Chapter 17

Posted: May 14, 2012 by Monica S. Kuebler in Chapters
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Chapter 17: Arthos and the Boy Who Would Be King

When consciousness returned and I opened my eyes , I found myself staring at an unfamiliar Nosferatu in black fatigues. He was standing just inside my cell, leaning against the closed door, observing me, frowning. He seemed younger than the King and Boras, but his hairlessness, elongated face and sunken cheeks made it difficult to gauge by how much. My eyes darted around the small space searching for Keel, but he was gone. It was just me and this stranger.

The throbbing ache of my shoulder drew my attention away from the vampire and back to the fight I’d had with Keel.

Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap.

This Nosferatu had to know Keel had bitten me; at this distance there was no way he wouldn’t. My heart broke into a gallop. I sat up, and attempted to brace myself for whatever was about to happen. Be brave. You’re a sorceress, and a dangerous one at that.

“You need to heal yourself,” the vampire said, finally, when I thought the dread-filled silence that hung between us couldn’t get any heavier or more awkward.

I stared at him blankly. Only Keel and I were supposed to know that I’d discovered my powers.

“Don’t play dumb,” he told me. “Do you think the prince would have ever gotten anywhere near you without me?”

He didn’t say it like a tough guy, but casually, as if it bored him to have to state that.

“Who are you?” I asked tentatively.

“Arthos,” the Nosferatu said. “Your day guard.”

Arthos’ calmness threw me. Even Boras had trouble keeping his blood-hungry nature in check when I had an open wound, but if Arthos was affected by my scent, it was impossible to tell. His stance was as even as demeanour. Almost relaxed.

“You’re the one Keel pays off,” I said, putting it all together. But that didn’t mean we were off the hook.

“Not pays exactly, but yes, I am the one.”

“Why? How?” Even if Keel had bought his allegiance, it didn’t make sense that Arthos was still playing along, not when we were so close to being caught.

“Has the prince not explained anything to you?” Arthos asked. I detected a trace of disappointment in his voice, which surprised me. I’d thought that telling me those sorts of things was expressly forbidden.

“Bits and pieces,” I allowed, unsure of how much I should say.

“Well, it’s like this,” Arthos began, with much more patience than I expected from one of them. “You want to make anything of yourself here, you either train for a career in the arena – fighting – or you ally yourself with a royal. I chose the latter. I just didn’t choose the current royal.”

“And that’s why you want me to heal myself?”

“Yes, because if you don’t… well, I think you know what would happen.”

I definitely did. These days, that scenario figured in to most of my nightmares, and few offered a fast death. But he wasn’t worried about me, he was worried about Keel.  Could the stakes in this be higher than Keel had let on? He’d said that his father wouldn’t kill him, but…

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Chapter 16

Posted: May 7, 2012 by Monica S. Kuebler in Chapters
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Chapter 16: Blood Magic

By the time the King returned, I’d doom-and-gloomed myself into believing every worst-case scenario my brain put forth. We’d been found out. What other reason could there be for their collective absence? Neither Keel nor his Majesty nor even Boras had been down in over a week.

Which was why, when the King finally stormed through my cell door, with Boras trailing behind him, my insides were quaking so bad that I wasn’t sure if I could move, let alone obey his commands.

“Neck,” he barked, as he dragged me to my feet. Was he angrier than usual or was I just imagining it? Even if he knew, he might not say anything about Keel. The prince’s fate – and the undoubtedly harsh corporal punishment he faced for his act of treason – wasn’t exactly knowledge befitting the King’s prisoner and personal blood bag.

I tilted my head and he sank his fangs into my neck with a sharp, snake-like, forward jerk of his head. It was the same place he’d taken a bite out of me last time, which pitched up the pain and almost made me cry out. But I refused to give him the satisfaction. I shoved my mind away from the five-alarm fire in my neck and retreated deeper inside myself.

My brain took me to my bedroom closet. In my life before, whenever I wanted to lock myself away from the world for a while, whenever I needed time to think alone, I’d throw all the shoes and other stuff out of it, then cover the floor with pillows and shut myself inside. I’d been doing it since I was a kid; it was my favourite hiding spot.

