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“I don’t care.” I thought of Stick, of Lucas and even Rat. They had been friends. People. Not walking blood bags. “I’ll be different. I’m sure as hell going to try.”
Kanin didn’t argue. Rising, he stepped around the desk and beckoned with a large pale hand. “Come here.”
Wary, I stood, edging toward him. “Why? What are we doing?”
“I said I would teach you how to survive as a vampire.” He took a single step forward, and I now stood a foot or two away from him, gazing up at his chin. Geez, he was big. His presence was overwhelming. “To live, you must understand the vampire body, how it works, how it endures. Take off your coat.”
I did, dropping it on the chair behind me, wondering what he was getting at. In one blindingly quick motion, he grabbed my wrist, yanked my arm up, and slashed it open with that long, bright dagger he carried. Blood welled and streamed from the wound, a second before the pain hit like a hammer.
“Ow! What the hell are you doing?” I tried yanking back, but it was like pulling on a tree. Kanin didn’t even twitch. “Let go, you psychopath! What kind of sick game are you playing?”
“Wait,” Kanin ordered, giving my arm a little shake. I gritted my teeth as the vampire held up my wrist. “Look.”
My arm was a mess, blood everywhere, oozing down my elbow. I could see the wound, the deep, straight gash that probably went to the bone. Psychotic vampire. But as I watched, panting, the wound started to heal, the gaping flesh drawing together, turning from red to pink to white until only a faint, pale scar remained. And then nothing at all.
I gaped as Kanin released my arm. “We are very difficult to kill,” he explained to my shocked expression. “Stronger than humans, faster than humans, and we heal from most anything. This is why we are the perfect predator, but be warned, we are not invincible. Fire harms us, as does any massive trauma. The strongest vampire will not walk away from a bomb going off under his feet. But bullets, knives, clubs, swords—it will hurt, being struck by one, but it will not usually kill us. Although …” He touched my chest. “A wooden stake driven through the heart will not instantly kill us, but it will paralyze and usually send us into hibernation. That is our body’s last-ditch effort to survive—it shuts down completely and we are forced into sleep, sometimes for decades, until we can rejoin the living world again.” He withdrew his hand. “But to completely destroy a vampire, beheading it or burning it to ash is the only sure way. Are you getting this?”
“Kill a vampire, aim for its head,” I muttered. “Got it.” The pain was gone now, and there was a gnawing ache in my gut, though I still wanted to learn more. “But why am I bleeding at all?” I wondered, looking up at him. “Do I even have a heartbeat? I thought … I thought I was dead.”
“You are dead.”
I scowled. “I suppose this is a case of death taking a while to kick in, then.”
Kanin’s expression didn’t change. “You are still thinking like a human,” he said. “Listen to me, Allison, and keep your mind open. Mortals view death in terms of black and white—you are either alive, or you are not. But between them—between life and death and eternity—there is a small gray area, one that the humans have no knowledge of. That is where we reside, vampires and rabids and a few of the older, inexplicable creatures that still exist in this world. The humans cannot understand us, because we live by a different set of rules.”
“I’m still not sure I understand.”
“We have no heartbeat,” my mentor continued, lightly touching his own chest. “You wonder how the blood can pump through your veins, right? It doesn’t. You have no blood. None that is your own, anyway. Think of it as our food and drink—it is absorbed into the body the same way. Blood is the core of our power. It is how we live, it is how we heal. The longer we go without, the farther we slip from humanity, until we resemble the cold, empty, living corpses the humans think us to be.”
I stared at Kanin, looking for any sign that he wasn’t human. His skin was pale, and his eyes were hollow, but he wasn’t corpselike. Unless you looked really hard, you wouldn’t know he was a vampire at all.
“What happens if we don’t … uh … drink blood?” I asked, feeling a pang in my stomach. “Can we starve to death?”
“We’re already dead,” Kanin replied in that same infuriatingly cool tone. “So, no. But go long enough without human blood, and you will start to go mad. Your body will shrivel, until you are nothing but an empty husk wandering around, very much like the rabids. And you will attack any living creature you come across, because the Hunger will take over. Also, because your body has no reserves to draw upon, any damage that doesn’t kill you could drive you into hibernation for an indefinite amount of time.”
