Page 31 of The Reveal (Bloodlore #1)

I have time to think about how much I really ought to hate myself, and how much I really do , as I follow him back down into the building and then out the school’s front door onto the street.

I can hear creatures move in the shadows, but none dare come out. Not with Ariel there, looking completely unbothered.

He glances over at the barricade I saw from the roof. “They build that up every week or two, and we take it down. At this point, it’s almost becoming a conversation.”

“Why do people need a barricade on Main Street?” I ask.

“You know what it’s like,” he says, almost conversationally, though there’s the hint of something like steel in him then.

It makes me think of the way he barks out his commands to his minions as they move like one on the school’s polished floor.

“The less someone has, the more they wish to defend it.”

I find that sits on me unpleasantly as I follow him down the center of what was once a fairly busy street, crossing the bridge over the river and circling around until we’re deep into Hawthorne Park.

A place I tried to avoid even before the Reveal.

Long ago, the towns in the valley decided to put in a beautiful greenway that follows Bear Creek, an offshoot of the Rogue River, for some twenty miles, connecting Ashland, at the southernmost part of the valley, up to Central Point, near where the tributary meets up with the actual river.

In some places, it’s probably still beautiful.

But here in the center of Medford, it was never anything but sketchy. There were always throngs of desperate people, in and out of their hiding places in the bushes. I rode a bike this way exactly once before vowing I never would again.

Being out here tonight feels particularly precarious.

Especially since I can still feel that mark he left on me, blazing now. Part of me is worried that it’s blistering my skin.

Yet I feel certain I would rather die than indicate I even notice.

Ariel ushers me through the dark with that same stern confidence I already know too well, and all the shadowy figures that I don’t want to look at directly move out of his way. Whether because they recognize him or sense who he is, I don’t know.

I’m just glad they move.

I hear murmuring, but I don’t know what that means either, and I refuse to ask him.

Maybe I’m afraid to ask him.

He leads me down to a path I didn’t know existed on the riverbank, separate from the old greenway that meanders along beneath the interstate. And then we walk.

I quickly lose my bearings once I can’t see the MMA school in front of us, a landmark sitting high on the other side of the water.

Ariel strides ahead of me, and I hate that I have to scurry after him to keep up, so I don’t.

I walk fast enough not to lose sight of him, but that’s all.

This path is well worn, but then he takes us on a smaller path that winds around and goes under a bridge, where he stops and waits next to a concrete wall covered in graffiti.

I go and stand next to him, not sure why we stopped.

I look up at the bridge above me and realize that we’re directly underneath the freeway, though I can’t hear any vehicles up above.

Someone told me that the freeways are turning back to nature, though I haven’t investigated this myself.

I like the idea of flowers pushing their way through, grass and trees reclaiming what’s theirs.

It lets me imagine that everything moves in cycles, and maybe one day I’ll recognize this world again.

Maybe one day it will feel like mine once more.

The darkness presses in all around us. The river rushes down below.

I comfort myself with the knowledge that if he wanted to kill me, he wouldn’t need to take me down to a bridge near the river to do it.

It’s actually not that comforting.

When I hear a scraping sound, I jump.

I hate that I display that kind of vulnerability and that Ariel simply puts his hand on my back and that’s enough to stop me. Worse, it feels like comfort, and I don’t know where to put that. My heart pays no attention, however, and catapults against my ribs like it’s trying to claw its way out.

I look around wildly, and then I can’t help but stare—possibly with my mouth open—when a slab of painted-over concrete at the base of the bridge ... moves .

It takes me a shockingly long moment or two to understand that I’m looking at some kind of door.

A woman peers out of the opening. She is beautiful, in a harsh and demanding kind of way—all jet-black hair and impossibly smooth skin—that would have made it clear that she’s a vampire even if I didn’t recognize her as one of the minions who ran me off the road.

“All clear, sire,” she says.

Sire, I think, the word landing in me like a hard slap.

I don’t know why it hasn’t occurred to me that just because I’ve been viewing my interactions with the vampire king as a series of sexual co-payments toward a dark insurance that might help Augie, it doesn’t mean that everyone does.

