All Things Devour

five

“Why were you imprisoned, Anton?”

They had walked for what felt like hours in Sonya’s exhaustion, following the coast to the pass carved into the stone cliffs, climbing the easement back up the hillside until the sea fell behind them. The sodden grass squelched underfoot, and more than once, she considered sitting underneath a bush or a tree and falling asleep, never mind the rain or the wildlife or risk of random vampire attacks.

Sonya had never felt more tired in her life.

To stay awake, she peppered Anton with questions when she managed to catch her breath, and he answered some and avoided others, not paying much mind to Sonya in his single-mindedness to reach shelter. The question of his incarceration had been prickling in the back of Sonya’s mind from the moment she opened that iron door, and no misdirection on the vampire’s part would sway her from wanting to know the answer.

Anton grimaced as if he’d stepped in something unsavory. “I made someone very unhappy.”

“How so?”

“Hmm…my connections , let’s say, made me privy to information I wasn’t meant to know. Instead of keeping my mouth shut as I should have, I tried to do the right thing and ended up paying for it.” He waved a hand. “No good deed goes unpunished and all that.”

Sonya found his flippancy in this rather baffling, but maybe it was how he coped with what had happened. Still, she had to wonder what doing the right thing meant for a vampire.

“Who did you make unhappy?”

“An annoying milksop of a man who didn’t have the balls to put a spear through my heart like he should have.” Anton grimaced again and exhaled, the muscles of his defined jawline flexing with irritation. He blew out his sudden frustration, and his voice leveled. “Ah, I shouldn’t complain. At least his cowardice left me breathing. Ask something else, Sonya, I don’t want to speak more on this.”

Sonya didn’t know what else to ask, still trying to process his sudden shift in emotion. “Oh. Um, that trick you did, in the prison? How did you call me from so far away? How did I hear your voice?”

“I felt your presence and reached out to your mind.”

“My mind? Does that mean—? Were you in my head?” Sonya gasped and almost tripped on a tree root. “You can’t read my thoughts, can you?!”

Anton chuckled—a low, rumbling sound. “Why do you ask? Do you have naughty thoughts you’d rather I didn’t see, sweet Sonya?”

She flushed like a ripe tomato. “That’s not what I meant at all.”

“You are too easy to fluster. I know what you meant, and no, I can’t read your thoughts. What I can do is touch a presence and feel its emotions to an extent, which can be as telling mind-reading if one has practice in it. I reached out for you when I glimpsed your fear and your curiosity. Fear is a very powerful sense; anyone like me imprisoned there could have probably felt it if they’d bothered to try.”

“Anyone like you? You mean other vampires?”

He shrugged, careless, wiping dirt from his cheek. “Maybe.”

Ahead of them, the lights of civilization glittered like yellow stars caught and tangled in a web of green trees and thinning mist. Sonya couldn’t remember the village’s name, but she and the others had skirted around it, briefly, on their way higher up the mountain. Thinking of her classmates had her wanting to head in that direction, desperate to find them, but Sonya believed Anton well enough to understand they wouldn’t be there. She couldn’t do anything for them now.

Sonya had enough money squashed and folded into the zipped pocket of her windbreaker to get them a room for the day, though stomping into an inn in the early morning hours involved waking the owner and earning a sharp rebuke in rambling Gaelic. Sonya had to use every ounce of her clumsy feminine charm to haggle with the burly Scotsman while Anton squinted at the building’s interior with mild confusion and intrigue. He kept smiling at her bumbling efforts, and Sonya had the urge to throw a pen at his head.

At last, a physical key was pressed into Sonya’s dirty hand, and the inn’s owner jerked a tired thumb toward the rickety steps before making off to his own quarters, slamming the door behind him. Sonya and Anton quietly made their way to the first level, finding the room that matched the number on her key. She opened the door and inspected the space, finding it small and a bit antiquated with furniture her nan would have loved but passable for their needs.

