IF I’D KNOWN the plate of pancakes Lou had brought in to me was going to be the last food I saw for another twenty-four hours, I probably would have forced more down.

Instead, I had to struggle through with an increasingly sickened feeling in my stomach. The second day of retraining wasn’t as bloody as the first, but it was just as terrible. Dad gave me another lecture about the danger I’d put everyone in and then the hazel-eyed, blond Assessor—Steven, I’d recalled randomly at some point in the middle of the night—was back to question my motives. Again and again, I was asked the same questions in a hundred different ways. Why did I leave? What did I hope to achieve? How could I possibly have feelings for a monster? The questions went on and on until I felt almost dizzied by the repetition.

I was thrown back into my cell at the end of the day, starving, confused, and dazed, and left alone in the darkened space. Another small drink, no doubt containing the same drugs I’d ingested the night before, was shoved through the hatch. I could have ignored it, but the liquid was likely to hold the opportunity to see Evie once more.

Eager for just one more chance to call her vivid image to mind, I grabbed the cup and crossed the room. Once I was settled on the bed, I drank the liquid and let my mind drift. Within minutes, Evie was sitting on the bed beside me with a smile on her face.

“Are you thinking about me again?” she sounded almost amused.

In my mind, she moved to lie beside me, wrapping her body over mine with one leg resting between my thighs like she had when I held her after her father’s death. My fingers itched to trace patterns on her lower back again.

“I wish you were really here,” I whispered against the cheek of the ghost my mind offered to me to save me from the harsh reality of the cell.

“What would you say if I was?”

I scoffed. There were a hundred things I wanted to say to her, but if she’d physically been in Hell with me, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to say them to her anyway. The words that I wanted most to say—that I loved her and one day I would find her again—were poised on my tongue when the door to my cell crashed open. Steven’s face swam in my vision, wiping Evie’s ghost away. “Well, Mr. Jacobs. Let’s see if our hospitality has loosened your tongue.”

Three pairs of hands yanked at me. I was barely conscious as they dragged me into the room and started the same dizzying rounds of questions that I’d been subjected to all day. Each time the drugs in my system threatened to drag me completely into blackness, a hand would slap against my cheek and pull me away from glorious oblivion.

When I woke the next morning, I had blurred visions of the questioning I’d been subjected to. Despite the confusion, I was certain I’d kept the secret of Evie’s survival hidden. I spared a quiet thank you to the universe that my suffering kept her free. Questions of whether she was worth the continued torture flowed away as soon as I pictured her face—her smile—in my mind.

Just as I was drifting off once more into what was sure to be a fitful drug-assisted sleep, the door swung open.

With no warning, I was blasted by a high volume fire hose. Water gushed around me, stealing my sight and forcing its way into my mouth and nose. I coughed and spluttered as I tried desperately to gain a breath while being pelted by the icy blast. My body convulsed as the cold water froze the blood in my limbs. I rolled off the bed and onto the floor, my stomach heaving up the water that had forced its way down my throat.

I dropped my head onto my forearms, the barrier created by my back giving me an opportunity to regain my breath. The water continued to barrage me until all of the strength had been sapped from my limbs and I fell to the floor. Whoever held the hose washed down the walls and rinsed the floor before disappearing again with a slam of the door.

The cold water on the concrete had sapped what little warmth the cell had contained, and I lay shivering in my wet clothes.

“Get up.” It was Evie’s voice inside my head.

“Evie?” I muttered, reaching my arm out to find her even though part of me knew she wasn’t there.

“You have to get up, Clay,” she pleaded. “For me.”

Closing my eyes, I rolled onto my back. I needed her in my arms, needed her warmth to re-energize my aching limbs.

I made a mistake leaving you. Almost as soon as the certainty of my error struck me, a rush of warmth ran through my core. It wasn’t Evie, but just the thought of her was enough to give me strength.

I dragged myself to my feet and stumbled over to the door, before smacking it with my palms and shouting until I was hoarse to try to get someone to let me free. It was useless though, all I was greeted with was the steady sound of the Assessors’ footsteps roaming the hall.

After I gave up on shouting, I understood I needed to find a new technique to get through the torture.

