again, this time much brighter than they had been in the bathroom mirror. I moved closer, curious to see if my reflection would take on a life of its own again, but there was just me staring back. A very angry, very cold-looking version of me, true, but still just me.
“What?” I asked. “No snide remarks? No ‘I wanna share your toys’ speeches to give?”
Apparently not.
I turned away from the window with a sniff of disdain and started pacing the room. I wanted someone to fight with. I wanted someone to take my anger and hurt out on. I wanted to scream and throw things an
d cuss like a sailor. But there was no one there to accommodate me.
Not even my alter ego in the mirror.
I was still pacing when Tyler walked back into the room. As much as I wanted to fight, I really didn’t think Tyler deserved my wrath. I stopped my angry back and forth motion when I saw what he was carrying. I arched an eyebrow and he held the laptop out to me. Wary, but more than a little curious, I took it from him and sat down in the chair he’d abandoned.
“Just push play,” he instructed me softly. “I believe this will help you to understand better than I could. Afterwards, I will try to explain.”
Yeah, that didn’t sound good, did it?
I had to force my shaking fingers to open it—and even then I lifted the top so slowly you would have thought the demons of Hell were waiting to jump out and get me.
After pushing play, I decided that wasn’t so far off the mark.
“Okay, this is kind of creepy,” I whispered with a shudder as the very room I was sitting in came into focus on the screen.
The scene itself didn’t look all that bad—at first. I was sitting at the end of the bed, apparently staring at the wall. That wasn’t what sent shivers of dread down my spine, though. It was the look on my face. There was no emotion at all. It was like all that was there was a shell that resembled me. An empty shell.
Until I heard a door open and close, that is.
That’s when the real creepy factor set in.
“Em? Are you okay?” Nathan asked as he moved into camera range.
“I’m cold,” the shell said, a weird little smirk turning up her lips.
“I know you are.”
Nathan walked a few steps closer and I saw the shell thing take a deep breath. Her smile got a little wider, a little scarier, just before she dropped her head. The fire red curls I’m famous for fell forward to cover her face, keeping me from seeing her expression any longer.
“I need to give you a shot, Em,” Nathan said softly as he moved closer. “It’ll make you feel better. I promise.”
I wanted to scream at him to run. Seriously, couldn’t he see that thing wasn’t me?! Sure, she looked like me, but he had to be able to see the difference, right? Whatever that thing was, it was dangerous!
I wanted to look away when the thing lifted my head again, but I was frozen in place, my gaze fastened on the thing’s eyes. They were glowing! Like, glowing! My pretty blue eyes, always my best feature, had turned into ice-blue orbs that were lit up like a couple of LED lights. The smirk was no longer a smirk, but a sinister smile that would have stopped my heart if I’d still had a heartbeat to stop.
I had never seen anything so blatantly evil in my whole life. I slammed the laptop closed, unable to watch, just as it launched itself at Nathan, snarling like a wild animal.
“He’s all right,” Tyler said, answering the question I hadn’t been able to ask myself. “It was close, but I was able to restrain you before you fed.”
“Before I fed,” I repeated in a horrified whisper.
Fed. Though Tyler must have said the word a hundred times in the last couple of hours, I guess it really hadn’t hit home what he was trying to tell me. Suddenly though, I was getting the message loud and clear.
Humans ate.
Monsters fed.
It wasn’t me, I tried to tell myself. It wasn’t. I would remember. It was somebody else. It was something else. I don’t have anything to feel guilty about. I don’t.
But if that was true, why did I feel so awful?
Tyler barely flinched when I picked up the laptop and flung it across the room, but the impressive thud it made when it hit the wall wasn’t enough to represent the pain and anger eating at me. I wanted to scream myself hoarse and then start all over again. I wanted to rampage through the room, breaking everything in sight, until it resembled the shattered, desolate thing I’d become. But, more than anything, I didn’t want to feel any of that.
I didn’t want to feel anymore, period.
“I can’t do this,” I whispered, another dry sob lodging in my chest. “I can’t, Ty. I’ll screw up, I always do.”
“Em, look at me,” Tyler said softly, reaching out to tilt my chin up when I didn’t immediately obey him. “You’re going to be fine. You can do this, Em. If anyone can, it’s you. You’re stronger than anyone I know, beautiful.”
His aura flared a little brighter, and I caught a faint hint of his mouthwatering scent. But, rather than back away from me like I was contaminated when I sucked in a deep breath of it, he just gave me a sympathetic smile and molded one of his long-fingered hands to my cheek.
