six
Sonya Marston was not an idiot.
She could be naive at times, and the sobriquet of “ odd ” had been following her for as long as she could remember, but Sonya had enough wits about her to put two and two together and get four.
She’d never been one for fiction, and yet she’d indulged in it enough to know what happened to hapless victims bitten by vampires. She wasn’t an idiot.
At first, she’d brushed the hysterical thought aside. It’d occurred to her only moments after she’d woken in the ruin and realized someone had sunken their teeth into her neck. Sonya had refused to give the idea credence. She didn’t want to feed into whatever mania her attackers meant to create, and when her heart kept beating sure and strong and steady in her chest, she’d felt silly for the thought ever popping up into her head.
Now, however….
She sought Anton’s face, unable to look at her own hands tinged pink as if scalded or lightly sunburnt. “What is happening to me?” she demanded again, and he soothed her, hands rubbing up and down her arms.
“You will be all right,” he said, taking a breath for patience or strength; Sonya didn’t know. A crease formed between his brows, and he cast his eyes low. “I think you already know what’s happening.”
“Am I a…?”
“Not quite,” he said softly. “Not yet.”
The sting was beginning to fade, and Sonya could curl her hands into frustrated little fists. “What does that mean?”
Anton shuffled so he could sit on his heels, his back to the window, utterly unperturbed by the stray speckles of daylight peeking around the curtains. “There are many ways to…make a vampire, and none of them are certain. In the different societies of my kind, some practices are preferred over others. This—.” His hand hovered over her throat. “Is not as common as you might think. Not in modern times, and not like popular culture has described.”
“Why not?”
“There are…requirements for this to succeed. Specificrequirements most people of age don’t meet. And it’s dangerous.”
Sonya waited for him to continue, fighting not to chew on her nails. It was a nervous tick she’d never been able to shake, and the morning of exams most often found her fingertips bitten bloody from anxiety. Anton looked like he wanted to be anywhere aside from where he was, his silver eyes fixed on her neck and the wound partially hidden by her stained jumper.
“Why is it dangerous?”
“Frankly, because they usually don’t wake up.” He brought his forefinger down to trace the deepest part of the bite, feeling the heat of it, his gaze full of a quiet, morose wonder. “You died, Sonya. You had to die.”
Sonya gawked, wide-eyed and aghast, and she wanted to argue with him. Of course she hadn’t died . She was sitting there, breathing and talking and—.
She thought again about the blood gushing under her cold hand, the lashing rain, and the—.
“Oh , ” she gasped, almost to herself. The crevasse. She’d stumbled into it, the dark rising up to meet her, and Sonya had rationalized that she’d slid down an embankment—even if she hadn’t seen one at the time. There’d been no embankment, no gentle slide down into the depths. She’d fallen, and Sonya knew there was no possible way she could have survived the descent. She’d known it the second she’d glance up at the rocks towering above her.
“That’s not possible,” she murmured softly, desperately. Don’t panic , she reminded herself—but Sonya didn’t know if she felt panic or fear or any number of unnamed emotions. It all swirled in an incredulous knot with no thread at the beginning and no thread at the end. Anton brushed the long, lank strands of her hair from her cheek and tucked them behind her ear.
“Is it such an impossible thing?” he asked in a gentle undertone, like someone trying to calm a spooked horse. “When you have seen me move mountains and have heard my voice call through the stone? Can you not believe that, by the breath of ?sir, the dead might waken again from their sleep? That you might have been judged worthy by the All-Father and given a second chance?”
Sonya didn’t believe it. She couldn’t , because the dead didn’t come back, and men weren’t supposed to move mountains and their voices weren’t supposed to whisper like wine through her veins. It wasn’t real.
The room spun, and Anton helped her stand and sit on the edge of the bed.
“There you go,” he said, crouched before her, hands on her knees. “Deep breaths now.”
“I’m okay,” she replied, and it might have been the truth, or it might have been a lie. Sonya wasn’t sure of anything at the moment, perilously close to hyperventilating. “I saw…I saw you in the sun while you were sleeping. It was on your hand and arm. How come…?”
“I’m older than you. Resistance builds, like a body growing immune to small doses of poison, but it takes time. A few rays don’t bother me, but full exposure would be quite uncomfortable.”
“You said I’m not—not quite what you are. Not yet. Is that going to change?”
Anton didn’t reply immediately. He kept his eyes focused on his hands, his thumb stroking the outside of her knee where the denim had been scratched and torn. “It has to be finished. You have to take the blood of your master—the one who bit you.”
Cold horror trickled like ice water down Sonya’s stiff spine. “But I don’t, I don’t know who—.”
