In the Blood

by Abigail Barnette

  “We’re too late.” He turned to Anthony, whose face twisted in disbelief. “We’re too late.”

  “Maybe not.” Anthony pulled his phone from his pocket and punched a few keys. “I’ve got some on the map. They seem to be congregating around midtown.”

  Covering his head with his jacket to protect himself from any sunlight that might break the cloud cover, Viktor exited the car and leapt to the second-story ledge, only belatedly considering the consequences if someone had seen him. Damn the Conclave’s protocol. His only concern was for Cassandra.

  “I had a key,” Anthony called from the street. “Shall I join you?”

  Peering through the dark glass, Viktor shook his head. “No. She’s not here. We have to find her.”

  He pushed off from the building and connected with something in midair. The impact shot him back, through the windows, spraying glass over the small apartment. He hit the bed and tumbled to the floor, locked in the rubbery grip of a Minion. The horrible thing dug its claws into his shoulders and its jaws snapped mere inches from his face. He pushed with all of his might and dislodged it, springing to his feet only to be struck down again. A second Minion perched on his back and bit into his neck. He roared in pain and shoved himself backward, smashing the creature into the wall hard enough to crumble plaster around them.

  They fought hard, hungry. Viktor knew they must have been waiting a long time for Cassandra. They wouldn’t have her. Let them tear him apart. They wouldn’t have her.

  Cassie turned the corner, not running, but walking fast enough that she had to dodge the quick-moving crowd. The doorman at Viktor’s building admitted her without question and indicated that instructions had been left to let her into the apartment. But when the elevator doors opened and she was confronted with the sleek black foyer, no one was there to meet her.

  “Viktor?” She hurried down the terrifying staircase, ignoring the windows that seemed poised to swallow her whole. The horrible feeling of falling, falling endlessly, gripped her, and she clung to the railing for support, breaking from the stairs and hurrying to the well-disguised door by the fireplace. She opened it to find the hallway dark, no sign of any occupants.

  She called Viktor’s name as she looked into the rooms she passed. The sound of a television, muffled by a closed door, drew her to Viktor’s office. The flat-screen television on the wall broadcasted a local channel, and the computer on the desk glowed with a map of Manhattan and the outlying boroughs. Red dots flashed and swarmed over the streets, moving like a sinister pox over the city.

  Leaning in closer, she scanned the map. There was her street. Four red dots seemed concentrated on her block.

  That was where Viktor was. She knew it without any doubt. He’d gone to rescue her. Just like before, her impulsive behavior had led him into danger. Just like before, it would be her fault if he were attacked. This time, though, he had so much more to lose.

  Her gaze fell on the little gold circle that lay on the desk. Her wedding ring. No, Melina’s wedding ring. She slipped it onto her finger and fled the apartment, then the building, out into streets swarming with monsters. She only prayed she wasn’t too late.

  Another Minion came at him, fangs bared. Viktor lifted himself as best he could and struck out at the creature. In the corner, Anthony’s body lay limp and skewed like a child’s toy thrown during a temper tantrum. He had done his best to fight off the Minions, using the skills and weapons the Conclave had provided him. It had been an impressive but ultimately futile display. When the Conclave members Anthony had called for help arrived, they would find their comrade dead, his charge the same. Viktor cried out pathetically as a Minion gripped his arm and pulled, hard enough that bone and sinew separated. He would be torn apart. Such an undignified end.

  But an end at last. The pieces of his kills—and the pieces of Cassandra’s destroyed apartment—lay in piles around him. His own skin resembled the chunks of flesh lying on the floor, rubbery and white. His memory slipped away from him like water through a sieve, and the hunger…he nearly sobbed with the force of it. He reached out for the Minion who’d caught him. He would pull the creature apart, feast on its blood. He would drink until his thirst was quenched, drink until the dead heart that beat within him burst from the pressure. He was a creature driven totally by hunger.

