Chapter 6

6

GAbrIEL

M y head was pounding, and I was floating, but not in a way that gave me any distance from the pain. Instead, I was submerged in it with no sign of land. My skull contracted around my brain with each throb. My eyes felt like they were made out of broken glass. I tried to rub them, but my arms wouldn't move.

Slowly, gingerly, I blinked open my eyes. A familiar vaulted ceiling arced up above me. I was in a large, opulent room, all dark wood paneling and rich tapestries. Byzantine icons, paintings of peasants at work with castles looming menacingly in the background, and pages cut from illuminated manuscripts, jewel-bright and flecked with gold hung on the walls. I recognized each piece of art. After all, I had picked them out myself in my younger years.

Dread fought through the pain to make itself known. I was in my childhood bedroom. More accurately, I was in a simulacrum of my childhood bedroom, filled with my old things, tastefully arranged by whichever decorators my parents had hired. I'd never lived in this room—it was constructed from someone else's idea of who I used to be.

I was sitting half-upright on the bed against a heap of pillows. When I turned my head to the side, I saw thick metal cuffs clasped around my wrists, chaining me to the ornately carved headboard. I tugged against the restraints with no success. The headboard was made of heinously expensive tropical hardwood and, even with vampiric strength, if I tried to yank my way free, my wrists would break before the wood did.

How could I have been so foolish? I should have seen the guards' behavior for what it was. In retrospect, it was clear they'd been told to let me into the building and alert my father to my presence immediately. My memories were still blurry from whatever concoction he'd injected into my system, but I could piece together the fragments. Deep in the citadel, guards had come after us. I remembered splitting away from the two witches, trying to lead the security team away. It had worked. The guards had run after me, chasing me through the corridors, leading me right to where my father was waiting for me.

The memories became fuzzier from that point on. Running. Desperation. Sharp, blistering relief at seeing Evangeline escape, marred with horror at seeing my own way home flying away with her. The agony on her face as she realized what was happening. Then darkness.

The bedroom door swung open on well-oiled hinges. For some reason, I found that funny. Someone was paid to come here, to clean and maintain my rooms, despite them sitting empty. Hopefully, they were at least paid decently.

Which had won out when they'd decided how much to pay the staff? My father's tightfistedness? Or my mother's firm belief that loyalty and discretion could be bought by the highest bidder, and were often worth the price?

"Gabriel," said a familiar voice, its tone chiding and patronizing in equal measure, as if it had been uniquely calculated to set my teeth on edge.

"Father," I replied coldly.

"I'm sorry it had to come to this," my father said, coming over to stand next to the bed. He looked down at me with an expression that, for him, was surprisingly close to genuine regret. "I should have stepped in sooner."

"Let me go. We can discuss this rationally." I had no interest in a calm discussion, of course, but if I could get him to take the damn handcuffs off, my prospects would start to look much more welcoming.

"Don't be stupid, boy," he said. "You won't be able to talk me into anything. You are not the one in control here. I've let you think that for far too long, and look where that's gotten you. Consorting with witches." He practically spat out that last word.

"You're working with a witch yourself," I snapped.

He waved a dismissive hand. "A means to an end. Morgana is useful. She's clearing out the riffraff, consolidating power. Soon, I'll take that power for myself, and when I do, I'll have you by my side. You're a necessary part of the plan, Gabriel. It'll be simpler for both of us if you simply fall into line without any fuss."

"Never," I snarled, pulling against my restraints. "I won't go along with this."

"You won't have a choice," my father said, with a distant, dreamy calm. "You'll be a symbol of my authority. A symbol of what I'm capable of. A reminder of the strength of my bloodline. My best and most well-honed tool." He smiled beatifically, staring off at a future only he could see.

"You've lost your mind."

"Oh, no. No, my mind is quite clear. Sharper than ever, in fact." He clapped sharply. "Come here, boy," he barked.

A young man walked into the room, moving slowly and clumsily. He walked as though each of his limbs was asleep, and he wasn't quite sure where they were at any given moment. The dark muttonchops and tattoo of a swallow on his neck looked familiar. The boy from Sal's diner, I realized, blood running cold. I tried to remember his name, but the fear and sedatives scrambled my thoughts. Thomas? Tony?

The boy had a glazed look in his eyes, and a strange slackness to his face, as if he was asleep. It was an expression I recognized all too well. My father was controlling his mind. Whatever this was, it wasn't good.

The boy's name popped into my mind. "Toby," I said urgently, pulling myself upright as much as I could. I barely managed a few inches. I tried to meet his eyes, but they were unfocused. "It's Toby, isn't it? I need you to listen to me. I know what he's doing to you right now must feel inescapable, but you can fight back. You can close your mind to him if you focus. It won't be easy, but you can do it. Just focus on my voice, all right?"

My father scoffed. "Oh, don't give the creature false hope, Gabriel. It's impolite to play with your food. He's only human. He doesn't have any experience blocking out this sort of treatment. Even if he did, it wouldn't matter. After all, I've reached into your mind many times, and you've never once managed to stop me."

Snarling, I tugged uselessly at my chains again. I tried to kick out at my father, but he was far out of reach.

