by Myers, J. L.
Shell-shocked, I sat there in complete silence as Caius released my hand. He had spoken out of love and concern for me, for all of us. I was risking more than my and Ty’s safety. And Caius was covering for me, lying to his counterparts. My heart squeezed with the pressure of a vice beneath my ribs. Uncertainty was in every beat. How could I stay with Ty? Nausea poisoned my insides. I felt like vomiting. “May I be excused? I need time to think.”
I forced my tearing eyes up to my uncle. Instantly I was taken aback. He sat watching me, now re-seated in his padded chair. Something was different. His skin gleamed under the desk’s poor lighting, his features radiant and youthful. It was a stark contrast to his disheveled appearance when I had first arrived. The ancient vampire blood worked as Caius had stated, rejuvenating and restoring. Still its effects hadn’t seemed to penetrate my body in the slightest. The mental and emotional strain I felt over Ty drained me to my core. No amount of blood could ever relieve that. Only change could.
“Of course,” Caius answered with a nod, his expression frozen and hard. “I trust you will make the right decision. But do not take too long. This issue must be put to rest, before it is too late.”
~
“What is this place?” I questioned Marcus, frowning at the red neon sign flashing Bite.
On arriving to the library this morning, Marcus had opted for a different lesson, one he stated, “books could not teach.” Instead, he had toured me around the Armaya’s expansive grounds. Victorian street lamps lit the cobblestone streets. They curved in a labyrinth, fronting stone and mortar residential homes, followed by an entire commercial community. It was surprising to see how populated the streets were. People—all vampires—moved from one boutique store to another. Others kicked back at one of many cafes. It was all so…human.
Marcus chuckled, hoisting the strap of his leather messenger bag across his chest. “I figured you’d never have visited a club like this before.”
Marcus passed through the thick wooden doors. I followed after him, leaving the well-lit street and star-spangled night sky behind. Inside, I glanced around the darkened space. The club was almost vacant. Only a handful of patrons occupied booths just past the blackened dance floor. Being mid-morning in vampire time, it wasn’t surprising. Yet a scent wafting from their tables was clear. It hung thick in the air. Human blood.
Marcus laced his fingers through mine and smiled, distracting me from my thoughts. The movement sent a spark through my hand. It somehow felt alien and natural all at the same time. I didn’t pull away. Instead I allowed him to lead me past the velvet-draped lounges. We stopped at an impressive bar that was entirely made of glass. It was even tinted by the glow of red lights.
The bartender turned from a group of women who caught sight of Marcus. They smiled before wrinkling their noses at me in unmistakable distaste. Each held a cocktail glass tipped with thick blood.
“Marcus, we’re free for a date,” one of the vampire women toyed. She drew aside the collar of her blouse to expose the supple-looking flesh of her neck. “If you’re thirsty…”
I flinched in shock, banging my elbow on the glass bar top. Was that woman actually offering her blood, among other things?
Marcus smirked. “Sorry, ladies. I have less sordid companionship today.”
The woman who had spoken flicked her hair over her shoulders and twitched away. Her entourage scurried after her.
The waiter mumbled to himself and tipped his head. “Lord Marcus Vladimir, the usual?”
Marcus’s lips split to reveal sharpened fangs. “I do think you forget your manners, bar keep. This,” he said eying me, “is Miss Amelia Lamont.”
The bartender’s eyes widened and he looked me up and down. Suddenly I was the most interesting thing he had ever seen. He bowed his head and crossed a fist over his chest. “P-please accept my apologies, Lady Lamont. I…I did not realize.” He raised his eyes to Marcus. “What may I do to amend my insolence?”
“Penance is not necessary,” Marcus said waving his free hand, though the sharp look in his eyes said otherwise. “But we would appreciate some privacy, in The Pit.”
The bartender nodded then cast a glance at a bouncer manning a robed entryway. The mono-muscled man dipped his head. Then he disappeared into the darkness beyond the archway.
“Much appreciated,” Marcus directed to the bartender. He squeezed my hand and we walked over.
