Chapter 6 #2
And considering my need to be close to him in order to stay healthy, maybe there really is no other choice.
Still, it’s like I can feel Vlad’s eyes on me as I walk Layden toward the nearest entrance.
Grandfather let me have a wing of the compound when I moved in a decade ago because I never felt safe around my uncles.
They creeped me out. I don’t know how else you’re supposed to feel about men who kidnap you away from your parents in the middle of the night.
We enter the compound, and I drop Layden’s arm, even though the warmth of his skin is comforting. Instead, I stomp down the hallway under the LED lights that run in tracks along the ceiling. There aren’t any windows in the compound, just this cold, unnatural white light.
Contrary to the myths about vampires, my grandfather and uncles can stand to be out in the sunlight—they just find it irritating and usually avoid it at all costs. Still, when meeting newcomers, Vlad makes a point of meeting them in the sun to help dispel any rumors.
“What is this place?” Layden asks as we walk down one empty hallway, then down a set of stairs to yet another empty hallway.
“What my grandfather thinks of as a perfect palace,” I reply, my voice hollow.
“You hate it here.”
“It’s that obvious?”
“Yes.”
“We can leave.”
I sigh. “It’s not that simple. There are things I didn’t tell you.”
“Such as?”
I sigh again. We’re here now. I might as well tell him. I push through the double doors to my wing and see Layden’s eyes widen as the dark halls are exchanged for pink ones.
“I wanted to piss Vlad off, so I redecorated.”
He nods, eyes watching me, patient.
I look away from him. “So I told you my family are vampires, but that I’m not.
That’s not entirely true. I mean, I don’t have to bite anybody or anything,” I say quickly.
“But it’s like…” I wave my hands in frustration at having to explain it.
“When Vlad feeds because he’s the eldest or the patriarch or whatever… it feeds me.”
“Feeds you?”
I wave my hands again. “Gives me strength. Energy. I can eat as much human food as I want, but if I’m not close enough to Vlad while he’s feeding, it doesn’t matter. I just sort of start… wasting away.”
I finally glance back at Layden. His eyes are only a little wider, but he doesn’t look freaked out or anything. Of course he doesn’t. He’s an angelic being who let himself starve in the forest for two hundred years. There’s probably nothing I could tell him he wouldn’t take in stride.
Which suddenly feels freeing. I’ve never been able to talk to anyone about this stuff. Even Sabra. She always had her own shit to carry with her mom and everything. So there was no one to really unburden myself to.
“I imagine you found this out the hard way,” Layden says.
I nod. “I was born here. Vlad had captured my mom right before she had me because he wanted to retrieve his latest vampire progeny. He was extra excited when I came out as… more. But my dad came and busted us out when I was still small, maybe four? I was okay for a few years, but then I got really, really sick. My parents didn’t know what was happening.
We were always on the run and hiding from Vlad, but he found us when I was in the hospital, so weak I could barely move. ”
Layden’s translucent eyes are locked on me as we walk down the hall.
Somehow, it feels easier to tell this while we’re walking.
I can’t get as lost in the memories. Still, I have to swallow hard, remembering the worry in my mother’s eyes as she looked down at me in the hospital bed that turned to panic as soon as Vlad shoved through the door.
“Right when my grandfather came in, I sat up, feeling stronger all of a sudden after years of being sick. I didn’t know then that it was because he’d drained the nurse outside who’d been so kind to me.
I was just confused because I felt better, but my mom was so scared.
My dad wasn’t there because they took shifts staying with me while the other one worked.
Then there was this stranger claiming to be my grandfather and saying he needed to take me with him or else I’d just keep getting sick like this. ”
Vlad had crouched down over my bed and asked me if I wanted to keep getting sick. I shook my head. But then I told him to leave my mother alone.
He smiled and said if I came with him, he wouldn’t hurt my mother, and I wouldn’t be sick anymore.
I saw how scared Mom was, and I believed him. He could hurt her. And I knew this was the bad man that Mom and Dad always talked about. They got quiet whenever I came into the room and they were talking about him, so I learned to listen from just outside.
It seemed like such a simple solution, and I knew what I’d sometimes suspected was true: I was the source of all my parents’ problems. If I wasn’t there, they wouldn’t have to be scared all the time.
