Chapter 9

I’m not a monster, Adam thought grumpily. Although he usually thrived on little sleep, the lack was beginning to get to him, making him moodier than usual. He frowned, his body rocking back and forth in rhythm with the movement of his horse. A monster is what I see right in front of me. A monster kills the innocent.

Still, he hated that the vampire would suggest such a thing—the notion bothered him more than he cared to admit. After a coven of vampires had attacked his small village when he was sixteen years old, he had studied his heart out, trained with the best of the best, spent every possible waking moment with a weapon in his hand, hunting monsters. This was who he was. His whole identity centered around destroying monsters.

From the time he rid an entire village of ghouls to the moment he coaxed a curse from a young girl who had wandered too deep into a forest, he had dedicated his life to helping those in need. People both loved and feared him. Monsters feared him. But when he received sincere gratitude from those he helped, those times made what he did for a living worth it. How could the vampire possibly accuse him of being the monster?

He grimaced as he watched Willow struggling to keep pace with the horse on foot, her eyes nearly drifting closed as if she might fall asleep on her feet at any moment. She looked weary to the bone, and suddenly he kicked himself for being stupid. If she was too weary, could she withstand what was to come? He could offer her his horse.

He quickly scoffed at the idea. Well, it was too late for that. Several days too late. They were nearing their destination, and despite her being a vampire, it was a bit belated to be chivalrous.

Yellow and red leaves littered the serene forest floor as summer finished its dance and autumn resumed where it left off. This was his favorite month not only because it was the most beautiful, but because there was a calm quiet to it that brought a feeling of peace—a luxury he hadn’t had the pleasure of knowing all too often. And despite the changing season, he recognized his surroundings as home.

The first indication of nearing their destination was the signpost that pointed to Windhaven one way and to Oakenhold the other way. Once he branched off the path, the giant sequoia was another landmark that led him in the right direction. His eyes traveled up the towering tree, a sense of relief settling into his heart at coming home again. One downside to being a blood hunter was constant travel. Returning home often gave him a sense of peace he didn’t find anywhere else.

“Ow! Will you slow it down a bit?”

A scowl replaced his excitement as he suddenly remembered the baggage he dragged with him, reminding him why he came here in the first place. “And here I hoped to get peace and quiet for a few minutes.”

“If you wanted peace and quiet, you should have asked,” she smiled innocently before the expression turned into a glare. “There wasn’t a chance in hell I would have given it to you.”

He ignored her, deciding that the less reaction he gave her, the less she tried to goad him. She was a spirited young lass…old lass? He wasn’t quite sure how to address the fact that she looked young, but she was twelve times his senior. Her age baffled him. How did one her age find a way to live as long as she had?

He asked her just that.

“How have you lived so long?”

Of course, she turned her head away and refused to answer as if to spite him. He sighed, suddenly growing weary of the small ways she tried to gain control in her predicament—such as withholding information.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to try and press her for the answer as a modest wooden cabin came into view, the fallen autumn leaves surrounding it like a halo of warmth. His cabin was sequestered in an unfrequented part of the woods and distanced from the main city. He certainly preferred his seclusion. Fewer people he had to deal with.

“Where are we?” she asked, taking every detail in with wonder as he led her toward the cabin like a pack animal.

He didn’t answer—he was set on the idea of not talking to her any longer. This time he undisputedly wouldn’t speak to the vampire. He hadn’t been successful thus far, but he was determined. No more talking.

They entered the cabin, and everything looked to be where he had left it, not a thing out of place. In one room, he kept all his alchemy ingredients—not to be confused with the edible ingredients for meals in the cupboard he kept on the opposite side of the room. Another room he reserved for his studies complete with a fireplace, an entire wall full of shelved books and manuscripts, and several weapons he found on his journeys that were better suited as decorations, and, of course, an armory in the furthest room from the entrance. He found he spent little time in his bedroom situated in the corner of the cabin, often untouched when he fell asleep reading in the comfortable armchair beside the fire. Although the cabin was nothing to gawk at, it was home.

She gasped, her eyes widening. “This is your home! Why did you bring me here?” Her eyes narrowed at him. “I hope you’re not planning on mounting my head to the wall to expand your collection of monsters. I’m afraid it would look much better on my body instead.”