“Surely they trained you for this sort of thing?” Evie’s voice echoed around my mind.

I dropped my head against my door. “What do you mean?” I whispered.

“They’ve trained you for extreme situations. Haven’t you got survival techniques to get through capture and torture?”

I spun around and a smile twisted my mouth in an unfamiliar way. Evie was right. I had to use the techniques the Rain had taught me against them—we’d been trained to focus on physical activity to stop mental torment. I stripped off my wet clothing except for my boxers and dropped to the ground to do a number of push-ups in the middle of the cell.

When I’d exhausted my arms, I shook out my limbs, folded up the bed so that it was secured vertically to the wall, and then used the frame to do chin-ups. Only once I was so physically exhausted that I could barely move did I even try to sleep again.

The instant I was asleep, Evie came to haunt my dreams and congratulate me on a job well done.

Days—or maybe it was weeks—dragged by in the same cycle of next to no food, very little sleep, being hosed down at night and left alone in the darkness to shiver as my clothes slowly dried. Every few days, I was forced to down another cup of foul tasting vitamins, prolonging my health just so they could torture me more.

Once a week, I was given a new set of clothes, from my own wardrobe. It was just another reminder of the home I was missing.

When the same routine dragged on for far too long, I was ready to agree to pretty much anything they asked me to do, just to get the hell out of the tiny room and away from the torture I had endured every day. I might have even hunted Evie if they’d asked me to, and had whispered the same in pleading apologies to the ghost of her in my head each night.

Even the technique of losing myself in the pain of physical movement no longer worked—I was too emaciated to even try. I was weak and confused, barely able to speak my own name let alone continue to argue. I knew what they wanted, and this time, I was going to give it to them.

The morning I’d made that decision, I was dragged back into the treatment room one last time.

Already strapped into the seat on the other side of the table was a girl who looked less than a year or two younger than me. If not for her deathly pallor and rail-thin body, she could have almost passed for a regular human teenager. Her caramel colored hair fell in curtains around her face, split in half by a part down the exact center of her head. Regarding her closer, I could see the thin purple spider web-like veins that crept up her face and the dark circles beneath her eyes that gave away her true nature. She was, for want of a better word, a vampire.

Not an immortal, undead vampire of mythology because it was, of course, impossible to actually reanimate a corpse or live forever. These creatures got their names because someone who had witnessed their super sharp, hollow fangs piercing the skin of a loved one in the past assumed that they were the undead creatures of legend. The girl in front of me was one of the naturally born and bred, bloodsucking, mind-controlling vampires of reality.

At least . . . that’s how I’d been raised to think of them.

Is that even true though? None of the stuff I was forced to believe about Evie was right. Is any of it true?

“Kill her,” the black-haired Assessor who’d dragged me to the room instructed as he threw me through the doorway. An athame, carved with protective symbols—and I was certain rinsed in holy water—clattered to the floor behind me an instant before the door snapped closed, locking me inside with the monster.

I spun around and banged on the door. Even if the Rain was wrong, I didn’t want to be locked up with a parasite. “Let me out.”

Silence greeted me from the other side of the thick door.

“Are you going to do as they ask?” The girl’s voice was quiet, less than a whisper, and sent chills down my spine like nails dragged along a chalkboard.

When she looked at me, her face was a mask of composure, her lips rested in a completely neutral expression, neither turned up to a smile or down to a frown. It was only her eyes that gave away her fear.

I bent to the floor, picking up the athame to hold it in my fist.

Could I actually kill her without question?

Not that long ago, I wouldn’t have even doubted the order. She was something else, no better than a leech picked up in a swamp. She was a threat, something that would kill a human without a second thought, and therefore something that deserved punishment and death.

Now, though . . .

“Why shouldn’t I?” I jutted my chin out as the question left me.

Instead of answering me, she closed her eyes. An instant later, the corners of her mouth turned upward ever so slightly.

“You regard yourself as different to them.”

“Get out of my head,” I growled, hating the fact that close proximity to her kind opened my mind up to the possibility of assault.

My training kicked in, and I could feel the metaphysical fingers of her mind feeling around for my memories. In response to the invasion, I took a step closer to the table and slammed my hands against it, hoping the shock would eject her from my thoughts. The knuckles on the hand that still clung tightly to the knife ached in protest of the move.