“You sure about that?” I asked, trying to turn away as a sad little sob broke through the dam I was using to hold them back.
In answer, he pressed a kiss to my forehead. I knew then that he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure at all.
Chapter 4: The Captive Chronicles
Day 1:
I have decided to stay in bed. Maybe forever. I’m calling it my coffin. What? I’m dead!
Anyway, I found a crack in the ceiling over the bed that I’d never noticed before. My mission in life now is to decide if it looks more like a duck or a pig…
I know, right. Deep thinking at its best.
Okay, so I didn’t take the news that I was a life-sucking demonoid with a smile. Really, I don’t think anyone would. For those first couple of days, I kind of went on autopilot. I moved only when I had to, I talked only when I had to. I climbed behind my internal walls, pulled the covers over my head, and mourned for everything I’d lost.
The real problem was that I didn’t know how to be me as a darkling. I didn’t look like me, I barely sounded like me, and I sure as hell didn’t feel like me. Mostly, I think, because everything that made me me was suddenly missing. It was all gone, all of it, and I didn’t know how to cope with the losses that just kept hitting me from every direction.
My friends? Gone. My boyfriend? Just a painful memory. My Grams? Yep, you guessed it—absent and not showing any signs of becoming a presence in the house again anytime soon.
My life was over, and, unfortunately, I didn’t know how to start a new one.
Tyler checked on me every half hour like a prison guard waiting for the convicts to revolt. I could almost feel the frustration rolling off him every time the door opened and then closed when he found me exactly where I’d been since I’d seen that damned video. I felt bad for worrying him—but not bad enough, apparently, since I wasn’t in a hurry to do anything about it.
“It’s a nice day out,” he said when he came to give me my shot at noon my second day on the new meds.
Indeed. And he was telling me this why? Because I looked like I cared? It wasn’t like I could go out and enjoy it, after all.
“The sun is out, the birds are singing,” he continued as he prepped my thigh before using me as a pin cushion. “The Earth is even still turning on its axis. Weird, huh?”
How awesome for the rest of the world.
“All right then,” he said cheerfully when he was finished playing nurse—seriously, he’d looked like he was actually enjoying himself when he stabbed me that time. “Well, let me know when you’re finished pretending to be a corpse and want some company.”
I really hoped he wouldn’t hold his breath while he was waiting.
Day 4:
Nothing much to report. I decided the crack looked more like a sheep than a duck or a pig. I stared out the window for about twelve hours. I let Tyler give me my shots. Yeah, my life is so exciting.
On a brighter note, I have now come up with at least a hundred ways to kill a fairy.
By day four, Tyler’s patience had started to wear thin. When it was time for my last shot of the day, he marched into the bedroom like he was going into battle. If I hadn’t been so mired down in self pity, I might have found the look on his face when he saw the empty bed amusing, but I didn’t. I didn’t find it unamusing, either. Actually, I didn’t care enough to feel any way about it.
&n
bsp; I lifted an eyebrow at him when he finally found me sitting in the empty bathtub, and then went back to staring at the wall—you know, for a change of scenery. Sighing, he came to sit on the edge of the tub. After studying me for a few minutes, he reached out to touch my cheek.
“You about done moping?” he asked when I turned to look at him.
I glared at him in answer and jerked my head away. Moping. I wasn’t moping, I was mourning my passing. Uh, there is a difference, you know?
“Guess not,” he muttered, pushing my legs over so he could climb into the tub with me. When I didn’t protest, he pulled my feet into his lap and started rubbing my instep through my sock. “Shea called. I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”
“The bad,” I muttered tonelessly, not really caring either way.
“All right,” he said, switching to my other foot. “Shea’s going to be out of town for a while. She’s leaving today.”
“What do you mean she’s ‘leaving’?” I asked with a shrug. “Looks to me like she’s already gone.”
Tyler gave me a warning look that said very clearly that I was starting to try his patience before explaining. “The Council is meeting to decide a very important matter. If she’s not there when they vote, it could be disastrous.”
“Figures,” I muttered, throwing my hands up in a gesture of contempt. “I’m having the life emergency of all time, and she’s running off to vote on how many toads should go into a potion or something. Now why do you suppose I’m not surprised?”
The way he looked at me was just creepy. I saw something in his eyes, something that looked entirely too much like fear for my peace of mind, before he said, very matter-of-factly, “I doubt Shea has ever used a toad in a potion, Em.”
“Whatever,” I grumbled.
“Enough!” he snapped, giving me a hard look. “That’s enough, Ember! Do you really think she would leave if she had any other choice?”