by Anna Katmore
The exact term is vampire, sweetness.
I want to cross to her, keeping my focus on the torch in her hands in case she goes for a second blow. But I halt when blood pools in my mouth. I run my tongue along my lips to locate the source and find… my right fang is missing. “Fuck!”
We both scan the floor for the tiny nugget I spat out. It lies right in front of Abigail’s foot.
My eyes move back to her horror-stricken face. Her mouth hangs wide open, her skin is pale as if I already had her for dinner, and her delicious carotid’s having trouble pumping all the blood her heart shoots through her body.
Our gazes lock for the length of a breath, and neither of us moves an inch. Then her attention slowly lowers back to my fang on the floor. I don’t like the thoughts that are obvious in her glistening eyes.
“Abigail…” I growl.
Too late. The little weasel kicks my tooth into the light stream from the door, and before I can make a grab for her, she dashes out of the shadows. The only thing I catch is the dead torch. Not wasting a moment, she swipes up my tooth and flees from the castle.
Abby doesn’t even stop outside—I can’t follow her anyway. From the safety of the shadows, I watch her escape. I’ve never seen a girl run so fast…
But damn, she has my tooth! If I don’t get it back soon, the wound will heal, and there will be no chance of ever putting it back in.
A tortured growl rumbles from my throat as I spin around and head to the dungeon. I need to find an ax, have to chop a hole in the yew barrier, and most of all, I need to find out where Abigail Potts lives so I can get my fang back once darkness falls.
Chapter 10
No snack intended
Abigail
I race down the hill so fast I think I lose my lungs somewhere along the way. With all the horror back at the castle, it’s a miracle my legs didn’t let me down and are actually doing what I want.
Quentin’s face and those terrifying fangs chase me in my thoughts. He’s a monster! A man afraid of the sun! He lives in a castle! Vampire! And he wants to eat me…
What if he found a way to go out into the light? What if he’s right behind me?
Don’t turn around! Just run!
I skitter to the end of the dirt road and move right onto the paved street. I can see my gran’s house like a beacon of safety. “Nana! Nanaaaa!” I shout in panic as I dash across the front garden and fall through the door. But damn, I forgot that she isn’t home today. It’s gin rummy night with her friends. Where do they meet? At Mitsi’s house? At Francesca’s? Heck, I don’t remember.
But when I turn around and see the sun dipping behind the peaks of the mountains, I know it’s too late to go looking for her.
Twilight. Quentin can leave the castle now.
Wild with hysteria, I bolt the door and race through the house, shutting the windows in every single room. Mine is the last one, and when I lock that window, too, I crawl to the very corner of my bed and press myself against the wall. Legs drawn to my chest, I hug them and rest my chin on my raised knees. What the hell am I supposed to do now? Call the Transylvanian police and tell them there’s a vampire running free in the village? Or Civil Defense? Dammit, I can’t even call my grandma because she’s the only person in the world I know who refuses cell phones.
I sniff. Nana would know what to do. Even if it were only to convince me that my mind has been playing silly tricks on me—maybe because of the warm weather—and that everything is really just a huge mistake. Quentin isn’t a monster. He’s a nice boy from America, and he works for a movie company that has an interest in Castle Dracula for a shoot.
And then I notice that my fist has been closed around something this entire time.
Reluctantly, my gaze lowers to my palm. The fang of a predator lies there.
A terrible shudder zooms down my back.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to rein in my clipping heart, but it won’t calm. It feels like I got caught in a horror movie—only the actors in this one are real.
The next second, my head jolts up, and my entire body stiffens as a sound drifts from outside. It sounds as if someone has rammed an ax into a tree. The woods aren’t far away from here, and the echo carries eerily down from the mountain. The windows in this house are as old as Nana, and if they can’t keep out the winter wind, they certainly can’t keep out the sound.
The noise repeats. Again. And again. Many, many times.
My toes curl into the blanket as I focus on the window. Night slowly chases the last light of day away. But the lumberjack sounds carry on… None of the villagers would go out into the forest to chop down a tree in the dark. Why would they? Sunlight doesn’t hurt them.
