A Shade of Novak Read online

  He heaved a sigh and turned his back on me. “Don’t,” he muttered.

  “I don’t know you, Caleb,” I continued. “But I don’t think that you belong in this castle.”

  He remained still, his breathing heavier as I spoke.

  “I promise that I’m not just saying this because I want you to take me home. I’m being honest. Even after witnessing what you do along with these other vampires…I just don’t know. There’s something I’m not seeing in you that I should be seeing in you.”

  I walked up to him. He avoided my gaze, though he didn’t change his stance.

  “I’m not asking you to tell me what goes on here. I guess I’m just asking you to stop treating your life like it’s worth nothing.”

  I reached out and touched his arm, hoping that he would look at me and see honesty in my eyes.

  “I think you deserve more than this,” I said, gesturing around at the broken-up room. “And if there’s some way that I can help… Well, I guess I’m here.”

  I shrugged when he still didn’t say anything. My shoulders sagged and I walked back over to the other side of his room, sitting down on the edge of his bed. He walked over to his piano and sat down, running his fingers over the keys.

  “Rose,” he said, heaving a sigh. “Sometimes, choices you’ve made in the past limit the choices you have today.”

  “Maybe,” I replied. “But there is always choice.”

  He didn’t argue back. Instead, he began playing the piano. But he appeared agitated, his fingers flying off the keys as the tone of his music turned aggressive. He stopped abruptly mid-tune. He shot to his feet and glared down at me.

  “I want to show you something,” he said.

  He marched out the room, and I had to run behind him to keep up.

  He walked straight out of his apartment and took a sharp right turn, walking along the corridor until we reached the stairs. To my surprise, he grabbed my hand and pulled me up toward the witch’s level. He opened her apartment door and, pulling me through the different rooms, stopped in the same room where I’d spied on him sitting with the wooden chest.

  He walked over to a table and lit four candles. Then he approached a cabinet in the corner of the room and pulled out what appeared to be an old leather-bound photo album.

  “Come here,” he ordered.

  I approached the table. He finished flipping the pages somewhere in the center of the binder and dropped it down on the table in front of me.

  Spread out over two pages were four fading black and white photographs.

  I gripped the binder and lent closer to the photos. Each were of the same young couple—a young man and a woman. I brushed my fingers over the photographs, clearing away the dust, and as I did, I couldn’t stop myself from gasping.

  The four photographs were of a young man and woman standing at the helm of a boat—clearly taken on the same day, since they were both wearing the same outfits in the photos: the girl, a flowing summer dress; the man, a casual shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and pants. Both smiling, they had their arms around each other, embracing like lovers.

  The man was clearly a once-human Caleb.

  And the woman… long black hair, tall, slim… the witch. Annora.

  “That was my choice,” he said, his deep brown irises glistening in the candlelight. “Do you understand?”

  Chapter 31: Caleb

  I didn’t take my eyes off of my beautiful captive as she stared at the photographs.

  She gazed up at me after a few minutes. “You two were lovers?”

  I nodded, picking up the photo album and placing it back on the shelf. There was only so long I could stand having that album open.

  “Oh. Wow.”

  She sank down in a chair.

  “We were engaged at one point,” I said, walking around to the opposite side of the table and placing my hands on the table, staring at the engraving in the wood.

  “But what happened?”

  I sat down in a chair and glanced at her face. Grimacing, I braced myself to recount a history I’d long tried to forget.

  I was the son of a shipyard owner. As I was his only child, my father trained me from a young age in vessel construction and repairs. He took pride in being the most reputable shipbuilder in town. All the wealthy merchants and aristocrats would come to us as their first stop whenever they needed a repair or a new ship.

  One such client was a silk merchant. He owned a fleet of ships and did regular business with my father. I always looked forward to the time he would call by, because his daughter was often with him.

  Annora. She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever laid eyes on. Tall, slim, long black hair flowing down her back, enchanting grey-blue eyes. Each time her father came in with a ship, I would snoop around to see whether she was on board. I was too reserved to talk to her at first. But eventually, I gathered the courage to start conversation. Small talk here and there at first, but she also took a liking to me. Soon she was the one seeking me out whenever they moored in our shipyard.

  My attraction to her grew stronger with each meeting. When I think of her now, I can’t believe she is the same person. She used to be such an innocent, shy creature. Her gentle nature was intoxicating to me. I found myself craving her presence and wishing our time together was longer. I couldn’t get her out of my mind. I even dreamt of her at night.

  Our friendship soon turned into a romance and, although her father didn’t fully approve of me, since he considered me beneath her, he didn’t object either.

  After a year of seeing each other, on my nineteenth birthday, I proposed to her. She accepted on the spot and swore that she would love me until her last breath.

  We were due to be married in three months. Our families started making arrangements.

  Then one evening, my life changed forever.

  My father sent me to service the ship of a new client. The client was an exceedingly wealthy saffron merchant who was new to these parts and required exceptional attention. Also, the gentleman had requested that the ship be fixed during the night because of an eye condition that made him sensitive to the sun.

