by Jade Farhill
James raised an eyebrow. “No, I wouldn’t. Are you drunk?”
“Aww, you caught me,” Abby said, stumbling towards him.
And actually tripped over.
James caught her before she hit the ground.
“Now really,” he said sternly, hands on her shoulders, the amused sparkle in his eyes undermined the severity his words, “tell me the truth. Why are you really here?”
Abby took in a breath and looked into his eyes. “Okay. When we were teenagers, my sister dared me to come in here alone, but I was too scared. She’s never let me forget it, so … I decided to stop the teasing once and for all.”
He snickered. “That’s it?”
“What?”
“You made me think something else was going on. Not some old dare. And I imagine liquid courage assisted you?”
Abby narrowed her eyes. James had his back to Sharon’s corner. Abby swiped her hand across her face, as if to push hair out of her eyes, but it was all to distract James while she secretly pointed for Sharon to scoot along the hall behind him.
But Sharon shook her head. Abby gestured again, more frantically this time. “Um—so what if I needed alcohol? I told you, I’m scared of this place in the dark. It’s creepy.”
James leaned in and smiled at her. “Then I bet you’re glad you ran into me.”
Abby hadn’t intended to flirt with him, but if it meant she could get her sister past him, then … She fluttered her lashes. “Oh, I am.”
Looking unimpressed, Sharon dodged along the hall.
James tilted his head and frowned—had he heard something?
Panicking, Abby touched his chest, running her hand over the pocket of his shirt. “Something the matter?” she purred.
James turned his attention back on Abby and winked at her. “Just scaring off the creepiness.” He turned and shone the torchlight down the hall, as if to prove it.
Abby held her breath—he would find Sharon!
But the hall was empty.
She tried not to sigh in relief. “Thanks for looking out for me.”
“Well, it is my job.”
Abby chuckled—she’d always liked James.
“Here, let me escort you out. And if your sister doesn’t believe you, then I’ll be your witness and tell her how bravely you traversed these dark halls.”
Abby chuckled. They went around the corner and Abby looked over her shoulder.
Sharon was poking her head out of an office and frowning at her.
Basement, Abby mouthed.
Sharon silently scoffed and disappeared around the corner.
James left Abby by her car, where she waited another hour before sneaking back in. This time, she managed to avoid James and made it to the basement.
“So, you just wanted to come here to flirt with the night guard?” Sharon said.
“That’s not the reason and you know it,” Abby grumbled.
Sharon gave her a dubious look.
“You still want to prove that you’re a vampire or what?” Abby huffed, shutting the door and turning on the lights.
“Fine.” Sharon leaned against a bench, arms crossed over her chest.
Abby withdrew some of Sharon’s blood and ran an analysis on it, then analysed her own blood for comparison.
When she saw the results, Abby’s pulse spiked. According to the test results, Abby and Sharon weren’t even related. Abby looked up at her sister, whose face was almost a mirror to her own. Brown hair, blue eyes—they even both wore glasses with similar prescriptions. The similarities were so obvious, anyone could tell they were related.
But the test results said the opposite. “Let’s run it again, just to be sure.”
“It’s saying I’ve changed, isn’t it?”
“We need to double-check everything, Shaz. You can’t just rely on one result in science.”
“Meaning I’ve changed.”
Silently, Abby collected new samples. She recalibrated the machines and ran the blood again.
Same result.
Abby’s heart thundered in her chest. “One more time.”
The same again.
Abby closed her eyes—in science, the first step to overcoming a problem was to recognise that it existed.
She turned to Sharon. “There … might be a slight chance that … what you think might happen will actually happen.”
Sharon levelled her blue eyes at Abby. “I know it’s more than a slight chance, Abby. She forced me to drink her blood and I felt the change inside me. I’m not who I used to be. My wounds even healed. I’m no longer your sister—”
“Of course you’re my sister,” Abby snapped.
“But will I still be when I’m a vampire?”
That shut Abby up.
“You need to stop me. Please, kill me before I hurt you.”
Abby shook her head. “No, we’re going to manage this. She said you’d be rabid if you didn’t get help. I won’t let you get to that stage.”
“How will you stop me? Your car didn’t stop her!”
“There must be some wa—”
“Abby! You’re not listening to me. I’ll kill you! Murder, maim, tortur—”
Abby clenched her jaw. “I won’t let you.”
“And how will you do that?” Desperation and disbelief were in Sharon’s eyes.
Abby took in a breath, already coming up with a plan. “Research.”
CHAPTER 2
“‘The vampire disease’?” Sharon asked dubiously, peering over Abby’s shoulder. She’d washed the blood off and was now in fresh clothes. “That’s your research?”
“It’s porphyria,” Abby replied, moving the cursor to circle the title of the study. “See?”
“Yeah, but the subtitle says otherwise.”
“Can you just let me research?”
Sharon scoffed and moved back to her computer. They’d found two laptops in the level above and brought them back to the basement.
A short while later, screams issued from Sharon’s computer. Abby spun around in her chair to see what was happening on her sister’s screen. “Really? Vampire movies?”
