by E. M. Knight
Cassandra gasps and backs away. She hits a shelf and holds onto its sides as if fighting for her life.
“You mean… you mean, if I don’t die, I’m going to become one of you?” she asks, breathless.
“Yes,” Morgan says. Suddenly a silver dagger appears in her hands. “Unless you’d rather be a corpse now?”
Faced with the imminent prospect of her death, Cassandra gulps and shakes her head. She is not quite so resolute as she was before.
The dagger is gone in a flash. “The fact that you have my son’s blood running through your veins explains why we find you here now. It was not coincidence that brought you to his chamber when he needed you. A type of link is created between a vampire and his spawn that lasts until the full conversion takes place. It is in the blood.
“Right now, Cassandra, your body is thriving on a mix of your own human blood… and Raul’s superior vampire blood. Your body knows that Raul’s is stronger, that it provided more sustenance. It is also linked to its source. If Raul were to die before the transformation took hold of you—before vampiric and human blood fused together to make you into a vampire of your own standing—then the blood fueling your body would lose its potency. Its link to Raul would be eliminated. It would lose its transformative power. It would lose all of its power, and if that were to happen, it would be as if a crippling disease struck you. Your body, which is becoming reliant upon Raul’s vampiric blood, would crumble. You would break. Oh, you might come out of the sickness, if you had the requisite strength, but the odds of that happening are not very high.” Mother pauses, and meets the eyes of everyone in the room. “Not very high at all.”
I step in to help the others make sense of the convoluted explanation. “What she means,” I say, “is that any human who is fed vampire blood becomes aware of the condition of the vampire who it belongs to, on a subconscious level. The same essence that animates us and makes us immune to sickness and disease is responsible for the phenomenon. It is why feeding humans our blood is prohibited,” I add, looking at Eleira. “The link that forms ensures the human will do everything she or he can to guarantee the vampire’s survival, until the conversion is complete. Of course,” I gesture at my brother’s leg, “most vampires don’t suffer afflictions such as that.”
“The stars tell us that everything happens for a reason,” Mother continues. “Raul, you know this. It is what brought Eleira to us.”
He grunts in response.
“There was a reason, then, too, that you killed Andrey. There was a reason that you spared this woman’s life. For that, I can no longer hold you accountable for Andrey’s death. Because had you not killed him, you would not have saved Cassandra… and, in turn, she would not have been able to save you.”
Eleira looks at the Queen, then over at Cassandra, who is taking all of this in with wide, owlish eyes. “But I don’t understand why her blood was able to help him now,” she says.
“Think, girl!” Morgan emphasizes. “The wound Raul sustained in battle poisoned his entire body. It began a corruption his system could not fight on its own. I was able to halt its progress with my spell, but I could do nothing to cleanse the blood. Cassandra, however—” she gestures at the woman, “—is the only vessel on this earth to hold a store of Raul’s untainted blood. When she gave him her wrist, it was not her human blood that saved him—but the clean, unsullied blood he fed her that gave him strength.”
A dark expression forms on Eleira’s face. “But now the store is emptied,” she says. “Raul will not be given another chance. Am I right?”
Mother hesitates… and finally nods.
“Cassandra bought him time,” she says. “How much time, I cannot say.”
Chapter Nineteen
JAMES
THE WOODS AROUND THE HAVEN
Days pass slowly as I recover my strength. I feed on the weakest, most damnable creatures. Old, decrepit beasts with scarcely enough life force to sustain them. Hobbled, pitiful things whose blood tastes of soil and dirt.
But every time I do feed, I come a little bit more into myself.
I stay away from the predators surrounding The Haven. I don’t trouble them, and they don’t trouble me. Sometimes I cross paths with one. They never attack.
There’s only one reason for that: they all consider me too weak, too paltry, to even be worth the effort of the kill.
If I were in their position I would feel the same. I still disgust myself. Feeding on creatures which are the lowest of the low? It’s repulsive.
But what choice do I have?
None.
At least my eyesight has returned. I think on the horrible days I spent wandering about, completely lost, stumbling over rocks and roots and bashing into tree-trunks. I could have avoided them. I could have navigated my surroundings with more dexterity… but in those initial days, I had not the inclination to try.
I felt miserable, and so I acted miserably. Something drove me to continue on, to not completely give up faith.
But faith in what? I believe in no gods. The only thing I believe in is my own vampire nature—and for a good long time, I thought even that had been lost to me.
How could I be a creature of the night if I could not see? The thrill of being a vampire comes from the hunt, it comes from being able to navigate where others cannot. It comes from owning the night, from owning the darkness, not from being crippled by it.
Maybe it was the vampire inside me that made me persevere. That instinctual longing for life, for continuity… it was not lost to me, no. Not entirely.
It had just been driven down deep inside me.
But now that I’m getting stronger, things are changing. Now, at the very least, I am making an effort to hide my traces. I’m not yet willing to wander far from the boundary of The Haven. This is the safest spot for me. This is the one place where I have the best chance to recover, because I know these grounds.
