I didn’t want to bring up my paradoxical existence—having watched both of my parents die on the space station yet knowing they were alive again in this time. I was the only one from the future who’d come full circle, my life as a vampire extending far longer than everyone else who’d stepped into 1949.
Instead of continuing to argue, Fiona stood up and separated her hand from mine. “Would you excuse me?” she said, which certainly didn’t escape her lips as a question. “I need to use the bathroom.”
“They’re in the locker rooms,” Jack said. “Do you remember how to get there?”
“I’ll come with you,” I said, also standing.
“No; you guys continue to discuss what you need to. I’ll be fine,” Fiona insisted.
I remembered her telling me she’d come here on her own after being released to visit with the orderly she’d befriended, so I didn’t fight her on wanting to go alone.
“Okay; we’ll be here,” I said, and once she was gone, I took the opportunity to request a drink. “Take it easy on her, okay?” I said as Jack heated up the blood. “She’s been through a lot.”
“We all have,” Ashley said. “She can’t keep using that as an excuse.”
“It’s not an excuse. And she hasn’t had the time to process everything like we have,” I countered. “It’s not like you were completely rational about the setbacks in your life at eighteen. Either of you. I know it was a long time ago now.”
“Not by looking at the two of you,” Ashley said with a smirk.
“Maybe she’ll run into her friend while she’s out,” I said. “Maybe that would help her emotional state right now.”
“What friend?” Jack asked, handing me the warm glass.
“The orderly she befriended while she was in here. I don’t remember her name. She’s come to visit a few times.”
“Not to my knowledge, but what do I know—I’m only the Director of Operations.”
“Though we’ve had another visitor,” Ashley said and glanced at Jack before elaborating.
15
Fiona
I didn’t have to use the bathroom until after I’d left the office, then it was suddenly unbearable. I’d just wanted to get away from everyone criticizing my reaction to my mother’s betrayal. I thought everyone would have been on my side and sharing my hatred of her. But with their infinite wisdom, they simply scoffed at my one-sided view—like she was the one who deserved to be pitied.
Luckily, I did remember where the locker rooms were, and even though I made a wrong turn or two, I eventually found them. It felt even better to find the women’s locker room empty, but I hurried to return to a more public portion of the hospital.
Of numerous hospital staff members I recognized, none chilled me to the core quite like Nurse Oleander. Her icy blue eyes recognized me from an adjacent hallway, looking up from a conversation she was having with another nurse. She made no move to come after me, but she watched me pass with the sadistic smile that never reached her eyes. My heartbeat quickened, but I tried not to appear obvious and quickened my pace.
She can’t hurt me anymore, I told myself. I’m not a patient here.
Even with Nurse Oleander out of sight, I still felt how this place affected me—the pain my body still remembered, and all the visits I’d been forced to endure—some admittedly more torturous than others.
I was torn between wanting to hurry back to the office and surround myself with allies in this deadly asylum and wanting to distance myself from Ashley and Jack’s criticism.
While I roamed the halls, I was also reminded of the friend I’d made while I’d been committed here—fifteen-year-old Kelsey, who’d had the terrible luck of being turned when she was merely thirteen by a pedophile vampire who thought she’d stay pre-adolescent forever. He didn’t seem to understand how the turning process worked and Kelsey had had to pay the price.
I knew it was getting late and the patients would be let out of their rooms soon for breakfast and rec time, ending the shifts of the daytime orderlies. Since I’d previously told Matthew I’d come here to visit Kelsey, I was inspired to do just that—which would also help with the honesty and no more secrets thing.
I didn’t know where exactly to start looking, so I peered into the closest patient room I could find, systematically working my way down the current hall. Inside many of those rooms were lonely and crestfallen patients, dreading another night of visits from their vampire masters. Mallory and I had shared a room during our time here, but we were obviously the exceptions. Every patient I came across was huddled alone in his or her own space. I was beginning to regret looking for Kelsey, knowing there was nothing I could do to help these people.
There was a bigger picture—a greater good at work—but it was hard to see that positive context as I looked into each of those dreadful rooms.
However, despite my heavy heart, I continued my search for Kelsey. And once I’d reached my third hallway, I found her scrubbing away at an empty room’s floor. It had been over six months since I’d seen her, and the young girl I pictured in my head already appeared older.
I lightly tapped on the small rectangular viewing window with my knuckles. She immediately stopped her work and glanced up. At first, she looked confused—then recognition dawned on her face and her lips curled into a radiant smile.
“Fiona, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” Kelsey said after opening the door.
“Sorry, this isn’t a place I was inclined to run back to,” I said and gave her a hug. “Do you mind if I join you for a few minutes?”
“Not at all,” she said, returning to her knees and plucking the sponge from the bucket of soapy water. “I’m almost finished here, then my shift is over. Rest until sun-up.”
“Is there someone assigned to this room right now?” I asked, wondering whose space I was invading.