  Although I despised doing repairs at night—it was always ten times more difficult than during the day—I agreed to my father’s request. Apparently there was a problem with the wheel of the saffron merchant’s ship.

  “Sir?” I called, as I climbed onto the deck.

  There was no answer. I walked along the deck until I reached the captain’s compartment. I knocked three times. A tall man opened the door. His eyes were pitch black, and his skin was strangely pale. He appeared to be middle-aged, smartly dressed, his hair slicked back with some kind of expensive-smelling oil.

  “Over here,” he said, shutting the door behind us and guiding me toward the wheel.

  I placed my tools on the floor and began my examination, the shortest of my career. The man walked up close behind me. At first I thought he was just watching what I was doing, but then cold hands gripped my throat and the man dug his teeth into my neck.

  I was too stunned to even scream at first, but when I did, nobody could have heard me. The door was closed and his ship was moored in the farthest berth. Soon, I had no more strength to struggle. I writhed on the floor in the heat of transformation.

  The man’s black eyes flickered in the candlelight as he watched me throughout my transformation.

  When the agony burning through my body had begun to subside and I had stopped coughing up blood, he held his hand out to me, helping me to my feet. Still too feeble to stand, I sank down in a chair.

  “What is this?” I gasped.

  “A gift,” he replied, chuckling.

  He gripped my bloodstained shirt and threw me off his ship. I lay helpless on the wooden jetty as the saffron merchant’s ship sailed away into the distance.

  Those next few hours were the most frightening of my entire life. I didn’t know where to go or whom to trust. I had heard rumors of vampires who walked among us. I
didn’t know many details other than that they were evil creatures.

  My first wave of bloodlust hit me, so strong that I realized I couldn’t even return to my home without pouncing on my parents and sucking them dry.

  I ran as fast as I could toward the beach, away from the town. Away from my family. Away from Annora. I raced for hours along the beach until the sun rose. My skin began to burn so intensely, I thought I was going to die. I ran toward the first cave I could find and hid in its darkest corner. I curled up in a ball, trying to control the way my body was convulsing for want of blood.

  I tried to force myself to sleep, to forget the pain and hunger, but it was useless. I stayed in the corner of that cave all day and all night. I remained there for at least five days before a search party came looking for me—a search party consisting of my parents, Annora and her brother.

  I was horrified to see them approach the entrance of my cave at night, flaming torches in their hands. I managed by some mercy to restrain myself from jumping on them and instead darted out of the cave. I travelled further along the beach. They had no hope of catching up with me that night. I found another cave and, after filling my body with the blood of a dead shark I’d found along the shore, I retreated for the night.

  But they didn’t stop trying to follow me. Eventually, after the tenth day, I stopped running. My parents and Annora had found my hiding place once again. I climbed out of the entrance of my cave and sat perched on the rocks above, looking down at them.

  And I told them everything.

  My parents could barely believe their ears. I had to repeat parts of my story several times before they accepted it.

  Annora, on the other hand, just stood silently, tears streaming down her beautiful face. I’d thought the pain of being a vampire was intolerable—but the anguish on my lover’s face caused me more agony than my transformation.

  For the following weeks, I remained living in caves. My parents stopped trying to persuade me to return home. They accepted that I was too much of a danger.

  Annora, on the other hand, didn’t stop visiting me. As I begged her to forget about me and move on, she refused.

  “I can’t leave you, Caleb,” she’d said, sobs racking her body. “There’s no one else I could ever love.”

  I tried to be callous toward her. I tried to scare her with my fangs and claws. But no matter what tactic I used, she insisted on staying with me.

  Then one night when she came to my cave, after a particularly aggressive argument, she asked me to turn her into a vampire. I laughed in her face and thought that she was joking. But she was deadly serious.

  “You’ve lost your mind,” I shouted, storming out of the cave.

  I didn’t return until the morning, hoping she would have been gone by then. But she wasn’t. She’d sat waiting in the cave for me all night.

  She approached me as soon as I entered, gripping her hands in mine.

  I jolted back. “How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t touch me.”

  “Turn me,” she whispered, her voice hoarse, her eyes red from crying.

  “Annora, stop it,” I hissed.

  She walked closer to me, the smell of her sweet blood invading my nostrils.

  “I don’t want a life without you.”

  “You’re young and beautiful. You’ll find someone else.”

  “No!” She began shaking her head furiously. Then she pulled out a dagger from beneath her cloak and held it to her own throat, its tip denting her skin.

  “What are you doing? Put it down!”

  She looked up at me with desperate eyes. “Turn me, my love.”

  I lunged toward her and wrestled the dagger out of her hands, hurling it out of the cave.

  I stood staring at her, unable to believe that she’d just threatened me with her own life. That she’d be willing to give it up so easily.

  She broke down sobbing again and ran out of the cave. At first I thought she would retrieve the dagger, but she headed back toward the town.

