A Trail of Echoes

  Once I’d come to the end, Rose walked over to River and kissed her cheek. “Welcome to The Shade,” she said, squeezing her hand.

  “Thank you.” River beamed. I could see that my sister’s gesture meant a lot to her.

  “No, thank you for helping my brother.”

  From the glance Rose gave me as she sat back down in her seat, I could tell that she’d already figured out that I felt more for River than just friendship.

  “So,” Caleb said, looking at me, “the plan is for you to turn back into a human today?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “And then turn into a half-blood.”

  “How soon that happens will depend on how soon we’re able to get a…” My voice trailed off. My eyes shot toward my sister. “Rose, you could half-turn me.”

  Chapter 27: Rose

  My eyes widened as I stared at my brother. “Are you serious? I—I only just turned. I don’t feel confident that I wouldn’t just rip out your throat.”

  “The only vampire who can turn me is one who was just newly turned,” Ben replied. “You need to try for me, Rose. You don’t have the problem around humans that I do, you’ll be as good as anyone.”

  I looked at Caleb nervously then back to my brother. “Once you’re a human, I… I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “Your parents are here,” River said, looking toward the Port.

  I spun around to see that she was right. My mother and father were sailing toward us on a boat.

  “Oh, no,” I murmured, “Dad’s a human.” The first human I encountered in The Shade and wanted to suck dry was my own father. I clutched Caleb’s knee, then looked toward my brother and River. He had reached for her and sat her on his knee as he looked out toward our parents approaching in the boat.

  “You’re going to be okay,” Caleb said to me. “You are strong enough to control yourself now.”

  And yet as my father drew closer and closer, I did not feel strong at all. I sat next to my brother and River in the far corner of the boat, trying to breathe in River’s scent so that my father’s blood would not be so alluring to me.

  “Stop hogging River all to yourself,” I said to my brother, managing a grin even as my stomach tensed up in knots.

  River chuckled, then lowered her arm to me and allowed me to hold it. I leaned closer to her and took a deep breath.

  The fact that my brother had called her just a “friend” was amusing to me. I knew him too well to not notice the way he looked at her, how much he seemed to adore her.

  As my parents reached the boat, I braced myself for the explosion.

  My mother was the first to lay eyes on me. Her expression of joy at seeing me again soon turned to shock, then horror, as she realized what I had become.

  “Rose! You… turned?” She clasped a hand over her mouth, then leapt onto our boat and rushed up to me. Holding my head in her hands, she examined me closely as if wanting to believe that her eyes were deceiving her.

  My father’s jaw dropped as he saw me. He took a step closer and my whole body tensed up. The demon inside of me clawed for release. I could practically feel the hot blood pumping through his veins.

  I imagined how bizarre this experience must have been for my father. His own son and daughter were doing everything they could to not launch at him and drain him dry.

  I was used to the abnormal, having grown up on an island of supernaturals, and after everything we had recently been through there wasn’t a lot that could faze me these days. But this… This was weird.

  Exhaling slowly, I remembered what Caleb had told me.

  I can do this. I’m strong enough.

  Thankfully, my father didn’t step forward as close as my mother did, wisely realizing what I was going through. He looked from me to Caleb, then back to me.

  “This was my idea,” I said quickly, not wanting them to think that Caleb might have influenced my decision. “Caleb was completely against it.”

  “Why?” was the one word that spilled from my parents’ gaping mouths.

  I explained my reasoning. How I had wanted to know if I would have the same problem as Ben, so I could know how this would affect my and Caleb’s future, and also to bring us one small step closer to understanding what might be wrong with Ben.

  “So you’re certain that you don’t have the same problem?” my mother asked.

  “Yes, positive. I’m not showing any of the signs that Ben showed.”

  “Why didn’t you discuss it with us before you left?” my father asked. “Why do it so suddenly?”

  “I just… I thought it best that I just do it. And the most logical time for me to turn was while we were away. We enjoyed our honeymoon, and then we hung around near the outskirts of The Shade while I recovered for the last few days.”

  “She’s all right, Derek,” Caleb said. “Give her a few weeks, and she’ll live among humans just as well as the rest of the vampires on this island.”

  Caleb’s words seemed to pacify my parents.

  My mother held my hands. “Well, as long as you’re happy with your decision. It will mean you and Caleb taking the cure and turning back into humans if and when you decide you want children…”

  “I know,” I said. “I’ve already thought about it.”

  “I just wonder why Ben has a problem and you don’t,” my father said, voicing the question that had been at the back of my mind ever since I turned into a vampire.

  “I wonder if something could have happened in Aviary,” my mother said, her face tense.

  I looked at Ben, who appeared just as clueless as the rest of us.

  “I just don’t know…”

  Chapter 28: River

  After Benjamin’s parents had recovered from the shock of seeing their newly married daughter as a vampire, all of us traveled to the shore. Rose and Ben sat close to me, as far away from Derek as possible. As we reached the Port, Derek stepped off first and distanced himself from the twins, and then I stepped out with them. Ben had an arm around my waist, while Rose had linked her arm with mine. I couldn’t help but chuckle at the way both were clinging to me.