The entire interaction left me feeling confused, and totally out of place. The manner of respect-tinged fear the bartender had projected was unlike anything I had ever encountered. “He knew who I was?” I whispered. “How?”
We paused before the rope and Marcus turned to me. He brushed my loose hair behind my ears. “You and your brother, Dorian.” His voice almost prickled over my brother’s name. “You’re the only people who were turned as infants and allowed to remain alive. You’re an anomaly. An urban legend, most believe. Never meant to be, but now regarded with the status of royalty. You’re one of us.”
“Oh.” From the start, Caius had taken the risk of giving us life when we should have been put down. I shivered at the thought. He’d defied vampire law to save us. Yet my actions were still causing him grief. Here, no matter how ridiculous it seemed to me, I was considered one of them, royalty. And even though I remained attached to Ty, Caius continued to protect me. Ty… The thought of him made my heart ache. There were so many issues. He’d called again last night, but I couldn’t talk to him. Why? I knew the answer. It was because I wasn’t sure anymore, sure about him, sure about us.
“The Pit is ready, my Lord.”
The bouncer’s deep voice caused my body to jolt. Total trepidation overrode my internal torment. The Pit?
“You may leave,” Marcus said with a nod to the bouncer. He pulled back the velvet robe and smiled impressively. “After you, Lady Lamont.”
With caution, I stepped past the barrier, pausing to let my vision adapt to the darkness. A wide hallway spanned ahead. At its end was a stairwell that led beneath the ground. Marcus’s hand found mine, directing me down the blacked-out stairs. “Where are we going?”
A fanged smile tugged at his lips. “You’ll see.”
The stairs’ landing opened onto a circular room. Kerosene wall lanterns offered minimal lighting to the stone-walled and wood-braced chamber. Humidity thickened the air, elevating a scent I couldn’t confuse. Human blood. It was the same scent I’d detected upstairs with only one slight difference. This blood, I could tell, was fresh.
My mouth watered and my eyes darted around the room. Partitions were set at intervals, each with two chairs facing toward each other. Chairs that supported slumped over people, humans. Their quiet breathing reached my ears. “T-they’re human,” I said, my voice shaking. A lump crawled up my throat and I swallowed it back down. “What are they doing here?”
Marcus’s fangs glinted through parted, smiling lips. “They’re lunch.”
At first I almost choked on his words. Then I reigned in my startled reaction as I remembered something Kendrick had said.
“I’m sick of dead blood.” Around the parking lot students had been scurrying to get out of the rain. Kendrick had watched them as though they were cattle. “But your mom was quite clear on the conditions pertaining to my visit. No human victims.”
Back then my stomach had dropped, churning with predatory instinct and seething disgust. But my fear had been unwarranted, at least when it came to Kendrick. He didn’t have to kill to feed. The humans were merely a meal, not a sacrifice. “You don’t kill them, do you?”
Marcus laughed. It was a short-lived but amused sound. “No, we don’t kill these humans. It’s purely their choice to donate.”
Despite the humidity, Marcus’s words made me shiver. What human would willingly subject themselves to a life like this? Waiting in the pit of a club to be drained day in and day out by monsters?
“I know what you’re thinking,” Marcus said. “And in answer, in payment for their… services
, these humans are offered the chance at a longer life as a vampire.”
They wanted to become vampires? How could anyone if given the choice want to become a bloodthirsty monster? To live in the shadows as only turned vampires could? To never live a normal life and have a family that they could grow old with?
I stared down at my free hand. Blue veins were visible through my pasty and almost transparent flesh. Those veins would darken, becoming more prominent if I refrained from what my body needed most. Blood. “How could anyone want this?”
“Would you trade knowing Kendrick or even me, and the superior world you could live in to be just human?” Marcus snapped with contempt. He glared over the slumped and almost unmoving forms. “To be a weak, dwindling flame without a cause?” With tense hands he gripped my shoulders and shook. His teal-blue eyes were lasers through spikes of blond hair. “Amelia, you belong here, with me, with all of us.”
