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I nodded. “It won’t hurt him?”
“He won’t remember any of this. We also make sure the family finds an unexpected bit of financial good fortune when we return the humans to where we took them from. To cover any hardships that might come from their temporary absence.”
“That’s considerate,” I said. I had to admit I felt nervous. But even that felt distant. The feeling at the forefront of my brain for the last day had been pure elation with a mild sense of trepidation.
I was cured.
I was healthy.
I was normal.
Except all of those statements came with a catch. Cured, but cursed. Healthy, but I’d traded my condition for a new one. Normal, but only within the context of this new world.
I kept picking it all over, waiting for the sense of regret to set in. But I felt like this was right. I also knew none of my feelings about it would matter if we wound up getting ourselves killed trying to rescue Maisey and the others from The Coven.
“I’m ready,” I said.
Kyla led me to the man and showed me how to find the vein in his neck. I took a deep breath, then nearly screamed when I felt something in my mouth moving. As soon as I’d looked at the vein in his neck, my canines had started to elongate.
God. It was like a vampire erection.
I pushed the grossness of that idea from my thoughts and tried to focus on what Kyla had told me.
Cringing, I bit into his skin. I didn’t bite hard enough at first and had to put a surprising amount of force into it for my teeth to punch through. I tried not to let my lips touch the man’s neck for Riggs’ sake, but it turned out to be nearly impossible to suck the blood without using my lips to create a vacuum. I could sense Riggs shifting uncomfortably while I drank and counted.
One one thousand. Two one thousand….
It was like when I’d drank Ana’s blood, but different. This blood was more dry, as strange as that sounded. Less sweet and savory, but it still felt like I was trying to fill an empty well. Like drinking a glass of water after a long day in the sun. I could’ve drank until my stomach hurt. I wanted to. I-
Kyla pulled me off the man, smiling a little. “Don’t worry. Almost everyone forgets to stop their first time.”
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, only succeeding in smearing blood across my skin. I gave a guilty look toward Riggs, who either smiled, or winced. I couldn’t say which.
I let out a small burp, then blushed. “Wow,” I said, looking down at my hands. “I feel really good. Like I could run a mile and hardly break a sweat.”
“You could do more than that. Your body is changing. The first few feedings will accelerate the process. In a few more days, the change will fully take effect, and then you’ll grow stronger more slowly. But every feeding will make you a little stronger. It’s why the oldest vampires are the most powerful.”
I nodded. “Do you think the others will help us?” I asked Kyla.
“What do you mean?”
“Get back our friends.”
She lowered her eyes. “I don’t know, honestly. There’s a lot of politics. Things have been done certain ways for such a long time. Everyone fears an all-out war. They think humans would catch on—too many to clean up.” She shook her head. “I don’t know if the rebels will help. But maybe the werewolves would.”
Riggs lifted his head. “You could come with me, Kyla. We could ask the Silverbacks.”
“You didn’t exactly leave on the best of terms.”
“Once pack, always pack.” Riggs said.
The phrase seemed to hold some deeper meaning, because Kyla’s breath caught. She hesitated, then put her hand to her chest. “Once pack, always pack,” she repeated.
“So are we going on a road trip?” I asked.
“Pack your things,” Riggs said.
“Is it okay for me to go?” I asked. “Will I know when to feed again or how to-”
“I’ll be with you,” Kyla said. She gave my arm a squeeze. “I’ll keep you on track, okay?”
I nodded.
Riggs was smiling until he saw me looking. He quickly went back to his usual resting glare face.
“So we’re going to ask the Silverback werewolves to help us rescue our Maisey and the others from the cleaners, even though we don’t know where the cleaners are keeping them?”
“I might be able to help with that,” Kyla said. “One of the teachers here used to be a cleaner. She’s kind of a grump, but I think she’ll help if we ask.”
37
Sylvie
The woman’s classroom was a bricked in room with a few rows of desks and piles of books on every available surface. She wore a simple charcoal dress and had her black hair done up in a ponytail. She only looked about twenty or thirty, but I sensed she was much older. I was learning that was the way with vampires. It was almost like they seemed to “lock in” at whatever age they were when they turned. If they did visibility age beyond that, I guessed it was an incredibly slow process.
