Dark Heritage Trilogy

by Hoffman, Samantha

  She shook her head and brushed back a long strand of dark hair. “No, we don’t get the flu. Our bodies are dead, but they run on the blood of others. We use that blood to sustain ourselves. If we drink bad blood, our body begins to shut down. We lose our ability to heal or handle the sunlight. If we don’t get good blood in us fast, our body begins to shrivel up and we die.”

  “Drinking bad blood kills you?”

  She nodded. “Yes, it does. Blood is very important for a vampire.” She eyed the bottle of cold blood with open disgust, before reaching for it with a sigh. She pulled the top up with her teeth and took a long sip. “Cold blood is better than bad blood,” she said as she licked a loose drop from her full lips.

  Even though she had someone’s blood staining her lips, I couldn’t help but notice how incredibly beautiful Holly was. She had probably been beautiful as a human, but vampirism had surely increased her beauty. It wasn’t often that I saw a man not spare her a second glance. I’d even seen some straight women staring longingly after her, and it was weird to think that someone could be so incredibly beautiful that a person’s sexual orientation would mean nothing.

  “You’re staring,” Holly said dryly, glancing at me out of the corner of her eyes.

  “Sorry,” I said, ducking my head so she wouldn’t see me blush. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable or anything.”

  “You didn’t. I’m used to being stared at. Even before I was made a vampire, I was always attracting unwanted attention. Now I’m always the most beautiful person in the room, wherever I go, and everybody seems to notice.”

  “Not many people would think being as beautiful as you are would be a bad thing,” I said quietly, knowing that in comparison to her, I probably looked like a dark-haired troll.

  She looked at me as if she were surprised I could possibly think so. “I can’t even go for a walk without being catcalled or grabbed or besieged by men who just want one night with me. At first, I was flattered by the attention. I’d always been a somewhat vain person, and I liked to have people tell me I was beautiful. But it got old fast. Not all women fall under my spell, and those that don’t often give me nasty glances. I don’t know if they’re jealous of my beauty, or if they’re angry their husband stares as I walk by, or if they just somehow sense that I’m different.”

  “Holly, many women would give anything to be as beautiful as you are. And you’re not just beautiful. You’re powerful and mysterious and dangerous. Your beauty gives you access to donors. It helps keep you alive, in a way.”

  She shrugged her thin shoulders elegantly. “I guess. I’d still like to be less beautiful though. It would make it easier to talk to people if they weren’t always staring at my face as if I were some kind of goddess.”

  Holly went back to sipping her blood while I started thinking again. I had never even considered the possibility that being beautiful might be seen as a curse and not a blessing. It just always seemed like life was much easier for beautiful women. Beauty was considered power. If you were beautiful, you could accomplish anything in life, and nothing would stand in your way.

  I wonder how long Holly has had to live with this kind of adoration. I wonder if she’d be upset if I asked…

  “You clearly have something you’d like to ask me,” Holly said, looking at me with the most beautiful brown eyes I had ever seen. “Ask it.”

  “How long have you had to put up with this? I mean, I know you’re like sixteen physically, but–”

  “You want to know how long I’ve been a vampire?” she asked, surprised. “I was made a vampire on the night of my sixteenth birthday, just over fifteen years ago. And I am sentenced to this hellhole until I get better control of my blood lust and my anger. Most vampires don’t take fifteen years to learn self control, but my maker was not interested in teaching me restraint. Instead, he used me to secure his victims.

  “When the High Council found out what he was forcing me to do, they staked him, and left me here under Kevin’s tutelage,” she said with a chuckle. “It figures they would leave me with someone almost as horrible as my maker. I’ve learned very little from Kevin. He seems to be intent on forcing me to remain here. Perhaps in the off chance I come to desire him as much as he desires me.” She sneered at the thought, before looking over at me again. “Did that answer your question?”

  I nodded my head. “Kevin is your mentor? The only person you have to really learn from?”

