Amaranth - By Rachael Wade Page 0,37

have your blood supplied, you don’t have to kill?”

“Right. As for the sunlight, our eyes are sensitive to it, but it’s manageable. Much more so when we feed.”

I shivered at her words, pictured the black sunglasses that Gavin toted around like a safety blanket.

“Our bite is venomous,” she continued. “We never bite, except with the intent to kill and feed, or to change someone. But blood isn’t the only thing that sustains us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Blood is our nutrition.” She lit a cigarette for me. “Our basic sustenance. But we also use energy to thrive. To become stronger, more powerful. We draw energy from other people, draw from what they have: their weaknesses or their strengths, it depends. We have to get to know the person though, have to read them. We’re all different kinds of readers.”

“You can read minds? You know what I’m thinking right now?” I made a disgusted face and didn’t care if she saw it. “If Gavin knew everything I ever thought, I’d die of embarrassment if I had to look him in the eyes ever again.”

“No,” she said, laughing, “not like that. We all read different energies, not minds. We can tell what someone’s good at, what their fears or strengths are, even what their desires are. With that knowledge, we know what we can, or what we shouldn’t draw from the people we feed from. Gabe said that most of our kind uses it as an advantage in hunting, but some are just addicted to the power. It’s how Samira designed us.”

I finished my glass of water and looked down at my bruised and swollen body, took a drag off my cigarette while I assessed the damage. Oddly, the ribs I was certain were broken in the attack didn’t hurt. “Did Gabe fix me?” I pointed to my ribs.

“It’s nice to have a former surgeon around.”

I set my glass down. “So, you have to feed on blood and energy?”

“Blood, yes. Energy, no. Energy’s optional. It’s like an extra high, makes us stronger. Andrew was so powerful because he’s been feeding off you since you met him. The longer we can feed on a single host, the more powerful we become, Gabe said. Andrew could read your ambitions, and was able to drain that energy from you. Once we find someone we can read, we know which buttons to push to weaken them. That allows us to feed off their vigor. A reader like Andrew can’t drain everyone who has aspirations, only those who possess strength in that area. And ambition is definitely your strength.” She smiled to make it clear that was a compliment.

I was far from flattered; what she was saying had me too much in shock to feel anything else. I stared at the ceiling, aware my cigarette ashes were spilling onto the couch but unable to even tap them into the ashtray. “Andrew’s been draining me all along.”

She nodded while she wiped the ashes from the couch, shoved an ashtray underneath my arm. “It’s allowed him to be much stronger than he would have been, living just on blood.”

“Andrew sure milked me for all I was worth,” I said, wincing as I shifted on the sofa. “Puts a totally new spin on that old saying, doesn’t it?”

She nodded. “Samira forbids us from feeding off a host for too long. She won’t allow a mortal to become a permanent power source for us. Her servants roam the earth as her watchdogs, and if they catch us doing that, we’re destroyed.”

I finally blinked, rubbed my cigarette into the ashtray, let her hand me another. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she said. “You can go to bed, you know. I can leave you alone now.”

“This changes everything.”

She’d been standing the entire time; she began to pace. “I know. But you have to know that Gavin and Gabe are different. They choose to live differently than Samira wants us to. They don’t hunt, don’t take energy. Gavin’s leading a resistance among our kind against her ways. And against our curse. Now it’s causing quite the commotion.”

“Where is this Samira person? And why do you and Gabe have to go there?”

“In a city called Amaranth. It’s the only place the curse can be removed. She’s the only one who can grant it.” She stopped pacing and rushed to the kitchen to refill my empty water glass, at my side again in a flash. “Besides, word’s gotten out about Gavin’s leadership of an alternative lifestyle. She would’ve