Bite Me: A Vampire Anthology

by Cain, Addison

  Oh no.

  As far as he’s aware, I’m crashing at Lucy’s; I doubt she will sound an alarm. She saw me leave with Sonny and likely assumes I’m getting my rocks off for the first time.

  The dead witches... It’s like a light pops on in my head, as I realize someone will find them. Once the Witch Trials celebration is over, the town’s people will return to their cars in the lot and find all the butchered bodies. They’ll alert my dad. He’ll want to get in touch with me, to ensure I’m okay. When he can’t, he will know something is wrong. He will know I’m missing.

  And he’ll find me.

  I have to believe with all my heart that he’s going to find me—hopefully before Sonny returns. The alternative is too much to bear.

  But it seems the alternative is my own reality.

  Heavy footsteps echo through the cove, dashing my optimism.

  It’s Sonny.

  I can’t explain how I know, but I do.

  He’s come for me.

  * * *

  In a panic, I try to sit up by using the edge of the cot for support, but it’s a struggle. I’m weak. My arms feel like jelly and my legs are so numb.

  Come on, Vi!

  I grit my teeth, using every ounce of strength I possess to put myself in a half-sitting position, dripping in my own pure white hair from where my ponytail has been removed. That’s when I notice where the shimmery blue light is coming from. A plunge pool with white mist coming off the water, fabricated in the corner of the cove.

  It’s like something out of a disturbing fairytale. Is this where Sonny lives?

  “Ah, you’re awake.” Sonny’s raspy voice makes me cower under the fur blanket, as I figure he’s finally come to kill me. “I was starting to worry I’d given you too many of those spelled herbs.”

  Spelled herbs?

  I watch, petrified as he walks into the room with cool grace, like kidnapping me is totally okay and not screwed up on any level. He’s carrying a bunch of trinkets in his arms, crouching to set them down on a lancet-shaped shelf by my cot. I note candles, a big white rock, and a chilled bottle of water. The next thing I note is what he’s wearing: laced-up tanned boots, dark colored jeans, and a black v-neck shirt that boasts the hard masculinity of his hairy chest. It’s different attire to what he was dressed in when I met him.

  That makes me think it’s after the celebration.

  “What’s going on?” I ask my first question in a meek tone, sounding all croaky and dry. “Where are we?”

  Sonny turns up his head and looks at me, searching back and forth between my eyes. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but a rational part of me wonders if it’s my nudity beneath the blanket. I bundle it at my chest, cherishing my modesty, internally begging him to ogle anything else.

  “You’ve been crying?” That’s what he asks, seeming surprised.

  Of course I’ve been crying! I want to scream. You’ve kidnaped me!

  He leans over, causing me to wince in fear that he’s going to hurt me. But he merely pulls a piece of tissue from his pocket and pats my cheeks dry. Slowly. Softly. The tenderness confuses me, especially when he puts the tissue in one of my hands and gives me a light squeeze, as if to comfort me.

  What kind of a beast does that?

  “To answer your question,” he says, keeping his tone easy, “we’re deep in the White Mountains.”

  Just outside of town?

  It’s like he can hear my internal questions. He nods, motioning to the other side of the cove where there’s a crack in the wall, letting in a peek of light. “Far away from anyone who’d like to get their hands on you, including your father.”

  My stomach somersaults at the mention of my dad. And it sinks when Sonny says he isn’t coming.

  “I compelled him,” he confesses why my parents let me go off with him in the first place. “As far as he knows, you’re with your friends.”

  No...no!

  I look away, repressing a monsoon of tears. At this point, I wish he had let the witches take me. Anything has got to be better than this.

  I am again confused by his kindness when he uncaps the bottle of water and offers it to me, telling me to drink. “You must be thirsty.”

  He’s right. I am. As I lick my lips, I can feel my tongue is rough like sandpaper. But still, I won’t drink. I’m afraid he’s drugging me again, and I can’t have that. I need my wits about me if I’m going to have any chance of escape.

  “You don’t want any water?” he asks with raised eyebrows, flicking inky strands of hair off his face.