And that’s what all this was about: hiding.

But I didn’t want to hold back anymore. I wanted to cast open the emotional floodgates, as I had with Keel and ensure the King couldn’t hurt me anymore. But Keel was right: it wouldn’t be that easy. If the King knew what we knew, it would change everything and put me – and everyone I loved – in even greater danger.

And if I was wrong, and this was just another grouchy feeding – which it very well could be, since the King’s mood never much strayed beyond “bad” and “worse” – and nothing had been discovered, it’d be a grave mistake to give myself away like that. As much as I couldn’t stand the idea of being a docile victim a second longer, I couldn’t do this yet. I needed to wait for the right opportunity and that certainly wasn’t when Boras was standing just inside the doorway overseeing everything. Even if I could momentarily stun the King, Boras hadn’t drunk my blood, so I would have no power over him and no hope in hell of bolting past him.

No. I’d have to wait, even if that had become my least favourite word in the dictionary.

My thoughts grew muddy and incoherent as the blood loss brought me closer to unconsciousness.  When I began losing my hold, instinct told me to fight, but I still had enough awareness to know the resulting beating would be worse than the bloodletting, so I gave myself over to the descent, and hoped this wouldn’t be the time he drained me dry.

* * *

When I came to, I had no idea how much time had passed – the lights in my cell never dimmed. The only thing that showed up like clockwork was food, and there was a meal waiting, which suggested I’d spent most of the day out cold.

Every muscle in my body ached. Apparently the King had just dropped me like a discarded rag doll when he’d finished feeding and I felt rigor-mortis stiff after lying in a crumpled, motionless heap for so long. I rubbed my arms and legs, tenderly trying to coax circulation back into my limbs, and eventually I was able to stretch out into a less tortuous position.

I eyed the still-warm plate of food that awaited me a few inches away from the edge of the mattress, but weakness trumped hunger and my heavy eyelids closed the blinds on consciousness once more. I didn’t eat until I woke next, and even then I just picked at my meal. The food that had always been so appealing – even after I discovered the filthy conditions it was prepared in – held little interest for me, and when I was done pecking at it, I shoved the tray away still mostly full. All the promise that Keel and my newfound magic had brought was waning, and depression was creeping back in. No matter how many times I dug my nails into my skin, or raked the edge of the shackle across my arm to draw blood, I couldn’t get a handle on how my power worked. I’d started to worry that, even with Keel’s help, I might never unravel its mystery. Maybe a tease would be all I’d get, never enough to actually accomplish anything – or to escape.

And just like that it was back to the helpless waiting. What would come next? More hope or more hell?

Speculation was torture in and of itself, but I couldn’t stop.

* * *

When Keel eventually slunk back into my cell, I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. I was running on empty, but my imagination wasn’t. I figured my subconscious had conjured him up to soothe my sorrow.

As the days had worn on, I was forced to admit that I actually missed Keel himself, not just what he could teach me. His company had brought my renewed solitude into sharp focus. Never mind that giving up hurt like hell, but I’d been hanging on for so long now that I felt like an idiot to keep doing it. I’d decided he wasn’t coming back – the reason never mine to know.

So when I realized it was actually him – in the flesh and blood – my relief was all-enveloping.

Keel gave me a knowing, slightly gloating smile. The bond had held.

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Chapter 15

Posted: April 23, 2012 by Monica S. Kuebler in Chapters
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Chapter 15: Fear the Future

The shower wasn’t worth it.

What Keel had neglected to tell me when he’d granted me my wish was what I’d have to do later: take a humiliating underwear-clad roll in the kitchen’s stainless-steel garbage cart, with a dash of oil and grease for my hair.

