“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.