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“Such as?”
I sigh again. We’re here now. I might as well tell him. I push through the double doors to my wing and see Layden’s eyes widen as the dark halls are exchanged for pink ones.
“I wanted to piss Vlad off, so I redecorated.”
He nods, eyes watching me, patient.
I look away from him. “So I told you my family are vampires, but that I’m not. That’s not entirely true. I mean, I don’t have to bite anybody or anything,” I say quickly. “But it’s like…” I wave my hands in frustration at having to explain it. “When Vlad feeds because he’s the eldest or the patriarch or whatever… it feeds me.”
“Feeds you?”
I wave my hands again. “Gives me strength. Energy. I can eat as much human food as I want, but if I’m not close enough to Vlad while he’s feeding, it doesn’t matter. I just sort of start… wasting away.”
I finally glance back at Layden. His eyes are only a little wider, but he doesn’t look freaked out or anything. Of course he doesn’t. He’s an angelic being who let himself starve in the forest for two hundred years. There’s probably nothing I could tell him he wouldn’t take in stride.
Which suddenly feels freeing. I’ve never been able to talk to anyone about this stuff. Even Sabra. She always had her own shit to carry with her mom and everything. So there was no one to really unburden myself to.
“I imagine you found this out the hard way,” Layden says.
I nod. “I was born here. Vlad had captured my mom right before she had me because he wanted to retrieve his latest vampire progeny. He was extra excited when I came out as… more. But my dad came and busted us out when I was still small, maybe four? I was okay for a few years, but then I got really, really sick. My parents didn’t know what was happening. We were always on the run and hiding from Vlad, but he found us when I was in the hospital, so weak I could barely move.”
Layden’s translucent eyes are locked on me as we walk down the hall. Somehow, it feels easier to tell this while we’re walking. I can’t get as lost in the memories. Still, I have to swallow hard, remembering the worry in my mother’s eyes as she looked down at me in the hospital bed that turned to panic as soon as Vlad shoved through the door.
“Right when my grandfather came in, I sat up, feeling stronger all of a sudden after years of being sick. I didn’t know then that it was because he’d drained the nurse outside who’d been so kind to me. I was just confused because I felt better, but my mom was so scared. My dad wasn’t there because they took shifts staying with me while the other one worked. Then there was this stranger claiming to be my grandfather and saying he needed to take me with him or else I’d just keep getting sick like this.”
Vlad had crouched down over my bed and asked me if I wanted to keep getting sick. I shook my head. But then I told him to leave my mother alone.
He smiled and said if I came with him, he wouldn’t hurt my mother, and I wouldn’t be sick anymore.
I saw how scared Mom was, and I believed him. He could hurt her. And I knew this was the bad man that Mom and Dad always talked about. They got quiet whenever I came into the room and they were talking about him, so I learned to listen from just outside.
It seemed like such a simple solution, and I knew what I’d sometimes suspected was true: I was the source of all my parents’ problems. If I wasn’t there, they wouldn’t have to be scared all the time. They wouldn’t have to worry about the bad man anymore, and they wouldn’t have to worry about me being sick. They could be happy.
As if he saw exactly what I was thinking, Vlad asked, “Are you a selfish little girl or not?”
Other men had come in by then, restraining my mom while Vlad talked to me.
I shook my head no. I would not be a selfish girl. If I went with him, the men would let my mother go. My parents would be safe. From this man. And from me.
“I told him I’d go with him but that if he hurt my mother, I’d make him sorry. He laughed in my face, but I was powerful again since he’d just fed, and I forced all of my uncles to crawl on the floor.”
I had to hold my mother frozen in place, too so she didn’t try to wrestle me away from Vlad. It was something I didn’t even know I could do until that moment. But I felt all the blood humming beneath their skin. It felt different in my uncles than in my mother, but I was able to control them all. Cruder than compulsion, I just physically forced their limbs where I wanted them.
My grandfather smiled down at me when he saw his sons crawling on the floor. “What a clever girl you are. All right. I’ll leave your mother here, unharmed. As long as you come with me.”
I nodded, pulled the IV out of my arm, and followed him out of the hospital, keeping my mother pinned to the wall the whole while. It made me feel bad in my belly, but I did it anyway.
“You were very young when this happened?” Layden asks softly.
“I was eight. I’ve lived here with my grandfather ever since.” I stop in front of the door of one of the guest bedrooms. “You can sleep in here.”
I reach for the doorknob, but Layden holds out a hand to stop me. “How old are you now?”
I glare up at him. “Nineteen.”
He pulls his hand away, a line appearing on his brow. “Still so young.”
I laugh at that and shove open the door. He has no idea. “I’ve never been young.”