“Which is why I called to see if the outpost was still here. That would be where a team sent to…clean up any incidents—.” He had the grace to wince, his grip tightening in the face of Sonya’s dread. “—would have returned. Seeing as the outpost is not active anymore, our best option is to return home and look there.”
“And what happens if I can’t find him?” She had to swallow to force the words passed her dry throat. “What then?”
Slowly, Anton shook his head.
Sonya’s eyes stung with tears, but she couldn’t hardly complain about possibly dying when it had apparently already happened. Her emotions tangled too wild and unfamiliar to manage, like eels swimming in the pit of her belly, and Sonya crossed her arms against her middle to contain them. Anton had known all this and hadn’t said anything—and yet, it hadn’t been him who bit her, or him who pushed her into the crevasse that claimed her life. She wanted to be angry for his evasiveness, but in the same breath, she felt ungrateful for her attitude and frightened about the future.
She had to find the man who’d attacked her. A man she’d only glimpsed in the full rain on a moonless night for a moment before he’d tossed her aside.
Sonya buried her face in her hands.
“Why are you helping me?” she asked after a moment, gathering her wits and inhaling deeply until her ribs creaked. It was a good ache, one that leveled the overwhelming dread and fear into manageable portions. “You don’t have to do this. I’m not anybody to you.”
Anton gave her knee a squeeze. “What, a man can’t help a pretty girl now and again?” He smiled, and Sonya did her best to return it, though it came as more of a grimace. “I won’t say I’m an utterly selfless creature, because that would be a lie. But you did help me, let me out. You didn’t have to do that. Where I’m from, where we’re going, honor is very important—maybe even above common sense sometimes.”
He took her hand in his own and gripped it as if they were making a solemn pact.
“Whatever happens, I won’t leave you to fend for yourself. I promise.”
What a fickle thing, a promise. People had made Sonya promises in the past, and as she’d gotten older, she’d begrudged them less for the ones they didn’t keep. Anton sounded sincere when he made this one, and Sonya wanted to believe him. She’d never wanted to believe in a promise as much as she did in that moment, confused and worried about what was happening to her.
Sonya nodded, and Anton let go, tapping one finger under her chin. “We will leave when it’s dark. Don’t worry so. You’ll find him.”
Again, she nodded, swallowing the scared, petulant need to say she didn’t want to find this man, that she just wanted to go home . She cleared her throat. “And what about my parents? My school?”
Anton hesitated, and his voice dipped. “Sonya.”
She hadn’t known him very long, but already she’d come to associate that tone with an ironically mellow sternness, the weight of a persona more serious, more somber, than the man currently on his knees. Sonya’s chest tightened, and she stood, stepping around Anton in her bare feet. “I think I need some—well, not air. But—.”
“If I remember correctly, there was a seating area downstairs that should suffice,” Anton said, reading her need for space. “And the windows are east-facing.”
Sonya excused herself and all but ran from the room, overwhelmed and desperate for a moment to herself so she could think and breathe and make sense of this strange, strange new world. Her jaw felt locked in place as she paced the corridor for half a moment, then descended the steps, trying to appear somewhat normal.
The lobby contained only a desk and a radio set in the front room of the house, and the aged, sandy-haired woman seated there peered at Sonya with curiosity as she passed through. Sonya simpered, hand covering her neck, and went into the lounge.
The air smelled of wood smoke and old potpourri, and when she sat down, the armchair released a puff of dust and a little bit of stuffing. She sighed and rubbed at her face, digging her fingers into her hair—snarled and oily still despite her attempts to wash in the early morning. The hour had grown late already, the oppressive sunlight bleeding orange around the shadows visible in the garden from the open window. The cobbled street had become a veritable muddy swamp in the storm, and where water lingered in the dips and grooves of the pavers, thin dints of light reflected.
Sonya had always loved sunsets—and sunrises, bright afternoons, misty mornings, rainy evenings, and all the hours in between. She’d never really being a morning or a night person, simply someone who found enjoyment in everything she could regardless of the time of day. Over the years, people had disliked her because her level temperament didn’t lend itself to easy camaraderie; she enjoyed bad weather and good weather, didn’t like to complain about exams or professors, and found pleasure in doing weighty homework assignments. She had a few fast friends who loved Sonya for who she was, but otherwise, those she’d met often didn’t know what to make of her.
Even now, as she leaned on her knees and wiped her eyes, Sonya tried to remind herself she was lucky to be alive at all.
On the innkeeper’s desk, the radio continued to play. The plaintive, English droning caught Sonya’s ear when it spoke a familiar name.
“ —news from the University of Cambridge today. Four students and a professor from the Department of Archeology have been reported missing after a vehicular accident on the A-Nine south of Helmsdale— .”
Her head swiveled, and she stared at the radio. Her mouth had gone as dry as desert sand.
