Chapter 16
Scarlet’s breathing was laboured. Everything hurt. She stared blankly at the floor. It was a strange view from where she was laying on her side on the dirty ground. She could only focus a few inches away. The pain was too intense to see any further.
She felt so weak, so close to death, but that sweet relief seemed so unattainable. She wanted to die. Why wasn’t he killing her?
She had lost track of how long she had been here.
She had lost the strength to scream a day ago, that much she knew. He had begun her daily torture again, and no sound had come to her, not one ounce of caring for what he was doing to her. She took it all, the beating, the scraping of blade against bone, and the poisonous words he poured into her ear about Troy. She felt nothing. Her mind was a void. Her body was numb. His brutal torture of her body didn’t stir a single emotion.
Since her arrival, she hadn’t seen the other men, and she hadn’t heard Troy for a day now. Had he lost the will to scream too? She could sense he was still alive, as weak feeling as she was. His signature on her senses was distant, hard to catch now. She couldn’t lock onto it any more. Either she was fading away or he was. Or maybe it was both of them.
The floor was red.
The hay that littered it was red too.
Everything was red.
The room stank of stale blood.
Her blood.
She coughed, felt the trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth. She licked it up, wanting to save what precious little she could.
She had told the man nothing.
He had asked her the same questions repeatedly, so much that she knew what order they would come in now.
She heard him drinking.
Her throat was parched.
She wished he would come a little closer so she could sink her fangs into him.
“You feel much younger than your comrade,” he said and she frowned, wondering what this new tactic of his was. “When were you drafted?”
She lay motionless, eyes open and staring at nothing.
His feet came into focus as he walked over to her and she flinched when he poured water onto her head. It stung her eyes and she spat out whatever got into her mouth.
“How many seasons ago were you drafted?” he said again. “Your type are drafted, aren’t they? You don’t join the army like us.”
“I’m honoured to fight for my species,” she uttered, too weak to form the words properly.
“Pardon?” he said and nudged her with his foot. She rolled onto her back, grimacing when her arm twisted behind her and pain shot through her.
“I said that I’m honoured to fight for my species.”
“Very gallant. Between the two of you, I don’t know who is going to crack first.”
She smiled inside, realising that Troy had given them nothing either.
“Why do you fight?” he said.
“To secure our future,” she croaked. Her throat hurt. She sniffed, rolling her eyes closed as she smelt his blood. It called her. She needed blood.
He laughed.
She frowned up at him.
“Your kind has no future,” he said with a grim smile. He looked too pleased by those words. “The vampires in this area are being eradicated like the pests they are.”
“You’re the pests,” she said through clenched teeth and forced herself onto her knees. She wasn’t going to lay there and listen to him insulting her kind. She was strong. She had to be strong to the last.
“It was your kind that couldn’t stop themselves from breaking the truce.”
“Liar!” she spat the words at him and he frowned at her. Her reward was a sharp kick in the face. She fell down again but struggled back onto her knees, refusing to give in. “It was the humans that started the war. We had nothing to do with it. Your kind killed without just reason.”
He frowned at her. “That’s the lie. It was the vampires that started the war. They killed the girl.”
Scarlet stared at him but he kept swimming out of focus. He was lying. Corazon had been there. He had told her the story.
“My captain would never lie to me about this,” she muttered and swallowed the blood in her mouth down.
She moved and her whole body protested.
There was a muffled cry from the room next to hers.
Troy.
She didn’t know how much longer either of them could hold on.
She didn’t care anymore either.
“Why do you say that?” he said.
She didn’t answer him. She stared at the wall, wishing she could see Troy just one last time before they died.
“I’m tired,” she laughed mirthlessly. “Kill me now.”
He looked surprised by her words. She held his gaze as best she could but her vision wavered and her head spun. It was a battle just to keep upright on her knees, but she had to be strong to the last. She had to show Corazon just how strong she really was now, so when she met him in the afterlife, he would be proud of her.
The man sat down on a small stool and stared at her for what seemed like hours. She wondered what he was thinking as he watched her. She levelled out her breathing and realised that she was beginning to heal. If she could get blood, there was a chance she would survive this.
But she didn’t want to.
