Obviously, Id chosen to live. But even after Id made my decision, Kanin hadnt left. Hed stayed, teaching me what it meant to be a vampire, making sure I knew exactly what I had chosen. I probably wouldnt have survived those first few weeks without him.
But Kanin had secrets of his own, and one night the darkest of them caught up to us in the form of Sarren, a twisted vampire with a vendetta. Dangerous, cunning and completely out of his mind, Sarren had tracked us to the hidden lab we were using as a hideout, and we were forced to flee. In the chaos that had followed, Kanin and I were separated, and my mentor had vanished back into the unknown from where hed come. I hadnt seen him since.
But then the dreams began.
I rose, the cushions squeaking beneath me, and wandered down a musty hallway to the room at the end. It had been a bedroom at one point, and the twin bed in the corner was far enough away from the window to be out of the sun if it came creeping into the room.
Just to be safe, I hung a ratty blanket over the sill, covering the pane and plunging the room into shadow. Outside, it was still snowing, tiny flakes drifting from a dark, cloudy sky, but I wasnt taking any chances should it clear up. Lying back on the bed, keeping my sword close, I stared at the ceiling and waited for sleep to claim me.
Vampires dont dream. Technically, we are dead, our sleep that of a corpse, black and depthless. My dreams were of Kanin, in trouble. Seeing through his eyes and feeling what he felt. Because in times of extreme duress, pain or emotion, blood called to blood, and I could sense what my sire was feeling. Agony. Sarren had found him. And was taking his revenge.
My eyes narrowed as I recalled the very last one.
My throat is raw from screaming.
He didnt hold back last night. He was toying with me before, just showing me the edge of his deranged cruelty. But last night, the true demon came out. He wanted to talk, tried to get me to talk, but I wasnt going to oblige him. So he made me scream instead. At one point, I looked down at my body, hanging like a piece of flayed meat from the ceiling, and wondered how I was still alive. Ive never wanted to die so badly as I did then. Surely hell would not be as bad as this. It was testament to Sarrens skill, or perhaps insanity, that he kept me alive when I was doing my best to die.
Tonight, though, he is oddly passive. I woke, as I had countless nights before, hanging by my wrists from the ceiling, mentally preparing myself for the agony that would come later. The Hunger is a living thing, devouring me, a torment all in itself. Lately I see blood everywhere, trickling from the ceiling, oozing past the door. Salvation always beyond reach.
Its no use.
His voice is a whisper, slithering out of the darkness. Sarren stands a few feet away, watching me blankly, his pale face a web of scars. Last night, his eyes glowed feverishly bright as he screamed and railed at me, demanding I talk, answer his question. Tonight, the dead, empty look on his face chills me like nothing else.
Its no use, he whispers again, shaking his head. Youre right here, right at my fingertips, and yet I feel nothing. He slides forward, touching my neck with long, bony fingers, his gaze searching. I dont have the strength to jerk away. Your scream, such a glorious song. Iimagined how it would sound for years. Your blood, your flesh, your bonesI imagined it all. Breaking them. Tasting them. He runs a finger down my throat. You were mine to break, to peel apart, so I could see the rotted soul that lies beneath this shell of meat and blood. It was to be a magnificent requiem. He steps back, his expression one of near despair. But I see nothing. And I feel nothing. Why? Whirling away, he stalks to the nearby table, where dozens of sharp instruments glint in the darkness. Am I doing something wrong? he murmurs, tracing them with a fingertip. Is he not to pay for what he has done?
I close my eyes. What he has done. Sarren deserves to hate me. What I did to him, what I was responsible forI deserve every torment he heaps on my head. But it wont make things right. It wont put an end to what I caused.
As if reading my thoughts, Sarren turns back, and the gleam in his eyes has returned. It burns with searing intensity, showing the madness and brilliance behind it, and for the first time, I feel a stirring fear through the numbing agony and pain.
No, he whispers slowly, in a daze, as if everything has suddenly become clear. No, I see now. I see what I must do. It is not you that is the source of the corruption. You were merely the harbinger. This whole world is pulsing with rot and decay and filth. But, we will fix it, old friend. Yes, we will fix it. Together.