  Sofia looked at Benjamin. “Are you sure you’re ready for the cure?” she asked.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” Ben replied grimly.

  “Then I suggest we go straight to the Pit and get this over with,” Sofia said. She looked up ahead toward her husband. “Derek, why don’t you go and fetch some witches… Ibrahim and Corrine?”

  Derek nodded, and then headed off into the woods.

  “What’s the Pit?” I asked, part intrigued, part chilled by the name.

  “You’ll see,” was all Ben replied.

  “We should travel around the outskirts of the island rather than going through the woods,” Sofia said. “That way we’ll stay further away from the humans… Will you come with us, Rose and Caleb?”

  “Of course I’m coming,” Rose said, as though it was a stupid question. She glanced at Caleb. “You coming too?”

  “Yes, I’ll come.”

  And so we began to run along the borders of the island. Truth be told, I enjoyed every moment of it, admiring the scenery we passed by, until we reached the borders of a mountain range. We climbed over rocks, winding in and out of boulders.

  “This area used to be called the Catacombs,” Ben said to me. “It’s where The Shade used to house its humans, or should I say imprison… Things have changed a lot since then.”

  Arriving in an area sheltered by rocks, we stopped outside a gated entrance.

  “Through there,” Ben said, still addressing me as he nodded toward it, “is the only place on the island other than Sun Beach where the sun shines through. It was once used as a torture chamber, to punish vampires who didn’t abide by The Shade’s law. Now, it’s where all vampires who wish to turn back into humans come and lock themselves… It’s where you will come if you ever decide you want to turn back into a human and we manage to figure out a cure for half-bloods.”
r />   “How long does it take vampires to turn back?” I asked.

  “It varies from vampire to vampire… But it’s in the hours, not minutes.”

  Hours of agony. Not something to look forward to.

  As we stood outside the entrance, Derek appeared out of thin air ten feet away, accompanied by a man and a woman, whom I could only assume were the witch and warlock Sofia had mentioned, Corrine and Ibrahim.

  Their eyes rested briefly on me, and then focused on Ben. Corrine moved forward and drew him in for a hug, while Ibrahim patted him on the back.

  “Welcome home, Ben,” Corrine said, eyeing him anxiously. She was holding a canvas bag in one hand that was bulging with something. “I think it’s best that we don’t talk about this too much.” She rested the bag on the ground and began pulling out vial after vial of red liquid that could have only been blood, laying them out on a nearby rock. “Let’s just give you the cure as soon as possible so you can stop being such a threat to our humans, and then we can talk about the next step.”

  “That is a lot of immune blood,” Ben said, eyeing the vials on the rock.

  “We don’t want anything going wrong,” Ibrahim said. “There is something different about you, and we can’t afford to take any risks.”

  “We’re going to make you down twenty times the usual dosage that a vampire would take during the cure,” Corrine said.

  “Twenty times?” Ben said, taken aback. “Okay.”

  “And this is pure immune blood,” Ibrahim added. “Not mixed with animal blood.”

  “Why would it be mixed with animal blood?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  Ibrahim turned to me. “To make our supply last longer and not keep having to draw blood from our resident immune, Anna, we figured out how to filter in animal blood while still maintaining the same effect. We kept aside just a small supply of pure blood…” He looked back at Ben. “And it’s a good thing we did. Don’t waste a drop, Ben. This stuff is precious.”

  Ben eyed the blood. “Okay.”

  He moved near the rock, and, opening all the bottles, began downing vial after vial of the blood. Once he was finished, he breathed out in satisfaction. Then Ben moved toward the Pit’s entrance.

  “Good luck, Ben,” Derek said, looking at his son with trepidation. It looked like he wanted to draw him in for a hug, but he remained standing apart from him.

  “Thanks,” Benjamin murmured.

  His mother gave him a tight hug, and then his sister.

  Ben turned to face me, his bright green eyes looking deep into mine. Butterflies erupted in my stomach as his hands rested around the back of my neck and he dipped down to press his lips against mine. That he should kiss me so openly in front of his family made the blood rise in my cheeks.

  “Good luck,” I whispered.

  Chapter 29: Ben

  As I stepped inside the Pit, the sun blazed down on me like a thousand knives. The brightness was blinding as I staggered into the center of it. I’d felt the sun on me before, but in this small enclosure, it felt hotter than I’d ever experienced.

  Every fiber of my being screamed to rush back out to safety, to the cool darkness. But I had to go through with this. There was no other way.

  I focused my mind on stepping out again in a few hours as a human. All of my bloodlust problems solved. Feeling normal again around my father and all the other humans I held dear. No longer feeling like an uncontrollable beast. Feeling myself again.

  As much as I tried to focus on the end, there was just no way to ignore the burning in my flesh.

  Although it was normal to feel pain like this when turning back into a human, part of me kept panicking that something was going wrong.

  I did my best to remain silent, and not groan or make a sound. It would only make the experience more torturous for my loved ones standing outside.

  The pain soon brought me to my knees, and I crouched on all fours, panting and drawing deep breaths, trying to find some way to not lose my mind.

  I’m going to make it through this.

