“You have to be deathly quiet.” She whispered so softly, I barely understood what she said. The rest of our conversation was in hushed whispers.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Eliza.” She looked at my worn-down form. “Can you get up?”

I nodded. “I’m mostly just sore.”

“Okay then. We’re going to get out of here.”

I was surprised at how quickly she was able to get the cuffs off me. I sat up on the bed, rubbing my wrists as she began rummaging through the closet for clothes she could throw on me.

“What’s your name?” She threw me a pair of boxers and a navy blue hoodie.

“Ben.” I quickly put the boxers on. “How did you get here?”

“I was following Claudia. I saw her approach you at the beach and sedate you. I would’ve saved you, but she was too quick, like she was suddenly in a hurry.” She threw me a pair of jeans.

I quickly put them on, surprised by how well the trousers fit. “Saved me? How could you possibly…”

“There’s no time for that now. All you need to know is that if you ever make it out of here without me, find Reuben. He’s a hunter like me. He’ll help you.”

She made me memorize a number as I pulled the hoodie over my head. We snuck out of the room, careful to check that no one was following us. We were foolish to think that we could actually escape, but it made perfect sense at the time. I was stunned for a moment when I realized that Claudia’s penthouse was nestled on top of giant trees. It was an amazing sight, but of course, it presented us with the dilemma of trying to figure out how to get down from there.

Eliza pointed to a lift nearby. We crept past some guy wearing a white woolen tunic. I was certain that we’d be found when I saw him, because of what folklore said about vampires having heightened senses. I was relieved to get past the guy, wondering if perhaps vampires weren’t really that attuned to their senses or whether he was most likely human.

We managed to get inside the lift and punched a button to get to the bottom of the tree. When the doors of the lift slid open, my stomach turned into knots.

We found Claudia waiting for us, chuckling. Two vampire guards were with her.

“Did you really think you had any chance of escaping?” Claudia taunted. The two guards restrained Eliza while Claudia set her attention on me, pushing me back into the elevator. Trying to capitalize on all the martial arts training I had back home, I made a move to hit Claudia, but she effectively dodged my blow. All it took was one hit from her, and I crashed into the elevator wall and fell to the ground, quickly fading into unconsciousness.

When I woke up, I was in a small, dimly lit room with no windows, chained to a wall, naked from the waist up. I noted how there were various chains and whips and contraptions that made my gut clench arranged in various areas of the room. On one side of the room, a surveillance monitor was mounted up on the wall, its screen showing an image of a large bed. Eliza was lying in the middle of it.

On the opposite side of the wall, Claudia was seated – looking quite relaxed – on a metal chair sharpening a dagger.

“What do you want from me?”

Claudia looked up. Her eyes lit up when she saw that I was finally awake.

“Oh, good. You’re up and about. This means we can now start with your training.”

She stood up and walked to me. She began tracing the tip of her dagger over my torso. “After everything I did to please you, you go off and leave me with that bitch?” She motioned toward the flickering screen. “I’m so disappointed with you, Ben.”

With a crazed look in her eyes, she used her dagger to make a long, shallow cut in the skin below my left collarbone. I gritted my teeth. I refused to give her the satisfaction of hearing me scream. I didn’t even want to let her see me writhe in pain.

She seemed to be pleased with my reaction. “You have a high pain threshold. I like that.”

“You bitch.”

She slapped me with the back of her hand, throwing my head grotesquely to the side. The force of her blow was so strong I was surprised my neck didn’t break. I tasted blood on my lips and her eyes popped wide open when she saw the trickle of blood. Her gaze alternated manically between the blood on my lips and the blood spilling from the cut she had just made on my torso.

She took a lick of the blood on both my lips and my chest before making another cut, this time a little above my waist.

My breathing grew heavy trying to keep myself from giving her the satisfaction of a painful reaction as she made one agonizing cut after the other until my upper body became nothing but a bloody mess. The pain was excruciating and I was begging my brain to make me lose consciousness, but my body denied me even that escape. When she stopped cutting me, I hoped that it meant she was done. Wrong. She grabbed my hair and made me look up at the monitor.

