Chapter Fourteen
Chapter
Fourteen
I do up the last button of my shirt. The feeling lingers.
Less than a minute ago, Aliz was tugging at my bra, her lips were on my neck.
I shouldn’t have enjoyed it. She’s a vampire.
I stare at my grey jumper and sigh, tossing it on my bed.
My skin is still too warm to put it on. Only now, when we’re back in the room, do I realise how close I came to killing her.
Had I let her bite me, she would be dead. I stare at her, and she’s still rubbing her ears.
“Was it really that sore?” I ask. I know, from my missions, the effect that hearing prayers or holy words can have on vampires, but the word Christ seems to have affected Aliz more than I thought it would.
“Yes,” she says. “It’s like a really loud horn that’s also punching you in the face.” Her cheeks are red, and she doesn’t look me in the eye.
I swallow hard, trying to focus. “Sounds pleasant,” I say, sitting on the edge of my bed.
She stays at a safe distance. I’m pretty sure Aliz won’t struggle to forget what just happened between us.
She’ll probably have another girl in her arms tonight, anyway.
Meanwhile, I’ll relive it in my mind, over and over.
“What else are you allergic to?” I ask, trying to keep my thoughts in check.
Aliz stares at me warily. “Haven’t you covered that in Integration?” she asks.
“I wasn’t paying attention.”
I already know what her weaknesses are. But I want to know how a vampire explains those seemingly random curses.
“The main one is garlic,” she says. Garlic, which is flowing through my veins. Which she almost drank. “It clogs our lungs. Not a very pleasant death.”
“Why?” I ask, scrunching my brows. I take off my glasses, cleaning them.
“Well, allicin, the main compound in garlic, is a natural antibiotic. In legends, our blood is considered a disease, so whenever we come into contact with it, it tries to cure us.”
“But your blood healed me,” I say. She gives me a pointed look. I touch my neck, wincing. At a cost. “I don’t really get it,” I say.
“Yeah.” She jumps up onto her coffin, crossing her legs.
“It’s pretty hard to explain, but to put it simply, we are bound by the legends of the land where we were born.
” She leans forward, muscles on her shoulders tensing.
“I was born in Hungary, where people’s idea of a vampire is, well”—she cocks her head—“not me, but someone with my weaknesses. Silver, garlic, crosses.”
“Wait,” I say. “Your weaknesses are psychological?”
Aliz scoffs. “I wish.” Her expression sours, and I sense I’ve hit a nerve.
“We’re monsters. Monsters adapt to flame the fears of those around them.
But just as it took humans millions of years to evolve, we’re also rather slow in getting rid of those curses.
” She leans back, thinking. “But it all depends on where you were born, or where you were converted. My mother, for example, is a jiangshi. A hopping vampire.”
My eyes widen, and Aliz stretches her arms out in front of her, mimicking a zombie.
“She can’t go out during the day, just like us.
But she isn’t affected by crosses or Christian prayers.
Instead, she’ll hiss at a bagua, and her skin will burn if it touches the blood of a black dog.
Different culture, different legends,” Aliz says with a grin.
“Right.” While Penny has told me a little about vampires from around the world, my training revolved entirely around the Western vampire. “Why do you sleep in a coffin?” I ask next. “I guess it makes sense for Converts, considering they’re technically dead—but you were born.”
“Father told me the original vampire was a Convert, so technically, we’re still their descendants. Either way, we struggle to fall asleep anywhere else. Something to do with our blood being too restless if we’re not in a wooden box.”
“I see.”
“What else do you want to know?”
“Silver,” I say, suddenly standing, my eyes wide.
“Well, as I said—”
“No,” I say. “Maybe silver will get rid of it.” I’m about to pull the chain out of my watch. But I can’t, not when she’s here.
“And where are you going to get that?” she asks, jumping down from her coffin.
“I don’t know. A charity shop?”
“Right,” she says. She walks over to her fridge and pulls out a flask of blood.
“Are you hungry already?” I almost ask if it’s because of me. Because of what she was doing, a few minutes ago. But I keep my words to myself and watch as she sticks the blood into the microwave.
“I last fed at one, so of course I’m hungry.” She leans against the microwave as it whirs, looking at me with an unreadable expression. “You might be on to something. But what if the silver burns you?”
“Why would it burn me?”
