B00C8324IS EBOK (5 page)

I shook her awake. “M
om, where’s Sofia?”

She blinked several times and frowned at me. “I have no idea where she is. What time is it? She was supposed to be here. Abby was terrified about having to sleep here alone.”

“Perhaps she just went out for a walk or something…”

“At this hour? What’s gotten into her?”

“I’ll find her,” I responded, starting to feel worse about what I did – or didn’t do – to Sofia the night before. It was unlike her to just run off. Between the two of us, she’d always been the more responsible one.

Worried sick and knowing that I’d been a
complete jerk to her, I set out to the beach to look for her. I walked about half a mile down the shore line before realizing that I was wasting my time. If Sofia wanted to be found, I would find her. I kept trying to call her phone, but just kept getting her voice mail. I was ready to turn back when I bumped into a gorgeous blonde girl, wearing – of all things – a black leather jumpsuit.

She approached me,
looking at me from head to foot, a sultry look in her eyes.

“I’m Claudia. You are?”

Distracted by how beautiful she was, I forgot about my quest to find Sofia. I flashed my best smile, all of a sudden also forgetting my obsession with Tanya.

“I’m Ben.”

To my surprise, she grabbed my neck and pulled my head down as she faced me for a kiss. It was arguably the best kiss I’d ever had. When our lips parted, she smiled. It was that smile that told me something was wrong, because aside from the fact that everything about her smile hinted madness, fangs suddenly protruded from both sides of her upper lip.

“You’re perfect,”
she hissed before stabbing me in the neck with a sharp syringe. It took mere seconds for me to fall to the ground, unconscious. The last sound that registered in my mind from that early morning was the laughter and childlike quality in her voice when she said, “I’m going to have so much fun playing with you, Ben.”

When I came to, I found myself in a large bed, my wrists cuffed to the bedposts. She was on top of me, kissing my neck, my shoulders… I was so much larger than her, and yet I felt helpless and completely at her mercy.

“What are you doing? Who are you? Where am I?”

She chuckled.

“Ohh … So many questions, my pet.”

I grimaced at the word she used, turning my mouth away from her when she tried to kiss me. Obviously irritated, she grabbed my head with both her hands before forcing a kiss on me. When our lips parted, she cocked her head to the side and pouted.

“You ought to be thankful that I’m in such a nice mood, because I’ve decided to answer your questions … What am I doing? I’m kissing you. Who am I? I’m Claudia, your mistress. Where are you? You’re in my bedroom.”

Her lips and her hands were all over me and all I could think
about was the way she smiled at me back at the beach before I lost consciousness. “You’re a vampire.” Saying the words out loud made me feel absolutely insane.

“Smart boy…” she straddled my waist and propped herself up over my chest as she looked down at me, the same manic smile on her face. “Now, I want you to shut up.” She gagged me, and then she sank her teeth down my neck, drinking my blood for the first time.

Once satiated, she lifted her head, my blood dripping from the corners of her lips. “You’re as sweet as he was. The Duke…” Claws protruded from her fingers and she began to trace one of them over my torso. “Do you have any idea what he put me through?”

Of course not, you insane bitch…
I fought the urge to scream when her claws sank into my skin, drawing blood. The way her eyes lit up with delight at the sight of my blood was sickening.

“My mother was a whore you know… We were so poor and she was so sick, so she decided to sell me to The Duke. I was only six years old.” She began running her hand through my hair before gripping a clump of it with a tight fist. “You remind me so much of him.”

My heart sank at this revelation.

I felt myself inside her,
every fiber of my being urged back, struggling against the restraints she kept me in, struggling against the degradation she was putting me through. All of it for nothing.

She slapped me with the back of her hand as she chuckled. “I struggled too you know. I screamed and clawed and fought back, but he had his way with me still. He always got his way. I’m going to have my way with you too.”

And she did. Everything about her made my stomach turn. Her moans, the things she was saying… When she collapsed over my body, panting, I wanted to murder her.

“When I turned into a vampire, I made him pay dearly for what he did to me.” Her eyes lit up at the memory. “You should’ve heard him cry and scream. He was weak,” she said. “Just like you. I hold the power now and no one will ever be able to harm me the way he did again.”

By the time she was done with me that first night at The Shade, I was battered, bruised, bleeding and exhausted. She left me still cuffed to the bed, gag in my mouth. It took hours before someone entered the room. At first, I thought it was her. I flinched just at the sound of the door creaking open. I couldn’t stand the thought of her touching me again. Thus, I was relieved when I found a pretty girl with raven hair motioning for me to be quiet. She took the gag out of my mouth before beginning to pick the lock of the cuffs holding me to the bed.

“You have to be d
eathly quiet.” She whispered so softly, I barely understood what she said. The rest of our conversation was in hushed whispers.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Eliza.” She looked at my worn-down form. “Can you get up?”

I nodded. “I’m mostly just sore.”

“Okay then. We’re going to get out of here.”

I was surprised at how quickly she was able to get
the cuffs off me. I sat up on the bed, rubbing my wrists as she began rummaging through the closet for clothes she could throw on me.

“What’s your name?” She threw me a pair of boxers and a navy blue hoodie.

“Ben.” I quickly put the boxers on. “How did you get here?”

“I was following Claudia. I saw her approach you at the beach and sedate you. I would’ve saved you, but she was too quick, like she was suddenly in a hurry.” She threw me a pair of jeans.

I quickly put them on, surprised by how well the trousers fit. “Saved me? How could you possibly…”

“There’s no time for that now. All you need to know is that if you ever make it out of here without me, find Reuben. He’s a hunter like me. He’ll help you.”

