“I’ve got you, Livi. We’re going to get out of this.” I hold her in my lap as she cries into my shirt.
It’s cold, and she shivers. “I want my mommy.”
“I know.” I rub her back, hoping it will help warm her, since my body temperature isn't high enough to offer her any comfort. Easing her onto the ground, I whisper, “I’m going to see if I can get us out of this cave.”
Her crying is muffled, but she’s holding together amazingly well.
Rising, I feel for the wall in the heavy darkness. How had the boogeyman made it so black that even I can’t see? One step in the direction where I think the mouth of the cavern was, and I can sense the monster watching. Another few steps and I’m sure I must be close.
I’m lifted from the ground and thrown. I try to claw, but there’s nothing there. As I hit the hard ground, my body jars. Something cuts through my sweatshirt and gashes my abdomen. My cool blood drips along my skin before my nature can heal the wound. It should have knitted right away, but whatever cut me is slowing the process. My throat clogs as poison slips like oil in my veins.
Livi’s little hands reach for me. “Miss Tilda?”
I sit up. “I’m alright.”
“But you’re not, vampire bird. You’ve lost what you need to be immortal. I’ve taken it, but the innocent can give it back. It wouldn’t take much. Just a little taste and you’d heal right up and save yourself.” Its grating voice sickens me almost as much as what it implies.
The fire jumps back to life in the center of the chamber.
Livi wraps her arms around my neck.
The boogeyman stands on four limbs and arches its back as evil oozes from its jaw. “It’s your nature, vampire. Drink the blood of a human, and you’ll heal. You’ll be nourished. Maybe you’ll be strong enough to escape my clutches. Take what you need.”
Eyes wide, Livi looks at me. Her voice shakes, but she still clings to my neck as if I’m the lesser of two evils. “Are you going to bite me, Miss Tilda?”
I wrap my arms around her and stand. “No. I would never harm you.” As soon as I say it, I know it’s true.
All the things that Pierre said about the nature of vampires flash through my mind. He claimed we can’t control our need for human blood, but that wasn’t true. He said we had to take what we needed or we’d grow more violent and destroy entire towns. I’d do anything to keep this child safe and my town out of harm’s way. It was all lies, and I let those lies control my life. I’d starved because he said the blood of other animals wouldn’t fulfill me. Yet, once Mari showed me that I could manage on hunting rabbits and deer, I saw that too was false.
Terrorizing humans was a game for Pierre, as was collecting and turning people he deemed special. He’d sired Mari because of her voice and me because of the swan. He died because he was too weak to live with what he’d done once Ion gave him a conscience.
Placing Livi on the ground behind me, I say, “Keep your eyes closed, sweetie. Promise that no matter what you hear, you won’t look.”
She squeezes her eyes so tight her face squishes. “I promise.”
I take her little hands and place them over her face, too. “Don’t break that promise.”
Shaking her head, she crouches on the ground against the cave wall.
With a turn, I let my fangs and rage descend. “Boogeyman, you have messed with the wrong vampire and the wrong town. Let me walk out of here with the girl, and there’s a chance you get away, though it’s slim. Keep us here, and I’ll tear you apart.”
Its laugh is worse than nails on a chalkboard. “You are just a little bird.” Half in shadow, it leaps at me.
I turn, and its claws bite through the skin on my upper arm. My fingers go right through its body as if it were only a hologram. Yet, it was solid when it carried Livi away and solid when it shifted to a man. Also, when it cut me both times.
My brain is hazy as the poison thickens my senses. There’s not much time. I’ll get one, maybe two chances. “I’m not going to warn you again.”
“Bold little monster. Drink the child’s blood, and then maybe you can win. Don’t, and you both die.”
What it says may be true, but I find pure happiness in the fact that the notion is abhorrent to me. I would never harm this child or anyone. Realizing that for the first time since I was transformed is like a light being lit inside me. My bite is for helping and pleasure. My venom can save lives. “Never.”
It leaps at me.
I narrow my eyes and see the moment it goes solid.
Focusing on the pain that will fill this beast, I push forward and sink my teeth into its shoulder. The taste is misery.
Still, as it falls back and writhes, there’s satisfaction.