It only hurts one person I know.
After an endless time, a deafening crack rumbles from the woods. The tree is falling.
Hesitantly, I lower my feet to the floor and draw closer to the window. I can’t see much from here, only the darkness of the forest at the foot of the mountain. But if Quentin chopped that tree for a purpose, he’s probably busy taking it home. That means he has no time to come down to the village and look for a tasty—
Holy mother of God!
Someone’s walking down the lane. In a panic, I press against the wall and pant. Please, please, please, please, don’t be the vampire!
Holding my breath, I carefully lean around the corner and peer through the old, thin glass. The young man in jeans and a white t-shirt walks past the houses, slowing a little in front of each. His blond hair and features are highlighted in the moonshine, and there’s no doubt at all who this is.
My hands start to sweat as they claw into the splintery windowsill. I don’t dare move a muscle. Then, Quentin slows down in front of our garden. Even from here, I can see how he closes his eyes, and his chest expands as if with a deep breath. Nothing to panic over, he did that in front of all the other houses, too, before he finally moved on to the next.
Only this time, he halts.
His eyes flicker open again, and he slowly tilts his head. Through the darkness between us, our gazes lock. And all I want to do is scream.
But no sound leaves my mouth as I stumble away from the window. Hysteria crushes my windpipe, no air going in or out. Falling on my butt, I realize that the top of the apple tree outside the window is shaking. Jesus Christ, he’s climbing up to my room!
In need of a weapon—anything to protect myself—I pat around behind me, my focus glued to the window. The first thing within reach is the mop I used this morning to clean up and forgot by the door. As it clatters to the floor, I pull it closer. In the same instant, Quentin appears outside my window, hoisting himself up on a thick branch.
With one hand on the limb above him and the other against the trunk, he hunkers just outside my room. Then his gaze lands on me. “Abigail…open the window.”
What the hell, is he mental? Clasping the mop handle, I frantically shake my head.
“Open, please.” As his lips move, they reveal the gap in his line of shiny white teeth. “I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.”
With these old windows, his voice comes in as clear as if he were sitting on my bed.
“Go away, Quentin!” I struggle to get back to my feet, then I hold the mop like a pitchfork in front of me. “I called the police.”
He narrows his eyes and cocks his head a little but quickly relaxes again. “No, you didn’t.”
How can he know that?
“No sirens in a three-mile radius,” he answers my unspoken question. Damn, is that how far his hearing goes?
“Why did you come here?” I croak, knowing there’s no way out for me.
“I need my tooth.”
My gaze switches to the nightstand where his creepy fang lies. His eyes follow before he looks at me again. “Please, give it back, and I’ll leave you alone.”
“Yeah, right…” A hysterical laugh escapes me. Not even I am that stupid. “As soon as I open this window, you’ll jump inside and eat me.�
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“Listen…” His face is strained, he almost looks pained. “If that was my intention, I could throw a stone and just break the glass, don’t you think?”
I frown.
“In fact, even if you open that window, I won’t be able to get inside. Not unless you officially invite me in. Which I’m not asking you to do. All I want is to talk. To make you understand…and to get my tooth back.”
“You’re a monster. A vampire!” My voice is so shaky and shrill, I don’t even recognize it. “You suck people’s blood and kill them. What’s there to understand?”
“Abby…” he growls and squeezes his eyes shut for a second, pinching the bridge of his nose. When he lifts his lids again, he draws in a deep breath. “I was born as a human in December of 1978. My great-great-granduncle Vladimir turned me into a vampire when I was nineteen to save me from dying after an accident.”
“Vladimir?” I squeak. “As in Vladimir…Dracula?”
A simple nod. “I swear I’ve never in my life hurt or killed anyone.” He pauses and searches my face with an emotion that bores straight through my heart. Because I recognize it: fear. When he speaks next, his voice is a lot lower. “But if you’re going to tell anyone around here what I really am…they’re going to kill me. My life is in your hands.”
