by E. M. Knight
“I will. But first...”
He reaches into his lapel and takes out a small, glass vial. It’s full to the top with the reddest blood I’ve ever seen.
Well—actually—it would have been the reddest blood I’ve ever seen had I not raided Mother’s stores.
Carter places it on the table between us. “The last I have from all I’ve managed to collect over the years,” he says. “I’ve been meaning to save it for an appropriate time… but I think you need it more than I. Try it. You’ll find it takes some of the edge off.”
No sooner had he placed the vial of blood on the table than my entire body went rigid. The craving for it was immense. It didn’t matter that I had drank more than my fill—way, way more than my fill—only minutes ago. My eyes fell on this new blood, and the vampire inside roared, and thrust for it like a pitbull on a chain.
“No,” I say, and it is the hardest monosyllabic word I’ve ever had to utter. “It is yours.”
“It’s a gift.” Carter’s eyes lazily slide back, to the bottle on the floor. He doesn’t say anything, but at that moment, my worst suspicion is confirmed:
He knows.
“Even I can sense your growing strength, Phillip,” he says. “Don’t you think the other vampires will find it curious that you are quickly growing past them, at an astronomical pace? This way, at least, you’ll have an alibi.” He pushes the vial toward me. “And I won’t tell.”
He’s blackmailing me!
“It’s common knowledge among the Elite that a portion of my stash survived the collapse,” he continues. “None will take issue with my sharing it with you.”
And then he leans back and crosses his arms, smug as a toad sitting on a lily petal.
In a hitching motion I pocket the blood. “Thank you,” I say, though I mean the words not at all. I know there is no such thing as a free gift. Not in our world.
“Perhaps now you’ll reconsider my offer of alliance,” he says. Then he cuts off. “Wait. I hear someone coming.”
A second later, the original guard bursts into the room.
“Nothing,” the guard exclaims, almost panting. “Not a sign of the bastard anywhere! We did a triple sweep, Commander, just to make sure.” He hits his fist into an open palm. “He deserted, just like those craven guards he brought with him!”
“Is anybody else missing?” I ask. “Have any items—no matter how insignificant they may seem—been reported stolen?”
“No,” the guard says. He casts a strange look at Carter before continuing on. “What I don’t understand is how he got out. We’ve had the way under constant surveillance. He couldn’t have just slipped by.”
“Perhaps he didn’t slip by,” Carter says. “Perhaps he was… assisted. By someone who knows the stronghold’s secrets like the back of his hand.”
Carter holds his left hand out in front of him and turns it back and forth, regarding the fine features.
My eyes narrow in suspicion. “You?” I say.
Carter gives a soft laugh. “Who else?”
Anger flares inside. I do all I can to not let it show—not with my own guard watching. “Why?”
“To see where he would go, of course,” Carter says. He takes out a rolled-up parchment and spreads it out on the desk. It is an ancient map of North America, showing little more than the broadest features of the land.
There’s an inky, black dot, swelling and constricting, swelling and constricting, ever-so-slightly, in a spot somewhere in The Rockies.
“Do you remember his sword, Phillip?” Carter asks. “Well, I had it remade. When I was certain Smithson had decided to leave, I gave it to him. What he didn’t know—what he could never suspect, the arrogant fool—was that I’d inlaid a tiny gem, a special torrial, inside the hilt, that would track his location anywhere and show it on this map.” He taps the parchment and smiles. “You’re welcome. Now, instead of losing out on one of the most, mmm… cunning…? vampires in this world? You’ve gained a strategic advantage against him. I trust you’ll put it to good use.”
With that, he stands and starts to leave. The guard is trying his best not to look at the map, but his interest is obvious.
“Wait,” I say. “Why would I—why would any of us—need to find advantage against Smithson?”
“Because,” Carter says. “He is a lot more wily than he seems. And a lot more capable. Just ask James, when you see him next.”
“You know of my brother?” I gasp. “Wait, Carter! What happened to him, dammit, tell me!”
But the distinguished member of the Royal Court makes no sign of stopping, or answering my call, as he steps around the guard and exits the room.
Chapter One
APRIL
PHILIP’S ROOM
I sit on the very edge of the bed, huddling into myself.
My mind flashes to the grisly scene with the demon. Vampires, I can handle—vampires I’ve spent my whole life being fascinated with. The deaths they cause are at least justified, in a sense. A twisted sense, maybe, but I always thought there was something poetic, maybe even erotic, about the way vampires take blood.
But the demon…
No such virtues color its behavior. It kills. It kills vampires, who are supposed to be at the apex of the food chain. They are supposed to be the most feared predators!
And the Narwhark did away with them as if they were nothing.
A sound in the faraway bathroom makes me gasp and jerk my head back. Next comes a faint crash, followed by a noise like splintering glass, and then a series of very loud, very profane curses.
I exhale in relief. I’m way too uptight. That’s just my roommate. She shouldn’t be causing me to jump like a frightened cat.
But the circumstances that brought us together were sketchy, to say the least.