He scoffed at the notion. “Your head on my wall? I’d rather not see your smug attitude every time I walk past.” He ran a hand down his face in frustration as he realized he broke his pact of refusing to talk to her not a minute into making it. This was going to be a lot harder than he expected. “Besides, I don’t collect the heads of the beasts I kill. Though, don’t give me any ideas.”

He gave her a pointed look before he traveled further into the cabin, pulling her after him. Now where to chain her? Outside would be ideal, but he didn’t want her howls of pain to attract nightwraiths. And he positively couldn’t lock her in the cellar—it was already occupied. He should have thought this through, but he hadn’t exactly had much time for planning. And traveling here had taken several days, meaning a short time remained to experiment before Dracula’s lamentation ended. He would be cutting it close…

He had few options available, and when he decided where to put her, he guiltily grimaced.

He would lock her in the washroom. It was clean…enough.

“How chivalrous of you,” she remarked sarcastically as he led her into the small room and tied her up. The only way she would be able to escape the vodryx chain would be if he died or he freed her himself. It was all a part of the magic that surrounded the metal.

“Stay put,” he ordered. “I’ll be back shortly.”

“I don’t think I could go anywhere if I tried.”

This time, he was successful in not replying as he left the washroom and strode with purpose into his alchemy lab. Dozens upon dozens of ingredients lay before him in bottles, bowls, or hung sporadically from the ceiling as dried herbs.

He took a deep breath and studied the list he created earlier that lay on the counter, some words nearly indecipherable as the paper had gotten wet, dried, gotten wet again, and dried to a nice crinkle. He needed to take more care with essential items.

The list contained a series of concoctions, along with their ingredients, and he was going to get to the bottom of the list before the end of the week.

He was going to find a cure for vampirism.

Although Willow had been born a vampire and not turned like his brother, he didn’t think it would affect his attempts to find a cure. At least he hoped as much, because he didn’t have the time or resources to find another vampire who had been turned. By then, it might be too late.

Under his breath, he read the ingredients, searching the area as he went and cursing his lack of organization in the process. It made it difficult to find what he needed.

“Bloodbane…thunderwort…asptongue mold…powdered fangs of a deceased vampire…”

By no means were these ingredients easy to come by. In fact, he had been searching for years for bloodbane alone—and he had found it deep in the Silent Hollow Caves. He had been preparing for a long time for this opportunity, and he certainly wouldn’t waste it.

Throwing the ingredients into a mortar, he began mashing them with a pestle until the compound formed a thick, gooey gray substance. However, he knew Willow would try to fight him; therefore, he thinned the concoction using birch sap, grunting in satisfaction as the sap made it runny enough to force it down someone’s throat. The mixture had a robust and ashy odor that made him want to retch. But he couldn’t show weakness. Not now of all times. Zachariah’s condition was getting worse by the day, and he feared he would lose his brother altogether.

If this didn’t work, he’d move down the list. But it had to. He was desperate.

The vampire was right where he had left her, and although the vodryx chain took away her vampiristic abilities, it didn’t take away her keen senses. A hiss spurted from her mouth the moment she caught a whiff of what was in the mortar, and she backed as far away from him as possible, shrinking into the corner of the small room. He advanced further, which made her cower more. She knew what this was… Did that mean it worked?

“Don’t! Stay away. Stay away!”

He ignored her cries, even as she lashed out at him, the blow hardly a thump against his thick leather armor. She scratched and hissed and scratched some more, and he would have been worried had he not been wearing leather armor her sharp vampire nails couldn’t penetrate.

Pinning her against the wall, he grabbed her jaw and forcefully tipped her head back, pouring the liquid into her mouth. She fought against him and tried to spit out the concoction, but he proved to be much stronger than her when her vampire strength was stripped away. A dribble escaped the corner of her mouth, and he squeezed harder on her jaw, tipping her head back further until she had no choice but to swallow.

She gasped and clutched her throat, squeezing her eyes shut. And that’s when the screeching started—the sound hit him like a force of nature, dragging him into its dark depths with a painful rage, a hollow ache, a heavy sadness. He couldn’t stay here. He couldn’t.

