Chapter 5

Sorin

Against my wishes, Cassius attacks the humans.

There are two of them, a young man and a woman who are as dirt-streaked and sallow-cheeked as we are. Heavy packs lie nearby where they dropped them. In the dark, I scent them more than anything, but I can still see them perfectly fine. Smell and sight are mirrors for fear, anger, resistance.

That is expected. What’s surprising is their weapons.

I watch the man wield what we heard before: a functioning crossbow. He moves with impressive speed and strength as he fights two of our less mannered cousins—the Virals, as they were nicknamed.

Selene, Cassius, and I are known as Subjects.

“Help him,” I order Selene quietly.

She nods and bolts, leaping on the female Viral with a savage screech, not engaging with the human man. She grabs the Viral’s head and wrenches—the snap of spine is chilling and echoing, and the severed head smacks the concrete with a heavy, squelching thud. The body falls, but I am already storming up to Cassius and the human woman.

He has her back against his chest. His arms are wound tight around her, pinning her arms to her sides. One weapon—a scythe with an oddly short staff—is slung in her belt loop. The other lay clattered a few feet away, identical to it.

Curious.

But I am more focused on the vein throbbing on her neck. I can practically taste the blood rushing inside it.

Hunger twists my stomach into a cinched knot. Thirst scalds my throat like a brand. Sanity gutters like wind trying to blow out flame.

No. I am disciplined.

“Cassius,” I bark. “Release her!”

My companion hisses, whipping his head toward me. His gold eyes burn molten and starving. It is a miracle he pays me heed at all. “Mine,” he snarls.

“No!” both humans roar.

The woman slams her head back, and skull meets skull. Cassius releases her, and she lunges to swipe the scythe, spinning on her heel, swinging the blade horizontally.

“No!” I echo, but Selene is faster.

She slams her body into the woman with a colliding sound of flesh and bone. They hit the concrete with similar grunts of pain. The woman is down for barely a moment before she thrashes, slugging her knuckles into Selene’s nose. Selene screeches—then hisses, and I know she’s about to lose her humanity.

In the corner of my eye, Cassius spits blood. We catch each other’s gaze. Nothing and everything passes between us in a single blink.

Then he turns and runs.

My heart riots in my chest.

The human man fires an arrow that swishes through Selene’s moon-pale hair as she rears before lunging on the woman. Her lips peel back over her fangs, and her hiss sends another chill skittering down my spine.

Another arrow sails past my cheek. I have suffered too much pain to even think about it. I catch Selene around her chest and haul her away, and she turns into a thing of flailing limbs. Her ragged nails rake across my skin, and her scream threatens to burst my eardrum.

“Blood!” she howls as the heel of her hand slams into my jaw, wrenching it up. “Hungry! Thirsty!”

I drop her, but when I hear the loading of the crossbow and the shing of scraping metal on concrete, I’m lunging again.

Selene will hardly forgive me easily for hitting her head. That’s a problem I will deal with when she wakes later.

She crumples like a child’s doll in a heap of borrowed clothes and a halo of hair.

I’m sorry, I beg of her as my palms burn with regret.

The crossbow loads again and fires an arrow toward my head.

I catch it. The humans’ breath hitches as if I’d I snatched that, too.

I turn toward them, raising my hands to show I have no ill intent, letting the thick arrow clatter onto the ground. “We mean no harm,” I begin, but they do not believe me.

With admirable teamwork, they attack me.

I defend myself, but do not lash out. I duck, get battered, disarm the scythe, and absorb a kick to the base of my spine.

It is a messy dance, only half-coordinated. The humans are in sync with each other. It is clear they have fought together for a long time, specifically against vampires. But have they fought a Subject as old and experienced as me?

I don’t want to kill them. I don’t want them to kill me.

“I am not here to hurt you,” I say as I dodge a mighty swing of the scythe. “I wish to talk. My name is Sorin—”

“Talk?” The woman barks out a derisive laugh that rivals Cassius’s.

“Yes!” I shout, catching the man’s last arrow as he pivots to fists. “Please! I don’t want to hurt you!”

“Liar!” the young woman snarls. She roars and cleaves the weapon toward my neck.

At the last breath, I move. The blade slices superficially, but the spear slams into my throat. I fall to my knees, cracking on the concrete, gagging and choking for air. The butt of the weapon strikes my spine and hurls me forward. I hit the ground face-first, grit scraping my cheek. Pain blooms everywhere, hot, but shame burns hotter.

The human man steps on my hand and grinds his heel. I shout a curse but don’t wrench free. This is my chance to surrender before the woman severs my head.

“I’m sorry!”

Those two words don’t burn like my shame. They are genuine, raw, and heavy. They are currency. Survival. Desperation. A plea for mercy.

I close my eyes, expecting the worst. I know the last thing any human wants to do is listen to a vampire when all my kind has done is kill and destroy.

I hear them panting with effort as they loom above me. My neck is exposed. My back is exposed. My hands are trapped beneath boots. They can chop me to bits in just a few swings while I lie helpless.

And yet they don’t.

