A Shade of Vampire 8: A Shade of Novak(35)

I recalled the time I had first laid eyes on her beauty, her face sweaty, her hair disheveled, breath smelling of champagne. She’d behaved like any other teenage girl looking for a night out.

Then she’d told me her name.

And I’d dropped her faster than a hot iron.

I’d heard rumors about the princess of The Shade—not just her beauty, but her innocence, her purity, her light. She was like her mother, they said.

I didn’t want to be responsible for ruining that.

I was responsible for enough evil already.

And now that she was on the island, since I couldn’t allow her to leave—at least for the time being—I swore that I would do my best to shield her from her surroundings.

The truth was, I wasn’t so much afraid of Derek Novak as I was of breaking his daughter.





Chapter 24: Ben





I’d been injected with something shortly after Stellan pulled me back into the submarine and I’d woken up in this dark dungeon. I’d lost track of how much time had passed since then.

I looked around the prison at the other cells, all crammed with humans. I was the only one to have been given my own cell.

My eyes fell on Kristal and Jake behind the gate across the corridor from me. Jake was lying on the floor in the corner, Kristal huddled up next to him, trying to get some sleep. The vampires who had come in to leave us water and bread had refused to answer any questions.

I just hope that Rose is somewhere better than this.

“Kristal!” I hissed through the bars. “Kristal.”

A few humans stirred and looked up at me. But Kristal remained lying still. One of the humans nudged her, bringing her to consciousness.

She rubbed her eyes wearily. Terror set in again on her face after her reprieve. She crawled over to the bars and stared at me. “Has anything happened since I fell asleep?”

I shook my head. Her whole body was shivering. It was freezing down in these dungeons and they hadn’t given us enough blankets.

She gripped the bars tighter, leaning her head against them. Tears spilled down her cheeks.

“What are they going to do with us, Ben?”

I’d already explained to both of them that our kidnappers were vampires. They’d had a hard time getting used to that idea—and I was sure Jake still thought I was a raving lunatic. They’d never been exposed to any supernatural creatures before, so I couldn’t have expected a different reaction from them.

Jake suspected that maybe we’d been taken for ransom because of their wealthy father.

“If these people really are…v-vampires,” Kristal continued, “what would they want with us?”

The answer would have been too troubling for her to hear in her already weakened state, so I just shrugged. She, however, wasn’t going to accept that for an answer.

“Is it our blood that they want?”

I breathed out, unsure of whether to answer.

She read my silence and clasped a palm over her mouth, trembling more than ever.

“Kristal,” I whispered. “Look at me.”

She raised her bloodshot eyes to mine.

“What’s that at the back of your cell?” I asked, pointing at something I’d spotted piled up on the floor.

She turned around and crawled toward it, trying not to wake her cell mates who were blocking her path.

“It’s just a pile of chains,” she murmured.

“Can you throw them to me?”

She picked the chains and crawled back over to the bars. Gathering them in one hand, she reached through the bars and swung them toward me. I managed to catch them before they clattered to the floor.

There was a padlock fixed to one of the metal joints, but no sign of the key. This appeared to be the kind of padlock that locked without a key by pushing it until it clicked.

I sat for the next few hours leaning against the bars, waiting with bated breath for the dungeon door opening. A vampire was due to come in at any time now to bring us our daily food and water.

Perhaps it was just my nerves playing tricks on me, but the vampire seemed to come in much later that day. Eventually, the door unlatched and heavy footsteps approached.

A vampire pushed along a trolley, passing out water jugs and bread. I tried to keep my breathing steady as he stopped outside my cell. He bent down low, pushing the water and bread through my bars. He stood up and before he could continue, I reached through the bars and slipped the chain around his neck.

He gasped in shock and let go of the trolley. I yanked the chain back with all the strength my weak, dehydrated body could muster and pressed against the padlock. It clicked as he thrashed about.

His razor-sharp claws caught my cheek, ripping open a gash. I ducked down and removed the cluster of keys attached to his belt.

The whole gate shook from his struggling. I didn’t have long. I fumbled with the keys until I’d found the one to open my gate. Then I rushed over to Kristal’s cell and unlocked it, freeing all the humans who were inside it along with Jake. I did the same with every other cell along that corridor.

“Follow me,” I hissed once they’d all bundled out. “Don’t make a sound.”

I had no idea where I was taking them. For all I knew, I could have been leading us all to our deaths. But something told me that if we didn’t try to escape at the first opportunity that came our way, we’d regret it.