by Shadow Soft
I redoubled my glare and shifted away from her, but Virgil put a warning hand on my shoulder.
“Curious? No.” Gabriella’s eyes narrowed on my face, on the darting apprehension of my eyes. “You’re beyond curious. You’re dying to know, Valx Nightfall. I can see it.”
The horrible thing was, I knew she could. Because I was dying to know.
“Well.” Gabriella folded her arms across her chest. “Truth is, until quite recently I was a member of the LFX like them.”
LFX. Liberation Front X. The vampire organization devoted to my protection and freedom.
Which would mean . . . . I shook my head, eyes hardening. “Liar,” I spat.
“What?” She quirked an eyebrow. “They had you fooled for three whole years.”
“I’m not an idiot, Gabriella!” I shouted. “Look at their teeth! Their eyes! They’re not vampires!”
Her long canines glittered in the moonlight as she grinned. “You’re wrong there, Valx. They are vampires. Just like their parents.”
I shook my head, quivering with rage. “How dare you accuse them of that!”
“I’m going to kill you!” Blake trembled. “You viper!” He elbowed Stefan viciously in the nose, then in his moment of surprise, flung him to the ground and began pummeling him.
Vales tore free. Her eyes frothed loathing at Gabriella. “How?” she demanded, voice cold as ice and hot as magma. “How, Gaby? How could you do this to us?”
In the moment of confusion I tried to dart away, but Virgil caught my arms and held me. I struggled, screaming. Screaming more from what I was hearing than from what was happening around me. Black flashed across my vision and I gasped, my heart doing cartwheels in my chest. Leaping off an unconscious Stefan, Blake pounced on Virgil at the same time as Vales threw herself at Gabriella. For a series of painful seconds I was tossed around as Virgil tried to keep hold of me while fighting off a furious Blake; then he gave up and let go, and I tumbled to the ground, panting. My head reeled. My heart shook furiously in my chest. Whirling, I raised my fists to help Blake—but even as I turned he dealt Virgil a stunning kick to the temple. The big man crumpled to the ground and lay still.
We both turned, poised to spring to Vales’ aid. Gabriella elbowed her ferociously in the mouth and I felt her pain. Blood streaming down her chin, Vales thrust upward, catching Gabriella’s chin with a powerful uppercut. The woman careened backward, struck the trunk of a nearby tree, and collapsed motionless to the ground.
Blake rushed to his sister’s side. I stumbled after him, too dazed to move properly.
“Hey, you alright?” He pulled her gently up by the shoulder.
Grimacing, Vales wiped blood from her chin. “Ugh.” She coughed and spat into her hand; more blood. “I think some teeth might be loose.”
“But we . . . . we won,” I stuttered, weak-kneed. “They’re all unconscious. We . . . .”
Vales looked up at me. A pane of moonlight cut across one side of her face, painting her skin palest ivory while feeding veins of scarlet into the blood smeared down her chin. “We did,” she gasped, relief flooding her voice.
At her smile I collapsed to my knees. Incredulity consumed me. Vales had the same long canines as Gabriella. I put a hand to my head. What on earth is happening to me? I must have been hit in the head. I’m seeing things. I . . . .
“Vales,” Blake said suddenly, sounding startled, “your denture.”
Vales put a hand to her mouth, and her eyes widened in horror. She swore more vividly than I had ever heard her swear before. “They’re visible,” she whispered. Her eyes fell to the ground. Mine did too. Frozen together, we searched the pine needles. I didn’t know what I was looking for until my eyes snagged on something in the dimness: a wire denture complete with a full set of normal teeth.
Aghast, I looked back to Vales. She met my eyes. No. I shook my head.
Blake covered his eyes with one hand, uttering a long, anguished groan.
“Blake . . . ?”
Sighing, he dug around his gums with his thumb and forefinger. There was a click, then he spat out his own prosthesis. Beneath it were long canines just like Vales’.
She wasn’t lying. No. No. No! Stumbling to my feet, I skittered away from them.
“Valx!” Vales pleaded, “You don’t have to be afraid!”
