knows the horror that lies ahead.
“I can,” he says.
My fingers grasp at his immovable arms that have me locked against him. I pull and push with as much might as my hands can muster, to no avail. If I am dirt, he is steel.
How… how can he do this?
“I’m sorry for everything I said and for everything I did.” I blurt out anything that may stop him. “Please don’t turn me into one of them!”
Zein inhales along my neck, above the spot that I’ve only ever read about in history books. The spot that vampires would bite for prime blood flow in the past, before the law of Cain banned the conversions. It dawns on me that he has no intention of stopping.
His fangs find their target.
A final breath permeates my sight, infecting it with a horrid anticipation unlike any I’ve ever felt before.
Then I feel it.
Searing knives cut in and along my neck, the pain shooting up and down my spine. My ears fill with the deafening sound of liquid rushing; of my own blood siphoning out of me. I cry out, the burning intensifying as the warmth from my body is stripped little by little, every few seconds.
No...
Dizziness overcomes me; my limbs growing weaker and weaker by the second.
...I can’t be one of them.
My thoughts fly to my home in Avignon, France... to that night. Watching through smoke and rubble as my brother, having been converted to the fallen, crouches over my father, preparing to eat him alive.
I can’t. I can’t become that.
“Kill me please,” I mutter, as my world becomes
wholly and completely black.
chapter 8
Sharp tingles fly up my body, pulling me into the world again. My face is slick with sweat, every part of me spent, each limb as heavy and bloated as a sandbag. If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that I have no clue where I am.
I blink the gunk out of my eyes, although thick linen curtains block me from seeing anything past the small cot that I’m in.
It’s dark, minus some flickering from a candle in the near most corner. Layers of wool and corduroy blankets insulate both my body and its egregious stench. I throw them off in a rush to feel the affections of the room’s cool air. After a moment of relief, stinging pain from my neck shocks me into recollection.
Zein bit me… and drank my blood. What happened after that?
I frantically analyze every inch of my body. All my hair is where it should be, no grotesque nails, no jaundice, no blood dripping from my eyes, no insatiable bloodlust.
I’m not one of the fallen? But how? Am I dead?
Footsteps and a pair of voices interrupt my thoughts.
“Did he take too much blood from her?”
I recognize this voice. I try to piece it together and finally picture a tall, blond vampire.
Narref?
“No, both he and the nurse assure me he did not. But she is taking longer than the usual,” Gemini replies. I recognize his voice instantly.
“Perhaps it would fare him better to just leave her be,” Narref says, “given her apparent worth.”
I cock an eyebrow.
“To think he would risk his resolve—”
“She’s awake,” Gemini attempts a whisper, but naturally, he underestimates the human ability to hear. “Nurse.”
Heavy footsteps eventually thud across the marble floor. Two dark shadows appear below the linens, indicative of two white-heeled ankles, foreshadowing a grand entrance.
They open and a large woman, a vampire, looks me up and down grievously. She stands stout in a medic cloak, much like that of the doctor in the Selection Hall, except hers is a dark shade of ruby red. The makeup that covers every corner of her face looks to have already endured a full day’s wear.
“Come to, now, ‘ave we?” Her voice carries like none other, shrill and deafening. I merely blink as she walks away. She spares no pause for an answer, saying, “Can’t be goin’ to our master’s quarters without a bit o’ bread on your stomach. ‘Else I’ll be seein’ you of’en.”
“What?” I ask.
“You can’t expect to feel fine after a feedin’ if you don’t eat!” she snaps, making marks on her paperwork at a nearby counter. ”Goodness, you ‘ave a fancy for faintin’?”
“Wait,” I mutter, beginning to understand. I slide my legs off the edge of the bed. “Are you saying that I fainted from a lack of food?”
She turns a quizzical eye at me. “Yes? Why else would you think?”
“Because that was her first summoning. She got herself into trouble and Zein