THE NEXT MORNING I CAVED in. I was dirty. There was dried blood on my shirt. And I was pretty sure I was starting to smell really bad.
I snatched the faucet handle from Ryan’s outstretched palm and stalked into the rotting bathroom, slamming the door behind me. The faucet handle was difficult to screw on over the thick rust that had built up, but I managed. Pretty soon drabs of brown, dirty water glugged out of the showerhead into the filthy tub. I took off my two–week–old shirt and turned it inside out, using it to loosen some of the caked dirt and dust from the porcelain. When I had cleared a patch big enough to accommodate my feet, I balled the disgusting shirt up and threw it into the corner of the room.
The water was hot and luxurious and slid down my body like liquid velvet. There was no shampoo, so I used the bar of soap to wash my body, then lathered suds into my stiff, bloodied hair. I was exhausted. I had been plagued with a killer headache since I woke up from my uncomfortable sleep on the floor, and I’d had nightmares about the beating heart in the jar all night long.
I thought about home, just like I had been every day and night as I paced my own personal hell. I thought about Jared, about Evie. I even missed my mom. I would have done anything to get back to them. I thought back to every animal attack I’d ever heard of, every abduction, every person who’d given me the creeps. I was starting to realize that the world I had been a lifelong member of didn’t actually exist.
Then cold water cut in, freezing my nerves and making me cry out. “Jesus!”
I shut the water off as quickly as I could and dried myself with the towel I’d so generously been given, then slipped into clean clothes. The black t–shirt and jeans were mine, probably taken directly from my car after I’d been knocked out. I wrapped the towel around my wet hair, feeling calmer and a little bit more like myself than I had in days.
I grabbed my silver ballet flats, the ones covered in snow and mud that I had discarded the night I awoke in vampire hell, and tried my best to clean them up with damp toilet paper. It was a small comfort having shoes on my feet again. The morning felt almost … normal.
I was snapped out of my somewhat serene state by a loud crash in the adjoining room.
I could not have imagined the hell that awaited me on the other side of the door.
I yanked the bathroom door open, rushing into the room Kate and I shared. Kate was crumpled in the corner—nothing new there—but she wasn’t alone. Caleb was there, clutching her narrow shoulders, dragging her back up to her feet.
“Let her go!” I yelled, pummelling his back with punches that did absolutely nothing. Someone grabbed me from behind and bent my arm back until it was ready to snap like kindling. “Ahh!” I screamed as my shoulder joint crunched out of its socket.
“Shut up,” someone breathed into my ear. Ryan. I should have known.
I wriggled out of his grip and leaned against the wall, hugging my useless limb to my chest. I snuck a glance at my paralyzed arm. It was too long to belong to me, hanging by stretched tendons. I had the sudden urge to throw up again. And it hurt like a bastard. Waves of pain slammed into me.
I stared on in pain and despair as Caleb put his mouth to Kate’s ear. He whispered things too low for me to hear, but his black gaze and twisted grin were clearly directed at me. I looked away, trying not to feel the terror that was encircling me like a bunch of snakes tightening around my useless limbs, trying not to fall into those bottomless eyes that promised an eternity of torment.
Kate’s child–like screams tore at my heart until it threatened to break in two. I started to hyperventilate.
“No, no, no!” she protested. “You promised you wouldn’t!”
Promised he wouldn’t what? Kill her? But hadn’t she wanted to die?
“Quiet!” he hissed forcefully, and she stopped whimpering all at once.
The vampire smiled. “That’s a good girl,” he said. He pressed his thumbnail into the creamy flesh at her collarbone. Kate’s eyes went wide in horror as her skin broke apart under the pressure, ruby–red blood rising up from the puncture. I watched helplessly as she tried to push him away.
I wanted to yell, “Stop!” But it was useless. I held my breath, squeezing my eyes shut, my last vision a horrific tableau of the vampire sucking greedily at the girl’s shoulder. I held my good hand to my ear and turned my face to the wall, but I couldn’t block out the noise entirely—the sucking, slurping noise of warm tomato soup being hungrily drawn through a straw. Poor Kate was the straw, and her blood was the soup.
I resisted the urge to curl up in a ball, to try and run away, to scream. I was just there, frozen and pathetic and unable to do a damned thing to help.
Eventually, the noise ceased. I opened my eyes to see Kate dead, drained of blood, and Caleb rising from her lifeless form. He wiped his mouth and turned to me, smirking. A low wail grew louder and louder and it took me a minute to realize that it was coming from me, that I was screaming. I abruptly shut my mouth, and the noise stopped.
I was shaking so violently, my knees threatened to buckle underneath me. Anger blossomed inside my chest. Nobody had the right to take someone’s blood—someone’s life—like this.
“Don’t you dare!” I cried as he came closer. “I’ll scream. I’ll hurt you.” As if I could.
He stopped, a peculiar look on his face. He smiled, blood still smeared on his teeth.
“What did you say to her?” I demanded.
“I said –” he spoke in a voice that was older than time, six little words that made tears spring to my eyes “—do you want to die today?”
But it was a lie, he hadn’t asked her that. He was asking me, did I want to die today?
A burning hand rested heavily on my throat, so hot I wondered if it would melt my skin. He was clearly waiting for an answer from me.
I shook my head NO. The burning hand squeezed harder, the black eyes grew wider, imploring a response. “I didn’t hear you.”
“NO!”
He loosened his fingers and let his arm drop slowly from my throat.
“Don’t worry,” he said cruelly. “You will soon enough.” He looked down at Kate’s lifeless body with those demon–black eyes. “She did.”
I stumbled and sank to the floor next to Kate, nursing my arm in my lap. There was blood everywhere, so much more than one person could ever forget. I held my hand in front of my face, the one I could still use. I couldn’t stop shaking, and I didn’t think I ever would.
I said nothing as Ryan followed the older vampire out of the room. The door slammed, and I heard bolts sliding shut on the other side of the wall.
And then, it was just me and the dead girl on the floor.
I cried until salty tears burned my cheeks, and watched that door, and I was hurting so intensely I couldn’t even muster up some sympathetic thoughts for the dead girl who lay less than three feet from me.
I wanted so badly to leave my body right then. I wanted to fly away home, to be with Evie and Jared and my mom. I’d even hug my idiot stepfather. But I couldn’t leave. I could never leave. So I did the next best thing. I closed my eyes and remembered a time before I was taken, a time before everything went to Hell.