His hand skims the top of the table to the very end, picking up the item on the corner. It isnt bright like the othersshiny metal polished to a gleaming edge. It is long, wooden, and comes to a crude, whittled point at the end.
I shiver, every instinct telling me to back away, to put distance between myself and that sharp wooden point. But I cant move, and Sarren approaches slowly, the stake held before him like a cross. Heis smiling again, a demonic grin that stretches his entire ravaged face and makes his fangs gleam.
I cant kill you, yet, he says, touching my chest with the very tip of the stake, right over my heart. No, not yet. That would spoil the ending, and I have a glorious song in mind. Oh, yes, it will be magnificent. And you you will be the instrument on which I compose this symphony. He steps forward and pushes the tip of the stake into my chest, slowly, twisting it as it sinks beneath my skin. I throw back my head, clenching my jaw to keep the scream contained, as Sarren continues. No, old friend. Death is still too good for you. Were just going to send you to sleep for a while. The stake continues to slide into my flesh, parting muscle and scraping against my breastbone, creeping closer to my heart. The wood becomes a bright strip of fire, searing me from the inside. My body convulses and starts to shut down. Darkness hovers at the edge of my visionhibernation pulling me under, a last effort at self-preservation. Sarren smiles.
Sleep now, old friend, he whispers, his scarred face fading rapidly as my vision goes dark. But not for long. I have something special planned. He chuckles, the empty sound following me down into blackness. You wont want to miss it.
The vision had ended there. And I hadnt had any more dreams since.
I shifted on the bed, bringing the sword close to my chest, thinking. Id tracked Sarren to one place he had been: a rotted-out ruin of a house in an empty suburb, a long flight of steps leading down to the basement. The scent of Kanins blood had hit me like a hammer as soon as Id opened the door. It had been everywhereon the walls, on the chains that hung from the ceiling, on the instruments spread over the table. A dark stain had marred the floor right below the metal links, making my stomach turn. It didnt seem possible that Kanin had survived, that anything could have survived that macabre dungeon. But I had to believe that he was still alive, that Sarren wasnt finished with him just yet.
My hunch had been confirmed when, as Id explored further, Id discovered the stiff, decaying bodies of several humans tossed casually in a closet upstairs. They had been drained of blood, their throats cut open instead of bitten, a stained pitcher sitting on a table nearby. Sarren had been feeding Kanin, letting him heal between sessions. Closing the door on the pile of corpses, Id felt a deep stab of sympathy and fear for my mentor. Kanin had made mistakes, but no one deserved that. I had to rescue him from Sarrens sick insanity, before he drove my sire completely over the edge.
Gray light was beginning to filter through the holes in the blanket over the window, and I grew evermore sluggish in response. Hang in there, Kanin, I thought. Ill find you, I swear. Im catching up.
Although, if I was honest with myself, the thought of facing Sarren again, seeing that blank, empty smile, the fevered intensity of his gaze, terrified me more then I cared to admit. I remembered his face through Kanins eyes, and though I hadnt noticed it in the dream, Id later recalled the film across his left eye, pale and cloudy. Hed been blinded there, and recently. I knew, because the pocketknife that had been jammed into his pupil the last time I saw him was mine.
And I knew he hadnt forgotten me, either.
CHAPTER 2
Four months ago, I walked away from Eden.
Or, more accurately, I was forced out. Much like Adam and Eve getting kicked out of their infamous garden, I had reached Eden with a small group of pilgrims only to be turned away at the gates. Eden was a city under human rule, the only one of its kind, a walled-in paradise with no monsters or demons to prey on its unsuspecting citizens. And I was the monster they feared most. I had no place there.
Not that I wouldve stayed, regardless. I had a promise to keep. I had to find someone, help him, before his time ran out.
So, Id left Eden and the company of the humans Id protected all the way there. The group Id left was smaller than the group Id first joined; the journey had been hard and dangerous, and wed lost several along the way. But I was glad for the ones whod made it. They were safe, now. They no longer had to worry about starvation or cold, being chased by raiders or stalked by vampires. They no longer had to fear the rabids, the vicious, mindless creatures that roamed the land after dark, killing anything they came across. No, the humans whod made it to Eden had found their sanctuary. I was happy for them.
Though, there was one I regretted leaving behind.
