Chapter 5: Sofia
The moment Zinnia swung the door of my suite open, I dragged myself inside and sank onto my bed. I was exhausted. Every day at headquarters was mind-numbingly routine. There wasn’t a minute that wasn’t scheduled. My time was no longer my own. Perhaps Aiden thought that if he kept me busy every second of every day, I would somehow forget Derek. The idea was ridiculous.
The thought of getting back to Derek was the fuel that kept me going. I knew that I had to find my way back to him and that was the only thing that kept me from sinking into despair. My every waking moment was filled with thoughts of how I was going to escape the hunters and return to The Shade. I went through the trainings and did everything I was told; I was willing to play the part of a hunter if only to gain their trust and betray it afterwards.
Perhaps it was rebellion against my father. I hated that he was acting like a father to me now, assuming that he knew what was best for me, after abandoning me for all those years. I resented Aiden Claremont for keeping me prisoner and preventing me from finding Derek.
“You look horrible,” Zinnia told me as she rummaged through the kitchen for something to eat—right after she had made sure that the door was locked, so I couldn’t escape.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I said, watching her move around the small kitchen. We could’ve eaten at the mess hall along with the other recruits, but I begged her to let me return to the suite. I was in no mood to socialize and I really just wanted to get back to the room that I used to share with Derek before he had mysteriously disappeared. The suite was my sanctuary, the one place in hunter territory where it felt as if Derek’s presence still lingered.
“Are you going to eat?” Zinnia asked as she put a pizza in the microwave.
I shook my head.
“Ben always ate up a storm after training… Do you ever think of him at all?”
“Sounds like him…” I smiled bitterly, recalling glimpses of Ben’s handsome face. I ached whenever I thought of him. “Ben was my best friend, Zinnia. At one point, I thought I was in love with him. Of course I think about him.”
Zinnia raised a brow. “But not as much as you think about the Novak…”
I furrowed my brows at her, wondering what she was trying to get at. She’d been acting strangely the entire day, and at that point, I really wasn’t in the mood to try and figure out her erratic changes of attitude toward me. At times, it felt as if we could be friends, then she suddenly switched and began treating me as if she thought I was the most annoying creature on earth—a burden she had to carry at all times.
“What’s your point, Zinnia?”
“Nothing. No point. Just an observation.”
I inwardly groaned, deciding to ignore her, but it seemed she wasn’t done.
“You know what I don’t get?” she suddenly said after a moment’s silence. “Why is Claudia still alive? After what she put him through, I find it hard to believe that Ben would ever request that she be kept alive unless she did something to make him do it.”
Claudia put him through hell during the time he was under her wing. Even I was confused when I was told that Ben pleaded for Claudia’s life. However, I really didn’t give it much thought after having gone through the motions of Ben’s burial and trying to adjust to all the changes going on around me. When I found out that Derek had left, I completely forgot about Claudia.
“Hasn’t anyone asked her yet?” I asked.
“As if we can trust anything she says…”
I suddenly felt overcome by curiosity about my last encounter with Claudia. I knew the thought was crazy, because Claudia had given me absolutely no reason to trust her, but I wondered if I could make an ally out of her in order to return to The Shade. I scoffed at the thought. I’m actually desperate enough to work with Claudia.
I looked at Zinnia. “Could you ask Aiden if I could talk to her? I have questions.”
Zinnia gave me a long look. I doubted that she had any trust in me at all, so I was surprised when she shrugged and said, “All right. I’ll ask.”
The next day, I was escorted to Claudia’s cell. I barely recognized her, not necessarily because of any drastic change in appearance, but more because of the change in attitude. I knew it was going to be an extremely strange encounter when for the first time since I had met her, she actually seemed genuinely happy to see me.
She was crumpled up in a corner, her back leaned against the wall, seated on the ground, her arms pulling her knees to her chest.
“Claudia?” I tentatively said, half-expecting her to attack me and once again try to turn me into a vampire.
Instead, the moment she laid eyes on me, her eyes lit up, twinkling with delight. A bright smile formed on her face as if she’d just laid eyes on a long-lost friend. “Sofia!” she exclaimed as she stood to her feet and embraced me.
My arms hung limply at my sides as I tried to figure out what was going on. I found myself stiff against her tight hug.
She pulled away from me and gave me an expectant look. “Where’s Derek? Are they going to allow us to leave now? We’re going back to The Shade, right?”
“Derek left… I don’t know what happened to him or where he is…” I found it hard to recall why I was there in the first place. Claudia’s reaction upon seeing me had thrown me for a loop.
“Oh…” She frowned, her eyes showing her disappointment and sadness. “He won’t allow me to go back to The Shade, will he? He’s angry that I tried to turn you… I thought that’s what he wanted, but then even Ben got angry when I did it…”
So she really did try to turn me. And she did it because she thought it was what Derek wanted. Or at least that’s what she says. I was beyond confused. “Why did you do it, Claudia? Why did you try to turn me?”
“You and Derek deserve to be together,” she said pensively as she slowly nodded her head as if our love was some sort of epiphany to her. “I understand that now. If you were immortal like he is, then you could be together forever. Isn’t that what you want, Sofia?”
I stared at her, not knowing how to react. Who is this person? I had no idea if it was all an act. I feared that perhaps it was. I decided to change the subject before she could drive me crazy with longing for Derek. “Why would Ben ask that your life be spared, Claudia? He hated your guts.”
Claudia’s face broke into a strange smile, a spark of her old, crazy self seemingly back, but her words indicated otherwise. “You got to him I guess…the same way you get to everyone… Back at The Oasis, he told me that if there’s any person who could forgive me for everything I’d done, it would be you.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “It was you, wasn’t it? You helped Ben get out of The Oasis so he could ask help from the hunters. Is that why he asked that your life be spared? He did it in exchange for your help?”
She nodded. “You could say that.”
“But why? Why would you help him? You’re in hunter territory because of it. This is the most dangerous place for a vampire to be in.”
“I wanted to help you and Derek.”
I couldn’t help but scoff at that statement. “Sorry, Claudia, but I find that hard to believe.”
She rolled her eyes as she ran a hand through her mass of blonde curls. I saw in her actions a trace of the old Claudia that I had known. Mischievous, naughty, sadistically demented, but again, her words took me aback. “Well, of course you don’t believe me.” She gave me a wry laugh. “After everything you know I’ve done, after I helped deliver you to Borys Maslen, you’d be crazy to believe me.”
“You ruined my best friend, Claudia.”
“Ben reminded me so much of the Duke, but he was nothing like the man who ruined me. He didn’t deserve what I had put him through.”
I didn’t know what to make of her words. It was hard for me to believe, but Claudia actually looked genuinely remorseful. “You know what…” I threw my hands in the air. “I don’t even really care if all of this is just some sort of act. If it is, I don’t know why you’re doing it. I can’t even tell if you’re telling me the truth, but right now, if there’s any way you can help me, then I need you to do that.”
She stared at me, waiting for me to spout out what I had in mind.
I heaved a sigh and spoke my mind. “I need to get back to Derek, Claudia. I need to get back to The Shade.”
The moment the words came out of my lips, her face once again lit up in delighted expectation. “Yes! The Shade! I want to go back too, Sofia. You’ll take me with you, won’t you?” Her childlike glee was blowing my mind until she finally said the words that would shed light to the reason behind her alarming and sudden change of character. “Yuri will take me back, won’t he, Sofia?”
I didn’t see it coming, but it appeared that after hundreds of years, Claudia had finally realized that she was desperately in love with the one vampire at The Shade who could possibly hold genuine affection for her—Yuri Lazaroff.