He ran from the room while covering his ears, blindly pushing his way out the front door and stumbling across fallen leaves and tripping branches, and he finally braced himself against the Giant Sequoia, releasing a shuddering breath. He could still hear her cries of pain from within the cabin. Pain he caused.

The ache inside him intensified. He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to push away his guilt and sorrow. This had to be done. Besides, she was only a vampire.

But now he was starting to doubt himself.

He didn’t know how much time had passed—minutes…hours…weeks… But finally, all grew quiet, and it should have relieved him but instead, a sense of panic set in.

“I killed her,” he gasped and nearly lost his footing as he hurried back into the house. However, quiet sobbing made him stop short. Guilt ate away at him. To keep himself sane, he told himself over and over that she was just a vampire. She was a killer. A liar. A monster.

He peeked his head around the corner of the washroom, not knowing what, exactly, he would find. She had curled herself in a ball and now lay on the floor with her back to him, sobs wracking her small frame. She shifted slightly, still unaware of his presence, enough to give him a glimpse of her bared fangs. His heart fell with disappointment that the mixture hadn’t worked, but again, guilt quickly replaced his disappointment as he watched her shoulders shake, her hands trembling as she kept them clenched in fists at her side.

Swallowing hard, he slid down against the wall just around the corner until he sat on the hard wooden floor, listening to her whimper. This wasn’t supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to feel this guilt.

Just a monster. That’s all she was.

But why did she appear…human?

It took several minutes to find his strength to pick himself off the ground, walk right past his unsuccessful attempt to cure vampirism and make his way toward his room to rest for the night after a long journey. After spreading salt across the walkway to make it impossible for her to enter and kill him if she happened to escape, he flopped on his bed and covered his ears with a pillow. The pillow muffled the vampire’s whimpers, but it didn’t completely block them. It would undoubtedly be a fitful night indeed.

****

Over the next couple of days, Adam didn’t know what was more torturous—Willow’s cries or his part in her cries as he created his elixirs and forced them down her throat. He was becoming increasingly frustrated that none of them appeared to work, but instead caused an extreme amount of torment. Last night’s elixir had been particularly awful. She’d had seizures for an hour straight, and she became extremely cold, to the point that he assumed her dead. It didn’t help anything that she often begged him for blood.

Five more, he told himself with a sigh as he mixed his latest concoction of ember weed, wormgrass, bear claw, and silverpetals. He threw in a spritz of salt and mixed it with a pestle in the direct sunlight until the elixir bubbled into a golden-brown color. It reminded him of the sludge they dared called porridge he lived off of for a week in Sedhyl during his blood hunter training. However, to a human, the sludge might be a mild inconvenience, but to a vampire…well, he suspected this wouldn’t go well.

Returning to the cabin with another sigh, he rounded the corner of the washroom and froze in place, his eyes widening as he found Willow sprawled on the floor, the color completely gone from her already-pale face. Even worse, she wasn’t breathing.

He dropped the mortar, the mixture splashing across the floor in a muddy-brown mess as he fell to his knees, shaking her softly at first, but a bit harder when she didn’t respond. Her body was limp, her skin cold—though he wasn’t sure if it was because she was a vampire.

Panic immediately set in, not for himself, but for her.

“Wake up!” Adam growled, a hint of pleading in his voice. He shook her again and poured water on her face, but still, there was no reaction whatsoever. He had to fix this. Surely, he had some sort of healing elixir in the lab.

He untied one end of the chain from the wall and cradled her limp form in his arms, surprised at how light she weighed for as strong and dangerous as she was. He wasted no time as he rushed to the lab and set her carefully on the floor before rummaging through his herbs and oils and dozens of other alchemy ingredients.

Glass rattled against glass, wooden bowls pushed out of the way and delicate herbs crushed in his haste. Finally, his fingers brushed against a vial he had mixed nearly a year ago—a mixture to counteract the effects of his latest concoction. With hope flaring in his chest, he spun around and…

And she was gone.

“By the nine,” he cursed under his breath.

He burst out of the lab with swiftly trained legs and nearly pounced on her as she tried to make a hasty escape, but he stopped himself, slowing as he watched her take a single step outside and hissed as the sunlight scorched her skin. Immediately, she flinched back into the safety of the cabin.

