"I don't want to see him," I shouted at the door. Usually when I told Ankor to go away, he did, but none of that was working today.
"This has gone on too long. Have you even looked at yourself lately? I'm letting him in."
A key rattled in the lock and Ankor stepped through the doorway, followed by Keel, who flipped on the lights. The brightness blinded me and I threw an arm over my eyes.
"Turn it off," I hissed.
Keel obliged, sparing me a desperate, sightless leap for the light switch.
"What the hell, Mills?" he said, and then to Ankor, "Why didn't you tell me it was this bad?"
Ankor looked ashamed, but also more than a little pissed. Not an expression I was used to seeing on his face. "She made me swear I wouldn't. Besides, you can't tell me you haven't been feeling this through your bond."
Keel slugged him, which wasn't exactly fair; Ankor made a good point.
Ankor rubbed his chin where Keel's fist had collided with his face, but for once he kept right on talking. "Never mind what I have and haven't done, why haven't you come down here? You're supposed to be feeding her. That was your job in this arrangement, and you've been too stubborn to do it. You can't put that on me. I haven't taken blood from her in days. Everyone's starving but you and that seer, and you haven't even noticed. Or worse, you've ignored it." With that, he left. Probably smart. Given the way Keel's fists were clenched and white-knuckled, there was a very real possibility he'd throw another punch.
No longer having Ankor to rage at, he turned to me and I braced for his anger, but his next words were softer. "Mills, this has to stop."
"I'm tired. Let's stop it tomorrow," I said. This was more excitement than I'd seen in... I'd lost count of the days.
"No, not tomorrow."
I curled into myself and yanked the covers over my head. All this talking was giving me a migraine. Sleep would help. Sleep, if nothing else, still brought peace.
The mattress moved. Keel had sat down beside me. He pulled back the covers.
"You need to drink," he said.
I rolled onto my back and stared up at him; his rock-star cheekbones out of place in this dim, clothes-and-rubbish-strewn room. So much healthier than when I'd last seen him. And why not? He was eating and not feeding me. His hair full and dark tickled his shoulders, having grown since we'd arrived here. If I ran my fingers through it, it would be soft and freshly washed. Lucia's blood suited him well, it seemed.
A familiar ache bloomed in my chest. "I don't want to taste her on you."
"Have you ever tasted any of my bleeders on me?"
I closed my eyes. My mind no longer quick or clever enough to win arguments with Keel. It's interesting the things that prolonged fasting takes from you.
I sighed and fought the urge to roll over and further shut him out. If I turned away now, I'd never turn back. "What do you want from me, Keel?"
"I want you back."
"And how does that work?" I asked, opening my eyes to look at him.
"You let me stay here tonight."
"Lucia and Ankor shouldn't be alone."
"I promise you, they'll be fine." Keel laid down next to me, so we were eye level with each other. "Now what do you say?"
This time, I did roll away from him. "You can do what you like. You're paying for this room."
"Why are you doing this, Mills?"
"Why did you stay away?"
"I thought you'd come upstairs when you got hungry enough."
"Why not come down here?"
"I was talking with the dead, trying to figure out what comes next."
"Every minute of every day?"
"No, but-"
"Then why did you stay away?"
Silence. Then: "I don't know."
If I wasn't so damned dehydrated I probably would have cried, instead a dull ache consumed my chest. When had Keel and I forgotten how to talk?
"I'm here now," he offered.
This time the silence was mine, but as soon as the smell of Keel's blood hit the air, every Nosferatu instinct in my body kicked into overdrive. The hunger that had dissipated, waned, and then disappeared, surged back with a wallop that forced my knees to my chest. A groan squeezed itself out from between my lips, as if my spasming body hadn't betrayed me enough.
"Take a little, it'll make you feel better," Keel said.
I wrapped my arms around my legs and gritted my teeth, trying to absorb the hunger pangs.
"Come on, Mills." Almost a plea.
"Tell me why you stayed away first."
Keel sighed. "I told you. I don't know."
"What do you mean, you don't know?"
"Just that. I knew I should come down here, but first I was angry and then the other stuff was so gruelling that I put it off and put it off, thinking you'd eventually just come back upstairs. But you didn't and by then I'd put it off so long that..."
"I don't understand."
"I don't either." I felt his forehead come to rest between my shoulder blades. It was the first time he'd touched me since arriving. There was only the slightest zing of connection, but I wasn't sure if that was because we'd damaged the bond or because my body was singularly fixated on his blood. I searched for that ever-present feeling of rightness and couldn't find it.
"What's happening to us?" I whispered.
