by Moore, E. M.
At the time, I had no idea what he meant. It seemed like living on the streets was far from the cry of freedom he deemed it to be. Now, though, I kind of understood. The apartment, as shabby as it was, kept me employed by two jerks. I worked part-time at a laundromat during the early hours of the morning. For my second job, the kung fu school down the street let me clean its facility in exchange for money and free self-defense lessons. I would’ve refused the self-defense lessons, thinking that Old Joe had taught me everything I needed to know, but the owner insisted. It was just barely enough to keep me alive. You see, it wasn’t really freedom at all. I had a place to stay; I had things to eat. That was it. Was that all there was to life?
The same crunching of stones on cement sounded just behind me. My eyes darted up from watching my feet pad against the sidewalk. I was already in the warehouse district, and I hadn’t picked up the pace. I did now, immediately making my legs move. My muscles, used to this now, pulled and tightened, allowing me to break into a run. Just ahead, I saw the facade of my ground-floor apartment. The old brick building that looked more like commercial than residential. It wasn’t much, but it was home to me, and I was happy to have it. Freedom, to me, meant living within four walls.
A tingle of fear crawled up my spine. I didn’t want to look behind me. The same crunching of stones sounded, and I knew it couldn’t be the chipmunk this time. There it went again, the darkness, wheeling me in. It was probably nothing. At least, that’s what I told myself. My lungs burned inside my chest, my muscles had started to ache, but I pushed and pushed. I only had a half a block to go. When my feet skidded to a stop by the old steel railing that led to my door, I breathed a sigh of relief.
It was cut short when I finally turned my head. My eyes widened. I stopped breathing, the earlier breath held tight in my chest. There was a guy there, under the only streetlamp within seeing distance. I stumbled backward up the steps. The guy, he couldn’t have been more than mid-twenties, smiled at me. He was handsome, and I wanted to kick myself for thinking like that in this moment. For all I knew, well I didn’t really know, did I? He could have been a neighbor. I didn’t really pay attention to my neighbors. But what was he doing out at this time of night? Then again, what was I doing out at this time of night?
I looked down, hoping to see jogging shoes and exercise clothes like I wore, but there was nothing. He was dressed in khakis and a sweater, so unlike what I would’ve guessed that I peered more closely, making sure he wore what I thought he did. My nerves automatically calmed, and some lying voice in the back of my head told me that well-dressed men, whether they were out in the middle of the night or not, did not mean me any harm. It also helped that he was handsome, with dark hair gelled to the side artfully. He was chiseled; at least that’s what I thought. I recognized the same definition in him as I had started to see in myself with my training and my running. Though, mine was nothing compared to his. He seemed to have unnatural musculature. It was like what I would have imagined a Greek God would’ve looked like. I shook my head at myself, disbelieving the way my mind worked.
Whether this guy was good-looking or not, I needed to get away. I kept backing up until my back hit the storm door, creaking. I jumped at the noise. In front of me, the guy had moved to the bottom step. He laughed; his husky voice guttural, melodic. I turned, knowing the only way to get into my house, to get to safety, was to unlock the door and lock it behind me. This may have been my undoing though. With my back turned, he was immediately on me, his hand coming to rest on mine as it worked on the lock.
His breath hit my face, unnaturally cool in the night. A shiver started from my toes making its way all the way up my spine to between my shoulder blades. The guy tsked. He peeled my fingers away from the lock one by one. “You won’t be needing this.”
I turned toward him. Though my body sent warning signals, I still moved closer to him on instinct. His eyes drew me in to their chestnut depths.
“I-I won’t?”
With a smirk sliding onto his face, the guy shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not. You’ve been chosen.”
I couldn’t be sure what happened next, only that there was a flurry of movement, and then blackness. I tensed, waiting for the nightmare to come again.
2
My eyelids fluttered open, but the unnatural light, harsh as it was, made them close again. It was a good thing, too. Now that I was conscious, I heard voices. I kept still as I took in my surroundings with what senses I did have without alerting the others to the fact that I was awake. I was lying flat on my back, the glaring light from above shined directly down on me. Underneath me was a cushion which was only slightly better than my terrible mattress back home. I could only conclude I was in some sort of bed. My hands were fastened over my stomach, but I didn’t dare move to feel my way around. The voices echoed, leading me to believe I was in a somewhat large room.
There was a woman and a man there with me. The man’s voice I recognized. He was the one who made it dark again. The girl was closer than he was. Though I was terrified, I tried to even out my breath as if I was still asleep. The woman sighed audibly, the voice even closer now. “So, this is her?”
Her? My mind, always working, always trying to connect the dots from one to the next, couldn’t comprehend any of this. The man didn’t say anything for a while. I guessed that I’d miss some sort of nonverbal communication between them. I hoped it was him shaking his head. This wasn’t her, right? I was just me.
Where was I? And why were they speaking as if they knew me?
“I don’t see anything that special,” the woman said.
My jaw hardened. I made myself relax to appear still unconscious. It wasn’t quite so much detest in her voice that I recognized as much as it was unanswered questions, perhaps frustration. “You’re positive you got the right one?”
