Chapter 21
QUIZ: Which Blood Feud Vampire Should Be YOUR Valentine?
by Amy Bello, posted on buzzfeed.com
Dear reader, are you single on V-Day? Well, never fear, because the hot vampires of Blood Feud are WAY sexier than any of the losers you’ve been swiping on Hinge (so sad, but you know it’s true). The only question is: Which one will give you the best Valentine’s Day of your life? Take this quiz to find out!
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Where is your valentine taking you for your big date?
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A private candlelit dinner with a table strewn with rose petals where you’ll drink expensive wine and be serenaded by violinists—you like it romantic!
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The hottest club in downtown Manhattan, where you’ll have bottle service at a center table and be the envy of all who see you—you like attention!
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Why go out at all when you could stay home, lock the door, have sex all night, and not have to interact with anyone besides your hottie? You like it dirty (and a little bit misanthropic)!
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Surprise! They have a private jet all fueled up. Where are you heading?
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Paris, mais bien sur! The city of love!
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Tokyo for fashion week and twenty-course omakases
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A ruggedly gorgeous castle in Scotland
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When you arrive, there’s a wrapped present waiting for you. What’s inside?
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A book of poems they wrote about you
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Insanely expensive lingerie
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A very large box of condoms
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Your valentine is drinking blood, obvi—but what are YOU drinking?
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Vintage champagne
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A mezcal cocktail
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Whiskey, neat
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You’re both exhausted from all your V-Day ~activities~; time to curl up and watch some TV. What are you watching?
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It’s Valentine’s Day—a freaking rom-com, duh!
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A sexy thriller, to get you in the mood to start kissing again.
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You’re finished having sexy times, and now you’re “exhausted” and “want to watch TV”? Bad news, sweetie, you’re about to get drained by a vampire.
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If you got mostly A’s: Your valentine is Felix Hawthorn! You’re the most romantic person in your friend group (or possibly in anyone’s friend group), so of COURSE you’re spending the most romantic day of the year with the most romantic vamp on the planet: Felix will whisk you off your feet and shower you with flowers, poetry, gems, champagne, and all the romance you crave and deserve.
If you got mostly B’s: Your valentine is Octavia Yoo! You’re incredibly chic and not afraid of a little danger, so you’re going to love being in Octavia’s orbit, jet-setting the globe in search of power and pleasure, seeing the most beautiful art and tasting the most delicious food the world has to offer while gazing into her hypnotic eyes.
If you got mostly C’s: Your valentine is Callum Yoo! There’s a reason so many readers are gaga about Callum—he’s gruff, he’s powerful, he’s mysterious, he’s so good in bed that his partners regularly lose consciousness. And so what if he usually kills his paramours when he’s finished with them? At least you’ll know your last Valentine’s Day on earth was also your very best.
Tess tore through the compound, her pulse pounding in her ears. She needed her copy of Blood Feud—shit, she’d loaned it to Callum. It was probably still in his room.
Everything felt blurry, like it was all happening too fast, like she wasn’t really here. She was picking up her clothes off Rick’s bedroom floor, careful not to wake him. She was crying on the subway, she was having a panic attack in the bathroom on the first floor of the CompLit building, she wasn’t asleep, she wasn’t awake, she was some unholy something in between.
Callum made it seem like it was no big deal, like she could just drink his blood, be altered by some chemical fucking compound, when she couldn’t even drink a cup of punch at a party. He acted so altruistic, so heroic and protective, but she knew men were all the fucking same.
She felt like the air was pressing in against her temples as she stepped through the door of his rooms, but she had to stay focused. Her copy of Blood Feud was still on the table next to Callum’s bed, the same bed where she’d slept beside him just last night. Stupid, she admonished herself as she flipped through the novel, a physical red flag, right there in her hands. When would Tess learn that she couldn’t trust anyone—and that if she did, she deserved whatever she got?
It was a passage about Konstantin, she was almost sure—she just couldn’t remember the exact language. She flipped through pages, desperately scanning paragraphs until she found the one she was looking for, wedged in an exposition dump in chapter seven:
During his millennia on earth, Konstantin enjoyed enormous influence: Some say Konstantin fed his blood to the Holy Father during the Crusades, controlling him in a perpetual blood thrall…
There it was, in black and white. If Callum thought Tess was going to drink some unknown substance and turn into his puppet, he was out of his fucking mind.