I stared, breath sawing at my ragged throat. Help me. Help me. Help me! “You . . . .” I lifted a quivering finger. “You’re . . . .”
Vales took a step toward me. “Just let me explain! Please!”
Spinning, I ran. I ran with all my strength, with all my horror pounding in my skull.
“Valx, wait!”
“Valxy! Come back!”
No. Never. Never back. To them. Liars. Vampires. Liars. Vales. She lied to me. No.
Branches whipped at my face, cutting to shreds Vales and Blake’s frantic pleas. No. You lied to me. You used me. For three years I trusted you. I loved you. Vampires. Tears bled down my cheeks, filled with pain and grief and horror. You took samples of my blood and claimed to be running tests. To save me! Hah! Research! No—it was for you. It was for you! My blood was always for you. You lied . . . . you lied . . . . Vales . . . .
“Valx!” My name flurried behind me but I kept running. It was Vales. I could hear her stumbling through the forest after me. “Come back! Please Valx!”
“Valxy!”
No, Blake. Never again. Never trust. I tripped over a root, fell, scraped my hand, scrambled to my feet and kept running. Dodging around trees. Branches clawing at my face. Blood and tears. My skin healed; new branches slashed it open. It healed again.
Panting. Gasping. A ravine—I jumped it. Rocks scraped me. They were coming—behind me. I could hear them breathing, their feet racing after me. Must get away. Must get away. The trees in front of me thinned and moonlight opened whitely across another ravine, a hundred times wider than the last. Too wide to jump. I veered left, but glimpsed a sheer rock cliff and reversed momentum, scrambling to the right. Please. They were behind me. Still calling my name.
To the right the trees thickened and I met another slope of tumbling rock. Too steep to climb, normally, but I had no choice. In front of me was the ravine, and behind were Blake and Vales, so close—I grabbed chunks of rock in both hands and pulled myself up, but the shadows beneath the trees furled back and suddenly Blake was there, leaping in front of me. “Valxy, stop!”
“No!” I staggered backward, tripped, and fell onto my back.
Vales came racing up. “Valx!”
“No!” Snarling at her—the pain was too great, the agony of knowing that she had been lying to me all this time—I clambered to my feet and stumbled away. To the edge of the gorge. It was the only way.
“Valx listen to me, please!” Vales extended a placating hand. “We haven’t changed, Valx! We’re still us! We’re the same. We still love you—you can trust us.”
I looked at her eyes, my head shaking. No. I mouthed the word. No trust. Not after three years of lies.
Tears glimmered on Vales’ cheeks. “You can trust me.”
“You are a vampire,” I croaked.
She shook her head. “I always was. See? You trusted me then, before you knew, and nothing is different now.”
“Everything is different.” My voice was harsh and rasping to my own ears. “I trusted the lie. It wasn’t really you.” Behind me the gorge yawned. I could feel its emptiness calling me. My route of escape.
“No.” Vales shook her head, tears spilling down her cheeks. She took a step toward me, hand still outstretched. “Please just listen, Valx.”
My lip trembled. Revulsion and anger. “I don’t think you’ve earned that.” Still staring into her eyes, I took the final step backward and let myself fall. Into the gorge. Staring up. I saw Vales’ face appear over the edge as I plunged into swift gloom.
“Valxy no!” Blake appeared beside her.
Wailing, Vales reached after me with a futile, grasping hand. “Vaaaa
alx!”
My name disintegrated into a shriek of anguish that dwindled as I fell, tumbling, my clothes twisting around me as the air pulled them this way and that. The wind whistled in my ears and I closed my eyes. Why scream? I cannot die?
The ground came more suddenly than I expected. Get up, I told myself, before I even hit. Get up and keep running.
Then I struck. Hard. You cannot imagine how hard. It jarred every bone in my body. Broke most of them, probably. Pain blossomed inside me, a vast, raging thing, and with a gasp I plummeted into blackness.
Chapter 5
I woke slowly.
