CHAPTER 20: BEN

This isn’t right.

I stared at Zinnia’s sleeping form on the bed next to mine. The guilt was killing me. What’s wrong with you, Hudson? It’s not like you haven’t had girls in your bed before…

I turned to my side, wanting to rip my brains out if it would help me get some sleep. I knew, however, that sleep would provide me no escape. Ever since my first mission, sleep either eluded me or attacked me with an onslaught of nightmares. Sofia, Vivienne and the first vampire I killed haunted my dreams and my every waking moment.

All it took was one mission for me to realize that Sofia had been right all along. Vengeance wasn’t the answer. Killing a vampire was nothing like Zinnia told me it would be. There was no sense of satisfaction or glee. In its place, there was just this aching guilt, knowing that a life had been taken by my own hands—a life that, for all I knew, could’ve been entirely innocent.

I wondered then if Vivienne was innocent. Sofia, after all, had once called the princess of The Shade her friend.

Since we returned to the headquarters after the mission, I began comparing everyone around me to Sofia—especially Zinnia. I realized then that Sofia was nothing like Zinnia or the hunters—and neither was I. I felt like I was surrounded by remorseless people who’d totally lost hold of their consciences. I longed for more of Sofia’s compassion and gentleness. I missed my best friend badly and no matter what I did to try and fill the void that she used to occupy, nothing worked.

This was my lowest point. I actually slept with Zinnia just to forget Sofia, only to miss my dear Rose Red even more.

Is he taking care of you, Sofia? Did I get it all wrong?

These same thoughts plagued me the next day when Reuben called Zinnia and me to discuss if there was any progress in finding The Shade.

“Ben, are you listening to me?” Reuben demanded.

I blinked my eyes several times and shook my head. “I’m sorry. I barely got a wink of sleep. Nightmares.”

Reuben and Zinnia gave me worried glances, but shrugged it off quickly. It was easy to surmise early on that hunters weren’t very sentimental people. They just really wanted to finish what had to be done.

“Pay attention, Ben. You’re too much of an asset not to understand what’s going on.” Reuben sounded impatient.

I couldn’t help but wince at the mention of me being an asset. It was on the mission that they realized how valuable I was to them. After I killed my first vampire, another attacked me, clawing through my back. I didn’t feel a thing. I went through that entire mission, back bleeding, without once feeling the pain. That’s how damaged I was by the torment Claudia put me through at The Shade. That’s how callous my body had become. I managed to fool myself for a while that I was just as callous inside as I was outside. I was wrong. I wondered if I had fooled Sofia too.

“I’m paying attention,” I assured Reuben, though I doubted I had enough presence of mind to go through the plans he was laying out.

“We’ve had scours of our teams worldwide checking out every possible island known to mankind. Nothing checks out. It’s like this island never existed.”

“It was hidden by the protective spell four hundred years ago. The spell hiding it is powerful. I believe even cellphone signals can’t get past the protective wall the spell creates. There’s no way to locate it,” I told them.

“No!” Reuben slammed his hand over the table. “There’s got to be a way. There’s always a way.”

“What do you even plan to do when we find the island? Attack it? The Crimson Fortress walled around the whole island will give the Wall of China a run for its money…don’t underestimate them.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Reuben hissed. “The Novaks rule the most powerful vampire clan for a reason. Whoever ends their coven will cripple all vampires permanently.”

“You didn’t answer my question. What do you plan to do when we find the island?”

“Get my daughter out of there and then blow the whole island into smithereens.”

I shot a look at Reuben, wondering if he was serious. He clearly was. “There are thousands of innocent human slaves living on that island. If I’m not mistaken, The Shade is self-sufficient and runs on the backbone of these slaves. You’d willingly kill them?”

Reuben gave me a careless shrug. “They were as good as dead the moment they were taken captive by the vampires.”

I couldn’t help but stare at him, wondering how on earth someone as kind and as compassionate as Sofia could possibly be related to him.

For the first time since I arrived there, it felt like joining the hunters had been the biggest mistake of my life.

CHAPTER 21: DEREK

I knew it would happen, but it still hurt that it did. After our discussion about the culling and my admittance that there was nothing I could do to stop it, Sofia avoided spending time with me. I knew her well enough to know that she had the tendency to do this when she needed to think things through.