That had happened to Tess once before. She would never let it happen again.
Callum couldn’t understand why Tess had run out of the great room like that. Had he done something wrong? Should he ask her? Or would that be read as needy—or worse, aggressive—and was it better to give her space?
“Fucking hell,” he swore under his breath as he stormed down the hall back to his rooms.
He’d never felt so unlike himself—first the injury, now the girl? He’d never cared about a human’s opinion before; he didn’t see why he should start now. And so what if the best part of being injured was the night she spent in his bed—smelling her hair, the tantalizing feeling of her body only inches from his, the soothing comfort of her warmth, her steady breath, her living pulse? He was attracted to her, fine. And grateful to her for saving his life—sensible enough. But the only woman he’d ever really cared about was his sister, and he barely knew Tess. Let her be angry. It made absolutely no difference to him.
Except when he opened his door and saw her standing inside, he sped toward her faster than he imagined possible given how badly his leg had been injured only a few hours before.
“Tess!” he exclaimed. “Are you all right? What’s happened?”
He’d never seen her like this before—her expression was ragged and wild, like she’d gone feral in the twenty minutes since she’d left the great room.
“What’s a blood thrall?” she demanded.
“What? Why do you want to know about—”
“Just tell me,” she spat. “Right now.”
“Erm.” He mussed his hair anxiously. “So you know what a glamour is, yeah? Vampire looks in your eyes, you do whatever they say, only lasts as long as they maintain eye contact?”
“I’m familiar,” Tess bristled.
“Right. Glamours are dead useful for little things like booking in hotel rooms or bank transfers, but if you really want to control someone…”
He trailed off.
“Go on.” Tears were streaming down Tess’s face. “Say it.”
“You feed them your blood. And then the glamour can last for days, or if you keep feeding them and keep glamouring them…”
“It can go on forever.” Tess slammed her copy of Blood Feud down on Callum’s desk. “That’s what Konstantin used to do, right? It’s how he amassed so much power? You said you weren’t like him, you fucking liar.”
Hot shame roiled through Callum’s body—oh god, it wasn’t possible—there was no way she could honestly think—
“Tess, I would never do that to you.” He moved to comfort her, but she shrank back from him in horror. He felt desperate with worry—how could he have fucked up this badly, just when she’d finally started to trust him? “Please, you have to believe me—”
“Why should I?” She folded her arms tighter. “You told me to drink your blood, but you didn’t tell me what it would do—why would you do that unless you wanted to make me some kind of hostage? To control my mind, my body, to have complete power over me? Why, Callum?! Why would you do that to me?”
She was shaking now, tears spilling down her cheeks. He rushed over to her, reached to hold her, but she shoved him away.
“Don’t you touch me!” she shrieked. “I never said you could touch me!”
“Please,” he begged, “I swear to you, I never meant to use my blood that way.”
“Then how were you going to use it?” she demanded. “Why did you want me to drink your blood?”
“Because the idea of Felix hurting you was fucking unbearable!” he swore. “Tess, I would never hurt you. To make you do anything you didn’t want to do—that’s the last thing I could do. Your strong will, your stubborn determination, this fierceness about you—how could I ever change the thing that made me want you in the first place?”
Tess sank down in his favorite leather armchair, looking dazed. “That made you…I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either.” Callum fell to his knees before her. “None of it makes sense. I’ve been trapped on this island eleven years. After Octavia left…I didn’t know how I’d go on. If I even could. And then to meet you…”
Tess buried her head in her hands. “You’re saying…what are you saying?”
Callum sighed. It was time to stop lying—to Tess, and to himself.
“I’m saying I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the first time we went into that forest. I’m saying I would lay down my own life to protect yours if it came to that. I’m saying I could never hurt you, because any wound to you is a wound to me, sweet girl.”
Tess looked down at him, scanning his face as if to discern whether he was lying. She pushed out of the chair and stood up—he did the same.
“And you didn’t want…” She spoke quietly and clasped her hands together, her knuckles were white. “I mean, if I drank your blood. It wasn’t to—to make me do things?”
