Page 9 of The Midnight Order (The Thorngray Vampires Duet #1)

Silver

I run as fast as I can. As fast as I’ve ever run before. My heart feels as if it’s going to explode as my feet pound down a flight of carpeted stairs.

I don’t know if it’s wise to run from a vampire. All I know about them is they can’t stand sunlight, drink blood, and are fast.

Though I saw them in the woods behind my house in broad daylight, so maybe all the theories in books are wrong?

Once I realize he has given chase, I press even harder to reach the front door.

However, as soon as I open the door, another masked man is leaning against the stairs casually, picking at his fingernails as if bored.

I halt, my breathing sounding labored.

“Where ya’ going?” he asks, flicking his ethereally red eyes at me with a smirk.

“Please, let me go,” I beg.

He pushes his massive body off the railing and strides over toward me.

I would back up, but the open door behind me feels occupied now.

I know that the one I ran from, the one who took my blood, is directly behind me. I feel his presence as prey feels it’s being stalked.

“I’m the last one of us you should ask for freedom. Though you don’t know that yet, do you?”

He twirls some of my hair around his finger, and I close my eyes and whimper.

“You’re bleeding,” he says, inhaling deeply and exaggeratedly.

“She shouldn’t be,” the doctor says, moving around me to inspect my IV. “Fuck, she’s pulled it halfway out in her attempt to run.”

Attempt.

“Naughty girl,” the tattooed man says, that same taunting smirk on his face gleaming down at me.

“I don’t understand why you chose me.” I hate that I sound scared, but they’re vampires, for fuck’s sake; anyone in my position would.

“We didn’t,” he replies.

The doctor eyes him as if to warn him to keep his mouth shut, but says nothing.

“The wards did.”

The wards?

The new man is taller than the doctor. He’s wearing more casual clothes: jeans and a dark shirt. Even though he has the same shiny white half mask on his face, he’s distinguishable by his clean-shaven face, whereas the doctor has a beard that’s just a touch longer than a five o’clock shadow.

His lips are playful, the bottom lip fuller than the top. They all share the same red eyes, but there’s a warmth to his, where the doctor’s seem cold and calculating.

“Well,” he says, turning me back toward the door by my shoulders, “let’s get you back where you belong.”

“I belong at home,” I lament.

“Mm, in a few days, we might agree with you. Until then, you belong here. Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he whispers, leaning down to hover near my right ear, “we’ll keep you safe.”

Safe.

An illusion that has shattered for me for the rest of my life.

The doctor allows me to use the restroom, takes me into an unfamiliar room, and removes my IV completely.

He’s wrapping my arm when I gain the confidence to speak.

“How long have you been… alive?”

He sits straight on the edge of the bed as he cuts the roll of tape away from my arm.

“Let’s see, the colonies had just formed, and the revolution was starting between those who wanted to follow King George and those who wanted to be free from the monarchy, so that must’ve been…

around 1775, and I was 26 when I joined the army to fight… ”

“You fought in the Revolutionary War?!” I squeak, flattening the tape to my arm as I sit up and lock eyes with him.

He inclines his head slightly. “I did.”

“You’re 275 years old,” I whisper in awe before narrowing my eyes at him. “Which side did you fight for?”

He laughs, and the sound takes me aback. It’s like the perfect few moments of your favorite song.

I wonder if vampires have qualities about them that draw us in—those of us with blood that sustains them flowing through our veins.

“The Americans, of course.”

“How did you become…” I swallow, not knowing what terms could be offensive and not wanting to anger a creature that could literally eat me.

“During the Battle of Trenton. It was… winter of ‘76.”

1776, I remind myself, unable to wrap my mind around anything he’s saying.

“We’d suffered losses at White Plains and Forts Washington and Lee before that battle.

We were tired and hungry, so we camped along the Delaware River before making our next move.

I don’t truly know what happened. One moment, I was relieving myself in the thick forest near the bank, and the next, I was being dragged into the forest’s interior. ”

“A vampire took you and turned you?”

He nods.

I lean against the bed’s headboard, enamored by his story as if it’s a fairytale he’s telling me, not the actual life he lived.

“Your commanding officer or general or whatever they were called didn’t come looking for you?”

“Washington? No. Why would he? There were nearly three thousand of us. No one would’ve noticed my absence.”

“Washington?! As in, the George Washington?”

He smirks. “General George Washington. Yes.”

“That’s insane! Sorry, I don’t mean to offend you or anything. It’s just… the life you must’ve lived. The things you’ve seen… I can’t fathom it all.”

“To me, it feels less spellbinding,” he admits, his eyes flicking away and filling with ghosts.

“Of course it does. You lived it.”

This has him looking at me with a quirked brow, but he says nothing about whatever makes him look at me as if I’m the odd one.

“So, how does one make a…”

“Vampire?” he finishes for me.

I nod.

“Well, our bite has venom, but our blood is the key. One must drink from the source, nearly drain them, and feed them their blood. The bite without the blood sharing isn’t effective.”

