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Once we were dressed, I packed a small bag of provisions, mostly water, since we wouldn’t be able to eat. There was no hunger while going through withdrawal. Your body didn’t want food.
It wanted blood.
But we would get thirsty. And we’d be out-of-our-minds crazy enough to try to drink ocean water if we had nothing else. So I filled up all the canteen pouches with water, put them in the backpack, and ushered my brothers out of the house before they did something against their will that they would regret for the rest of their lives.
It was still dark out, so we stumbled several times as we made our way down the path toward the dock. Everything was still wet from the torrential rain, but thankfully, it wasn’t raining now. The trees dripped on our heads, and we stepped in a few muddy spots, but the air was fresh and salty and seemed to clear Rix’s and Jorik’s heads enough that I didn’t need to hold their hands.
We walked single file down the path to the ramp, then onto the dock.
“Help me push the boat into the water,” I said, hoping they weren’t so far gone that they could still at least hear me.
Not acknowledging me but seeming to understand me, they helped me tear off the tarp, and together, we shoved the sailboat into the water.
It wasn’t ready to sail down the coast again, but if we pushed off into the inlet a bit of a way and anchored ourselves, we should be fine. And if it sank, well, then maybe that would be like splashing cold water on our faces and we’d snap out of our trance.
We got the boat into the water, and I ordered them to get in while I untied us from the dock.
They complied, still not saying anything.
In less than five minutes, I had us slowly, silently moving out into the middle of the inlet, into the dark and away from the cabin. Away from Haina and her blood that we all so desperately craved.
The greater distance we put between ourselves and her, the better.
I pushed my nose into the wind. As far away as we were, I could still smell her. Could still sense her blood.
Maybe it was the scent of her on us that we smelled, but I couldn’t risk it.
I steered us farther away.
I wasn’t sure why I was more aware and cognizant of my surroundings than my brothers were, but I was glad that I was. Perhaps it was because I had a full dose of the serum last time so it was wearing off slower than their half-doses.
It was only a matter of time until I was just like them though.
I could only imagine how much pain they were in. Because I felt it, too.
My body screamed like my skin was being burned off my bones from the outside while flames licked my muscles and scorched them from the inside. My guts and throat were raw as if I’d just swallowed a thousand scalding-hot razor blades that had been dipped in pepper oil and acid and my cock throbbed with the need to come.
The metallic, meaty flavor of blood filled my mouth. But I knew that I wasn’t bleeding anywhere. It was the next level of the craving. My brain—demanding a fix—was fucking with me. Making me taste something that wasn’t there. Reminding me of just how delicious a fix could be by making me taste that which I desired most. I knew my brothers already tasted blood. It was why Rix was staring at Haina like a piece of meat and doing everything he possibly could not to bite into her throat and feed the beast.
My mouth filled with saliva, and I swallowed past the pain.
It didn’t matter that we didn’t ingest the serum usually, that we took it intravenously. The addiction didn’t care. We were addicted to her blood, so the best way to get us to go get more was to make us taste blood.
I took a long sip from the canteen as I continued to steer us out into the calm blackness.
Rix and Jorik were quietly sitting at the stern. I glanced at them every few seconds, worry tripling inside me every time I looked at them.
And then one of them would whimper or moan in pain, which was like a barbed poker directly to my heart. They didn’t make a lot of noise, though. Like good little soldiers, they were quiet, taking the torture like we’d been trained to do—with passive, disinterested silence.
“I’ll give you something to cry about,” Unte would say before he’d unravel the leather strap he kept wound around his wrist and whip us with it until we were bloody. We’d learned to stop crying before we turned one. There was no point in it. Crying resulted in punishment. And we’d do anything we could do to avoid one of Unte’s punishments.
Not that that even mattered all that much. He punished us even when we didn’t deserve it. Said it built character. Made us tougher. Then, when he grew bored with that, he’d mix it up and make us punish each other. Said he was teaching us the art of torture.
When I was eight, he gave me the leather strap, and with a loaded gun to Jorik’s head, he made me whip my five-year-old brother until he was bloody. But Jorik never cried. Not once during all fifteen strikes. And he never hated me for it, as much as I hated myself for having done it. When we were sent to our room that night, bandaged up and unable to lie on his back, Jorik crawled into my bed and curled up against me and told me thathewas sorry that I had to go through that. Yeah, my little brother apologized to me that I was forced to beat him.
I didn’t regret killing Unte. Not for a second. I did, however, regret not making it painful, slow, and letting him know that he died at my hand. I would have loved to watch his cold, blue eyes drain of life as he felt me twist the dagger in his chest, hear him suck in a breath in surprise, then watch him drown in his own blood, knowing that he was dying and that I was the one to kill him.
But we don’t always get everything that we want.