I made him turn away while I did this, but I still caught his shoulders shaking from a barely suppressed snicker. I tossed a wilty, cantalope-sized rotting head of lettuce at him, but missed – it bounced off the white cupboard behind him and fell to the floor with a dull, squelching thud. I regretted it almost immediately, when Keel looked over his shoulder and I had to dive back into the trash to avoid giving him a peepshow. This time when he averted his gaze, I knew he was laughing – I could hear him, he wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore. I jumped out of the mini-dumpster  and hastily yanked on my scuzzy clothes – if I didn’t do this fast I was going to totally lose my nerve – then I marched over to where he was waiting and smushed a squishy, browning tomato right into the back of his head, twisting my hand so it soaked into his hair real good. Keel whirled around in a fury, and I quickly stepped back out of arm’s reach, afraid he was about to slap me. I’d expected him to be stormy, but he was a hurricane.

“How dare y –” he roared, then he blanched. For a moment, he looked as if he was going to be sick, but he swallowed hard, turned away and began searching through the drawers and cupboards that lined three of the room’s walls. The fourth was reserved for the ovens and oversized refrigerators, and the entrance to the walk-in freezer. While it resembled a standard restaurant kitchen, it would have never passed a health inspection. Chunks of old, dry, unidentifiable food clung to the countertops, which were still gleaming with the fresh grease and juices from the preparation of the last meal. Maybe the half-vampires had punched up immune systems, but didn’t they worry the humans would get sick? Or were they that disposable? And what about me? I rarely caught colds, so maybe my sorcerer’s blood protected me too.

That didn’t make it any less disgusting, though, and I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to eat again.

Keel pulled a dishtowel out of a drawer and bent over to try to mop up the mess I’d left in his hair. I barely dared breathe the entire time.

You’ve got to stop forgetting what he is.

Maybe I should have been mad at him for being mad after he was a jerk to begin with, but instead I was angry with myself. He’d done just enough right for me to hope, but he was what he was. And while there was no way I was going to give him blind obedience, as I did with the King – he’d made it clear that he didn’t want that anyway – I needed to choose my battles better.

Still, Keel shouldn’t have been laughing. He should’ve been … what you want him to be?

That was as stupid as the girls in school who thought they could tame a guy just by going out with him.

When he was done, he strolled purposefully back over to me, his expression cold but otherwise unreadable. I flinched as he approached but held my ground. “This is really messed up,” he said, circling me, looking me over, either getting an ogle in or making sure I hadn’t missed any spots – or both. I kept my smartass comments to myself for a change. “I was furious when you did that. But then your fear – of me – drowned everything out.”

“My fear?” My voice was small and cautious. It’d be harder, if not impossible, to deceive him now.  Crap. Some people you just didn’t want to be an open book around.

“Yes, your fear,” he repeated. He’d come to a stop in front of me, his expression serious. “I don’t think I could’ve hurt you if I tried. It would have been like hurting myself.”

I smirked. Maybe this wasn’t so bad after all. “So I give you my blood voluntarily and you have to be nice to me? I like that.”

“I don’t have to let you cut yourself,” Keel reminded me.

“And I don’t have to let you do your little experiments,” I shot back. I had this one. “Don’t forget, they require my cooperation, and I could always block you out, just like your daddy.”

“So, is that it?” Keel said, stepping into my personal space. I didn’t retreat. “You finally get it through your head that you’re a sorceress and now you think you’re big stuff? You better keep that attitude in check around my father. He’d take a limb off you for what you did there.”

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Chapter 14

Posted: April 16, 2012 by Monica S. Kuebler in Chapters
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Chapter 14: The Sorcerer’s Daughter

The longer Keel and I stood there, the more the room seemed to shrink until all that existed was me, him and the knife.

The latest dare. The latest impossible decision.

My gut told me that doing this would change everything. But I didn’t know how – or why.

Keel was asking for even more complicity in our only semi-voluntary bloodsucking arrangement, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that or ever would be. Though wasn’t allowing the vampires to take it without putting up a fight pretty well the same thing? Maybe this was something else that Keel considered a nicety but got all wrong.

The thing that didn’t fit was he wasn’t at all concerned with hiding the evidence; he’d said I could cut anywhere. Unless he was setting me up or planning on ratting us out to his father himself, this made no sense at all. But I didn’t think he’d do either of those things – not for one second.

