I felt shivers run down my spine as the king’s piercing blue gaze settled on me. He looked me over curiously, then back at Eli.
“What is all this? At this time of night?”
Eli looked at me, indicating that I do the talking.
I cleared my throat. “My name is River Giovanni and I’m a friend of your son. I need to speak with you and your wife urgently.”
“My son?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s, uh, waiting near the island.”
Derek spun around, looking over his shoulder and called back into the apartment. “Sofia!”
A pretty redhead in her early to mid-twenties raced to the doorway. This was Ben’s mom. She was clearly a vampire.
Her green eyes—so similar to Ben’s—widened as she stared at me.
“This is River, a friend of Ben,” Derek said. “He’s near The Shade.”
“Where?” she gasped.
“By the boundary near the Port,” I said. “I can—”
Before I could finish my sentence, Sofia reached for my hand and pulled me toward the elevator. Derek followed a few feet after, and so did Eli. We all descended in the elevator, and as we reached the bottom, we began running forward, Sofia still holding my hand. I slowed her down considerably compared to the two men who were speeding ahead, but finally we all arrived at the Port.
They stared out over the waves toward the boundary, squinting. I stood at the end of the jetty, looking in the direction I had last seen Ben. At first I thought that he might have left already, and my heart sank, but then I noticed the submarine’s shiny roof above the water and the small bump of the hatch.
“Over there.” I pointed.
“Ben!” Sofia began to shout.
Derek was already in one of the boats that surrounded the jetty, and we all bundled in after him. We began speeding toward Ben’s submarine, which was rising higher above the water.
I knew that Ben would’ve preferred to leave quietly, but there really wasn’t a way around it. Of course they would want to see him. From what Ben was telling me, it had been a long time since they had last seen each other.
I looked nervously at Derek as we neared Ben’s submarine.
“Um, I’m not sure that it will be safe for you to go near him,” I said. “He still has a problem controlling himself around human blood.”
Derek didn’t slow down in the slightest, but he looked at me and nodded.
As we reached the submarine, the four of us climbed onto the roof. The hatch lifted and Ben climbed out of it.
“Ben!” his parents called.
The expression on Ben’s face was a mixture of tension and confusion. As Derek and Sofia moved toward him, he said, “Dad? You’re a… a human? Don’t come near me!”
Sofia had already reached him by now, and she embraced him.
I hurried up to Ben and stood right by him, hoping that my blood would help to diffuse the scent of his father.
Derek looked pained as he stared at his son, as though there was nothing more that he wanted to do than pull him in for a hug, but he seemed to know better than to draw too close.
He remained standing at a distance, watching his son.
Sofia had tears dripping down her cheeks as she finally stepped back from Ben. Tears of happiness. Tears of relief.
Ben reached for me, and pulled me closer. His body felt so tense—the effect that his father’s blood was having on him. Ben lowered his face to my neck, and breathed me in.
I had a suspicion that he might have already finished the container of my blood while he’d been waiting, perhaps more out of nerves than necessity.
Derek and Sofia looked from Ben to me, then back to Ben.
Then they both asked:
“What happened to you?”
Chapter 23: Ben
It would have been less painful not to see my parents, but I could hardly expect them to not come running when River told them how she got here. My gut clenched as soon as my father came within proximity. It was a harrowing feeling. Had River not been here with me, there would have been nothing stopping me from launching at him and trying to sink my fangs into his throat. It was a chilling reminder of the monster I’d become, and why I so desperately needed to find a solution.
Why is my father a human? The question kept running through my mind, more out of fear than curiosity.
When my parents asked what had happened to me all this time, I was not sure how to answer. I felt extremely uncomfortable standing so close to my father, even with River by my side.
“I’ve been… all over.”
“Start from the beginning,” my father said.
The beginning. It seemed like an age had passed since I’d first left The Shade on the submarine, hoping against hope that my lust for human blood would subside and I would able to stomach animal blood. Those days of optimism, when I’d thought that I might still learn to control myself around humans, had long passed.
“I understand why you choose not to set foot on the island,” my mother said, “but why don’t you come and sit in our boat? It’ll be more comfortable than standing on this roof.”
I was still nervous about getting any closer to my father. But I figured that if River sat on my lap, I would be okay. Besides, Eli and my mother were here to help restrain me if something did go horribly wrong.
My father, mother and Eli stepped onto the boat before me, and then I followed with River, both of us keeping to the far end of the vessel. I pulled River onto my lap, practically smothering her again. I realized how odd this must have looked to my parents.
“River is a half-blood,” I said, clenching my jaw and trying to steady my breathing. “That means that she is half human, half vampire. Mom and Eli, I’m sure you can smell that her blood is not at all appealing. Because it’s spiked with vampire venom. River is the reason I’m not launching at you now, Dad.” I cast my father a glance.
“How did River become a half-blood?” he asked, frowning in confusion. “And how did you two meet?”
