Chapter 38
Elliott | Highlands, present day
When we retire to the bedroom she’s staying in, Sadie tells me exactly what’s in the syringes and what it does.
Fucking Alexander, I knew he was up to something despicable when he was drawing my blood.
But this? I feel guilty that I’ve contributed to this ‘vampire Viagra’ debacle.
That my blood can be used to turn people into vampires. My expression must show it.
‘It’s not your fault, Elliott,’ Sadie says quietly.
Sitting on the edge of the double bed, she’s being careful not to touch my outstretched legs.
‘You didn’t know you had special blood or what Alexander was up to.
Even if you did, how would you have stopped him? You were shackled to a dungeon wall.’
My jaw clenches, trying to reconcile the mix of guilt and anger that rips through me.
Like my sense of smell, my emotions have heightened since becoming a vampire.
Luckily, my fangs have receded. Otherwise, I’d be in danger of piercing my own lip.
‘I could’ve at least tried to save those other girls. I knew they were upstairs.’
‘You were trying to survive,’ Sadie states, moving her hand infinitesimally closer to my shin. ‘No one blames you. I would’ve done the same.’
I sigh. That does make me feel a bit better.
Resting my head more comfortably against the padded headboard, I eye her, wondering how she’s feeling.
All the bravado I had in the dungeon, my resolve to tell her exactly how I feel, has fled now that I’m actually sitting in front of her.
I’m too chicken to come outright and ask the question ‘Is there an us?’ in case her answer isn’t what I want to hear.
I stick with something safer. The villain at hand.
‘We need to stop Alexander.’ I wave my hand at the three syringes lying innocuously on the nightstand. ‘Or else he’s going to try and make more of this shit. And if it gets into the wrong hands ...’ I shake my head.
‘What?’
I’m thinking along the lines of vampire armies raping and pillaging entire cities. But that might be overly dramatic as I play a lot of zombie video games. I don’t want to scare her, so I don’t say that.
‘This serum breeds vampires. Horny, violent vampires, not peace-loving ones like you and your flatmates.’
‘Lucy seems OK ...’
I stare at her. ‘Lucy got only a small dose. You saw Tim.’ In fact, we can hear him right now via the headboard slamming against the far wall.
‘But Alexander needs your blood to create more of it,’ Sadie says, wincing as a booming cry of ecstasy filters through from next door. It sounds like a victorious rutting stag. ‘And ... and you escaped. So the danger is over. We can go home ...’
I shake my head. ‘We can’t leave those women in the castle. He’s abusing them. Lucy is counting on us to get them out.’
Where’s my brave Sadie gone? Why is she being so feeble? It’s not like her. I try another tack to rouse her fighting spirit.
‘Besides, now that Alexander knows my blood is necessary for his experiments, he’s going to try and get me back. Do you want a repeat of the other night?’
She shudders and moves closer to me. ‘No, that was horrible.’
‘It was.’ Getting torn from your arms was my idea of hell. ‘Just the sight of this stuff is giving me nightmares,’ I say aloud. ‘It’s evil.’
I reach over and collect the syringes carefully in my hand.
Sadie jerks. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Flushing it down the toilet.’
‘I don’t think we should act hastily,’ she says, looking at the syringes nestled in my hand.
I glance at her. ‘Surely, you’re not thinking of trying it?’
‘Of course not!’
There’s a thump against the wall and a loud masculine moan. I swallow. They’re at it again. If they don’t settle down soon, I might have to go for a walk.
Strangely enough, the noises emanating through the walls are not turning me on but doing the exact opposite.
‘My instincts are telling me to wait before we do anything rash,’ Sadie says, taking the syringes out of my hand. ‘We’ll sleep on it. You need to rest.’
‘Maybe lock our door too,’ I mutter, kicking off my trainers and flinging the edge of the bedcover throw over me.
Sadie locks the door and lies down next to me on her side, facing away from me. I’m highly aware of our bodies not touching. I close my eyes, but it’s really difficult to fall asleep with all the loud sex noises going on next door.
Then a high-pitched giggle and gasps start up from the other side of the room. Sadie’s shoulder tenses. Oh no, looks like Damian and Floss are at it too!
‘Jesus,’ mutters Sadie. ‘It’s like Mother Swift’s all over again.’
‘Tell me the story of how you ended up in the brothel again,’ I say to distract her.
She rolls over to face me. ‘You’ve heard it before.’
‘Yes, but not for ages.’
Her lips thin. ‘There’s not too much to tell. I came from rural Kent. I was a farming girl and a beloved only child—’
‘Like me,’ I interrupt.
She coughs a little and looks guilty. ‘Yes. Anyway, when my parents died unexpectedly, a well-meaning uncle brought me to London to live with him in Clerkenwell. I was 16 years old. But after two years of heartily eating his food, he decided that being a harlot was the best thing for me under the circumstances. “It will slim you down and make a woman of you,” he said.’
‘Wow, eighteenth-century gaslighting,’ I remark disparagingly.