The knife nipped at my skin, drawing my focus back to it. If I was going to do this, it had to be about me, not about feeding Keel, and not about giving in now, because he’d find a way to make me to do it eventually anyhow. I was just as brave and tough as he was. If he was testing me with this bit of recklessness, than I’d meet him head on.

“Stop touching me,” I snapped.

Keel dropped his hand from my cheek, and stepped back, saying nothing.

I rotated my arm beneath the knife – I wasn’t trying to kill myself here – and ground my bare feet into the floor, attempting to anchor them to the hardwood. I took a slow, deep, wavering breath that filled both of my lungs, then I stared Keel right in the eye and sliced into my arm.

Or did I?

I’d been bracing for a riot of agony, but felt nothing, except for a warm wetness.

Keel gaped at me. Hunger and horror and awe all competed for face time.

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Chapter 13

Posted: April 10, 2012 by Monica S. Kuebler in Chapters
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Chapter 13: A Game of Knives

“What do I have to do to convince you to come?” Keel’s impatience was quickly turning into a childish kind of desperation. I half expected him to start begging, pleading and stomping his feet. He’d been trying – unsuccessfully – to convince me to accompany him back to his room for the last ten minutes. I had no idea why he didn’t just force me to go with him. Was this his next game? His next test? Seeing if he could make me walk willingly into his trap?

So far, I’d refused to budge, and he’d hadn’t attempted to drag me, but he pummelled me with wave after wave of promises and impassioned pleas, all while steadfastly refusing to tell me what he planned on showing me once we got there. The whole display was un-Keel-like. He was never this animated.

Or maybe that’s just what I told myself when I started caving.

One of us had to – eventually. That, or declare our little trip over. We couldn’t very well stand around in the creepy Nosferatu museum forever. If it wasn’t for the clean clothes I was wearing, I might have been the one to do it, but I wasn’t ready to give them up just quite yet – and apparently that meant making concessions. Sadly, there wasn’t anything I could ask Keel for that would even the odds between us, but there was one thing that might lesson his advantage slightly.

“Give me your knife,” I demanded.

Keel’s eyes widened. “Really?” He hadn’t expected that.

“Yes, really. You want me to trust you, so prove that you trust me first.”

“You know I could disarm you in two seconds, even if you had my knife?” He was right, of course. His preternatural speed and strength outmatched me no matter what I was wielding.

“But I’m betting you won’t.” This time, I stole his line.

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Chapter 12

Posted: April 2, 2012 by Monica S. Kuebler in Chapters
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Chapter 12: Artifacts and Artifice

“The compound has eight levels,” Keel said as we walked down the grey hallway side by side. I snuck a furtive glance at him, shocked by how keeping step with me seemed utterly natural for the half-vampire, even though he was slowing down to pace himself with my limp. We’d been getting on each other’s nerves – big time – ever since we’d left my cell, but now he was just trudging along beside me as if none of it had happened. Looking “pleased as punch,” as Estella used to say. Keel was a chameleon: I never knew who I was going to get with him – man or monster, friend or colossal prick. But here I was, wearing his clothes and listening to him tell me everything Boras, his father, and the rest of them had sought to keep hidden from me.

The hallway emptied into a featureless alcove – the Nosferatu took minimalism to a whole new obsessive level – with an elevator. It looked exactly like the one at the other side of the prison, only smaller.

“Service elevator, for guards, staff, royalty, and the council,” Keel explained. “It only goes up as far as the second floor, though.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked him, as we came to a stop in front of its doors. My wet hair had left a damp trail down the back of the hoodie Keel had lent me, so I gathered it up and  knotted it into a drippy, makeshift bun at the base of my neck.

“Why not?” he said, thumbing the “up” button. “I don’t think you’ll use it and, if you do, I’d love to see how far you’d get.”

“Is everything a game to you?”