She needed space and I willingly gave it to her. I did, however, station guards to keep an eye on her and update me on what she was doing. I couldn’t risk leaving her unprotected because of the recent bout I had with my father. Despite the regular updates, however, I still found myself missing her sorely. I spent most of my time at the training grounds, focusing my energies on the military training I knew The Shade was in desperate need for.

I’d just finished a rather tough fight with one of the best fighters we had—Xavier Vaughn—when a familiar face showed up at the training grounds.

Ashley. I hadn’t dared visit her since her turning, but I’d kept up-to-date with her through Kyle and Sam. It was strange seeing her and not getting that intense craving to feed on her. She looked incredible as a vampire, her brown eyes having a far more brilliant sheen than they used to.

“Hey, baby vampire,” I greeted her, ignoring the irritated look on her face.

“New harem girls, Derek? Really?”

Xavier, while still trying to catch his breath from our fight, raised a brow at her. He usually skipped formalities and called me by name, but as far as he and the rest of the citizens of The Shade were concerned, a new vampire had no business calling me by name.

I gestured toward Xavier to tell him that it was alright. “Let’s take a walk, shall we, Ashley?”

“Why can’t we have the conversation right here?” She animatedly planted her hands on her hips, her long blonde ponytail sashaying with her every move.

Xavier’s eyes grew wide with interest as he whispered, “Feisty girl…”

Ashley squinted her eyes at him. “I heard that.”

She was causing a commotion and the other trainees were now gathering around. I chuckled dryly as I turned around to leave.

“Where are you going?!” She ran after me.

“Somewhere we can talk without you getting yourself killed.”

Her face paled, realizing how much trouble she’d gotten herself into only moments ago. “Oh shoot…I keep on forgetting that you’re some sort of legendary royalty here at the Shade.”

“You’re a vampire now. You can’t forget that.”

We began to walk through the forest, aimlessly traveling along the stony terrain, past the giant redwoods that filled the island.

“You didn’t even bother to check on me,” she said with a pout after a long silence. It was a reminder that in spite of her newfound immortality, she still was a seventeen-year-old teenager. “I mean, I can understand if you don’t, but Sofia?”

“Didn’t either Kyle or Sam tell you that I forbade her to go see you?”

“Well, yeah…they did, but since when did you forbidding Sofia to do something keep her from doing it?”

I changed the subject. “So is it what you thought it would be…being a vampire?”

“Let’s just say that I wished I had listened to you the night of my turning.”

I bowed my head, truly feeling sorry for her.

“Did you choose to be turned?” she asked.

I shook my head. “My father turned me. He took me by surprise. He did the same thing to Vivienne. As for Lucas…well, I never really got the complete story about how my father managed to turn him.”

“Does the craving ever disappear?”

I let out a dry laugh. “No, Ashley. It’s in your nature to be a predator now. You need to learn control. It’s possible. Vivienne did it. She never once drank human blood. Ever.”

“And she just lived on animal blood? I can’t stand it! Compared to human blood…”

I grabbed her by the wrist in surprise. “You’ve had human blood?”

“Yes…I…”

“You’ve killed.”

She shook her head, her eyes showing how nervous she was. “No. I drank blood from the chilling chambers.”

The mention of the chambers only reminded me of the culling and the reason behind Sofia’s avoidance of me.

“There isn’t enough left to sustain The Shade…we consume too much blood. There are too many of us now. The Naturals are in constant danger of a vampire losing it and going after them, but we can’t go on with the abductions either…”

“And yet there are still three girls in your harem now.”

“I didn’t want that. I had them sent to Sofia to help her out in The Catacombs. I haven’t seen them since.”

“So you haven’t been seeing Sofia?”

My silence was enough of an answer.

“Why?”

I told Ashley about the culling, about why I thought it was necessary. “If I let the culling happen, do you think Sofia will ever be able to forgive me?”

Ashley was quiet for quite some time as we walked on. “She’s been able to forgive you for a lot. I don’t even think she’ll blame you, but I think it will definitely wreck her. Gwen’s death was something that she took quite heavily. For months, she had to spend every day having those psychological treatments with Corrine in order to get through that. Imagine what a murder of that scale would do to her.”