“You can’t seriously be considering this!” Lucas stepped forward. “They outnumber us at least five to one. We have no choice but to run.”
“Run? Run where?” I shot back at him. “Lest you forget, this is an island we’re on. If we want to reach the ship that got you here, we’d have to walk right into the hunters.”
“Most of us aren’t trained to fight,” Lucas continued to object.
“They might simply burn us,” Yuri spoke up.
“That’s exactly what they’ll do if we just sit here and wait for them.”
“What are you saying, boy?” Cameron asked.
“I don’t know about you, but I can no longer run. I say we fight for this island. We make a refuge out of it.”
The other vampires were beginning to huddle around us, listening in, curious about what was going to unfold.
“How do you propose we do that, brother?” Lucas practically spat out the words.
“We’ll make an example of these hunters. We’ll send out a clear message. Any human who enters this island can never leave again.” The moment I said the words, I immediately took notice of the shock in Cora’s eyes. I tried not to worry about her. A decision had to be made and I was clearly the only one who would make it. There was no going back for me. “We need to fight back.”
“And if we don’t succeed?” This time, it was my father speaking as he rose to his feet. “What if the sun rises as we fight? It will be the end of all of us.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know about you, but I’d rather die fighting than running.”
And so it happened that at the darkest time of the night, we took the offensive and ran straight to the hunters. Their surprise proved to work to our advantage, but they knew that there was no way for us to finish the battle before the sun would eventually rise and defeat us on their behalf. However, as we fought for our lives against some of the best and most fearsome hunters their order sent our way, we realized that our fear of sunlight proved to be unfounded. We fought for hours – for as long as it took to destroy every hunter who dared invade us, but dawn never came.
After the Battle of First Blood, the island became permanently enveloped by darkness. The moon became our sun. It would be years later before we found out why, about the hand Cora played in it all. Even after I found out that she was behind it, I couldn’t fully understand why she chose to spare our lives even though it meant losing the lives of hundreds of hunters.
The others lauded the strange occurrence as a miracle. They believed that the island was truly meant to be our sanctuary, and celebrated me for discovering it and leading them to fight for it.
I didn’t see it the same way they did. I saw it as a dark omen.
I would never forget Vivienne and me staring at the starlit sky long into the night while the others slept like babies. It seemed only my twin and I agreed on what actually happened. The fear in her violet eyes was unmistakable. After years of silence, she stared up at the night sky, grabbed my hand and said, “The darkness is coming.”
I didn’t ask her what she meant. To me, she meant the darkness that took over The Shade signified the darkness that took over each of us during that battle, because for many of us, it was the first time we ever intentionally took human life. It was the night we drew first blood.
By the time I grew too tired to fight, the ground of the arena was blood red, a stark reminder of the battle we fought four hundred years ago. Of all the warriors who stood within that circle, not one was able to hit me, much less wound me. They were the same men and women who drew first blood with me – only this time, they were weaker, prouder, and less resilient. In battle, I barely recognized them anymore.
I threw my weapon on the ground and began to walk away from the training grounds, only to find Cameron approaching.
“You up for a fight, Hendry?”
“Not today, prince.” He shook his head, an amused smile forming on his face. “I came to ask if you still wanted that meeting with the council at the Great Dome.”
“Of course,” I shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I?”
He responded with a look that clearly spelled, you should really know the answer to that. I shuffled my feet and gave him a confused and impatient stare. He chuckled, pointing to the opponents I just fought.
“If we weren’t vampires, you would’ve already murdered more than two-thirds of the Elite council…” he smiled before adding “…your majesty.”
I fought the urge to laugh. The Elite council now consisted of a rather pathetic bunch. I just rolled my eyes and went for a quick change before I headed for the dome with Cameron.
“What do we know about Ingrid Maslen?” I asked. For reasons I couldn’t completely understand, something about the idea of Borys having a new girl didn’t sit right with me. He was after Vivienne for such a long time, bent on getting “what belonged to him”. I simply couldn’t believe that he would just let bygones be bygones and replace Vivienne with someone else, unless of course there was more to Ingrid Maslen than we knew of.
Cameron shrugged. “I’m not sure she’s even been allowed out of The Oasis ever since Borys turned her. She’s his best kept secret.”
“Any idea why she is kept under wraps?”
“Just rumors. Some say Ingrid is to The Oasis as Vivienne is to the The Shade.”
“She’s a seer?”
“Maybe… Why else would Borys be so obsessed with her? We both know how sick that man is – if we could even call him that. He wouldn’t turn a human like Ingrid and make her part of his clan unless there was something special about her.”
I couldn’t help but frown at the information, wondering to myself why it bothered me so much. Borys was no longer after my sister. I should’ve been happy. Still, thinking about Ingrid made me feel unnerved. Something wasn’t right. I had more urgent matters to concern myself with for the time being, but I knew that someday I would have to come face-to-face with Borys Maslen again and finally lay eyes on this mysterious woman of his.
A strange sense of premonition told me that I was going to rue that day.