Consciousness came first as a tendril of cold worming down my throat. A breath. Cold air into my lungs. My fingers twitched but otherwise I did not move. Memory was a black hole in the undulating plain of my mind, filled with a vague awareness of pain but no images to explain it.
This wasn’t physical pain, mind you. I’ve suffered physical pain more than most, and it doesn’t daunt me. Sure, it hurts. But the hurt goes no deeper than your flesh and bones and blood, and it always goes away. This was soul pain. Lying there in the bottom of the ravine, pulling gradually into consciousness, I knew that it was soul pain. Soul pain is deeper than physical pain. How can something be deeper than you are? you may ask. What can be deeper than your heart?
Well let me tell you—every person has two hearts. One is physical. It’s an involuntary muscle that pumps blood through your body. The other is metaphysical. It does not exist in the physical dimension, but in the abstract. This heart is the heart of your soul. It lives in the realm of mind, will, and emotions.
Pain in your metaphysical heart is worse than pain in your physical heart. It’s deeper and wider and stronger and harder. You know the pain I speak of. It’s the tears of a widow weeping over a moss-grown grave. It’s the loneliness of feet that wend their way along sidewalks crowded with people, while the heart within is filled with an ache of emptiness. It’s the wretchedness of death too soon.
It’s the numbness that takes you when you stare your best friend in the face and hear them say, “I lied to you. I tricked you. I don’t really love you.”
It was this numbness that I awoke to. This pain of my soul heart. At first I couldn’t remember why I felt it—it just was, a welling agony deep within. But as the minutes passed and I lay there, unmoving, eyes closed, it came back.
Gabriella. Until quite recently I was a member of the LFX like them.
Blake. Vales, your denture.
Vales. They’re visible. Her hand going to her mouth to cover . . . .
Unable to bear the memory, I groaned and rolled onto my back, eyes fluttering open. So this was my life. For the briefest flicker of breath I had had hope. For three years I had thought maybe things would be different. Maybe not everyone was selfish and evil after all. Maybe there was good in the world, and I had a chance to live . . . .
But no, it had been a lie. I should have known. Wiping my eyes, I sighed and watched ribbons of mist drift by above me. It was dark, but they glimmered faintly in what little light there was. Night, still? I guessed. How many hours had I been laying in the bottom of the gorge? Slowly, I picked myself up. I was not bruised or broken. My skin was unmarked, my bones strong as the day I was born.
Because I was Subject X, and I could not die.
Sometimes it was the biggest curse I could imagine.
On my feet, I craned my neck to look upward. The sky was a dark expanse of stars and drifting clouds far above, only a tattered strip of it visible between the monolithic walls of stone that hemmed me in. Great. So I’m stuck in the bottom of a gorge in the middle of the night with vampires prowling the forests above. Considering, the bottom of a gorge was probably the safest place I could be. Its walls were sheer, and it could take hours for anyone to find a way down.
Which is probably why Vales and Blake aren’t down here feasting on my blood already. The thought tried to be ironic but fell short, weighed down by the stone of grief in my chest. My best friend had betrayed me. Vales, who taught me painting and writing and how to skip stones. Vales, who I had climbed trees with, watched sunsets with, laughed and played and joked with.
And Blake—him and his easy smiles, his bubbling laugh, his gentle hands as he corrected my mistakes during tae kwon do lessons. His jaunty confidence and contagious charm. He was a liar, too.
And Valerie and Victor. Loving adoptive parents? No. Selfish like the rest. They wanted my blood, not my love.
Standing in darkness staring into darkness, I wondered for the first time what I did now. I had no home, anymore. No family. All I had was the sting of betrayal and a world that wanted to eat me alive.
So I began walking. It was the most natural thing to do, since I didn’t have a clue what else I could possibly do. I couldn’t climb the gorge walls, and I couldn’t live down here my whole life. That was what I knew. Possibly the only thing I knew, but that was enough for the moment.
The gorge floor, though shrouded in shadow, was fairly smooth and free of debris. Not that it mattered if I tripped. I could fall and break my neck for all I cared; three seconds to heal, and I’d be on my feet and on my way again.
