by SARA FREITES
“I don’t think anyone saw us,” he said to me.
“Good,” I said. “So, you have no idea where the vampires are right now? How do we find them?”
“It’s raining, means it’s going to make it ten times harder for me to pick up on their scent unless they’re close by, not to mention to traverse the roofs with you. Right now, I think it’s safest to get away as far as we can, then wait for the storm to let up before we start looking.”
“Where should we wait it out?”
“I passed an abandoned factory on the way here,” he told me and took me in his arms.
“Works for me,” I said, and he took us where the city met the sky.
I could tell he’d slowed his pace down over the wet rooftops. Just a few blocks down, he took us through the window of an abandoned building. The streetlights pouring into the mostly broken windows brought forth an eerie scene. Large machines sat unused for probably quite some time with cobwebs and debris littering them and the floor. Boxes were stacked up everywhere I looked.
Blake set us down in a large broken-out windowsill where an overhang shielded us from the rain. I rang my hair out in my hands. A bird flew from one of the rafters overhead and had us both looking to be sure we weren’t being followed.
“I want to know everything. About you, what you know about Arlos—everything. Start from the beginning. The very beginning,” I ordered.
“You might as well sit down,” he suggested. “This is going to take a while.”
He lent me his arm and helped me from the window to the bare concrete floor. Carefully, he set me down against the wall.
“Let’s start with your age,” I said as he sat beside me.
“My age,” he began. “Intellectually, I’m probably really, really old. But my physical body is new. I don’t know what month and day I was born.”
“Well, how old do you think you are?” I pressed.
“I think maybe about a year.”
“What?” I reeled. “A year old? Are you serious? That’s not even close to what I was expecting.”
“Okay, a few months over a year. Like I said, I’m not exactly sure.”
“I can’t believe this. You’re not even as old as my baby brother,” I realized in horror.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you that,” he said with a winced.
“No, I’m glad you did! It explains a lot. And you were trying to tell me this was going to take a while.” I tried to regain my composure. “Tell me everything.”
“Everything,” he repeated.
“Yes. Starting with your birth up until now. I mean it.”
He didn’t say anything for a few beats, and I started to wonder if he ever would. He studied the dusty rafters high above as if searching for words in them.
“I’ve never sat down and tried to make sense of what I remember of my birth,” he began. “I just remember colors, images. I have better memories of my life afterward. I can try to explain it. The first thing I remember was light. At first, it was so bright I worried I was blind. I even had enough self-awareness at that point to consider the possibility of being blind. It was cold, too—a cold light. See, this sounds stupid. It doesn’t even make sense,” he scoffed and stared down at his shoes.
“No, I get it. Keep going,” I urged.
“I felt like I was suspended in the air, just floating there, wherever I was. The light disappeared, and in an instant, everything turned murky. My subconscious urged me to fly, to bring myself up. So, I did. I started rising. My arms and legs were strong, and I took the air under me in yards at a time. I broke through the surface of what I thought was the atmosphere. I soon realized, as I fought against a small current to stay afloat, that I was underwater. It was odd because I knew what I was—an evnaut, half vampire, half demon. I just didn’t know why I was there or where I was.
“I swam to shore and pulled myself to land. It was night, but I could see trees and the lights of a city nearby. I was dirty, covered in mud from the shoreline, but all I could think about was how hungry I was. I wandered around the city outskirts until I met a man, a homeless man, who helped me find clothes and food. The food he gave me never suppressed the profound hunger that felt as though it grew in me every day. I didn’t stay with the man for long because I soon found myself hungering after him, after his soul. I didn’t understand what was wrong with me, and I was scared of this sensation. Evnauts feed once every six months, but if I miss that one feeding, I’ll grow weak and can fall into blood-rages. That meant I had to be careful not to wait around too long before I did something about my hunger.
“The next few days were a blur. I don’t remember ever feeling tired enough to sleep. My first hunt, or what I called my ‘first experiment’, was terrifying. I was afraid of what I was. I knew I wasn’t like the others around me. My instincts told me to hunt these people, that they were my prey, they were what would satisfy my starving body. So, I soon set out one night to hunt. I felt alive and safe in the dark, and that’s when I took my first victim. The encounter was bloody, messy, but the soul she provided flourished in my veins and made me feel alive. I slept that night, and afterward, I was satisfied for a long while. I lived like this on the streets for five months, in and out of the city, but I can't tell you exactly how long it was until he found me.
“I was exploring the city streets one evening when a man came to me. He was tall, his skin different from everyone else I’d seen so far, and I sensed something demonic about him—something that I could see within myself, as well. He told me he’d been searching for me and that he had the answers to all my questions. He called me ‘Soul’. At first, I thought he was crazy. I tried to walk away, but he trailed me into an alleyway and attacked. I fought him, but he was overwhelmingly powerful, stronger even than I was. He held me down and made me listen to what he had to say.
“He told me I was a part of him and that he was not from this world. He said he was disappointed by what I was—a light evnaut, but would, nevertheless, take care of me, turn me into something that I could never imagine. He told me his name was Arlos and that I had powers beyond what I knew. I didn’t know what to do, and I didn't have anywhere else to go, so I told him I’d go with him. I wanted to hear more about what I was and why I came to be here.
