Chapter 14

RED

O ctavia rushes out of the office in a blur, Xavier speeding off after her. I've taken a step forward without even realising it.

Amelia appears suddenly, standing in front of me.

It takes me a second to realise her arm is against my chest. Slowly, I lower my eyes to her arm. It's an iron bar, wedged firm against my ribs. That, too, takes a second to process. I used to be the strong one, the responsible one. The one who did the looking after. What is this strange reversal?

I slide my eyes up to meet Amelia's. There's a flicker of hesitation where, I suspect, she remembers she's the younger. But it doesn't stop her. She remains a steel wall blocking my way.

"You're not going after her," she says.

There comes a strange moment in life with one's siblings. The same moment when you mentally separate from your parents and discover they are fallible mortals like you.

This is that moment with Amelia. I've spent years looking after her, caring for her and dutifully playing the role of mother to her. I made sacrifices to ensure she was cared for and had everything she needed. There's nothing I wouldn't do for her.

And even though this isn't a betrayal, it's a line in the sand that she's crossed. Amelia has proven that she'll go against my will. What I don't understand is when we grew apart.

The hierarchy in our family is shifting.

In this moment, she is stronger than me. I am weak; I am lost. I am shaking from the shock of her movement.

"I—" she starts, sensing that something between us has snapped. But she doesn't move her arm.

My body tightens, wanting to cry or slap her. Make her understand that she can't do this to me. She can't just grow up and leave me.

Fuck.

I back away from her arm. I slump down in the chair.

"I'm sorry," she says, but she can't bring herself to look at me.

"It wasn't because Oct?—"

"Just stop," I say. "It's fine."

It's really not fine. But how can I tell her I feel more like her mother in this moment than her sister?

I decide that instead of holding back, if she really has grown up, I owe her this truth.

I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands. "I've looked after you for so long I forgot you were my sister and not my daughter, I guess. And yes, there's only a few years between us. But I…"

"You gave up your youth to let me keep mine," she says and slides to her knees, nestling her head between my arms and onto my knees. "You won't admit it, but it's because you blame yourself for what happened to Mum. It wasn't your fault. You were young, too."

Suddenly she's the little sister she always was. I stroke her hair, brushing the locks fallen loose from her blonde bun behind her ears.

"I didn't mean to treat you like a child. I realise we're both adults. But I put myself in that position because you had no one else, and I thought it was my responsibility to give you some semblance of a mother and then all this shit…"

"I love you, Red," she says. "Thank you… for everything you did for me."

I lean down and kiss the top of her head. "I'd give it all up again, over and over, if it meant you got to have a childhood."

"That's the thing. You don't need to keep giving things up anymore. I'm grown now. We both are. Neither of us are tweens living in Oriana's back room. We're fine. We're coping. We're okay."

She lifts her head off my knees and pulls my hands into hers.

"We should talk about…" her eyes go to Octavia's bin. The one holding an empty blood bag.

I yank my hands out of hers.

"What's the alternative?" she says, her voice pleading.

"There's always another way," I say.

"Red, please. Just do this for me."

"I… I can't," I say, tearing my gaze away from hers.

"Please? Don't you get it? If you don't drink it, you could die."

"Don't fucking do that. Don't guilt trip me. I won't do it. There's no way I'm drinking human blood, Amelia. I am not becoming the monster that took everything from us."

"Half the monster," she says. "And lest you forget, you fell for one of those monsters too."

I glare at her. "And where's the line? Did you lose all your morals when you became a vampire? Where's your humanity?"

"Then what about the cure? You want me to take it so badly, and yet you're resisting becoming the one thing that will secure it."

"Yeah," I huff, looking her up and down. "I can see we need the cure more than ever."

"Oh, go fuck yourself, Red. How dare you! I'm being pragmatic here. You want a chance to fix this city? Fix the wrongs that were done to us? Done to so many others? Then you have no choice but to drink the blood."

"THEN I'LL BE AS BAD AS THEM." I fling my arm out towards Octavia's office window. The curtains are closed, but the meaning is the same. Them in the club. The vampires. The ones in power.

"That may be so, but you'll have a pure heart and all the power in the world to fix it."

"Well, maybe that is the fucking problem. No one should have that much power."

"Say that when this city is safe, and no more humans die needlessly. Say that when we have a taxable blood system—I bet you haven't even let Octavia tell you about those plans, have you? Or the fact she wants to up the pay rates so that there's enough willing donors that no vampire ever starves, and no human ever dies. Isn't that worth becoming half the monster you fear so much? Isn't that worth holding the power so you can do something good with it?"

