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CHAPTER TWELVE

ENDER

The hours stretch on and even though there’s not a window in here, I can tell it’s shifted from day to night. I’m stuck in the darkness, encompassed in that small box. I can’t move. I can’t turn around. I’m suffocating.

And I can hear him.

He’s laughing. He’s enjoying every minute of this.

Fear twists in my stomach as I try to get away, but where is there to go in this darkness?

Every way I reach are walls. I can’t even stretch out as the walls close in around me.

I’m being driven mad by the realization that the only thing I ever have to look forward to is fear.

“Aren’t you hungry?” he asks, voice jovial as he peels the lid off and looms over me. I’m blinded by the light; I cower down to get away from the monster as he reaches in?—

“Ender!”

I jerk awake and my head snaps back, but I find it hard to hold up now that I’ve managed to escape the darkness of my dream.

“I think you were having a nightmare,” Mads says, voice gentle.

I look over at him and the realization hits me that Abel must have been in here and I never even heard him. A fresh puddle of blood joins the other as I notice the addition of a new blade buried into Mads’s stomach.

Abel entered this very room and I never heard him? I didn’t even wake up. The idea of him being close to me sends emotions reeling through me that I don’t even know how to comprehend.

“It’s okay,” Mads soothes, still trying his best to look like everything is just fine even though it’s clearly not. “You’re fine. I mean not completely fine. But whatever was bothering you in your dreams isn’t here now.”

“I think you need to worry about yourself.”

“Nah. It helps if I worry about someone else,” he says as that blood drips… drips… drips…

I could kill Abel if I could get out of here. I just need the strength to…

“Looking at me like I’m a kebob doesn’t really help the situation,” Mads comments.

“I need to kill him.”

“He’s not my favorite person at the moment either. There’s no way you can like grab the sword out of me and then stab him when he comes in?”

I need to feast. I need to eat. I need…

Darkness is clouding my mind, and I try to tear away from it, but it’s consuming me and I feel like there might be no way out.

“Ender, what’s going on?”

It’s closing in around me, tightening a noose around my throat?—

I lean over and bite my arm, using the pain of my fangs sinking into my flesh to pull me out of this frame of mind I’ve found myself in. No… I can’t lose control. I can’t….

“What the hell are you doing? You think you can just eat yourself now?” Mads asks.

He goes to try to give me a kick to snap me out of it, but it must hurt because he cringes and immediately stops moving, instead stirring up the smell of blood drifting off him.

“I know you’re hungry, but eating yourself has never been the answer. ”

“I need you to distract me,” I beg.

“I swear you were just telling me you wished I’d stop talking? But fine, fine. What do you want me to talk about?”

“Anything,” I say through gritted teeth as the darkness starts to close in around me.

“I nearly kept Rylee’s cat for myself. I’ve always loved animals but never got too many chances to have them.

Not always sure I deserved them. At this one place I worked, they used rats for testing.

It made me so sad that one night, I broke all of the rats free.

I made them a little home at my house and the company went crazy trying to figure out who stole the rats.

Of course they didn’t expect it was the vampire, a being created to feast on blood.

But there I was with my little rat army.

I miss those little guys. Very smart animals.

Very intuitive. Of course they only got more rats.

And I just stole more of them. I eventually got fired when the boss caught me with seven squirming around in my shirt because the box I’d grabbed to escape with them was nabbed by someone.

“I miss my little rat army, but I gave them to a friend since I didn’t have the time for them. What I’m saying is that I was not above keeping Rylee’s cat, but I needed an excuse to talk to you again.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to know what was so interesting about you. Why does everyone fear you, are convinced you are a monster, yet the VRC allows you to live and doesn’t arrest you?

There’s something we aren’t being told. There’s something I want to know the answer to. And I really think you should tell me.”

“I don’t trust you,” I say as the smell of blood wafts toward me. It’s destroying my sense of control. I’m losing myself to it and I know that I need to get away.

“How’d you end up with Rylee?”

Rylee… that’s right. She keeps me centered. Rylee keeps me in control.

“Fuck,” Mads groans as his head tilts back and he grits his teeth.

My eyes latch on to his throat and all I can do is fantasize about sinking my fangs into it, grabbing him as blood fills me.

You’re just a monster. That’s all you’ll ever be. You were created for this . You were created to kill. Monsters don’t need emotions, they don’t need people. They don’t need anything but the drive. Now kill them.

“Ender, what’s wrong?”

Rylee doesn’t think I’m a monster. She’s told me I’m not. But she’s just a fucking kid. She has absolutely no idea what I am. She believes what I’ve shown her and not what I really am.

I groan as I sink deeper into that feeling of losing control.

“Stop digging your fingers into that chain, I can hear you breaking them,” Mads snaps. “What the hell are you doing? Is this because of the bullet? Ender, are you with me?”

All you’re good for is destroying. You’re surrounded by death because that is what you were made to do. Look behind you. Look at what you’ve done and realize that you’re absolutely perfect for this and only this.

No! No… I don’t want to do what he tells me to do. I don’t…

Mads kicks me and I feel like he does it to snap me out of it but all it does is heighten the smell of blood in this small room.

The darkness grabs me and tears me straight under.

The chains I couldn’t destroy before crack beneath my rush of strength as I crash to the ground.

