by D. N. Hoxa
I didn’t know what the hell that meant.
“All I’m asking is that you get me out of these chains. Nobody will know that you were even here.”
“How do you know that?” Drag said.
“Because Ignis gave me her word.”
“Doesn’t matter. I can’t help you,” El said, and stepped back.
Drag looked at me for so long without moving that I felt like I was going to explode. “Drag, come on. Please. I’ll be forever in your debt.” But he only shook his head, and stepped back.
I couldn’t say I was surprised. I wasn’t, not even when I looked at Zuke, and he shook his head, too.
“You know, you asked me for a favor once.” His brows raised. “Yes, I remember some things, and I remember how you came into my room in Manchester, and asked me to not take you with me to Switzerland. I didn’t even hesitate. Is that right?”
He turned his back to me and walked to the door. The others followed.
“I didn’t even hesitate!” I shouted after them, but they never looked back.
I knew that the chances of them helping me were very slim, but I was still disappointed. Hopeless to a point that I wanted to just give up. Let them do whatever they wanted to do.
But I couldn’t. Instead, I concentrated on Ray Bardos. My Doyen. The vampire around whom Hammer’s world had revolved in one of the memories.
It was all I thought about until unconsciousness took me, and it was the first thing on my mind when it breathed life back into me. Chandra’s face was right in front of my eyes.
She slapped me as soon as my lids pried open, so hard that my jaw cracked.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” she hissed. “Don’t you feel guilty for what we’re doing to your vampires? It’s all your fault.”
“No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s not my fault you’re all a bunch of lunatics.” It earned me another slap. “Go ahead. Take out your anger by slapping me. It’s not going to change anything,” I said, but the truth was different.
I was just a vampire, trying to fit into the skin of another I knew so little about, while trying to make my own place in this fucked up world. There was nothing I had to give. Even if I agreed to help them find Morta, where would I even start? I didn’t know her. I probably never would.
“We could’ve been upstairs right now, you and me,” Chandra whispered. “Just like the old times.”
“I am not Hammer,” I said reluctantly. It felt like I’d spent a lifetime saying that. Sometimes, like when they first got to me, I wished I was him. I tried hard to wear his skin, think the way he did. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t him.
“Then be Mask,” Chandra said. “It’s so easy, I can’t believe you can’t see it. I’ll give you everything.” She took my face in her hands and made me look at her. “Everything I have can be yours. An army, all the blood there is, the whole world.”
“The world that you’re going to ruin,” I hissed.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” I didn’t. She was far from stupid. “We’re not going to ruin the world. We’re going to ruin three cities! You have no idea how much more there is out there. The world is vast, full of opportunities.”
“It’s their world,” I said. “They were here first.” We became vampires after we were born human.
“It is, for now. And we’ll make it ours. There’s nothing wrong with that, Mask. We’ll do more good for this planet than the humans ever could. We are the future. There will be no more climate changes, or global warming, or pandemics, or terrorists…nothing!” She sounded so hopeful that I almost believed her.
“It’s still their home. You can’t wipe out an entire race. How do you expect the vampire race to survive without them?”
“We will. We have choices now. If you could just…just choose our side, you would see everything we’ve worked so hard on for the past century. You would see how easy it really is.”
“Wiping an entire race off the planet is easy?” I laughed. “I don’t know what you’re telling yourself Chandra, but I’m not stupid. If they don’t survive, we won’t either.”
“They are killing the planet. Don’t you see? They are the virus. If we don’t put them out, the whole world will be gone!” she said. The passion with which she spoke lit up her eyes.
“It’s their world. Theirs to live in, and destroy. Not ours.”
I was wasting words, talking to her. She believed so much in herself, it was almost admirable.
“I’m not giving up on you, my love. Not yet. I’ll come back after I give another visit to one of yours. I’m curious to see what you’ll say then.”
It was impossible to drown out the cries and screams of the others. I’d brought them there, and I had no idea how to get them out.
When unconsciousness finally made my lids too heavy to keep open, I barely felt the vampire that touched me. I didn’t know what he or she did to me, whoever it was, but I didn’t care at that point. Imagining the pain the others were in was much worse than feeling pain of my own. I didn’t even protest. I didn’t try to look at who it was.
When I woke up the next night, I was free.
XXXIII
The thick chains were sprawled around me, and I was on the floor, on my back. My first instinct was to jump to my feet and run. My second was to sit tight, listen to whatever was going on around me, and then stand up, with as little noise as I possibly could.
I chose the second option.
Had it been Zuke? Had he come out just as the sun had come up to release me from the chains?
I listened hard, but I heard nothing. I pushed the chains off me as slowly as I could. The damned things still made noise, but nobody came running to the door. The door, which was unlocked.
I’d suspected it, because whenever others came, I never heard a key turning. Why would they lock the door when they had me locked to the room?
Outside, the narrow hallway was deserted. To my right were the stairs. The way out. To my left, to the very end of the hallway, were two doors. The others.
I headed left with slow steps and sniffed the air around me, in hopes of catching something. Anything.