  She didn’t come to visit again the next day, nor the day after. A week passed and when she still hadn’t returned, I thought that she’d finally heeded my request.

  But then, on the eighth night, she came to me again.

  I was woken from my slumber by the feeling of a warm, smooth body lying against me. Opening my eyes, to my horror, I realized that it was Annora. She’d stripped herself naked and wrapped herself around me.

  As soon as she saw I’d woken, she climbed on top of me, her warm hands pressing down against my bare chest, her long black hair grazing my skin as it hung either side of her shoulders. She gazed down at me through her thick dark lashes.

  “No,” I gasped.

  She lowered herself against me and pressed her lips against mine. She began loosening my pants with one hand, her other hand gripping the base of my neck as she continued to kiss me forcefully. Her scent and the way she touched me sent all my senses into overdrive.

  I wanted nothing more than to devour her.

  I tried to push her off me, but my resolve was evaporating by the second. Once she’d positioned her neck so that my lips were touching it, I was a lost cause.

  I gripped her waist and rolled her off me, slamming her against the ground as I positioned myself on top of her. I sank my fangs deep into her soft neck.

  I groaned as her hot, sweet blood flowed into my mouth, lighting my body on fire.

  “Caleb,” she moaned as she writhed beneath me. “Turn me, my love.”

  Although my conscience was screaming at me to stop, my body was now beyond the point of return. I took three more deep sucks of her exquisite blood and released my venom into her.

  I continued drinking from her until her blood began to taste bitter—her transformation now underway. I pulled away from her and watched as she lay writhing on the ground, screaming with pain and coughing up blood.

  What have I done?

  I stood dumbstruck as the warmth faded away from her, the dark disease consuming every molecule of her body.

  Finally she stopped writhing and lay motionless on the floor.

  “Annora?”

  I rushed over to her and shook her. Her eyelids fluttered a little. I continued shaking her, shouting her name. Finally, her eyelids shot open, her eyes now a steely grey, nothing like the delicate color they were before.

  She reached for my neck and gripped me, her claws digging into my flesh. She lifted herself up to me and attempted to dig her fangs into my neck.

  I pushed her away, pinning her to the ground.

  “I need blood,” she gasped. “I need blood.”

  Watching her was like reliving my own turning. The horror of craving another’s blood without remorse. Feeling like I’d stop at nothing until I got it.

  “I-I’ll find blood for you,” I stammered.

  Grabbing the fisherman’s net I’d found while roaming along the beach, I gripped her arm and pulled her out of the cave. I walked with her until we reached the sea. I pulled her into the waters until we were deep enough to catch a decent load of fish.

  Now that I still had the taste of Annora’s blood in my mouth, fish blood seemed the most disgusting thing in the world to me.

  “Annora,” I muttered, turning around to face her.

  But she was no longer by my side—in fact, with several strong strokes, she had almost reached the shore. Alarmed, I began to swim after her. She jumped out of the water and sprinted along the beach toward the town.

  “No!” I yelled and raced out of the water after her.

  Her speed almost matched my own, so it wasn’t until we were about two miles along the beach that I managed to catch up with her. I threw myself at her and wrestled her to the ground.

  “Who goes there?”

  Both Annora and I looked up. A young fisherman was approaching us in the darkness, dragging a net full of eels along the sand.

  Annora slipped away from my grasp and hurled herself against the man. By the time I reached her, s
he’d already dug her fangs deep into the man’s throat.

  Attempting to rip her apart from him now would be pointless. Her fangs were embedded so deep, she’d have torn through the man’s artery. I had no choice but to watch her drain him to death.

  When she’d finished, she dropped the corpse on the sand. She looked up at me, wiping the blood away from her face with her bare arm. She gave me an eerie smile.

  The glimmer of darkness in her eyes disturbed me more than I could describe. Gone was the innocent girl I’d fallen in love with. In her place was a monster.

  I comforted myself that perhaps she would get better with time, once she got more used to her bloodlust. I hoped that her old personality would return.

  So over the following days, I did my best to keep her inside the cave at all times. I was afraid to even sleep in case she claimed another victim.

  But it was becoming increasingly difficult. Her cravings appeared greater than my own and she was showing no signs of even attempting to control them. When a group of humans approached our area of the beach one night, I knew that it was time to move. But I had no idea where to.

  I was beginning to grow desperate when, one night, a ship drew in just outside our cave.

  The ship of the saffron merchant.

  To this day, I don’t know how he managed to find out our location.

  He told us he could take us somewhere where other vampires lived away from humans. Away from the threat of being discovered. Although I didn’t trust a word that came out of his snake-like mouth, we had no other option than to follow.

  He ended up taking us to the Elder’s castle—The Blood Keep. I knew we’d made a mistake as soon as we drew up outside the tall black gates. The castle from the outside appeared to be a place of nightmares, and once we stepped inside the nightmares became real.

  As it turned out, the Elders didn’t want Annora and I to remain in that castle for long. They wanted us out of the human realm entirely.

  They wanted us in Cruor. The dark hell that was the realm of the Elders.