He didn't answer, but I felt a bit of movement behind me, he'd either shaken his head or shrugged.
"Take a bit of blood," he said, and the smell strengthened. He'd deepened the wound. The more he bled, the more my body ached for it. "It'll help, I promise."
"Fine," I relented, and his arm appeared over my shoulder.
"Just a little though. We don't want to shock your system."
I probably should have asked what he meant by "shock your system," but as soon as my eyes caught sight of the red stuff, my neck instinctually craned upward, mouth wide open, and then Keel's arm was there. I swallowed once, twice, before shoving the appendage away. He needn't have worried about me taking too much; his life force blazed down my throat like wildfire, and as I fell back on the pillow, gasping, I pictured him burning me from the inside out as I'd once done to him.
"Just another way starvation isn't ideal for our kind," he said. His hand was back, but this time he was using it to stroke the matted hair from my sweaty forehead.
And you still let me starve. My throat felt so raw and swollen there was no way I could speak. I could only hope the bond still let me talk inside his head.
You also let yourself starve, Keel corrected. Why didn't you come upstairs?
I couldn't. Even as I said it, I knew this was no better answer than Keel's "I don't know," but it was just as honest.
Keel's hand left my forehead and he switched back to speaking out loud. "Listen. I need to go talk to Ankor and Lucia for a minute, but I'll be right back."
"You don't have to come back," I mumbled.
"I'm coming back."
I didn't turn to watch him leave, but I heard him slip Ankor's key off the coffee table. There'd be no keeping him out now. Did I even still want that?
The fire in my throat had burned itself down to warm coals, and my stomach - so long asked to subsist on almost nothing - was rumbling as it hadn't in days, demanding more of the fiery medicine that healed what ailed it. How long would drinking Keel's blood hurt? I wondered. Just more suffering to add onto the indignity of everything else.
But at least he came, the voice in my head reminded me.
But so, so late, I reminded it right back. And dragged down by Ankor.
Keel kept his word and returned ten minutes later. He had all his bags with him.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Moving in."
He began to tidy up the Styrofoam containers, spoiled food, and dirty, wrinkled clothes, much as I used to do in our old room.
"I said you could stay the night, not move in."
"I know, but you're going to need to eat every hour or so for the next few days, and running up and down the stairs is neither safe nor convenient.
"Fine," I said, mostly because I was in no condition to fight him. He could probably pin me to the mattress with one finger given the shape I was in.
"You're still mad?"
My stare became a glare. "Of course I'm still mad."
Keel kept on cleaning the room, and despite my anger, I kept on watching him traverse the dreary space, marvelling at the way his muscles shifted beneath his T-shirt and the casual litheness of his movements. He was everything I wasn't anymore, right down to the maid routine.
I'd given up and Keel had risen up - or something.
When he was halfway done tidying, he returned to the bed, sitting in the same spot as he had before. "Okay, time for a few more sips."
I knew it would scald and burn and make me feel like I was dying even more than the starvation did, but I took his wrist right away this time, and managed three whole swallows before turning my head and howling into the pillow.
"Why the hell does it hurt so much?" I choked out once I was able. "Ankor was starving and he took my blood without any problem. Took a lot of it even."
"Because the final stages of starvation hadn't set in for him yet. Once they do, a Nosferatu body enters a sort-of..." Keel paused and I could tell he was looking for the right word, likely because the human language didn't have a proper equivalent. Our differences were extreme enough that it happened from time to time. "Hibernation" is what he went with. "It's the body's final effort to stave off cell death. And once in this state, you must be nourished out of it carefully."
Cell death.
I'm not sure two more ominous words had ever been spoken in this space.
"Never mind that you're not fully Nosferatu, so..."
"We just don't know," I finished for him.
"Hopefully anything my blood can't heal, magic can."
"Hopefully," I echoed back, but I wasn't sure what I hoped for anymore. "How long can this 'hibernation' state last?"
"Surprisingly long, but you'd soon lose your ability to move or speak, and it's hard to recover from that level of malnutrition without permanent aftereffects. That's why it's good you're taking the blood."
Keel finished his marathon housekeeping session and brought his arm back for a third feeding. No extra swallows this time, but I thought maybe the wildfire had been knocked down a degree or two.
With nothing else to fold or wash or pitch into the garbage, Keel's attention remained with me. I could feel his questions tugging at the constraints of the bond, threatening to spill into my head if he let them, but he'd corralled them as effectively as cattle.
"Why was this the thing that made you so mad?" he said finally. "Why is this the thing you can't get past?"
