1. Amy
Chapter 1
Amy
Two weeks later
I hugged the pillow tighter to my stomach, as if more pressure would soothe the cramping and aching. It felt like my stomach was trying to fold itself into one of those little paper triangles Tavia and I used as kids to write notes to each other. Menstrual cramps times a hundred.
Not even crippling depression could make me ignore how hungry I was.
“Amy?” A gentle hand came to my shoulder. I knew without looking that Bea’s brow was furrowed with concern. “Amy, I don’t think we can put this off any longer.”
I ignored her and squeezed the pillow tighter, shutting my eyes against the waves of pain rolling through me. It didn’t matter if my eyes were open or not. I always saw myself in that mirror when I woke up.
My blue eyes were set in black, no whites to be seen. Fangs grew longer when I was most hungry, like now. There was an inhuman smoothness to my face, and I was never going to be able to see the sun at its peak brightness again.
And yet I couldn’t even call myself a vampire. Vampires were born, just like any other living creature. They were powerful and they ruled this world.
I was something else. A brusang . A freshly dead human brought back to life with a vampire’s blood.
Tavia had done this to me, which was precisely why I’d barely spoken to her in the past two weeks.
“I’m going to get Tavia,” Bea said in her sweet, gentle voice before her hand lifted away.
Like me, Bea was a brusang. In the few moments I’d been lucid and not drowning under the surface of my depression, I learned that she’d been turned about twenty years ago. One vampire had attempted to murder her, and another had saved her life by giving her his blood.
It was apparently some heroic thing he did; I wasn’t entirely sure. The guy who saved her was now imprisoned by another vampire clan, serving a life sentence.
My situation was not anything nearly as romantic. A horde of vampires attacked Sapien, my home and the only all-human settlement in the vampire-ruled territory of Sanguine. It was broad daylight and the attacking vampires were hopped up on some drug that allowed them to be unharmed by the sun’s rays. And that wasn’t the only strange thing.
They didn’t just drink people’s blood—they mauled us like animals. Several people died, myself included. Why was I the unlucky one to be brought back?
The answer was Tavia, or more specifically, her vampire mate, Cyan. She was so overcome with grief at my death that she begged him to give me his blood. Apparently the turning process for a brusang had roughly 50-50 odds of being successful.
Lucky fucking me.
I heard Tavia’s heartbeat before her approaching footsteps. That was the weirdest thing, hearing heartbeats as clearly as any other noise people made. For the first few days, I thought heartbeats were footsteps.
“Ames?”
She stopped a few feet away. How pathetic I must have looked from her perspective, rotting on a couch, wrapped in blankets and pillows.
Not that it was anything new for me. Even when I was human, I felt pathetic. I had been born six weeks premature with an underdeveloped aortic valve that gave me a heart murmur. I also had lifelong asthma. What a combo.
As a result, I’d always been smaller and weaker than average. Tavia was three years younger than me, but at ages seven and ten, we’d been the exact same height. When we became adults, she grew tall and strong, while I remained kid-sized. On a good day, I was a whole five feet tall.
Most of the time, I had been glad Tavia was always there for me, shouting down childhood bullies when I felt faint or couldn’t breathe. But there were still times that I felt seeds of anger. Not entirely at her, but just once I wished I had the chance to stand up for myself.
“Amy.” Tavia moved closer. She stood over me, but never touched me. “I’m sorry, but you need blood. It’s been two weeks and I’m not gonna tiptoe around the subject anymore. We’re taking you to the blood bank. If we have to drag you, we will.”
She reached over and clutched the blanket I was cocooned in. I promptly shoved her off, hearing her stumble slightly at my inhuman strength.
“Don’t touch me. I’m going.” My throat rasped with a burning hunger.
I got dressed in… something. I was too damn hungry, or maybe too dead on the inside, to care what I looked like.
Tavia’s boyfriend, or blood mate, rather, met us in the corridor outside of Bea’s place. Cyan was probably attractive; most vampires were. He had buzzed dark hair, angular bone structure, and red eyes. Tavia was certainly obsessed with him. But I couldn’t bring myself to notice him more than the lamps on the walls or staircase going up to the main floor.