The sky was clear the following night, spotted with stars, a frozen half-moon lighting the way. The wind and the crunch of my boots in the snow were the only sounds keeping me company. As always, while walking alone through this quiet, empty landscape, my mind drifted to places I wished it wouldnt.
I thought of my old life, my human one, when I was simply Allie the street rat, Allie the Fringer, scraping out a meager existence with my old crew, facing starvation and exposure and a million other deaths, just to declare that we were free. Until the night wed tempted fate a bit more than usual and had paid for it with our lives.
New Covington. That was the name of the vampire city where I was born, grew up and ultimately died. In my seventeen years, I hadnt known anything else. Id known nothing of the world beyond the Outer Wall that kept out the rabids, or of the Inner City, where the vampires lived in their dark, gleaming towers, looking down on all of us. My whole existence had consisted of the Fringe, the outer ring of New Covington where the human cattle were kept, herded in by fences and branded with tattoos. The rules were simple: if you were brandedRegistered to the mastersyou were fed and somewhat taken care of, but the catch was, you were owned. Property. And that meant you had to donate blood on a regular basis. If you were Unregistered, you were left to fend for yourself in a city with no food and no supplies except the ones the masters allotted; but at least the vamps couldnt take your blood unless they caught you themselves.
Of course, you still had to worry about starving to death.
Back when I was human, Id struggled with hunger every day. My life had revolved around finding food and little else. There had been four of us in my small gangme, Lucas, Rat and Stick. We had all been Unregistered; street rats, beggars and thieves, living together in an abandoned school and barely scraping by. Until one stormy night when wed ventured beyond the Outer Wall to find food and became the hunted ourselves. It had been stupid to step outside the protection of New Covington, but Id insisted, and my stubbornness had cost us everything. Lucas and Rat had been killed, and Id been pulled down and torn apart by a pack of rabids. My life shouldve ended that night in the rain.
In a way, I guess it had. Id died that night in Kanins arms. And now that I was a monster, I could never go back to the life Id known. Id tried, once, to contact a friend from my old life, the boy named Stick whom Id looked after for years. But Stick, seeing what Id become, had screamed and fled from me in terror, confirming what Kanin had always told me. There was no going back. Not to New Covington, not to my old life, not to anything that was human. Kanin had been right all along. He was always right.
I thought of him often, of the nights wed spent in the secret lab beneath the vampire city where I was born. His lessons, teaching me what it meant to be a vampire, how to hunt and fight and kill. The humans Id preyed on, their screams, the warm blood in my mouth, intoxicating and terrible. And Kanin himself, whod taught me, in no uncertain terms, what I wasa vampire and a demonbut also that my path was my own; that I had a choice.
You are a monster. His voice was always so clear in my head, as if he was standing right next to me, his dark eyes boring into my skull. You will always be a monsterthere is no turning back from it. But what kind of monster you become is entirely up to you. That was the lesson I clung to most, the one I swore Id never forget.
But Kanin had another rule as well, one I hadnt remembered so clearly as the first. The one about humans, and becoming attached
And just like that, my traitor mind shifted to a lean figure with jagged blond hair and solemn blue eyes. I remembered his smile, that lopsided grin meant only for me. I remembered his touch, the heat that radiated from him when we were close. His fingers sliding over my skin, the warmth of his lips on mine
I shook my head. Ezekiel Crosse was human. I was a vampire. No matter what I felt, no matter how strong my feelings, I could never separate the urge to kiss Zeke from the desire to sink my fangs into his throat. That was another reason Id left Eden without saying goodbye, without letting anyone know where I was going. I couldnt be near Zeke without putting his life in danger. Eventually, I would kill him.
It was better to be alone. Vampires were predators; the Hunger was always with us, the craving for human blood that could take over at any time. Lose yourself to the Hunger, and the people around you died. It had been a hard lesson for me to learn, and one that I did not ever want to repeat. It was always therethat fear that I would slip, that the Hunger would take over again and when I came back to myself I would have killed someone I knew. Even the men I preyed onbandits, raiders, marauders, murderersthey were all still human. They were living beings, and I killed them to feed myself. To keep myself from attacking others. I could choose what kind of people I preyed on, but in the end, I had to prey on someone. The lesser of the two evils was still evil.