“I’m going to visit the loo,” she told Anton.

“Very well.”

Sonya continued down the hall to the shared bathroom, where she stripped out of her filthy clothes and tried to shake as much sand out of them as possible before washing up. She inspected her body and found it suspiciously free of injury—aside from the nasty bite on her neck, which Sonya could see in all its gruesome detail.

She swept steam from the mirror and leaned closer, staring at the mark with her mouth twisted in worry and fear. It had stopped bleeding, but the two fangs had left deep incisions into the muscle, while the other teeth had left shallower bruised impressions. The mark formed a half-circle on either side of her shoulder, and Sonya assumed only her windbreaker’s collar had spared the innkeeper from spotting it.

She dressed again in her grubby jumper and jeans, leaving off her boots and jacket as she returned to the room. Inside, the lamp had been turned on and Anton perched on the edge of the only bed, using the phone. It was an ancient rotary version Sonya wasn’t sure would work, but the vampire operated it easily enough. He stood up with the receiver cradled between his ear and his shoulder to close the curtains snug against the window and spoke what almost sounded like Icelandic, what with its hard, rolling ‘r’s and stressed first syllables.

Sonya lingered by the entrance and listened to him exchange a few short, clipped sentences.

“ Th?kk fyrir ,” the vampire said before hanging up, frowning.

“Who were you talking to?” Sonya asked, a tad suspicious. She didn’t like to be nosy—but just who did an escaped vampire convict give a ring to? His vampire solicitor?

Don’t be ridiculous, Sonya.

“I used to work at an…outpost of sorts here in the isles for a great many years. I was calling to inquire as to whether or not my old acquaintances still operated in the area.” He turned to study her, strange eyes flicking over her washed face. “Unfortunately, it seems the outpost has been all but closed up.”

“Oh.” Sonya sank into the weathered armchair by the dresser, her jacket folded in her lap. “Is that why…?”

“Go on.”

“Is that why you sound English? I can’t quite place your accent, but your word choice seems mostly British.”

“Maybe.” He dropped onto the bed and laid back with a sigh, lacing his hands behind his head. “Maybe not.”

Sonya huffed and changed the subject. “We’ve made it back to town, but what am I supposed to do now? I’ve no money and lost my phone. How am I meant to get home? What on earth am I going to tell the university? The police?”

Anton kept his eyes closed and didn’t share his thoughts. Instead, he simply said, “You should sleep.”

“It’s nearly dawn.”

“So it is. Which doesn’t change the validity of what I said.” He shifted and patted the mattress at his side. “Don’t be shy. I don’t bite.” He smiled enough to show a hint of his terrifying teeth. “Much.”

“The great question of the universe has been answered; do vampires have a sense of humor? They do, and it’s terrible.”

“Great puns are the least of my crimes.”

“Shouldn’t you be sleeping in a coffin with your arms crossed over your chest?”

“You know, in my experience, humans are usually much more polite when they know you can eat them.”

“I’m perfectly polite.” Sonya stood and crossed to the bed but did not get in it. It seemed utterly bizarre that this whole horrid experience would be capped off with something as banal as sleeping next to a stranger in a tatty old inn—but Sonya had never slept next to anyone, and certainly not a vampire who smelled of ruins and odd spices and saltwater. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but still odd.

The thought of slipping into the sheets next to his much larger, longer body stretched next to her had her heart thumping about once again.

Her tone had grown rather snappy with her embarrassment, so she lightened it as she picked up the spare pillow and dropped it on the floor. “I’ll sleep down here.”

Anton opened one eye to peer at her. “Sonya.”

“I’ll be fine.” She tugged the counterpane out from under his muddy shoes and then settled on the carpet, grimacing at the dust and questionable spots. She’d suffered worse in the last twenty-four hours.

Anton sighed and turned off the lamp. “Have it your way.”