  “There are a handful of other vampires here, but they’re all supposed to be learning control as well, and are incapable of helping. Kevin actually teaches them. Perhaps because they’re not as beautiful as me, and haven’t caught his fancy.” She looked over at me. “If I weren’t so beautiful, Kevin probably would have taught me and I would be free to live my life. I wouldn’t be confined to this hellhole, only allowed to go out when the Council needs me to help them with something.”

  “That sounds terrible, Holly. I’m so sorry,” Tanya said, frowning. “Can’t you do something? Like petition the High Council to move you to another place? Or at least to find you another teacher? Surely they can’t expect you to learn anything here without a decent teacher.”

  “In order for me to petition the High Council, I have to get this Council’s permission. Which will never happen because Kevin refuses to let me go, and Lisa Valentine doesn’t care. The only one sympathetic to my plight is Marcel, but he gets outvoted every time I bring it up.”

  “You speak like you come from another time,” I said, not for the first time noticing how sophisticated she sounded when speaking.

  “It’s a trait of most vampires. We tend to emulate the speech patterns of our makers. My maker happened to be an older gentlemen from long before my grandma was even born. He spoke in a very correct, depressing way. I guess that would be why I apparently sound depressed all the time.”

  “Speaking of Marcel,” Ezra said, looking over Tanya’s shoulder. “Here he comes.”

  Marcel ignored the stares of everyone around him as he made his way over to our table. His eyes found mine straight away, and he didn’t even acknowledge the others who sat with me. When I stared into his eyes, I found they were full of something that could only be described as pity. I knew instinctively that something was very wrong, and his next few words would have a huge, jarring impact on me. “Veronica, there’s something you have to see.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  My mother stared at me with hollow eyes. The sockets were bare, and were nothing more than empty pits in her skull. Most of her flesh had been stripped away by years spent in a box under the ground, but there were still bits of it hanging from her arms and chest. Though for the most part she looked like a mummy. She was bald except for a few strands of dingy, mud-streaked strands that fell across her face.

  She doesn’t have a face, though…I thought to myself, trying not to freak out or break down into a mess of snot and tears. She’s a corpse, and nothing more. She’s nothing but a pile of bones and loose scraps of clothing held together by nothing more than dark magic. She’s not there, Ronnie. She’s not there. She’s not there. She’s not there…

  No matter how many times I told myself it wasn’t really my mother, I couldn’t keep myself from thinking it. The last time I had seen my mother was when she had said goodbye to me right before fading away forever, and even though I missed her dearly, I had had a beautiful vision of her to remember forever. She had looked the exact same as she had the last time I’d seen her alive, and it left me with a sense of peace and fulfillment. But this was more real. And far more horrid.

  Rain pelted me, drenching my hair and clothes, but I didn’t really notice. All I could do was stand in the mud and stare at my mother’s remains, transfixed on her empty eye sockets. That was what was most wrong, the fact that her eyes were gone. They had always been her most telling feature. They were the same shade of dark green as my own, and they had always betrayed her true feelings, whether she wanted them to or not.

  And they
had held such love and affection and warmth it could have comforted anyone. But now they were nothing but dark, empty pits that somehow still managed to stare right at me. Her head–which was little more than a bare skull–tilted to the side as if she were studying me intently. Perhaps she was trying to find some kind of weakness to use against me.

  “Ronnie, it’s not your mother,” Finn said quietly, putting his hand on my shoulder. His hand warmed my damp skin, and he pulled me closer to his side. I knew Finn well enough to know that he was wishing he could shield me from the sight of my mother, but I also knew there wasn’t much he could really do right now. Nothing would ever erase this sight from my mind, and nothing would ever fix me.

  “I know that,” I said numbly. “My mother’s spirit is long gone, and even Tabitha can’t call it back. She’s safe in the afterlife. It’s someone else’s spirit trapped in my mother’s rotting corpse!” With each word my voice had risen higher and higher into hysteria, until it finally broke, and with a strangled cry, I turned and buried my face in Finn’s muscular chest. Every single time I blinked, that fraction of a second was long enough for the image of her corpse to flash through my mind.