“It was a huge mistake because he filled my head full of shit the moment I came to live at his estate. He told me I was the first step in helping him make this world into somewhere we’d fit in and that he and I would remain the most powerful. Over the weeks, just as he’d promised, he helped me awaken a large portion of the strength I didn’t even know I had. He also tried awakening a darker side of me other than just my physical strength. He started teaching me how to seep into the minds and dreams of the humans and how to place ideas in their heads. He even wanted me to learn how to do the same things to the vampires so I could use them on my mother, but I never felt right about it.
“For a long time, Arlos didn’t tell me what he meant by ‘making this world into somewhere we’d fit in’, but things just always felt wrong. I soon felt even more uneasy about cooperating with him, but Arlos wasn’t pleased when I grew a mind of my own. He laughed when I questioned him and tried to feed me more meaningless talk about how powerful we were going to be.” He faltered, taking a deep breath as if reluctant to continue. “And then, things began to…change. It started when I found Arlos torturing humans here in the prison one morning. I felt sick to my stomach about it for days until I confronted him, and he was not happy about it. It was the first time he hit me, shouting that I wasn’t allowed near the prison. I was shocked by his outburst but quickly dismissed it and tried to forget about it. Only it wouldn’t be the last time it happened. I left the estate a few nights later to watch the sunset like I always did before I came to live there. When I returned, Arlos met me in the driveway. He stopped me before I could go inside and asked that I follow him. So, we walked out past the courtyard. He stopped us near the gates and hit me so hard I blacked out. I don�
�t know how long I was unconscious, but when I came to, there was blood all over the driveway, and he was still hitting me.”
“Oh my God," I said to myself.
I glanced at him in concern, but looked back at the ground, unsure of what else to say. Guilt built up inside of me for not having the right words to say.
“When he realized I was conscious again,” Blake continued, “he threw me aside like I was nothing and left me there. At first, all I could do was lay there and let my wounds heal, but then, he came back. I braced myself for another attack, but instead, as if nothing happened, he told me in an eerily calm voice that I wasn’t allowed to leave the estate unless he accompanied me. He also assured me that if I didn’t break any more of his ‘rules’ that this wouldn’t happen again. I was uneasy about staying there any longer, but I wanted to believe him. He and my mother were all I had. So, I found myself for the second time thinking it probably wouldn’t happen again, that it was the last time he’d put his hands on me. But I lost count of how many times it happened after that.
“And these were…”—he began, then waited as if he couldn’t find the right words— “incredibly violent, unprovoked attacks. I lived here for five months, and the last few weeks felt like forever. They were unbearable. I was just always in the wrong place at the wrong time with him. I had no doubt he hated me, and I felt like he was trying to humiliate me, break me. And after a while, it worked. I didn’t feel like I was worth anything anymore. I stopped fighting back, stopped standing up for myself. I just kept hoping it would stop happening, but after getting the shit beat out of me for so much as speaking or even looking in the wrong direction, I realized I couldn’t have a free will anymore.”
“Oh, wow. Blake,” I said with a quick breath. It was all I could say.
“I’ll spare you some of the gory details,” he offered.
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not telling you this to make you feel sorry for me,” he said.
“I know you’re not. You don’t have to talk about this if…I know I asked you to tell me everything, but if this is too personal for you—”
“I can talk about it,” he replied. “I just haven’t told anyone else about it before.”
“I’ll be honest, as upset as I am with you right now, it’s hard to hear that someone hurt you like that. Why didn’t you leave?” I asked, angry.
“Trust me. I wanted to when things got bad. But Arlos made it impossible for me to even step outside without him knowing about it. I also didn’t want to abandon my mother. I had this feeling like she had it worse than I did. She was very loving toward me, of course—nurturing, but she was also withdrawn. I didn’t understand why at first, but I think he was hurting her, too…but in a different way. I never knew for sure—the way she moved around him, the way she looked and didn’t look at him, her body language, the things she said and the way she’d say them. I just had my suspicions.
“One night, I heard him raise his voice at her. I went to see what was going on and saw him reach for her. The way he grabbed her, his tone of voice, it sent me over the edge. I normally tried avoiding confrontation with him. I’m sure you can guess what would happen if I didn’t. But I knew how it felt to be used as his personal punching bag, and I was afraid that night my mother would, too.
“I told Arlos to back off and leave her alone, and he let her go and turned on me instead. He backed me into a corner and threw things, laughing and saying my name over and over again. At that moment, I was tired of walking on eggshells. I wanted to antagonize him. I wanted him to know I wasn’t going to let him walk all over me anymore. I told him not to call me Soul, that I didn’t want the name because he’d given it to me. He asked what I wanted him to call me, and I told him ‘Blake’. It sounds insignificant and random, but I chose the name intentionally to piss him off.
“My mother was the one who’d told me the story of Blake, the leader of the Royal Vampire Guard. Blake was one of the very first to stand up against Arlos when Latresma was alive. I don’t know the whole story. My mother only told me what she knew, but it was enough for me to know that Arlos hated Blake, enough for me to know what it might do to him if he ever heard that name again.