  I shake my head, huddling deeper in the fur blanket.

  He doesn’t take offense, simply putting the bottle aside. That’s when I expect some kind of explanation on his behalf, that maybe I’ve got this all wrong, and he took me to keep me safe.

  But an explanation doesn’t come.

  He doesn’t utter a word. Just watches me, eyes all over my body at once, turning my skin into a sphere of pricks.

  I cannot stand it.

  “Why am I here, Sonny?” I speak for the both of us, desperate for answers. Why am I still alive? That’s what I should ask specifically, but I’m too scared of his response.

  “You must’ve figured out what’s going on by now?” He cocks his head and studies me with a deep, intense stare. “I told you the story. A coven of witches need a human albino for a spell, so they can create a foreseer. Given you’re the last living albino, I couldn’t let them have you.”

  I don’t need him to reiterate all that, and my scowl suggests as much. I know why the witches want me.

  “Ohhh.” Sonny nods a couple of times, realizing the true point behind my question. “You mean, why haven’t I killed you yet?”

  I gulp, nodding in skittish motions. Please say you’ve changed your mind.

  “Well, Vi”—he stretches his legs to sit up beside me on the edge of my cot, hunched over with elbows on his knees—“the vision you saw of us making love has piqued my curiosity.”

  We’re back to that?

  “Why?”

  “Because, human albinos who haven’t been spelled should only be able to envision their end. Since you saw us making love, I’m kinda concerned.”

  My blood runs cold, as I wonder if that’s what the vision was. Us making love, is it my end?

  “How do you know it was a vision?” I try to make him believe he’s got this all wrong; he’s got me wrong. I’m no foreseer. I’m just an ordinary American girl who wants to go home. “How do you know it wasn’t wishful thinking, Sonny?”

  A sly gleam reaches the greenness of his eyes, as he whispers, “You want me to make love to you, is that what you’re saying?”

  I glance away in both revulsion and shame, shrinking into the blanket. No, I do not want him to make love to me—well, I don’t anymore. I’m sickened by the sheer idea of ever fancying him.

  “Is this where we were?” Sonny casts a long-fingered hand around the cove. “Did I have a taste of you here?”

  I’m cringing as I blink about to be sure, remembering how our hot bodies were entangled in this exact cot. The hungry moans. The sensation of Sonny’s breath on my lips.

  “Vi?”

  “Yes,” I say timidly, certain we were here. “This is the place I saw in the vision.”

  “Hmmm,” Sonny ponders, chewing the inside of his mouth. “Strange.”

  Strange indeed. It’s all so strange. Never in my life have I experienced anything out of the ordinary—short of being paralytic with liquor—and now I’m seeing the future?

  “Maybe this is what M.N. meant when she told me I’d find peace in the extinction of albinos.” Sonny is still musing aloud, looking around the cove in a deep state of reflection. “Maybe I’m going to die with you.” The second the words leave his mouth, I want to puke, horrified and full of dread.

  He can’t die with me. He’s already claimed my freedom, and now he thinks he can be a part of my death?

  “Who’s M.N.?” I say, fisting my ha
nds in the blanket with rising bitterness. “Your mother? Tutor?”

  Another grin, as Sonny peers down on me and says, “She’s Mother Nature.”

  Mother, what?

  I’m certain he’s joking, but the sure look on his face tells me otherwise.

  “You know who and what she is, don’t you?” he asks. “You know she’s the creator of everything?”

  “Obviously I know what Mother Nature is,” I snap with offense. “I’m not stupid.”

  He leans in just enough for me to smell the spice of his cologne, full of amusement. “Just checking. One can never be too certain of what humans do and don’t know these days.”

  “Well, I know plenty.” I lean away with a scowl, squeezing the fur blanket to my chest now. “And she isn’t the creator of everything, you know? She’s the controller. The force.”

  “That’s what you’ve been taught to believe, but you’re wrong. Mother Nature created everything from the heavens and earths to good and bad, life and death. She blessed witches with magic, ghosts with eternal life, and cursed my family bloodline to fashion Hunters... Trust me, there’s no end to her power.”