  I wanted that image gone. I wanted this to all just be some kind of horrid nightmare. I wanted to wake up in the morning just in time for my mother to visit me and tell me she still loved me, even if she couldn’t be with me right now. I wanted a lot of things, but most of all, I wanted to make Tabitha pay for doing this to me, for cementing this image in my mind.

  Finn wrapped his arms around me and rested his chin on the top of my head in an effort to not only comfort me, but keep me somewhat dry. “Everything will be alright, Ronnie. I promise. We’ll find Tabitha, and we’ll make her pay for what she’s done to you tonight,” he said, mirroring my own thoughts. “She won’t get away with this.”

  Finn’s words normally would have had a calming effect on me, but not tonight. Tonight, all his words did was remind me that my world was slowly imploding around me. I wasn’t sure if Tabitha was trying to break me so I couldn’t fight her, or if she was trying to make me angry enough that I would suddenly snap and realize that evil was really the way to go.

  If that’s Tabitha’s plan, it’s working, I thought to myself suddenly. I’m ready to track Tabitha down and kill her for what she’s done to me. I want her to pay. I want her to suffer for forcing me to see this. Tabitha thinks there’s evil inside of me just waiting to be unleashed and she might be right…

  Without telling them to, my feet carried me over to where my mother stood buried nearly up to her ankles in sticky mud. It coated what was left of her skin, but she didn’t seem to mind. Probably because she was already dead and couldn’t really feel anything, like the rain or the cold. If my mother’s corpse hadn’t been disturbed, she would have been resting under the ground and would have probably been dirty anyways.

  My hand shifted up to grip the amethyst pendant in my hands, which were trembling so badly I almost ripped the stone off the chain that hung around my neck. I took a few deep breaths to try and steady myself, but they didn’t seem to be helping me much. I was too focused on what was left of her face; I couldn’t look away from those empty pits that stared right into my eyes.

  Her hand moved away from her side, and I watched as it reached up to my face. There were several people all standing outside in the rain–Finn, Marcel and the other Council members, Annie, Tanya, Holly, and Ezra–and they all went still and silent as my dead mother’s fingertips gently brushed my left cheek. Her feather-light touch sent unpleasant shivers down my spine, and my knees threatened to give way beneath me as I remembered the last time she had touched me so lovingly.

  Her black pits locked onto my eyes as she lowered her face to mine. For a breathless second, I thought for sure she was going to kiss me, but her mouth flew past mine to latch onto the muscle between my neck and shoulder. Her teeth sank in, tearing flesh and muscle in one swift movement. White-hot pain shot through my neck as she pulled away from me, tearing a chunk of bloody flesh with her as she went.

  My skin was flapping between her clenched jaws as I screamed. My hand went to my neck to try and stop the bleeding, but it didn’t seem to do much. In seconds the entire shoulder of my shirt was soaked in bright red liquid, and I could feel it dripping down my arm and between my shoulder blades. Finn’s strong arm wrapped around my waist and he spun me away from my mother’s corpse, putting himself between me and her in an attempt to either shield me from more pain or from the sight of what Annie was about to do to her.

  Finn’s arms tightened around me and I buried my face in his warm chest. “Don’t watch,” he murmured softly, stroking my damp hair with surprisingly gentle and warm hands. “You don’t need to see this, Ronnie.”

  I could feel Annie working her magic, and I knew that within a few seconds, whatever poor soul currently inhabited my mother’s corpse would be sent to the afterlife, and I would be left with nothing but the body of my dead mother. I would have to bury her once again. The first time she had been buried had been excruciatingly painful for both me and the man I had thought was my birth father; I wasn’t sure if I could go through that kind of pain one more time.

  Finn will be there beside me, I thought to myself. He won’t leave me now unless I ask him too. No matter how things are between us at the moment, he won’t leave me to suffer in my tragic loneliness.

