Chapter Two
Samara
The door opened.
There was no heartbeat.
I didn’t open my eyes. Couldn’t muster the strength.
Everything hurt. It was beyond thirst. I couldn’t lift my head from where it slumped, chin plastered with sweat against my chest. My lips were cracked and raw, caked with dirt and dried blood that brought me no peace.
Every bone in me was tired, as if the life was sapped away, and I was slowly, excruciatingly, turning to dust.
I had only the slightest awareness of sounds around me.
A cedar scent wafted across the stale air to reach me. My nostrils twitched, but I didn’t lift my chin.
It didn’t matter.
“Oh, Samara.” A voice like night—so close. It was quiet, so it didn’t hurt my sensitive ears. I’d known that voice once, but all thought, all memories, had leached away. There was only the thirst, and the beckoning shadow of death, waiting for me to crumble. “You can’t go on like this.”
Soon. I couldn’t part my lips to answer. I wasn’t even sure if it was real, it was so distant.
“You must feed.” The voice was stern, stronger, but it didn’t rise above a whisper.
There was a soft thud, and suddenly the cedar scent was stronger, wrapping around me. The first thing like comfort I’d experienced in the eternity since I’d been in this state.
Maybe that was why I managed to force a single spat of air from my lips. “Won’t.”
A strong hand gripped my shoulder, another tilting my head back. I met Raphael’s blazing gaze, the dark red almost glowing.
“I will not permit you to die,” he growled.
No. You denied me that. The thought came without any ire. There were no emotions left, not anger, not relief he was alive.
“You’re on the brink of true death, Samara. If you don’t drink today, you will fade away. All this suffering will be for nothing.”
True death.
It sounded peaceful.
He was close. As he knelt before me, his white hair was wild and unkempt.
Of course, he didn’t look like he’d been sitting in the dirt for weeks.
But he was as disheveled as I’d ever seen him.
My mind tried to pull the pieces together—he was okay, he had suffered—but it was too hard to tug them into a thread of reason.
“You don’t have to drink human blood.” The words were said calmly, quietly, yet I sensed a bolt of panic in them. Inside me? Everything felt muddled.
Blood. Against my will, my body perked at the word, the thirst renewing painfully.
“You can drink from me, little viper. It will complete the transformation and end your pain.”
I jerked my head back.
His grip never broke contact. He drew closer, so, so close. The other hand cradled the back of my head. I had no strength to resist.
He tilted his neck, exposing the vulnerable, pale flesh.
Blood.
I could sense it, the huntress in me waking.
The human in me craved death.
She was so weak.
He tipped my head closer to his neck. Nearly touching. I ground my mouth shut, sharp pain radiating from my jaw at the force.
Wrong. It’s wrong.
“Drink, Samara.” A pulse of command sliced through me. It wasn’t a thrall, but my lips parted of their own accord. I’d held out so long. I knew it would make me a monster. There could be no going back.
But I was so, so thirsty. And that part of me I couldn’t destroy wanted to survive more than I wanted to die a human.
I bit down.
My fangs ripped his flesh open, and my brutality was rewarded.
Bliss.
Creamy, vibrant blood coated my mouth. Instinct guided me, and I took immediate swallows.
The dimness that had coated my senses went first, sharpening my awareness of the thirst. I bit down harder.
Wetness coated my chin, but I paid it no mind.
The only thing that mattered was the blood coursing through my veins, filling me with strength.
As if terrified he would leave, my arms unfurled, clutching him desperately. His hands didn’t move away from cradling me.
“That’s it, little viper.” The words came as a distant groan. “Take what you need. It’s all yours, anyway.”
His voice soothed the beast in me, but I didn’t let go. I drank deeply. I was dying of thirst, and he wasn’t just water. He was the freshest, most perfect drink, made just for me.
Raphael’s taste was a thousand times more potent than his scent. Cedar and night and everything I’d ever wanted.
He slumped a bit in my grip. Was I taking too much?
Need more, the predator inside me snarled.
So I took more.
“It’s all for you,” he murmured. “Drink your fill, little vampire.”
Vampire.
The word broke through the bloodlust, loathing chasing away the bliss. How easily I’d broken. Given in to the monster that lurked inside. I pushed away weakly, pulling my fangs out. The taste still coated my mouth, and as repulsive as my once-more rational mind found it, I licked my lips.
Raphael watched me for a moment, assessing, but all I could see was his neck.