“It threw him into a rage. He dragged me into the gardens behind the estate, out in the rain, and tore into me worse than he ever had. I thought he was going to kill me that night. I fought back, but it didn’t make a difference. It felt like forever before he decided he was done. He finally placed a demonic curse on the grounds, and that ended the fight.
“A shadow fell over the grass, and the dirt around me started moving. Inferno-roots broke through the surface around me. The more I fought, the more they grew and the stronger they became. If I shredded one apart, another would grow in its place. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get free. Arlos walked off and left me there, wrestling with them. Each root sprouted large, curving thorns that pierced through me, making it painful to move. At one point, I gave up. I bled out and fell unconscious.
“I don't know how many hours passed until my mother came to set me free. She doused holy water on the roots, and they shriveled up without a trace. With tears in her eyes, she held a glass of blood to my lips, and as I drank, my wounds healed. She ordered me to save myself and leave. She explained that Arlos had plans to open a hell-portal and let through a legion of demons. At that point, I was indifferent in the way I felt about humans, but at the same time, I knew what Arlos was trying to do was wrong.” Blake took his finger and traced the scar’s long path across his face. “But before anything else happened, Arlos returned to the gardens with the Lumière Dagger. He knew he could kill me with it. If my mother hadn’t intervened, I wouldn’t be here right now. And then, he just let me go. But even after I left, he kept haunting me. No matter what I did or how far I went, I couldn’t get away from the connection we shared. On the rare occasions I somehow slept, he came to me in my dreams. Before that, I never slept. I never had to. The nightmares were a constant bombardment of disturbing images and sounds. While I was awake, he could influence my thoughts, make me see things that weren’t there. Sometimes, I thought he was showing me images of hell, and I felt like I was living in a nightmare every waking minute.
“Weeks went by when he came to me in a dream again, swearing to keep the nightmares and visions at bay if I promised to find the reincarnation of Lady Latresma. He wanted me to lead you to him. He’d talked about Latresma many times before—told me how he’d murdered, or in his words, ‘set free’, the Royal Vampire Court because he thought their beliefs were diluted. I ignored the dreams for days, and the hellish visions continued. But there was one I couldn’t ignore. In this vision, Arlos threatened to kill my mother if I didn’t do what he asked.
“I lost it and went back to the estate to get her out of there. But it ended in Arlos threatening her life. He assured me that if I didn’t come back with solid leads on the reincarnation’s whereabouts by the end of the month, he’d take my mother’s life. And then, he projected his thoughts into my mind, and I watched the many different ways he would torture and kill her. He swore to let me take her away if I found you in time.
“I was stupid to believe him, but I was so desperate for him to just leave my mother and me alone that I hung onto his every word. I had to agree to do what he wanted and immediately started my search for you. And as Arlos promised, he took away the visions, and I found I didn’t have to sleep again. It was immensely relieving to have a clear mind with the absence of the nightmares and daydreams. I could hardly remember what it was like before them. However, the burden of my mother's life in my hands only took their place.
“Two weeks into my search, I heard you were spotted in the states. I quickly left London and traveled to the U.S. While in Maine, I befriended a few unsuspecting rogue havidens who told me you might be in the Chicago area. I left Maine and traveled to Illinois after letting Arlos know I was closer to finding you. I also learned there were vampires in the city where you were. As
a precaution, Arlos sent out a group of his men to watch my back. While in Chicago, another small group of rogue havidens I’d met there tipped me off. They mentioned on the offhand that they’d been watching a house in the suburbs, something about some odd activity. They were sensing strange vibes and so on and had been for several days—probably sometime before your aura appeared or they would have mentioned that, too. They had no idea it was you, but I knew. The halved vampire soul inside of you had awakened. Your blood-aura isn't just visible to us. It causes waves in the energy field around you, even before it ever appeared. Only a few of us who are sensitive to it can feel it, too. Even animals can sense it.”
A smile tugged at my lips. “My dog, Bandit.” I began. “He hasn’t let me go near him since the night I had this weird dream about flying over the city.”
“That may have been the night your vampire soul awakened,” Blake gathered. “And I’m not surprised by your dog’s reaction to your change. Dogs have a very strong sense of the world.”
“That same night, I swore I heard someone in my house,” I went on as I thought back. “And then, I saw someone on my neighbor’s roof. Was that you?”
“No,” he replied. “That must have been one of the rogue havidens taking a peek into your house, one of the few who can sense you, probably trying to figure out what was going on. The first time I spotted you, you were sitting on the porch of your house and—”
“My brother and his friends came to pick me up,” I interrupted, remembering that night his yellow eyes gleamed at me from two rooftops over.
It was weird to think that Blake and I had seen each other long before I’d met him.
“I called Arlos to let him know I could bring you in,” Blake went on. “But he told me to hold off, that he wanted to send his men in to assist. Instead, I followed the Jeep you got in around town for a while. You stopped at a house in the suburbs and you—” he hesitated. A slight pink rushed across his cheeks.