“You’re a clever one,” he acknowledged with interest, watching her struggling to pull a hefty steel sword off the wall, hardly able to hold it in her hands due to its weight. She awkwardly pointed the sharp end in his direction, a menacing growl escaping her mouth. “You can’t leave. The sun will kill you if I don’t kill you first.”

“Stay away from me,” she spat. “If you hurt me one more time, I will make sure my father hunts you down. And believe me, he won’t execute you swiftly.”

The thought was gruesome, but he had already weighed his options to a lengthy extent and decided the ends justified the means. His brother was worth risking everything for, even his own life. She didn’t understand. She couldn’t understand.

He began walking toward her slowly, wearing an expressionless mask as he drew Zachariah’s old dagger he kept with him at all times—it helped remind him of what was important, of why he became a blood hunter in the first place. Never again would he lose someone he cared for to a bloodsucking vampire. He hated them. They were all monsters.

When he got close to her, she swiped at him with the dull sword, but he easily blocked it with his small weapon and pushed hard enough against her efforts to make her drop the sword, a metallic ring in the air as it clattered to the floor.

“You deserve to die for what you’ve done,” he snarled, grabbing hold of the vodryx chain that continued to bind her wrists and pulling her back toward the washroom, securing her chains in a way to make sure she wouldn’t escape again.

“I haven’t done anything!”

“Your kind. What difference does it make whether you did it or one from your coven?”

“The same difference it makes when your king raids a village and taking the blame yourself. I don’t take credit for others’ actions! Whatever happened to make you hate me… It wasn’t me!”

“Perhaps not. But you are their princess, are you not?”

She grimaced at the term he used. “Humans and vampires have a different idea of sovereignty—”

“Shut up. Every one of you is the same. It’s my job to rid this world of the evil you bring.”

She clenched her teeth, deadly quiet as she took several steps toward him, close enough for him to see the depth in her eyes—green eyes, with a brown star shining furiously around her pupil, and long, long lashes. Her fiery eyes matched her fiery hair that framed her heart-shaped face. Like his first initial assessment of her, she was too pretty to be a human.

He didn’t move away. Actually, he surprised himself that he didn’t move. Her proximity sent shudders racing down his spine, but he attributed it to the knowledge that was she free of her bindings, she would be a dangerous foe. He had faced her once, and he didn’t plan on doing it again.

When she spoke, her voice was deadly calm. “Take a look at your people before pointing fingers at us. We’ve killed far fewer humans than the number that have died at the hands of their own kind. And you say we’re the enemy…” Her last sentence was soft, thoughtful—thought-provoking enough that he almost didn’t notice the way she trailed her finger across his chest, looking at him from beneath her lashes. He didn’t know what game she was playing… But it did nothing to change his mind about freeing her from his captivity.

“Look at this mess,” he said, changing the subject and finally managing to step away from her to survey the elixir he dropped earlier. It covered the floor, and some splattered across the walls like a murder scene that hadn’t happened. “Now I have to remake it.”

Without another word, he strode from the small room and into the lab, moodily gathering the ingredients of the previous elixir on the list, mashing the ember weed with the wormgrass a little more aggressively than necessary.

Sure, his pride was wounded that he allowed her to trick him, but she was infuriating in her own way. He didn’t like listening to what she had to say. It often made him feel like the bad guy, which was further from the truth.

He added the bear claw and silverpetals with a dash of salt, continuing to mash indignantly while he walked past the washroom without giving her a second glance and made his way outside into the sunlight. There was barely enough left of it to finish the elixir, but he had enough, nonetheless. The mixture started bubbling, and he stomped inside but stopped short outside the door.

She couldn’t see him. Not yet at least.

He sighed and glanced at the elixir in the mortar, knowing it would most likely make the vampire scream out of sheer agony—it was one of the most potent elixirs on his list, after all.

He couldn’t do this. Not today.

Reaching into his pocket, Adam pulled out the list of elixirs, five of them already crossed off the list. He took a deep breath and crumpled the small piece of parchment, dropping it to the floor to collect dust. He couldn’t listen to her screams anymore. She wasn’t the only one in agony.

He did what he never thought he would do. He walked away.

Although he didn’t know what to do concerning his predicament with Zachariah and finding a cure for vampirism, he knew he could no longer do it this way. And now he had to figure out what to do with the vampire he had captured. He had to figure it out, and soon.