“What?!” He felt a physical pain in his chest as realization thundered down on him. Her obvious terror when he tried to carry her into the forest, her fear of sharing a bed, the way she bolted tonight—all of it suddenly made the most horrible sense. It wasn’t only about whether she was afraid of him. It was about something that had happened to her.
“Tess, I’ve never done that. I would never do that,” he promised. “How could I do something like that to someone I care about?”
“I don’t know.” Tess was crying in earnest now. She felt the fog of her panic dissipating, the anxiety attack sparked by Nantale’s suggestion that Tess drink Callum’s blood was finally ending. Tess felt completely exhausted—not just from the last twenty minutes but the last three years of constantly being on guard, forever trying to discern whether any man she met might secretly be a monster. She looked at Callum—he looked so upset, so absolutely bereft by her obvious pain. He wasn’t Rick. His blood wasn’t that fucking whiskey laced with god knows what. She had a sudden urge to let Callum hold her, to cry in his arms, to finally feel, after all this time, like she didn’t have to carry this horrible burden alone.
She thought back to sitting across from Flora at Bar Between, the witch putting her hands over Tess’s. Don’t be ashamed to ask for what you need.
Callum stepped toward her—tentatively, not too fast, like she was a creature he didn’t want to spook. But she was done with questions—done running, done overthinking, done stopping herself from having a single thing she wanted because every last one caused too much pain.
“Callum,” she croaked, her voice hoarse from crying. She hurtled toward him and threw her arms around his neck, burying her face in his chest as he pulled her close. He was so strong, and it was such a fucking relief just to be in his arms, just to let herself believe that he might not wish her harm.
“You have to know I’ll always protect you,” he whispered into her hair. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Something did,” she said, her voice breaking.
He pulled back far enough so he could look at her, his face lined with concern. “At Columbia?”
She nodded, the tears coming back again. She leaned into him, and he held her softly. He moved his hands gently across her back, and she let the slow rhythm of his movements and his heartbeat lull her into something like calm.
She’d never told anyone about Rick—not Joni, not anyone at school, not her new friends at the hotel. After all the years of Rick infesting her brain, not talking about him felt like some kind of victory. Like she could make him go away by pretending he didn’t exist, by never telling anyone her secret.
No. Not her secret. His.
“I want to tell you,” she said, the need suddenly desperate.
“I want to hear anything you want to say,” he said softly. “Should we sit down?”
She nodded, and he led her to a comfortable brown leather chesterfield situated opposite a small fire burning in a stone hearth, which lit the room with an amber glow. Tess kicked off her boots and curled her legs beneath her, leaning against Callum. He rubbed her shoulder reassuringly.
“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “It, um…It happened on Valentine’s Day, three years ago.”
“Stupid holiday, making people buy chocolate to honor some murdered priest,” Callum muttered, and Tess smiled through her nerves. “Go on.”
“I was in our department’s lounge with Joni—she was my best friend. And actually, we had just taken a quiz about Blood Feud.”
“Like trivia?”
“No.” Tess smiled. “A personality quiz. About which vampire would be your perfect valentine.”
“Really?” Callum looked at Tess with interest. “At least tell me you got me.”
Tess got exactly who she knew she would get, the same character she always got after taking dozens of variations of this exact quiz.
“Felix.” Tess breathed out the name with a little sigh.
“Ugh, of course you did.” Joni rolled her eyes. “Do you ever get bored of being a straight-girl-romance cliché?”
Tess hit Joni with one of the CompLit lounge couch’s microsuede pillows. “I want a man to touch my hair gently and read me a fucking sonnet, asshole.”
It was a long-standing joke that Tess was basic for having a literary crush on the romantic hero of the Blood Feud books when there were so many morally complex side characters, but she couldn’t help herself. Felix Hawthorn was gallant and brave, the polar opposite of every self-obsessed New York guy Tess had gone out with whose boundless interest in his own opinions made it impossible to sit through dinner, let alone form a lasting relationship. Of course Tess loved Felix. Who wouldn’t?
“Who’d you get?” Tess asked.
“Octavia!” Joni proclaimed in a loud singsong voice, like she was a horn at a medieval court.
“How is that possible??”
“Because she’s my destiny, duh.”
“You hate fashion,” Tess pointed out.