“Hi Amy.” Cyan smiled, probably trying to convey friendliness. “It’s good to see you.”
I didn’t answer, didn’t engage at all. Tavia squirmed at his side like she wanted to tell me off for being rude.
Do it , I challenged her in my head. S ay something to me that isn’t a hollow fucking apology.
It was Cyan’s blood that brought me back to life, that made me this creature with black eyes, fangs, and a gnawing hunger for blood. My best friend’s lover’s blood was inside me. It felt perverse for some reason, wrong in a way I couldn’t explain. Not least of all because neither of them asked for my consent first.
If they had, I would have said no.
“Ready?” Bea’s smile looked convincing, at least. Over the past two weeks, she had been genuinely friendly and warm. There was an adorable pixie vibe to her, if pixies had aquamarine eyes set in black and mini vampire fangs in their smiles.
I nodded and went to walk beside her, moving past Tavia and Cyan without a second glance.
My body moved on autopilot, the hunger pains easing slightly as we left the vampire compound and set out onto the street. It was nighttime, but I still had to blink to adjust to the outside sights and smells.
There were so many smells. I wrinkled my nose and rubbed it, resisting the urge to sneeze.
“You’ll acclimate to all your new senses after some time,” Bea said. “I know it’s overwhelming. I swear I sneezed for a week straight right after I was turned. But I’m pretty sure we don’t get allergies. At least, I haven’t met any other brusang who have them.”
I grunted out a noise of acknowledgement. Everyone told me I would get used to this new existence, it would just take time. Time to adjust to a nocturnal schedule. Time to get used to drinking blood. Time for my new superhuman senses to acclimate. And the best part was I had all the time in the world with my new eight-hundred-year-plus lifespan. Time was so great. Time healed all wounds. Time was the most precious currency and I was now a rich woman.
Blah blah blah. Fuck time. I never chose this. I’d trade all this fucking time in a heartbeat to get my humanity back.
“Can you pick out that spicy, woodsy smell? It’s coming from there.” Bea pointed to a small building that had the word DARAKT painted across the front windows. “Those are the cigarettes Thorne is always smoking, the ones that make red smoke.”
“Is it red because they’re smoking blood?” I asked, my lip curling.
“In powdered form, yeah. But it’s not just blood. There’s a bunch of different herbs mixed in to give it different flavors.”
We passed the smoke shop and I got a strong whiff of thick, spicy smoke. It wasn’t terrible, I had to admit. Back home in Sapien, some people grew their own tobacco either for personal use or to sell in the human world. I never could smoke due to my asthma, but I always did enjoy the smell of the dried, harvested leaves.
“Do vampires get lung cancer?” I wondered.
“Nope, neither do brusang,” Bea said. “Our fast healing counters any damage done to our lungs.”
That made me wonder if I still had my asthma or heart murmur since being turned. I hadn’t felt faint or short of breath since I woke up to my new existence. But then again, I’d spent most of my time in a near-vegetative state on Bea’s couch. This evening stroll was the most physical activity I’d had in two weeks.
“That’s a great restaurant.” Bea pointed to another building labeled Carnassian’s in an elegant script. “Tavia and I have gone there a few times. Great menus for whatever diet you have.”
The place was bustling with activity, every seat filled and wait staff hustling from table to table. Large windows opened up to the street, and string lights lined the outdoor patios.
Bea pointed out a few more places as we walked, with me only taking mild notice. Our journey ended at a square white building that reminded me of human-world clinics or small hospitals. The side read Blood Bank in large red letters, and Receiver Entrance in smaller letters.
Inside felt like a hospital reception area too, clean to the point of sterile, with a front desk and chairs for people to wait in.
I dropped into a chair like a pile of laundry, letting Bea handle things at the front desk while pointedly ignoring Tavia and Cyan easing into chairs next to me.
