Kiev was as unpredictable as anyone could get.
When our eyes met, Kiev struck me in the face so hard, I was thrown to the ground at least a couple of feet away from him.
“Mention his name again, Sofia, and I will make you bleed.” The tone was almost seductive. He gripped me by the head so hard I screamed, my scalp burning with pain.
He was asking the impossible of me. How could I possibly last without speaking about Derek? “I want to see Derek,” I insisted. “Now.”
“Shut up!” He struck me again. And again. And again.
I thought he was going to kill me, but as he was about to deliver the fifth blow, the servant standing by the door took a step forward.
“Master,” she breathed out.
“Stay out of this, Olga,” Kiev hissed, his fist up in the air, ready to deal another blow.
She was young and beautiful. She reminded me of a porcelain doll, her eyes bright, her voice thin and almost baby-like.
“I’m only worried that you might cause her to…” Olga hesitated, fidgeting with her dress.
Clarity came over Kiev’s blood-red eyes. He looked at me like I was dust turned into a precious diamond.
He dropped his hand and nodded. “You’re right.”
I was about to sigh with relief, but Kiev was far from finished. Instead he flexed his arms and cracked his knuckles. “Still, Olga, sweetheart, you know that someone has to pay for all the trouble Derek Novak put me through…” He turned to the young woman and before I could comprehend what was going on, he hit her.
“Kiev! Stop it!” I screamed.
He didn’t stop until she was beaten to a bloody pulp. Kiev cuffed me to the bed when I tried to hit him on the head with the first object I could get a hold of.
When he was satisfied, he stood and pointed at Olga. “I can’t hurt you, Sofia. What you carry inside you is too precious. Be thankful for that. Thus, whenever you displease me, it is Olga who will feel my wrath. And you’ll know that you’re responsible for her pain. Do you understand?”
“You’re a monster,” was all I could respond with, my mind reeling at what he was implying.
He chuckled, and then in a split second, his mood completely changed, as if the word ‘monster’ had triggered something in him. He began to cry and when he saw Olga’s unconscious form on the ground, he gasped. “What have I done? Olga…”
He knelt beside her and forced her to drink his blood so that she would heal.
“Please don’t cross me again,” he pleaded and for a moment, I actually believed that he meant it, but I was confused by how he could be this violent man one minute and this whimpering child the very next.
I learned several things about my stay at The Blood Keep that night. Derek was no longer at The Blood Keep. That he had escaped was a hope I latched on to, something that Olga eventually verified. I also began to wrap my mind around the possibility that I was pregnant and that this was the reason I was so important to them. They wanted my child.
It didn’t take long before nature verified this fearsome possibility for me. I was indeed bearing Derek’s child.
Finally, I realized that Kiev wasn’t just evil. He was stark crazy, and neither I nor anyone else was safe around him.
I knew then that I had to find a way to escape like Derek had, because I didn’t want him to have to come back to The Blood Keep. Ever.
Five months into my stay at The Blood Keep, I was getting nowhere in my attempt to escape. Only recently had Kiev allowed me outside the bedroom he’d kept me in for the first few months of my captivity at the castle. All that time, I was heavily guarded. By a beast. Beasts, the vampires called them, but I’d been at The Blood Keep long enough to know what they really were—dogs turned into blood-sucking vampires. The dogs fed only on blood. They were twice their original size and they had the keenest senses an animal could possibly have.
One was always tailing me wherever I went. The only places I was allowed to go to were the gardens and my bedroom. All my meals were served in either of the two places. I couldn’t get too far away without the giant, bloodthirsty mutt snarling at me.
Still, as far as I was concerned, an animal was an animal and the one that kept following me seemed likeable enough—if I ignored the fact that one wrong move I made would cause it to go berserk and drink my blood. I called him Shadow.
I looked around and found Shadow pacing the ground a few feet behind me. He didn’t seem to be in a good mood.
“Hey, boy…” I nodded his way. He growled fiercely at me in response, reminding me of what had happened when I had dared approach the Keep’s border. I’d ventured past the gardens and through the woods to the boundary line where the witch’s spell of eternal night stopped, and day began. Shadow had tackled me to the ground as soon as I had got within fifteen feet of the border, first biting my shoulder, then aiming for my neck. If Kiev hadn’t arrived to hold the beast back, I was certain it would have eaten me alive.
I rolled my eyes at the beast. “You’re never in a good mood.” I took a deep breath. For crying out loud, I’m actually having a conversation with a dog. I must be getting desperate.
The only people I was allowed to converse with were Olga and Kiev, although I could hardly call him a person. Olga was cordial enough, but she always acted like she was walking on eggshells around me. I couldn’t blame her. Any mistake I made and she would pay. I wasn’t exactly a safe ally for her at The Blood Keep.
I was often allowed to roam the castle’s gardens, well-trimmed and beautiful. The gardens looked completely out of place in the Keep. Beauty didn’t belong in such a place.
I flipped over so that I was lying on my stomach and propped my upper body up with my elbows. I watched Shadow pace like the brooding vampire that he was before he stopped to face me, his eyes hateful and full of hunger.
“So, Shadow, do you know where Derek is? Is he safe? Olga told me that he escaped. I have to believe that’s true, that he’s somewhere out there, doing everything he can to get to me.”
Shadow’s deafening growl told me that he was getting agitated by my friendliness. When he poised himself for attack, I backed down. “Fine. You don’t want to talk. You don’t have to be mad about it.”
I felt the pressure to do for Derek what I hoped he was doing for me, to find him, but there wasn’t much I could do at The Blood Keep. I was at the mercy of one person: Kiev, a man I could not understand at all.
Not wanting to think about Kiev, I sat up and retrieved the sketchbook I kept on my person at all times. I began thumbing through it. Every sketch it contained made my heart ache with longing. Every single one was of Derek.