That floors me. I knew this meant a lot to Octavia, but I hadn't imagined she'd already thought it through so much. That she had plans and ideas solidifying into place, real tangible ways of making her dream come true.

I glance up at Amelia. "What if I can't? What if I take that power and I'm no better than Cordelia? Than everyone who has ever come before?"

Amelia sniffs. "You're being a coward. What would Mum say?"

"Don't you dare use her name against me."

She shakes her head and then freezes. It's such a sudden movement. My skin prickles.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

Her head snaps to face the door. "Someone's injured in the club. A lot of blood. They're coming here."

The door is flung open, and Erin comes barrelling in, holding the body of a limp man. Blood is pouring out of him, splattering on the floor like juice.

I instantly feel sick and hungry and deeply fucking confused. Amelia's eyes widen as she takes in my expression. She wipes a hand over her mouth with a feverish swipe, and it takes me a second to figure out she's miming about me. I close my mouth, running my tongue along my teeth. Whoa, they're sharp. Way sharper than they should be.

Fuck. What is happening to me?

"Let me help," I say. "Amelia. Rags, sheets. Get some O negative blood from the stocks. He needs a transfusion. I need the first aid kit. Lay him there. Do we have a vampire medic in the club?" I say to Erin, pointing at the sofa.

"Not tonight. There normally is at least one vampire who will donate in case of emergencies, but the designated one on duty tonight had to leave."

Amelia is off and back before he's even on the sofa. I breathe through my mouth and not my nose. The last thing any of us need is for me to lose my head at the first scent of blood.

"Erin, get vodka, the purest you can get."

I shred his shirt and find the gash in his stomach. It's a stab wound. Amelia hands me the blood and a first aid kit as Erin returns with the vodka. I pour it over his stomach, and he shrieks. I hand the bottle to him, and he guzzles.

"Erin, knock him out."

"What?" the man shrieks. But Erin lands a brutal blow to his jaw and his head falls slack.

I slide my fingers inside his stomach and feel around. Lincoln and I had to take an advanced field medics course before we could get our officer ranks. I rack my mind trying to find the right knowledge. My fingers glide around his fat cells and deeper skin layers until I punch through into his abdomen.

I fumble for his organs. I'm not trained enough to be confident, but it doesn't seem like there's anything seriously cut.

My fingers grow warm. They tingle at the tips, and as I pull them out, the blood flow slows.

"What the fuck?"

"What's wrong?" Erin says.

"What?" I snap my head up. "Nothing. Nothing. Get me sheets and shred them. We need to pack his wound and apply pressure."

She darts off and grabs the sheets Amelia brought. She shreds them into sets of strips, and then Amelia speeds them over to me.

"What's wrong?" she whispers under her breath.

"I'll tell you in a minute." I apply pressure to his wound and focus on trying to get the blood flow stemmed. When I pull the first bloody rag off, I move my fingers over the wound. They tingle again. I pull them off his skin, confused, but when I look back down the wound is still bleeding, though it's no longer pouring blood out in long ribbons, it's more of a lazy ooze.

Amelia lets out a little gasp as I glance up at her. "Do it again," she breathes.

So I do. I run my fingers over his stomach and focus my thoughts on healthy, smooth skin. I picture a thin silvery scar and when I pull my fingers away, nothing else happens. The tingle doesn't return. And from all the expended effort, I am now ravenous.

"I can't," I whisper. "That's all I've got. There's nothing else."

"You did good, Red. Even if you don't have enough power yet to fully heal a person, you did amazing." She squeezes my shoulder and I lean into her arm.

But I buckle over, holding my stomach, cutting the celebration short.

The craving for blood is sapping the energy from my every cell. It claws at my insides. Knives stab my consciousness. I'm not sure if I want to be sick or sink my teeth into the same man I just saved. The wound is still a nasty gash, but there's only a trickle of blood left. Still, it takes everything in me not to lean down and lick the red thread off his stomach. I gag at the thought and stumble back. I can't get anywhere near him. My head is all over the place.

What kind of fucked up is this?

"Bandage him," I say. "Wrap them around his stomach. Pull tight. We need the pressure to seal the rest of the wound. I need… I need a minute."

I stagger to Octavia's worktable, pick up the vial of blood that she gave Amelia, and head to the bathroom at the back of the office. I close the door and flip open the vial, downing the entire thing.

I don't care if they wanted me to ration it and have a drop or two every couple of hours. I need the entire thing right the fuck now before I do something I regret.

I let the vial clatter to the basin and lean over it, breathing heavy. When my head stops spinning, I stare at myself in the mirror. I'm not even sure I recognise who is looking back anymore. My face is pale. Paler than normal and my skin sallow, my cheeks gaunt. When did I prioritise blood over food? Aside from the awards ceremony, I can't remember the last time I ate a decent meal.