‘Yeah, totally Well, I cried and begged him not to send me away, especially not to a brothel. What would my mother, his sister, have said? He was meant to care for me and find me a husband! But my pleas fell on deaf ears. He knew of Mother Swift’s establishment.
So a week after my eighteenth birthday, he delivered me like a virgin lamb to her employ.
I had nowhere else to go, and she was kind to me.
I worked in her brothel until I became a vampire, and then I moved to Paris. That’s it.’
‘Did you ever see your uncle again?’ I ask curiously. ‘Did he ever contact you?’
‘No,’ she says flatly. ‘I never saw my well-meaning uncle again. May his despicable gaslighting soul be rotting in hell as we speak.’
I squeeze her hand gently, and she lets me.
Sadie’s story always gets me right in the gut.
What a long crazy life she’s had. It reminds me too that I’ve known her for only forty years.
It’s nothing really in the scheme of things.
I’m a mere blip on her radar. If we break up, will she even remember who I am a hundred years from now?
***
Eventually, the sex noises stop, and there’s quiet throughout the house.
But I can’t fall asleep. It’s weird being like this with Sadie in bed and not holding her.
It’s like we don’t know each other anymore.
Or how to be with each other now that I’m a vampire.
And why did she react so badly to my suggestion of getting it on in the forest?
I thought she’d be into it. Maybe it was in poor taste and not romantic enough?
But she hates all that stuff! It’s very confusing.
Quite a few hours must pass as when I wake, the room is much darker. The headboard next door is thumping rhythmically against the wall.
I groan. ‘Seriously?’
‘Yup, they’re at it again,’ Sadie whispers. She’s lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling. No matter how weird it is for me, it must be even weirder for her having to listen to her ex-boyfriend getting it on with Lucy.
‘How long has it been going for?’
‘Ten minutes. This session should be over soon. I’ve been timing them. They go in fifteen-minute spurts.’
I chuckle. ‘No pun intended.’
She turns her head and smirks at me. ‘Oh, very much intended.’
We stare at each other, and the urge to tilt her face to mine and devour her sweet lips is overwhelming. But there’s a soft knock at the door, and she slips away to answer it before I can.
It’s Hester. ‘Sorry to interrupt ...’ she says. Through the crack in the door, I can see she’s being careful not to look directly into the room. It’s a fair assumption that with everyone else getting it on in the house, we would be too, especially with our history. But she’s safe on that account.
‘You’re not,’ Sadie confirms. ‘Come in. We’re just talking.’ Is that a note of disappointment I detect or wishful thinking on my part?
Hester settles herself in the armchair by the window.
‘Can’t sleep either?’ I ask. A rapid thump thump thump sounds through the wall from the room to the left, accompanied shortly afterwards by a litany of baritone groans on the right.
‘No, it’s kind of noisy,’ says Hester with a grin.
‘Did you want me to read a scene with you?’ asks Sadie, still standing by the door and seemingly reluctant to rejoin me on the bed with Hester in the room.
‘Oooh, yes please.’ Hester whips out her phone. ‘I’ll forward you the script, but only if you want to.’
Sadie laughs. ‘It’s fine. I’m up for some Shakespeare.’
‘Who do you want to be, Olivia or Viola disguised as Cesario?’
‘Er, whichever one you’re not auditioning for.’
I don’t particularly want to be involved, and my head feels like it’s full of cotton wool. So I pull on my trainers and stand up.
Sadie’s eyes snag on mine, glowing like bright sapphires.
‘Where are you going, Mr Blythe?’
‘I might go for a walk and clear my head.’
‘Hmm.’
I gaze at her, unblinking, waiting for the familiar tug of her grip to keep me here, if that’s what she wants.
Instead, there’s nothing, no tug of the leash.
And it’s like a light bulb going off in my head: Sadie’s spell is broken because I’m now a vampire.
I can choose to leave the room if I want to.
After forty years of complete enthrallment, even a simple action like this is staggering, and I stumble a little against the side of the bed.
Sadie turns away, looking intently at her phone, but I know she saw the epiphany on my face.
She could force me to stay if she really wanted to, pin me to the floor like she did with Tim; it’s her main power after all.
But she appears reluctant to control me—now that I’m like her.
And my main power hasn’t been determined.
If it’s something dangerous, then she’s wise to be self-protective.
‘You won’t go too far? I don’t want to have to go running around in the forest again if you get lost. My Converse can’t handle it.’
She gives a wobbly smile, and even though I can’t hear her thoughts, I somehow know what she’s thinking: He loved me blindly when his will wasn’t his own. Does he now? Is he going to bugger off?
I guess that’s what I need to figure out.
‘I’ll stick close to the house,’ I reassure her. It’s the least I can offer for now.
‘Before you go ...’ Sadie rummages in her handbag and takes out my glasses case. ‘I brought these with me. I thought you might need them.’
‘Thanks.’ I put them on with a sigh. Hopefully, my 20/20 vision kicks in soon. Whoever heard of a vampire needing glasses?