‘Might as well be,” Keel said, his tone low and oddly confessional. “I’m combat trained in twenty different weapons, but no one will take a proper swing at me. Not as long as my father’s alive anyway. My whole life has been spent practicing for what comes next. A series of calculated risks, where nothing’s really at stake and I’m never really in danger.”

“So this is…”

“Exerting my independence,” he said, cutting me off.

Before I could ask what that meant exactly, the elevator arrived. It was little more than a metal box with a handful of round, black, numbered buttons to the right of the door. Keel pressed “2” and turned to face me, then he leaned back his head and closed his eyes, as if he were basking in the sun.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re clean,” he murmured, so faintly I could barely make out what he was saying at first. “This tiny space – it amplifies the smell of your blood, and now that there’s nothing to taint it, it’s like it’s all around me. It’s like you are all around me.”

“Umm, ick,” I said, nervously scanning the tin can that was rumbling us upwards towards the museum, and trying to look anywhere but at Keel. “Why do you always have to go there?”

“Why do you refuse to acknowledge what we do?” he retorted, snapping out of his rapture.

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Chapter 11

Posted: March 26, 2012 by Monica S. Kuebler in Chapters
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Chapter 11: With Friends Like This…

Keel was careful, but apparently not careful enough; the first thing Boras said when he came through the door a few hours later was, “What happened to all the blood?”

Crap! You didn’t even consider this possibility. I was definitely slipping, but not so much that I couldn’t still think fast under pressure.

“I cleaned myself up,” I said quickly, garnishing the lie with an extra spoonful of cranky. Terrified, pissed off – maybe he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Same galloping heartbeat.

“How?” said Boras. His face was creased with deep lines that belied just how seriously he took his assignment of jailer and warden.

I shifted my gaze to the white porcelain toilet bowl. “How do you think?”

“Why are you dry, then?” he asked.

“Because I came to hours ago – and I wouldn’t have had to do it if you had done your job.” He might not buy it, but luckily Boras had a secondary weakness: sass. And I was fairly confident I could annoy him into distraction.

But, of course, he had weaponry of his own. “Shame about your face,” he said. “You weren’t half-bad looking once, for one of them.”

Ouch. That was low. What I’d said to him hadn’t been anywhere near that mean.

I’d somehow, erroneously, convinced myself the damage couldn’t be too bad, since Keel hadn’t said anything and he’d spent the majority of his time here looking right at me. But that’d been dumb. I should have known that when it came to me, he only saw the blood.

He hadn’t even asked my name. Still. Even after I threw that in his face.

“Shall we see what can be done, then?” Boras said. He hadn’t taken his eyes off my wounds, but he finally let the blood thing drop.

I shifted myself on the mattress so that the lacerated side of my face was fully exposed and tilted my head. I’d didn’t want him anywhere near me, but if he didn’t doctor the wounds, no one else would, and it wasn’t like Keel’s tongue had any healing properties.

Boras said nothing as he disinfected the rawest areas and then carefully stitched up my cheek. The sharp, piercing jabs that accompanied the white string he pulled through my skin soon coalesced into a single pulsing agony and I drifted away again – just like when I was with the King. I didn’t want to think of the extent of the damage, and every stitch was a further reminder of it. I didn’t want to think about anything.

When Boras was done with my face, he cleaned and wrapped my neck wound, but this time he had proper bandages instead of that useless neck brace. Had they had to order more supplies now that the King had a new plaything?

“He’s not coming today,” Boras said as he packed up his makeshift medical kit – a black gym bag with assorted bandages and disinfectants in it.

My head shot up. Did he just read my mind?

“Rest up, and eat,” he continued. “I know you weren’t fed last night – couldn’t let anyone in here with you ripped up like that – but it’ll be brought right down.” With that, he left my cell.

As soon as he was gone, I ran my fingers over the mountain range of stitches that trailed up the left side of my face. The next time I looked in the mirror, I’d be greeted by Frankenstein’s monster made flesh. Will I even recognize myself? I wondered. The human-world me seemed further and further away with each passing day, each new scar.

Live with monsters, become one?