I’d barely taken the third step when one of the doors at the end of the hallway opened. I ran back and hid to the side of the stairs.
“Fetch Ignis for me, will you?”
My eyes squeezed shut when I heard the voice. His voice. Ray Bardos, my Doyen.
My stomach stayed the same. I didn’t have the feelings Hammer had had towards him. I could’ve cried from joy.
The other vampire ran up the stairs, and though I heard nothing, I knew Ray was still there. I didn’t move a single muscle.
It didn’t take long for Ignis to arrive. She was right above my head. What if she smelled me?
I shivered. There was nowhere else I could go. A wall was in front of me, and the side of the stairway was behind my back. I was stuck.
“What the hell, Ray? You can’t just call me whenever you please,” Ignis hissed. She took the time to descend the stairs when she could’ve simple ran to him like I hoped she would. But it didn’t seem like she heard or smelled me.
“Don’t be like that, baby,” Ray said, and from what I could hear, he gave her a kiss.
“I’m busy,” Ignis hissed, but she didn’t sound as mad as before. “What do you want?”
“I think it’s time.”
I could tell by his voice that he was grinning.
“Mistress said—”
“I know him better than anyone here.”
He was definitely talking about me.
“I know you do. She won’t let us,” Ignis said dryly.
“How will she even know?” Another kiss.
Ignis sighed. “I don’t want her pissed right now. Not when we’re so close.” So close to what?
“If you let me talk to him, I could convince him.”
“No. You can’t talk to him.”
I wondered for a second why she insisted he didn’t speak to m
e, until I remembered what she’d asked me. How Hammer had killed Ray. And she didn’t want him to know.
“I’m bored out of my fucking mind down here. If somebody doesn’t do anything soon, I’m getting out,” Ray said.
“I know, baby. I’m bored, too.” She definitely didn’t sound like she was. “Let’s just get to Lance for now. I like his screams the most. Hammer’ll cave soon.”
It took everything I had not to go after them when they opened a door and went in. I couldn’t run after them like a mad man. I had to think this through carefully because getting locked up again wasn’t an option. I waited for as long as my gut told me to before I went to the doors at the end of the hallway. I listened and sniffed, and when the screaming started, I bit my tongue. But they were all there. Tif, and Lance, and Penny were all in the same room with Ignis and Ray.
What the hell was I going to do?
There was only one thing to do. Run. If I wasn’t there, they wouldn’t need to torture them anymore, would they? And if I could get to Dublin, I could make him help me get them out. There was no way I was going to be able to do that all by myself.
The guilt made a hole in my chest. Running back to the stairs was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do as a vampire until then. I had to remind myself, every second, that they would be fine if I disappeared. They wouldn’t be tortured anymore, and I would come back for them. I would free them from Chandra’s claws, no matter what it took, and I would never ask them for anything, ever again.
I reminded myself of this every second as I took the stairs, slowly, soundlessly, and finally got to the ground floor.
From the looks of it, it had once been a factory. On one side, there was a huge room with old, broken machinery I had no idea how to name, and on the other was a corridor. That’s the way I went.
I heard voices coming from the doors to my sides, but I pushed the panic as far away as I could. Hurrying would only get me into more trouble.
Just when I was at the end of the corridor, a door behind me open. I grabbed the knob of the closest one and went inside. For all I knew, there were others in there, but I didn’t have the time to think it through.
Ten vampires were behind me, but a huge window on the wall across from the door separated us. I dropped on all fours and squeezed my eyes shut. What I’d seen through the window, other than the vampires, couldn’t be real, could it? I dragged myself closer and stood still until I was sure I wouldn’t freak out too badly, before I took another look.
I bit my lip so hard, I almost tore it off completely.
It was very real.
The room on the other side of the window had more than one hundred beds in it. On each bed lay a human. They didn’t move. Their chests moved up and down so slowly. Both their arms were hooked to IVs. One bag was filled with clear liquid, and the other with blood.
Ten vampires walked around, checked the humans, replaced the filled bags with new ones, and put them in the end of the room, somewhere I couldn’t see. It was disgusting to watch, so I sat down on the ground again. What the hell were they doing? Cultivating blood?
To think that the blood I’d drank came from those bodies…I wanted to break something so badly, but I wanted to get out more. The others needed to know. Chandra and Mohg couldn’t do this. They couldn’t keep bodies in there forever for blood. People died. What would happen when those did?
It didn’t matter. I needed to get out first. Then, I needed to come back with whoever I could find to help me and burn this place to the ground.
I walked out of the room and ran farther ahead. Ran. It didn’t matter how much noise I made. I would run until my feet couldn’t carry me anymore.
The image of the humans in that room remained in front of me until I saw a window that showed the black sky. The problem was, three vampires were right at the corner from it. There was no way they wouldn’t see me.
Another two were coming right behind me on the corridor through which I’d passed. I was glad that they did, because they made my decision for me. Without another thought, I ran, covered my head with my arms, and went right through the window.
The glass broke and most of it stuck in my body. I fell for two seconds before I hit the first tree branch. After a dozen more, I finally landed on the yard.