I drop hard to my knees, my nails scraping into the ground as I lean down and lick the blood off the floor that has dripped beneath Mads’s feet, but it’s not enough.

I need more. I need it all. I need to kill. I need the darkness to end.

“Ender, stop! Ender, what are you doing? Please?—”

I slam into him and he groans in pain as my fingers dig into his hair, jerking his head back.

My fangs pierce his flesh, ripping into it as the sweet taste of blood fills me.

My mind is nothing more than darkness, not a single thought inside of it my own.

I’m plagued by this inability to think or function on my own.

“Ender, hey, please stop,” Mads says, and I can hear his voice. I can recognize the words, but I can’t comprehend what they mean. “You’re going to kill me. Please, Ender… I don’t want to die. Please, it’s okay. I know something’s wrong, but it’s okay. You can get out now. En… Ender.”

I can feel him growing weak in my hands. And even though I know that I’m killing him, there’s nothing left in my mind beyond the desire to kill.

“Ender… please… Ender…”

His words do nothing to me. I don’t even understand why he keeps repeating them. Doesn’t he understand that everyone has to die?

A noise sounds behind me as someone opens the door.

I tear back from Mads, pulling one of the swords free from him before using it to cut the intruder’s head clean off.

It hits the ground as I see another. The tall man.

He looks startled as he comes for me but he’s nothing.

He can’t get away. He screams and claws and begs as I rip into his throat and drain him until there’s nothing left.

When I drop him to the ground, I see others have joined us. Good. I don’t have to hunt for them.

One backs away while the other rushes me, but he soon finds a place on the floor just like his fleeing friend. I want to consume them. Eat them, destroy them… but there are more to kill. More waiting for me.

I dash into a large room where I hear someone laughing.

“I see that even being shot can’t keep my little puppet down,” Abel says. “Come here.”

I cock my head as the cloudy part of my mind tells me to go to him. He’s ordered me back to him, so that is where I should go. It’s easiest. It’s best. It’s the only answer.

“Ender, come, now,” he snarls.

But one of his children gets close to me, snapping me out of it. He seems to think he’ll herd me back, but instead, I tear into him. I’m draining him as Abel shakes his head, dissatisfied by my actions, but isn’t this what I’m meant to do? Destroy? Kill? “Ender, now .”

The blood of another vampire is filling my mouth. I need to get up and go to him, do as he says, and he’ll save me from the darkness.

Or is he the darkness?

The blood slides down my throat as I watch the others closely from where I feast. No one else is stepping forward. Are they afraid of me? I will eat them all just like I ate this man. And the one who harassed me and Mads…

I hesitate as the body falls from my hands.

Did I eat Mads?

No, I didn’t particularly like Mads, but… I didn’t mean to kill him…

Did I kill him? He was already so weak. There was barely any blood left in him and I attacked him. I consumed his blood even as he begged me to stop.

The warm blood is drawing life into my body, life it’s lacked for days. And it’s washing away the darkness in my mind, but when the darkness is gone… Abel is stronger than me.

“Ender, come here,” he snaps.

But that was years ago. That was when I was young .

Even though the fresh blood has helped me, I still feel the effects of the drug coursing through my body.

The weakness in my limbs tells me that there’s no way I’d win a fight against that man, not when he has so many others, not when I feel like all I’ve done is merely prolong death’s journey to me.

I can’t let him know I’m in my right mind again or he’ll attack. So I simply pick up the sword and stand up before seeing someone nervously hovering near the hallway I’d just come through. I rush him, knowing he’ll flee, and he does.

“Ender, dammit,” Abel snarls.

I need to leave. I need to get out of here. I need to get my strength back so I can kill him. But most of all, I need to get back to Rylee.

But what if Mads is still alive? What if I didn’t kill him? Do I even care?

I should just get out of here, but—maybe because Rylee is rubbing off on me—my mind is fixated on Mads.

The vampire I’m chasing rushes past the room we’d been held in, and I dart into it.

Mads hangs from the chain, blood streaked down his throat from where I’d torn into his neck.

In my fucked-up state, I hadn’t even bothered removing both swords so he could heal, just the one I wanted to kill the man in the doorway with.

I grab Mads’s head, push it up, and press my fingers against him.

There’s the faintest warmth to his body that tells me that for now…

he’s still alive. I pull the sword out of him before dropping it on the ground, along with the other to free my hands, and then grab the chain above him.

Using all the strength I can muster from the blood I’d consumed, I tear it from the ceiling, but I can’t break the shackles around his wrists or ankles in this state, though it doesn’t matter.

It’s not like he’s in any shape to be walking.

I toss him over my shoulder and swoop down to pick up the swords before hurrying toward the far doorway.

A group of vampires is moving toward me, but I slip out and run. Weakness is eating into my limbs, but thankfully, I have consumed enough blood to push it away for now. I see a window and slam into it, glass shattering as I rush through it, out into the night.

Three vampires come out of the darkness and try to stop me.

One slams into me now that I’m weakening again, and I accidentally drop Mads.

The vampire manages to cut me but I throw him off before driving the sword into a woman.

I want to feast on them in an attempt to override the effects of this fucking drug, but I can’t hesitate.

Abel will know I’m fleeing and the second he zeros in on me, I know this is all over.

I grab Mads and disappear into the night before weakness can totally consume me.