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Chapter 10

Posted: March 19, 2012 by Monica S. Kuebler in Chapters
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It took me a long time to fall back asleep after Keel crept out of my cell.

Our encounter had energized me. I felt more awake and clear-headed than I had in weeks, but also much more conflicted. I replayed our conversation over and over again in my head, searching my memories of our fleeting time together for anything I might have missed – for any information that might prove valuable.

Part of me was deathly afraid I’d wake up and discover it had all been a dream. But why would that be so bad?  I asked myself. It wasn’t as if Keel had ridden down here on a white stallion, like some fairy-tale knight, bringing with him the promise of rescue and salvation. He wanted the same thing the rest of them wanted – my blood – but apparently with a chaser of companionship.

That part intrigued me.

It was something new, a change in the monotonous, hellish routine – an oasis in the desert.

In my old life, Keel wouldn’t be my first – nor second, nor probably even tenth – choice for a friend, but he was best one the compound had offered up thus far.

But he fed from you! Every aspect of my curiosity was tainted by that.

Worse still was the knowledge of what I’d been prepared to do to keep him talking. Fredrick and Estella would be absolutely ashamed of me. Devaluing myself like that just for a little attention.

But I….

No.

I silenced the thought before it found a comfortable place to settle in my cranium.

Keel is a vampire, and the Nosferatu are bad news.

But maybe there are all kinds of vampires, just like there are all kinds of people.

He drank from you! And he hasn’t even bothered to ask you your name!

It came right back to that. My internal argument reached an uncomfortable stalemate.

I thunked my head up and down on the mattress, no matter how hard I tried or which way I came at it, I couldn’t untangle my feelings. I had no idea what to do next, if there even was a next. Keel himself had said coming down here was a bad idea, so why was I sitting here torturing myself with “what ifs” when I’d likely never see him again – at least until the King was done with me, and Keel had become a full-fledged bloodsucker.

Would he keep me imprisoned too? A slave to his appetites.

I reached up and probed the wound he’d worked open with his knife. It throbbed dully when I touched it, but it wasn’t bleeding. It’d scab over soon.

Maybe the King would still notice; he always seemed to know right away whenever anyone spilled my blood. What then? Would I give Keel up? Confess what he’d done?

Maybe I should do that anyway.

No.

But could I even trust my judgement anymore? Just because Keel was less evil and less sadistic than his dear old dad didn’t mean he was a good guy or should be forgiven for his vampiric trespasses.

Still, I knew I wouldn’t snitch on him.

And that was probably yet another stupid mistake on top of the mountain of them I’d already made. But I just couldn’t do it.

That meant going back to being invisible, to being completely and utterly alone.

When sleep eventually came, I was haunted by Keel’s emerald eyes and the shiny blade of his knife, his humanity and his monstrosity forever at war within him, with the vampire ever fated to win. In my dream, he was carving the lines of battle into my flesh, and blood blossomed from each and every one of them.

I awoke to the sound of Boras and the King arguing loudly outside my cell door.

“You drink from her every day already. Are you sure this is a good idea?” Boras was asking. “You could kill her.”

They were clearly talking about me and dread fluttered in my chest. Yesterday, I might have lain there accepting my fate, but not this morning.  Sometime during the night I gave up caring if Keel was a good thing or a bad thing. He was something.  And after a long bout of nothing , that was enough. Hope needed only a tiny seed and just a droplet of water to spring back to life.

“It must be done,” the King snapped. “I will not fail.”

A second later, the door burst open. I managed to stumble blearily to my feet as the two of them entered my cell.

“Neck,” the King ordered immediately, and I cringed outwardly, unable to disguise my repulsion. Some spots were more intimate than others and when the King chose those, it always amplified the violation of the feeding – never mind that the mottled flesh that permanently scarred the back of my neck where Harck had savaged me was perpetually tender to the touch.

For the first time in weeks, I glared back at him defiantly. Maybe I wasn’t giving Keel enough credit: sure he was an arrogant, half-monster jerk, but with the King for a dad, he should be much, much worse.