“Yes. A girl named Gemma. She recently left with the nurse for breakfast. I thought I was going to finish before she was released, but I guess I’m a little behind schedule.”
“How have you been?” I asked, finding a place to stand that was out of her way. The bed was nicely made, so I didn’t want to sit on it and mess up Kelsey’s handiwork.
“Good. The doctors are really helping me control my cravings. They’ve been getting worse. But I haven’t had any accidents. I’m happy about that.”
After completing a section of the floor behind the door, Kelsey dropped the sponge back into the bucket with a small splash and rose to her feet. “There; all finished.” She placed the bucket on her cart next to the pile of dirty sheets and clothes. “What’s life been like for you, adjusting to the outside again?”
“It was more of a relief than an adjustment,” I said. “Maybe if I’d been here longer, then it would have been different.”
“As much as I’m thankful for everything this place has done for me, I can’t wait until I’m ready for reintegration. Though I don’t know where I’ll live or anything. It’s not like I can just go home.”
“Are your parents still around?”
“Yeah; but after being gone for so many years and presumed dead, only to come back as this…” her voice tailed off, and she looked distant. “You know, I can’t face them with what I’ve become. It’s probably better to let them continue believing I’m dead.”
I didn’t know quite what to say; she looked so sad and alone.
“With reintegration, does the hospital help you get settled and find a job?”
“Supposedly, but I don’t know the details. I still have a few years anyway.”
According to the True North Society, the current state of the world didn’t have more than a few years left, so she’d be entering a very different world to the one she’d left—one more amicable to her kind and less amicable to mine.
“I’d like to help if I can,” I said. “Where are you off to now?”
“To put all this away, then I’ll just retire to my room for the night. You’re welcome to come if
you want. I always enjoy the company.”
I thought about the meeting Matthew was having and didn’t know how much time I had, but figured I could just text him, then hang out with Kelsey until his business was finished.
“Let me just check in, then yeah, if you don’t mind me tagging along.” I pulled out my cellphone and began typing a quick message to Matthew.
“Hi, Kelsey. I thought I’d missed—Fiona, what are you doing here?”
The familiar voice made me cringe, and when I looked up from the screen mid-text, Mallory was standing in the doorway. The better question was, what the hell was she doing here?
16
Mallory
Since I’d first started training, it had been ingrained in me to hate supernatural creatures—especially vampires. And my training had started earlier than it did for most; my father had made sure of it. However, it was our little secret. I was never supposed to breathe a word of the existence of monsters to anyone—especially to my mother.
My training started after my twelfth birthday. As far as my mother knew, I was enrolled in karate. Like my brother before me, my father said it was important in this day and age to be proficient in self-defense. Since I was a girl, he told my mother that it was even more important. He simply left out the part that I was learning to defend myself from vampires, as well as would-be human attackers. Naturally, my father had taken Aaron and me to the classes in the beginning. But after a few years, it had become just Aaron and me. Once he became a candidate, Aaron was able to continue his training on the compound while I’d continued training in secrecy. And once I got my license, I was all on my own.
Since training before candidacy wasn’t sanctioned, my father had been forced to find a Society member willing to train his children in private. In the beginning, he trained Aaron himself, but by the time I’d joined the mix, an official trainer had already taken over the sessions.
My father took Aaron and me to a small strip mall he owned, which actually did have a karate studio in it. But during our sessions, the studio was closed to the general public, so Aaron and I had it all to ourselves.
Our trainer was a tall and muscular man named Mack. I didn’t know about the Society at that time, so Mack was introduced to me as an ex-Navy Seal. He confirmed my father’s wild stories of this crazy world’s monsters that most people had no idea existed. This was information the government hid from the general public to prevent widespread pandemonium, and elite fighting teams in the armed forces had both the honor and the privilege to combat these supernatural forces. And now I, too, was being groomed for such an honor.
I was by no means a natural in the beginning. However, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t in many extracurricular school activities because my training had quickly become five days a week, every afternoon after school. It started with defense, then offense and weapons training. I could successfully disarm and defend myself against a human three times my size by the time I was fourteen, which gave me a confidence I’d never felt before by the time I entered high school.
Then the focus of my training turned to the monsters I’d been taught to hate and fear. They were said to be soulless, vile creatures that had no business existing in this world and should be killed at all costs. I was to become a part of something important, and for that, I needed to be ready—ready for war.
It wasn’t until I became a True North Society candidate that I actually met one of these elusive supernatural beings. I’d accepted their existence as truth since my father and Mack were so passionate about the subject, but a little voice in the back of my head always wondered if this was all some type of warped fantasy. I couldn’t talk about this stuff with anyone else and normal people didn’t believe in monsters.
What if everyone else wasn’t in the dark about the true state of the world? What if we were the crazy ones? However, when I became a candidate, I irrefutably discovered everything I’d been told about the existence of vampires and angels was true. Then, in the glass room on the space station, I’d learned how there was so much more to the story.
