Authors: Bella Forrest
I
’d been trying
to keep my head down as much as possible. Jeramiah had consulted with Michael and Amaya, and he’d given me a few other jobs—mostly menial tasks like tending to the lily pond. I did them dutifully. My plan was to do as I was requested until I felt the time was right to propose that I accompany them on one of their hunts.
I had to gain their trust first. It seemed like the most obvious thing that a vampire would ask if he wanted to escape—to accompany them beyond the boundary. I needed to be patient and show Jeramiah that I was committed to being a good citizen of The Oasis.
I was invited to join more parties at night, but I declined. I just told them I was a recluse and had never been one to party. Nobody seemed to raise much objection to it. Marilyn didn’t bother me again either. Nobody other than Jeramiah sought me out, and even then just when there was a specific task he wanted to talk to me about, or to deliver more blood. There never seemed to be any shortage of it—indeed, he encouraged me to drink as much as I wanted. Though I didn’t, of course. I just drank the minimum required to survive without climbing the walls from hunger. I was just grateful that I hadn’t needed to do any killing myself. The moment I did that again, I’d be plunged back into the same black state I’d been in while drifting in the submarine.
When there was a knock on my door in the early hours of the night, I assumed it would be Jeramiah. I was right.
“Jeramiah,” I said.
“Would you come with me?” he said.
“What is it?”
“It’s easier if I just show you.”
“All right.” I wasn’t wearing a shirt, but I just went with him as I was. I doubted he’d keep me long, whatever it was.
He was silent as we walked along the veranda. He stopped eventually outside the door of an apartment.
He knocked on the door. “Michael,” he called.
So this is Michael’s apartment.
I wondered why he was bringing me here of all places.
There were footsteps and the door opened. Michael appeared behind it, his lower lip stained with blood. Perhaps we’d interrupted him during a meal. The traces of human blood on his mouth made my stomach lurch, even though I had already downed three glasses earlier this evening.
“Come in,” Michael said—more to Jeramiah than to me. He opened the door wider and stepped aside as we entered.
I still didn’t understand what Michael found so objectionable about me—I’d never done anything to insult or harm him. Not that I gave a damn.
“Through here,” Michael said, leading us along the long corridor. He took a left down another hallway and stopped outside a door at the end of it. He drew out a small key from his pocket and opened it. Before I even realized what was happening, Jeramiah had stepped behind me and pushed me through the door into what turned out to be an unheated sauna room. Following closely behind me, he slammed the door shut after us.
I was confused at first as to Jeramiah’s hurry to get me in the room, but then I was aware of nothing but the scent of hot human blood overwhelming me. As I laid eyes on a young woman cowering in one corner of the paneled room, puncture wounds in her neck still bleeding, I realized that agreeing to come here with Jeramiah had been a terrible, terrible mistake.
M
y head was still spinning
.
Vampires.
They exist.
Did this mean that other creatures my mother and I had seen reported on TV existed too? Witches? Dragons?
I felt like I’d gone insane even entertaining the thought.
And yet here I was locked in this sauna room with fang marks in my neck.
I was past hoping that I would wake up.
This was no dream.
When the door opened, I was terrified that it would be Michael back for more of my blood. The sight I was met with was no less terrifying: two vampires—Jeramiah, and another young man who looked over six feet tall, with deep green eyes and dark, almost black hair.
My first thought was that this must be the Joseph person Jeramiah and Michael had been talking about earlier.
Now I wondered whether it would have been better for me if Michael had shown up again.
I was expecting one of them, perhaps both of them, to launch on me and inflict more pain, perhaps even end my life. Instead, the green-eyed man jerked backward the moment he laid eyes on me and darted toward the door. Jeramiah reached it before him and blocked his exit. Joseph’s shoulders were heaving as he kept his back facing me.
“What’s wrong?” Jeramiah asked.
“I’m willing to serve The Oasis, but not like this,” Joseph said, his voice deep and strained.
“I’m not going to ask you to kill this girl. Just half-turn her.”