His Majesty didn’t repeat his command. Before I could even register movement, he’d slapped my face, raking all five of his nails across my cheek and forehead. My hands flew up in a desperate, instinctive bid to protect myself – far too late.  When I pulled them away, they were streaked with blood. The left side of my face burned as if it had just been flayed. If I reached up again, would I discover my torn skin hanging in tattered ribbons from my cheek? I was too freaked out to try it. If my face had been destroyed, I’d rather not know.

I stood there frozen, staring at my bloody palms until the King grabbed my wrists and jerked them behind my back. “Why do you continue to insist on fighting when there is no point?” he hissed, his face so close to mine that I could see his pores.

I said nothing. He didn’t really want an answer. He just wanted to hear himself talk.

The King was drunk on power. And he thought I was his gateway to more.

He leaned in and inhaled the scent of my freshly spilled blood. “What is your secret?” he whispered to it, as if the red stuff were simply playing coy. Then he licked me.

Oh god, he knows.

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Chapter 9

Posted: March 5, 2012 by Monica S. Kuebler in Chapters
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PART TWO: APRIL

Chapter 9: Keel

Boras was true to his word.

My life in the compound was eating, being eaten and twice weekly being hosed down with freezing cold water, with my clothes on. Twenty-four hour lockdown. Solitary confinement, seven days a week. Long stretches of boredom, divided by brief interludes of hell, with clockwork regularity.

Boras had placed a guard at the door. I heard the two of them talk, but I never saw the guard. My keeper and the King were my sole visitors.

As my imprisonment stretched like soft taffy into days, then weeks, hopelessness took root and grew, polluting my soul.

Boras remained stoic and uncommunicative. Apart from the orders he squawked at me – Shove your plate over here! Hand me your mattress! Hold still and let me bandage this! – he refused to answer my questions or humour my pitiful attempts to make small talk. When the loneliness eventually became too crushing, I began talking to myself, afraid that I if stopped speaking altogether, I might forget how. Or maybe I was just going crazy.

I worried about that. Whether I would or I already was. And I worried that worrying about it would be the thing that’d tip the boat, and plunge me to turbulent, bottomless sea of insanity.

What concerned me most, though, were the moments I caught myself thinking that I might be okay with that.

But my dad died for me – and that was not the tribute his sacrifice deserved.

The wobbly scratches in the wall now numbered more than five dozen. During the first couple of weeks, I’d been ambitious: I spent four days chipping away at the concrete around the plate that secured me to the wall with the edge of my right shackle, only giving up when my wrist was bruised black from the repeated reverberations and swollen so badly the cuff was nearly cutting off circulation. After that, I spend another half-week trying to pry open one of the chain links, but if it budged at all, it wasn’t visible to the naked eye.

At one point, I became so distraught and disillusioned that I even tried to “activate” my powers, which like everything else, proved utterly useless, since I obviously didn’t have any. The two days of fruitless meditation and concentration and focussing really pounded that home.

Without anything else to do, I went back to reliving my old life over and over again in my head. Every birthday, every Christmas, every date, every field trip, every stupid party. When that wasn’t enough, I tried to dredge up details about those events that I’d forgotten. And when I could mine nothing more from my own experiences, I gave myself over to my imagination with wanton abandon, dreaming up new episodes for all those TV shows that I couldn’t watch anymore, and even fixing up Anna and Henry in my head. Someone deserved to be happy. They not only went to the spring dance together, but every one after that, for ever after. I rode unicorns and comets, ran with tigers, and slept beneath the starry sky every single night.

I created a whole world inside of myself. And I spent more and more of my time there.

Occasionally I still cried, but not often.

My hours with the King hardened me. Over time, I found a way to distance myself from his excruciating ministrations and deny him my screams. Though, the first time I did this, he left me with a bruised rib. The next time, he gave me two black eyes. The last time, he peeled my fingernails off one by one, like the tops of pop cans. I sure as hell screamed then. Three nails in, Boras showed up in the doorway of my cell and told the King he had to stop, that my wailing was upsetting the other cattle.

