Frostbitten

by Charlotte Stein

  She couldn’t breathe by the time he’d finished. It was like seeing a terrific actor play one of Shakespeare’s characters, if Shakespeare’s characters regularly ranted about nonexistent horror-movie monsters. His last sentence was so fiercely spat she felt it shove against her body. His face contorted into a mask of rage; his revulsion was a physical thing.

  She would have applauded if he wasn’t clearly a maniac.

  Vampire, had he said vampire? And if he had, then why in God’s name did she want to believe him? His conviction was so thick and rich it actually sucked her in for a second. That last sentence made her hair stand on end, and she was grateful for the respite Zeke then provided.

  “We’re not vampires, Merrick,” he said, and she was allowed a moment of relief.

  Before Stone-eyes rallied again with another rant.

  “All these years, and you’re still trying to pretend. How quaint you are, Ezekiel. Or is it Zeke in front of the semihuman? Wouldn’t want her to think you’ve been alive for five hundred years—better make it something more palatable to the modern ear. Oh and I’m sure you can pretend we don’t have the other qualities too. What are they again? The strength, the speed, the aversion to sunlight . . . I know, tell her that she recently became allergic to the outdoors. It will save her turning to a cinder again.”

  “New ones don’t turn to a cinder. She won’t—”

  “And that makes it better? That makes it easier to understand? Well, she’ll only burn herself a little. She’ll only like the taste of blood a tiny bit more than she did before. She’ll only be able to leap average buildings in a single bound, she—”

  She cut him off then. She had to. “Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up.”

  If he kept going, she was going to believe it. She knew she was. She could already feel herself falling down the rabbit hole. His derision was too strong; his passion too obvious beneath it. Zeke only wanted her to believe what he told her. But this man . . . this Merrick . . . he actually believed it. The delusion was there right down to his bones, and it needed destroying.

  It needed destroying now.

  “I don’t care how you put it,” she went on. “I care that you’re both lunatics. You’ve kidnapped me and brought me to this godforsaken place. You’ve chained me to a wall with poisonous manacles, for God’s sake. And now you’re talking about imaginary creatures? When I get out of this I’m not going to call the police. I’m going to call the nearest mental asylum,” she said, and was pleased with herself for doing so.

  Not that it had the slightest effect.

  “It isn’t poison,” Zeke said. “It’s just garlic in the keyhole to stop you fiddling with it. And we had to do it—we had to chain you. If we hadn’t, you would have wanted to run away and be back amongst people, and you can’t be. You’ll hurt someone.” At which point she knew.

  There was no reasoning with them. She was not going to escape by appealing to their ability to differentiate between reality and fantasy. They were too far gone; they had invested too much into whatever this was. She had to face the facts.

  Even if the facts made tears run over her cheeks again.

  “The only person I want to hurt is you. I thought you were my almost friend.” Her tone was far too desperate. But then, so was his.

  “I am completely your friend, Cora.” He sounded like he was bleeding from the throat.

  “It seems like I mean something to you.”

  “You mean everything to me,” he said, and oh how she wished those words didn’t make her ache. Even now, in this terrible predicament, the thought of Zeke feeling so strongly about her was unendurably sweet. She had to remind herself that this emotion was merely a memory of all the things she had once wanted.

  They couldn’t be hers now, no matter what he said.

  “Then why are you doing this? Tell me the truth.”

  “You already know what the truth is. By now you’ll be able to feel it—the blood must be singing in your veins. But you can fight it. If we give you time like this, if you don’t taste any blood but your own, if you don’t give in to . . . any urges you have toward me . . . eventually you might overcome what I’ve done to you. The disease will leave your system within a week, and then I swear we’ll set you free.”

  “Urges? What sort of urges?”

  He sighed and turned away.

  As if the details were as hard for him to grasp as they were for her. He had to distract himself with other things—sweeping crumbs that didn’t exist off the rickety table in the center of the room, straightening ancient-looking books on a shelf in the corner—before he could get them out. And when he finally did, he sounded a touch off.

  Shaky almost, even though Zeke was never shaky about anything.

  He was always as calm and cool as a summer breeze.

  It was what she liked about him.

  What she had liked about him.

  “It’s like a kind of frenzy. All new vampires go through it—but especially when the mystical bond between the person who infects and the person infected is strong to begin with. Then it becomes . . . bad for both. It becomes warped and weird and hard to fight. You’ll want to bite me. You’ll want to be near me, to touch me, to do all kinds of lurid things to me . . . and I’ll want to do the same to—”

  “Oh, so that’s what you’re going to tell yourself when you hurt me. You’re going to say I secretly wanted it because of some made-up vampire thing.”

  It surprised her, how vicious she sounded. How her lip curled as she spat the words out.

  But it didn’t seem to surprise him. He just accepted it, like he’d prepared in advance for this response.

  “I’m not going to do anything to you, Cora. No matter how much you beg me to, I will resist with everything I have. Believe me, if I had any other place to stay while we go through this, I would. I want you to be human again, and you will be, you will be, I swear—if you can just resist too.”