Joni nodded. “It’s a construct of gender performance designed to deplete women’s time, energy, and money.”
“You don’t drink mezcal.” Tess referenced another of the questions on the quiz.
“Because it tastes like smoky spit.”
“And you won’t watch thrillers!”
“To be fair, I won’t watch movies with any kind of stakes. Too stressful!!” Joni got up to refill her coffee from the ancient pot.
“What’s wrong with Felix, anyway?” Tess turned back to her phone, skimming her fingers over her quiz results. “He’s sensitive, and intuitive, and actually values the opinions of women, and has great hair—”
“You talking about me?” Tess looked up in shock to see Rick Keeton, who was, undoubtedly, the Felix Hawthorn of the Columbia Department of Comparative Literature. Tess had thought he was cute since they started the program, but she’d seen a lot more of him recently, now that he and Joni were working on an article together—and Tess’s affections had developed into a full-blown crush. Their article, which compared archetypes in epic poetry (Rick’s specialty) to contemporary hero portrayals in pop culture (Joni’s area of expertise) was a really big deal for Joni. Rick was sure it was going to land in a major publication, the first serious byline of Joni’s career.
“Nah, your hair’s just okay,” Joni deadpanned. Rick laughed heartily and punched her on the arm.
“You guys teaching this afternoon?” he asked, giving Tess a long look. She’d caught him eyeing her on multiple occasions, in lectures, at department meetings. But he was always dating some impossibly beautiful undergrad; Tess figured she must not be his type.
“Shakespeare section,” she replied, pulling out her laptop to go over her notes for the afternoon’s discussion group.
“Oh yeah?” Rick flopped beside her on the couch. “What play?”
“The sonnets, actually.” Tess felt her body heating up with Rick sitting so close. “You know, for, um…”
“Valentine’s Day.” He smiled. “That’s just cruel.”
She peered at him. “How so?”
He leaned toward her. “I’m sure every guy in your section already has a crush on you—now you’re gonna read the world’s most romantic poetry on the year’s most romantic day?” He shook his head in mock disapproval. “Not cool, Rosie.”
She laughed. “If I use my feminine wiles to make the kids appreciate rhythmic subtext in iambic pentameter, would that be so wrong?”
“Sounds more fun than my afternoon with Anna Karenina, anyway.” Rick sighed. “It’s always death with the Russians.”
“To be fair, it’s pretty often death with Shakespeare,” Tess quipped. Rick laughed appreciatively, then stood.
“I’d better get to it—you guys coming to my thing tonight?”
Joni said, “We’ll be there!” at the exact moment Tess said, “I’m not sure.”
Rick smiled at them both, then looked right at Tess as he said, “I hope you do.”
As soon as he left the room, Joni rushed over to Tess. “Oh my god, he totally likes you.”
“You think?” Tess felt flushed. “No, he was just being nice. He’s nice to everyone!”
“He is nice, which is the only reason I support this—the window for acceptable straight men is narrow, but he’s in there,” Joni assured her.
“Okay, but you guys are working together!” Tess protested. “I don’t want to make it weird.”
“You’re not!” Joni insisted. “I really like Rick, and I really love you. What could be bad about you really liking each other? Nothing! So will you just come to the party with me?! I promise, we’re going to have an amazing time. Maybe not as amazing as if Octavia were there, but you can’t have everything.”
“Okay, okay!” Tess laughed. “You convinced me. Let’s go to a party.”
Here are some of the things Tess remembered from the night of the party:
Choosing her outfit, her favorite black silk wrap dress trimmed with dark fringe and printed with splashy pink peonies.
Pregaming with Joni, cold red wine in mismatched glasses, singing along to Harry Styles.
The February wind accosting them so relentlessly on the walk to Rick’s place that Tess suggested they turn back, but Joni insisting that Tess was gonna make out with a hot snob come hell or high blizzard, because this was the Valentine’s Day she deserved, goddamn it.
Walking into Rick’s building, a sleek high-rise on Riverside Drive with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Hudson, the George Washington Bridge to the north and New Jersey to the west. Joni saying, “Oh shit, this fucker is rich.”
Nodding along as her classmates debated Joyce and Proust, while thinking inwardly about how much she hated Joyce and Proust. Looking around for Rick, seeing him deep in conversation with a model-thin blonde in a corner across the room. Muttering to Joni that they should leave, Joni responding that she just needed to use the bathroom.
