I should’ve been afraid, especially when his eyes went all dark and glassy again, but I was just pissed now. “He was my friend,” I spat, glaring up at him. “I know that’s impossible for you to understand, seeing as you don’t have any, but I knew him years before you came along.”
“And what,” Kanin asked in his cold, cold voice, “were you intending to do once he saw you? Go back to your old gang? Join this new one? A vampire among the sheep? How long do you think you would last without killing them all?”
“I just wanted to talk to him, dammit! See if he’s doing all right without me!” The rage was fading now, and I slumped against a wall. “I left him alone,” I muttered, crossing my arms and looking away. “I left him, and he was never good at taking care of himself. I just wanted to see if he was doing all right.”
“Allison.” Kanin’s voice was still hard, but it had lost its frosty edge, at least. “This is why I told you to forget your human life. Those people you knew before you were turned, they will continue living, surviving, without you. You are a monster to them now, and they will never take you back, they will never accept you for what you were. And eventually, whether from age or starvation or sickness or their fellow man, they will all die. And you will continue to live, assuming you don’t decide to meet the sun or get your head torn off by another vampire.” He gazed down at me, his face softening just a touch, almost pitying. “Immortality is a lonely road,” he murmured, “and it will only be made worse if you don’t release your attachments to your old life. To that boy, you are the enemy now, the unseen monster that haunts his nightmares. You are the creature he fears the most. And nothing in your previous life, not friendship or loyalty or love, will ever change that.”
You’re wrong, I wanted to tell him. I had looked after Stick almost half my life. He was the closest thing I had to family now that everyone else was dead. But I knew arguing with Kanin was useless, so I shrugged and turned away.
Kanin was not pleased. “Don’t go after that boy, Allison,” he warned. “No matter what you think you’ve left behind. Forget about him and your old life. Do you understand?”
“Yeah,” I growled. “I hear you.”
He stared at me. “Let’s go,” he said at last, walking away. “We’ll have to find somewhere else to feed tonight.”
I gave the warehouse one last look and turned away. But before trailing after Kanin, I unwrapped the shoes and placed them on the ground in plain sight, hoping that Stick would stumble upon them the next morning. We left Sector Four, wandered back into gang territory and were eventually set upon by two Red Skulls who apparently didn’t get the note about rogue vampires. They then proceeded to have a very bad night. We returned to the hospital with full stomachs, though Kanin and I didn’t speak to each other for the rest of the evening. Mister Broody Vampire vanished into his office, and I wandered back to the reception area to swing my katana at imaginary enemies with Kanin’s face.
At least he didn’t ask me about the shoes. And I never told him.
*
FOR THE NEXT FEW NIGHTS, everything was normal. I continued my lessons, suffering through math and English and vampire history before moving on to training. As I got better with my katana, Kanin would give me various patterns to work on and then leave me alone to practice. He never told me where he went, but I suspected he’d searched everything on this floor and had moved to the lowest floor of the building, past a large red door at the bottom of a stairwell. The one marked with the faded sign that read, Danger! Employees Only. I’d stumbled across it one night, wandering the hospital in a rare moment of leisure. But I’d left it alone when Kanin called me back.
I was curious, of course. I wanted to know what was on the other side of that door, what Kanin was really looking for. The one time I followed him down the stairwell, the metal door was shut, and I didn’t want to risk going inside and having him find me. Ever since that night in Sector Four, there was a wall between us. Kanin never said anything about it and never went out of his way to check up on me, but we were cooler toward each other now and didn’t speak much beyond training. He probably wouldn’t care if I ventured down to the lowest floor, but I wanted to lie low for a few days, let things smooth over.
I didn’t want to give him any reason to suspect that I was planning to do something stupid.
Chapter 8
One night I woke up, alone as usual, and wandered down the hall to Kanin’s office, only to find him gone. A note sat in the middle of the desk in neat, spidery handwriting: Down on the lowest floor. Practice patterns 1-6 on your own. You’ve learned all I can teach you about vampire society.—K.
A strange flutter went through my stomach. This was it. Kanin was absent, and tonight I could do what I wanted. I wouldn’t get a better chance.