The front desk person gave me a short form to fill out and told me that I would have a human tech assisting me. I didn’t know why it mattered, but also didn’t argue.
Tavia leaned closer to me and I fought the urge to hiss at her being in my personal space.
“Do you want me to come back there with you?”
“No.”
I sensed her flinch in my peripheral vision. “Okay, but maybe Bea can? Just so you won’t be alone.”
Wouldn’t it shock her to know that being left alone was exactly what I wanted?
“No.”
That seemed to send the message clearly enough and she leaned away from me.
A human woman called my name soon enough and led me through a door behind the front desk. She was dressed in maroon scrubs and carried a file folder, just like any nurse would. If I didn’t know any better, I’d thought I’d be getting a checkup in the human world.
“My name’s Rebecca and I’ll be assisting you with your feeding today.” She opened the file folder and scribbled a note on my paperwork. “I understand this is your first time at the blood bank?”
“Yes,” I sighed, wishing for this whole ordeal to be over with.
Rebecca glanced at my form and then at me with her eyebrows slightly lifted. “You were turned two weeks ago?”
“Yeah.”
“So generally, we recommend brusang take blood at least once a week. The amount depends on your caloric needs and other factors such as your height and weight. You may also supplement with rare or raw meat or a bone marrow mash, but that isn’t sustainable for the long term. Since your body is human in origin, you do need calories from human foods as well. Everyone is different, but we like to start with a baseline of one blood meal per week, and a human meal at least every other day.”
She stopped talking and I continued to stare blankly.
“Okay,” I said finally.
Rebecca’s brow pinched, her face showing something like pity. “Did you have any questions?”
“No.”
She sighed and set aside my paperwork, lacing her fingers in front of her. “I can tell this isn’t an existence you wanted. You’re unhappy, maybe even resentful of whoever turned you, and that’s valid. I’ve met a lot of brusang and I promise what you’re feeling is completely normal.”
I blinked, not expecting the validation.
“My job is to make sure you receive the right kind of blood so you can remain alive and healthy. That’s just the first step, but it’s a huge one, Amy. I know you’re resisting because drinking blood from a live person will solidify the fact that you’re no longer human. It’s scary and it’s emotional.”
“I don’t want to do it,” I whispered. It was the first time I admitted it in actual, real words. Any time Tavia or Bea brought up giving me blood, I ignored them or told them to leave me alone. “I don’t want to. Please don’t make me.”
Rebecca gave me a sympathetic look. “I understand, Amy. But you need it to live. Just like breathing air, drinking blood is necessary to your survival. And someone loves you so much they cheated your human death. This is a second chance.”
She sounded like Tavia now. I remembered her anguished, tear-streaked face when I woke up from death. I’m so sorry. I just couldn’t lose you, Ames.
My anger flared back to life. “I never asked for this. No one bothered to ask me if I wanted this.”
The hotter my anger burned, the longer my fangs grew in my mouth, which pissed me off even more.
Rebecca nodded dutifully. “We have people here you can talk to as well. A listening ear might help you work through these feelings.”
“No, thanks.” Unless she had an empty room for me in which to scream and throw things, I wasn’t interested.
The nurse nodded and then looked at her watch. “Well, my shift ends in two hours and those hunger pains are only going to get worse if you don’t feed. But ultimately, it’s up to you.”
I almost laughed. Finally, she wasn’t bullshitting. All the pitying looks, not just from her but everyone, the tiptoeing around me, the platitudes of everything takes time … I was sick of it all.
But I was also really, really hungry.
I didn’t want to drink anyone’s blood, but I also wasn’t ready to give up. I was still here, after all. Pissed off, depressed, and betrayed, but I was here. I couldn’t feel any of those things as a corpse.
And despite the depth of my anger at Tavia, she was still my best friend. I couldn’t bring myself to hurt her, to make her feel responsible if I allowed myself to waste away. She already blamed herself for the first time I died.
I did want to process these feelings. I needed an outlet for this anger. But to do that, I needed to live another day.
“Let’s get this over with,” I said to Rebecca.