His harshness stunned me, but it also made me think. When I had first discovered the monster lurking beneath my flesh, I would have given anything to be normal, to believe I was just human. But so much had happened since then. I wasn’t a killer as I had dreaded. I could control it. And within these walls I was accepted. Not a freak. This was where I belonged. I shook my head. “I wouldn’t change a thing.”
~
Marcus and I walked hand in hand from Bite. Fresh, warm blood swarmed my veins, fueling excitement at my accomplishment. There had been no struggle to pull away from the blood donor. I had been in complete control.
Now humming Skillet’s song ‘Awake and alive’, I felt alive in a way I had only experienced twice before. Except this time there was nothing catastrophic to taint the high. Every inch of my skin tingled and my pulse was noticeably elevated. My mind felt sharper, like I was seeing the world through brand new eyes. Even with a thick cloud cover now across the night sky, the lamp-lit streets seemed brighter. I could hear individual footsteps and entire conversations. There was the sound of a door opening and closing with the chime of a bell. They were all things that surrounded us, but were out of sight.
“I feel like I could literally run across the country.” Or, I thought, nick a motorbike and take off, feeling the wind like fingers through my hair.
“Well, that’s an option,” Marcus said. We rounded a bend that opened onto what appeared to be the town’s center. “But, I did have something a bit more exciting in mind.”
A vast fountain centered the cobblestone path, spouting water from the hands of a winged angel. Cafes lined one side. Most were packed with vampires enjoying what I could tell was re-heated blood. The other side opened onto a park with lush grass spanning out to bordering snow-capped cedars.
I felt like kicking off my Vans to run through the park, feeling the tickle of grass and ice under my bare feet. “More exciting?”
Marcus released my hand and circled the fountain. He lowered himself down onto the curved edge and patted the space beside him. As I sat, he began rummaging through his messenger bag. A moment later he had retrieved a very old, green, leather-bound book.
A loud groan vibrated up my throat. “Not more study…”
“Hardly…” The teal-blue of Marcus’s eyes shimmered. He thrust the book into my hands. The title was embossed with gold onto the cover. Elemental Magic and Compulsion. “Have you heard of elemental powers?”
When I shook my head, fully intrigued by his words, Marcus continued. “Most Pure Bloods will develop an affinity for one of the four elements, Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Which means,” he said catching sight of my befuddled expression. “We can harness energy that gives us the aptitude to manipulate the essence of that element.”
My frown deepened at Marcus’s gibberish-jargon. “Huh?”
“Here,” he said collecting a piece of paper from his bag. He scrunched it up before balancing it on his upturned palm. “Watch this.”
Marcus’s fingers strained, cradling the air around the ball of paper. His teal-flecked eyes focused with intensity. A quiet crackling reached my ears and a plume of smoke lifted from the crumpled paper. Then it instantaneously burst into flames.
My eyes widened as flames swallowed the ball, dying only after the paper had turned to ash in the middle of Marcus’s palm. I grabbed for his fingers, staring, studying. There was no scorched flesh or bleeding. No indication the flames had penetrated even a single layer of his skin in any way. “That’s amazing!”
Marcus shrugged. “That was a party trick.”
He flicked open the book in front of me to an illustration inside the cover. Four quarters split the page with an eye joining them in the center. Each quarter displayed a different image, a portrayal of one of the four elements. The first showed three hurricanes dancing in curves around each other and decimating everything they touched. Second was a surging wall of water that rose in a wave to crush anything in its path. In the third, fire raged even below a thick blanket of rainfall. The last had rampant growing vines that looked like they wanted to crawl off the page.
My awestruck gaze returned to the eye connecting the four elements. “What’s that?”
“The Fifth Element.” Marcus eyed me while brushing the ash from his hands. “As with the other elements, only royals can harness its power, the affinity for spirit.”
A sudden fear I didn’t understand caused my heart to patter and my hands to shake. “Spirit?”
“The rarest of abilities,” Marcus said, flicking to another illustration. This one had ghostly shadows quaking across the page. Their mouths gaped, and their arms reached as though they were trying to escape the yellowing parchment.
Ice-cold fingers gripped my spine, causing my entire body to shudder. I had a sudden urge to slam the book shut and throw it into the fountain, drowning it.
