A Wind of Change (A Shade of Vampire #17)(24)

My breathing was heavy as I recalled the scent of her blood and I felt a burning hunger in my stomach. Before Jeramiah had knocked on my door, I had been satisfied. Now, I was craving blood again.

I headed straight for the kitchen and opened the fridge door. I pulled out every single jug of blood that was stored there except for one. I drank it all, and as I finished the last gulp, even that didn’t satisfy me. Having a human so close to me had reignited the darkness that lingered beneath the surface.

I gripped the table hard.

This was the most human blood I’d consumed since I had last murdered, before arriving in The Oasis. I had been so careful to consume only as much as my body absolutely needed. Now it seemed that I needed so much more just to keep my craving in check. Just looking at that human had set me back so far.

If this was how I still acted around humans, what was I going to do once I managed to escape this place? I knew that I had to escape, but I still didn’t know how I would cope without murdering every human who had the misfortune of crossing paths with me.

Dammit. Why can’t I just drink animal blood like the rest of my family?

As I stood in the kitchen, it occurred to me that it had actually been some time now since I had last tried to drink animal blood. Perhaps something in my body had settled down by now and I could handle it. I found it hard to believe, but there was only one way to know for sure.

Walking to my bedroom, I pulled on a shirt. Then I left my apartment and descended to the bottom level of the atrium. I walked through the gardens, scanning the rooms that surrounded it. I looked for the one where I had seen the vampire retreat with the snake that had recently escaped. I was not sure if there were other animals in The Oasis, but snake blood should be good enough to test my theory.

Once I thought that I had spotted the right room, I left the gardens and approached it. I gripped the handle of the door and was pleased to see that it was open. I found myself stepping into a large room filled with cages of writhing snakes of all shapes and sizes.

Why do they keep all of these snakes?

I had gotten the impression that the vampires here only drank human blood. Why would they drink anything else when they had so much of it, and of such quality?

Whatever reason they had for keeping them, it suited me right now. I approached the cage nearest to me and scanned the snakes inside it, wondering which to pull out. Then I noticed the huge black snake that had tried to attack me out in the gardens in the next cage and decided he—or she—would be a worthy target.

When I opened the cage, the black snake darted towards me, its fangs bared. I caught it by its neck and squeezed hard before it could bite me, then jerked it upward, pulling the rest of its tail out of the cage. I closed the cage again before any other snakes could attempt an escape.

The black snake’s tail thrashed about as it continued trying to attack me. I didn’t prolong its death. Drawing out my claws, I sliced off its head in one swift motion. As blood began to spill from its body, even just the smell of it made my stomach lurch. It was hard to describe the smell. It was just foul. Something I would never want to put in my mouth.

Still, I forced myself to dig my fangs into its flesh and draw a long deep gulp.

I held my nose as I swallowed, then waited.

After twenty seconds, nothing had happened, so I took another deep gulp. And then another. That was about all I could handle of the vile substance in one go, so I set the body down on the ground and sat down on a bench in one corner of the room. I still held my nose even now, afraid that if I stopped, I would upchuck everything.

After two minutes, a wave of relief washed over me. Animal blood still tastes disgusting, but perhaps I can stomach it now. Maybe I really have changed. Maybe all I needed was some time to settle into this new body.

I was starting to feel so confident that I got up for another gulp of snake blood, but as I motioned to pick up the body, my stomach growled and before I knew it, I was staring at a pool of red vomit on the floor.

I kept vomiting until it felt like if I vomited anymore, I would start throwing up my insides.

Great.

Nothing has changed.

Something is very, very wrong with me.

I looked around the room and spotted some cleaning equipment. Filling up a bucket, I grabbed a mop and cleaned up my mess. Then I picked up the corpse of the snake and left the room. I wasn’t sure whether somebody would be irritated with me that I had just killed one of their snakes, or whether they wouldn’t mind. They seemed to have so many, after all.

Still, I wanted to avoid trouble, so I made my way to one of the orchards that was overgrown with shrubbery. I dropped the body of the snake beneath bushes and covered it with soil. It would decompose soon enough.

Then I walked past the lily ponds and rinsed my mouth and hands in the clear water. When I stood up, my gaze landed on the memorial stone of Lucas Novak. It seemed to have been attended to since I had last laid eyes on it. It was cleaner, and I could make out the inscription better. Feeling unsettled, reminded of the urgency of escaping this place, I headed straight back to my apartment.

I could still taste snake blood on my tongue. I walked back into the kitchen intending to finish off the last jug of blood to get rid of the taste, but when I opened the fridge, the shelves were filled with jug upon jug of delicious human blood.

Strange.

I wondered who had done it. I had only been gone a few minutes. It was almost like there was some slave living with me, watching my every move.