  I’m going to make it through this.

  I tried to distract myself with the thought of River, standing and waiting for me on the other side. I tried to lose myself remembering what it felt like to kiss those soft lips of hers, to run my hands along her curves, and look down into her gorgeous eyes.

  That helped more than anything, but it still wasn’t enough to bring me relief.

  I heard them calling for me, but I couldn’t focus on their words. They entered my ears mangled and disjointed, and I could barely make sense of them.

  Hours passed.

  My skin felt like it had been deep-fried in a pan of oil and then scraped off with a carving knife, but my vision was too blurred to see the true state of it. I had lost my sense of touch temporarily. Although I ran my fingers along my arms, I couldn’t sense what I was feeling other than the pain that spread throughout my entire body.

  Lying on the floor, my eyes shut tight, I was no longer able to summon the strength to even move an inch. My throat was so dry and parched, it felt like I’d just swallowed a mouthful of nails.

  Finally, the entrance swung open. Someone hovered over me—perhaps more than one person—and then the next thing I knew, my body lurched and I had been vanished out of that blazing hell. I landed on a soft mattress.

  Opening my eyes, I felt my vision slowly returning. I was looking around a cool, dim chamber in the Sanctuary. My parents, my sister, Caleb, River and the two witches stood around my bed.

  “Benjamin.”

  I began to regain my sense of hearing. It was Corrine speaking. She touched either side of my face, and then my arms, my chest.

  “Benjamin.” It was my mother this time. “Can you hear me?” She spoke slowly, enunciating every syllable.

  The back of my throat twinged painfully as I tried to speak. So instead I just grunted.

  Bunching up the sheets between my fists, I managed to find the strength to sit up against the pillows and look around the room I was in. River, who was standing right next to my head, placed a hand over mine.

  I looked down at my hand.

  Its color was tinged red, but it was still unmistakably pale.

  Can a human be this pale?

  “Benjamin,” Corrine said, her eyes wide with worry. “You are still a vampire.”

  I almost choked. Before I could respond, she held up another vial full of blood and tipped it into my mouth. The sweet immune blood trickled down my throat like honey, and every part of my skin began tingling.

  I found my voice again. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you’re still a vampire,” Corrine said.

  I looked at myself in the mirror fixed on the other side of the room. The rest of me was pale, just like my hands and arms. Opening my mouth, I bared my fangs. Then I flexed my claws.

  “But… this is impossible,” I gasped. “Remaining a vampire all that time beneath the sun… How could I have? I should’ve died.”

  “I have no clue,” Corrine said. “Like you say, there’s no reason for you to still be alive now. Your skin was reddish and blotchy just now before the immune blood healed you, but you endured nowhere near the damage you should have done as a vampire beneath the blazing afternoon sun for all those hours… You should be dead.”

  I’m still a vampire.

  No, this cannot be possible.

  “But you gave me a ridiculous dosage of immune blood. How could I not have turned? Sh-Should you have given me more?”

  There was a pause, everyone in the room eyeing me nervously.

  “I’ve a feeling,” Corrine said slowly, “we could have given you all the immune blood in the world, and you still would not have turned.”

  Chapter 30: Derek

  It was a mystery to all of us. Not only Ben’s inability to turn, but how in hell he was still alive.

  I recalled my failed attempt to turn into a human while The Shade was under attack from the witches. If I had not been sa
ved from the Pit by my wife, I would’ve died. My body had been scorched black after just a few hours. I had not been in there nearly as long as Ben. And yet here he was—although he had clearly been in agony, his body had been hardly covered with more than a few red patches.

  It was deeply unsettling that not even Corrine or Ibrahim had a single clue as to why.

  Benjamin looked shell-shocked as he sat back down on the treatment bed, staring blankly at Sofia and me. Despite the fact that Sofia and I had done what we’d thought was right for him at the time, I couldn’t help but feel the guilt welling up within me again. I was the one who’d turned him. Ultimately, I was the reason he was going through this torment.

  As Benjamin’s eyes fixed on me, his expression changed. It was an expression I knew too well, not just from myself, but from other vampires when bloodlust was taking hold of them.

  His facial features darkened, his eyes growing dull and blackish. The failed cure had drained him, and now he was starving for blood.

  Although Corrine had just fed him a vial of immune blood, that would have soothed his throat, but it would not have even begun to satisfy the craving that was now roaring in his stomach. If anything, the exquisite taste of the immune blood would have just aggravated his appetite.

  “He needs more blood,” Corrine said anxiously. “But we can’t afford to keep giving him pure immune blood.”

  River moved closer to Ben, pressing a wrist against his face.

  “Leave it to me,” I said, clenching my jaw.

  Sofia shot me a confused glance. “How are—”

  “I’ll be back in an hour,” I said firmly.

  It was time that I stepped out of the room anyway. It was bad enough Ben just being on this island. Me standing in such proximity to him was unnecessary torture. I left the chamber, closing the door behind me, and then left the Sanctuary completely. Emerging in the moonlit courtyard, I hurried forward, my legs speeding me toward the Port. Arriving at the jetty, I walked along it and stopped at the end.