“You couldn’t have told me all this without slicing my arm open?”
“I could have.” Kanin shrugged unrepentantly. “But I had another lesson in mind. How do you feel?”
“Starving.” The ache in my gut had grown more painful; my body was crying out for food. I thought longingly of the once-full blood bag, lying empty on the floor. I wondered if there was anything left that I could suck out, before I caught myself in horror.
Kanin nodded. “And that is the price of such power. Your body will heal itself from most anything, but it will draw upon its own reserves to do so. Look at your arm.”
I did and gasped. My skin, especially the area where Kanin had cut me, was chalk-white, definitely paler than before, and cold. Dead flesh. Bloodless flesh. I shuddered and tore my gaze away, and felt the vampire’s smile.
“If you do not feed soon afterward, you will fall into a blood frenzy, and someone will die,” he announced. “The greater the wound, the more blood you need to replenish it. Go too long without feeding, and the result will be the same. And this is why vampires do not become attached to humans, or anyone. Sometime in your life, Allison Sekemoto, you will kill a human being. Accidentally or as a conscious, deliberate act. It is unavoidable. The question is not if it will happen, but when. Do you understand?”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “I got it.”
He watched me with depthless black eyes. “Be sure that you do,” he said quietly. “Now, from here, you must learn the most important part of being one of us—how to feed.”
I swallowed. “Don’t you have any more of those bags?”
He chuckled. “I procured that from one of the guards at this week’s bloodletting. It’s not something I’d normally do, but you needed food immediately upon waking. But you and I are not like the vampires in the city, with their slaves and pets and cellars of ‘wine.’ If you want to feed, you must do it the old-fashioned way. I’ll show you what I mean. Come, follow me.”
“Where are we going?” I asked as he opened the door, and we stepped out into a long, narrow hallway. Once-white paint was peeling from the walls, and glass crunched under my feet as we walked. Every few yards, a doorway opened into another room, the remains of beds and chairs and odd machines I didn’t recognize scattered about and broken. A strange chair with wheels lay on its side in one doorway, covered in dust and cobwebs. I realized I could see perfectly in the dark corridor, though there was no light, and it should’ve been pitch-black down here. Kanin looked back at me and smiled.
“We’re going hunting.”
WE TURNED A CORNER, and the hallway opened into what looked like an old reception area with another big wooden desk in the middle of the room. Above the desk, tarnished gold letters hung on the wall, most of them skewed or broken, so it was impossible to make out what it had once said. There were a lot of smaller signs, too, on walls and at the entrances to hallways, all difficult to make out. Glass, debris and sheets of paper were scattered about the cracked tile floor, rustling where we walked.
“What is this place?” I asked Kanin. My voice echoed weirdly in the open chamber, and the silence of the room seemed to press down on me. The vampire didn’t answer for a long moment.
“At one time,” he murmured, leading me across the room, “this was the sublevel of a hospital. One of the busiest and most well established in the city. They did more than treat patients—there was a team of scientists here, researchers committed to ending disease and discovering new cures. Of course, when the Red Lung virus hit, the hospital was overrun—they couldn’t keep up with the amount of patients pouring through their doors. A lot of people died here.” He gazed at the desk, his eyes hooded and far away. “But then, a lot of people died everywhere.”
“If you’re trying to creep me out, congratulations. So, how do we get out of here?”
He stopped at a large, square hole in the wall and gestured at the opening. I peered through the gap and saw a long shaft, leading up into darkness, with thick metal ropes dangling from somewhere up top.
“You’re kidding, right?” My voice echoed up the tube.
“The stairs to ground level are collapsed,” Kanin replied calmly. “There is no other way in or out. We have to use the elevator shaft.”
Elevator shaft? I frowned and looked back at him. “There’s no way I can climb that.”
“You aren’t human anymore.” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re stronger, you have unlimited endurance and you can do things humans cannot. If it puts your mind at ease, I will be right behind you.”