The man’s voice deepened and hardened like steel. “Of course. Christian Ravana pointed her out to me himself. It’s impossible for me to make a mistake.”
The woman grunted almost condescendingly at him. “Your arrogance knows no bounds, Samuel.”
“Some say they like that.”
“They’re lying.”
His voice was closer now and I couldn’t stop from tensing at his proximity. I wasn’t hurt, not that I could tell anyway, but he was the reason why I was here and not in my own bed.
The man snickered, laughing at her. “You try running a military camp and see if you keep your sense of self-righteousness and cool. I’ve done this for far too long to keep a level head about my abilities.”
“Military camp?” she scoffed. “You’re training a bunch of humans. I’d hardly call that—”
The man growled, a short, terrifying rip through the air that barely rose above a whisper, but it cut my thoughts short on her mention of the word humans. “And what would you call the defense of our kind?”
“No matter,” the woman said. Her voice was light, airy, almost as if she were hiding a laugh. There was a scuffling of feet and then her voice was far away again. “Did you ask them why they wanted her? Her specifically?”
I held my breath.
“Of course, I did. That doesn’t mean they gave me an answer.”
Who was this Christian guy and why did they want me? I racked my brain, rummaging through the memories of my life, trying to think if I ever knew someone named Christian Ravana. I’d been through several foster homes, but that name didn’t ring a bell. Not in any of my few foster brothers and sisters, not in any of my “parents” or other family members. I couldn’t recall the name Christian anywhere.
“I have a theory,” the man offered. His voice was slow, almost testing. The woman didn’t say anything, and I wondered again if I missed some sort of nonverbal cue for him to speak. Though the man had authority, a superior tone to his voice that the woman couldn’t match, I still wondered if they were equals. In any case, she didn’t seem to take any of his nonsense. I didn’t want her to interrupt. I’d love to hear this theo
ry about why this guy Christian wanted me here. “I wondered,” he started, his voice lilting, “that perhaps the reason why they aren’t saying anything, is that they really just want her.”
The woman didn’t skip a beat. “The Ravanas want her blood, you mean?”
I couldn’t stop the hitch in my breath. Icy, finger-like tendrils ran up the sides of my arms. What world was I in? I wouldn’t put it past some of my previous foster families to be this weird, but this was something else. My stomach clenched. Why me? Why was it always me?
The man’s voice was close again, my skin tingled on the right side of my body as if he was standing over me, staring at me. That whole side of my body was hyper aware. “What else could it be? She has no training, background, or family connections that I’m aware of. You should’ve seen her apartment. It wasn’t fit for a girl her age. What else could they want from her if not for her blood?”
The woman tsked. “I suppose her having no family or connections makes sense then. If they were going to choose someone to drain, it would be someone who no one would miss.”
The words stung more than they should when they were uttered from a stranger. Heat built behind my eyes. No one would miss me. No one would even realize I was missing. I kept to myself. The only people who might notice I wasn’t around were my bosses at work, but they half expected I wouldn’t show up anyway. They would just chalk it up to me being a stupid girl, a stupid young girl who couldn’t even keep a job. The only other person who might notice was my landlord when the rent check didn’t show up in his mailbox. Would he even bother to think something bad had happened to me though? In the part of town I lived in, people probably skipped out on their rent all the time.
They had taken me, this man and woman, and no one would know.
The man shifted, and I almost flinched away. Even without sight, I knew he was too close. “I think we can ask her ourselves. Seeing as how she’s been awake all this time.”
I cringed, hoping that the movement was internal only and that my sleeping mask was still intact. Could I still just play at sleeping? If I opened my eyes, I would be in the nightmare.
Never one to be a coward for too long and always wanting to face my circumstances, I took a deep breath and opened my eyes, hoping the harsh light wouldn’t force me to close them again as soon as they opened. Hovering above me, just as I suspected, were the golden-brown eyes of the guy who took me, along with another pair of much lighter yellow eyes of a woman with long blonde hair.
“Ah, there she is,” the guy, Samuel, said.
I tried to sit, but the restraints on my wrists held me in place. They gave me just enough leeway to put them back down on the small table next to me, but not enough to pull me up to a sitting position. I stared at both of them, my eyes traveling to the impossible color of their eyes, one to the next, trying to make them out. Were they a threat?
Stupid question. They took me here, didn’t they? I wasn’t hurt, but that part might be coming later. My eyes moved around the room. There were other tables like the one I was on. It looked strikingly like a doctor’s office, only with more cots. A hospital, I guessed. As my eyes kept wandering around the narrow, but lengthy room, I noticed silver trays with instruments on them, a rubber glove dispenser, and hand sanitizer stations all over the place. Yes, it was most definitely a doctor’s office, hospital, or something to do with the medical profession.
Maybe I just passed out? Maybe I passed out and the guy brought me here? Maybe he didn’t mean me any harm at all.
The content of their conversation came back to me now. My blood. The thought crushed my hopes, sending them in a swirl to my twisting stomach. I stared up at the man. He’d already known I was awake. That meant he wouldn’t keep anything from me, right? If he’d known I was awake and he didn’t want me to know about anything, he wouldn’t have said so much in my presence. I pierced him with a stare I hoped was menacing. “What did you mean ‘want my blood’?”