After Phillip discovered me trying to deliver that message to Smithson, he took it away and quickly brought me here. These are his private bedrooms. They’re a far cry from the luxury apartments that the Elite keep in the tree houses, but with The Haven still under lockdown, they’re all the vampires have left.
He’d told me to stay, warning me of the danger if I tried to leave—as if I needed the reminder—and closed the door, locking me in. I would have been annoyed with him were it not for the ghastly images from the Narwhark attack playing on my mind. For a time, in fact—just a few minutes, no more—I was able to direct my thoughts only toward him.
That, admittedly, serves as a nice distraction.
I don’t think the feelings growing inside me for the youngest Soren brother are one-sided. There’s a tenderness in the way he looks at me, a subtle shift in his demeanor that comes about whenever his eyes fall to mine. It only began after his feeding—after he took my blood and broke his centuries-long fast.
When I first noticed the looks, they scared me. Not in the way the demon scares me. But in a wholly different, yet nonetheless terrifying way.
Why? Because those looks prompted a certain bloom of feelings inside me that I’ve never known before.
When I was with James… it was only to further my purpose. I wanted his vampire blood. I thought then maybe, just maybe, I could become the first Fang Chaser to achieve our cult’s ultimate goal.
With James, the relationship was strictly physical. That’s how I liked it. I let him use my body, because, ultimately, what else did I have to give? And before James, back when I still lived on the Outside, I had a whole sordid history with older boys…
Heh. My lips curl up in a smirk. I remember the time when I was the prize—when I played the high school boys against each other to give me what I wanted. I had no shame about using my body. I’d developed early, earlier than most, and discovered the power of a good T&A when the other girls my age still had one hand on their Barbie dolls.
That seems so far away now that it could have happened to another person, in another life.
My mother was a hooker, no two ways about it. When I was really young, she used to tell me she was
a waitress, and maybe she was, once. Before my father left and took my younger brother, Robin, with him. But, after they were gone, the constant stream of old, strange men into our tiny, box-like apartment gave away the lie.
I don’t know when I figured it out, but I remember being so angry when the pieces fell into place. Admittedly, she and I never had the best relationship. The discovery only put more strain between us. I became the rebel daughter, she the whore mother, and the dynamic rapidly deteriorated into something quite poisonous.
That was about the time I somehow came across the Fang Chasers.
Maybe they found me, I don’t know. A vague memory tugs at the back of my mind, something about a twenty-year-old boy gripping my hand and rushing me down a dark, narrow alley, toward a warehouse in the distance. I think I had just had my thirteenth birthday when it happened. I’d put my Mother’s makeup on, behind her back, of course, and went into the seedy district of our so-called city with a few older friends. One thing led to another, and somehow I found myself alone with that guy. He’d taken a liking to me, and I, dumb as I was, actually thought his interest genuine, not creepy.
And now the rest of the memory flares into being and comes rushing back.
Yes, he was the one who took me to the warehouse. And that was where he introduced me to his… friends.
I shudder. No wonder I’d repressed this memory. What they did to me in the warehouse…
I shake my head and try not to dwell on it.
But after, later that night, when I was wandering the street, alone, scared, frozen, lost, a woman came up to me and offered her help.
She told me her name was Wanda and that she could make all my wishes come true and open my eyes to a world beyond this one, if I but listened to her.
No, wait. That first part never happened—she never said anything about wishes. But she did offer her help, which, at the time, was probably the wish I needed granted the most.
That night, Wanda took care of me and told me stories, filling my head with tales of beautiful, otherworldly creatures who felt no pain, who never aged, and who could not die. Would it not be wonderful, she’d asked, if none could ever hurt me again, the way she knew I’d been hurt earlier that night?
And I said yes, and she told me to find her the next day. I did. I kept coming back, day after day after day, and Wanda kept telling me those amazing stories, and I fell in love with the beings she described.
It was only after a month or two that she revealed what they were. Vampires.
And she promised me they were real.
Maybe somebody in a position less desperate than mine would have laughed it off. But I was so young—still a child—and Wanda’s promises made me imagine a life that I so desperately wanted to believe in. It took another few months for her to expose the name of her cult, and to tell me its purpose… and from there, I was fully hooked.
From that day on, my life took on new meaning. For the first time, I had a real purpose. And while I went along with school and work, and everything else, in the back of my mind, I’d always known that I was destined for greater things.
I’d always known that one day, I would be made into a vampire.
I’d used James for that. When he brought me into The Haven, Morgan’s spell wiped a select portion of my memory… but it never altered the cognizance of my purpose. I don’t care what Smithson said about The Order’s witches implanting the idea to kidnap me into James’s head. I don’t believe him.
It’s just too much of a coincidence for words.
Only when Eleira came into the fold, and The Queen dispelled the enchantment clouding my mind, did I truly remember who I was… and all that I had given up to be here.
I was so angry with her—with Eleira—at the start. I’d honestly thought she had ruined everything. But after a bit of introspection, I realized I was being too hasty. Being cast together with her implanted me ever more firmly amongst the Elite. If James would not turn me, I was sure—certain—that somebody else would.
At least, I was going to do my damnedest to make it happen.