For minutes on end, we just stare at each other. Thousands of thoughts race through my mind. Half of them end with me dead. And some feature Quentin in a coffin.
“What happened in the castle today was a terrible accident,” he breaks the silence eventually. “I’m so sorry, Abigail… I didn’t mean to scare you.”
The honesty in his deep blue eyes hits me like a train and makes me lower the mop just an inch. But when he moves on the branch, I jerk it up again. Quentin breaks a piece the size of my forearm from the apple tree. He tests the splintered end with his fingertip, and it looks quite sharp. A tiny bead of blood forms on his skin.
He leans forward and lays the wood on the ledge. Then he settles back on the limb.
My eyes narrow to slits. “What’s that?”
“You kill a vampire with this. Not with a mop.” Slowly, he blinks his long, dark lashes. “Aim for the heart.”
I don’t think I could kill a person—human or just human-looking, it makes no difference. The mop was more an option to push Quentin down from the tree. Thinking of driving the sharp piece of wood through his chest makes me shiver.
But he’s right, for protection, it might be a whole lot better.
Hesitantly placing one foot in front of the other, I cross the room. Quentin doesn’t move. Silently, he remains hunkered in the tree, watching my slow steps. I unlock the window and warily open one side to reach for the stake. My eyes are fastened on him every second. When my fingers close around the wood, I pull in a deep breath, toss the mop aside, and clutch the stake to my chest instead.
Quentin has broken off another, much longer stick in the meantime, and now shoves both sides of the window open. My heart stutters when he does it, but with his warning that he could have just broken the glass, I don’t try to stop him.
“Step back, Abby. I want to show you something,” he says it so gently that it’s frighteningly easy to fall into the trap of believing he’s just an ordinary human boy hanging out in my tree.
I do as he asks but also grip the stake a bit tighter. He nods, pleased with my reaction. Then he takes a sudden leap from the branch, moving straight at me. I jolt back, screaming in terror.
Only he rebounds from the space of the open window and drops from the second floor of the house. I screech again, but this time in horror. Reflexively, I dash forward and lean out to check if he’s all right.
Quentin hangs on the ledge, his fingers digging hard into the wood. With one hand, he reaches over to the branch and then hauls himself back up into the tree. His moan drifts into my room, and some leaves rain down to the ground as he breaks a few twigs on the way. When he’s safely settled back where he was before, he casts me a smirk. “You have a nice shriek, Abigail Potts. Will probably cause me sudden deafness one day, but it’s nice.”
I know that he’s mocking me for worrying about him—a vampire—yet a long breath leaves me that he didn’t tumble to death from my window.
“So, you really can’t get into my house?” I ask him skeptically a few calm moments later, the stake still securely clutched in my hands.
He shakes his head. “Only with an invitation.”
Which he’ll get over my dead body.
To know that I’m at least somewhat safe from him in this room gives my lungs the freedom to expand with air again. Still, I take a step backward, just in case. “Why is that?”
Quentin shrugs, his lids lowering nonchalantly. “Vampires abide by some stupid rules. No daylight, no breaking in… No garlic?” He lifts his gaze back to me as if probing for something.
And then a shocking puzzle piece falls into place. I gulp. “You could smell that on me yesterday?”
He pushes up his nose. “That was quite a nasty reek. What the hell did you do? Roll yourself in garlic dip?”
“No. I swallowed one of my grandma’s garlic pills. She takes them to stay sharp.” I wince. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you now?” Quentin’s chuckle warms the night as he plucks a leaf from the twigs above him and starts to absently fold it with. “I might have bitten you if you hadn’t made me throw up.”
My fingers tighten around the stake once more. “You really would have?”
He lowers his head bashfully, and his voice drops to a mumble. “I was thinking up ways…”
“Ways to what?”
He searches my face. “To make you offer me your blood.”
“Offer? You’re funny.” Not. I snort. “Like anyone would ever let a bloodsucker voluntarily bite their neck.”