And that to some, like all his vampire minions and apparently the whole of the valley, the fact that he’s the king isn’t hypothetical.

This makes me feel heavy and weak all at once.

There’s no time to process it, because his hand is on my back and he’s guiding me forward. I can either do as I’m told or turn and run. Screaming.

Shamefully enough, I consider the latter. My mind is spinning out as I try to imagine what it would look like if I really did make a break for it.

But reality asserts itself, as stern and unyielding as that hand on my back.

As that heavy, cold cock against my clit earlier, as hard as the brick wall in front of me.

There’s nowhere to go. If I run, he will catch me, in seconds and without much effort.

Even if he doesn’t, I’m weaponless, out in the dark, and the only way to access my vehicle involves crossing a park full of addicts and monsters, then circling a block in the war zone of downtown Medford. I essentially have nowhere to go.

Not if I want to see Augie. In whatever state he might be in, down beneath the earth in the clutches of vampires .

It’s impossible to imagine what might be happening or what shape he’s in—my mind actually flinches away from such thoughts, and my temples begin to burn again.

The only remedy is to go down into the dark pit, so that’s what I do.

After I ease myself in through the opening and start climbing down the ladder that waits there, I make a command decision not to think too closely about where I’m going.

Much less make comparisons to the sewers I’ve seen in movies.

The ladder seems to go down and down forever, deep into the earth, where it is already winter, damp and cold.

When I land, I stagger a little, surprised to find ground beneath my feet. I turn and find that cold-faced woman staring right at me.

I glance up at the ladder, but Ariel isn’t there.

“The king has important matters to attend to,” the woman says, in a tone that I can only describe as surpassingly hostile. “Surely you can’t imagine that you, a mere human, should command his attention?”

“I would be delighted to avoid his attention altogether,” I shoot back.

This is probably unwise.

She confirms this by baring her teeth at me. They are all fangs, and it’s beginning to occur to me that this is part of how vampires communicate. The amount of teeth they show at any given moment indicates the truth of things.

Right now, she’s indicating that I should watch myself.

“He used to mark all of his sacrifices,” she tells me, and the tone is vicious. It matches the fangs. “It didn’t save them. It won’t save you.”

I stare back at her, and her terrifyingly beautiful face, and have to come to terms with a number of things. Quickly.

One is that I’m standing deep underground in what is clearly a vampire lair.

Two, she and I are discussing his mark , which is a very fancy way of saying that when he came all over my body he clearly knew that other people—other vampires, certainly—would be able to sense it. Or smell it. Or whatever it is they do.

And three, that I have to suffer this if I want to see my brother.

I do the only thing I can do. I show her my own teeth in what can only loosely be described as a smile. Fangless though it is.

“Are you going to lead me to Augie?” I ask.

The vampire wheels around and starts walking. This is when I realize that instead of being dropped down some deep, dark well, I’m actually in a tunnel. More critically, there is no hint of any light, and she’s not walking slowly as she heads into the maw of darkness before us.

It’s very clear that she wants me to feel every possible misgiving, and I do, but I also hustle to keep up with her. Because I decide I don’t care if she sees me scurrying.

I have only passing, muddied perceptions of this tunnel we’re in, because it’s so dark and she’s moving so swiftly.

I’m sure I can feel the walls closing in all around me, but when I reach out a hand to test that, there’s no wall within reach.

Whether it’s my mind playing tricks on me or run-of-the-mill vampire games, it’s hard to say.

My mind whirls, trying to fill the darkness, so I quickly establish some rules with myself.

There will be no thinking about Ariel, his mark, or his sacrifices .

There will be no unnecessarily snarky remarks to all these things that are probably just waiting for reasons to kill me.

I have to assume, as ever, that if Ariel wanted me dead, he could and would do it himself without taking all this trouble with the nightly visits and the sex and the marking and the wandering around riverside paths in the dark of night when surely all good vampires are out exsanguinating the innocent, et cetera.

I imagine that if I say something like that out loud, the vampire who is my unwilling guide will leap at the opportunity to hiss at me and tell me I’m far beneath her king’s notice in life and death. So I don’t say it.