But then, it seems like it’s been one big catastrophe after another. James was sent away. I was lost and forgotten. Discarded like a used and broken toy. Eleira was kidnapped, and then she came back as a powerful vampire… oh, how I envied her then… the Queen made me prisoner, Smithson and his guards nearly raped me, and then—finally—Phillip fed on my blood.
Events just totally spiraled out of my control.
And now? Now, as I sit here in Phillip’s room, labeled an outcast by the villagers and even my adopted “family,” I don’t know what to think. Phillip is constantly on my mind, and not in a healthy way. No, he’s there in a school-girl-obsessed-with-her-crush kind of way.
Feelings are something I thought I would never develop for a guy. Not after the way my virginity was stolen in that dirty, ramshackle warehouse.
But, no matter how hard I try to deny it, feelings are exactly what Phillip arouses in me.
The stream of curses from the bathroom stopped long ago. So did the sound of running water.
The door opens, and Cassandra comes walking out. She has a long towel wrapped around her chest, and her golden hair is wet and hangs down to her waist.
She picks up her dirty clothes, pointedly ignoring me the whole way through, and turns around to go wash them in the tub.
I wait for a few minutes… and then decide to offer my help. Not because I’m feeling overly generous, no, but because I think it’s giving me a bit of a distraction from the tumultuous thoughts haunting my mind.
I walk into the bathroom and see that the tub is already full. Soap suds float on the surface. Cassandra is so involved in wringing her clothes that she does not notice me as I enter.
It’s only when I kneel down beside her that she hisses in surprise and jerks away.
Then her face takes on the nastiest sneer I have ever seen on a woman.
“What do you want?” she asks haughtily.
I don’t understand her hostility toward me. It seems to be so much greater than what the other villagers fling my way.
Why? I know nothing of the woman. I’d glimpsed her face a few times in the village, yes, but past that…?
She is a complete mystery. As is the reason I found her here, in Phillip’s prisoner rooms, in the first place.
“I just thought I could help,” I say, adopting a purposefully meek inflection. “There’s nothing else to do.”
“I don’t need your help,” she says, turning her back on me.
“I’m sorry,” I say, taking on an attitude of my own. “Did I do something wrong?”
“The same thing you’ve been doing since you first arrived in The Haven,” she says. “Vampire-lover.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” she said. “I despise people like you. Cozying up with the enemy. Turning away from your true kind to… to… to mingle amongst them.”
“The enemy?” I repeat. “Were you not there when the vampires fought for us?”
Cassandra scoffs. “Yeah, to keep their livestock safe. We’re nothing but food to them. You think they really care about what happens to the villagers?”
“Yes, they care,” I tell her. I think of Phillip. “They’re not monsters.”
“Of course, somebody like you would think that,” she says. “Now leave me alone. I need to finish and get this dry.”
I shake my head. “No. I’m not going to be dismissed like that!” Some of my natural spunk is making an appearance. “Who the hell are you to tell me what to do?”
“Fine. Stay.” She shrugs. “But it doesn’t mean I want to talk to you. And I sure don’t need your help.” She goes back to washing.
“Might as well accept help from a vampire,” she mutters under her breath.
I stare daggers at her back. “If you hate vampires so much,” I say. “What are you doing here, in Phillip’s room?”
She shakes her head a gives an incredulous little laug
h. “You think I want to be here?” she asks.
“It’s better than the caves.”
“I would be back there in an instant. I’d never betray my kind,” she says.
“Oh, and you’re implying that I would, is that it?”
“I think we both know the things that you would do, April,” she says. “I don’t need to spell them out.”
“And I think you’re mistaken,” I say. I walk over to the other side so I can see her eyes. “Look. I know we may have never spoken before, but it doesn’t mean you have any right to be so bitchy toward me!”
She laughs in my face. “Bitchy? You think that’s what this is? Hun, you haven’t seen bitchy yet. But,” she warns, “if you keep pestering me it will quickly come out.”
She shoves her dress back underwater and starts scrubbing it furiously.
I grab her arm to make her stop. “Look,” I begin, but then I stop.
There, on her wrist, are two deep bite marks.
She pulls away as soon as my eyes fall on the wound. But it’s too late. I’ve already sighted the marks.
“You hypocritical bitch,” I say. “You accuse me of being a vampire ‘lover’ when you yourself gave your blood?” I chortle. “And the Royal Court passed an order that no humans are to be fed upon. That’s why you’re here in Phillip’s room, isn’t it? You let him feed, and now you’re hiding.”
“You know nothing,” she says softly, shielding her wrist.
“Yeah?” I challenge. “I know that the only reason you’re getting angry at me is because you don’t want me to discover your secret. Well guess what—I just did. Now ‘fess up and tell me what happened.”
“I don’t need to tell you anything,” she says. “Vampires are horrific beasts. I would never willingly give my blood.”
But when she says that last bit, her eyes turn away. And I know her then for a liar.
“You think I’m so naïve, don’t you?” I ask. “Why? Is it because I’m young? Is that why you don’t like me, because you’re threatened by me?”
“I’m not threatened,” she says, fiercely meeting my gaze. “What’s there to fear from a silly girl like you?”