  She sounds horrible, and I know my face says so.

  “Awww, ever so judgy.” Sonny chuckles. “You should stop. Condemning isn’t worth your mental energy.”

  Says him.

  “Were you born this way?” I ask, meaning both a vampire and an arrogant asshole.

  “No. It doesn’t work like that,” he says, assuming I’m only referring to his vampire nature. “Hunters aren’t born. They are awakened when their parents die.”

  “Your parents killed themselves with knowing you’d become”—I look him up and down, grimacing—“this?”

  He nods, unbothered by my loathing. I just stare at him in response, unsure of what shocks me more: Mother Nature being thrown into our mix, or knowing his parents turned him into a vampire by killing themselves.

  “I can see your thoughts churning.” Sonny shifts his sitting position, crossing one leg over the other. “I’m going to take a wild guess and say you’re disturbed that my parents let this happen to me?”

  He’s got that right.

  “It really wasn’t that bad.” He waves out to brush me off. “This might surprise you, Vi, but my parents ended their own lives out of guilt.”

  Guilt? Pttf. I don’t believe that for a second. No person who feels guilt would turn their child into a beast.

  “It’s true,” Sonny says, standing by his word. “That’s what happens to Albino Hunters. The more we kill, the more we feel, until the guilt becomes too much and the only reprieve is death.”

  “Guess I can assume you haven’t killed many, then?”

  He chuckles at my accusing tone, saying I’ve assumed right. “I’ve killed fifty-three, to be precise.”

  My jaw drops, astonished.

  “Nawww, come on, judgy,” he teases. “Don’t be like that. My mother and father’s slaughter count far outweighs mine.”

  I wish he was joking, but I know he’s not. The fact makes me want to ask how many—to see how long it takes for a vampire to feel remorse—but I can’t seem to find my voice. He tells me anyway, stating that his parents have slain hundreds, including men, women—and children.

  I want to cry.

  “By the time I turned twenty-four,” he says, unaware of my grief, “they lost count, just before they lost their minds to guilt.”

  The urge to cry grows stronger, tears brimming my eyes. I don’t pity his parents—well, not totally. I’m mostly heartbroken for all those who have lost their lives due to some stupid witchy goal for power. Why has this happened? How could any God let this be?

  Sonny tips his head in a reflecting fashion, frowning at me.

  “What?” I snap through my tears.

  “You really are sad, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I am.” I use the tissue he gave me to wipe my runny nose. “Death isn’t funny, Sonny. No matter how or why one commits such abhorrence, it’s not a laughing matter—or do you think your parents’ deaths are funny?”

  I expect him to continue with amusement, to tease me further with his dark humor, but shockingly, he looks away in what could almost be mistaken for shame.

  I don’t believe it.

  “You know I’m right,” I say, still wiping my nose. “You don’t find their demise funny in the slightest, do you?”

  “No,” he whispers, shaking his head. “I don’t. Never have. It’s the realist thing I’ve ever experienced.”

  I am again shocked when he tells me how it happened, how they came into his bedroom one night, mad with madness.

  “It feels like a thousand sunrises ago.” He rubs his forehead, mentally reliving every second of the experience. “I woke up to the sight of them drenched in blood, pacing in endless circles around my room. Mother was crying in agony, clutching her stomach. Father was shouting at the top of his lungs for someone to stop. I didn’t know who at first, until he said they were his dead. He said they were everywhere. He said they were tormenting him, urging him to kill himself. So, he did. And he made my mother do it, too.”

  At this point, I’m holding my mouth, horrified that his parents made him sit on the bed with them while they waited for the sun to come up.

  “I knew right then something was wrong,” he says beneath his breath. “It’d been so long since I had seen them in the sun; I didn’t know what to expect, but it was beyond a nightmare. Raging flames. The loudest screams I ever heard. Then dust. Lots of dust. Their bodies disappeared into nothingness—and after that, I changed.”