“Step aside.” There was urgency in Joseph’s tone.
“You said that you felt you were ready to come out with us on a hunt,” Jeramiah continued, making no motion to step out of the way. “Half-turning humans shouldn’t be difficult. And I’m here to oversee it. I’ll make sure you don’t take things too far—”
Joseph gripped Jeramiah’s shoulder and shoved him aside. Casting him a glare, he said through gritted teeth, “I can’t… touch this girl.”
He clutched the handle, forced the door open and stormed out of the room.
I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or dread what was to happen next.
My stomach squirmed as Michael stepped back into the room with Jeramiah.
“Now what?” Michael said, eyeing me.
Jeramiah looked quite unfazed. “Joseph isn’t going to do it,” he replied. “So that means we’re going to have to create another new vampire from one of our humans.”
“Which one?”
“It doesn’t matter much,” Jeramiah said. “Just choose one who is smaller than us—someone who won’t be impossible to control soon after their turning. Because I’m not willing to wait days for a new vampire to calm down. As soon as they turn, they’ll begin work right away.”
“A damn annoyance only new vampires can half-turn humans,” Michael muttered.
Both men stepped out of the room. The door shut behind them, leaving me alone.
It was all I could do to not lose myself to despair when I imagined what my sister might be going through. I could only pray that she was being treated better than me.
But what do they want her for? What do they want me for?
My chest ached as I imagined how sweet Lalia’s blood might taste to them.
Please, Laly, wherever you are, be safe. I’m here. I’m gonna come for you as soon as I can.
I almost leapt out of my skin as the door swung open again. It was Jeramiah, alone this time. He was holding a syringe. Panicking, I scrambled to my feet and tried to distance myself from him, but he closed in on me.
“Be still,” he said calmly as he slid a hand around the back of my neck and positioned me against the wall. I struggled until the needle pricked my skin and the drug seeped into my bloodstream. Consciousness soon left me after that. The numbness was an unexpected mercy.
I
was fuming
as I returned to my apartment. I shouldn’t have been surprised that the day had come when Jeramiah expected me to half-turn humans. After all, Jeramiah had said all along that was what I was useful for—but I couldn’t help but feel furious at the way he’d sprung it on me. The fact that he hadn’t told me what he’d come for when he’d first knocked on my door made me believe that he’d thought that I would disagree.
As much as I knew this would set me back in my attempt to gain the vampires’ trust and escape this place, I simply couldn’t bring myself to bite into that innocent girl’s flesh. I knew that the moment I held her in my arms, I would lose myself in her and resurface again only to find her a shriveled corpse.
Jeramiah didn’t know who I was. He thought that he would be strong enough to control me. Although he was a Novak himself, I doubted that there was anyone who could restrain me when I was in the midst of a blood frenzy. Even my father had trouble controlling me back in The Shade.
There was something very wrong with me, and until I found out what it was, I couldn’t risk killing again.
My mouth watered as I recalled that human girl huddled in the corner of the sauna. When Jeramiah had closed the door, I had been so sure that I would launch at her and rip her throat out. If I had not shoved him aside, I would’ve drained every last drop from her.
My breathing was heavy as I recalled the scent of her blood and I felt a burning hunger in my stomach. Before Jeramiah had knocked on my door, I had been satisfied. Now, I was craving blood again.
I headed straight for the kitchen and opened the fridge door. I pulled out every single jug of blood that was stored there except for one. I drank it all, and as I finished the last gulp, even that didn’t satisfy me. Having a human so close to me had reignited the darkness that lingered beneath the surface.
I gripped the table hard.
This was the most human blood I’d consumed since I had last murdered, before arriving in The Oasis. I had been so careful to consume only as much as my body absolutely needed. Now it seemed that I needed so much more just to keep my craving in check. Just looking at that human had set me back so far.
If this was how I still acted around humans, what was I going to do once I managed to escape this place? I knew that I had to escape, but I still didn’t know how I would cope without murdering every human who had the misfortune of crossing paths with me.
