Page 19

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ENDER

I don’t make it far before the exhaustion becomes too much. We’re going to get caught again, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do. I don’t even know where the fuck I am. All that surrounds me are trees and fields and mountains. Where the fuck are we?

I stumble as pain and exhaustion strike me and hit the ground on my knees. I try not to let Mads fall, but I can’t keep a hold of him as we both crash to the ground. He groans and tries to curl in on himself, but he turns still before he accomplishes anything.

On my hands and knees, I’m left in a state of exhaustion.

How can being shot by that fucking thing still be causing me so many issues?

I guess Mads was right; most vampires would have died from this by now.

I’m not a true vampire. Just because I’m different from the rest doesn’t mean I’m invincible.

They’re following me. There’s no way they can’t follow our trail.

Mads smells like blood, which is like an invitation leading straight to us.

I tear his clothes off and check his stomach where he’s still not healed from his wounds.

If he had some blood, I bet he’d heal… that is, if I could get him to swallow it.

Bunching up his blood-soaked clothes in my hands, I dash into the darkness where I find a deer that I’ve startled awake.

I wrestle it down and tie the clothes around its neck before letting it flee.

Terrified, it bolts into the darkness. It won’t give us much time, but maybe it’ll distract them momentarily. At least he can’t complain about his ass being breezy now that all of him is.

Not that he can complain at all in the state he’s in.

I find another deer and drag it back to Mads.

The animal looks petrified, and I know Rylee would be horrified to know what I’ve done as I kill it quickly and try to drip the blood into Mads’s mouth.

My blood would do nothing to help him as I’m not a true vampire and neither is Mads who is nothing like me—a being who has to consume vampire blood the way a regular vampire needs human blood—so the deer is all I have.

No, there’s no one like me.

It’s hard to hold the animal and get Mads to open his mouth.

I’m pouring blood onto his face when he needs to drink it, but he’s not coherent enough to do so.

I pull his mouth open but just getting it in there turns out to be the easy part when I can’t get him to swallow it.

It merely pools in his mouth before running out.

I nudge him and shake him but still nothing.

“Come on, dammit, wake up,” I snap as I smack his face in the hope of startling him awake, but it does nothing to help. “Mads, wake your annoying ass up.”

Fuck, fuck. I didn’t mean to drain him this badly. I didn’t mean to hurt him like this.

I’m barely getting any blood in him and end up draining the rest of the deer myself. That mouthful or two that he might have swallowed likely won’t do anything, but at this point do I really have any other choice? I can’t wait for him to rest. We have to keep moving because every second matters.

Lifting the naked man up, I drape him over my shoulder and keep running. Maybe I can hit the city soon and reach the VRC… but where the hell is the city? I don’t hear cars, I can’t see houses. The fields around here aren’t farmed, they’re overgrown grassland and brush.

Nausea rolls through me. Maybe I shouldn’t have drained that deer.

It’s not like I can’t consume other blood, but when I’m in this condition, vampire blood is probably the only thing that will heal me.

Slowing to a walk, I draw my shirt down, exposing my shoulder that I’d been shot in and revealing how my veins show black through my skin.

Hell, maybe this thing is just taking its sweet time to kill me.

Just because it didn’t kill me immediately doesn’t mean it’s not going to.

I don’t know how much of the drug was put into it or if it would even be affecting a true vampire to this extreme.

All I know is that weakness is washing through my body, and even the blood I drank doesn’t seem to be the fix I thought it would.

“How about you carry me some?” I mumble, but maybe he would have if I hadn’t tried eating him. “I’m going to be so pissed if I carry you all this way for you to just fucking die off.”

I try not to notice the way guilt eats at me at that thought. It wasn’t like I meant for it to happen. I never meant for any of it to happen. Doesn’t mean that I don’t have to live with the consequences of it.

Positive that whatever direction I pick will lead me farther from civilization, I pick a random route and start moving, just making sure I’m going the same way without getting turned around.

Exhaustion weighs down my limbs as I run until my legs shake, and when I trip, I go down on my knees again, unable to get back up.

When I try to rise, I can’t even get my legs under me.

Deciding I’ll just take a short break, I lower Mads off my shoulder and onto the ground before hitting down on my side as the world spins around me.

We’re both just going to be lying here when Abel finds us. He’s going to drag us back and that darkness is going to take us.

You know you can’t outrun me, right, Ender? Where would you even go? You know I own your life. I own you. I created you. You’re special because I chose to let you exist. I chose to let you be. And you have one purpose.

To kill.

No, no, I don’t want to kill them. I don’t want to. They were kind to me. They took care of me and now their blood coats my fingers. I can taste it on my lips. Their pleas, their cries tearing through me.

A hand brushes my cheek, and I reel back because that monster is here. I let him invade my life. I’m lying here because I’m weak. I’m so fucking weak and he found me.

“Shhh.”

My eyes flash over to what’s made the noise, and I realize that the hand slumped against my cheek belongs to Mads and I’m just caught back up in a dream of a life I’d do anything to forget.