Marcus’s eyes remained set on the illustration. “Those gifted possess the aptitude to see and speak with the dead. A rare few hold the ability to create a blood bond with another vampire. Even rarer than that is an ability called The Sight, allowing the gifted to glimpse into the past, present and future.”
The Sight? Memories slipped in and out of focus causing my brain to push against my skull. It almost felt like a warning to stop probing into my subconscious. Why does that feel so familiar? I raised my eyes to Marcus. He was now watching me with a look of contemplation. “You said only Pure Bloods, royals, can possess these gifts?”
“Yes.” Marcus narrowed his eyes. “Why do you ask?”
Why did I ask him that? It was like the words had been spoken to me, like they weren’t of my own volition. My brain pulsed again, jagged pain rippling through my skull. I bit my lip to stop myself from crying out and shrugged. “No reason. Just curious, I guess.”
~
Nausea crippled me as I climbed the stairs to my room. My legs suddenly weighed as much as solid concrete pillars. I clutched the wooden railing and took a deep breath. Then I forced my pin-tingling limbs to move. An uneasy sensation tightened within my stomach. I wasn’t alone. My eyes darted back down the stone stairwell. Shadows seemed to move with the flicker of wall lanterns. But there wasn’t anyone there. Like Dorian would say, you’re just being paranoid.
I pressed on. Then as I reached the top of the stairs a dizzy spell seized me. My limbs quaked and I fell. The wooden railing collected my ribs. I spat profanity through my lips while I struggled to regain my composure. Weight made my head feel heavy and haze littered my mind. I sucked in a number of deep breaths. What the hell is wrong with me?
Slowly some of the feeling returned to my legs. I pushed off the wall, praying I’d make it to my room without collapsing. Prayers were useless, I realized. Just as I reached and unlocked my door, my vision blurred. My knees buckled. And then I was falling. My trembling legs refused to respond to basic motor instructions.
A millisecond before I hit the ground, a set of strong arms caught my weight. They lifted and cradled my body against a hard chest. “Amelia,” a familiar voice spoke. “What happened? Are you okay?”
> I peered up into Kendrick’s concern-filled eyes. He was frowning intensely. Where had he come from? Inside I felt cold, a shell of death. Like a living, breathing creature that had lost almost all animation. “I think I’m just tired,” I downplayed, not wanting to worry him. “You can put me down now.”
Kendrick ignored my request with a doubtful grunt and carried me to my bed. “Just tired?”
The day’s events ran through my mind like watching a movie reel. Marcus had escorted me to Bite. There, the bartender had reacted on discovering who I was. The pit had followed, where I’d taken a woman’s delicious blood. Was I forgetting something? There seemed to be fragments of my time with Marcus that wouldn’t reassemble.
I glanced to the antique clock on my bedside. It was after 6AM, the end of a vampire day. But I had checked the time when leaving Marcus and it had only been 4AM. What had I done after? Where had I been, and with who? My brain throbbed against my prodding, feeling far from awake and alive like before. My brow creased. “I um, think so.”
Kendrick supported my weight with one arm and pulled the sequined quilt back. He was still frowning when he placed me down against the pillows. “You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
“Thanks.” Still feeling confused and disorientated, I rubbed at my forehead. “I think I just need a good night’s rest.” Too dizzy and weak to undress, I pulled the covers over my fully clothed body. There was no way in hell I was about to ask for Kendrick’s help. My cheeks blushed. He had already seen me naked once, which was more than enough.
Seeming to read my thoughts, Kendrick pulled back the turquoise quilt, exposing my feet. “At least let me take off your shoes.” He removed my Vans then stood back, examining me. “You’re really pale.” With a click of his tongue he darted around the floral couch to rifle through the mini bar. A second later he returned with a bottle of blood. “Here, drink this.”
I pursed my lips. Although I knew I needed the blood, something had changed. This substitute wouldn’t even come close to the fresh source I’d tapped at Bite. Not that I was about to make live drinking a normal thing. Resigned, I took the bottle from Kendrick and chugged the contents. A loud burp bubbled up my throat. “Oops, I uh, guess I needed that.”