  A familiar scent wafted to him above the smell of his own blood. Ah, desperation. Guilt. He knew her, but all that registered now was the hunger. He needed to consume her.

  The door opened, and she stopped in her tracks. Her gaze remained fixed on the ruin and death around her.

  It was time to strike.

  One of the creatures stood over what Cassie thought was Viktor. But it couldn’t be. Though the monster wore the tatters of Viktor’s clothing, it seemed shapeless and unformed. The suggestion of a human body with the rubbery skin and shapeless features of a Minion.

  The creature that held down not-Viktor sprang toward her, and she rushed forward, purely on instinct, driving her shoulder into the creature hard, setting it off balance. In that moment, she grabbed the object nearest to her—an umbrella leaning behind the door—lifted it over her head and pummeled the creature again, screaming with every smack of the weapon. Blood, thick and black, sprayed over her, but she didn’t stop, squeezing her eyes shut tight to protect them from the spray. Only when a hand caught her ankle did she open her eyes again. The thing that should have been Viktor held her in his grasp.

  She couldn’t harm him. Tears spilled from her eyes as she stared down into the formless face. “Viktor, it’s me. Please!”

  He pulled her down, mouth unusually wide, teeth at strange angles in his horrible mouth.

  “It’s Cassandra. Melina. I love you. Please don’t do this!” She didn’t fight him. He covered her body, his rubbery white limbs so different from the sturdy arms that had held her the night before. She closed her eyes and sobbed. If this was how she would die, she would. She only hoped that Viktor’s soul, or whatever part of him could be called a soul, had moved on before he became this monstrosity. They had found each other in this lifetime. She wouldn’t rest until she found him in the next.

  His fangs sank into her neck, and she screamed, but she didn’t push him away. She didn’t want to struggle, didn’t want him to hurt her more than he had to. There was no chance of escape now, anyway. She clung to his shoulders, wiry and round now from his transformation into Minion, and whispered that she loved him over and over while her blood flowed from the wound in her neck. What he did not drink puddled beneath her head, wetting her hair. Tears rolled from her eyes to join the sticky wetness on the floor. It hadn’t been long ago that she’d collapsed on this floor and Viktor had come to her aid. She forced herself to focus on the short time they’d spent together. When she died, which wouldn’t be long now, she wanted to die remembering what he had been, not fearing the monster he had become.

  Her thoughts became muddled, and she struggled to hold her memories close. The pain faded. She couldn’t feel her body anymore. Her mind wandered, all the way to the little attic room where she’d spent her wedding night as Melina. Lying beside Viktor in the dark, she had listened to the sound of his breathing, her heart nearly bursting with the love she’d felt for him in that lifetime.

  “Miluji tê,” she whispered to Viktor, lying sleeping beside her, and to Viktor, transformed into a monster from her nightmares. “Miluji tê, Viktor.”

  Then she died.

  Her blood washed through him like a tidal wave, blasting away years of pain, decades of dying. He had the presence of mind to release her, to roll away from her body so that as he collapsed, he did not crush her. Melina. No, Cassandra. That was her name now. Her soul was nameless, though it was familiar, and it poured into him as a healing balm. How had he forgotten her?

  It took him a moment to become aware of what he’d done. It took him another moment to stop. He drew away, his broken arm still cradling her. She’d spoken to him, in words that had penetrated his consc
iousness, in a language he had not spoken for decades but still remembered with piercing clarity. She had told him she loved him.

  “Miluji tê,” he repeated to her still form. He wanted to weep, but he could not allow it. He had done this. He had murdered his beautiful Cassandra. His Melina. For the second time, he had failed her.

  No, it could not be this way! With a roar of frustration, he slashed his own wrist and let the blood well up. He had condemned her to death before by being too weak to protect her. This time there was something he could do about it. He pressed his wrist to her slack mouth and prayed that some spark of life remained within her. Prayed that she could forgive him for what he had done, what he did to her now. The act of changing her might make him into a monster once more. He had balanced so precariously on the limit of his humanity for so long, he no longer knew what might tip the scales. He silently urged her to wake, to drink the blood that flowed into her mouth.