“Some of them draw on legends. Considering what happened tonight, maybe there’s truth to them.”
“That’s not research.” Abby sniffed as the vampire in the movie leaned in to kiss a human. “And you scoff at my way of researching.”
“There are common themes in every vampire movie.” Sharon started listing them on her fingers. “Can’t go in the sun, craves blood—which is exactly what Crazy Lady told me would happen—super strength, speed, immortality, vampires forming communities and collectively living in ‘dens’.”
Abby frowned. “If you want to research myths and legends about vampires, why don’t you just go to the source of them? Like—where did the legends originate?”
“Lots of cultures have myths about them.”
“Then look them up instead of wasting time on movies!”
“Fine! But I’m still going to watch the movie.”
Abby turned back to her research. If vampires existed, then maybe someone mistook vampirism for porphyria. If so, it would have ended in disaster—at least, Abby assumed it would. She looked at Sharon out of the corner of her eye. Her sister was hunched over the laptop, glaring at the monitor.
Abby searched the terms ‘disasters’ and ‘porphyria’.
After scrolling through a few pages, during which time the vampire and human in the Sharon’s movie moved their relationship to the bed, Abby found an article about scientists placing a call to the police and asking for help, literally saying, ‘She’s a vampire! She’s already killed three people and drank—actually drank, mouth to neck—the blood from four others! Please, send a force, send the military. We need help!’ But by the time the police arrived, the lab was in flames.
No one survived.
Abby kept searching and discovered similar incidents around the world. A lab. A terrified phone call to the police. The place in flames by
the time the police arrived.
“Almost as if someone is trying to destroy evidence,” Abby muttered to herself.
In Sharon’s movie, someone stabbed a vampire in the heart with a wooden stake.
Sharon was pale, all research abandoned, and was staring at the screen.
“You saved me!” said the beautiful heroine.
“I’m a vampire hunter, ma’am. Killing the undead is my job,” the man replied, giving his most charming smile.
Sharon and Abby met each other’s eyes.
“Vampire hunters,” they said together.
***
Abby’s fingers flew over her keyboard. She discovered that silver knives had been found at three of the destroyed labs. She found a photograph of one.
A sturdily crafted handle. A long, thin, double-edged blade. Smooth, non-serrated edges.
There were nicks in its metal, as if the weapon had been used often. Yet it was sharpened, keeping its edge. It was also well cared for: not a speck of dirt visible, and polished to a shine.
So maybe—actually, definitely, given the evidence of cover-ups—there were vampire hunters out there.
Which meant Abby needed to keep her sister safe from them, while keeping herself safe from her sister.
Breathing became difficult for a moment.
At least she’d found a weapon to use against vampires. Even if she never wanted to use such a knife against Sharon, it might help Abby control her sister when she Turned into a vampire.
She winced and shifted her focus. “Okay, how are we going to train you?”
“I thought you were going to figure that out.”
Abby sighed. She didn’t want to tell her sister about the many labs that had been destroyed and the countless scientists who’d died. “I figured you’d want a say on how you’re trained.”
Sharon scratched her cheek. “In this series—” now she was watching one about a vampire detective falling in love with a human “—the detective was restrained by another vampire and fed humans until he could control himself around the living. Then he was released.”
Abby shifted uncomfortably on her seat. “Restrained?” she asked, uncertain.
Sharon met her gaze. “Yes, as in tied up.”
Abby looked away. “That’s a bit weird.”
“Would you rather I kill you while you’re ‘training’ me?”
Abby went silent.
“So, you’re restraining me,” Sharon said definitively. “Now we just need to figure out what you’re restraining me with.”
“You’ll be strong,” Abby replied, trying not to think too hard about the consequences of this conversation.
“So you think we’ll need bars?”
Silver bars? “I don’t know.”
“But I could escape. I think I might need to be actually tied down to … something.”
“Something?”
They were both diligently avoiding one another’s eyes.
“Where … are we going to keep you?” Abby asked.
“Here. I can’t think of anywhere else. I mean, it’s a basement. Your apartment is really sunny and the morning sun is always hitting mine, no matter what I do.”
“Okay, but …”
“What if someone finds me?”
“Yeah.”
Sharon rubbed her forehead. “Let’s hope they won’t.”
Abby stared at her.
“Or we can lock this place up?” Sharon shrugged.
“That sounds better.”
“Wait a sec—let me try something.” Sharon paused her show, typed something into a browser search bar and then showed Abby a website that specialised in making cages for animal research.
Abby felt sick.
Sharon clicked around the website until she found a cage large enough for a human to stand in comfortably. There was an option for plating the steel with different metals—silver being one of them.
“It’s expensive,” Abby pointed out.
“We can sell stuff to pay for it.”
“We’d have to sell a lot of stuff.”
“I’ve got savings. Besides, I’m leaving everything to you in my will.”
“Won’t that be … suspicious?”
“As long as you’re not the last person to see me.”
Abby dropped her head in her hands. “This is crazy. I really wish I was drugged with some hallucinogen.”