My father hadn’t told me about Sisters of Mercy until I brought it up. President Bolt had sentenced Fiona and me to that vampire torture chamber—a true human hell—in an attempt to bring us closer together and force us to rely on each other. Shared trauma was supposed to give us a special bond—a special sisterhood that would forever change us. It changed us all right, but not in the way they—meaning the Assembly—wanted. Fiona and I already had our shared trauma. I had been linked to her far longer than she knew. Her mother had torn my family apart, and even though it wasn’t Fiona’s fault, every time I saw her, I could only see her mother.
I couldn’t get past that, nor did I want to. I knew my father wasn’t entirely innocent—affairs needed two willing participants, after all—but my father at least tried to mend the rift he’d created in their marriage. He loved my mother despite her faults, trying hard to right his transgressions. But she simply continued to unravel, ultimately taking her own life while I was locked in a room with the girl I despised almost as much as I loathed her mother.
My feelings toward Fiona and her mother were not changed, but I still exited Sisters of Mercy a different person. I met creatures more vile than anyone could successfully describe and I fought for my life. However, I also met a girl who had challenged my one-size-fits-all vision of vampires. Our regular orderly, Kelsey, defied everything my father had told me about the Undead. She’d not asked for what she would ultimately become, had she?
As it turned out, she was still transitioning, still growing, still living…
Maybe once she died, she’d also become one of the hellish creatures visiting us on a nightly basis, but I was no longer convinced the situation—or her kind—was so black and white.
There were vampires out there that didn’t want to be monsters. They didn’t want to prey on humans. They didn’t want to be vampires at all. And for that, I could no longer universally condemn them. I began to understand the work that Sisters of Mercy was doing, though that understanding could still get easily lost in an explanation. Assemblywoman Ashley Degray was right; to truly understand it, one needed to experience it firsthand.
I didn’t see my experience as a blessing right away. I left Sisters of Mercy like any sane person and never wanted to set foot in there again but it haunted me. Initially, I was consumed with nightmares of the torment I’d been through. But over my subsequent weeks of freedom, I was haunted by Kelsey and what had happened to her, how many others were like her, and the roles the unfortunate patients were playing for the baby vampire training.
About two months later, I wandered back into Sisters of Mercy under my own accord and asked to speak to the young boy director. I hadn’t wanted to listen to what he had to say when I’d arrived the first time, but I wanted to listen to him later. I knew Ashley had started her Society journey in Sisters of Mercy, and it was no secret it had changed the course of her life. I hadn’t realized it was Jack who’d initially changed hers, though, much like Kelsey was now altering the path of mine. Our orderlies were the catalysts for opening our eyes to new possibilities.
“What did Ashley do when she came back?” I asked Jack as I sat across from him in his sparse office. He was initially quite skeptical of my return and assumed it had something to do with my father. When I assured Jack that my father had no idea I was here, he finally started to open up.
“She wanted to know more about Matthew because he was the lost link to her murdered parents,” Jack said. “So, she had even more reason to come back. But we’d also become close and Matthew allowed her to visit me. The interactions were mutually beneficial. Have you ever noticed the angel pendant she wears?”
I shook my head.
“Her mother was wearing it the night she was murdered by a vampire—by the original owner of this facility, actually. She never wants to forget where she comes from. Since she was released from Sisters of Mercy in 1964—I believe—she’s never taken it off. It’s
a part of her, as is this place.”
“The orderly who was helping me; her name was Kelsey.”
“Yes; Kelsey Green. Her story’s very sad, but unfortunately not too uncommon.”
“I want to help her—be like a big sister or something,” I said, feeling more vulnerable than I’d even felt as a prisoner here—more vulnerable than I’d allowed myself to feel in years.
“What about your father?” Jack asked, raising an eyebrow.
“He wouldn’t understand—he’ll never understand,” I said. “So, I have no intention of telling him. I don’t need his approval all the time.”
“Then I’m not going to stop you,” Jack said. “I think it’s a great idea. And I can take you to her whenever you’re ready.”
“I’m already here,” I said. “So, I’m ready now.”
“Then why are we still sitting in here? Let’s go find your little sister.”
17
Sean
I’m never drinking again.
Wine hangovers were a bitch. I’d told myself earlier that I wouldn’t drink myself into oblivion, but all promises went out the window by the third glass or so. I quickly lost count. It didn’t help that I started pouring and re-pouring partial glasses, so they all started to blend together. The next thing I knew, the rather expensive-looking bottle from Matthew’s wine cellar was empty.
At some point between napping and passing out, a new bottle emerged, uncorked, and just waiting to be poured.
A part of me had wanted to erase all the insane information I had received the day before from my brain; there were vampires in the world. And angels. And magic. And the house I was crashing in belonged to Fiona’s new boyfriend—who was also a vampire! I made a promise to myself when I was sober not to drink myself into oblivion, but you can’t make those kinds of promises with that sort of information violently swirling in your head.
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