And yet, there is an eerie emptiness all around me. None have come to search for me. It helps that I am still cloaked, of course. But still. I would have thought that when Smithson discovered my body missing, or when Mother found me gone, more of an effort would have been made to find me.
Apparently, I thought wrong.
I haven’t sensed a vampire in my vicinity even once. Where are they? I don’t dare wander in past the border of The Haven. But even I know there should be someone there, on the other side. Either the guards patrolling their territory. Perhaps some of the Elite, checking on the ruined wards themselves.
But there have been none.
I tense when a small mountain lion, almost a cub, makes its way through the bush near me. I go still. It cannot sense me, not with the cloaking spell, but it can still hear me—it can still smell me. Even if I’ve spent the sun-drenched hours of each day buried beneath the earth, protected by dirt from those awful rays, even if my body reeks of earthworms and moisture and the damp of the underground—
The cat stops. Its ears twitch. It hears something in the distance.
Something that I do not.
It turns its head in that direction, away from me. My body should be attuned to danger—but I feel no threat. Whatever caught the animal’s attention is not something that should trouble me.
But with its head turned, the cub has given me the opportunity of a lifetime. My nostrils flare as I allow myself to pick up the fresh whiff of strong animal blood. It is nothing compared to human blood, of course. But against the backdrop of the feeble beasts I’ve been feeding on, it makes a world of difference.
My body needs blood. So the choice is made for me.
The hunter’s instincts erupt. Even if they’re subdued, even if they are a tenth of what I am accustomed to, they guide me with a single-minded purpose. I pounce from my spot and descend on the cat.
It has scarcely a second to react before I crash into it and take it to the ground. It turns over and swipes at me, those muscular legs pumping furiously. Its claws draw blood, but that only enlivens me. I f
eel the cat tear through my skin, feel my own hot blood pour out. It stinks, my blood does, because it is tainted by all I’ve been feeding on, by the pathetic scraps and small remains of whatever I’ve been able to scavenge.
Yet it will not be this weak for long. My fangs come out. I sink them into the animal’s neck. I wasn’t aiming, but my teeth cut right into the thick, pulsing carotenoid artery. Immediately, my mouth fills with blood. Hot, red, lush, life-giving blood.
In my near-depraved state I find that it tastes almost as good as a human’s. I draw deep, so deep, and drink it all, until the cat stops kicking and its body lies as an empty shell beneath me. My new wounds quickly close, and I feel an energy—a revitalization—take hold of me. It washes through me and fortifies my limbs, gives strength to my bones.
Why had I denied myself this? I wonder. From whence came the hesitation before the kill?
I had forgotten my true nature. And now, with this beast lying dead at my feet with its blood coursing through my veins, I have regained a small part of it once again.
And, suddenly, I am so much more aware of the forest. I hear the eagles in the treetops, the owls sitting on their perches. I feel the exuberance of life all around me—from the trees, from the water, from the rain. I spread my arms and breathe in deep, tasting the night air as I have forgotten I can taste. There are squirrels in the closest redwood, there’s a fox in a hollow underground. Nearby, resting, is a small pack of wolves.
Suddenly, I’m reminded of the wolf I killed right before I stole Eleira. A cruel smile forms on my face. A sort of hunger opens up inside, not for blood, but for power. I want to feel powerful. I want to be feared. I want to revel in my vampire nature and let the world know once more that I am James Soren, eldest of the Soren brothers and rightful heir to the throne of The Crypts—
And then the madness of my thoughts crashes into me, and I stagger back. I trip and fall, not caring if I am graceless, completely indifferent to how I look.
One feeding, I think in alarm. One feeding is all it took to restore those feelings of euphoria, of mania. One feeding… and it wasn’t even on human blood.
A sound in the distance catches my attention.
It’s like… a cough. It is a cough from somebody—from a person. A human.
I bolt upright. All my senses go on high alert. I focus on the sound. I see the world around The Haven spread in my mind, and…
There!
From right over there, the sound comes again. Except this time, it’s not a cough, but a whisper.
And it’s answered soon after by the whisper of another.
Rashness takes hold. I race through the trees. My mouth salivates even before my nose can pick up the human scent of blood.
And there, tight together in a clearing… I see them.
A group of humans. A poor, disheveled lot. There’s a woman with red, fraying hair peering out into the darkness. A tall man, bald and unattractive, confers with her.
Theirs are the voices I heard.
But there are more. I do a count of the group. There are twenty of them in all, including the lead man and woman. Some have backpacks open at their feet. Others are munching on dried meat. They look like lost mountaineers – definitely not part of The Haven’s villagers.
“Well? How much farther?” the man asks. “We’ve been walking in circles for days.”
“Yes, but that is because we need to be careful,” says the red-haired woman. “We have to be absolutely sure the vampires know we mean them no harm.”
I freeze. The woman speaks as if she knows we exist! But then the ludicrousness of the rest of her statement takes me. Harm? She thinks that this ragtag bunch of humans can be seen as a threat?
I cannot help it. I start to laugh.
Immediately the man and the woman whip to me. “Who goes there?” she calls out. “Show yourself!”
