Page 6 of Ashvale: The Vampire's Thrall

“Don’t bite me again,” he murmured with a snap of his teeth in my direction that made me flinch.

The woman looked on in something like amusement before stepping to one side. “Enter.”

I did as she bade without too much thought, sitting myself in one of the heavy wooden chairs that was placed in front of an equally antique-looking desk before I froze. Why had I done that? Up until she’d spoken, I’d been thinking about running.

The woman laughed quietly as she moved around the desk so gracefully it almost looked like her feet didn’t touch the ground. “I see we do have an odd predicament indeed. You were sent on this retrieval, Hayes?”

Finally, a name. Hayes. He shot me an irritated look, like he’d been enjoying withholding the information, before he answered. “Yes. Nobody saw us come in, as requested.”

“Casualties?”

“One.”

Oh god. The girl. The girl in the lake. How had I forgotten? What was happening to me? Another memory poked at the corners of my mind, another person, another bite, but it drifted away before I could grasp it.

“Hm.” The woman leaned in and peered closely at my face. “What do you remember, Leonora?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“It is your name, is it not?”

I stayed silent and shot Hayes a glare when he smirked. “She doesn’t remember.”

“Anything at all?” The woman’s dark brows furrowed and I found myself watching her intently. Something about her seemed… off.

“Nothing.” Hayes hesitated, biting his full lower lip for a moment before admitting, “I don’t think she even really remembers everything that’s happened since we met.”

The woman nodded. “Yes, I’d imagine the block is still in place and working overtime to erase her exposure to the supernatural, but it has begun to break down since her transformation. Poor dear,” she said, turning her attention back to me, “you must be so confused.”

That was when it hit me and I reared back in my seat, shocked as I spun to Hayes. “Did I… did I bite you?”

Hayes rubbed the back of his neck, looking down at the plush rug that covered the stone floor and the woman gave a low laugh.

“Oh, she’s a strong one, isn’t she?” she said to herself, standing up and taking my chin in her tight grip while she peered into my eyes, humming in satisfaction at whatever she saw. “You didn’t feel the bite worth mentioning, Hayes? You know there are no points for this assignment, only pass or fail. She’s here,” the woman said, looking me up and down and wrinkling her nose slightly, “and mostly in one piece.”

“I don’t…” Hayes shook his head before giving me a look that was surprisingly helpless and the woman’s eyes flicked back and forth between us for a moment before she laughed again, longer and harder. Somehow it chilled me more than her silence.

“Oh, this is truly delightful. I haven’t seen a blood bond in years.”

I flicked my eyes to Hayes, trying to see if he understood what this meant, but he was staring at the woman with something akin to horror on his face.

“We’ll deal with that later,” she said dismissively as she finally released my chin, only to place her fingers at my temples. “This might hurt a smidge.”

A lancing heat flooded through my head and shuddered down my whole body and I would have screamed if I could have remembered how. Memories flitted past my mind’s eye and l wanted to look away, wanted to forget what I’d seen as I watched the girl from the lake grow still, saw Hayes thrown into the air by an invisible hand and then crushed to the ground before the vision swapped and there he was again, on the floor panting as I took his blood from his body in large pulls that made him moan.

Things they’d said started to make sense as the part of me that had been locked away behind the mental block resurfaced. My life and memories as a living vampire, preserved until I passed the ultimate vampiric test of strength. Then the block would fade, memories finally clicking back into their rightful place as the woman stripped away the magickal partition.

I could see a dark chamber and I remembered the feel of red lace itching my much smaller body, the touch of cold stone as I was laid down and the magick that would make me forget the vampiric world until my nineteenth birthday was cast. Except, I’d never reached nineteen.

The woman’s hands fell away and I heaved in breaths that burned my lungs. Hayes’ heart seemed to beat too loudly in the room and I focused on it until my shaking subsided and I could look up and meet their eyes. My memories from my time as a ‘human’ were still a mystery, but my supernatural ones from my early life, the ones the magickal block had shielded, were very much intact.

When I’d come into this room I’d thought that I might still make it out alive. I’d been wrong. By the time I’d entered this room, I was already dead.

New knowledge burned in my brain, as well as a clearer idea of what had really happened since Hayes had found me in the cemetery. But it wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I shouldn’t be undead yet. Not like this. Not so soon. I should have awoken as a living vampire and made my way to the closest sanctuary, ready to complete my studies on vampirism and then chosen for myself when to make the transition from living vampire to undead. But I’d beenretrieved, whatever that meant. All I knew was that it wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

When I looked up and met the eyes of the woman across the desk, I finally realised what had seemed so odd about her—she was dead. One of the many undead vampires that likely existed in the world, a rank I had just joined. In this room, the only heart that beat was Hayes’ and it would do so until his death when he would join us too.

“What happened?” I asked calmly, evenly, and the woman’s smile became sharper.

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