  She stirred in his arms, pushing him away, gagging. She spit the blood from her mouth, scrubbed her hand across her face as she did so. Her hair, matted with her blood, stuck to her cheek, and she pushed it away with a grimace of disgust.

  She should have been unable to move, seized by agony as the change had taken her. It had taken him days to recover from his transformation. Days of fever and uncertainty, days of praying for a death that would never arrive. He didn’t wish that horror on anyone, especially not Cassandra. The thought of her hurting, the thought of the pain he had already caused, drove a spike of helpless rage into him.

  Cassandra rolled away from him, choking, and he didn’t dare to touch her. Finally, her coughing subsided, and she asked in a strangled whisper, “What happened?”

  Viktor squeezed his eyes shut. “Anthony and I saw on the news that Minions had attacked near here. We came to protect you. He did not survive.”

  A sob escaped her, and it surprised him. She had never seemed to care for Anthony, and Anthony certainly had never cared for her. She’d consumed vampire blood. At this moment, she should care only for blood, for feeding, if she had truly transformed. He reached for her. Her skin did not burn the way a new vampire’s feverish flesh should feel. She was human still, warm and alive. He had not killed her. He had not turned her.

  “This is all my fault. If I had never left—”

  “No.” He tried to pull her into his arms, but she resisted him. Why shouldn’t she? He’d nearly killed her, and he had certainly destroyed her life. “You are not responsible for what happened here. There are Minions all over the city. Right now, many Conclave members are losing their lives. You are responsible for none of them.”

  “No.” She turned wide, tear-filled eyes to his. “I meant before. In Prague. I should have never left by myself that night. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have died, and you wouldn’t be—”

  “Dear God.” He pulled away from her, then cursed his reaction. What reaction did he expect to have, faced with a living ghost?

  “You should have let me die.” She sounded tired and defeated. “This time. You should have let me die.”

  His hands trembled as he reached for her. On her left ring finger, she wore Melina’s wedding band. He covered her hand with his own, and the skin-warmed gold did not burn him. “Melina?”

  She looked up at him and gasped. What must he look like now, half-transformed, halted in his transition to Minion?

  “Viktor,” she sputtered. “Your hair.”

  In the fight, her little vanity table had been destroyed, and pieces of mirror lay all around them. Cassandra reached for one with trembling hands and held it out so he could see. In the fragile shard, a face from long ago stared back at him.

  He touched his hair, no longer the colorless white from before, but the dull brown it had been in his youth. His face, too, did not appear so pale or grim. He looked…almost human.

  “Does this mean…” She paused and licked her lips. “Does this mean that you’re not a…”

  “No.” The hunger remained, taunting him. “No, I am still a vampire.”

  “Oh.”

  The soft noise of disappointment pierced his heart. She would have liked it better if he had not been a vampire anymore. The sound of sirens pricked his ears. “We have to go.”

  With his help, Cassandra rose on shaky legs. “You can’t go out like that, you’re practically naked,” she said, indicating his torn clothes. “And the sunlight!”

  A crack of thunder split the air, and raindrops pelted the window. The sunlight would not be a problem, but everything else…

  With a growl of frustration, Viktor grabbed the sheet from the bed and shook glass off it. He tied it around his waist and helped Cassandra downstairs, to the waiting car. The sun stung his eyes, but his skin didn’t ignite. Anthony had left the keys in the car—a final favor. Viktor peeled away from the curb without a look back. When he finally relaxed enough to check on Cassandra, she was asleep, slumped against the window in the passenger seat.

  Safe. Covered in gore, almost dead at his hands, but safe. He trembled and turned his attention back to the road and the unfamiliar mechanics of driving. Anthony was gone. The Conclave wouldn’t be happy. Minions still swarmed the city.

  He had failed her.

