A Castle of Sand (A Shade of Vampire #3)(34)

“Does the craving ever disappear?”

I let out a dry laugh. “No, Ashley. It’s in your nature to be a predator now. You need to learn control. It’s possible. Vivienne did it. She never once drank human blood. Ever.”

“And she just lived on animal blood? I can’t stand it! Compared to human blood…”

I grabbed her by the wrist in surprise. “You’ve had human blood?”

“Yes…I…”

“You’ve killed.”

She shook her head, her eyes showing how nervous she was. “No. I drank blood from the chilling chambers.”

The mention of the chambers only reminded me of the culling and the reason behind Sofia’s avoidance of me.

“There isn’t enough left to sustain The Shade…we consume too much blood. There are too many of us now. The Naturals are in constant danger of a vampire losing it and going after them, but we can’t go on with the abductions either…”

“And yet there are still three girls in your harem now.”

“I didn’t want that. I had them sent to Sofia to help her out in The Catacombs. I haven’t seen them since.”

“So you haven’t been seeing Sofia?”

My silence was enough of an answer.

“Why?”

I told Ashley about the culling, about why I thought it was necessary. “If I let the culling happen, do you think Sofia will ever be able to forgive me?”

Ashley was quiet for quite some time as we walked on. “She’s been able to forgive you for a lot. I don’t even think she’ll blame you, but I think it will definitely wreck her. Gwen’s death was something that she took quite heavily. For months, she had to spend every day having those psychological treatments with Corrine in order to get through that. Imagine what a murder of that scale would do to her.”

“If I stop the culling, what happens? How do we survive?”

Ashley grew silent once again. As we walked on, she eventually admitted, “I don’t think I can live on animal blood, Derek.”

My jaw clenched. “I don’t know if I can either.”

We continued to walk in silence, allowing ourselves to mull over what was about to come and what we ought to do about it. It didn’t take long before we bumped into Cameron and Liana, holding hands. Liana was laughing over something Cameron whispered in her ear.

I always did envy the couple from the moment I met them. Both of them had been turned not long after Liana gave birth to their second child—a daughter. Their firstborn was a son. They spent the first decades of their lives as vampires securing a future for their children, while still being away from them. They couldn’t risk losing control around the kids, so they had to leave the children with trusted friends. To that day, they still knew and kept track of their children’s descendants spanning centuries upon centuries of beautiful, loving families.

Whenever I saw Cameron and Liana together, I couldn’t help but wonder what it would’ve been like to fall in love before I had become what I was.

If Sofia would just agree to become a vampire, we could be like them.

I shook the thought away. I once again chastised myself for still entertaining the notion. I shifted my focus back to the couple whom we were quickly approaching.

Liana’s face broke into a smile at the sight of us. Still, I didn’t miss the hint of concern in her eyes. Even Cameron was looking at me worriedly. They were two of our family’s closest friends and most loyal allies. Next to Sofia and Vivienne, they knew me better than most vampires at The Shade.

“So this is the newest addition to our coven…” Cameron eyed Ashley knowingly. “How do you find being a bloodsucker so far?’

“It’s a lot like starving.” Ashley nodded resolutely. “Every minute of the day.”

Liana chuckled. “You’ll get used to it.”

“You mean it’s always going to be like this?” Her eyes grew wide with horror.

Cameron and I nodded in an attempt to scare her. “Uh-huh,” we both said.

Liana rolled her eyes. “No. It gets easier the older you get…don’t listen to them.” She then eyed me and Ashley. “Where’s Sofia?”

“On the farm with Gavin, I suspect.”

“Have you told her about the culling?” Liana was never really one to beat around the bush and with Ashley being one of us, there wasn’t much sense in keeping things confidential.

I nodded.

Cameron shuffled uncomfortably on his feet. “How’d she take it?”

“Her exact words were, ‘I will fight tooth and nail against this, Derek.’ “

Cameron let out a low whistle as his hand protectively snaked around Liana’s waist. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“You explained that it’s necessary?” Liana pried.

“How do you justify something that she sees as a bloody massacre?” I couldn’t help but scoff. “You can’t tell someone like Sofia that murder is necessary.”

No words were spoken. We’d been trying to reconcile the past culling with our consciences and we all knew that no matter how much we tried to bend the rules of what’s moral and what’s not, what was done was exactly what Sofia called it—a massacre. None of us could justify it other than that we needed it to happen in order to survive.