Later, I realized that was likely a lie, because none of my screaming ever bothered them before. They hadn’t even responded when I’d shouted directly at them through my door. Had Boras shown me a small mercy? I wondered, knowing neither of us would ever acknowledge it.

Not one of those nails had started to grow back yet.

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Chapter 8

Posted: February 26, 2012 by Monica S. Kuebler in Chapters
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Chapter 8: I, Bleeder

I clenched my eyes shut and waited for the crunch, for the unbearable agony of my bones grinding between Boras’ teeth.

As my life dangled in the balance, skewered on the dual points of his razor-sharp fangs, I realized just how badly I wanted to hang onto it – or, at the very least, not die like this. If I have to die, I want it to be with purpose, dammit.

Instead of becoming a human juice box, however, I tumbled roughly onto the filthy mattress as he tore himself free of me. A red, glistening splotch of my blood was smeared across his lower lip; my hand immediately shot up to my throat. It was barely a nick. I was bleeding worse from the cuts on my shoulders where his nails had punctured my flesh.

Boras sized me up hungrily; his irises still as black as pitch and his gums receded to fully expose his fangs.

“P-p…please,” I begged. I was shaking so hard it was the only word I was able to force out.

Boras began to bend towards me and I flinched back against the wall. Alarms sounded in my head. I’d been cocky before I’d known what he was capable of. Now? Now I just wanted to go back to being prisoner-and-captor, not predator-and-prey. Not this.

As he reached his pale, bony hand towards me I wholly expected him to drag me back up into death’s embrace, as if my body were a rag doll with which he could do as he pleased. But Boras released a mighty groan, wiped his right arm across his mouth, transferring my blood to his sleeve, and abruptly stood back up.

“No,” he announced. “You’re not so sweet that I would die for a taste of you.”

Some girls would have been insulted by that, but I knew I’d just dodged a bullet – one fired out of a rifle of my own stupidity. Maybe my luck was finally changing.

Yeah, right. Just keep telling yourself that.

“I’m sorry,” I sputtered. “I–“

Boras stared down at me with utter disdain. I’d seen that expression other vampires’ faces when they looked at me, but never his.

“I didn’t mea­–”

“Enough,” he roared so loudly I had to cover my ears.

“But…”

“No. You aren’t going to say another word, or so help me I’ll rip out that throat of yours.” His voice drawled into a feral-sounding growl; his fragile restraint was wavering.

I frantically wiped the blood from my still-bleeding shoulders with the top of my tank top, unsure if it’d be enough to stem the temptation but I had to try. And no more talking either, I told myself. Please, just once, keep your mouth shut.

“The King is mad for bringing you here,” Boras raged on.

I watched as he channelled his bloodlust into anger, hoping he wouldn’t turn it back on me and take with his claws what he refused to take with his mouth.

“The others had it right. You don’t belong here. The King should’ve just drained you dry, as we’ve done to your kind for centuries, and been done with it.”

He meant it: the callousness in his face matched the hostility of his words. I lowered my eyes before he could see the regret on my face. Boras wasn’t an ally; perhaps he could have been, but I had to go and ruin it.

“But no,” Boras went on bitterly, “he would keep you here for years, first for himself and then for his son. It’s pure insanity.”

He was pacing now, like an agitated lion. Still, this was the most any of them had told me about “my situation” and I was absolutely riveted.

Boras turned his monologue inwards as I followed the trajectory of his black-booted feet with my eyes. Back and forth. Back and forth. But never any closer to me. It was as if he had forgotten me entirely. I was invisible. Blanked.

He only stopped moving when the door of my cell swung open and another guard stepped inside. “Are you done ye–“ he began, then stopped and sniffed the air. “What’s going on in here? Is she bleeding?”

“Yes, she is,” Boras said bluntly.

A confusing array of expressions passed over the guard’s face – horror, uncertainty, lust, hunger, awe, disgust, fear – before he blinked them away.

“Calm down,” Boras commanded brusquely. “Go tell his Majesty that I need to see him down here immediately.”

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