“If you serve one of these Purebloods, then how is it you have your freedom?”
“Vampires are evil, infected with venom; their souls become submerged in darkness from the change. Free will is not something they seek. But, sometimes, just sometimes, we might see light. Long enough to remember who we were before. My companions are Vampires like me, freed from our Pureblood Master, with some help.… We don’t want to be slaves to them anymore.”
“But you are still a Vampire,” I stated.
“Yes, and I still drink blood to survive. We all do. But we’re selective over our meals.” Pausing before he continued, he said, “I don’t want to have to kill, you know. I wasn’t exactly given a choice.”
I raised my eyebrows at his statement. I felt compassion for him, but I didn’t believe anyone should play God when it came to who deserved to die. “What did they do when they … captured you?” I pushed, wanting to know more.
“I was not turned by the Pureblood of that clan. It was not the right of the Gualtiero—Eligio—to end me.” He saw my confusion and answered it. “Gualtiero means the Leader, the Master. Eligio is the Pureblood’s name.” He inhaled sharply. “They locked me away with no…” He stopped, searching carefully for his next word. “Food.”
He looked at me blankly as I flinched.
“Withholding my ability to feed is torture. I don’t know how long I’ve been kept in the darkness. They had me bound in silver.” He nodded to his wrists. “I managed to escape, but I’ve got nothing left inside me to be able to fight them if my companions don’t find me first.”
“Would the Pureblood have eventually ended you?” I asked.
“No. My Gualtiero was coming to end me himself,” he replied.
“Is that what Eligio told you?”
“No. My Gualtiero—Emery—and I are still connected, though not so much now that I’ve been parted from him and the clan for some time. But I can still sense him to a degree.”
I was trying to comprehend what he was telling me. It was an existence I knew nothing about.
“Eligio will know I have gone by now. It won’t take him and his clan long to track me down.”
A sense of alarm rang through me—would they come here? Could they track him to this house? Just as I was contemplating the notion of a Vampire ambush, the ground beneath me started to vibrate and shake. Panic began to run through me and I sprinted to the window, checking that the boards were in place, as if that would somehow help.
I turned back to Jonah, terrified.
“That’s them, they’re coming…” His eyes flashed and he snarled a deep, low growl that made the hairs on my arm stand up.
“What do we do? Where are your friends?” I said hurriedly, checking that the wooden boards covering the windows were still sturdy.
“They’ll come, but they may be too late. You need to leave, take the truck and drive as far away as you can get,” he ordered. “Then run and don’t come back!”
Now he was trying to save me.
“I can’t leave you here, they’ll kill you. I won’t let you die like that!” There was something about Jonah I was oddly drawn to. Somehow he had spared me and that was an almost impossible thing for a creature such as himself. I couldn’t let him be destroyed by them. I couldn’t!
He almost sniggered when he said, “I am already dead.”
“You didn’t answer my question: How will your friends heal you?” I demanded.
He looked at me, puzzled. “They will bring me someone to drink from.” His reply was flat.
I thought about it for a few seconds. If he drank from me, just enough to make him regain his strength, he could fight them off and we could escape. Both of us in one piece, I hoped. If I didn’t, his existence would be painfully ended. And they would likely kill me, too. “Drink from me.”
This time I was the one giving the orders.
I frantically searched through my bag and drew out a Swiss Army knife. I rolled up the sleeve of my jacket hastily, my hand quivering as I brought it to my wrist.
“No! I won’t be able to…” He trailed off.
“It doesn’t matter!” Even if he couldn’t stop, I knew he wouldn’t end my existence. It was a hunch. I tried to remain calm.
Suffering death didn’t have the same meaning for me as it did for a mortal; if anything I think I dreaded it more. Unlike them, it wasn’t the fear of the unknown once death had taken hold, because I knew I would wake up again.
It was the waking up part that petrified me.
I could only hope that Jonah would overcome his desire in time to pull me back from death’s white-knuckled grip.
Clenching my legs around him, I sat with my thighs touching either side of his waist. Taking the knife, I sliced a deep cut a few inches below my wrist, instantly drawing blood. For the briefest moment, Jonah’s orbs flashed incarnadine, startling me; the blade slipped from my grasp, clanking as it hit the floor.
“No!” He moaned as loud shrieks came from the distance.
“Drink!”
Jonah shook his head violently. His bone-chilling glare told me that if he had the strength, I probably would have been thrown across the room by now.
I held my wrist slightly above his lips and, squeezing the skin together, encouraged a steady flow of blood to seep, trickling down to meet him.
I watched him struggle to resist. Luckily it didn’t take long for his hunger to take over. He tasted me. Within a second, his mouth was latched around the gash and I felt the sudden sharpness of his fangs cracking into position, stabbing me.
Slowly at first, as if he were sampling a glass of wine, he swirled his tongue, nuzzling at my flesh. It was a strange sensation, and I began to realize quickly that I was the striking surface to his match. I held his stare with my own. I watched as the hazel color of his eyes changed and was replaced by red flames that burned fiercely.
It was exhilarating.
He moved his eyelids downward and began guzzling harder and quicker. It was in the loss of his sparks that it occurred to me that I was now becoming a meal to a starving Vampire.
Only a few minutes had passed and I started to feel faint. Jonah showed no sign that he was ready or able to let go. “Jonah, stop,” I whimpered, feeling hazy.
I was losing all strength in my body, and my legs gave way.