I looked at the elevator tube and shrugged. “All right,” I muttered, reaching out to grab the cables. “But if I fall, I expect you to catch me.”
Tightening my hold, I pulled.
To my surprise, my body rose off the ground as if I weighed nothing at all. I shimmied up the tube, going hand over hand, feeling a thrill I’d never known. My skin didn’t tear, my arms didn’t burn, and I wasn’t even breathing hard. I could’ve done this forever.
I paused, my rhythm stumbling to a halt. I wasn’t breathing. At all. My pulse didn’t race, my heart didn’t pound … because I wasn’t alive. I was dead. I would never age, never change. I was a parasitic corpse who drank the lifeblood of others to survive.
“Having problems?” Kanin’s deep, impatient voice echoed from below me.
I shook myself. Empty elevator tubes were not the best places for personal revelations. “I’m fine,” I answered and started climbing again. I would sort all this out later; right now, my dead-corpse stomach was telling me I was starving. I found it very strange that my heart and lungs and other organs didn’t work, but my stomach and brain were still functioning. Or maybe they weren’t—I had no idea. Everything about vampires, I was learning, was a complete mystery.
A cold breeze hit my face as I scrambled out of the shaft, gazing around warily.
There had been a building here once. I could see the remains of steel beams and girders surrounding us, along with maybe half a wall, falling to pieces in the long yellow grass. The plaster was blackened and scorched, and charred bits of furniture—beds, mattresses, chairs—were strewn about and half hidden in the grass spreading across the floor. The tube we’d just come through was nothing more than a dark hole in the tile, hidden among the rubble and weeds. If you weren’t standing directly above it, you might never see the gaping hole until you tumbled down the shaft and broke your spine at the bottom.
“What happened here?” I whispered, gazing around at the devastation.
“A fire,” Kanin said, starting across the empty lot. He moved quickly, and I scrambled to keep up with him. “It started on the ground floor of the hospital. It quickly grew out of control and destroyed the building and most everyone inside. Only the lower levels were … spared.”
“Were you there when it happened?”
Kanin didn’t answer. Leaving the hospital ruins, we crossed an empty lot where nature had risen up to strangle everything it could get its green-and-yellow claws around. It pushed up through the once-flat parking lots and curled around several outbuildings, choking them with vines and weeds. When we reached the edge of the lot and looked back, you could barely see the hospital remains through the vegetation.
It was dark on the streets of the Fringe. Clouds scuttled across the sky, blocking the moon and stars. But I still saw everything clearly, and even more amazing, I knew exactly what time it was and how long we had until dawn. I could sense the blood on the air, the lingering heat of warm-blooded mammals. It was an hour past midnight, long after the bravest humans closed their doors against the dark, and I was starving.
“This way,” Kanin murmured and glided into the shadows.
I didn’t argue, following him down a long, dark alleyway, subtly aware that something was different, though I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Then it hit me. The smell. All my life, I had grown up with the smells of the Fringe: the garbage, the waste, the aroma of mold and rot and decay. I couldn’t smell any of that now. Perhaps because smelling and breathing were so closely linked. My other senses were heightened: I could hear the scuttle of a mouse, scrambling into its hole a dozen yards away. I could feel the wind on my arms, cold and clammy, though my skin didn’t respond as it should and pucker with goose bumps. But when we passed an ancient Dumpster and I felt the buzz of flies from within, heard maggots writhing through dead, rotting flesh—of an animal I hoped—I still couldn’t smell anything.
When I mentioned this to Kanin, he gave a humorless chuckle.
“You can smell, if you want to,” he replied, weaving around a pile of shingles that once belonged to a roof. “You just have to make a conscious effort to take a breath. It’s not a natural thing anymore because we don’t need to do it. You’ll want to remember that if there’s a situation where you’re trying to blend in. Humans are usually unobservant, but even they will know something is wrong if you don’t appear to be breathing.”
I took a breath and caught the stench of decay from the Dumpster. I also smelled something else on the wind: blood. And then I saw a splash of paint across a crumbling wall—a skull with a pair of red wings on either side—and I realized where we were.
“This is gang territory,” I said, horrified. “That’s the sign for the Blood Angels.”