It's not that I didn't understand where he was coming from; I'd forgiven executions, and torture, and even murder, but this had smashed me into a million little Mills pieces.
"I guess..." I started, testing out my throat against the lingering sting of Keel's blood. "It's just... I know we lost the compound, but you've still gotten everything you've wanted - including my best friend. And what about me? What have I got in all this?
"You have me."
"Do I? Because that's not what your absence told me."
"I made a mistake, Mills, but I'm here now."
"What if that's not enough?" My voice broke on the final word and I pulled the blanket up over my head again. Fuck. I hadn't wanted to cry.
Keel surprised me by climbing under the sheets with me, though he stayed to the edge of the bed, careful not to touch me.
"It's not enough?" His voice was quiet.
"You know how you said you couldn't live with the hunger?"
He nodded. His red eyes seemed brighter under here.
"Well, I can't live with the pain."
"I thought you said we needed to survive this?"
"And I thought you said you never wanted to lose me?"
"I don't." He started to extend a hand but hesitated, perhaps sensing that it wouldn't be welcome.
"Then where have you been?" I said, exasperated.
"I don't have the answers you want."
I met his red eyes. "Then how am I supposed to forgive you?"
Keel let that question hang in the air so long that I gave up on him answering and switched on the TV. No sooner had the sound of disembodied voices filled the room, when he reached over and slipped the remote from my hand. After turning the television off, he placed it on the night table out of my reach.
"Hey!" I protested.
"A little more blood and then you need to get some sleep and let it do its work."
"Is that what would make you happy?"
"It'd make me less worried."
"Open your wrist then," I said, and watched as he buried his fangs in his arm before offering it to me. I was momentarily transfixed by the red drops falling and spreading out on the off-white sheets, but as before, the smell of Keel's life force brought me right to the source.
"Not too much," he warned as he'd done all night, and just as always my body forced me to abide or succumb to howling misery.
Once I was done, Keel pulled the sheets tighter around us, but kept to his side of the bed. "A little more in an hour," he said, and I nodded numbly at him and closed my eyes.
While I doubted my ability to doze off without the background noise of the TV, it had been days since I'd stayed awake this long, and soon, without much difficulty at all, I'd drifted off to sleep.
Keel woke me like clockwork, always just long enough for him to slip me some blood, and then he let me go again. Reminding me time and again, as if it mattered, that "It's okay to sleep, I'll be here when you wake."
When I woke up for good the following night, I found that Keel had kept his word. Also, that he was no longer alone.
Ephraim sat in one of those high-backed uncomfortable floral monstrosities by the window, looking pained. Keel sat in the other one, his lips a tight line, his claws threatening to cut grooves into his jeans.
"Get the other two," my father said to Keel when he saw I was awake, and five minutes later Keel returned with Ankor and Lucia, whose mouths formed equally thin, pinched lines on their faces. Keel must have warned them that Ephraim was not pleased.
Lucia took a seat at the foot of the bed and proceeded to stare at the floor. Ankor moved behind it and remained standing, while Keel returned to the uncomfortable chair opposite Ephraim.
There was no doubt this was bad, but there was also no denying the joy I felt at seeing my father. He was alive. He'd come back. If I'd had more energy I'd have jumped up and thrown my arms around him. Instead, I just smiled. I was the only one in the room who didn't look like they'd just come from a funeral.
Ephraim assessed the four of us. His expression one of molten fury.
"What the hell have you all been doing since I left?" he asked. Lucia and Ankor kept their heads down, either in shame or in hopes of deflecting some of my father's rage. Keel did not. To Keel, he said: "Your wife is wasting away, and you're living up there instead of down here with her. Do you think that is right?"
Unexpected anguish played out across Keel's face.
"I thought- The ghosts- She wouldn't-" He stuttered and then gave up.
My father exploded. "You are bonded. That bond comes with expectations." I wondered why he didn't bring up our marriage again, that came with expectations too.
"And you," Ephraim was talking to Lucia but staring at the fang marks Keel had left in her arm, which for some reason he'd chosen not to heal. "Your mother is going to kill me."
"I'm sorry, sir," Lucia said, sounding contrite and terrified.
"What are you doing here?" he asked her.
Unlike Keel, Lucia found her voice and explained as best she could about the ghosts without telling my father any more than she had told me.
"That doesn't explain the..." My father waved his hand at the bite marks.
Here, Keel jumped in. "Hunting wasn't working. It was all consensual."
"Doesn't look like it to me," my father said, but he wasn't looking at Lucia anymore, his eyes and the bags they carried beneath them were locked on me.
"I tried to tell you, it's complica-" Keel went on.