“Same here,” Sharon whispered. Abby scrutinised her but she abruptly brightened. “I’ll just give you my account details, so you can log in and withdraw whenever you want.”
“I don’t think I like that either.”
“Too bad.” Sharon brandished the piece of paper with her bank account login and password at Abby, forcing her to take it. “Besides, I’ll probably be regarded as a missing person and won’t be legally declared dead for another seven years. Which means you won’t ‘inherit’ my savings until then. And considering it’s my money, I want you to use it to help me.”
She had a point, but that didn’t mean Abby had to like it. “Fine,” Abby said, taking the paper.
“Think of it as an investment in your research,” Sharon added.
Abby sighed. “How am I going to give you blood intravenously?”
“That’s how you’ll do it?”
“Do you suggest I offer you my arm instead?”
Sharon crinkled her nose. “No. We can restrain just one of my arms … maybe.”
And hope she doesn’t grab me with her other arm. Abby pushed this thought away.
“No, I don’t like the cage idea. I reckon I need to be fully restrained.” Sharon obviously had the same thought as Abby. “Plus, this cage will take months to get made and shipped. Whereas we can get steel cables easily, and it shouldn’t be too hard to find a steel workbench.”
“True.”
They spent the rest of the night discussing restraining and training options.
***
Abby woke with paper stuck to her cheek and a shrill ringing in her ears. It was six in the morning, and she’d fallen asleep at her desk in the basement again.
In the last three days, they’d found a hardware store that would deliver the materials needed to rig the restraints. Now they just had to buy them.
Abby realised the ringing noise was her phone. It was her mother. Great.
“Hello?” she asked, trying to make her nose sound stuffy.
“Are you really sick, or are you just faking?”
Abby crossed her arms over her chest. “Mum, I’m actually sick.”
“I just think it’s coincidental that Sharon’s sick too. This reminds me a little too much of the time you both feigned sickness to stay home from school and instead of resting—like you said you would—you bounced on your beds so much you broke the frames.”
Abby bit her lip—that was a fond memory, until the beds had broken. “It’s not like that. We’re adults, in case you forgot.”
“How does she know I’m not at work?” Sharon whispered from her desk.
Good question. Abby asked her mother.
“I’m at that fashion show. She said she’d be here and when I couldn’t find her, I asked.”
Sharon swore quietly and put her hands on either side of her head. “The biggest moment of the season and I’m not there!”
Abby shushed her. “Look, Mum, the kettle just boiled. I’m in the middle of making chicken soup. Can I talk to you later?”
Their mother huffed. “Fine. Get well soon. And tell Sharon to call me.”
Abby put the phone down gingerly. “She wouldn’t fire her own daughter for skipping work, would she?”
“She might not, but Dad would.”
Abby cringed. “Let’s go get those cables.”
***
At the hardware store, Sharon asked, “How are we getting all this into Mum’s lab?”
“It’s got heavy-duty hand trolleys.”
“And what if Mr Flirt Guard sees us?”
“His name is Jam
es.”
“My question still stands.”
Abby chewed her lip. “Maybe we can rope him into it and say Mum needs this to go to the basement?”
“And you think he’ll believe it?”
We’ll think of something.” Abby pulled out her phone and researched the company’s orders. “There’s a delivery coming in three days. Let’s sneak it in then—I’ll make the arrangements.”
“Isn’t that cutting it a little fine?” Sharon asked.
They had seven days and had both agreed that Sharon should be restrained by the sixth day. “Do you have a better idea?”
Sharon said nothing.
***
Finally, the sixth day came.
And, of course, the hardware store delivery was late.
Abby shifted on her feet as the she and Sharon waited in the delivery bay.
“Do you think we should call them again?” Sharon asked.
“They said they’d be here in five minutes.”
“But that was fifteen minutes ago.”
They both fell silent as the regular scientific equipment delivery truck pulled up. Men jumped out and opened the doors.
Abby decided that she may as well be useful while she was here, and directed the men to move the equipment to the appropriate rooms.
And suddenly, the truck was empty. Abby refused to look at Sharon, knowing that now they’d have to come up with a different plan to get the cables and table into the building.
They were alone on the bay, and Sharon pulled out her phone. “I’m calling them again.”
But at that moment, a truck roared around the corner and started beeping as it reversed into the delivery bay.
“Oh,” Abby said, covering Sharon’s phone with her hand, “I’ve never been so happy to hear that reverse warning siren.”
The hardware truck pulled up alongside the equipment truck, and two men came out carrying a steel table, followed by a box of cables. “Just leave it all here,” Abby said.
Someone started whistling in the corridor behind them—it sounded like James.
Sharon signed for the delivery as Abby tried to wheel the heavy items on the heavy-duty trolleys closer to the scientific truck.
“Thank you and bye,” Sharon said, trying to get rid of them.
All the while, the whistling got closer.
Abby and Sharon exchanged a panicked look as the truck roared to life, then slowly—far too slowly for Abby’s liking—pulled away from the bay.