“Keep your eyes on your little friend there. She’s a huntress, dedicated to finishing off our kind. I suspected someone was following me back at the beach where I found you. How she found me, I guess I’ll never know. When I sedated you, I could hear her gasp from a mile away. Silly, insipid little worm. It’s funny how out of her own stupidity, she actually thought that she was being stealthy, thinking that vampires wouldn’t notice her follow us all the way here to The Shade, but I let her go as far as allowing you the illusion of escape to test your loyalty to me.” She grinned. “Now, that you’ve proven yourself disloyal, I can commence with punishing you.”

She gave my bloody torso a manic glance. “Oh wait, I already did.” To my surprise, she made a cut on her palm and shoved it over my lips, forcing me to gasp when she pinched my nose shut. I had no choice but to let the blood from her palm trickle down my throat. Her grip on my head tightened. “Of course, your punishment is far from over. I said I want you to watch your friend.”

I shifted my gaze toward the surveillance monitor and saw a man approach Eliza’s unconscious form. She looked so fragile as he lifted her in his arms and pulled her against his body. There was no mistaking the dark expression in his eyes as he looked at her milky white neck. It was ravenous and predatory. I wanted to look away when he bared his fangs and bit into Eliza’s neck, but I couldn’t. Claudia made sure of that as she held my head in position, her blood beginning to travel through my veins. As I was forced to drink Claudia’s blood, I was also forced to watch another vampire drain the lifeblood away from an innocent young woman - one who already felt like a friend in the few minutes that I’d known her. By the time the vampire was done with Eliza, Claudia pulled her palm away from my mouth. She then looked at my body, which was to my surprise, beginning to heal.

I didn’t realize fully the extent of her madness until she said, “Perfect. You’ll be like brand new soon, and then I can cut you up all over again.”

“Claudia was sadistic and insane,” I told Sofia. I no longer wanted to continue the story or paint for Sofia any more of the gory details of the torture and humiliation Claudia inflicted on me, so I simply settled for: “She put me through hell.” Even time couldn’t erase an experience like that.

Silence followed as both of us got lost in our own thoughts. Eventually, I couldn’t bear the quiet anymore.

“So?” I asked with a bitter chuckle. “Was your experience at The Shade anything like mine?” I tried to say the words as lightly as I possibly could. Instead, my words came out flat and unnervingly cold.

“No.” Sofia shook her head, her head bowed, as if she couldn’t bear to look me in the eye. Guilt was evident in the tone of her voice. “Derek was nothing like Claudia. It was Lucas who tried to make my life there a living hell. If it weren’t for Derek, he would’ve succeeded, but Derek did everything he could to protect me from his older brother.”

I found it sickening the way she talked about Derek like he was some sort of hero, but if one thing was clear to me at that point, Derek had done something to warrant her trust. Still, though he might have fooled her, he wasn’t fooling me.

Tears moistened her eyes as she was finally able to force herself to look at me. “I’m so sorry, Ben. If I didn’t wander off that night, you wouldn’t have…” She choked on her words, biting hard on her lower lip. She grabbed my hands and squeezed hard.

I wanted to comfort her, tell her that it wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t have known. She was a victim too. However, I didn’t tell her the things that I should’ve told her, because I was too preoccupied mulling over what I couldn’t bring myself to tell her.

I couldn’t tell her that after what Claudia put my body through, my sense of touch was so dulled I could barely feel Sofia’s hands on mine. I didn’t want any more of her pity.

I also couldn’t tell her that Derek was the vampire who killed Eliza, because in spite of everything we’d been through, I was no longer sure of where her loyalties stood and the idea that she wouldn’t believe me, that she could still choose Derek over me was one that I found terrifying.

CHAPTER 9: DEREK

You shouldn’t have let her go.

I tried everything I could to shut out my sister’s words and keep them from continuously circling in my mind, but it was impossible. They gnawed at me and reminded me of the truth that I already felt so immensely. Sofia was no longer around, and no matter whom I surrounded myself with or what activity I tried to immerse myself in, I could still feel her absence with every fiber of my being.

Of course, I’d lived long enough to mask what I was going through as I continued my strict schedule of meetings with the vampires I needed to carry out my commands. By the end of the day, word was already out all over the island: The prince is wide awake. He’s done taking a break and is about to get right to the bloody business of keeping The Shade safe.

I hated to admit it, but Vivienne was right. It was all a ruse, a show I had to put on in order to distract myself from the void that formed upon Sofia’s departure.

After I wrapped up the last meeting of the day, I pulled Cameron to the side. “I can trust you, can’t I?”