Samuel’s lips turned up at the corners. His face was much more handsome in this fake, bright light. In fact, he didn’t look menacing at all. He looked trustworthy, even though everything in my body said otherwise. He shook his head, then leaned his palms against the table and peered down at me. “Listen very carefully, young Ariana…”
My eyes widened at the mention of my name. My real name.
His lips pulled wider. “You’re at the Rajyvik Guardian Training Facility, otherwise known as The Fort. The vampire princes have requested your presence here.”
“V-vampire?” I stuttered out, the word sinking into me like sharp teeth.
My blood ran cold. Even though I rebelled at the thought—vampires were a myth, not reality—I knew he wasn’t lying. To prove it, two very pointy, very white teeth razored to a needle-like edge as he spoke. “You have two choices: stay at The Fort and train to be the Ravanas’ Guardian. Or, you can die. Which will it be?”
3
Samuel said I had a choice, but I didn’t. Not Ariana Stuart. I’d always had a high self-preservation instinct. How else would I have stayed alive after all my friends and family died in that car accident? I could still almost hear my mother’s voice saying, “stay alive, stay alive, stay alive.” It didn’t matter that it wasn’t real. It was real to me. I knew I needed to stay alive. The same thing happened again when my foster father brought home a gun.
That was the night I ran away.
So, for me, I would never choose to die. At least, not without a fight. I told Samuel I would stay and be a guard even though I didn’t really know what that meant. So far, all I’d gathered was that I was at some sort of military institution in which I would be trained to fight for the vampire princes’ lives. It wasn’t much, but it didn’t matter anyway. I would play the guard route until I could escape. I wouldn’t die.
Samuel walked me down a gray-stoned corridor. I followed him, making sure to stay a step behind so that my actions would go unnoticed. My eyes wandered, taking in my surroundings. I stared out the slitted windows, looking for any possible escape route. I memorized the walk, looked inside doors. Anything I could think of, I encapsulated in my memory to save it for a later date. Who knew what might help in my planned escape.
Samuel hadn’t spoken to me since we left the infirmary. We headed toward a steel door at the end of the hall and once we got there, he pushed it open. A gust of the same cool air I remembered on my skin when I was jogging earlier that night rushed toward me. We stepped out into the night, the night that didn’t lie, and I looked around. We’d just exited from a monstrous stone building, reminding me of castles in the tourist brochures from England or Ireland. He didn’t stop as I gawked like a sightseer. I wanted to ask him where we were but talking to him unnerved me. I trusted him far too much, and against my own better judgment.
Hurrying after him, my sneakers slipped through the dewy grass. There were a few buildings ahead of us. They were made of stone too, like the one we came from, but smaller. Surrounding them, I noticed with dread, was a high wall. I understood why they called it The Fort now. One of my nicer foster families had liked to travel. They took me to sites around where we lived, and one of them happened to be a Revolutionary War fort. This reminded me so much of that. High walls to protect its soldiers from the battle. There were small slits to stick guns through and little holes as if cannons were waiting on the other side to fire from.
I stopped to stare up at a small circular stone room atop the wall when Samuel yelled back at me, “Keep up.”
I scrambled after him, my heart sinking. If this truly was a fort, I would be hard-pressed to find a way to get out of here. No matter, I told myself. Not everything was bulletproof. There had to be a way.
I ran forward as we headed toward another stone structure whose middle was one story high while the East and West points jutted into the star-studded sky. We walked right through the center doors, and I was immediately overcome with familiarity. The inside of this small castle was like the real world. There were carpeted fl
oors, painted walls, and disheveled furniture. Even from the doorway, I could hear the light, breezy voices of others.
Samuel stopped abruptly and turned on his heel. He glowered down at me. “The others will probably have many questions for you. Since you can’t answer them, I suggest you keep your guard up. I’m sure they will fill you in on what you’re confused about. Do keep in mind that they are merely humans with their own take on things.”
He looked exasperated as if he wasn’t used to humans having their own minds. I looked up at him, crossing my arms in front of my chest. “But, I’m human.”
“Yes, of course you are. You wouldn’t be allowed in the guard if you weren’t. Remember, no matter the Ravanas’ decision to take you on, Ariana, that doesn’t mean you’re special.”
He spun and headed in the direction of the voices. I scowled after him, already guessing that the vampires—no matter how weird it was to say that word—had a steep superiority complex. Nothing short of what I encountered in the human world, where rich thought they were better than the poor, and some races and religions believed they were better than others. It was nice to hear that prejudices were in place even under otherworldly situations. Perhaps this place wasn’t that different from the real world after all.
I entered the room right behind Samuel. There was a smattering of boys and girls, all my age, sitting on chairs and sofas and lounging around. But when Samuel walked in the room, they all stood at attention, their heels knocking together and their arms tight to their sides with their chins raised in the air. I could see now, disbelieving yet satisfied, that my instincts were right. Samuel was someone who demanded respect. That woman vampire should not have scoffed when he called this place a military institution. That was exactly what this reminded me of. We were all recruits, and he was a drill instructor, not likely to take any of our crap.