"I don't want to hear any more of your pathetic excuses," my father roared and erupted out of his chair. He grabbed Keel by the collar of his T-shirt, pulling him to his feet. Keel had the strength to stop this, but he took my father's anger. "You need to fix this."
"I am. I've already started," Keel said.
"And not just this, whatever started it too." He still had his fist clenched at Keel's neck.
"I understand," Keel told him.
Ephraim released him.
"And you two," he turned his attention to Lucia and Ankor, who were as white as ghosts, "I'll talk to you upstairs." They both understood that meant they were dismissed and scurried for the door.
Ephraim picked up his coat, pausing before following them out. His eyes found Keel's again. "You will not leave this room, not even to hunt. I'll determine when you hunt. Any questions?"
"No," Keel said.
"And don't you dare forget even for one second that that's my daughter."
"I won't," he promised.
Keel and I didn't move until the door swung shut, then I said, "Looks like you just got grounded."
"What?"
"Human expression, never mind."
I heard a door slam upstairs and then the yelling resumed. I cringed. "He has the worst timing."
Keel returned to the edge of the bed and opened his wrist for me. "I told Lucia to see if the ghosts could help us find him. And they did."
I was finally able to keep down more than a few swallows, and I thought about him seeking out my dad as I drank. He must have been super worried; one didn't summon Ephraim unless one was also willing to suffer the wrath of Ephraim.
"Why?" I said when I was done and had licked the excess blood from my lips. No way was I going to let any of that go to waste, not after going without for so long.
"Because after I saw you yesterday I knew that this couldn't go on."
"You're only realizing that now?"
"Come on, Mills. That's not fair."
"Isn't it?"
"Please. I don't want to fight. That's not fixing anything." That pleading voice again, the same one he'd used on our walk home from the woods. I hadn't given in then, but now... I was simply too tired to fight.
"You want to move forward?" I said, and he nodded. The motion of his head almost solemn. "Then tell me what you did with Lucia."
"You don't really want to know."
I sat up, my torso as heavy as a bag of boulders. "I do," I assured him, putting my hand on his arm, not far from the spot he'd been opening to feed me.
"What do you want to know?" he asked. He was looking at the wrinkled, dirty bedsheets, and not at me. Clearly, this was not a conversation he looked forward to having.
"Did you bite her?" I said.
"Yes."
"Were you kind?"
"Mostly."
"Did you have sex with her?"
"No."
There was silence in the wake of that last question. I couldn't believe I'd been so blunt. But Keel's answers were equally blunt - and truthful. The bond, even dimmed as it was, gave us no opportunity for deception.
"Any other questions?" he said.
"Is she okay?" She'd looked okay when my father had summoned her, but I wanted to hear it from him.
"She's fine."
Relief. But his inability to answer my other questions kept me from feeling its full force.
"Can I ask you something else?" I said.
"Go ahead."
"Didn't the bond tell you I was starving?"
The guilt in his eyes was mirrored in our connection. "Mills, you have to understand, everything that's been predicted has come to pass; we're a great and terrible weapon, and just like Boras foretold when I decided to bring you back to the compound, you were the end of the place, the end of Argarast royalty."
"So, you're... having regrets?"
He was. I could see them written all over his face, and in the way his back and shoulders hunched, and how he still wasn't looking at me.
"Don't forget, you're the one who came after me," I said. "And you're the one who begged me for months to consummate the bond, despite my repeated warnings about the same prophecy you're complaining about now. You're also the one who put a crown on my head and a ring on my finger. You did all of that, Keel. Now you decide you made a mistake and this is how you deal with it?"
"I thought-" He stopped. "No, your father's right, I didn't think. And you're not a mistake. But being around you always makes it so hard to think straight. For instance, it would be so easy to take you into my arms right now, and-"
"No."
"I know. That's why I'm staying over here."
"Thank you."
I supposed I should also thank him for cleaning the room. If my father had seen it in the state it had been in yesterday, his mood would have been not just volcanic but nuclear, and much more centered on me. Keel had spared me the worst of the parental shrapnel, which meant it had to have been all that much worse for him.
"How bad did my father chew you out?" I asked.
Keel looked pained.
"That bad?"
"As you say, I deserved it," he said, and drew a claw across his arm.
It was time for my next meal.
---
Author's Note: I have so much I could say about this chapter, but for now, I won't. I'll let it speak for itself. Sometimes these things just need to do that. BUT if anyone's having feels about this one, we can have a little support group in the comments.
Everyone else, I'll see you next Friday with Chapter 8: Return of the Wayward Father.
Chapter art by Daria Shevtsova on Pexels.