I flare my senses… and, there!
I catch the faint hint of human life, so thin and frail that it would have been overlooked by any of us.
I look in the direction. There’s a trapdoor leading to the basement under the table. I flip the piece of furniture over and rip the trapdoor out from its moorings.
Inside, just a half dozen feet under the ground, is the saddest-looking girl I have ever seen.
Her eyes are wide and haunted.
She is hours away from death. How she has survived this long, I cannot say. She must have hidden there during our attack and scavenged out every few days to seek out whatever food might still be found in the village.
She holds her knees tight to her body as she looks up at me. I feel her fright—feel it as a more palpable thing than even her life force.
She looks at me and knows she is looking death in the eyes.
I go to my knees. I reach down for her. “Don’t worry,” I say, using the vampire influence to make her completely beguiled by me. “I won’t hurt you. I’m here to help.”
Slowly, with one trembling arm, she reaches out.
I grab her wrist. My grip is so sudden and so tight that she gasps. I yank her out in one harsh jerk, nearly dislocating her shoulder in the process.
The poor girl is skin and bones.
Hardly enough blood.
“I am an angel,” I tell her softly, “here to rescue you.”
Her eyes, for the very first time, glimmer with a new shred of hope.
“But for me to do so,” I say sweetly, continuing the outflow of influence, “you have to trust me completely. Can you do that?”
She gives a thin, feeble nod.
“Come here,” I say, holding my arms out to her. She takes a cautious step forward, then one more.
I close my arms around her in a reassuring embrace.
“You have nothing to fear,” I whisper in her ear. “As long as I am near, no harm shall befall you.”
And then, in a vicious downward thrust, I sink my fangs into her neck.
She gasps and struggles and cries out, her body knowing instinctively this is the end. One quarter mouthful of blood is all I take—it’s all she can spare me—and then I bite an incision in my wrist and press it to her lips.
She fights against the taste of my blood. But she is so weak that I must give it to her first, to strengthen her body, before injecting her with the serum that will catalyze the transformation.
“Drink!” I demand, throwing my influence at her. As soon as it hits, she starts to gulp down my blood.
With every swallow her body grows stronger. It is like giving water to a dying plant. She soaks it all up, meanwhile, always asking for more.
I let her feed on me, let her be as gluttonous as possible. After many long minutes, I sense she’s had enough, and I bite into her neck one more time to gift her with the serum.
Immediately, my blood mixes with hers. Hers mixes with mine. And together, we form a single body, a single entity, one proper being made whole from two separate beasts.
When it’s done, I rip away. I gasp for air—making new fledglings has always been an almost spiritual experience. But this one, this transformation, with this malnourished girl so very close to death, has taken me a long time to recover, to burrow out from the ecstasy overcoming me.
My vision clears, and I can see in front of me again.
This little girl is looking down at her body in amazement. Her gaze runs over her arms, down her legs. She tests her fists, flexing her hands, all in a state of amazement.
I go to her and take her by the shoulder. “You are mine,” I say to her, slowly. “For however long I need you to be.”
I let her go and turn away, hearing my vampires already returned to the church.
“Come,” I command, and she follows me, as if in a trance, staring at me like I’m a god.
We cross the street. The signs of death and destruction do not seem to bother her any. She is fully enamored by me.
We enter the church building. The guards have started attacking the hatch. I hold a finger to my lips, motioning for the girl to be quiet.
Together, we step to the edge and look down.
The vampires there are busy hacking away. The rock is strong, but nothing is impenetrable in this world, not if you have a team of vampires determined to break it down.
Of course, they sense my presence—and the presence of one more.
They stop their excavation and look up. I put a protective hand in front of the girl.
“You found a survivor,” Sebastian says. “You made her one of us.”
His voice is flat, devoid of judgment. He knows the rules of our coven dictate that only the Queen can choose the fledglings who come into our fold.
But we are out of her jurisdiction now.
“Yes,” I say. “This is…” I realize I don’t know the girls name.
I decide to bequeath her with one. “This is Alissa.”
The moment I say the name the girl seems to stand taller.
“Alissa,” she whispers.
“She survived on her own the two weeks we’ve been away,” I continue. “For that, she has demonstrated abilities rare in a human. Rarer still, for someone so young.”
“Yet you’ve stunted her growth,” Sebastian mutters. “She will be trapped in that body for all eternity.”
“Maybe not,” I whisper, running a hand through her hair.
A cruel, dark smile touches my lips.
“How many hours until daybreak?” I demand.
“Four. Maybe less,” a guard answers me.
“So, then you have two hours to break through that seal. And two more for us to load up whatever we find underneath to bring back to the Queen. Get to it!”
“Yes, my Prince,” they obey, and resume work.
“Walk with me, Alissa, won’t you?” I say.
I lead the way out of the church and into the dirty street.
I walk slowly in silence. The girl keeps step with me, not daring to speak for fear she might break the spell she must think she’s been put under.
We walk all the way to the edge of the village. A waist-high stone wall surrounds it. I jump up onto it, then lean down and offer Alissa a hand.
She surprises me by jumping up, much as I had, instead.
Maybe she’s not so meek, after all.
I turn back to look at the buildings. “This was your village,” I say. “It is all you’ve ever known.”
She nods.
“You were born here. You thought you would live your whole life here. You thought you would die here. Is that so?”
Silently, she nods.
“But then, one night much like this one, all you knew was destroyed. Your parents were killed. Their friends were killed. All the adults, all the children, were killed. Yet you survived. How?”
I peer at her intently.
“I… I ran,” she says. She points to the edge of the woods. “I hid there all night. When day came, I came back, and saw…”
“It’s all right,” I say. “You don’t have to say.”
She nods, biting her lower lip.
I squat down beside her and take both of her shoulders. I fix my gaze onto her eyes.
“Do you know what I am?” I whisper.
She nods.
“Say it!”
“You’re an angel,” she says. “Came here to rescue me.”
I throw my head back and laugh. It startles her.
“If I am an angel of anything,” I say, showing her my fangs, “I am an angel of death. It was I who destroyed your whole village. Me and my kind, who you’ve already met. My kind, of which you’ve now become.”
Her eyes harden. “You gave me life,” she says intently. “I know you are good.”
Once more I laugh. “I gave you life,” I say. “Only so that I could rip it away.”
“I don’t believe you.”
The audacity of this little girl surprises me.
“Well,” I say, rising. “Maybe it’s better that you don’t.” I flare my senses, as far as they can go, and…
There! Five or six miles away, along the road, I feel a small group of humans, slumbering for the night.
“Would you like to go hunt?” I ask her.
“Hunt?” She seems confused.
“You’ll see. Follow me!”
I burst off in a breakneck run through the trees, racing for the slumbering party.
I go at a pace that should make it hard for Alissa to keep up. But she surprises me once more with how damn fast she’s taken to her new body.