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One
Descending the steep stairs from my apartment was easier said than done while jonesing for another vampire bite. It would be hours until any of them were awake and willing to comply—good news, because I had to earn the money to pay them to bite me.I’ll get paid tonight in cash, then they’ll give me what I crave.Four bites a day was ideal, but I’d have to get by with just two.
It was going to be a long night.
A gust of wind lifted the strands of my hair and scraped icy fingers across my skin, so I pulled my jacket tightly around me. The coat might be two sizes too big, but when Wanda left it for me, I’d been grateful. She delayed following the vampire compound—as she’d been ordered to do—for as long as she could in order to make sure I’d be okay.
I obviously wasn’t, but things were probably as good as they were going to get.
I was officially eighteen years old, not that anyone in my life celebrated the event the day before. The past year and the changes it brought were a really strange time in my life—the ramifications of my seventeenth year would stay with me until I died.
But at least I made it to legal adulthood.Whatever that means. I’d been an adult since birth; now I felt ancient.
The sun burned my eyes, so I lowered my gaze. I actually slept about four hours that morning. One of the few things that had gone my way was finding a job where I worked from afternoon until nightfall. The hours meant I was awake at the same time as the vampires who still lived here, and they were why I hadn’t completely fallen apart.
Not that they helped me out of the goodness of their monstrous, evil hearts.Ha!No, I paid them, and since they were the low hanging fruit in the vampire world, they gladly took my money to betray the order they’d been given to leave me alone.
Rowan’s directive placed me in this situation.
Banished, abandoned, yet it didn’t really surprise me.Rowan is one of the monsters now.
Rowan. Griffin. Caesar. Tanner. Ace. As humans, they were my friends. Not anymore. Now, they were nothing to me except other vampires to destroy my life.
I sighed. Thinking about my situation did me no favors. I needed to keep my concentration where it belonged—on putting one foot in front of the other. Instead of focusing on things I couldn’t change, I reminded myself of the things I did have going for me. I was lucky to have the job at the gas station, grateful for the pitiful amount of food I managed to get, and lucky that Wanda put a roof over my head and didn’t make me pay rent or utilities.
Not that Wanda helps because of her charitable desires. No, she owed a favor to Ace’s father, who’d been preoccupied with keeping me alive.He’s gone now. They all are. It had taken just forty-eight hours for the majority of the vampires and anyone associated with them to disappear when they were ordered to move. Our town became ghost-like practically overnight.
Restaurants closed. Half of the shelves in the grocery store stood empty. The bars were gone. Although we were always a small town, it looked as though the end of the world descended on us. I thought I knew what it meant to be lonely before, but I hadn’t understood the meaning of the word.
I was completely alone.
Addicted.
Even my future hung like a desolate void.
I couldn’t go back to school because of my issues. The teachers didn’t know about the vampires or they would have left with the compound. They’d probably think I was on drugs, and the last thing I needed was a well-meaning social worker to make things even harder.
I nodded to Jim as I pushed through the door to the gas station where I worked. He worked the shift before mine, so he grabbed his bag and sent me a polite nod as he clocked out. I liked Jim—he was organized, and he kept the shelves stocked and laid out exactly as we had been instructed to keep them. A small television in the corner kept a constant stream of news going in the background, and I appreciated the noise once Jim left.
Afternoons were the slowest part of my shift. A few customers might drive through for cigarettes and soda. Otherwise, the monotone drone of the news kept me company until night fell. At dark, the soda changed to beer and condoms, but good for them. I was glad other people were having fun.
I certainly wasn’t.
* * *
I closed at midnight. The pumps might stay open twenty-four hours a day, but the market didn’t. I yawned and locked up as I did every night. At least my hands didn’t shake anymore, the tremor replaced by a constant body ache that would remain until I could be bitten. I preferred the shakes to the pains, but it was all the same, really.Just the way things are for now.How long can I live like this?I didn’t know.
My clothes hung off me more and more every day. I tried to eat, but it was a struggle. My body rejected food, especially if I tried to eat too much.All in all, I’m a mess. But, hey, time to get bitten!I hated them, but I felt so much better afterward. I’d get bitten, go home, and try to eat, and then come out for two more rounds with other vampires. After that, I’d try to sleep, rinse, repeat. I knew the routine, and it might suck, but it wassomuch better than the full-on all-consuming pains and withdrawals I experienced right after the vampires left.
They’d been biting me ten times a day or more, so getting down to these few bites was a triumph. The downfall? I couldn’t get past this few and probably never would.
This is as good as it gets, and it fucking sucks.
I cringed, seeing the vampire waiting for me ahead—Samuel. That was all I knew about him, really. I’d discerned some other things over time from observation, like he wasn’t well thought of in our community. Wanda rolled her eyes when she’d introduced me to him, so I picked up on it immediately. Plus, he’d been left behind. Despite all of Rowan’s claims about how people needed to handle things aside, they only left vampires they didn’t want around behind when they’d gone. Basically, it was a slap in the face to those they left behind; they would never be powerful or part of the inner circle. They were nothing. Expendable.
And they were also all I had to keep me alive.
Samuel liked to wear bell bottom jeans and plaid t-shirts.
