Playing Dead: Book One of The Whitechapel Chronicles

Chapter 32

I had been wrong about one thing that night. The hunger never waits. And it won't be pushed aside for long. You don't neglect the hunger, it simply won't let you and naively I had started to believe I could already control it. How very wrong I was.

Finding myself in a new home with six men I had only just met probably wasn't the most well-thought-out of plans that I had ever had. Still, it had never been a plan at all, more instinct than anything else. I wanted to be a part of this and I couldn't even explain why. I didn't know these people and I certainly didn't owe them anything, but something that clawed constantly at my gut told me that Garrick was right. There is always hope. I felt it. I believed it. And that to me was the greatest revelation; that after everything I had suffered, the betrayal, the turning, the torture, crawling around in the dirt and my own filthy human stench, I could still believe in hope and that convinced me that I needed to stay here.

Well, that and the whispers of the asylum. As I had stood in that corridor, feeling that empty well in the pit of my stomach and wanting with all my heart to follow Harper out into the night, the walls called out to me, tendrils of whispers curling into my ears and holding me back, begging me to help, to do something that would avenge their deaths and soothe their spirits. I had turned and placed my hand palm-flat against the cold damp wall and felt the troubled, tortured souls reverberate through my skin. Closing my eyes, I welcomed their voices and knew I could not desert them. Harper's vengeance might have been satiated, but theirs wasn't and nor was mine.

Not wishing to sleep in the same room as any of the others, I found a corner in the room in which Harper and I had sat and curled up on my side, my fingertips brushing the peeling surface of the wall and let my eyelids droop heavily. But of course, my rest was not to be a peaceful one and it wasn't long before the hunger reminded me just who was in control and it definitely wasn't me.

I awoke suddenly as the pain gripped me, forcing me up onto all fours and the sweat already slicking across my forehead as I pressed it up against the wall and gritted my teeth, fighting to suppress the torturous contractions. The hunger whirled around inside me like a fierce maelstrom, battering the walls of my empty stomach and I struggled to my feet, using the wall as support. When I managed to stand half-upright, I remained there for a minute, with my ear pressed against the wall and tried to focus on the whispers, but they could not quell the noise of my hunger as it howled and screamed to be freed.

Staggering to the doorway, I slumped against the frame, staring wildly down the darkened corridor towards the main entrance. I already knew that I could not go out there. It had been a long night and beyond that door lay nothing but the blistering, burning daylight that couldn't wait to tear at my skin and rip it free from my bones. I moaned and crumpled to the floor, panting like some feral animal as the pain spread out through my veins and crippled me. On hands and knees, I tried to crawl back into the room, but only made it partway in before I slumped onto my front, my cheek pressed against the hard cold floor. I could smell the faint tinges of old blood, so sweet and enticing and it just made the agony worse. I scratched at the tiles and gasped for breath as the pains thundered through my whole body. Just as I felt the darkness creeping into the edges of my vision, I felt strong hands pulling me onto my back and dragging me across the floor.

Garrick sat against the wall, his long legs on either side of me as he pulled me up against him, my back pressed against his chest and his mouth close to my ear. I could feel his warm breath on my skin and with one arm wrapped around my waist; he held his other against my lips, exposing the blue veins of his wrist under pale skin.

"Bite down," he urged and I didn't need him to ask twice. As I pierced his skin, he didn't gasp, but instead he moaned softly and stiffened against me, gripping me tighter as I drank ferociously from the small wound. Instantly I was enthralled by how much it tasted like Harper's blood, not identical of course, but there was definitely a sense of him and instinctively I knew it was because they shared the blood of their father, Benjamin Garrick.