There were no tidy punctures, but rather skin torn open, the flesh raw and exposed, blood oozing from the wound.
I’d given the rats a better death when I snapped their necks in Greymere.
A painful crush of feeling hit my chest. Guilt?
Shame? It pressed against my ribs, my lungs. I was no better than an animal.
“You’ll get better at it,” he said quietly.
The words were meant to be comforting. I didn’t take them as such. The numbness was gone. The thirst was gone. And now the bliss of drinking was gone.
Which meant I was left with the anger I’d been nurturing.
It was his fault I’d been turned into a monster.
“I don’t want to get better at it!” I jumped to my feet.
The movement came easily now. Power coursed through my veins, as potent as lightning.
I want to be away from him. I crossed the cell to get away from Raphael in a split second, unused to my vampire speed.
No, I want to yell at him. I turned back around, my emotions ricocheting.
Raphael stood, fixing the cuffs of his shirt while staring at me.
And, gods curse me, I stared at him too.
It was as if I’d never seen the vampire king before.
As a mortal, I might as well have been blind.
With my enhanced vision, I could see every part of his face as easily as if I was in daylight.
His hair was longer. I was acutely aware of every strand that curled around his ears, the very tips stained red where they brushed against his open skin.
His eyes weren’t simply red; they were shifting crimsons and carmine, with pupils a shade of red just a feather before black.
His lips looked hard, but I knew how soft they would be pressed against me.
There was anger still there, more potent for my new strength.
But there was also another emotion. One that had only bubbled under my skin.
Now I was surrounded by it. Want. Not for his blood, but for everything else he was, for the way I could let myself see something like care and concern in his eyes.
No. He turned you. You’re a monster now, like him. You can’t trust him. You can’t want him.
I slammed a palm to my forehead as the reprimand cut through my mind. It was too much. Hate and desire warred. Everything had been so numb, and now the two were potent poison, sour and bitter on my tongue.
“Turning heightens all your emotions,” Raphael soothed.
He could still feel my emotions? I slammed my mental barriers back up. I hadn’t paid them any mind since being down here—I hadn’t known if the mental walls could survive his betrayal. Hadn’t cared. But clearly they did.
Or I was just transparent.
Or Raphael was used to all these questions from fledglings.
Iademos had said I was the first he’d agreed to turn—
I slammed the gates down on that mental path. Too many contradicting thoughts hit me, but each one was like a strike against the flint of my anger, making me burn.
I surged forward until we were inches apart. “How could you?” I demanded, tipping my head back to glare. I slammed a fist against his chest. “How could you?”
Raphael said nothing, just tilted his head, eyes crinkled.
I ignored any concern I might have imagined in them and pounded again. With my vampire strength, my strikes surely hurt. He was strong enough to stop me, but he didn’t grab my wrists. I hit him again and again. “How could you do this to me?”
I tasted salt at the corner of my lips, mixing with the copper tang of the vampire king’s blood. Tears coated my cheeks as I beat my fists against his chest over and over, until even my hands ached, my skin cracking over my knuckles.
“Why are you letting me hit you?” I snarled. Somehow, his acceptance of my blows made me even angrier. I was nothing, a weak, barely undead vampire because of him. He had centuries to build strength, but he just took them all. “Why won’t you say anything?”
Raphael caught my fists at last. His hand was so much larger, my fingers nearly looked like a child’s. He caressed my chapped knuckles, and I felt that sensation more acutely than any other touch.
“I will accept any pain you offer me as penance, little viper,” he murmured. “I can only hope one day you’ll forgive me. But know, even if you do not, I regret nothing.”
Nothing? The fight inside me disappeared like smoke, the new strength fading as defeat slammed into me.
“I told you I didn’t want this.” It was hard to see him, my tears clouding my vision. “You knew I would rather—” Die. I choked on the word.
“Attempting to lie will be painful,” he cautioned.
I glared up at him. “Because you turned me into this godsforsaken state,” I snapped. “And it’s not a—” My throat tightened again, the word turning into a wheeze.
“Yes, it is,” he growled. For the first time since he’d come down here, some anger slipped out. “Above all else, you’re a survivor. You can lie to yourself, little viper. But you will not be able to let an untruth pass your lips.”
The anger returned, matching his own fury. “I don’t care what you’ve convinced yourself of. You told me you’d respect my wishes, and I told you I would never want this. I never wanted to be anything but mortal.” There. That was a truth.