I started from the beginning. They all remained quiet as I told them my story, from the night I’d left The Shade, to floating in the ocean in the submarine, to the murders that I’d committed on land, to meeting Jeramiah and my time spent in The Oasis, and finally our bizarre journey back to the island.
They all looked dumbstruck by the time I was finished.
“Lucas had a son,” my father said, his jaw hanging open. I wasn’t sure how much he had absorbed of my story after I’d revealed Jeramiah’s identity. He seemed stunned by this news—just as I had been when I had first found out. “I mean,” he continued, “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Lucas was incorrigible when it came to young women even before he became a bloodsucker. But for him to have a son who is still alive today as a vampire… I never would have dreamt it.”
My mother seemed more concerned by the tattoos etched into my and River’s arms. She eyed us worriedly.
“Are the tattoos hurting you right now?” she asked.
“Mine isn’t hurting… It’s giving off a mild prickling sensation. What about you, River?” I asked.
“Mine isn’t hurting either,” River replied. “Just a prickling.”
“And the voices in your head, Ben?” my mother said. “Do you hear them now?”
I shook my head. “Not at the moment.”
“Half-bloods…” Eli muttered, his eyes fixed on River. “I have never heard of such a concept.”
“Somehow, Jeramiah and his coven discovered that it was possible,” I said. “They keep many half-bloods as slaves, though they make lovers out of them too. They are not as strong as vampires, but they are longer-lasting companions than humans—immortal, apparently.”
They continued asking me questions to clarify various parts of my story, and finally I found the opportunity to state the actual reason for my return.
“I came back only because of River. I need you to take
her to the witches and try to find a cure for her. Her home is in New York and she wants to return to her family there. Assuming the witches find a cure, one of them needs to transport her back home. And if they can’t… Then I guess she’s going to have to stay here with you in The Shade. It’s the only safe place for her.”
“But where would you go from here, Ben?” my mother asked. “It’s such a different world out there now. Did you see those ships?”
“Yes.”
“They’re hunter ships, in case you didn’t guess,” my father said, grimacing toward the vessels beyond the boundary. “Also, I’m not sure if you’re aware that your killing in Chile was caught on camera. It was broadcast all over mainstream television.”
My jaw dropped. I had been trapped in The Oasis for so long, I hadn’t exactly had a chance to follow the news. “It was broadcast on television?”
“Oh, my, I saw that on the news, Ben!” River said. “It didn’t click that it was you… the footage was blurry.”
“Yes. Quite a bit of footage has been broadcast recently,” my father said. “Supernaturals are now entering the consciousness of mainstream human society.”
“You were the trigger for all this,” Eli said to me. “You broke the code of secrecy.”
A feeling of guilt swelled in my stomach. All this time, I’d been totally oblivious to it.
My mother reached for my hand. “What’s done is done. There is no point lamenting the past. But now… Benjamin, you need to think carefully about what you’re going to do. Neither your father or I are going to stop you if you choose to leave, but I urge you to consider if that is really necessary. If you don’t feel confident enough to stay on the island, remember that we could always fix you up a residence on the water here, near the outskirts of the boundary.”
“Even that wouldn’t be safe,” I said. “It’s only because of River’s blood…” I stopped short, the obvious whacking me over the head like a sledgehammer. “I… I should try to turn into a half-blood.”
All four of them stared at me. I could see the penny dropping. I’d already explained to my parents and Eli that half-bloods were immortal, they were harmless without claws and fangs… and they didn’t crave blood like vampires did.
“Maybe I just need to forget about the reason I’m like this, and just solve the damn problem at the root.”
My mother’s face lit up. “Yes. Yes,” she said breathlessly. It was clear that she would agree to anything at all if it meant keeping me in The Shade.
My father stood up, looking down at me thoughtfully. “You would take the cure, and turn back into a human,” he said, thinking through my plan out loud. “Then we would need a newly-turned vampire to half-turn you, correct? We don’t have any newly-turned vampires on the island right now, at least not to my knowledge.” He looked at my mother and Eli. “Do you know of any?”
They both shook their heads.
“So we would have to think about how to handle that,” my father continued. “Whether anyone who is already planning to turn would mind doing it a bit sooner than intended…”
“Dad, why are you human?” I finally asked the question that had been bugging me from the moment I laid eyes on him.
He exchanged glances with my mother. “We’ll need to explain the whole story for you to understand, and that’s going to take hours. But basically, I needed my fire powers back.”
“Well, don’t you plan to turn back into a vampire?” I asked.
“Yes, at some point… But not yet. I want to hold off a little longer because, as I discovered the last time I took the cure, you can only take it so many times before you start building up an immunity to it. Things almost went… wrong. So this time when I turn back into a vampire, I want to be sure that I will not need to become a human again.”
“We will just have to try to find someone else on the island who wants to turn into a vampire,” my mother said.
“What if you still craved human blood even as a half-blood?” River asked me, raising a brow.
“I wouldn’t be equipped with a body designed to kill,” I said. “I’d be easier to control. And hopefully, the craving would be far less strong and I’d be able to eat normal food, like you can.”