  “I won’t need to resist. We both know nothing is going to happen.” But by this point the cold finger was practically a whole hand. She could feel it clamped around her heart, as she thought one by one of all the things that proved him right. There was the explosion she only hoped she had dreamt and the conviction of his friend; the blood on her chin and the feel of this terrible ancient place.

  Their safe house, she would hear them call it—and she believed them when they said they hadn’t had to use it in years. It looked and smelled like animals had been nesting there in the meantime.

  And then there were their names: Merrick and Ezekiel.

  They sounded so old. They spoke with old voices and looked at her with eyes that could have crossed a thousand years. And finally, there was the feeling. The one he’d spoken of—the singing inside her. Only it didn’t seem like singing at all, to her. It seemed like a great seething mass rising up steadily through her body, so ready for all the things he’d suggested she might do.

  You’ll want to bite, he’d said.

  And by God she wanted to bite.

  You’ll want to be near me, he’d said.

  And she was damned if she didn’t want that too.

  You’ll want to touch, he’d said, which was undoubtedly the craziest one of all.

  Apart from one highly problematic thing . . .

  She had no idea how her hands weren’t on him already.

  As near as she could tell, she waited three days. Three days of not being sure what was real or what wasn’t. Three days of almost being convinced by the ache in her gums and the shivering and the heat; three days of never being convinced of anything. She heard her captors arguing distantly in rooms she couldn’t get to, everything so faint she didn’t know if she was imagining things they’d said or not. All she knew was that the tone of Zeke’s voice still soothed, and the glassy sharpness of Merrick’s stabbed, and both of them left her in a tangle.

  One she had to get out of.

  After three days of this delirium, she was finally ready. She was more
than ready. She was desperate, to the point where she could barely make herself wait for their silence. They were talking somewhere . . . below her almost, about how still she had become. It seemed like the best moment to catch them unawares, yet she managed to force herself not to chance it. Not until they were completely quiet and possibly sleeping.

  Then she climbed to her feet.

  Slowly, so as not to disturb them—but also because of the thing she expected to happen. She hadn’t stood in all the time she’d been here, so her legs were probably going to be shaky. In fact, all of her body should have been shaky, without food or water. Yet somehow, that wasn’t the case at all.

  She was as steady as she’d ever been.

  And the hand she looped the chain around—that was steady, too. It barely rattled the metal. The action was smooth and silent, as if she’d done it a million times before. This was just an everyday sort of thing, escaping from makeshift prisons after days of starvation. It didn’t mean anything that she did it so effortlessly, or felt so suddenly bright with energy.

  It was probably that adrenaline thing people got when they were in danger, she thought, and then yanked.

  She heaved. Her body leaned back diagonally; her feet pressed so hard into the bare boards the wood kind of started to buckle. She knew the wood was starting to buckle, but refused to think about it too deeply. If she did, she would have to accept the impossible.

  She would not, she could not.

  Vampires did not exist. They were a made-up thing that these two weirdos were using as a justification to keep her here—but that wasn’t going to be the case for long. The wood behind the ring was starting to creak and groan. Another second and she’d be free. Just a little more muscle, a little more effort, and then there it was.

  The wood cracked and the ring clanked to the floor, so sudden it should have sent her sprawling. Yet somehow it didn’t. Somehow she stayed on her feet. She hardly even staggered or lost a bit of her balance, which seemed unsettling enough on its own. But then there were other things, too. She wasn’t sweating, despite working harder at something than she’d ever worked in her entire life.

  And she wasn’t breathing hard.

  In fact, she’d suspected for some time that she wasn’t breathing at all. There was a terrifying stillness to her entire body now—a kind of silence that she couldn’t quite figure out. Was it purely the absence of oxygen, going in and out of her lungs? She didn’t think so, but what else could it possibly be?

  Nothing, she told herself, nothing, and part of her really believed that.

  She believed it enough to wrap the loose chain around her body and run right out the door.

  Of course, the problem only followed her. Once she was out there she should have been cold, but she wasn’t. She didn’t have anything on her feet, but the snow-covered ground barely posed an issue. It didn’t even make her slip or stagger, despite how fast she was running. Somehow she wasn’t only impervious to the cold. She was also at least fifty percent less clumsy than she’d been before.

  And eight hundred times faster.

  The trees whipped by her as though she was in a car instead of on her own two feet. Everything seemed so light, like flying rather than running, and once she realized Zeke and Merrick were onto her that feeling intensified. It came back to her when she heard Merrick’s voice somewhere behind her: strength and speed, he’d said.

  She couldn’t deny he’d been right. She was running so fast now she couldn’t see the trees anymore. They formed great walls of green and brown on either side of her, like she’d somehow turned them into a tunnel.

  She didn’t even need to dodge around things or watch out for fallen branches. Her body simply reacted to all obstacles on its own. Even in the darkness, with only a sliver of moon in the sky to light the way.

