Chapter 5
It was William, the vampire who seemed to hate me the most. His face was just as the book had described it: shadowed, wrinkled, and hard. His lips were pulled back; his sharp, white teeth were like daggers that could cut through even the hardest bones. A horrifying mask, but still obviously his face. Worst of all, he looked angrier than I had ever seen him before. I didn’t move. I figured if he was going to kill me, he might as well do it here and now. I couldn’t run anymore.
William walked over to me. I felt every step he took in my chest, in my heart. But with every step, his face changed back to the one that I was familiar with. His teeth retracted into his gums, like shells disappearing into a wave-crashed beach, and his lips slid back into place. His eye color became the bright blue I remembered, and the dark shadows disappeared.
“Where are you going?” he said between clenched teeth.
I didn’t answer. Opening my mouth took too much thought and energy. My mind was paralyzed.
“Where are you going?” he screamed, now in my face. I looked down at the snow. I could feel his breath on my forehead, could smell the blood that he had devoured. I did not look up; I was too scared. Waiting for the moment when he would either sink his teeth into my skin or snap my neck.
Instead, he grabbed me around my waist with his two strong hands, threw me over his shoulder, and started running. Fast. I don’t think I’d ever known anything to move this fast, not even an airplane. Then I remembered the dreams I’d had when I first got here. Feeling like I was moving at a high speed without my feet being on the ground. Were those dreams memories of that first night, when William had rescued me from the monster?
Suddenly, we were in front of the Scott house. In the span of minutes, we had traveled the distance it had taken me an entire day to cross. Without stopping, William rushed inside with me over his shoulder. Everyone was sitting there and staring at me in shock. I was not sure if it was a good shock or a bad one. William dropped me on the sofa and turned to Ester.
“Warm her up and give her something hot to eat and drink. I will be back later.”
Ericka stood up. “She’s turning our lives upside down. We need to do something other than feed her soup. Fast.”
I started to cry.
***
It had been a week since I discovered that I lived in a house full of vampires. William hadn’t been back to the house since the day he had rescued me from the mountain lion. The only time I had even seen him was a few days ago, through my bedroom window, standing at the edge of the forest staring back at me.
“Good morning!” Ester greeted me in my room as she had every morning since my return. I didn’t say anything back to her. What was so good about it? That I was still alive? I had not left my room or talked to any of them all week. When they saw I wasn’t getting out of my room to even eat, they started to bring my meals to my room. I hardly touched my meals. All I did was huge my pillow and sob for being so stupid and getting my self trapped again —this time by vampires probably worse than my father. But maybe it was time for some answers.
“How did he find me so fast?” I demanded. Ester looked startled, probably that I’d spoken at all, but also that I sounded so demanding.
“Your scent,” she said as she folded her arms across her chest. She was standing in the middle of my room, wearing black pants and a white top with black heels, and her hair was up in a ponytail, which made her eyes seem larger than they already were. “We can find people by their scents. Every human scent is a little different, and since you had been staying with us for a while now, we knew what your scent was like. William was able to smell your scent miles away and found you,” she explained. I listened, but that wasn’t the only thing I wanted to know.
“Why have you guys kept me here this long and not killed me?”
“Because we didn’t want to hurt you.” Her voice was calm.
“Then why won’t you guys let me leave?”
“If we let you leave, we will be killed by our leaders.” She held up her hand to touch me, but I moved my arm away. Leaders? I thought. How many of them are there? Do they have some big community hidden somewhere that humans are not aware of?
“Leaders?” I asked her. She moved to the chair next to my bed and took a seat, her face serious.
“Yes, we have leaders at a city hidden from all humans. No one knows of its existence but vampires. All vampires can live there, but they can also choose to live in the human world, and if they choose the human world, they have to be careful not to let humans discover them. Otherwise, our kind would be in danger,” she explained, keeping her gaze leveled at me. This was all confusing to me: A week ago I hadn’t even known vampires existed. Now I didn’t just know they existed but had discovered that there was a large number of them hiding somewhere.
“I won’t say anything. I just want to live my life. Please, just let me go.” I’d moved from a demanding tone of voice to an angry one and now to begging.
“It’s too late. Most of us wanted to let you go before you found out about us, but William did not agree,” she said, standing up and taking a few steps toward me.
“Why not? He hates me,” I said, surprised.
“He doesn’t hate you,” she said. “Kind of the opposite, in vampire terms.” I don’t know what expression my face twisted into—some strange mix of annoyance, shock, and confusion, I’m sure—but it was enough to get her to continue.
“He’s upset about you, not with you. Your blood smells different to him than any other creature’s blood he’s ever known. He said it’s a form of torture to smell your scent, but he also does not want that torture to end. Almost every vampire comes across such a personally intoxicating scent, but only once or twice a century. Usually we just drink the blood, and it’s a particularly good meal, and the scent disappears. However, it’s apparently different for William when it comes to you.” She moved closer to the window and stared outside at the storm. “It’s not just your scent that he’s drawn to; it’s more than that.”
What else can it be? I thought. I turned away from her, quickly shaking my head. This was too much. I was hearing things that just couldn’t be true. I must be in a bad dream. I told myself I would wake up soon and laugh at myself for even having dreams like this. I rolled my eyes at Ester—she ignored me and continued. As she spoke, she seemed to be studying my facial expression, carefully waiting for me to answer.
“You must understand,” Ester said, “that our family never goes after humans—and neither do many vampires. Human blood is the most delicious and nutritious kind of blood for us, but it puts us at too much risk of being detected. Any vampire who exposes our kind to humans will be killed instantly by our leaders—no forgiveness is possible.”
