completely destroy a vampire, beheading it or burning it to ash is the only sure way. Are you getting this?”
“Kill a vampire, aim for its head,” I muttered. “Got it.” The pain was gone now, and there was a gnawing ache in my gut, though I still wanted to learn more. “But why am I bleeding at all?” I wondered, looking up at him. “Do I even have a heartbeat? I thought … I thought I was dead.”
“You are dead.”
I scowled. “I suppose this is a case of death taking a while to kick in, then.”
Kanin’s expression didn’t change. “You are still thinking like a human,” he said. “Listen to me, Allison, and keep your mind open. Mortals view death in terms of black and white—you are either alive, or you are not. But between them—between life and death and eternity—there is a small gray area, one that the humans have no knowledge of. That is where we reside, vampires and rabids and a few of the older, inexplicable creatures that still exist in this world. The humans cannot understand us, because we live by a different set of rules.”
“I’m still not sure I understand.”
“We have no heartbeat,” my mentor continued, lightly touching his own chest. “You wonder how the blood can pump through your veins, right? It doesn’t. You have no blood. None that is your own, anyway. Think of it as our food and drink—it is absorbed into the body the same way. Blood is the core of our power. It is how we live, it is how we heal. The longer we go without, the farther we slip from humanity, until we resemble the cold, empty, living corpses the humans think us to be.”
I stared at Kanin, looking for any sign that he wasn’t human. His skin was pale, and his eyes were hollow, but he wasn’t corpselike. Unless you looked really hard, you wouldn’t know he was a vampire at all.
“What happens if we don’t … uh … drink blood?” I asked, feeling a pang in my stomach. “Can we starve to death?”
“We’re already dead,” Kanin replied in that same infuriatingly cool tone. “So, no. But go long enough without human blood, and you will start to go mad. Your body will shrivel, until you are nothing but an empty husk wandering around, very much like the rabids. And you will attack any living creature you come across, because the Hunger will take over. Also, because your body has no reserves to draw upon, any damage that doesn’t kill you could drive you into hibernation for an indefinite amount of time.”
“You couldn’t have told me all this without slicing my arm open?”
“I could have.” Kanin shrugged unrepentantly. “But I had another lesson in mind. How do you feel?”
“Starving.” The ache in my gut had grown more painful; my body was crying out for food. I thought longingly of the once-full blood bag, lying empty on the floor. I wondered if there was anything left that I could suck out, before I caught myself in horror.
Kanin nodded. “And that is the price of such power. Your body will heal itself from most anything, but it will draw upon its own reserves to do so. Look at your arm.”
I did and gasped. My skin, especially the area where Kanin had cut me, was chalk-white, definitely paler than before, and cold. Dead flesh. Bloodless flesh. I shuddered and tore my gaze away, and felt the vampire’s smile.
“If you do not feed soon afterward, you will fall into a blood frenzy, and someone will die,” he announced. “The greater the wound, the more blood you need to replenish it. Go too long without feeding, and the result will be the same. And this is why vampires do not become attached to humans, or anyone. Sometime in your life, Allison Sekemoto, you will kill a human being. Accidentally or as a conscious, deliberate act. It is unavoidable. The question is not if it will happen, but when. Do you understand?”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “I got it.”
He watched me with depthless black eyes. “Be sure that you do,” he said quietly. “Now, from here, you must learn the most important part of being one of us—how to feed.”
I swallowed. “Don’t you have any more of those bags?”
He chuckled. “I procured that from one of the guards at this week’s bloodletting. It’s not something I’d normally do, but you needed food immediately upon waking. But you and I are not like the vampires in the city, with their slaves and pets and cellars of ‘wine.’ If you want to feed, you must do it the old-fashioned way. I’ll show you what I mean. Come, follow me.”
“Where are we going?” I asked as he opened the door, and we stepped out into a long, narrow hallway. Once-white paint was peeling from the walls, and glass crunched under my feet as we walked. Every few yards, a doorway opened into another room, the remains of beds and chairs and odd machines I didn’t recognize scattered about and broken. A strange chair with wheels lay on its side in one doorway, covered in dust and cobwebs. I realized I could see perfectly in the dark corridor, though there was no light, and it should’ve been pitch-black down here. Kanin looked back at me and smiled.
“We’re going hunting.”
WE TURNED A CORNER, and the hallway opened into what looked like an old reception area with another big wooden desk in the middle of the room. Above the desk, tarnished gold letters hung on the wall, most of them skewed or broken, so it was impossible to make out what it had once said. There were a lot of smaller signs, too, on walls and at the entrances to hallways, all difficult to make out. Glass, debris and sheets of paper were scattered about the cracked tile floor, rustling where we walked.
“What is this place?” I asked Kanin. My voice echoed weirdly in the open chamber, and the silence of the room seemed to press down on me. The vampire didn’t answer for a long moment.
“At one time,” he murmured, leading me across the room, “this was the sublevel of a hospital. One of the busiest and most well established in the city. They did more than treat patients—there was a team of scientists here, researchers committed to ending disease and discovering new cures. Of course, when the Red Lung virus hit, the hospital was overrun—they couldn’t keep up with the amount of patients pouring through their doors. A lot of people died here.” He gazed at the desk, his eyes hooded and far away. “But then, a lot of people died everywhere.”
“If you’re trying to creep me out, congratulations. So, how do we get out of here?”
He stopped at a large, square hole in the wall and gestured at the opening. I peered through the gap and saw a long shaft, leading up into darkness, with thick metal ropes dangling from somewhere up top.
“You’re kidding, right?” My voice echoed up the tube.
“The stairs to ground level are collapsed,” Kanin replied calmly. “There is no other way in or out. We have to use the elevator shaft.”
Elevator shaft? I frowned and looked back at him. “There’s no way I can climb that.”
“You aren’t human anymore.” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re stronger, you have unlimited endurance and you can do things humans cannot. If it puts your mind at ease, I will be right behind you.”
I looked at the elevator tube and shrugged. “All right,” I muttered, reaching out to grab the cables. “But if I fall, I expect you to catch me.”
Tightening my hold, I pulled.
To