“Yes,” said Kanin calmly.
I resisted the instinct to scramble away from him, to flee into the nearest alleyway and head for home. Vampires weren’t the only predators to roam the city streets. And scavengers weren’t the only groups to stake their territories in the Fringe. While some Unregistereds were simply thieves, bands of kids looking to survive, there were other, more sinister groups. Reapers, Red Skulls, Blood Angels: these were only a few of the “other” gangs that had carved out certain parts of the Fringe for themselves. In this world, the only law was to obey the Masters, and the Masters didn’t care if their cattle occasionally turned on each other. Run into a bored, hungry gang, and you’d be lucky if all they did was kill you. I’d heard stories of certain gangs who, after having their “fun” with a trespasser, would slice them up and eat them, as well. Urban legends, of course, but who was I to say they weren’t true? That was why venturing out of familiar territory was a bad idea at best, suicidal at worst. I knew which parts of the Fringe were gang turf and had avoided them like the plague.
And now we were walking right into their territory.
I eyed the vampire at my side. “You know they’re going to kill us for being here.”
He nodded. “I’m counting on it.”
“You know that they eat people, right?”
Kanin stopped, turning to me with intense black eyes. “So do I,” he said evenly. “And now, so do you.”
I felt slightly sick. Oh, yeah.
The smell of blood was getting stronger, and now I could hear the familiar sounds of a fight: cursing, shouting, the smacks of fists and shoes on flesh. We turned a corner and entered the back lot between several buildings, surrounded by chain-link, broken glass and rusting cars. Graffiti covered the crumbling bricks and metal walls, and several steel drums burned around the perimeter, billowing a thick, choking smoke.
In the center of the arena, a group of ragged, similarly dressed thugs clustered around a crumpled form on the pavement. The body was curled into a fetal position, covering its head, while two or three thugs broke away from the circle to punch or kick at it. Another body lay nearby, disturbingly still, its face smashed beyond recognition. My gut twisted at the sight of the broken nose and staring eyes. But then the scent of blood came to me, stronger than ever, and I growled low in my throat before I realized I’d made a sound.
The gang members were laughing too loud to hear and were too focused on their sport to notice us, but Kanin kept walking forward. Calmly, as if out for a late-night stroll, he approached the ring of humans, making no sound whatsoever. We could’ve sauntered right past them and continued into the night, but as we neared the circle of thugs, who still hadn’t noticed us, he deliberately kicked a broken bottle, sending it clinking and tumbling over the pavement.
And the Blood Angels looked up.
“Good evening,” Kanin said, nodding cordially. He continued to walk past them, moving at a slower pace, I noted. I followed silently, trying to be invisible, hoping the gang would just let us go without a challenge.
But part of me, the strange, alien, hungry part, watched the humans eagerly and hoped they would try to stop us.
It got its wish. With muffled curses, the whole group moved to block our path. Kanin stopped and watched impassively as a thug with a scar over one pale eye stepped forward, shaking his head.
“Look at this,” he said, grinning at Kanin, then me. “Lucky night for us, ain’t it, boys?”
Kanin didn’t say anything. I wondered if he was afraid speaking to them would clue them in to what he was; he didn’t want to scare away our food.
“Look at him—so scared he can’t even talk.” Derisive laughter all around. “Shoulda thought of that before you came through our turf, pet.” Scar-face stepped forward, the jeers and insults of his gang backing him up. “Gonna drop your pants so we can kiss your shiny ass, is that what you want, pet?” He spat the word, before his gaze flicked to me, and his leer turned ugly. “Or maybe I’ll just save it for that sweet little Asian doll. We don’t get many whores through here, do we, boys?”
I snarled, feeling my lips curl back. “Bring your cesspit mouth anywhere near me and I’ll tear it off,” I spat at him. The gang hooted and edged closer.
“Ooh, she’s a feisty one, ain’t she?” Scar-face grinned. “I hope there’s enough of that to go around. You don’t mind sharing, do you, pet?”
“Be my guest,” Kanin said and stepped away from me. I gaped at him as Scar-face and his gang exploded with eager, taunting laughter.