“What about the attacks around here? Who is doing that? Surely it’s not an animal like the police think. It must be a vampire.”
“You’re right. We think that it is a vampire. But it’s not anyone in our family. It’s not William. You know that—he’s saved you twice now.”
“I know it wasn’t him—the attacker is not a guy,” I said without thinking.
Her eyes widened and she moved closer to me. “How do you know?”
“I don’t, I don’t know. I just said that,” I lied, hoping that she would believe me, but it didn’t seem like she bought it. I wasn’t even sure why I didn’t want to be honest with her. I just knew the redhead was connected to William, based on the two photographs I had seen in his bedroom and in the library, and I didn’t want him to get any more upset. “So what’s going to happen to me?” I asked her, worried about my fate.
“We have no choice but to kill you,” Ester said in a sad voice.
“What?!” We were back to the beginning again. “I won’t say anything! I promise!” I said, standing up and moving closer to her.
“I believe you, but our leaders won’t agree. If they ever found out we let you go, and they would, they would kill every single one of us, and then they would hunt you down and kill you, too.” She took both of my hands in hers, looked into my eyes, and started to try to calm me down with her powers, but I looked away quickly. I didn’t need to be calmed down—I needed to think clearly now, more then ever.
After Ester left my room, I sat at my usual spot on the window seat and sobbed. William being angry at Ester for taking me out of the house to go shopping and the memory of Ester and Michael arguing outside during Jake’s and Ericka’s engagement party flushed over me now that I knew it had to do with me. I realized that from the time I had heard Jake say only William could decide what to do with me, and felt that they knew something about my fate, something bad was going to happen to me. I should have just listened to my gut and left when I wanted to. Maybe if I had left then and never found out about them, they might have let me live.
The Scotts did not kill me that day. They did not kill me the next day either. They said they still wanted to celebrate Christmas with me, and I found that, despite everything, I was excited to celebrate it with them. Perhaps we were all just insane. But having watched so many movies about Christmas, I wanted to experience that holiday at least once before I died, even if my death was imminent. Or maybe I was actually super logical. Unable to sleep, I had plenty of time to think, and eventually it seemed that no matter which way I looked at it, I was not meant to live. If I went back to Inevia, my father would kill me. If I stayed with the Scotts, they would kill me. If they let me go or I ran away again, I would be hunted down and killed either by the Scotts or their leaders. I had escaped my father, the most powerful man in Inevia, but getting away from these vampires was just not going to happen. I could have just stayed home, done something stupid, and gotten killed there instead of going through all this trouble. But I had been so excited to see this new world and live this new life, and at least I had, if only for a little while. You never know where life will take you—you can only make a choice and hope for the best, and that’s exactly what I’d done.
***
It was Christmas Eve. Aaron and Jake had gone into the forest and cut down a big tree. Even though it was now dying, no longer connected to its roots, the tree would live on for a few weeks. It might even live longer than I would. This just is not fair, I told myself.
I had wanted to decorate a tree ever since I could remember. A few times I had tried to convince my father to take us on a vacation to a country that celebrated Christmas, but he always said no. He would argue that Christmas is celebrated only by Christians for the birth of Jesus Christ, and that since we were not Christians, we were not supposed to celebrate Christmas. However, I saw it as a beautiful holiday that gave people an excuse to spend money, decorate their houses beautifully, and eat lots of good food.
Decorating the Christmas tree was like creating art. It was one of the most enjoyable things I had ever done in my life, even though at first I had no idea what to do, exactly, with the boxes of ornaments and lights. As I went along, I decided it was almost like helping to decorate the palace for a big party.
Michael lifted me up so I could place the beautiful star on the tree’s top, and we plugged the lights in. Then we decorated the fireplace with stockings. There was even a stocking with my name on it. Though it was not my real name, it still felt good to have my own stocking.
All night I kept glancing at William out of the corner of my eye to see if he was in a bad mood, but he seemed calm and chatty. I thought it could be a good sign: Maybe, just maybe, he would have second thoughts about killing me.
The decorating done, William started getting out supplies for, Ester explained, a gingerbread house. Oh, I really wanted to experience that! Without saying a word, William handed me a tube of frosting, inviting me into the fun. As I took the tube from him, my hand touched his cold hand. I pulled away quickly. I squirted the icing, and he set up the walls. We put the entire house together without saying a word to one another.
The next morning, my first Christmas, I actually ran downstairs, I was so excited. When I got there, I saw the most beautiful gingerbread house ever sitting on the coffee table. When I’d gone upstairs to bed the night before, I’d thought it was finished: It had been a house shape made out of sheets of gingerbread. I had been wrong. I walked around it, looking at it from every angle. It looked as perfect as a painting. The white icing swirled across the roof looked like snow. The candy canes and other red, green, and white candies—which were lampposts, windows, and doors—shone in the overhead light.
“Merry Christmas!” Aaron said cheerfully and handed me a cup of coffee. “William wanted to finish it for you.”
I caught my breath. Wow. Why was he doing something nice for me? Wasn’t he planning to kill me? All the Scotts were now gathered in the living room talking, and Aaron swept me into their midst. We opened lots of presents, sang holiday songs, and played family games. I almost forgot how William felt about my scent, and the fact that he was going to kill me any day now. A little past midnight I went upstairs to bed. As I went to turn off the light, I noticed a small gold box on my nightstand. I picked it up and unwrapped it. Diamond earrings. There was also a note inside, but all it said was Merry Christmas. I figured these were from Ester, or maybe Naomi—who was, after all, a jewelry designer—but why hadn’t they just given me these earrings downstairs by the tree? I put the box back on the nightstand and tried to sleep.