“Kill him,” the man growls, “or I will.”

“No,” the woman says, and she seems surprised by her own response.

My eyes fly open, but I don’t move.

She moves me instead. Her foot kicks my ribs. I grunt and instinctively roll to my side. She kicks me again, so I’m on my back. She rests the upper curve of her blade to my throat, and I dare swallow against it.

My breathing constricts when she places her boot on my chest and presses forward so her forearms rest on her thighs.

“Give me one good reason,” she hisses with impressive malice, “why we shouldn’t kill you like we’ve killed dozens before.”

“Because….”

Well, there really isn’t a good reason. I just have a reason.

“We have the same goal,” I say.

The woman presses the blade further, cutting into my skin, and scoffs.

Subjects’ sight is enhanced to detect heat signatures in darkness—hazy white silhouettes against blackness. That’s mostly what the woman is. The closer she leans, the more solid white she is. Yet I can still see her features: the creases of her eyelids, the slope of her nose, the movement of her throat when she swallows.

And her scent… oh, it is sweet. It wreathes around my every sense, alighting every nerve, turning my skin and bones to a boiling ache.

Hungry. So thirsty.

Blood.

Her pulse pounds in my ears. It sounds like a homecoming. I can hear her veins pumping blood throughout her body. My teeth ache with oversensitivity, my fangs freezing, begging for the warmth of blood.

The woman snorts. My slipping restraint is evident, then. She knows I’m overcome, but she doesn’t seem to fear me.

But instead of killing me, she slams the butt of the scythe into my temple.

It’s a swift correction of behavior.

My vampire instincts black out, and I have my humanity back. I suck in a breath so long and sharp that it startles the humans, but they don’t back down.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I gasp. “I don’t want to.”

“Your kind only want to hurt us,” the man snaps, now standing beside his companion. He has an arrow aimed between my eyes. “Why are you any different? Why are we even letting him talk?”

“I don’t know.” The woman’s voice is firm yet wavering, as if she is confident in her reasoning but unsure how to convey it convincingly. She straightens and tilts her head to the side as if she is the predator and not me. “He isn’t like the others.”

“That doesn’t mean we chat him up,” the man says scathingly. “He’s as starving as the rest of us. We move on before we’re hurt.”

“Exactly!” I blurt out, feeling far younger than I am with desperation and hope. “We’re starving, vampires and humans alike. We have destroyed the world through hunger, greed, and thirst, and now we all pay the price. I believe….”

The two humans are gaping at me in the dark. Their stares feel like a physical presence.

It earns me a stage. My performance will be short.

“I believe,” I tell them carefully, “that vampires and humans need to unite to save both our kinds.”

I’m thinking the humans are about to laugh in my face as if I just delivered the funniest joke of our lifetimes when the unnatural sound of Selene’s head thumped on like dry wood breaks the silence.

“Kill her before she gets up,” the woman says to her companion, not taking her attention off me for even a breath.

The man turns and cocks his crossbow.

Everything down to the tips of my hairs goes into a riot. “No!” I bellow. “Selene!”

I act faster than the humans can track. Within heartbeats, I put a sizable distance between us, carrying Selene as I crouch and guard her like a living shield.

With her momentarily safe, I make the mistake of baring my teeth with a hiss.

At the exact moment, Selene wakes with a final disturbing crack of her spine. She doesn’t notice the humans and shoves my back hard enough that I tip forward.

“You hit me!”

“I wanted to talk to them,” I say before I can think better of it.

Selene’s blue eyes widen in astonishment—then blaze with rage. “Talk to them?!”

“Yes,” I sigh. “I’m sorry I killed you, Selene. Talking to humans is the only way to save both our kind.”

Selene’s smile is elegant, serene, and deadly. She bats her eyelashes and says sweetly, “I am going to flay you alive, remove your organs, and sing a lullaby to your screams.”

I swallow hard, feeling quite put in my place, and knowing she will keep that promise.

I sigh again as an arrow whizzes past my ear, tearing cartilage. I hiss and grab Selene’s hand to pull us up.

“Run,” I order, and she does.

Together, we easily outrun the humans until an entire block separates us. My ear heals quickly as we lean against an old drugstore.

Selene sags to the ground almost immediately with a whimper of pain. “My head… Sorin, you bastard. We could have fed—”

“And would have drank them dry,” I say more sharply than I mean. “And then we’d be driven to starvation again. We can’t take them as cattle.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that,” she snaps, though weakly. “We drink them, we find more bodies. Our lives are a trail of bodies. It’s what we were made to do. Stop fighting our nature, Sorin!”

I spin, but when I see how deathly she looks, my anger fizzles. I crouch in front of her, but she looks away.

“I don’t fight against our nature, Selene. But I cannot embrace it when we see what it’s done to our world. I’m tired of living day to day, body to body.”

I crook my knuckle under Selene’s chin and lift her head. She looks more exhausted than ever, a breath away from fading forever.

I sigh again as guilt eats my insides with dull, unforgiving teeth. “It’s time for change, Selene. Will you be by my side through it?”