Sylvie nodded. “I’m proud of you, you know. Asking to talk to your sister? Having them turn me into one of them? You’re changing, Riggs. And in a good way.”
I looked away. The truth was that I was still battling years of hatred on the inside. I didn’t magically want to shake hands with every vampire I met. But for once, I wanted to try to overcome the swirling black anger that I’d been cultivating in my heart all these years. For her, I wanted to change. At least I wanted to try.
Kyla came while Sylvie was napping. She slipped in the door quietly, head low.
My sister was tall with sandy blonde hair and our mother’s dark blue eyes. She was pale now, like they all were. She also had that supernatural smoothness to her skin they seemed to get, and she’d become thinner than when I saw her last, like she’d shed most of the lithe muscle she’d carried.
“Hey,” I said, feeling awkward.
“You asked to see me?” she said, not quite meeting my eyes.
Kyla was younger than me by a few years, and I was struck then by how fucked up it was for me to have disowned her like I did. All this time I’d thought how she was all I had, and she’d stripped me of that. I never flipped my perspective to realize I was all she had. I was the one who had severed ties. I was the one who had fucked it up.
I walked toward her and reached for a hug. She flinched, but I hugged her anyway. She didn’t react for a few seconds, then she finally put her hands around my back.
She hugged me tighter then, shaking softly as she cried into my shoulder. I felt the same prickle of emotion threatening to overcome me, but I held onto her, being the strong big brother I should’ve been all this time.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into her ear.
35
Riggs
I lounged in the chair by the window of our room. Moonlight bathed the grounds of Blackridge while small figures moved from building to building, casting long shadows.
I still couldn’t quite believe I was in their world. In more ways than one, I supposed, as I looked to Sylvie.
She was hunched over a small table in our room scarfing down her third helping of hamburger and fries. I grinned, but felt a pang of sadness when I realized it might be one of the last times she ever craved human food.
I didn’t regret the choice I’d offered her. This was right for her. That was what mattered. It didn’t mean the slightest if I was going to struggle with the idea of turning the first perfect woman I’d met into the thing I’d sworn to hate.
It had been a full day since Ana turned Sylvie in the dungeon. Sylvie slept through the entire day and woke almost as soon as the sun set. She was asking for food almost as soon as she rose, and apparently already had shed any symptoms of her illness.
“I still can’t quite believe it’s real,” she said once she was full and slouched back in her chair. “I mean, just starting with the fact that any of this is real to begin with. That’s a hard enough pill to swallow, even if the plan was to go back to life as usual when this was over. But now I’m a vampire?” She laughed to herself. “It’s ridiculous.”
Gravy Boat had rejoined us at some point during the day. It appeared the hairless cat found a source of food since we’d arrived, because he was growing fatter by the day. He came up to my leg and head butted my ankle.
“Don’t try to sweet talk me,” I muttered to him. “You led me into a trap and then bailed when shit hit the fan. Little traitor.”
Gravy boat meowed as if I’d wounded him.
I sighed, then gave him a quick scratch on his wrinkled head.
I caught Sylvie grinning at us. “You like him.”
“I don’t. I just know he won’t stop making that horrible noise if I don’t scratch him.”
“That’s how it starts. Next you’ll be letting him cuddle you in bed.”
“Absolutely not,” I said.
“So, how are we going to get them back? Please tell me you’ve thought of something, because I’m so out of my depth. I don’t know if the Coven have a lair somewhere we can just expect to find them chained up. Or do they live on the road in biker gangs? Like this is exactly the kind of stuff you should’ve been educating me on so I could be useful in this type of situation.”
“The Coven is a global organization. It’s less like Blackridge and more like a religion, though. It just happens to be the oppressive religion that has dominated vampire culture for centuries. In our case, we’re dealing with a more formal wing of The Coven with Lazarus and his Cleaners. They do have a base of operations, but it’s not exactly public knowledge.”