Extracting herself from the Joyce-Proust argument to admire the view; outside, snow had begun to fall against the dark sky. Rick coming up beside her to watch the snow, his arm brushing against hers and resting there, Tess feeling electrified by the contact between them.
“Pretty gross, right?” he deadpanned.
“The view? Oh, terrible. An eyesore. You should see if the building can get you a better one.”
She glanced up and saw that he was gazing at her and grinning. He held two glasses of whiskey on ice; he offered one and she accepted.
“Single malt, from Japan. My dad’s favorite.” A slight apologetic eye roll as he clinked her glass with his.
“Peaty,” Tess remarked, feeling the smoky liquid warm her insides. “Is this your dad’s place?”
“He bought it as an ‘investment’ ”—Rick used finger quotes—“which is the most asshole-ish way possible to say I don’t pay rent. Don’t hate me, okay?”
Tess laughed softly. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
She remembered moving to a couch, comparing notes on Shakespeare and their dissertations and favorite poets as the party thinned out. The kind of conversation Tess always fantasized about having with the man she’d someday fall in love with. Wondering if it was possible that Rick could be that man.
Joni stopping by to say she was leaving, Tess saying she would see her at home. Joni kissing her cheek and whispering, “Have fun, hottie.” A classmate with curly hair giving Tess a dirty look, Tess wondering if it was envy.
Rick refilling her whiskey; once, twice. Not more than twice.
The room tilting. Was she drunk? It had been hours. She shouldn’t be this drunk.
Asking him, “Is Rick short for Richard?”
Him smiling. “Frederick.”
“Like Felix,” she breathed, sinking deeper into the velvet cushions.
Her head going foggy, a dull pain seeping in.
Rick’s voice, muffled. “Are you okay? Tess?”
Nodding, trying to nod. Everything feeling heavy.
“Do you want to lie down?”
A bed. His bed?
The sound of heavy breathing. Then darkness. Then nothing at all.
Gray dawn light through his giant window, the curtains only partly drawn. Splitting pain—her head throbbing. Rick, asleep beside her.
Realizing she was naked.
Confusion, panic. Quietly pulling on her clothes and rushing out of the apartment, terrified he might wake up.
A knowing smile from the doorman. Feeling like she might vomit.
Stumbling into the subway, unsteady on her feet. Wishing she had sunglasses so no one on the train could see that she was crying. If anyone noticed Tess’s tears, they looked away.
“Oh my god, how was it?”
A few hours later, Joni bounded into Tess’s room and leapt on top of her crinkly green comforter, wrapping Tess in her arms with absolutely no concern for whether she’d been sleeping. She hadn’t, of course—every time her eyelids started feeling heavy she was startled awake by a shot of adrenaline, her mouth filling with the putrid taste of acid and bile. Tess went rigid beneath Joni’s body; even breathing felt impossible. Joni immediately sensed that something was wrong and moved to a corner of the bed, a reassuring hand on Tess’s shoulder.
“Hey, you okay? How was last night?”
“I don’t, um…I don’t really know,” Tess said truthfully. “I don’t remember.”
Joni frowned. “You blacked out? You never black out.”
Tess made a tiny shrugging motion with her shoulders. She felt a quivering, shaking feeling pulsing through her blood, an ice-cold feeling like all the heat of being human had leaked out of her.
“Fuck, you must be really hungover.” Joni glanced at her watch. “It’s almost three. Have you eaten anything today?”
Tess shook her head, and before she knew what was happening, Joni was gone, banging around in the kitchen, returning minutes later with a steaming bowl of split pea soup and a hunk of brown bread from the nearby co-op.
“Eat,” she said, placing the food on Tess’s night table.
“I’m too nauseous,” Tess protested weakly, but Joni wasn’t having it.
“That’s because you need food. Eat,” she insisted.
Tess brought a steaming spoonful of soup to her lips, worried she would shake and spill it on her bedding. But the second she swallowed the soup, she did start to feel a little better.
“Helps, right?” Joni asked, and Tess forced a small smile. “So what happened after I left? You stayed over? Did you and Rick hook up?!”