  There was a muffled thump, and I knew that my mother’s body had collapsed due to the absence of the spirit that had filled her. When I peeked around Finn’s broad shoulders, a quiet whimper escaped my locked lips when I saw my mother lying face-down in the mud like she was nothing more than a piece of trash. Annie was still standing over her with her own pendant in her hands, and she looked at me with the sorriest expression I had ever seen.

  “Ronnie, I’m sorry this happened to you,” she said softly. It was almost like our earlier fight had never even happened, and she was back to being not only my teacher, but my friend as well. “The Council will help you rebury her in the morning, but we would all understand if you needed some time to be alone with her…”

  “Thank you, Annie,” I said quietly, forcing myself to stare at Annie’s face, and not at the motionless body in the mud. “What do I do about this nasty bite?” I asked, reaching up with a blood-covered hand to gently probe the second zombie inflicted gaping wound I had received today. “Can someone take care of it for me?”

  Tanya stepped forward. “I’ll take care of it after you’re done out here. I’ll be waiting for you in your room, okay?” she asked, her turquoise eyes full of concern and sadness. Without another word, everyone except for Finn turned and headed back into the compound, leaving the two of us alone in the rain and darkness, with the body of my mother.

  I slowly and unsurely detached myself from Finn’s warm and comforting embrace, and he let me go without putting up a fight. I think he knew how badly I needed to do this without him hovering over me, and he was willing to give me the space I needed to do this. I wasn’t exactly sure what I needed to do with my mother’s body, but I couldn’t just turn around and walk away without doing something.

  I knelt in the mud beside her, feeling the mud and water soak up through the fabric of my jeans. I reached out with a trembling bloody hand to push back what little dark hair she still had left, exposing part of her face that wasn’t buried in the mud. Now that she wasn’t up and walking around like a zombie, she looked so much worse than she had just moments ago. She looked more decomposed and more horrifying than I could have ever imagined.

  Seeing her like this brought fresh tears to my eyes, and I sniffed once. I was unsure of what to do, so I just sat there in the mud next to her with my head in my hands. I sobbed quietly to myself while Finn stood guard nearby. He could hear my every sob, and I knew it had to be killing him to not be able to help me in some way. Despite all the fights we’d had–especially recently–I knew how much he truly cared about me, and he certainly wouldn’t enjoy seeing me in so
much pain, both physical and mental.

  “I’m so sorry this happened to you,” I said quietly, reaching out to gently caress her face, like she had done to me just moments ago. I knew my mother wasn’t really here with me–her spirit was safe in the afterlife–but I needed to say something to her. She deserved that, even if she wasn’t around to witness the love and respect I still had for her. “Mom, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now,” I said, aware that not only was she not there to listen to me, Finn was, and he could hear every word I was saying.

  “I know Tabitha did this as a way to force me to do something rash, and I’m afraid it’ll work. I’m afraid I’ll march up to those Council members and demand they let me go after her. I’m afraid I’ll screw up somehow, and not only will Tabitha get away, but she’ll wreck more havoc on the world. I can’t let that happen; I feel like so much is riding on me, and it isn’t fair that you’re not here to help me anymore!” I wrapped my arms around myself, as if it would magically help me hold myself together. “Mom, I’m so lost without you,” I whispered. “I don’t know what to do anymore…”

  Finn dropped down into the mud beside me, and his arm wrapped around me, pulling me closer. “Ronnie,” he said softly, “I know things have been strange between us lately, but I want you to know right now that I’m not going anywhere. Now or ever. I’ll be right here by your side whenever you need me, no matter the reason.”

  “Thank you, Finn,” I said, wiping my clean hand across my face to clear away the tears. I wasn’t sure what else there was to say about that.

  “And I know things may seem very bleak right now, but it will all be over eventually, and things can go back to normal. Well, normal for us. You’ll be able to leave this place and start a life somewhere. You won’t have to spend every day of your life looking over your shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop. You’ll be happy and you’ll be able to finish school and maybe go to college. You’ll be able to do everything you’ve ever wanted with your life.”