A Castle of Sand (A Shade of Vampire #3)(22)
Author: Bella Forrest

I expected Ashley to stop coughing after a few minutes, but it didn’t let up for another five minutes, at which point even I wanted to rush forward to try and do something about it, but I was held back by the knowledge that I had to stand by Sofia. Corrine was powerful enough to protect herself; thus, it left Sofia as the only human being in that room Ashley could possibly attack once the bloodlust took over.

When the coughing stopped, an audible sigh of relief filled the room. Still, Ashley’s fingers and toes were twitching—aftermaths of the violent tremors her body had just endured only minutes ago. When the claws began to grow, Ashley once again screamed in agony.

That’s when flashbacks of the night I was turned began to fill my mind.

I trusted him. I trusted my father. I was supposed to kill him. He was a newly turned vampire, and I was the most powerful hunter there was. It would’ve been easy to take Gregor Novak down, but he was still my father and as I held that crossbow mounted with a wooden stake, I simply couldn’t make the kill.

“How could you let this happen?” I asked through gritted teeth. “How could you allow yourself to become one of them?”

“You don’t know what it’s like, Derek,” he explained to me as he took a step forward over the creaking floorboards. “The taste of power, the heightened senses…everything becomes a thousand times more beautiful…”

I backed away from him, the back of my knees hitting one of the benches in our home’s small parlor. “Stop it, Father. I don’t want to know what it’s like. These creatures killed Mother…how could you…” I drew in a sharp breath. It felt like a betrayal. “How can you live everyday knowing that you’re one of them? One of the beasts who killed her?”

“Don’t talk to me about your mother, Derek…”

His words faded away when a surge of panic and fear enveloped me. “Vivienne and Lucas…where are they?”

His face morphed from irritation to defensiveness. “You have to understand, Derek…”

Breathing began to be quite a task. “No…no…what have you done?” I didn’t need to hear what he had to say. I walked past him, trusting that he wouldn’t do anything to harm me. I was his son after all. “Vivienne! Lucas!” I threw one of the bedroom doors open.

The sight that presented itself to me made me want to vomit.

“It was the only way we could all be together. Forever.”

At that moment, I knew without doubt that my father was a sick, sick man. I stared blankly at the two beds where my brother and sister were lying. Both were writhing on the floor, half-grown fangs were protruding from Lucas’ lips. Vivienne on the other hand was doubled over in pain, her hands gripping her stomach. It was clear that whatever she was going through, it was agony.

“How could you do this to your own children?” I walked toward my twin sister, longing to hear her speak to me—a pleasure I’d been deprived of since Borys Maslen took her captive. I couldn’t hold back a sob as I watched what the turning was doing to her. I wanted to spare her the agony she was going through, but the idea of killing Vivienne was something I knew I would never be able to do. I brushed a strand of her sweat-soaked hair away from her face, whispering, “What have you done?” to my father once again.

The moment my hand came into contact with Vivienne, the skin where my finger touched her grew bright red—almost as if she were being burned by my touch. Her eyes—more bright and brilliant than I’d ever seen them before—sparked with fury. Her fangs came out and she glared at me.

I withdrew my hand immediately and stepped back. “Doesn’t she recognize me?”

“She’s turning, Derek. She’s too consumed by the process.” My father was speaking from behind me. I was about to turn around to face him, but to my shock, Vivienne lunged for me, her hands gripping my neck, ready to take a bite. I knew how to take her down, knew what I had to do in order to kill her, but I couldn’t do it. She was too precious to me. I shut my eyes as she bared her fangs at me. I had no doubt in my mind that I was about to meet my end by my sister’s hands.

To my surprise, my father pulled her away from me and threw her right back onto the bed. Vivienne glared at him with a look that was not her own—beastly, menacing, fearsome—nothing like the serene and docile young innocent my sister used to be.

“How could you do this?” I spat at my father as he held me down on the ground. “How could you do this to your own children?”

“If I don’t turn you, they will kill you, Derek. Can you really let Vivienne live her whole life bearing the guilt, knowing that she helped kill her twin?”

The implications of what he was saying hit me full force. “No…you can’t…you won’t…” It felt like I was blindsided, because he hit me on the face and everything faded to black. When I came back to full consciousness, it was because of the agonizing pain. Three days of sheer excruciation followed—three days I could barely remember. At the end of the worst seventy-two hours of my life, I woke up to find three unconscious young women surrounding me. To my relief, they weren’t dead, but I knew based on the way I was craving them, that I’d had a taste of their blood. Fighting the urge to kill the three innocents—not even bothering to ask how they got to be there, I knew that I needed to leave that place—to get as far away as possible from those three young women before I could do anything I would later regret. It was taking every bit of my will power and self-control not to hunt them down.

Until the Battle of First Blood, the battle that secured us control over The Shade, I prided myself on never killing a human being—something Vivienne was also able to accomplish. As for my father and brother, I never dared ask. One thing was for certain though: after the Battle of First Blood, many humans had since died in our hands.

Mine was a fate I was determined not to let Ashley repeat, but it was going to be an uphill battle and I knew it.

I gripped Sofia’s hand tightly until she gasped in pain. I wanted her to know that I wasn’t about to be questioned or defied. “We’re leaving. You’ve seen enough.”

Tears moistened her eyes. “Is there no way we can help her, Derek?”

I shook my head. “She’s made her choice. Now, she has to live—or die—with the consequences.”

CHAPTER 18: SOFIA

I sat on the red velvet couch in the living room area of my quarters in The Catacombs. It’d been three days since Ashley’s turning and I hadn’t been able to visit her. Derek simply wouldn’t hear of it.