They wouldn’t have to worry about the bad man anymore, and they wouldn’t have to worry about me being sick. They could be happy.
As if he saw exactly what I was thinking, Vlad asked, “Are you a selfish little girl or not?”
Other men had come in by then, restraining my mom while Vlad talked to me.
I shook my head no. I would not be a selfish girl. If I went with him, the men would let my mother go. My parents would be safe. From this man. And from me.
“I told him I’d go with him but that if he hurt my mother, I’d make him sorry. He laughed in my face, but I was powerful again since he’d just fed, and I forced all of my uncles to crawl on the floor.”
I had to hold my mother frozen in place, too so she didn’t try to wrestle me away from Vlad.
It was something I didn’t even know I could do until that moment.
But I felt all the blood humming beneath their skin.
It felt different in my uncles than in my mother, but I was able to control them all.
Cruder than compulsion, I just physically forced their limbs where I wanted them.
My grandfather smiled down at me when he saw his sons crawling on the floor. “What a clever girl you are. All right. I’ll leave your mother here, unharmed. As long as you come with me.”
I nodded, pulled the IV out of my arm, and followed him out of the hospital, keeping my mother pinned to the wall the whole while. It made me feel bad in my belly, but I did it anyway.
“You were very young when this happened?” Layden asks softly.
“I was eight. I’ve lived here with my grandfather ever since.” I stop in front of the door of one of the guest bedrooms. “You can sleep in here.”
I reach for the doorknob, but Layden holds out a hand to stop me. “How old are you now?”
I glare up at him. “Nineteen.”
He pulls his hand away, a line appearing on his brow. “Still so young.”
I laugh at that and shove open the door. He has no idea. “I’ve never been young.”
I walk into a room that is less pink than mine but still has pink accents here and there.
I never particularly loved pink, but I always liked anything that made my grandfather wince.
The walls in this room are a bright sea-foam green, and I bought colorful print art to put on the wall.
A couple tasteful vases with high-end fake flowers perch on end tables here and in the foyer.
All the rooms in my wing are like this. Sabra and I went through a decorating phase when we were fifteen.
An overstuffed couch and a bed with a thick white duvet finish out the room.
“It’s nice in here,” Layden says, looking around.
I nod, satisfied. No one else has been here besides Sabra and me.
“Did you ever see your mother again? Or your father?”
Any happy feelings the colorful space briefly inspires quickly sour at his question.
“No.” I walk over to the little half-kitchenette that’s really just a sink, a half-fridge, and a microwave and wash my hands. “But I imagine them out there happy wherever they are.”
“They were good to you when you lived with them.”
“Yes.” I scrub at my hands even though they’re not really that dirty. Washing my hands at the hand pump with a rough little bar of soap back at the cabin might have been annoying, but it had done the job.
“Do you miss them?”
I dry my hands on the little hanging towel more vigorously than might be strictly necessary before swinging around to look at Layden. “Does it matter? They’re out there, wherever they are, and I’m here. They’re safe; that’s what matters.”
Layden just stares at me.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” he asks.
“Look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Like you’re sorry for me.”
“That is not what I was thinking at all.”
“Then what are you thinking?”
“That it must have been wonderful to have a mother and father that you cared for and who cared for you. You love them. They love you. And I’m sure they are unhappy wherever they are because you are not there.”
He says all this, so matter of fact. I love them, and they love me. I hadn’t thought about all these things in so long, but being back here after I briefly hoped I might be free of it, even briefly—
I burst into stupid tears.
Layden immediately comes closer, and I turn away from him. I never cry.
“What is happening? Are you hurt? Did I do something wrong?”
I cry harder and wrench away from him when he puts a hand on my shoulder. I don’t cry. Why the fuck am I crying?
“Phoenix,” he says, and I hear his pain and confusion in the word.
I spin and throw myself against his chest. He just stands frozen for a long moment. But then his arms come around me. I melt against him, sobbing, and he holds me tighter.
How long has it been since anyone held me like this?
I mean, sometimes Sabra and I hug hello, but it’s not like this.
This absolute enveloping clench of safety while I just totally lose my shit.
I continue sobbing, and Layden’s arms are so strong and sure as he holds me close, his chin notching over my head until I feel all but swallowed up in his embrace.