Chapter Twenty - Tom – July, 1429

I drank his blood.

Why do such a self-destructive thing? I asked myself a hundred times before I did it. Because I didn’t want to die was the answer every time.

And I was dying.

I barely had enough energy to raise my head without help anymore, and sitting up was nearly impossible. I needed fluid and protein to make blood, so Léon brought me fresh milk when he could. When he came today, he said he met a girl who made a drawing of him. Something broke in me. I couldn’t look at him after that, not even when he tried to show me the portrait. If I looked at him I’d tell him everything, and none of those words would ever change what I was, or that I was dying.

My blood filled flasks and tubes along the counters and shelves of Wilder’s laboratory. He was drinking it steadily now, and I could feel the Monger in him being refueled with aggression and the urge to destroy.

He wasted my blood, too, and sent flasks flying across the room when he didn’t get the Seer’s visions he expected. I didn’t tell him his rage was proof it was working.

He was gaining my Monger rage. It seemed unleashed in him, as if all the control I’d kept wrapped around it had broken with the pain, and it was angry and vengeful. I had somehow become the focus of my own rage.

The power he wanted was from my Seer blood – my mother’s blood. But since Wilder had begun consuming it, he hadn’t had a single vision of the future. Not one. I knew this because he had screamed those words at me in a fit of rage, right before he threw his wine glass at my head.

I was unconscious for two hours.

No visions from drinking a Seer’s blood. What did it mean? Who the hell cared? Before Wilder grabbed me in that cellar under the Tower of London, I had visions all the time. They had become fugue-Sight, one after the other, always flashes, and full of Mongers. I hadn’t had a vision since that night, and I didn’t miss them. Sure, it would have been great to See someone coming to rescue me. But that wasn’t in my future. I had no future.

But last night Wilder did something stupid.

The vein in my arm was near collapse when he finally drew the goose quill out. The flask was barely half full, and he was furious. He smashed it to the ground, shouting insults at me as if they had any power, as if anything mattered anymore except whether there would be another breath.

The flask shattered, and a piece of flying glass cut the inside of his forearm. I noticed the blood welling there before he did, and I tracked its progress as it rolled down his arm and dripped into a flask of milk Léon had brought from his island. One drop. Two. Three. Barely enough to stain the liquid pink. The fourth drop hit the table, and that’s the one he saw.

It sobered him instantly, and he wiped it with his shirt, then went to the far side of the room to tend his wound.

Just then, sounds of banging came from below. It sounded like someone was pounding on the door, and Wilder snarled, “It’s not a night for visitors.”

What visitors could you possibly have? I didn’t have the strength to say it, and even the voice in my head was weak. Wilder grabbed one of the flasks of day-old blood from the counter, uncorked it, and slugged it straight from the bottle. He used to pour it in a wine glass and pretend to be civilized. That ended weeks ago as his frustration grew at his lack of Sight.

I hated him with every cell and molecule in my body. That hatred was winning the war with apathy when it came to my survival.

The pounding on the door downstairs persisted, and Wilder finally stalked out of the secret tower room muttering about unwelcome and unwanted guests. My eyes found the flask of milk on the table next to my bed. I hadn’t moved without help in days. I didn’t know if I still could.

I pulled strength from my bones, from the memory I had of muscles that used to run and climb and jump with Saira and Adam and the Wolf kid. I was good then because I worked at it. I practiced harder than they did. I ran in secret, and at night. The Vampire knew I was training, but he never told Saira he saw me struggle over walls she could fly over, stumble into branches she ducked with ease. I didn’t know why he kept my secret, but I was grateful. It took a few months, but eventually I could keep up. I couldn’t be left behind when we ran.

It didn’t matter in the end, though. No one would ever come for me here, so I was left behind anyway.

Underneath the disappointment I tucked a piece of that strength away, and it’s what I drew up into my body to reach for the flask of milk.

It was all excruciating now. And yet I still didn’t want to die. My arm came into view, and I almost dropped it again just so I didn’t have to see the wounds that didn’t close anymore. The wounds were horrific, swollen with pus that burst from the edges of half-formed scabs and dripped down my arms like snake venom. I was revolting to look at, and my conviction faltered. What was left to save? But a spark of will forced my arm farther, out beyond the edge of the bed, toward the table where the flask sat.

The flask into which the Vampire’s blood had dripped.

The trembling started as my fingers reached out. I worried about the flask, about being able to hold it. My hand didn’t want to close, but I forced my fingers into claws, and they wrapped loosely around the neck of the flask. The shaking was worse, and I was afraid I would tremble the milk right to the floor. I needed this to work. I needed to find the strength to pick up the flask.

Slowly, excruciatingly, I drew the flask across the table toward me. There was no strength left – nothing but will and fear put motion in my arm. And when it was at the edge, I had to close my fingers around the smooth glass and lift. It wasn’t a grip, it was a flinch that held as I drew the flask to my mouth.

I was shaking again, and when I got the flask to my chest I almost dropped it. But I held on, and somehow managed to tilt my head up to put it to my mouth. A splash of milk slid down my throat and I forced myself to drink as much as I could swallow. Three drops of the Vampire’s blood had tinged the milk pink, and I prayed it was enough.

That’s a lie. I didn’t pray. I didn’t believe a God could love me and leave me here to die like this. I willed it to be enough, and my will was the only thing I had faith in any more.

I drank the monster’s blood.