“I can barely believe it,” she murmured almost too quietly for me to hear as her mind reasserted itself within me. “You loved an other even though you knew it was wrong.”

Her eyes lifted to mine. The flat, lifeless charcoal irises were equal parts hypnotizing and repulsive. While holding me captive in her gaze, she reached deeper into my memory. I could feel her probing at my mind and exploring its depths, mentally searching out the places that governed the control of my body.

Struggling against the hold of her hypnotic stare, I shook my head as if it would release me from the daze that had settled over me.

Think, Clay, think.

I’d been trained how to fight the effects of vampire mind control, but each time I called them to mind, she swatted the memories away like flies. If I hadn’t already been so weakened by the lack of food and sleep, and the psychological torture I’d endured, I might have had some luck, but I was barely standing upright.

You have to fight it.

My fist clutched around the athame until I could feel the carved runes biting into my flesh. I shook my head to fight her influence.

A minute or two more and she would have complete control.

If that happens, will my family rescue me from this room or would they leave me to become her next meal?

After everything I’d endured, I couldn’t be sure what my fate would be if I didn’t fight through her hold.

Her influence danced through my mind until it brushed across memories of Evie; from the first glance I’d ever had of her and her kaleidoscopic hair, right through to our goodbye.

The girl across from me gasped as her intensive struggle yielded the sort of results she had to have desired, information that would give her an edge over me—something she could use to her own advantage. I met her eye the instant I felt her presence around the memory of the last time I saw Evie.

The vamp leaned forward in her chair, pushing her chin and chest toward me until her arms strained backward, fighting the restraints that held her wrists in place.

“I wonder what they’d do if they knew. These people you call your family and friends,” she flashed her fangs as she whispered to me. A vision of Evie—crying, but most definitely alive—as I left her in the motel in Charlotte swum behind my eyes. It was the vamp’s influence, and it told me exactly how dangerous the information she’d found was. She was showing me her willingness to use it to force me to comply with her needs willingly.

Grinning because she knew she’d found my weakness, she stopped attempting to wrestle control of my mind away from me and released me from her hold. She no longer needed to go to the hassle of finding a way to steal control of my mind when she had the dual information of Evie’s continued survival and my unwillingness to mindlessly kill.

“One little word is all it would take,” she taunted as she licked one of her fangs with a pale-pink tongue. “They’re all listening you know. I wonder what they’d do if they fou—”

Her words cut off with a gargled sound as I slashed the sharpened athame across her throat in one swift movement. I brought my arm back in the opposite direction, slicing again. Over and over again I hacked at her throat until I was certain I had silenced her forever.

Even as the vamp’s blackened blood cooled on my hand, I stood breathing deeply and trying to make sense of what I’d just done. I’d killed a creature. I’d attacked brutally, willingly, and in full control of my functions.

The Rain part of me awakened again, rising slowly within me like a dormant beast that had been in hibernation. I argued with that part of me, telling it that the vampire hadn’t been like Evie at all. She’d been a threat and could have easily spilled the secret about Evie’s survival. I might have been having something of a crisis of conscience when I fell in love with Evie, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t kill if and when I needed to—especially if it was to protect the people I loved.

Besides, that vamp would’ve killed me the instant she was freed; the part of me that was completely Rain justified the action to calm the building panic.

I dropped the athame and backed away from the vamp’s body. The fact remained that every second I was locked up I was that much closer to having my sanity break completely. I was already so close—seeing Evie every night and having internal dueling conversations with myself.

If I did that, would I slip and reveal the truth about Evie’s survival? Would one of the creatures brought in to show me their true nature, be Evie’s undoing? Whenever I closed my eyes, I was assaulted by image after image of Evie’s death—by the jaws of a deadly creature, suffering tortures at the hands of the Assessors all in the name of research, or at the hands of my family.

Pressing my hands against my face, and only realizing too late why it was a bad idea as the coagulated blood spread over my cheeks, I came to the conclusion that I’d already lost the war. Evie was gone, and I wasn’t likely to see her again. Even if I did, what would be different? I would still bring danger to her life.