I bite down my laughter, but I do not move.
“Who are you?” the woman yells. Excited murmurs come from the people behind her. “Friend, or foe?”
And then, on a whim, I decide to toy with her. I’ll play her little game.
Let’s see how they react when they see a true vampire walk into their midst.
I waltz out from my hiding space. Moonlight streams through gaps in the trees.
Gasps sound from the humans when they see me. As they should, as I look like a veritable monster. My clothes are soiled and ragged, my hair is unkempt, and—most of all—my mouth is red with the blood of my latest prey.
“Neither friend nor foe,” I say loftily. “But vampire.”
At that I expect them to run, or shriek, or scream. They do none of those things. As soon as my pronouncement is made, the woman and man, together as one, drop prostrate to the forest floor.
“Forgive us for not recognizing you, Master,” the woman mumbles. “We are not gifted with the same sort of vision you are. The moonlight is pitifully weak, and we dare not use our flashlights.”
Their response stops me in my tracks. The people behind her—the rest of the strange ensemble—immediately follow suit. They also throw themselves to the ground as if kneeling before a king.
Is this some mockery? Who are these people? The woman at the front is the only female I see in their whole company.
I step closer. They should be frightened. They should be scampering away. But I smell precious little fear on them. Only… excitement.
“Who are you?” I demand. “How did you get here? Do you know where you are?”
“Oh, yes,” the woman answers. “We’ve been searching for your sanctuary for years. The Haven calls to us all. We are but your humble servants, if you will have us.”
Curiosity ripples through me. “You know of The Haven?” I ask.
“We know of The Haven,” she answers. “Because you have one of ours.”
My eyes narrow in suspicion. “One of your what?”
“One of our members.” The woman dares a peek up. “You have April.”
Chapter Twenty
CARTER
A CAVE BENEATH THE HAVEN
I sneak past the guards who are supposed to be watching The Haven’s humans. It helps immensely that they are lazy from the drink I gave them hours before. They were hungry, as are all The Haven’s vampires, and a treat of blood from one of the Elite’s personal stores was not a gift they could refuse.
Of course, they had no idea it had been tainted with a special mix of herbs known to make vampires sleepy. I’d only put in the slightest amount, just a drop, so they would not be able to detect the taint.
And then I waited… and when the concoction took hold, I knew I was in the clear.
I raise my hand against the burning torchlight that surrounds the human’s little space. They are all contained on a relatively small, flat piece of rock inside a cave, with only one way in and one way out.
The humans all remain close to the entrance. They do not want to go past the circle of torches. Rightfully so. Even though they know that, for now, they are protected, and for now, no vampire would dare take their blood, they are smart enough to stay away from the dark places where little… accidents… have been known to occur.
A few of them take note of me when I appear. They give no sound of alarm. They are used to the presence of vampires, even if they are not entirely comforted by it. Some of them, in fact, look upon me with a grudging sort of respect.
They know that without The Haven’s vampires, they would not have survived the massacre.
I drop down from the cliff edge and walk amongst them. Many are huddled in groups, speaking in low whispers. Those whispers go quiet when I pass. Not that it really matters—if I so wished, I could focus my hearing and listen in on any conversation going on around me.
But I am not here to eavesdrop on the pitiful complaints they are likely making to each other. No, I am here to find one particular girl.
I find her sitting alone, on an uneven rock, far away from everybody else. She tenses as I approach, but does
not look up.
“Come to kill me, have you?” she asks when I stop by her side. Her voice is full of resignation and defeat. “Figures. I knew my time was short when we made the deal.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about—but the information is valuable. I tuck it away into a pocket of my mind.
“No,” I tell her soothingly. “That is not why I am here.”
She gasps and looks up. Clearly, she was expecting someone else.
I kneel down beside her. “You’re April,” I say. “Aren’t you? We haven’t met, but I am—”
“Carter. I know.”
A flicker of surprise shows on my face.
“James made sure I knew the names of all the Elite when I was his—”
She coughs and breaks off.
“I understand.” I place a hand on her shoulder. “You needn’t say more.”
To my surprise, she doesn’t flinch away. Tougher than she looks. I think.
“What do you want?” she asks, point-blank.
“I’m not sure if you’re aware of what happened to Captain Commander Smithson,” I begin.
She shrugs. “Word spreads, even amongst the humans. I hear he was stripped of his post.”
“That’s right,” I say. “But in talking to him, your name came up… more than once.”
She meets my eyes. “So?”
“He said that you are a friend of Eleira’s. That you are one of the few humans she trusts. Or maybe—one of the few humans who trusts her.”
“I knew her before her conversion.” April tries to shrug it off. “It’s no big deal.”
“I recall how you were introduced alongside her at the ceremony.”
April gives a quick, bitter laugh. “You think I had a choice in that? It was all the Queen’s doing.” She looks around. “Anyway, look at me now. It’s not like the connection has been much help.”
“You’re alive,” I say. “Surely that counts for something.”
She doesn’t answer. After a moment, she asks again, “What do you want?”