Dammit. Why can’t I just drink animal blood like the rest of my family?
As I stood in the kitchen, it occurred to me that it had actually been some time now since I had last tried to drink animal blood. Perhaps something in my body had settled down by now and I could handle it. I found it hard to believe, but there was only one way to know for sure.
Walking to my bedroom, I pulled on a shirt. Then I left my apartment and descended to the bottom level of the atrium. I walked through the gardens, scanning the rooms that surrounded it. I looked for the one where I had seen the vampire retreat with the snake that had recently escaped. I was not sure if there were other animals in The Oasis, but snake blood should be good enough to test my theory.
Once I thought that I had spotted the right room, I left the gardens and approached it. I gripped the handle of the door and was pleased to see that it was open. I found myself stepping into a large room filled with cages of writhing snakes of all shapes and sizes.
Why do they keep all of these snakes?
I had gotten the impression that the vampires here only drank human blood. Why would they drink anything else when they had so much of it, and of such quality?
Whatever reason they had for keeping them, it suited me right now. I approached the cage nearest to me and scanned the snakes inside it, wondering which to pull out. Then I noticed the huge black snake that had tried to attack me out in the gardens in the next cage and decided he—or she—would be a worthy target.
When I opened the cage, the black snake darted towards me, its fangs bared. I caught it by its neck and squeezed hard before it could bite me, then jerked it upward, pulling the rest of its tail out of the cage. I closed the cage again before any other snakes could attempt an escape.
The black snake’s tail thrashed about as it continued trying to attack me. I didn’t prolong its death. Drawing out my claws, I sliced off its head in one swift motion. As blood began to spill from its body, even just the smell of it made my stomach lurch. It was hard to describe the smell. It was just foul. Something I would never want to put in my mouth.
Still, I forced myself to dig my fangs into its flesh and draw a long deep gulp.
I held my nose as I swallowed, then waited.
After twenty seconds, nothing had happened, so I took another deep gulp. And then another. That was about all I could handle of the vile substance in one go, so I set the body down on the ground and sat down on a bench in one corner of the room. I still held my nose even now, afraid that if I stopped, I would upchuck everything.
After two minutes, a wave of relief washed over me.
Animal blood still tastes disgusting, but perhaps I can stomach it now. Maybe I really have changed. Maybe all I needed was some time to settle into this new body.
I was starting to feel so confident that I got up for another gulp of snake blood, but as I motioned to pick up the body, my stomach growled and before I knew it, I was staring at a pool of red vomit on the floor.
I kept vomiting until it felt like if I vomited anymore, I would start throwing up my insides.
Great.
Nothing has changed.
Something is very, very wrong with me.
I looked around the room and spotted some cleaning equipment. Filling up a bucket, I grabbed a mop and cleaned up my mess. Then I picked up the corpse of the snake and left the room. I wasn’t sure whether somebody would be irritated with me that I had just killed one of their snakes, or whether they wouldn’t mind. They seemed to have so many, after all.
Still, I wanted to avoid trouble, so I made my way to one of the orchards that was overgrown with shrubbery. I dropped the body of the snake beneath bushes and covered it with soil. It would decompose soon enough.
Then I walked past the lily ponds and rinsed my mouth and hands in the clear water. When I stood up, my gaze landed on the memorial stone of Lucas Novak. It seemed to have been attended to since I had last laid eyes on it. It was cleaner, and I could make out the inscription better. Feeling unsettled, reminded of the urgency of escaping this place, I headed straight back to my apartment.
I could still taste snake blood on my tongue. I walked back into the kitchen intending to finish off the last jug of blood to get rid of the taste, but when I opened the fridge, the shelves were filled with jug upon jug of delicious human blood.
Strange.
I wondered who had done it. I had only been gone a few minutes. It was almost like there was some slave living with me, watching my every move.
Although I was immensely grateful to not have to worry about finding my own blood, I couldn’t help but feel that with each gulp of this exquisite blood, I was becoming more and more indebted to this strange place known as The Oasis.