Chapter 13: Sofia
Blood was all over the Sun Room. The LED lights mimicking the sun’s rays were busted. The only source of light was a flickering fluorescent lamp fighting to stay alight. I was pinned against one of its walls. I couldn’t move. I was frightened. I didn’t understand what was going on. I couldn’t hear anything. My sense of touch was gone. I sensed a dark presence enter the room. A shadow. I couldn’t make out who it was. I tried to talk, but my voice came out in an inaudible rasp. The shadow approached. Its presence was so strong, so powerful, so dark. It stopped in front of me. Blood began to pool on the ground where the shady figure stood. I was expecting to see Lucas, and found myself gasping when I saw it was Derek. Blue eyes void of life. Fangs bared. Ready to prey on me. He took a hold of me. His fangs were about to sink into my skin. Then nothing. Nothing but a large, empty void and a female voice whispering, “The darkness is coming.”
I woke up in the hotel room, sweating, tense and all out of breath. I was clutching the sheets for dear life, afraid that if I let go, I might get sucked back into the nightmare. I flinched when I heard the bathroom door open. I could smell Ben’s aftershave mixed with the fragrances of shampoo and soap. I stirred on the bed trying to shake off the effects the nightmare had on me. I was afraid for myself. I was afraid for Derek.
“Breakfast is ready on the veranda,” Ben called. He was rubbing his hair dry, oblivious of my still trembling form.
I dragged myself out of the bed. I can’t keep waking up this way. I might’ve left The Shade, but the island and all its horrors were still right with me.
I pulled my hair up in a messy bun as I made my way to the veranda. I needed the sunlight to draw the lurking shadows away. Breakfast consisted of muesli, coffee and fruit salad. I would’ve preferred some toast with jam and butter, but I wasn’t in a particularly picky mood.
Ben joined me not long after I settled down
in my seat.
“Mom and Dad are on their way to pick us up. We might end up staying here a couple more days. Apparently, they made a whole fuss with the police when we disappeared…” He sat across me, looking bothered.
I cringed. “I was afraid of that. We’ll have to talk to the police, probably even a social worker…”
“So what’s our story going to be?” He leaned back in his seat, rolling a grape around on his plate. “We ran away? That’s it?”
“I guess we could just keep it simple by keeping our mouths shut. We ran away. Period. No need to give them any details.”
“Unless…” Ben began drumming his fingers over the top of the table.
“Unless what?” I pushed my bowl away. It seemed neither one of us had much of an appetite that morning.
“Unless we just tell them the truth. The whole truth.”
I knew it was an option, but for reasons I couldn’t fully understand, something inside me was violently screaming against it. “We can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“What are we going to tell them? We were abducted by vampires and taken to an invisible island to be their slaves? … We don’t even know where The Shade is. They’re going to think we’re insane.”
“So what? We met people there… I’m sure someone out there has reported them missing… How else would we have known about them?”
I shook my head. “We can’t. Derek trusted us by letting us escape. We can’t betray…”
“So there it is then! The truth. You don’t want to talk about The Shade because of him. What did he do to you, Sofia? It’s like you’re possessed by this inexplicable urge to please him.”
The words stung. I couldn’t look Ben in the eye. I didn’t know why. I wished I knew why. “It’s not just Derek. I’m sorry, Ben, but I just can’t… Not this way.”
A knock on the door interrupted our conversation. I could feel Ben’s eyes threatening to burn holes through me, but he eventually stood up and answered the door. From the veranda, I could hear his mother, Amelia, sobbing.
“Where’s Sofia, Ben? Is she with you?” Little Abby sounded cautious.
If his father, Lyle, was there, he certainly wasn’t talking much. It took a couple of minutes before Ben eventually came out to fetch me. “The police are here. They want to ask us some questions.”
“And what’s our answer going to be?”
He ground his teeth before responding. “We ran away.”
They spent a considerable amount of time getting us to talk. They kept telling us that we could tell them the truth, that we didn’t have to be afraid. They tried their best to pry any information about where we were, how we managed to keep ourselves hidden, how we survived. We remained true to our decision. Ben never even hinted about The Shade. Just like me, he kept silent about it and I was grateful for it. I knew he couldn’t understand why I refused to give The Shade away – heck, even I didn’t understand – but he supported me and I thought the world of him for it.
The police eventually gave up. Running away wasn’t a punishable crime, and unless they were charging us with a crime, we had no more reason to talk.
It took three days before all the necessary paper work and police reports were done to get Ben and me cleared to go back to California. The physical examinations brought about a new onslaught of questions. They didn’t find anything wrong with me, but there was no hiding the scars on Ben’s body.
I would never be able to forget the look on Amelia’s eyes when she saw the scars. It felt like I was being torn apart when she looked at Ben and me – eyes pleading – and cried, “Who did this? Why won’t you tell us who did this?”
It was the first time I ever saw Lyle so angry. “Sofia, where were you? What happened to both of you?”
I could sense Ben’s eyes on me – eating away at my conscience. Even then, I couldn’t… I couldn’t tell them about The Shade. “I’m so sorry,” was all I managed to say, head bowed down and tears streaming down my eyes.