  My new body, she thought, only it wasn’t so scary now. How could it be, when whatever power she had was helping her elude them? She could hear them running the way she was running—on feet so light they barely touched the ground—yet still they couldn’t catch her. After a while they were reduced to shouting after her, though she wasn’t sure shouting was the right word.

  Somehow she knew they were hardly raising their voices. They warned her to stop, to come back, to listen to them, and they did it all in whispers . . . yet she heard them anyway. It was as though they were talking in her head—a thought that sung through her so strongly she almost stopped. For the first time, it really struck her.

  It struck her the way it had when she’d seen him through the fire—humans couldn’t do these things.

  She thought of how it felt to run like this, to jump so high, to be so strong. When she whispered in their direction, she actually felt them recoil. “Hullabaloo,” she said under her breath, like she was five again, with all those hopes and dreams about the wonder of the world. One day I will step through a mystical door, she’d always thought, and now somehow she had. It was soaked in blood and weird as fuck, but it was amazing nonetheless. It was so amazing that when she came to a chasm in the woods—fifty feet across and with a wild river at its bottom—she didn’t hesitate. All this new wonder surged in her veins, rising up and up until anything seemed possible.

  I can jump this, she told herself, in a voice filled with awe.

  And she was right.

  She took off from the ground like a rocket, arcing so high she was sure she could see the tops of the trees for a second. Her legs pedaled in the empty air, arms reaching for the mossy bank at the other side. She didn’t need to reach, however. She overshot the edge by a good yard, her feet forming heavy grooves through the mud as she slowed to a stop.

  It looked like something had crashed there, when she glanced back on it. Something heavy she thought, but it had only been her. She was the thing that had crashed—even though she hadn’t crashed at all. She was still upright, still unmarked and unhurt. She could have been out for a stroll for all the effect it had on her.

  A fact that they seemed just as shocked by as she was.

  They stopped at the edge of the chasm on the other side, two dark marks amidst all the white. Eyes wide and staring, in a way she shouldn’t be able to see. She shouldn’t have been able to, but she could. When she squinted, she could make out the line between Zeke’s brows, and the tightness of Merrick’s mouth.

  It made her want to wave just to infuriate him further.

  You can’t get to me, she thought gleefully.

  But she was so very, very wrong about that. Or at least, she was wrong when it came to Zeke. Merrick might not have dared to do it, but Zeke apparently did. She saw him take three steps back, and almost put up a shocked hand, as though some part of her still cared for him. She thought of him saying, “You mean everything to me,” and there it was. The urge to shout no, the way Merrick did.

  He practically cried out in anguish, and went to grab Zeke before he could do it. The way a lover would, Cora thought, but didn’t get the chance to truly address that idea. Instead she had to watch with bated breath as Zeke launched himself off the edge of the cliff, not sure if she was more terrified of him falling or making it. If he fell, she would never hear his voice again or look into those liquid eyes.

  And if he made it . . .

  She would have to return to the chains.

  Of course it was true that no longer meant what it had. If they were really vampires, then perhaps their motives were not so terrible. Maybe she could trust him; maybe she could trust both of them. Maybe they were only looking out for her. It certainly seemed like it, when she considered things rationally. But the problem was—she didn’t seem able to look at things rationally. She saw him land on the stretch of mud in front of her, and everything just went haywire. This big glut of terror and panic punched through her, so overwhelming she didn’t know how to fight it.

  Her only thought was of escape, even though she wasn’t sure escape was the right word for it anymore. Whenever she thought about fleeing, it wasn’t because of any kind of
oppressed feelings. It wasn’t because of the possibility they would recapture her, or the threat of something worse that might happen. It was about getting away to somewhere that had people.

  She wasn’t going to hurt those people after all. And if she did happen to hurt them, well she wasn’t going to do it a lot. She just wanted to see them, and maybe touch them with her aching teeth. Was that really so bad? Was that really so awful?

  Zeke seemed to think it was awful, but then Zeke was a vampire fiend. A vampire fiend who filled her with strange, visceral urges, but a vampire fiend nonetheless. She couldn’t possibly put much stock in his opinion, no matter how delicious he smelled and how dizzy he made her feel. After all, he was busy trying to haul her back, away from the people all filled with lovely blood. He managed to snag the material of the stupid nightgown they’d put her in, and she could tell he was trying to use it to get purchase on something more solid.

  So she yanked, hard enough to tear it.

  She let the entire sleeve go and kept running—or at least, it felt like she was trying to run. She moved her arms and legs in the exact same way she had before, when she’d turned the forest into a tunnel, yet somehow it wasn’t working right. Everything felt slower and more sluggish, to the point where he could actually catch up with her.

  And when he did it was pretty much game over for her rational side. The second his arms went around her—blocking all her limbs in and damn near squeezing the breath from her body—she turned into someone else altogether. She bared her teeth and bucked hard against him, snarling and spitting in a way that didn’t seem normal.

  It seemed near feral, as though she’d forgotten how to be a person.