Charlotte grabbed my wrist, and with a rag she must have had on her, she wrapped the fresh wound. “Come on. You need to rest. This will all be over soon.”
That was what I wanted. One way or another. The torture had to stop. Although I had no idea how that could be. I was still going to be addicted when the guys broke out of their coffins. And after that too.
* * *
I scrubbedthe floor of our living quarters on my hands and knees. It was raining outside, and the sun going down hadn’t stopped that. The compound, always lit well, had a sort of surrealness as I glanced out the window. The water hitting the lights made it look as though everything was sort of not real.
Humming, I scrubbed some more. While I had energy, I had to use it.
A noise caught my attention. Outside, someone was yelling. I pulled myself up to stare further through the old glass. The outside door of the coffin room gaped open, and right outside of it stood Caesar. I caught my breath and placed my hand on the window like I could touch him from a distance. Three vampires held him, but he struggled against them, yelling loudly. It looked like he was going to break through.
This was unheard of. Vampires stayed in the coffin room until they were fed enough, then they could be safe to roam the compound. Humans were brought to them. I hadn’t heard that any had been going in, but it wasn’t like I had seen anyone today to tell me.
I could hardly breathe. Another figure emerged from the coffin house. Rowan. He strode to Caesar and placed a hand on his arm. The latter stopped fighting, grabbing his head instead. I couldn’t hear what they said, but after a long moment, the three vampires holding Caesar let him go and they all went back inside.
“They woke up. Two days ago,” Laura, one of the older servants, said to me as she entered the room. “So far, they’ve been fed twice. That’s all I know. I thought someone would have told you.”
It had been a week since Ace’s father warned me this was happening. I’d lost track of time. It didn’t matter how long they’d been up. They’d risen from the dead.
They were vampires.
Sixteen
For all thatI’d avoided looking at the coffin room for six months, I couldn’t take my eyes off it now. But not much happened. At least not that I could personally see.
Days passed before I could find the guts to ask Bethany what she knew. All the servants were home, lying on their beds, when I turned to her. As Charlotte braided my hair, I found my voice. “Bethany, do you know what happened? Who woke up first? Or maybe never. Maybe it doesn’t matter.” She rolled over onto her stomach. “I do have information, but I don’t know if actually hearing about it is going to make you happy.”
“I’m never happy.” I paused. “Are you?”
I might have hit a nerve, because they all shifted in their beds, and Charlotte’s hand faltered. It was she who answered me. “No, but we all hope to be. I know that’s not what you want, to be a vampire. It is what we still hold onto, even when we sometimes falter.”
So there it was. The answer I would have expected to get from them. “We don’t even know what female vampires are like. I’ve never seen one. Have you?”
Bethany sighed. “Maybe we should get back to the original topic. But yes, I once saw a female vampire. She was so stunningly beautiful. For just a moment. Then they had her out of here because the rule for this location is there aren’t female vampires around.” Charlotte started to braid my hair again as Bethany spoke again. “It was Ace who rose first. I heard the pounding in his coffin. Then Rowan. Caesar. Tanner. Finally, Griffin. He was a day later. Unless he just lay there in silence and was up for a while first? That could be true for any of them, actually. Maybe Ace just complained about it in a way we could hear. The vampires would know for sure. They’d be able to sense small movements we can’t because they’re closer to perfection than we are.”
Okay. I was done with this. “Thank you.”
“You know what? Out of all of us, you’re the most likely to be made a vampire. And I don’t think you appreciate that.” That nasty gift was thrown at me from my least favorite servant, Tally.
“No one is going to be making me a vampire, I promise you that.” Charlotte was done, so she rose from my bed and went back to her own. This whole being together every night thing could get old. So now I knew the most likely order that they had woken up. Did that mean anything to me at all? No, it absolutely didn’t.
They are awake.I’d seen Caesar and Rowan. I hadn’t seen their fangs, hadn’t watched them drink from anyone. But I’d seen three vampires try and fail to take Caesar down. I’d seen the way they glided, like the vampires, when they moved. It had happened. Intellectually, yes, I’d understood it. Seeing it was a whole different thing altogether.
Bethany’s phone dinged. It usually meant that someone had a job for us. It was late in the evening for that. Usually, the vampires were enough involved in their own things by now they wanted nothing to do with the servants. She looked down at her phone.
“There is a huge mess after a party in the second house. The paramours got out of control. Little drunk. And now they want it cleaned. Probably one of the vampires is fastidious. So we’ve got to do that.”
I raised my hand. “I’ll go.”
I needed air, and I had to get out of the room before I caught whatever it was that made these women want to be vampires. The female was beautiful? She’d probably been that way before she changed. I doubted very much there was a sudden dive into gorgeousness just by becoming a bloodsucker. And even if there were, who cared? Not if you had to live by feeding off someone’s blood. Yuck. Gross. It never stopped being that way to me.
“We’ll go.” Charlotte rose. “If we need more help, I’ll call for it. How much of a mess could they have made?”
Bethany got off her bed. “I’ll come too. If a vampire sees Maci, they’ll want to feed, and then you’ll need help anyway.”
And there it was.
Just another sucky aspect of my life that might never go away. My dead friends were vampires. They weren’t getting me out of this mess. I’d proven I couldn’t leave on my own. I was hitting walls everywhere.