I glanced at Caden to check the effect of his sister’s tone but his face showed no emotion, his eyes still intently focused on me. Probably wondering what my blood tastes like.
“What happened, exactly, to make you believe us?” Fiona asked.
“You mean, besides these?” I reached up and lightly touched the bite marks on my neck.
They all cringed. “Still hurt?” Bishop asked, unusually serious.
I shook my head. “It would seem that I’m surrounded by vampires, giant unkillable dogs, and a vampire–witch who put a curse on me.” I suddenly began laughing, finding my predicament comical now that I had said it out loud for the first time.
“Why?” Caden asked, his eyes widening.
“I don’t know. Apparently Sofie was messing around with magic and fried their venom. Now they can’t ‘breed.’” I shuddered. “I’m supposed to come here and find a way to fix it.”
Silence filled the cave.
“You’re handling this well,” Fiona said softly.
“I’m glad it looks that way,” I answered, staring down at the fire.
“Are you afraid?” Caden asked quietly.
“Yes, terrified,” I answered truthfully, looking up into those beautiful, vibrant green eyes. Good vampire. Definitely has to be a good vampire.
“And you understand what we are?” he asked, his jaw taut. He hadn’t enjoyed asking that question.
“You’re … like Viggo and Mortimer and Sofie?”
He nodded once. “Viggo and Mortimer … yes.”
I swallowed the giant lump blocking my throat. Well, there’s no denying it now.
“But Sofie … not quite. You said she was also a sorceress?”
I nodded.
“Interesting.” Caden’s eyes flickered to his sister’s but their expressions were unreadable.
“Why?”
“Because sorceresses can’t become vampires. It’s impossible. The venom kills them.”
So Sofie was still lying to me. I should have known.
“In my experience, humans tend to freak out and run the other way, crossing themselves in prayer repeatedly when they find themselves in the company of a vampire. They don’t willingly share a campfire with four of them.” Amelie’s tone was light, but her eyes were earnest, as if she expected me to turn and run at any second.
“I still might, but right now it’s too cold,” I said, a small smile on my lips.
Laughter filled the cave.
“We won’t hurt you,” Amelie said softly.
Could I believe her? Looking at that angelic face and kind smile, there wasn’t a part of me that felt I was in peril. Then again, I had felt safe with Sofie. My sense of self–preservation wasn’t exactly top–quality. “Well, I figured you guys were the good kind.”
“What?” Caden’s voice rose, his face screwing up.
“Viggo told me most of the stuff about you guys is myth.”
“And you believed him?” I didn’t miss the scorn in his tone.
“Caden,” Amelie warned.
“You’re so sure we won’t attack you?” Caden continued, on his feet and pacing now.
“Caden,” Amelie said through clenched teeth.
I glanced warily at her. “Well, you didn’t attack me yesterday and you can’t get much closer than that, so …”
Caden’s eyes widened in surprise.
“After I was bitten, I mean. With all the blood!” I stammered, realizing that it sounded like I was referring to everything leading up to it.
Bishop barked out laughter. “We don’t have time for that right now. You can test it out again later,” he said, followed by, “and I don’t mean after you were bitten.”
I felt my face blaze, likely a hideous shade of beet red. Why would Caden tell him? Or maybe Bishop was reading my mind. Maybe that wasn’t a myth. Oh God, I hope Caden can’t read my mind.
Caden gave Bishop a shove in response, sending him flying into the cave wall. Chunks of rock crumbled to the ground as Bishop’s back made impact but the blonde vampire simply stood up and brushed himself off, smiling broadly, proud of the ribbing. It was such a pleasant smile that I cringed when it disappeared, his face twisting up in disgust.
I found out why when an unwelcomed voice sang out at the cave entrance, “What’s got you so upset, my love?”
“Oh good, you’re back,” Amelie answered dryly.
Rachel glowered at her. “You’re lucky Caden feels an odd sense of obligation to you, otherwise I’d—”
“Look who’s back!” Caden said, pointing in my direction.
Rachel turned to glance at me, her smile falling short of genuine, before turning to bestow a loving gaze on Caden. “It seems your scheme with the statue switch worked,” she purred, forcing him onto the bench and climbing onto his lap. She planted an inappropriately long kiss on his lips.
I averted my gaze, not because of the uncomfortable public show of affection but because the twinge of jealousy pained me a thousand times more than my injured hand or even the bite from the night before.
It went on, even as Bishop cleared his throat loudly and Amelie let out an exasperated sigh. I had to find some way to peel Rachel off Caden. “Sofie said the pendant is magical,” I blurted, ignoring Sofie’s warnings. “It gets me here and it protects my human traits, like the scent of my blood and my heartbeat. It takes time to adjust sometimes, though.”
It worked. Rachel stopped mauling Caden. “Like when you get all flustered and red near my Caden?” she asked sweetly. My face felt like it had burst into flames as a renewed surge of humiliation struck. “Seems it hasn’t adjusted yet.” She giggled viciously.
“How does it work?” Amelie quickly asked.
“Um … I don’t know. Every night my necklace begins to burn and I fall asleep. Then I wake up the next morning back in my bed.”
“The time in between your visits is weeks here,” Fiona commented, frowning.
“And if one of us were to put that necklace on, I wonder what would happen,” Rachel murmured, eyeing my pendant keenly.
Memories of excruciating pain had me shaking my head with panic. “No, I’m sorry. It can’t come off, not even for a second, or I’ll die.”