She made me memorize a number as I pulled the hoodie over my head. We snuck out of the room, careful to check that no one was following us. We were foolish to think that we could actually escape, but it made perfect sense at the time. I was stunned for a moment when I realized that Claudia’s penthouse was nestled on top of giant trees. It was an amazing sight, but of course, it presented us with the dilemma of trying to figure out how to get down from there.

Eliza pointed
to a lift nearby. We crept past some guy wearing a white woolen tunic. I was certain that we’d be found when I saw him, because of what folklore said about vampires having heightened senses. I was relieved to get past the guy, wondering if perhaps vampires weren’t really that attuned to their senses or whether he was most likely human.

We managed to get
inside the lift and punched a button to get to the bottom of the tree. When the doors of the lift slid open, my stomach turned into knots.

We found Claudia waiting for us, chuckling. Two vampire guards were with her.

“Did you really think you had any chance of escaping?” Claudia taunted. The two guards restrained Eliza while Claudia set her attention on me, pushing me back into the elevator. Trying to capitalize on all the martial arts training I had back home, I made a move to hit Claudia, but she effectively dodged my blow. All it took was one hit from her, and I crashed into the elevator wall and fell to the ground, quickly fading into unconsciousness.

When I woke up, I was in a small, dimly lit room with no windows, chained to a wall, naked from the waist up. I noted how there were various chains and whips and contraptions that made my gut clench arranged in various areas of the room. On one side of the room, a surveillance monitor was mounted up on the wall, its screen showing an image of a large bed. Eliza was lying in the middle of it.

On the opposite side of the wall, Claudia was seated – looking quite relaxed – on a metal chair sharpening a dagger.

“What do you want from me?”

Claudia looked up. Her eyes lit up when she saw that I was finally awake.

“Oh, good. You’re up and about. This means we can now start with your training.”

She stood up and walked to me. She began tracing the tip of her dagger over my torso. “After everything I did to please you, you go off and leave me with that bitch?” She motioned toward the flickering screen. “I’m so disappointed with you, Ben.”

With a
crazed look in her eyes, she used her dagger to make a long, shallow cut in the skin below my left collarbone. I gritted my teeth. I refused to give her the satisfaction of hearing me scream. I didn’t even want to let her see me writhe in pain.

She seemed to be pleased with my reaction. “You have a high
pain threshold. I like that.”

“You bitch.”

She slapped me with the back of her hand, throwing my head grotesquely to the side. The force of her blow was so strong I was surprised my neck didn’t break. I tasted blood on my lips and her eyes popped wide open when she saw the trickle of blood. Her gaze alternated manically between the blood on my lips and the blood spilling from the cut she had just made on my torso.

She took a lick of the blood on both my lips and my chest before making another cut, this time a little above my waist.

My breathing grew heavy trying to keep myself from giving her the satisfaction of a painful reaction as she made one agonizing cut after the other until my upper body became nothing but a bloody mess. The pain was excruciating and I was begging my brain to make me lose consciousness, but my body denied me even that escape. When she stopped cutting me, I hoped that it meant she was done. Wrong. She grabbed my hair and made me look up at the monitor.

“Keep your eyes on your little friend there. She’s a huntress, dedicated to finishing off our kind. I suspected someone was following me back
at the beach where I found you. How she found me, I guess I’ll never know. When I sedated you, I could hear her gasp from a mile away. Silly, insipid little worm. It’s funny how out of her own stupidity, she actually thought that she was being stealthy, thinking that vampires wouldn’t notice her follow us all the way here to The Shade, but I let her go as far as allowing you the illusion of escape to test your loyalty to me.” She grinned. “Now, that you’ve proven yourself disloyal, I can commence with punishing you.”

She gave my bloody torso a manic glance. “Oh wait, I already did.” To my surprise, she made a cut on her palm and shoved it over my lips, forcing me to gasp when she pinched my nose shut. I had no choice but to let the blood from her palm
trickle down my throat. Her grip on my head tightened. “Of course, your punishment is far from over. I said I want you to watch your friend.”

I shifted my gaze toward the surveillance monitor and saw a man approach Eliza’s unconscious form. She looked so fragile as he lifted her in his arms and pulled her against his body. There was no mistaking the dark expression in his eyes as he looked at her milky white neck. It was ravenous and predatory. I wanted to look away when he bared his fangs and bit into Eliza’s neck, but I couldn’t. Claudia made sure of that as she held my head in position, her blood beginning to travel through my veins. As I was forced to drink Claudia’s blood, I was also forced to watch another vampire drain the lifeblood away from an innocent young woman
- one who already felt like a friend in the few minutes that I’d known her. By the time the vampire was done with Eliza, Claudia pulled her palm away from my mouth. She then looked at my body, which was to my surprise, beginning to heal.

I didn’t realize fully the extent of her madness until she said, “Perfect. You’ll be like brand new soon, and then I can cut you up all over again.”

“Claudia was sadistic and insane,” I told Sofia. I no longer wanted to continue the story or paint for Sofia any more of the gory details of the torture and humiliation Claudia inflicted on me, so I simply settled for: “She put me through hell.” Even time couldn’t erase an experience like that.

Silence followed as both of us got lost in our own thoughts. Eventually, I couldn’t bear the quiet anymore.

“So?” I asked with a bitter chuckle. “Was your experience at The Shade anything like mine?” I tried to say the words as lightly as I possibly could. Instead, my words came out flat and unnervingly cold.

“No.”
Sofia shook her head, her head bowed, as if she couldn’t bear to look me in the eye. Guilt was evident in the tone of her voice. “Derek was nothing like Claudia. It was Lucas who tried to make my life there a living hell. If it weren’t for Derek, he would’ve succeeded, but Derek did everything he could to protect me from his older brother.”