As I walked I thought. With a scintilla more logic than before. Although I was still angry and deeply hurt, some things about what had happened were too obvious to ignore. If the Nightfalls were vampires, they couldn’t be completely evil. After all, they could have taken me hostage, strapped me to a chair, and kept me there for three years, visiting daily for their coveted dose of blood type X. Instead they had taken care of me, fed and sheltered and educated me. Yes, they had still taken my blood. For “tests”, I was told, and plainly that was a lie. But it was a far more humane way of taking blood than the hellish and abusive way most vampires do it.
So that was one thing in their favor. They had actually treated me kindly. While lying to me, of course, but wasn’t that better than treating me harshly and telling the truth? At least the past three years had been pleasant.
I sighed. In a way, that made it all the worse now. A pleasant three years meant that now, learning how utterly I had been living with the wool pulled over my eyes, I was more depressed than I would have been if I had known the truth from the beginning. It’s one thing to live without hope. It’s another to live with it, then lose it all of a sudden. The second is more painful. But the first, perhaps, is worse.
All that considered, I was left with a growing curiosity as to why the Nightfalls had done what they did. Why take me in, raise and care for me, if all they wanted was my blood? If all they wanted was my blood, why not leave me chained in the basement all that time?
I dared not believe it was because they actually loved me. When I say they cared for me, I say it in the most austere sense. They addressed my needs by giving me food and water and a bed to sleep in. But I couldn’t believe that they really loved me. Not after learning the truth. If they had loved me, why would they have lied to me? Why would they have taken my blood? Why wouldn’t they have just told me the truth of what they were, promised to do nothing to me against my will, and given the choice to me?
I sighed and raked the hair back from my face. I knew why they hadn’t done that. In my gut I knew, and I couldn’t decide if it made things better or worse.
Truth was, if I had known they were vampires from the beginning I would never have stayed. Even if they had promised to leave my blood untouched, I would have fled. My prejudice was too strong, my distrust ingrained in the blood of my veins.
They knew that, I realized. They knew they couldn’t tell me the truth. If they wanted me to stay—if they wanted to be able to protect me—they couldn’t tell me the truth.
I walked on, exhausted and disheartened. Everything inside me was shattered and scattered and filled with confusion. I didn’t know if I wanted to go back. If I did want to, I didn’t know if I should. If I could. What if LDV had taken Victor and Valerie? What if they were captured or dead? What if—
A faint, whirring ru
stle sounded from the darkness off to my left and I started. Animals? Down here? When it didn’t come again, I kept walking. My skin prickled, but there was nothing else to do.
The sound came again. From my right this time. I experienced a sharp, sudden pang of fear. It was the vampires. They were here. They had found a way down. For a moment I was sure of it, and my throat grew tight and dry.
But then the rustling came a third time, and my eyes narrowed. No. There were no footsteps, and it was not clothing that rustled it was . . . . I turned sharply, following the drifting noise as it whirled around me. Wings. It was the sound of wings, rasping faintly in the darkness. Bird wings did not have the same huskiness when they flapped, like dead snakeskin brushing over itself.
Bats, I decided, and a second later I caught sight of them. One—two—three of them. Two had glowing blue-green eyes; the third’s were ruby. I could hear the faint, high-pitched ululation of their ultrasonic calls, quavering on the very precipice of my hearing. For a long moment I stood still where I was. The bats cavorted around me, wheeling circles faster than my eye could follow in the misty halflight. Their echolocation fluttered against my eardrums.
At first, in my somewhat dazed state, I noticed nothing unusual about the experience. Their glowing eyes should have cued me, I suppose, but the past few hours had been decidedly surreal and at the moment their hypnotic circling had a somewhat soothing effect on me. I began to feel sleepy. I even began to wonder if all the drama I had undergone had really been nothing more than an especially vivid dream.
It was only after a minute or two that I picked up on the queer edge to the bats’ echolocation. It pushed against my mind, insistent and disconcertingly human. They seemed to be .. I frowned. No, it could not be. They were bats . . . . But yes, it was. They were trying to communicate with me.