“So, someone wanted you to be like this…”

“Yes. Jasper.”

“Jasper?”

“Our… leader, for lack of a better term. At least, the one we follow currently.”

“The Midnight Order?”

“Yes.”

“What exactly is the Midnight Order?”

He sighs, his eyes shifting left as if trying to recall what he’s supposed to tell me and what’s off-limits.

“We’re the original faction of vampires.

The first coven, if you will. In this world, anyhow.

In the old country, thousands of years ago, more covens were in operation.

Jasper and Lowell got displaced during a voyage when the ship they were on wrecked.

They landed here and did what they could to survive. ”

“He killed you.”

My assessment has his face hardening, where it had softened slightly as our conversation progressed.

“How old is Jasper?” I ask him, wondering which one Jasper is to begin with, but I don’t want to press my luck by asking too many questions.

“That’s his story to tell. For now, though, story time is over. Lie down.”

I do as I’m told, and he leans over me and begins tucking me into bed, fitting the sheets and blankets beneath me as someone would a child.

“What is your name?” I ask him.

“Corvin.”

“Goodnight, Corvin.”

“Goodnight…”

“Silver.”

His face hovers over mine as my mind tells my body to calm down. We’re in the close presence of a vampire, and we need to play it cool before he kills us.

“Goodnight, Silver,” he says before straightening and heading for the door.

I’m breathless, and when he clicks the light off and exits. I’m in a stupor, far too wired to go to sleep.

Especially in a house full of vampires.

Something dusts across my face, and I try to swat it away.

My hand jerks, unable to move, and something clamps around my wrist.

“Careful there, you’ll hurt something,” a voice says, and my eyes spring open.

Right. Captive of the vampires. How could I forget?

It’s the same man from the porch, and I have the distinct feeling he’s not supposed to be here.

The way he cocks his head reminds me of the man standing in my yard the night I had to call the police, and I gasp, tugging against my restraints again stupidly.

Had Corvin done this in the night? My wrist is handcuffed to the headboard, and I rattle it again to riddle it out.

“You’ve been watching me,” I breathe, my heart rate spiking as the realization crests.

“Hard not to. Look at you,” he says, striking an odd feeling down my spine.

“What?”

He runs the back of his crooked index finger down my cheek, and I’m stricken stiff in the bed beneath the same spell I’ve felt come over me in Corvin’s presence.

“You’re so beautiful. It’s not even that there’s blood running beneath your skin, either. There’s this pull toward you like you’re the flame, and I’m the moth being drawn in.”

His admission startles me a bit, and I wonder if he’s a touch crazy.

That can probably happen when you’re forced to live lifetimes beyond when you should have expired.

Then again, there’s something eloquent and warm in how he’s looking at me as if I’m as delicate and spellbinding as a flower on the first day of spring.

“Can you undo this?” I ask him, wiggling my wrist.

He looks bored with the request as he flicks his wrist, and the handcuffs open.

What the…

“Sit up. Let me look at you in the light.”

The longer I’m alone with him, the more I know he has something odd about him.

I don’t feel threatened, and I should. I should probably check myself into an institution after this because of how strangely calm I’ve been able to remain in this absurd situation.

As a whole, I should freak out.

Instead, I’m going to chalk it up to survival instinct and push the worries away.

Again.

I sit up in bed, watching his pupils get wider as he takes me in.

“Mm, I truly hope you’re the one.”

The one to break their curse.

I want to ask about it, but I have also been told that once they rule me out, I’ll be set free.

Will they still let me go if I prod for too much information?

Don’t vampires have some mind control they can do to make me forget this ever happened?

God, I should’ve read more vampire fiction.

“Sorry, but I hope just the opposite,” I finally say when I notice him staring at me.

“Why?! You’d be the happiest woman in the entire universe,” he says, his vocal tone dropping an octave into a deep gravel that nudges along my senses a bit rigidly, making my nipples harden.

He leans closer, whispering, “We would treat you like a queen.”

The way my eyes close and my lips part is just a bodily reaction, I tell myself as I straighten and clear my throat.

“Lowell! What were you told?” a deep voice shouts, causing me to jump.

The vampire I now know as Lowell rolls his eyes before turning around. “To steer clear of the woman.”

“And where are you right now?”

He turns back to me with a smile, and I stare at two sharp fangs gleaming in the sunlight streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. “I don’t know, little lamb. Where am I?”

How he curled his tongue around the nickname sent shivers racing across my skin, and I fought the bodily shudder in reaction.

“You’re disobeying a direct order, it seems like,” I answer.

The vampire in the suit grins, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Seems the lady agrees with me. You’ll have your time with her. For now, she’s Corvin’s.”

Lowell pats my hand. “Did you hear that? We’ll have our time.”

Standing, he passes the vampire in the suit, never bothering to look his way before leaving the room.

I swallow as I realize they’ll pass me around for their test, and I don’t want to know what Lowell has in store for me.