As if I’d hit a nerve, Quentin’s features harden, and his fingers stop fumbling with the leaf. “I’ve never drunk from anyone without their consent.”
Now that’s something I can hardly believe. But Quentin didn’t lie when he told me the no-breaking-in rule. I take a slow step closer to the window and scrutinize him with narrowed eyes, my head slightly tilted. “Are you saying people actually agree to have a vampire bite them?”
He just nods and then starts to shred the leaf into tiny pieces. “Vampires are able to control other people’s minds and make them willing. But they don’t always have to.”
Is he serious? Mind control? This horror movie just keeps getting creepier. The sound of my gulp fills the room. Yet as Quentin tells me all of this so softly, it’s getting harder by the minute to see a real monster in him. And he’s raised my curiosity. Since there’s obviously no acute danger inside the house right now, I lower to the floor near the window. Eyes fixed on him, I cross my legs and purse my lips a little. “What do you mean, they don’t have to?”
Quentin lets the shredded leaf bits rain to the ground. “I know some girls who quite enjoy being donors. I didn’t need to hypnotize them.”
“So…if I say no, you would have to take control of my mind for me to let you drink my blood?”
He nods. “To drink from a resisting person would mean a bloody massacre. No vampire wants that. Well, not the ones I know anyway.”
“Then why didn’t you control me earlier at the castle?” Sure, Abby, give him ideas, why don’t you?
I want to bite my tongue, but he surprises me with his next answer. “Because I can’t. Never learned how.” He sighs and then sends me an apologetic look from under his lashes. “Though I have to admit that I tried it with you. Only, you always headed in the opposite direction.”
A snort escapes me. “Well, that’s good to know.” I peel a little bit of bark from the stake and toss it out the window, missing him by a few inches. A short moment later, I calm down, curiousness taking over again. “Why didn’t you learn it?”
Quentin briefly presses his lips together as he draws in a deep breath through his nose and shrugs. “Lazy? My uncle wa
nts me to figure it out. That’s why he sent me to this godforsaken place. Alone. So, I’m forced to finally develop my skills and can return as a proper vampire.”
Can someone feel sorry for a deadly monster? Because I think he just made me feel sorry for him. “Sounds like a screwed-up version of boot camp for exceptional creatures.” I know that he feels lonely up there in the dark castle. And he must be getting really hungry if all of what he said is true. “When was the last time you…” God, I don’t want to say the word. “Drank?”
He glances at his wristwatch, then at the moon. Finally, he scrunches up his face. “A few days ago.”
“And normal food—?”
“Doesn’t work for a vampire.”
So the apple strudel was a total waste. The severity of his situation sinks in even deeper. “How long can you go without blood before you die?”
His insecure gaze slowly wanders back to my eyes. After a long, quiet moment, he whispers, “I don’t know.”
My chest constricts for him. I don’t want Quentin’s teeth in my throat, but I don’t want him to suffer either. “Can’t you just drink blood from…from…” The image of a hospital comes to my mind. “Blood bags?”
“I can. If I could get ahold of them. You don’t walk into a blood bank at night and simply ask for a donation, Abby. I would need to control their minds for that.”
“Something you’re incapable of,” I finish the thought and then rub my face, groaning into my hands. “Boy, you’re one miserable vampire, you know that?”
“Yeah, I guess my luck is running a little downhill right now.” He smiles so sadly that I want to climb out there, hug him, and tell him that everything will be all right. I must be completely out of my mind.
Quentin’s head tilts slightly, and he stills for a second. Something obviously caught his attention. Around here, or three miles away? He leans back a little to look around the trunk. “There’s an old lady coming down the road.”
Agh! I jerk up. “That must be my grandma.” The stake held loosely in my palm, I head to the window and lean out, finding Nana ambling toward our house with a merry hum on her lips. “You’re not going to eat her, are you?” My voice is worried, almost begging. As I turn to Quentin, we’re face-to-face with mere inches separating us. Goodness! He’d only have to slip his hand around my neck and pull me out of my room if he wanted a midnight snack. I suck in a sharp breath and jolt back inside.
