Eternally Bound - Book Three ✎

Chapter 2

An hour before the sun was set to rise, I veered off the highway towards a city that looked like it held some decent hideouts for nocturnal creatures like myself. I doubted there would be any blood hotels around these parts, so I was content with a basement or anything other than having to dig a hole in the ground.

Heading inland, away from Seattle, I was getting farther and farther from the ocean and I missed its soothing sounds, the relaxed feeling it provided when I lay floating on the surface, letting the waves bob me up and down. Without the running water in the rooms at the blood hotels, I'd be filthy and covered in dirt if I stayed underground for the day.

I was sure there were lakes or other waters where I could go swim and be scrubbed clean in, but I didn't have the time to go looking for any. If I happened to stumble across one on my way, then great, if not, then I'd make do with the stank.
Also, staying out in the open meant I was vulnerable if any humans happened to find me. I didn't know if I could wake myself up if they tried to harm me or if I'd just lie dead still as they killed me with any means necessary. Granted, that was also a risk of staying in an abandoned house, but at least I could avoid direct sunlight if I stayed within the confinements of its four walls.

The privilege of being used to such luxuries of hotels had caused a sort of vanity within me. I missed the large beds with their silky-smooth covers, the hot and cold running water in the bathrooms. However, the best part about these things was that I had enjoyed them with Nox. A naked Nox holding me in the shower, a naked Nox on top of me in the bed. A different kind of hunger filled me and I clenched my thighs tightly against the motorcycle until the lust had faded to its usual low hum just south of my stomach.

Easing my hand off the throttle, the bike slowed as I went through what looked like a residential area; crestfallen houses on both sides of the street, one story houses, two story houses, square front lawns and paved driveways, but what all of them had in common was the obvious look of complete and longtime abandonment. As I drove by the darkened houses, I tried to imagine what it would have looked like before the vampiric invasion. Families staying out on their porches after sunset. Children playing on the grass and in the streets, the evening air filled with laughter and carefree thoughts like what to make for dinner or when to cut the grass.

I'd get these thoughts sometimes, reminiscing about something I hadn't even been alive to experience, but growing up, my mom told me stories that her mother had told her about the old world. A world where humans didn't know about the existence of vampires, who were forced to live in secret. But the world hadn't been perfect, far from it. Overpopulation, wars, hunger, some people who had everything and some who had none. This place, America, had been a grand nation once upon a time, but it had slowly fallen, turned rotten from the core by the leaders who ruled it.
I remembered Sam talking about it as well, back in Los Angeles. Before the vampires had come out in the open, America had been on the verge of shutting itself off from the rest of the world. Now I guess it was. I had no idea what it was like in other countries, hell, I didn't even know if vampires ruled the whole world or if we had just drawn the unlucky hand.

Not that I could do much about that, seeing as I was one of them now.

I guess, if vampires in general didn't find a way to co-exist with humans, like they did in Seattle, then there would come a time when there would be no one left to feed from. Then we'd slowly go insane from hunger, before, I imagined, eventually fading away into nothing. Except, maybe that was a good thing. Maybe vampires weren't meant to be on Earth. Perhaps we needed to die in order for the world to continue living. After all, what were we if not death personified? "What's dead should stay dead." I heard the echo of Dennis' voice in my head, but the pain of his loss barely hit me anymore as I focused less and less on my human emotions. I had to let him, and Johan go.

I shook my head, not wanting to dwell on such heavy and complicated thoughts.

I pulled the bike to a stop at a regular looking two-story house, the blue color on the walls faded in most places. It looked sad, worn from the weather and neglect, but the small windows down by the ground indicated a basement and that was good enough for me. I pushed the bike off the road and up the small driveway taken over by wildly growing weeds bursting through the pavement. I went around the back of the house and placed the bike by the wall out of sight. The garden in the back looked just as wild as the one at the front of the house. The grass and weeds here had run wild as well and the patches of flowers around the garden swayed in the gentle night breeze.

As I had travelled away from the desert and up the western coast, the landscape had turned green and lush, having been able to grow undisturbed for so many years. Where the desert was bare and golden, this part of the country was wild, green and colorful.

The backdoor of the house looked like it would fall off at any moment. I gingerly grabbed hold of the round handle and gave it a gentle twist and push, worried my vampire strength would tear it clean off its hinges, but it creaked open loudly, briefly breaking the heavy silence.

Inside, I was astounded to see that most furniture was still there, unlike many of the other houses I had been in over the years. A large grey sofa, a wooden table and chairs, shelves with books on them. Aside from the look of neglect and amount of dust, I could almost picture someone living there. I found the entrance to the basement through a door in the light-blue kitchen, but not before having checked for signs of others having stayed in the house recently. When I found no traces of humans or vampires, I deemed it safe for me to spend the day. Going through the living room, I snatched a random book from one of the shelves and held it against my chest like some treasured possession.

The basement was large, with a high ceiling and divided into three individual rooms, one of which, much to my surprise, had a bed. There was one window in there, some of the glass missing. It was small and square, but to be safe I took one of the sheets from the bed and covered up the window to the best of my abilities.

When I was satisfied with the result, I lay down on the bed and opened the book. The pages were stiff and yellow, a few fell out of the middle, but I carefully turned to the first page and tried my best to read the words aloud.

"It is a...truth...uni...universally acknow...ledged, that a single man in...posses...sion of a good...fortune, must be in want of a wife."

Reading the words aloud seemed to work best for me but going further down the page had me even more confused. The sentences didn't make much sense, which then didn't help me much at all, so after failing to get through even just the first page, I put the book down on the floor and settled myself back on the bed, folding my hands over my stomach.

The sun was approaching; I could tell from the way my limbs were slowly getting heavier. My freakishly accurate internal clock said I had only a few minutes before I'd fall asleep, so I checked again that the window was fully covered before pulling the sheets over me like I was just a normal girl, going to bed in her home.

I wished I was normal. That my parents were alive and well, asleep upstairs in their bedroom. The thought of my father hit me harder than I thought it would. It was the first time since his death in Seattle that I'd allowed myself to really think about him and I somehow felt guilty of it. I'd been so consumed with finding Nox, that my father's death, and Grant's for that matter, hadn't felt as important.

After seeing my father and talking to him for the first time in eleven years, I had been truly conflicted in my emotions. So conflicted in fact, that I had been unable to process it all and had turned it all off to escape. I had taken the easy way out, but I didn't feel too bad about it, because it had felt good. I had hated the man; hated him for what he had put my mother and me through, for never telling me what I might become and for never coming to look for us. For making me grow up too quickly, to see my mother die of sickness and then be on my own.

Once again, I was filled with rage, built up from the past eleven years of neglect and abandonment.

It was that feeling I went to sleep with, the feeling that fueled my dreams.