“Oh.” Tess cleared her throat. “Um, I don’t think so. I think I just passed out on the couch.”
“Wow, you really were drunk. Are you okay now? Is there anything else you need?”
“Probably just rest.” Tess handed the soup bowl back to Joni. “I feel like shit.”
“That’s a good idea.” Joni gave Tess’s knee a squeeze. “You’ll feel so much better after you get some sleep.”
But Tess didn’t sleep that night—her body wouldn’t allow it. The adrenaline shocks persisted until her body roiled with pinpricks, like the feeling when your foot falls asleep, but across every inch of skin. (An ironic term, Tess thought bitterly, since actually falling asleep had become impossible.) When she did manage to doze for a couple of minutes here and there, she had nightmares of dark shadows looming over her, unfeeling eyes looking down on her, a hand across her mouth.
She woke gasping, terrified, and waited for dawn.
None of it made sense. She had gone to that party wanting Rick, with the express purpose of kissing him, being with him, spending the night in his bed.
And all of that had happened, right? She was pretty sure? Asking him was out of the question. Had he used a condom? She had no idea—she walked to the twenty-four-hour CVS at four-thirty in the morning and bought emergency contraception. She took it with a glass of tap water and said a small prayer of thanks that the pill made her incredibly tired—she’d taken it twice before, though always with firmer information about whether she actually needed it. Around eight a.m., as the cold winter sun filtered through dull gray clouds, she finally fell asleep.
After that first night, the most terrible night, the night when every minute crawled by in nail-screeching agony, Tess thought she’d sleep better. She’d have to eventually, right? Humans weren’t built to exist without sleep—and besides, she was fucking exhausted. It was Sunday, and she had classes to teach the following day. So after her few hours of fitful morning rest, Tess forced herself to stay awake through the afternoon and evening, going to a movie with Joni and absorbing none of it, grateful for the noise. She figured if she could just make it until nine or ten, she’d pass out and be functional the next day.
This was a mistake.
The second night wasn’t as miserable as the first, mostly because Tess gave up on trying to sleep more quickly and decided distraction was the best strategy. She opened her laptop and watched half an episode of some reality show about a woman looking for love, but it couldn’t hold her attention. She grabbed her old paperback copy of Blood Feud off her shelf and read a few hundred pages; she eventually slipped out of consciousness at five a.m., and her head pounded when her alarm went off at eight.
She dragged herself through a hot shower and the twenty-minute walk to campus, her mind so foggy she nearly stepped into traffic more than once. Her section that morning was a discussion on the use of prophesy in Macbeth, one of Tess’s favorite aspects of one of her favorite plays, but she kept forgetting things, misunderstanding her students’ points, losing threads of logic in arguments she’d made a thousand times.
“Are you okay? You don’t look great,” a pretty undergrad observed with concern.
“Just a little under the weather.” Tess forced out a smile.
The kids filed out as Tess gathered her notes—she heard a laugh from the hallway and looked up to see Rick talking with one of his friends. The panic flooded through her then, her body screaming at her to run, go, jump out a window, anything to get out of this room, but her muscles were rigid, incapable of motion, even as her breath flamed against her lungs like she’d just sprinted up a mountain.
She knocked into the chair behind her, and Rick turned at the sound. He gave a little nod and a smile—What’s up?—then went back to his friend, still laughing as they walked off down the hall. Tess felt her knees give way beneath her, and by sheer force of will she managed to collapse into a chair and not onto the floor, her body bathed in sweat, heart pounding, lungs contracting painfully, lightheaded and dizzy as her body’s oxygen dwindled.
That was the first panic attack. Tess made it through another dozen or so before she stopped going to campus. Another ten before she decided to drop out of school. When she tried to tell a counselor, she panicked. When she tried to go to campus, she panicked. When she tried to tell Joni, she thought about what would happen if Joni believed her, and it fucked up her article and her future—or worse, if she didn’t believe Tess, because Rick really was such a nice guy, and none of this made any sense, and maybe Tess was just crazy to be overreacting like this. When she tried to go to sleep…well, eventually she just stopped trying. It wasn’t worth it, not at night. She’d get a few hours here and there during the day. It was enough to keep living. Just not enough to stay where she was. So Tess did what she had to do.
She ran.