  It wasn’t just that he hadn’t been able to stop himself from draining her dry. It wasn’t that he’d failed to transform her. He rejoiced in that. No, the thing that bothered him most was that he had even considered condemning her to this life. In his desperation to keep her, he’d been willing to sacrifice her soul.

  For years, he had mourned Melina, prayed to have her back. The impossible had happened. And now, he had to let her go. To protect Cassandra, he had to let her go.

  Chapter Ten

  Cassandra woke to an empty room. She lay in Viktor’s bed, and the shades were open to the city lights stretching beyond the darkened rectangle of the park. Standing gingerly, she winced at the soreness in her limbs. She’d never have thought that beating something to death with a weapon would take so much physical effort. She’d always assumed the weapon did most of the work.

  Her neck stung too, and she reached up to touch the wound from Viktor’s bite. A shiver ran through her, all the way to her toes, and not the good kind. Viktor had been one of those creatures, or nearly one of them. A monster from her nightmares.

  She paused. Something was wrong. She hadn’t woken screaming or sweating. She hadn’t been tormented by hellish visions. She’d just…slept.

  Frowning, she slid from the bed. When Viktor had carried her into the apartment, he’d taken her straight to the master bathroom and helped her to undress. She’d stayed awake just long enough to shower away the blood before crawling under the covers. At the foot of the bed, a black silk nightgown waited for her, and she pulled it on, grateful for the comforting softness. Her neck ached where he’d bitten her, and she touched the edges of the wound gingerly.

  Padding down the hall, she found the door to the living room open and warm firelight in a flickering reflection against the marble. Her muscles tensed and she shot into motion, running toward the flames and shouting, “Viktor!”

  When she burst into the living room, she realized her foolishness. The apartment was not engulfed in flames. A cheerful fire crackled in the fireplace, and Viktor sat on the couch, holding a glass of something that was not red, but a warm amber. He looked at her with concern written across every feature. “Is everything all right?”

  Her chest almost caved in under the weight of her relief. “Yeah. Everything is fine. I thought the apartment was burning down.”

  He chuckled. “You’re still in shock. You’re waiting for monsters to jump out at you from every corner.”

  “Can you really blame me?” She sat beside him, wanting to touch him, to melt against his sturdiness and stillness, but she kept her arms tucked around her waist, pulling her body into a shell. He didn’t seem like the same Viktor. Though he hadn’t looked old before, he seemed younger to Cassandra now. He was the man she’d seen
during her past life exploration, but she was not that woman. “What do we do now?”

  He lifted his glass to her. “Since my transformation has been somewhat…reversed in its progress, I thought I would see if it is possible to get drunk. And watch the sunrise, if I am able.”

  “The sunrise?” It hadn’t been the answer she’d been looking for, and she couldn’t ask him again. Despite all they’d been through, he seemed unapproachable now. “Isn’t that a little dangerous?”

  “Only as we lose our humanity. At first, we can do nearly all of the things we were able to do while alive.” He smiled sadly, but Cassie couldn’t fathom why he’d be sad to regain his humanity. Not when she’d seen what he was about to become.

  “Well, I meant…what now? The cops would have found my apartment full of dead monsters. They’ve got to be looking for me.” She wished he would take her into his arms and tell her that it would be okay. He would have, a day ago.

  He shook his head. “No, they will not look for you. The Conclave has an infinite reach. They’ll have that apartment completely made over by now. It will look like you never lived there at all.”

  “But the cops will know I lived there. They’ll want to question me and—”

  “The Conclave will take care of the details. And if they do not…my wealth will take care of what they miss.” The silence stretched between them for some time, until he continued. “I am sorry to have complicated your life so. I fully intend to help you with whatever you need to rebuild. A job, a new identity, an apartment. Say the word, and it is yours.”

  A cold knot formed in the pit of her stomach. “Um…I don’t know what I would need.”

  “You need something better than a vampire, Cassandra.” He looked back to the flames.

  Now that it was out in the open, the knot turned into lead and hardened everything inside of her. “What did you do to me? After you bit me.”