My father curled a hand around Toby's shoulder, claw-like, and steered him over to the side of the bed. Smiling down at me, he picked up a small, wickedly curved knife from the bedside table and handed it to the young man. I watched, horrified, as Toby drew the knife over his own arm. Dark blood beaded from the gash, the smell heady and enticing. My mouth began to water, and I hated myself for it. This wasn't who I was, not anymore. Not after all the work I had done to pull myself out of that place.

"Your propensity for inferior blood has weakened you, Gabriel," my father murmured. "Animal blood. Synthetic blood. Pale imitations. A true vampire needs the blood of humans."

"Don't do this," I begged. "Please."

"Go on, boy," my father said.

Toby reached out his arm above my head, and the blood dripped down my face. I twisted my head to the side, trying to avoid it, and my father snarled.

"Don't be stubborn," he said. "This is for your own good, Gabriel."

The blood was hot across my cheek, and a droplet trickled over my lips. My nostrils flared, my pupils dilating like a predator who had spotted prey. My father sighed, reaching out to grab my jaw in a viselike grip. He forced my head up toward the ceiling. I clamped my lips together as tightly as I could.

"You're only making this harder for yourself, son," my father said. He pushed into my mind roughly, taking control of my muscles by brute force and opening my mouth against my will. The blood flowed into my mouth, hot and tangy with iron, and so fucking delicious. I tried to spit it out, but I couldn't turn my head, couldn't regain control of my own body. The blood trickled down, and I could do nothing to stop the convulsions of my throat as I swallowed again, and again, and again.

Toby had cut a long, shallow gash, and blood fell across my entire face. It rained down across my forehead with maddening irregularity, dripping down into my stinging eyes. My father stood over me, watching with grim satisfaction.

"Isn't this better?" he asked. "It's what you were meant for, son. You're a predator. It's time you started acting like it. All your talk of…" He snorted then took on a simpering tone. "Caring for the weak, outreach programs, harm reduction!" He dropped the affectation like it sickened him. "It's idiotic. It's against our very nature."

My father scoffed, waving an arm at the opulent room around us. "We take," he said. "We feed off the weak, we do not care for them. If they were worth protecting, then they already would have made something of themselves. Don't you understand?" He leaned in closer, grabbing my face and shaking me a little. His fingers slipped in the blood smeared across my cheek. "An effective vampire is an apex predator. An ineffective one is simply a parasite. It does us all good if they're removed from the ranks."

You're wrong, I thought at him as loudly as I could. Caring for those who need it is what separates us from animals.

My father rolled his eyes and licked the blood from his fingers. "It's amazing you've survived so long and stayed so na?ve. I always told your mother she sheltered you too much." He sighed, shaking his head wearily. "I'll be back when the boy's empty."

He swept out of the room, leaving Toby and me alone. My father's hold over my mind was strong enough that he could keep me pinned in place even at a distance. The only sound was Toby's increasingly ragged breathing and the sound of dripping blood.

Eventually, Toby, pallid and sweating, slumped down onto the edge of the bed. All I could do was swallow over and over again until he finally fell. He landed across my chest, a lighter weight than I would have thought. I lay there, unable to so much as blink as his body grew cold. My face was sticky and itching from the half-dried blood.

My father came back with another human—a tanned woman with the beginnings of crow's feet and chipped blue nail polish—who followed after him obediently. She smelled like cleaning products and cigarettes. He shoved Toby's corpse onto the floor and handed the woman the knife. A few hours later, her body joined Toby's.

They kept coming. A tall, olive-skinned man with a twice-broken nose and a shirt someone had hand-embroidered with little flowers that sprouted out of the breast pocket. He rolled up his sleeves neatly, with perfect photoshoot-ready folds, before slitting his arm. A teenage girl with greasy blue hair and a dozen plastic bead bracelets. One of the bracelets had the name ABBY spelled out in flat white beads with raised black letters. It sat right over the pulse of her wrist, and I stared up at it as she bled into my mouth.

I lost track of time, of faces. The characteristics that must have been so precious to those who loved these people blurred together. I felt drunk on the rich, thick blood in my mouth. The edges of the room felt vague and inconsequential. My body was distant, both mine and not mine. Did one of the people I'd drunk from have something in their system? Or was this what human blood did to me? It had been so long since I'd had the real thing.

I slipped into a hazy, uncertain sleep. I didn't know if I fell down into the dream, or if it rose up to meet me, but I was in it all the same, and it was warm and safe here. Evangeline was in my arms, murmuring words I couldn't make out. The slickness around my mouth was from her, not from anything more gruesome. She kissed me sweetly, not caring about the taste of herself on my lips. Our bodies were borderless and shifting, like drops of ink on wet paper. I was inside her then, and she was eager, moaning and pliant. Evangeline smiled up at me, as though we were in on a secret together. I pressed my mouth to hers. It wasn't really a kiss, just closeness, openness. I could hear her heartbeat. She brought her hands up to tangle her fingers into my hair, and I could hear the thudding of her pulse in her wrists, right next to my ears. I could smell the blood in her veins. I rolled my hips into her, steady and fluid as the tide, then lowered my mouth to her neck and bit down.