  I can see the change happen in his distant gaze, as every bone in his body cracked. His skin seared with heat, laced in thick black veins. Fangs broke from his top jaw, giving him the means to feed.

  “The worst part was the dangerous desire to kill.” His voice deepens, poisoned with the memories. “I could sense my victims...I was supernaturally drawn to them...until I killed them.”

  “You’ve been doing this since you were twenty-four?” I speak in whispers, still disturbed. “That’s how old you are now, isn’t it? You said while we were walking to the parking lot.”

  He nods, lifting his broken eyes to mine. “I’m frozen at this age, Vi. Damned to never grow older. Only wiser.”

  That’s so sad—and I abhor that I think it’s sad. I shouldn’t pity him. He doesn’t deserve it.

  He agrees, telling me to stop feeling sorry for him. “I told you before, your sympathy for me is misplaced.”

  “Oh, my apologies,” I say with disdain, smacking tears off my cheeks while clutching the blanket to my body with my free hand. “I’m struggling to shed my compassion as easily as others do.” I mean him particularly. “Give me time, Sonny, and I might become so cold.”

  His mood returns to wicked and amused, as he chuckles in the darkest tone. “I like your sharp tongue. You should use it more often. Maybe then, you wouldn’t get caught up in such sticky situations.”

  Is that what he thinks this is? A sticky situation?

  “You’re incredible, you know that?” I scoff each word, absolutely appalled with him. “You run around killing without mercy...you lure and kidnap girls out of curiosity.” I pause for a moment to show my revulsion, while he stares me out with a blank expression on his face. “Why not let the witches take me, Sonny? Why not fight your destiny or whatever the hell you call it and give someone a chance for once? Give me a chance, please? Let me live.”

  “No. You can’t become a foreseer.”

  “I’d rather that than die.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.”

  “Yes, I would!” I scream with such passion it ricochets around the cove. “I would rather anything then die, and you know it! I have a family; a mother, a father, brothers, a sister...I have friends. I want to live! I want to grow old with the people I love!”

  “You don’t want that, you silly girl!” he snaps back at me, making me flinch. “You wouldn’t want that if you knew.�
��

  “Knew what?”

  “If you became a foreseer,” he really lays into me, shouting, “not only will the witches be the most powerful creatures on this earth, but you’ll be their blind, paraplegic dog!”

  What?

  “Yeah,” he hisses with his nostrils flaring. “Believe me when I tell you this, you don’t want that. Death is kinder.”

  I would agree, but I have no words, gripping my throat to ease the need to puke. No one mentioned this before. Neither he nor the witches said I’d become a disabled pet with only my tormentors to rely on.

  “What’s wrong, hmm?” Sonny interrupts my thoughts. “Didn’t think about what would happen to you?”

  I don’t answer him, just glare.

  “You don’t need to say anything.” He huffs. “You’re an eighteen-year-old girl...of course you didn’t think of what would happen. But do you know what, Vi? Lacking the ability to walk and see isn’t even the worse part”—Sonny inclines toward me, dominating himself over me—“your friends and family...your father, mother, brothers, and sister...they’ll all be killed. The witches won’t want anyone coming after you, so they’ll get rid of anyone who would dare to take you.”

  “Stop!” I cry, terrified out of my mind. “Stop! Just stop it, god damnit!”

  “Stop indeed,” Sonny says, sitting back. “Enough story telling. Enough with all this.” His mood shifts another gear as he reaches over for something on the lancet shelf: the white rock. “Do you remember what this is for?”

  How could I forget? He used a similar stone to foresee my end.

  I now assume he does it to all his victims, like some kind of sick, private joke in the midst of murder and bloodshed.

  “I wanna know more about your vision,” he says, sounding stone cold. “And with this rock being bigger than the last I had you touch, it should help expand your prophecy.” He offers it to me, ordering, “Don’t hold back. I want every detail before I kill you.”

  “Why?” I sob even harder, streaming with tears. “So you can try to cheat death?”

  He sits up with the rock in his hands, smiling desolately at me. “If you think I want to cheat death, then you have me sorely mistaken.”