“How do you half-turn a person exactly?” Eli asked, still looking fascinated by the concept.
“I’ve done it twice so far, but I’m hardly an expert. Basically the advice Jeramiah gave me was to dig in your fangs, focus on releasing venom, but then pull back before you feel like you’ve really started… Yes, I know it sounds vague.”
“Okay,” my mother said slowly, looking relieved. “So we have a plan. I’ll speak to some people tomorrow morning and try to find someone who would be willing to turn soon and then half-turn you. First, of course, you’re going to need to take the cure. I think you’ll want to rest a bit before that though… you’ve heard all about how painful it is.” She shuddered just at the thought.
Yes, I’d been told how painful it was supposed to be. But I was willing to undergo any kind of pain if it meant solving my problem once and for all.
At least I had some peace of mind now that we had a plan, which was more than I’d had just an hour ago. Heck, more than I’d had since I left The Shade.
Now that I was able to relax a little more, I leaned back in my seat, my hands resting on River’s lap rather than gripping her waist as I had been doing.
“Where’s Rose?” I asked. “And what’s been happening here in The Shade since I’ve been gone? The black witches? Are they still a threat?”
My mother smiled broadly at me. “Rose is on her honeymoon.”
I almost jolted River from my lap. “Honeymoon? What! With whom?”
“With Caleb,” my mother said.
“Jesus. They hit it off fast,” I said.
“Well, it had been a year… A very intense year.”
Once the shock started to wear off, I was filled with a feeling of melancholy.
I missed my sister’s wedding.
I wondered what else I had missed.
“When will Rose and Caleb return?” I asked.
“They’re due back any day now. They’re actually a little late… You have no idea how much Rose has missed you.”
“I’ve missed her too,” I said.
“You’re also going to have a cousin soon,” my father said. “Or should I say, another cousin. Vivienne’s pregnant. It won’t be much longer before she’s due. Claudia and Yuri are due for a baby too. Liana and Cameron returned—only recently, actually. Oh, and your grandfather hooked up with a werewolf.”
My head reeled. “My God. I really have missed a lot.”
“As for the witches,” my father continued, “they are no longer a threat. We managed to finish them off.”
“How on earth did you do that?”
I insisted that my parents do the same thing that I had done—start from the very beginning, tell me everything that had happened since I had left the island.
When they had finally finished, I felt overwhelmed. I was amazed at how much everyone in The Shade had grown during recent events, especially my sister. Dragon-pacifier? Fire-wielder? Who would’ve thought?
“I wonder whether I possess hidden fire powers as a human,” I said.
“It’s possible. You can try to summon them after you take the cure,” my father said.
“And what about these tattoos?” River asked, rolling up the sleeve of her robe. “And this weird echoing in our ears? Will we just have to learn to live with it, or could your witches do something about it?”
“I suggest we get Corrine and Ibrahim to see the two of you first thing in the morning,” my father said. “We can talk to them about finding a cure for you, and also see if they have any ideas on what could have happened to you and Ben in The Oasis—”
“What the—” Eli exclaimed as his eyes fixed on the submarine behind us.
I turned around to see two heads poking out of the hatch. The mermaid and merman. Their sc
aly faces looked dry and shriveled as they placed one hand after another on the slippery roof of the sub and squelched out.
“Merfolk!” my parents gasped at once.
Before any of us could stop them, they’d slid off the side of the submarine and plopped into the ocean.
“Damn it!” My father looked furious as he stared down into the water. “What were you doing with those in your sub?”
I realized I’d forgotten to tell him that we still had them in the vessel.
“I didn’t know what else to do with them. If I let them back into the water while we were still outside The Shade, I was worried they were going to try to smash up the submarine again.”
“They had better not try to harm our humans,” my mother said, looking anxiously down at the waves. After their adventures in The Cove, she had experienced firsthand that merfolk were not the cuddliest of creatures.
As we stood watching the two green shadows swim further up the shore and fade beneath the water, Eli muttered what I guessed all of us were thinking:
“This place is turning into a zoo.”
Chapter 24: Ben
My father said that he would ask one of our witches—or perhaps even Micah—to track down the merfolk tomorrow and expel them outside of the boundary. We had absolutely no reason to show mercy to them, certainly not when it came with a risk to our humans. We already had the occasional shark problem on Sun Beach, and the last thing we needed was a couple of nasty merfolk.
We continued talking some more as each of us remembered details we had missed out in the initial recounting of our stories, and then my parents left for all of us to get some rest. They said that they would come to meet us at the submarine in the morning around 9am.
That left River and me with some time to ourselves. Inside the submarine wasn’t an appealing place to sleep that night, to say the least, thanks to the fishy smell the merfolk had released after breaking free from their cabin. Although it wouldn’t be as safe as being inside the submarine where the smell of human blood would be less, we decided to lie on the roof of the submarine. As long as I kept River close to me, I was confident I’d be all right. We dried the flattest part of the submarine’s roof with towels, then spread out spare blankets to make it comfortable and lay down beneath the stars.