Even here, miles and miles from wherever she could possibly be, I posed a danger. I was possibly the greatest threat to her existence.

As if my thought was her cue, Evie appeared in front of me. Her fingers reached for my face and, if I squeezed my eyes tightly, I could almost feel of her warm skin brushing across my clammy cheek.

“You know what you need to do,” she whispered to me.

I shook my head. I can’t give you up. I can’t tell them you’re alive. They’ll kill you.

She gave a sad little smile and shook her head. It was like she’d expected me to say those exact words. “You know you don’t have to give me up.”

There’s no other way. It’s that or keep living this torture.

“There’s another way. You know what it is.” She closed her eyes and pressed her lips against my forehead.

I closed my eyes to try to experience the feeling of her warm kiss once more.

“I—I can’t,” I sobbed.

“You have to.”

Her gaze rested on me, and even though I knew it was just a dream, just a vision of the one I wanted to see, the love and trust that echoed in her eyes offered me a renewed strength. She was right. I had to.

There was only one way to remove that threat, even if doing it felt like a betrayal—I had to forget her. I had to push her out of my mind and heart, and move on with my life. I had to stop dreaming about her, stop bringing her ghost into my life to save me. I might not have been able to give her up, but I did have to let her go.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “For everything. I love you.”

Crawling toward the door, I knocked on it and begged to see my dad. When he arrived, I broke down and admitted that I’d been wrong to try to be with Evie. I told him everything I knew he wanted to hear—even though the words felt like poison on my tongue. Continuing to allow myself to feel anything for Evie wasn’t worth the nightmare I had to face. How many more weeks, months—years?—of torture would I have to face if I didn’t?

It killed me at first, but giving Evie up—letting myself be free of the ache in my chest whenever I thought of her and the guilt I felt every time my family was nearby—meant freedom. It meant peace. It was disgusting how easy it had been to do in the end.

Less than a day after admitting to my weakness, betraying everything I held dear by denouncing Evie as the evil creature they’d believed her to be, and begging for forgiveness, I was in a luxury hotel room at the Gansevoort Hotel.

I stayed under the stream of the shower for almost an hour, washing away the filth that seemed unwilling to relinquish the hold it had over my body. Instead of seeing Evie’s smile or body when I closed my eyes like I had in the years before, I saw flashes of the various corpses I’d seen in the days since I’d arrived back at Bayview. I scrubbed harder to try to clean myself of those visions.

When I shut the shower off, I headed straight for the mini-bar before downing three small bottles of whatever liquor was closest to the door. Once empty, I set the bottles down on the counter and considered the fact that I was free from the constant assault on my senses at Bayview.

Whoop-de-fucking-doo!

I couldn’t garner any excitement because my head was a still a mess. I grabbed the rest of the tiny bottles of liquor out of the mini-bar and crawled into the oversized bed.

That night, the sounds of the monsters that had been dragged in, slobbering, howling, and with claws ready to attack, all to convince me of their true nature, haunted my dreamscape. Then, just when I thought the nightmares couldn’t get any worse, Evie would appear.

Usually, we were happy together until she was the victim of their hellish attacks while I sat hopelessly by, strapped to the chair and unable to move. Sometimes, she was in the vampire’s position, and it would be her blood raining over my fingers as I slashed through skin and sinew to slice at her jugular. My attack would be relentless until I was able to tear out her larynx and silence her voice. At least once, she stood watching me, calling out for me to stop, as I fired a gun and the bullet sliced through her chest.

I woke the following morning certain that I would be back in the cell that had been my life for what felt like an eternity. My head pounded and my stomach churned. I wondered what new torture had been devised for me until I realized that it was just the effects of the worst hangover I’d ever had to endure.

With some effort, I picked myself back up and was ready to face the fight again. Or as ready as I could be given I didn’t really have a say in the matter anymore. I’d made my choice when I’d left Evie, and I’d reinforced it when I’d betrayed her by declaring her a monster.

By ten, Eth was at my door ready to collect me for my first mission post-Evie. As we greeted each other with solemn nods, we both tried our best to act as though I hadn’t just recovered from committing the ultimate betrayal of everything we stood for.