I expected Ben to tell them everything right then, but he held his ground. Lyle and Amelia tried to pry information out of us. They screamed, they begged, they threatened… Neither Ben nor I said anything about the vampires.
Finally, everything came to an end when Ben sighed in exasperation and said, “Can we please just go home? I’m exhausted.”
His statement paved the way to the quietest, tensest road trip I’d ever been on. Ben slept through most of the trip. I envied him; as hard as I tried, I was unable to get a wink of sleep throughout the entire drive home.
Their home. Not mine.
It wasn’t until we reached their house that I managed to pull Lyle over to the side and ask him the question that’d been bothering me since I saw them.
“Did my dad know I was gone?” Did he care?
The look on Lyle’s face was heartbreaking. “The checks came on schedule.”
I knew what that meant. It didn’t matter if my father knew or not. As far as Aiden Claremont was concerned, when it came to his daughter, everything was just business as usual. His fatherly obligation toward me apparently started and ended with the quarterly checks he sent the Hudsons.
I didn’t know why I was surprised. From the moment my mother went insane and he shipped her away from home, he married his work as the founder of what was then a small home security agency that eventually developed into a larger business. Truth be told, the sums he was sending the Hudsons to care for me were really just scraps considering what he was actually worth. He was a filthy rich, miserable excuse for a father.
As if throwing me a bone of consolation, Lyle awkwardly rubbed my back. “The Aiden I used to know adored you.”
Yeah? Introduce him to me once you find that version of him again. I just smiled back at Lyle. It wasn’t right for me to take my frustration out on him. From my perspective, he lost a best friend the day I lost a father.
Amelia kept me busy working with her in the kitchen, making dinner for the rest of the evening. Dinner was tense. Abby was the only one who seemed to be in a light and bubbly mood. We tried to oblige her, but none of us ever really managed to ease the sense of friction soaking the atmosphere.
That night, I tossed and turned in my bed, unable to sleep. I kept my eyes shut. I thought of escaping The Shade many times while I was there. At the back of my mind, I had some vague idea about exposing The Shade and freeing all its human prisoners. That was what I thought I’d be doing now, after leaving the island. Instead, I went back to California, had dinner with the Hudsons and talked – rather uncomfortably – about going back to school.
I had to force myself not to laugh when Amelia said she expected Ben and me to return to school immediately. I looked at Ben for a reaction, but he kept still. He said nothing about it. He’d just seemed dazed and out of his element since we got back.
I was convinced that I would spend the rest of the night obsessing about what living with the Hudsons for the next few years would be like, when I heard a knock. I sat up in my bed and found Ben pushing my door open.
“Hey…”
“I just…” He seemed genuinely embarrassed to be there. “Do you mind sleeping with me in my bed? I’d rather not be alone…”
I needed no further prodding. I got up, grabbed my pillow and blanket and followed Ben. We snuck through the hallway until we reached his bedroom. We snuggled against each other beneath the sheets, but I couldn’t shake away the thought that it provided me none of the security and comfort that I had with Derek.
Even together, Ben and I stayed up way into the night afraid of the nightmares sleep would surely bring.
“Mom wants to drive to school tomorrow, see what we have to do to catch up…”
“You’re actually willing to go through with this high school thing?”
“I think I owe it to my parents – even to myself I guess – to at least try. Besides, what else are we going to do?”
It was another small glimpse of the Ben I used to know �
�� the Ben who loved his parents and loved being the popular hotshot in high school. To be given the chance to once again see that side of him was the only reason I said, “High school it is then.”
There was a long pause, with both of us mulling over our own muddled up thoughts.
I eventually broke the silence. “Ben?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
He didn’t ask why. He knew. “They did something to you at The Shade, Sofia. I don’t know what, but I hope you eventually break out of whatever they did and finally see sense. I’ll wait until graduation. After that, I’m going to take revenge on the island, and I’m going to do it whether you’re with me or not.”
I didn’t know how he intended to do it, but I knew he meant every word. The coldness in his voice terrified me, but not as much as the fact that I suddenly felt an almost animalistic urge to protect The Shade – no matter what.
It didn’t make sense to me at all, but perhaps Ben was right. They must’ve done something to me at The Shade, because no matter how far away from the island I was, I remained its captive, and it felt like there was nothing I could do about it.
The Shade became a part of me and destroying it felt equivalent to destroying myself.
Chapter 14: Derek
The Great Dome was a large, round hall located at the topmost level of the Crimson Fortress’ west tower. It earned its name due to the dome-like, cavernous structure of its ceiling. It was never officially declared as the main center of all our governmental, judicial and military gatherings, but it became just that over the years.
The dome was designed to show the hierarchy of The Shade’s Elite. Across the large oak doors, right at the front end of the room, the balcony stood. It had four seats – on a pedestal three feet above the ground was my father, the king’s seat. To its right, two feet above was my seat. On either side of mine were Vivienne’s and Lucas’ seats, situated one foot above the ground.
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