She was so close to seeing Corazon again.
“I never realised how human your kind are,” he said. “I’ve never seen one of you up close.”
She frowned at him, raising her head a little and forcing herself to focus on him.
He moved off his stool and came to crouch in front of her.
“Do you feel human too?” he said.
She thought he was asking her how she felt at first, but then he began touching her. He stroked her cheek, her hair and then moved around behind her and touched her hands.
“I didn’t think people could be changed by biting here,” he said and she felt his fingers brush against the marks on her wrist. “It has to be the neck, doesn’t it? I see there’s a mark there too.”
He moved around in front of her again and resumed his position on the stool.
“Who bit you?”
Tears rose unbidden into her eyes as she thought about Corazon and how she would never see him again until she died. She wanted to see him again.
“Kill me,” she said and looked at the man with furrowed brows. “Please?”
He looked shocked to hear her pleading him to kill her.
“That’s very noble, to choose death over giving away any information.”
Scarlet hung her head forwards and sniffed back her tears, ashamed of her weakness.
“I just want to die. It has nothing to do with giving you information.”
There was silence for a few minutes.
“Why?” His tone was different. He sounded confused and truly stunned.
She tried to move her arms, wishing she could see the marks on her wrist and kiss them as she wanted to.
“Because I want to see him again... and if I die... we shall meet in the afterlife.”
The man moved over to her again and placed his hand under her chin, forcing her to raise her head and look at him. “Who is this man?”
“My captain... Corazon,” she whispered and tears streamed down her cheeks as she blinked, stinging the cuts on them.
The man’s hand moved to cup her cheek and he wiped away the tears. His expression held a wisp of sympathy. “You’re different to how I remembered you... but you look the same.”
She was stunned but too weak to move away from his touch. Had she known him when she was human? She didn’t recognise him, but it had been over a decade since her turning.
“You don’t know me, do you?” he said, voice hushed and soothing. She shook her head a fraction. Her throat hurt as the wounds on it stretched.
If she had known him, then why had he tortured her? Had he hated her when she was human? No person she had known in her youth would have done such a thing to someone they knew, not even if they had become a vampire. But then, the war changed people when they reached adulthood and were asked to take part in the battles and the killing.
If she had remained human, she would have spent her life shut away in the village. They wouldn’t have allowed her to fight. No woman did.
“It’s Jacob,” he whispered.
Scarlet didn’t see him as he was now when she looked into his eyes. Suddenly he was the youth that she had known back then. He was barely twenty again, strong and slim, wide-eyed and full of laughter. She remembered them collecting apples in the woods together. She remembered washing clothes in the stream and playing in the water with him, carefree and oblivious to the war.
When she blinked, she saw him sitting before her again, face worn with worry and battle, scarred and aged beyond his years. His eyes no longer held the laughter they used to. His smile was gone.
“You remember me now?” he said and removed his hand, stroking it down her cheek.
She nodded, still staring at him as though caught in a spell.
Another scream next door broke it and she pulled away from Jacob’s touch, glaring at him.
His eyes shifted to look at the wall and she could see he wasn’t happy about the disturbance.
“Troy,” she whispered almost beneath her breath. Her heart hurt to think of the torture he was enduring. He was stronger than her, and she was sure that the two men had remained with him.
“It won’t be long for him now,” Jacob said.
She shook her head, wishing his words weren’t true. She ached inside, desperate to see Troy again, to tell him that although she couldn’t love him, she saw him as a friend, as the closest friend she had now. He was the only one in the world for her now. He had tried to protect her by letting the men take him. She wished he had fought to remain with her instead.
“Troy... Corazon,” she said and raised her eyes to the ceiling.
The last shred of hope left her and she didn’t stop the tears that fell, coursing down her cheeks and gathering along her jaw.
The man stood and walked out of the door. He left it open a crack and she could see why he wasn’t worried about her escaping. The sun was shining bright and fierce down on the world. She could see the horses and livestock. Her and Troy must have been in the large hut that she had seen the man walk into.
Jacob.
How could he hurt her so much after he had grown up with her?
He reappeared, closed the door and dropped the wooden latch into its slot on the wall.
She stared at him.