I run the tap and hesitate. Blood smothers my fingers and hands. I turn my fingers this way and that. It would be easy to taste it. Lick a drop off and see what it was like. But if I do that, it's a slippery road and I'm not sure I want to know where it leads.

I bring two fingers to my nose and sniff. It's rich, and potent enough my mouth fills with saliva. It's the most divine thing I've ever smelt. Like summer evenings and fires and s'mores. I open my mouth, my tongue skitters over my bottom lip, but I can't bring myself to do it.

I shove my hand under the tap, cursing myself internally for even hesitating. The fuck, Red. Of course, I'm not going to drink human blood. I'm a hunter. I'm better than this.

I do not have to be any fucking dhampir. I'm sure one of the other hunters can take the role. It doesn't have to be me.

I wash the blood off and decide to get in the shower. Octavia's blood is now in my system, and I need to appease the ache between my legs. I survived earlier, but I am not going to survive this. I'll be a puddle on the floor and completely useless.

I barely have to touch myself before I'm coming. But it's not enough, so I slip my hands between my legs and rub at a frenetic pace. I slide to the floor and use both hands, shoving two rough fingers inside and letting my other hand ravish my clit. My eyes close and I think of Octavia, imagine her sat on my face, grinding the pleasure out of me. I savour the sweet taste of her excitement and I come again with the thought of my tongue between her folds, my fingers inside her. When I'm spent, I climb out of the shower, dress, and I head back into the office.

But it's silent. The type of silent that's deafening.

"What?" I ask, my cheeks reddening as I wonder if they heard me masturbating in the shower.

The man sits up on the sofa; the colour has returned to his cheeks. Erin has removed the blood transfusion bag, and his stomach is bandaged and strapped up. He looks… basically fine.

"How the hell is he upright?" I say.

"He healed fast," Erin says.

Amelia is giving me the side eye because she knows exactly why he's better. Fuck. I wonder if that's why I needed more blood. Did he drain me of… of what? A millennium of lost dhampir magic? Well, good. Maybe I'll stop transitioning. Hopefully, I gave him everything and he can be the fucking dhampir.

I shake my head, pull my hand down over my face. I need to get a grip and confront the reality that what just happened means no matter how much I keep hoping, I've already started to transition, and I really don't want to think about the consequences of that.

"Erin, will you give us a moment?" Amelia says, her eyes darkening as I think she's come to the same conclusion I have, and this situation getting outside of this room isn't good for anyone.

Erin nods her assent and leaves. Amelia turns to the man.

Her voice drops an octave as she rounds on him. "What happened to you?" she purrs, her voice like liquid silk.

I have to shake myself to stay fully conscious. Damn Amelia, you have changed.

"Stabbed, glass bottle got smashed. It was an accident to be fair, but my blood got spilled on the dancefloor, and several vampires weren't expecting it and it sent them into a blood lust. It was bad until they got a grip of themselves and alerted Erin. That's how I ended up in here."

"And what do you remember of how you got fixed?" Amelia says.

His eyes glide across the room to me. "I… I don't know how you did it, miss. But it was definitely you. I was unconscious, but it was like a sheet of golden energy coming out from a point near my belly. It was glistening and warm and like… I don't know. What I imagine heaven to be, I guess."

"I see," Amelia says.

She glances over her shoulder at me, and I nod my head.

I am a hypocrite. I can't believe I am furious with Octavia and yet, I'm agreeing to let Amelia compel him. But what choice do I have? If she doesn't, then he's going to know or at least work out who I am fairly quickly, and then word will get out. Until this whole situation is under control and the door is open, I can't let anyone know who I…

I can't bring myself to say the words. It doesn't have to be me. I don't want the power. Someone else needs to take it.

Amelia takes a step towards him. He hesitates, his eyebrows cinch together. "What's going on?"

"Red? Tell me to do it…" Amelia starts.

"Do it." I exhale, and a coil of bitter sickness climbs up my throat. Is it possible to hate yourself more than I do right now? I slump into a chair, wondering how I got this far from my moral compass.

Amelia stares into his eyes. "Forget what happened here tonight. Forget that you were stabbed. You fell onto something sharp on your way home, and the club doorman helped patch you up. You never saw me or Red. In fact, you don't even know who we are."

His eyes go hazy, distant and glazed, and then he snaps out of it.

"I need to go home," he mutters, getting up off the sofa and walking out of the office.

I sag against the chair, and Amelia turns to me.

"You see now? You see what you could be capable of? How many people you could save? All you need to do is drink the fucking blood."