“That mark,” she says. “If it’s vampiric in nature, it might react the same way my skin does to silver. Burning and whatnot.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that a part of me, a layer of my skin, could have been infected because of her. “So be it,” I say.
“I guess we could give it a shot,” she says. The microwave chimes, and her hands are shaking as she reaches for her meal. All the tension I hadn’t even noticed was in her shoulders eases as soon as she takes her first sip. She turns away from me, still leaning on the wall as she slurps.
“A shot?”
“I’ve actually got some silver,” she says, and I gawk at her, my frown vanishing.
“You’ve—what?”
She takes the lid off her cup, gulping it down, before tossing it in the bin. “Yeah.” She reaches under her coffin, and I walk over to her. Why on earth would a vampire have silver? She pulls out a case, and in an instant, I recognise the translucent material that covers it.
Zia.
She pulls the zia aside, and unzips the case; inside, a pair of gloves and a long silver sword. Engraved on the hilt is the same crest that’s tattooed on my neck.
“I don’t understand,” I say, getting on my knees next to the sword. It’s a hunter’s weapon. So why—
“You think the Astras became the most powerful family in Europe by being friends with other vampires?” she asks, carefully picking up the gloves.
I notice that they, too, are covered in zia.
She puts them on and lifts the blade. “My family once had a dedicated team of assassins.” She holds the sword up in front of her, silver almost touching her nose. “We called them Blood of Callisto.”
I stare at the sword. The words reach me, but they don’t make sense.
“Callisto?” I never thought I’d say that word in here, in front of her.
“I take you’ve heard of the hunters,” she says, a grin stretching her lips. She jumps up, swinging the sword around without a care in the world. “Well, guess what. They were originally our bodyguards!”
Penny told me Callisto was formed to stop vampires. To protect humanity from them.
Sensing my confusion, Aliz continues. “My father was a bit of an astronomer during the fifteenth century. Even though their discovery was attributed to Galileo, my father was the first to identify Jupiter’s four largest moons.
And he named four factions of his staff after them.
Blood of Io were the servants, Europa the gardeners, Ganymede his cupholders, and Callisto his hunters. ”
I listen to this, stunned. It can’t be. “And your father saw himself as Jupiter?” I ask, and Aliz winces.
“I guess so,” she says.
“What happened then?” I ask. “To Callisto.”
“A falling-out,” Aliz says, leaning against the false window, the night’s first stars glittering behind her. “My sister was going to take over the family—she was destined to be the new head. Her plans differed from Blood of Callisto’s. So, they killed her.”
“Callisto killed your sister?”
I remember that phone call with Penny. The tension in her voice.
Does she know the truth about Callisto’s origins?
I rub my head. It doesn’t make sense. According to her, Callisto was founded by Catherine Lovelace roughly two hundred years ago.
But according to Aliz, we date back to the fifteenth century.
“They drugged her and took her out into the sun,” Aliz says, drawing me out of my thoughts.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Don’t be,” she replies, resting the silver sword atop her coffin. “I wasn’t born yet.”
“When were you born?” I ask.
“How old do you think I am?” she counters.
I take a step closer; she takes one back, surprised.
“Hm…” I reach up to touch her face, turning it to see her features a little clearer. “Two thousand?”
She blinks. “Not bad,” she says, and grasps my hand, her cool fingers keeping it pressed to her cheek. “You’re off by just a few.”
I gawk at her, “A few?”
“I’m twenty-four.”
“Twenty-four!”
“Are you a parrot?” she asks, leaning down. I finally snatch my hand free from hers, taking a step back. “I’ve still got another six years of aging left. Then I’ll be stuck looking like this for eternity.”
“Wow,” I whisper. “I was wrong.”
She snorts. “Yeah. And you?”
“Twenty-two,” I say.
“All right, let’s see if you’re allergic to silver,” she says.
She lifts the sword again, and I feel the blade beneath my chin, tilting my head up.
“I don’t get it,” she says in a low voice. “You get all flustered when I hold your hand, but now, with a fucking sword at your throat, you’ve got no reaction?”
“Maybe it’s because you’re scarier?” I reply.
“Sure,” she says. “Ready?”
I close my eyes, prepared for the cold metal to burn against the mark, but then Aliz’s phone starts ringing. “Shit,” she says, and draws the weapon away. I notice, just by the way she holds it, that she must know how to use it. She grabs her phone and whispers, “Fuck.”
“Who is it?” I ask.