And she did. Everything about her made my stomach turn. Her moans, the things she was saying… When she collapsed over my body, panting, I wanted to murder her.

“When I turned into a vampire, I made him pay dearly for what he did to me.” Her eyes lit up at the memory. “You should’ve heard him cry and scream. He was weak,” she said. “Just like you. I hold the power now and no one will ever be able to harm me the way he did again.”

By the time she was done with me that first night at The Shade, I was battered, bruised, bleeding and exhausted. She left me still cuffed to the bed, gag in my mouth. It took hours before someone entered the room. At first, I thought it was her. I flinched just at the sound of the door creaking open. I couldn’t stand the thought of her touching me again. Thus, I was relieved when I found a pretty girl with raven hair motioning for me to be quiet. She took the gag out of my mouth before beginning to pick the lock of the cuffs holding me to the bed.

“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.