“Only the quickest of seconds …” Rachel said, off Caden’s lap and standing over me in an instant, a hand clamped over the chain.
“Leave it alone,” Caden said, appearing beside her. His hand closed over hers, stopping her from yanking the chain off and killing me.
Her left eyebrow arched severely. He replied with a hard stare of his own.
I turned to look at Amelie. Her eyes were locked on the two of them; she looked ready to spring.
After a few tense seconds, Caden’s shoulders visibly relaxed. He wrapped his free arm affectionately around Rachel. “If she dies, we’ll have to wait for this sorceress to send another one.”
I flinched. I was replaceable, like a goldfish.
But his callous words worked. Rachel’s icy glare melted into adoring eyes and a childlike giggle. Then those snake eyes turned to me. “So you can bring us back with you?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but Sofie’s warning rang loudly in my mind: Don’t trust our kind. My instincts told me to heed the warning and, though those instincts had proven to be equivalent to those of a lobotomy patient, I decided to listen. I looked straight into those yellow eyes and I shook my head. It was easy to lie to her. Enjoyable, actually.
My lie prompted crestfallen expressions, which didn’t make sense. I looked around at their faces. “Why would you want to come back with me?”
Something unspoken passed between them, conveyed only with a look.
“Because you’re the only one left,” Fiona answered quietly.
I frowned. “Only what left?”
“Human.”
My jaw dropped.
Amelie sighed heavily. “Where do we begin? In our world—Ratheus—humans are extinct. You have been for seven hundred years.”
I swallowed hard, unable to blink. “Why? … How?”
“We caused it,” Caden answered coldly, having moved away from me to stand on the other side of the fire. “We killed them, every last one.”
12. Extinction
A shiver ran down my spine. That’s why Jethro reacted the way he did when he saw me. Now it made sense.
“Not us, specifically. Our species—vampires,” Bishop clarified, the last word coming softly.
“We did our share, though,” Caden said, turning to pace, head lowered.
“Why?” I heard myself croak.
“Vampires were no more than a myth for thousands of years, characters in horror movies. But then drained bodies with bite marks started showing up, left out for display. There was a new generation of our kind—one that didn’t care, that wanted people to be afraid. The humans fought back in the only way they knew how: war. One that escalated so quickly, it was too late to reverse the effects, by the time we found out. Vampires converted humans by the hundreds to build their army. Humans killed any vampire they could catch. They even killed other humans, if there was any doubt as to what they were.”
“So your kind can be killed?” I asked, my folklore facts not yet up to speed.
“It’s hard, but yes. With nuclear warfare, everything within the blast radius will die, including vampires. The radiation did nothing to us, but it was deadly to the humans. Between the blasts and the radiation, few humans survived; most of the world was destroyed within a few months.”
I asked into the silence, “How did you get away?”
“There was this large island in the middle of the ocean, thousands of miles from anything else. It was inhabited by people, but not overly developed—a Third World country; under the radar, so to speak. Many of us fled here, betting that it would survive. We were right. We brought humans with us, to breed. But humans take too long to reproduce and their blood is too tempting. They didn’t last long.”
“So now you live off animals? Like Viggo and Mortimer?”
A cynical smile touched Caden’s lips. “Just like them. But we’re starving—always starving—without human blood. Some of our kind experimented with feeding off other vampires. It mutated them into something altogether evil. You saw it … Jethro.”
I shuddered, those white, veiny eyes flashing in my mind. “How many of you are left?”
“A lot less than there used to be. There’s this self–formed Council composed of the strongest and oldest of our kind. They decided the population needed shrinking. We,” he gestured at the others, “hid well and survived. Since then, for over seven hundred years, they’ve been searching for a secret human civilization, hoping some survived somewhere in the world. But we know there aren’t any left. Deep down, we all know that. No human can survive in this world.”
I noted the present tense, and his silent message. I was human. I couldn’t survive here.
Caden’s next words confirmed it. “There is no ‘good and bad’ of our kind. We’re all bad.”
“Caden!” Bishop warned.
“And if the Council got hold of you,” Caden continued, ignoring him. “They’ll do anything to get to this world of yours, to have a new crop of humans to feed off. It isn’t safe to be around us.”
“Stop saying ‘we’ and ‘us,’ Caden. We aren’t like those demons,” Amelie said, throwing a withering glare in Rachel’s direction.
“I’m here, aren’t I? And I’ve helped you so far, haven’t I?” Rachel retorted haughtily.
“Us or yourself?” Fiona muttered.
“You’re a Council member,” I said slowly. “So was Jethro,” I added, recalling his greeting the other night.
“Yes, and I killed him. For you. So you can trust me.” Again, that sickly sweet smile that made my skin crawl. Hearing those two words, the same two words the vampire uttered before he sank his teeth into my neck, had the opposite effect. I had never trusted anyone less.
Here I was, a one–way ticket to survival for some lucky vampire. If I could bring back only one of them, how would I tell them? Or could I bring more than one? I had no idea! And, save for Rachel, how would I choose between the others? Would they make me choose?
Grateful I had listened to Sofie’s warning, I said quickly, “Well, none of them can come back with me.” I forced down the lump that rose in my throat with the lie. “No one can.”
Amelie put her hands on mine. “It’s okay, Evangeline. We’re not like them.”
“So … you don’t want to come back with me?”
“Oh no, we do,” Amelie answered firmly. “But not to feed off humans.”
“Then why?”
She paused. “To feel like we’re alive, instead of just …”