But Raphael didn’t back down from my anger. “And now you’re something more. You were bleeding out in my arms, and I had seconds to act. If you didn’t want me to turn you, you should never have put me in that position to begin with.”
That position. Where Titus had betrayed me, poisoned and stabbed me when I’d refused to kill Raphael. After conspiring to do just that. I wasn’t sure what to say now. How much did he know?
It was Raphael who stepped away. My emotions must have been plain again on my face, or my mental shields no longer worked, because he just sighed.
“We will be discussing how those events came to transpire,” he warned. “But for now, as your sire, it’s my duty to see you through these changes.”
“Sire?” I exclaimed. My fangs sliced into my lower lip, puncturing it.
I flushed. Embarrassment hit me like a blow.
Gods, was this going to happen over and over?
I was cursed not just to be a vampire, but one who couldn’t speak without cutting myself on my fangs?
I clamped a hand over my mouth as if I could hide the evidence.
“Don’t be ashamed of them,” Raphael said, voice soft once more, gentle even.
“Ashamed?” I said behind my palm. “They mark me as a monster.” I spoke slowly, trying to avoid hurting myself again. Yet the pain had faded almost instantly—vampire healing. No doubt strengthened by his blood.
Raphael came closer. “You know as well as I do monsters don’t need fangs.”
I flinched. Nelson, who had delighted in tormenting me. Devoin, who pushed me into that sadistic initiation. Titus, who had been the one to orchestrate events, brutally murdering the donor girl to push me along with his plans.
“Show me,” he instructed, lifting a hand to my face again.
I shut my eyes and parted my lips on reflex. Gods, his touch felt good. After days and days with nothing but stone and dirt, touch was intoxicating. He traced his finger around my lips, his thumb pressing lightly against the sharp point.
“They’re lovely.”
A bolt of desire hit me low in the core as his words caressed me. Just a few syllables, a brief touch, and my body ached. I wanted to lean into his touch, to hoard it.
No. Anger. Remember your anger.
I pulled back.
“Everything feels like . . . too much.” That was the easiest phrase for me to get out. Too much of everything. Anger, yes. I wanted the anger. But I couldn’t hold on to it, not when guilt, embarrassment, lust, and revulsion all took their turns with me.
Raphael’s expression shuttered. “It’ll be worse because you waited so long to drink and complete the transformation. Your emotions will be heightened. You’ll also need to stay near me.”
I balked. “What? For how long? How near?”
Raphael shrugged. “It’s hard to say precisely. I haven’t turned another in several centuries, and that was an unusual circumstance.”
So it was true, what Demos had said when I last saw the general—before I’d managed to compel him to leave, marking myself as the necromancer. I fought against the surge of fear that came at that thought. If they discovered what I was . . .
“Your emotions will become easier to regulate once you’re feeding regularly and acclimate,” he continued. “The nearness . . . for fledglings, it can be a matter of days or weeks. Sometimes months.”
“Months?” I couldn’t risk months like this.
He arched a brow at me. “In the context of the next centuries that now lay at your feet, it’s not so long. But it’s unlikely. You’ll be strong as a vampire. I turned you, after all.” There was no arrogance in his explanation, simple facts.
“How near?” I pressed.
Raphael shrugged again.
I decided it couldn’t be that bad. I hadn’t been near my “sire” since I’d been turned and hadn’t noticed anything.
“There are other considerations for fledglings,” he said.
I sighed. I wanted to keep fighting that he never should have done this to me, but this was the reality I lived in. I was a vampire now.
But I’d discovered I was also a witch—not any witch, but the necromancer, the one creature even the vampires feared. A creature they would kill if they discovered one in their midst.
That meant I needed to know what my limitations were. Needed a way out of this bond now. I held my mental shields strong and asked, “What considerations?”
Raphael glanced away. I wasn’t sure where he was looking since there was nothing to see in the windowless cell.
“What considerations?” I pressed again.
“Aside from the need to drink blood more regularly and a complete intolerance to sunlight?” Raphael looked back at me. “Most salient, fledglings can’t stay awake once dawn hits.”
I frowned, exhausted once more. “How am I supposed to know when that is?”
“Because you’ll involuntarily pass out the moment the sun rises.”
“And when is that?” My legs were suddenly less sturdy underneath me. I shuffled a bit, bracing against the wall.
Raphael took a step closer. “Right about . . . now.”
Blackness began to claim me. Strong arms lifted me before I collapsed on the ground.