“They aren’t getting any answers either. I’ve told them to let the lieutenant, your Troy, recuperate before continuing their questioning.”
She frowned at the spark of compassion in his words and look. It only made her even more confused.
Either they really wanted the information and that was why she was still alive after all these days, or he couldn’t bring himself to kill her. The Jacob she had known would never hurt her. But the man before her now hadn’t hesitated.
She swallowed hard but it did nothing to clear her dry, sticky throat. She needed blood or death. One would keep her alive, the other would bring her the sweetest of relief.
Jacob moved the stool closer to her and sat down.
She didn’t have the energy to look at him anymore. Her head hung forwards, her chin resting against her chest. She was too weak to do anything but stare at her blurred knees. She couldn’t even think.
She wished she had died in battle. It would have been an honourable death.
“Your brother was a broken man when you were taken,” he said.
She frowned at her lap. She had forgotten about her brother. She could picture him now, taller than Jacob, almost Corazon’s height, and of broad build. He had dark hair just like her, long and flowing, always tied at the nape of his neck. He had been like a father to her when their parents had died.
“The families were devastated... I was devastated.”
Forcing herself to raise her head, she looked at him to see whether his words were true. There was pain in his eyes, but it did nothing to ignite sympathy within her. He had tortured her. What kind of man professes to have been hurt by a person’s death and then goes on to torture that person?
She was too tired to answer him, to voice the million questions now crowding her mind.
“I wanted to marry you,” he whispered.
She flinched and sat back, frowning at him now and mustering the last of her strength so she could hear what he had to say without passing out.
“I did,” he said, giving her a hard look when she gave him a sceptical one. “I’d been planning to propose on May Day.”
Her brow rose. “I was turned two days before May Day.”
He nodded.
She didn’t know what to say. He had wanted to marry her, but he had never once shown her any sign of those kinds of feelings. There had been no love between them. Even Corazon had shown more emotion towards her than Jacob had.
Another tear rolled down to her chin at the thought of the kiss they had shared on the wall.
She missed him so much. Each new thought of him, each replayed moment, made her die a little more inside. She wanted to see him again.
“Are you thinking about your captain?” he said, breaking her out of her thoughts.
She nodded.
“He is dead?”
She nodded again, and the tears fell fat and fast as those words echoed around her head. Corazon was dead.
“Now you want to die too?”
She said nothing this time, didn’t move or give any sign that she’d heard him.
“I can’t kill you,” he said.
She looked at him through her lashes. Those words brought her more pain than any torture. She wanted to die. He had to kill her.
“Even though you’re a demon now and not the girl I’d once known, I can’t kill you.”
“I am still that girl,” she uttered, too weak to put any more voice behind those words. “But I never belonged in your world. I am happier as a vampire than I’d ever been as a human.”
He frowned. “Because you found someone to love?”
“No,” she whispered. “Because I found someone who loved me.”
He paused.
“I loved you.”
She dropped her eyes to the bloodstained floor. Her blood. His words were hollow now, offering no peace or comfort. No man that loved her could hurt her so easily.
“I never knew. You never said... and seeing you as I do now... I could never have loved you.”
He stood and went to speak, but someone banged on the door. He glared at her and then went to it and opened it.
“I’ve orders to take over.” A tall brutal looking man with a mane of sandy hair and a thick scar down his neck stood in the doorway.
“I’m handling this,” Jacob said and she sensed a note of panic in him.
He hadn’t wanted to kill her. What had he planned to do with her? She wouldn’t have survived much longer anyway and she wouldn’t have given him any information.
The newcomer shook his head. “Step outside.”
Jacob looked back at her, regret shining in his eyes.
She had none in hers.
Seeing him as she did now, she was glad that she had become a vampire and escaped a life as his wife. He was more brutal than any vampire she knew. No man with a heart could torture the woman he had once loved. He had taken her to the brink of death. He was worse than Daliel.
The newcomer walked in and closed the door. He locked it and came over to her.
She looked at him as he towered above her, ready for whatever was going to happen.
He smacked her hard across the face and she hit the floor, banging her head against the cold stone flags.
The edges of her vision went fuzzy and dark, and before she could even draw a breath, the world was gone again.
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