“ The group was reportedly heading to a practice expedition in the highlands when a landslide swept their vehicle off the road. Search teams have been dispatched, but no sign of the passengers has been found. Progress has been made clearing the damaged motorway, and traffic conditions are expected to return to normal by the morning. ”
The elderly woman made a light tutting noise but otherwise didn’t react. Sonya thought she might be doing sudoku in her newspaper.
“A practice expedition?” Sonya echoed, clasping her hands together as she stared into space.
It had not been a practice expedition, and they most certainly had not suffered a traffic collision.
The blond man from the mountain had said, “ I’ll make certain the humans disappear without comment. ” Was this part of what he’d meant? How could the vampires organize this kind of cover-up? How could they get the department to conveniently forget the legal, documented presence of a prospective archaeological find in the highlands?
And just how many times had Sonya listened to the news and heard about a murder that might have been the work of a vampire hiding their tracks?
For once, she wasn’t sure she truly wanted to know the answer.
She had a choice before her. Sonya could believe everything Anton had said and leave for an unknown place with him, or she could depart from that inn alone and return home. She could fight to disprove her supposed death, though she understood she wouldn’t be able to explain how the others truly died or say a word about what happened to her. She could return home alone and try to find a way to fix her affliction, or simply make peace with her parents for whatever time she had left. She could do that, or she could abandon everything she’d ever known, that world of familiarity, and accept this new stage in her existence.
“Well,” she whispered to herself, heart fluttering. “I’ve never been afraid to try new things.”
Anton found her in the lounge, unmoved, two hours later when the gloaming had overtaken the sky and replaced the day with bruised shades of plum and indigo. He took her by the hand, helping her into her windbreaker and boots, and they returned the room key to the old woman at the desk. The woman thanked them in a thick Scottish burr and told the two travelers, “Ye be careful oot thir ‘n the dark.”
“Why so?” Sonya asked.
“Cos there’s bin a murder, thas why. Ye hevny heard? Doon by th’ market, old Willard found deid in th’ morn an’ they don’t ken who did it.”
Sonya paled—and Anton’s grip tightened on her sweating hand. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said. “How terrible.”
The woman waved them off and wished them well on their travels. A little bell above the door jangled as they stepped outside into the smell of wet earth and heather, Sonya’s heart heavy in her throat. They passed through the gate to the road beyond, and Sonya followed Anton’s guiding hand, going where she didn’t know, following because she knew she couldn’t go home.
He didn’t speak, and so it fell to her to break the hushed evening silence that covered them.
“You killed that man she mentioned, didn’t you?” she asked. Her voice held no reproach, only a somber, solemn kind of certainty. “When I woke, I noticed you looked better. Not quite so pale, with a healthier flush to your cheeks. I thought I heard you leave just as I fell asleep, but I…I attributed that to a dream.”
Anton didn’t answer, didn’t look at her. They walked side by side in the deepening twilight, and when the words came, they almost escaped from Sonya on a coastal breeze. “All things devour,” he said. “Men, vampires, time. These are things that must all be fed. It is a reality neither you nor I can change. I was in the dark alone for a very long while, Sonya. And in that dark, I slept as most others do to avoid the hunger, but it persisted. I resisted your blood, but I could not resist forever.” The softness of his cadence didn’t quite match the conviction in his statement, as if he spoke what he knew to be true but didn’t like to accept. “Nor would I want to.”
Sonya thought of that poor man who lost his life at Anton’s hands. She wondered if he had a family—a wife maybe, or a husband. Maybe children, or his mother or father. She thought of her own mum and dad and a little flat in Cambridgeshire with an untidy bed whose owner would never return. An owner who was meant to be dead.
Anton’s thumb swept across her knuckles, sending a spark of feeling through her skin, and she raised her head to find him watching, squinting as if having trouble reading her expression.
The quandary reminded her of the ‘trolley problem’; it was ridiculously popular among more pedantic academic circles, the debate of utilitarianism and deontologicalism, discussing whether it was more ethically correct to allow five people to die in a trolley accident or to actively choose to divert the trolley and seal the fate of one person who’d otherwise be spared. To Sonya, neither option was correct—and nor were they wrong. She could no more deny Anton’s right to live than she could rejoice in the death of an innocent man.
All things devour , he’d said. That, Sonya decided, was true.
They entered a walkway with unlit lamps, the stone steps leading through a park toward the glistening water of the harbor below. The stars gave off enough light to see by—but when the bushes started to rustle and creak, causing Sonya and Anton to stiffen, she wished more light had been illuminating the trail.
The figure of a man parted the wild gorse, his gait shambling, and by dint of the moon, Sonya saw a familiar pair of brown tweeds and hiking boots. She clutched at her jacket, hardly daring to believe—.
“… Dr. Rangel ?”