“Pet’s so scared, he pissed his pants!”
“That’s a real man, hiding behind a girl!”
“Hey, thanks, pet,” Scar-face called, his mouth split into a truly evil grin. “I’m so touched, I’m gonna let you go this time. Thanks for the Asian doll! We’ll try not to break her, too quickly.”
“What are you doing?” I hissed, betrayed. The thugs stalked forward, grinning, and I backed up, keeping them in my sights while glaring at the vampire. “What about all that talk of ‘teaching’ and ‘preparing’ me and all that crap? What, you’re just going to throw me to the wolves now?”
“Your sense of predator and prey is backward,” the vampire said in a low voice, so that only I could hear. I wanted to throw something at him, but the approaching gang members were more of a problem. The raw lust in their eyes made me feel sick, and I felt a snarl rising in my throat. “This will show you exactly where you stand on the food chain.”
“Kanin! Dammit, what am I supposed to do?”
Kanin shrugged and leaned against a wall. “Try not to kill anyone.”
The thugs rushed me. I tensed as one grabbed me around the waist, trying to lift me off my feet and push me to the ground. I hissed as his arms touched me, planted my feet, and shoved him away as hard as I could.
He flew backward as if he weighed nothing at all, crashing onto the hood of a car twenty feet away. I blinked in astonishment, but the next thug came rushing up with a howl, swinging a fist at my face.
Instinctively, I raised a hand and felt the meaty fist smack into my palm, surprising us both. He tried pulling back, but I squeezed hard, feeling bones crunch and grind together, and gave it a sharp twist. His wrist snapped with a popping sound, and the thug screamed.
Two more Blood Angels came at me from different directions. They moved slowly, like they were running through water, at least that’s how it looked to me. I easily sidestepped the first lunge and kicked the thug in the knee, feeling it snap under my ankle. He jerked sideways and smashed to the ground. His friend swung at me with a lead pipe; I grabbed it, wrenched it from his grasp, and backhanded him across the face with it.
The scent of blood from the gang member’s cheek misted on the air, and something inside me responded. I pounced on him with a roar, feeling my teeth burst through my gums.
The bark of gunfire shattered the night and something small whipped past my head. I felt the wind from its passing rip at my hair, and I spun into a crouch, hissing and baring my fangs. Scar-face’s eyes went wide, a string of swearwords falling from his lips as he pointed a smoking pistol at me.
“Vampire!” he shrieked, amid a flurry of cussing. “Oh, shit! Shit! Get away from me! Get away—!”
He took aim, and I tensed to fling myself across the pavement, to pounce on my prey and drive my fangs deep into his throat. But suddenly, his eyes went wide, and he was lifted off his feet, kicking helplessly as Kanin picked him up as easily as a cat, wrenched the gun away, and threw him into a wall.
The crack of the Blood Angel’s head against the brick pierced my wild, foaming rage and brought everything into focus again. I shook free of the bloodlust, the consuming Hunger, and gazed around in both horror and amazement. Five bodies lay on the ground, moaning, broken and bleeding. By my hand. I looked at Kanin, who tossed the gun almost disdainfully and raised an eyebrow as I approached.
“You knew,” I said softly, glancing at one dazed Blood Angel. “You knew what I would do—that’s why you let them attack me.” He didn’t answer, and I realized I wasn’t shaking with fear or adrenaline or anything. My heart was still and cold. I glared up at Kanin, furious at his manipulation. “I could have killed them all.”
“How many times must I tell you?” Kanin said, peering down at me. “You are a vampire now. You are no longer human. You are a wolf to their sheep—stronger, faster, more savage than they could ever be. They are food, Allison Sekemoto. And deep down, your demon will always see them as such.”
I looked at Scar-face lying in a heap beside the wall. Though his forehead was cut open and a large purple bruise had already begun to form, he groaned and tried to get up, only to slump back again, dazed. “Then why didn’t you kill him?” I asked.
Kanin’s stare went cold. Turning, he walked stiffly over to the gang leader, grabbed him by the scruff and dragged him back to me, throwing him at my feet.
