A Shade of Vampire 8: A Shade of Novak(44)

Now that I still had the taste of Annora’s blood in my mouth, fish blood seemed the most disgusting thing in the world to me.

“Annora,” I muttered, turning around to face her.

But she was no longer by my side—in fact, with several strong strokes, she had almost reached the shore. Alarmed, I began to swim after her. She jumped out of the water and sprinted along the beach toward the town.

“No!” I yelled and raced out of the water after her.

Her speed almost matched my own, so it wasn’t until we were about two miles along the beach that I managed to catch up with her. I threw myself at her and wrestled her to the ground.

“Who goes there?”

Both Annora and I looked up. A young fisherman was approaching us in the darkness, dragging a net full of eels along the sand.

Annora slipped away from my grasp and hurled herself against the man. By the time I reached her, she’d already dug her fangs deep into the man’s throat.

Attempting to rip her apart from him now would be pointless. Her fangs were embedded so deep, she’d have torn through the man’s artery. I had no choice but to watch her drain him to death.

When she’d finished, she dropped the corpse on the sand. She looked up at me, wiping the blood away from her face with her bare arm. She gave me an eerie smile.

The glimmer of darkness in her eyes disturbed me more than I could describe. Gone was the innocent girl I’d fallen in love with. In her place was a monster.

I comforted myself that perhaps she would get better with time, once she got more used to her bloodlust. I hoped that her old personality would return.

So over the following days, I did my best to keep her inside the cave at all times. I was afraid to even sleep in case she claimed another victim.

But it was becoming increasingly difficult. Her cravings appeared greater than my own and she was showing no signs of even attempting to control them. When a group of humans approached our area of the beach one night, I knew that it was time to move. But I had no idea where to.

I was beginning to grow desperate when, one night, a ship drew in just outside our cave.

The ship of the saffron merchant.

To this day, I don’t know how he managed to find out our location.

He told us he could take us somewhere where other vampires lived away from humans. Away from the threat of being discovered. Although I didn’t trust a word that came out of his snake-like mouth, we had no other option than to follow.

He ended up taking us to the Elder’s castle—The Blood Keep. I knew we’d made a mistake as soon as we drew up outside the tall black gates. The castle from the outside appeared to be a place of nightmares, and once we stepped inside the nightmares became real.

As it turned out, the Elders didn’t want Annora and I to remain in that castle for long. They wanted us out of the human realm entirely.

They wanted us in Cruor. The dark hell that was the realm of the Elders.




I had to pause for a moment as the memories washed over me, the images fresh in my mind as if it was only yesterday. Rose’s eyes were glued on me. Her chin resting in her hands, she hung onto my every word, a look of horror mixed with fascination on her face.

I’d told her far more than I had intended to already about myself.

She frowned at me as soon as I had stopped. “So you went to Cruor?”

I nodded.

“What was it like?”

I didn’t want to give Rose nightmares, so I refused to give her details. “Suffice it to say, Cruor made Annora much worse. She never returned to her former self.”

“How did you escape from there?”

“A group of witches came to visit the Elders one day, and offered a fresh batch of humans in exchange for fifty vampires. We didn’t know what they needed us for. We didn’t question it. And when three witches came to release us from our dungeon quarters, we all followed them without hesitation.”

Rose bit her lower lip and rubbed a palm against her forehead. “And Annora… she’s not a vampire now?”

“She is a witch.”

“But how?”

I paused, considering how to answer her question. “The witches who came for us were… different.”

“Huh?”

“These witches didn’t come from The Sanctuary.”

“Then where did they come from?”

“They have their own abode outside of the witches’ realm.”

“But who are they?” she asked, frustrated.

“Let’s just say that they are a darker breed of witches than you’ve likely ever come across.”

“But…how do they get here? Hell, how did you get here? I thought the gates between the human realm and the realm of supernaturals were all closed off years ago.”

I almost smiled at her naiveté, but refused to answer. Rose pressed for more information, but I brushed her off.

She sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. “Well then, continue. What happened to Annora?”

My eyes glazed over again as I dug back into my memories.

“We were transported away from Cruor and taken to the witches’ residence. During our stay there, Annora became increasingly… involved in the things that went on behind their walls. She embraced their way of living in a way that I never could have predicted. She confessed one day to me that she wanted to become one of them. I tried to make her see the consequences of that action, but she ignored me.”