Everything hurt. My ribs were broken. My leg was broken. Both my arms, and maybe my jaw. It was worse than molten silver while they healed. When my ears worked again, I heard the alarm. It was a small sound, but every vampire in the area would be able to hear it.
I’d barely made it to my feet before I heard them running. They were too many to count, and they were coming from both sides. My legs were still weak from the fall, but I ran with everything I had.
Ahead of me was a huge wall, almost as high as that around Manhattan. There were trees here and there, broken, almost black. I headed for the closest and tallest one, and I jumped on it, as high as I could. They were so close, and as soon as my hands touched the wood, a gun fired, and pain cut my shoulder in half.
The silver bullet went right through my flesh and hit the wall in front of me. The pain paralyzed my right arm for a long second, and the vampires fired again. I had no choice but to jump and hope to make it over to the other side.
I did. Some of my bones broke again. I was past trying to figure out which. And on the other side, there were other vampires, too. Big guns in their arms. Three of them were the closest, and they reached me as soon as I stood up. They looked at me with raised brows like they couldn’t figure where I’d fallen from, and I took advantage of their confusion. I ran ahead full speed.
Bullets flew around me. Another hit me in the back of my leg, but from the pain it caused, it wasn’t silver. Just a regular bullet. It hurt, but it was nothing compared to the first that had gone through me.
I only needed a couple of minutes to get to the buildings ahead of me. I could hide better in them.
I made it to the buildings, but the others were just as fast as I was. A roof, then another, and a bullet buried itself in my back. Not silver. I jumped from the roof and continued to run on the empty streets.
The place was deserted. Nothing moving around there. Nothing except me and more than twenty vampires who ran after me and tried to shoot me. I went into a building and out of it through another window. I did the same with the next ones on my way. The vampires were still there, behind me, but they weren’t shooting anymore. They could hear me, but they couldn’t see me. Would they ever stop chasing after me?
Just as the thought occurred to me, I went into the next building in front of me, and something, someone hit me hard on the back of my head. It was so unexpected that I flew for a few feet, and right in the arms of a man. A man with the faintest sound I’d ever heard of a beating heart.
He put something around me, something that looked like a blanket, but when it touched me, I felt the silver in it.
His friend, the one who had hit me first, helped him envelope me with it from head to toe. I didn’t feel the pain as much as I felt the panic. They’d caught me. I couldn’t move a single muscle. The silver blanket touched me everywhere. I was paralyzed.
Just when I’d hoped I’d escaped them, they caught me. I wanted to scream until my voice failed me, but I couldn’t even move my jaw. The silver was everywhere, and when the men grabbed me and pulled me up, I saw death in the face.
They walked with me in their arms for a minute, then threw me somewhere. Somewhere soft.
Then, we moved.
XXXIV
I’d never been in a car before, but this definitely felt like it. I hadn’t expected them to be so fast. The blanket was so soft, yet covered in silver. Hard to understand how they’d made it, but I wanted to understand first who they were. I was sure I’d heard a beating heart, but now, I heard nothing. It could’ve been the pain that didn’t let me focus, but I heard nothing other than the engine.
Like always when touched by silver, I lost track of time. Would they give me blood to heal? Woul
d they even get that stupid blanket off me before I lost it?
When they finally did, they put cuffs around my wrists. They weren’t silver, but I couldn’t break them. My strength was all but gone.
Ahead of us, in the middle of nowhere, was an airplane. Not quite like the ones I’d seen the pictures of in Dublin’s books, but it was an airplane.
I looked at the two men who dragged me by my arms. They weren’t vampires. They weren’t fucking vampires. They were human.
How the hell was that possible? I couldn’t hear their heartbeats. I looked down at their chests, concentrated for a second, but I got nothing. Nothing, yet I could faintly hear the blood that coursed through their veins from their necks.
My teeth were sharp. The craving unstoppable. If I could just lean my head close enough to one of them…
“Don’t make me put a silver bullet through your brain, you fucking sucker,” the man on my right hissed. I’d been watching his neck with so much longing that he must’ve seen.
“Where the hell are you taking me?” I asked, just as we reached the plane. It looked bigger from closer up. It was grey and shiny, brand new.
They took me up a set of narrow stairs and inside, but they never answered my question. They locked me inside a small room with nothing in it, not even a chair. The door was thick and made of steel. My legs gave, and I fell to the floor. My hands covered my ears. So many beating hearts were close to me. Seven in total, and they all pumped delicious blood slowly, perfectly, as if to spite me.
All I saw was blood, and all I heard was beating hearts. I lost myself even before unconsciousness took me.
The next night when my eyes opened, there was a large glass of cold blood right in front of my nose.
***
The bed I was lying in was hard and smelled awful. A man stood at the end of it, his heart beating steady.
“Before you do anything stupid, another glass is right there.”
He pointed at the stand to my left. He was right. Another glass was filled with cold blood, and though I would’ve preferred drinking straight out of the man, I didn’t. Cold, but it was blood nonetheless. It filled me from head to toe, and my eyes, my ears, my brain worked much better.