For the next ten minutes or so, Sonya laid on her back and stared at the ceiling, tracing old spots of mildew and rust in the plaster as she tried to stop her exhausted brain from bombarding her with thoughts. She kept remembering little things—silly things, really, like how Kirstie had promised her lunch at a new pub that opened by the university, how Callum had been discussing his interest in paleontology on the plane, and how Sahar had asked Sonya to review an exciting cross-section between anthropology and archeology in her dissertation. It felt as if they’d only just been having a laugh about Callum’s stingy wallet, sharing granola bars in the rain.

So many little memories, a thousand worthless things adding up to moments Sonya would always remember fondly. She wished they’d had more time together. She wished they’d stayed at the university.

The back of her eyes stung with tears. She could hear Dr. Rangel telling her to watch her step, calling her back from the edge of the crevasse as she stared deep down into the unflinching darkness below. If she’d stepped back sooner, if she’d looked away, would it have made a difference?

The mattress above creaked and groaned as Anton shifted—and Sonya shrieked when the vampire landed on top of her, catching himself like a cat with the very tips of his fingers. He muffled the sound with his hand over her lips and lowered his mouth to her ear, holding his weight steady. He spoke before she could think to be frightened. “ Go to sleep , Sonya .”

She would have protested that she had planned on it until he’d decided to scare the life out of her, but his words brushed her like the voice from the ruins, warm and familiar, and it slowed the whirling, mired frenzy of thoughts in her mind. Her eyelids were too heavy to open. Sonya muttered nonsensical words under her breath as she felt Anton’s hand pat her cheek, and he stood, tugging the blanket up to her neck.

It might have been her imagination, but she thought she heard him leave after that. His footsteps creaked on the old floor, the door coming open, but Sonya was lost to her dreams long before it gently closed again and the lock sealed it shut.

She woke much later feeling uncomfortable in her jumper and jeans, her neck stiff and her body heavy with fatigue. Sonya cracked her eyes open and peered at the slender bars of gold slicing across the ceiling, the brilliant glow of late afternoon sunshine saturating the paisley curtains. Someone in one of the other rooms had music playing, the low thump of bass matching the pulse of the headache in Sonya’s temple. Dirt and dampness tickled her nose.

Exhaling, she sat up—and came face to face with Anton, still fast asleep.

He had opted against using the blankets, lying instead on his side, turned toward Sonya, his legs curling naturally closer to his middle. She studied his face, the fan of those black lashes, cheeks tinged pink, his mouth red. Sonya wanted to see his teeth again just to make sure last night hadn’t been a drunken, concussed delusion, but she didn’t dare touch him. The pain in her throat was proof enough.

A solid streak of sunlight escaping the blinds fell over his bare hand, relieving the slopes and dips of his sturdy bones and the blush of blue veins hidden beneath his skin.

Well, that puts paid to that myth.

As the shock of his presence and the reminder of the previous evening settled in her mind, Sonya found she couldn’t stop staring. The vampire—Anton—was…beautiful. Shockingly so, the fairness of his face barely touched by the ambient light, his hair a dark contrast to his skin’s smooth pallor. He had blemishes, a few scars here and there, but they didn’t detract from the image before her. Rather, they enhanced, and gave it reality.

God, Sonya, don’t be so strange.

Wincing, she pulled back the itchy counterpane and stood, rubbing the soreness out of her lower back and bum as she went to the window, wanting to see if the storm had finally passed them by. Her hand touched the curtains just as Anton rolled over.

“Sonya, don’t —!”

Too late, she peeled aside the hangings—and the light of day spilled over her, Sonya gasping at the inexplicable weight. It felt as if a fist had collided with her chest, driving Sonya to her knees beneath the crushing pressure. Then, Anton was there, and the rings upon the iron rod shrieked as he yanked the curtains shut once more. Sonya remained where she’d fallen, unable to stop trembling.

Anton knelt before her. He wore a sad expression, the furrow between his brows deep and bothered.

Sonya looked at him as her hands shook and begged, “What is happening to me?”