TWO: HAPPY PLACE

Riley led me into another room. I had followed, beyond caring about what had happened to me, or what lay in my future. The pain in my throat had reached almost endurable levels of agony, and I kept my hand clamped around my neck, even though it made no difference at all.

The room was dark, and crowded with others. Beautiful people, some also holding their throats. They all looked the way I felt. Confused. Scared. The hum of voices ceased the minute Riley came into their view. It seemed he demanded their respect, but he had earned it from me. He had no obligation to show any kindness towards me like he had.

"Wait here," Riley told me, and left the room. I thought I heard the click of a lock, but I couldn't be sure.

Eyes avoided mine. I stood against the wall next to the door, and slid onto the floor, feeling drained and hopeless. It wasn't a good feeling. I no longer cared about anything; I hadn't the energy to care. I wanted the pain in my throat to go away, and then I wanted to close my eyes and drift away. Whether I came back or not, I didn't care.

A male vampire jumped to his feet, catching the eye of everyone. We were all vampires now, weren't we? That was what we had been told. No other explanation had been given, and we weren't in a position to choose what to believe. I was a vampire. As I thought the words, I almost smiled. How ridiculous and impossible. Yet easy to believe.

I focussed on the man who had stood. He looked quite deranged, and my heart sank. The last thing I wanted to listen to was his hysterical rant. I had enough problems of my own without having to listen to his.

"Why are they locking us in here?" he demanded of the locked door, his throat hoarse. He winced at every word. His throat seemed so much worse than mine. I felt a sudden rush of pity for him. We were all in the same situation at the end of the day. I regretted my earlier thoughts. It all depended on your ability to handle the cards you were dealt. Some were more accepting than others. This man was clearly at the end of his rope.

No one answered him. Everyone just continued to stare desolately ahead of them, lost in their own thoughts. The man sat down after a few minutes, when it became clear he wasn't going to get the answers he was searching for.

I counted the amount of vampires in the room with me. There were around thirty, and they all looked exactly how I felt. We all were waiting for the pain to stop, and maybe even hoping that this was a horrible dream, and we would wake up and be with our loved ones again. I didn't know about them, but I knew I didn't have enough imagination to dream anything like this.

I don't know how long we all sat there. No one made any other effort to speak, and many of us had stopped breathing, trying to ease the roaring pain in our throats. The silence was dense. The room was dark, but no one felt like getting up to turn on the light. I just gazed straight ahead of me, searching for a topic safe enough to dwell on, something I could think about without distressing me further.

And my thoughts landed on Riley.

The door clicked open, and I jumped to my feet. I became aware I was the only one who moved, but I didn't care. I was beginning to feel claustrophobic in this room.

It was Riley, again, and I felt a sense of relief wash over me.

"Let's go," he said darkly, to the entire room. Everyone got to their feet and followed him obediently. I was swept up into the crowd. We walked through the house and out a back door, ending up in a dark and narrow street, which was empty of life.

"Now, before I let you go, a few warnings," Riley said. I noticed the way his eyes flickered throughout the entire group and landed on me. "Do not go to visit any of your loved ones, and I mean this, because you will probably end up killing them. Just don't do it." A few faces in the crowd looked stricken.

"Remain as inconspicuous as you possibly can. And don't even try running away, to escape this situation that you're in; you have nowhere to go that won't involve you killing many people along the way. So just return here when you're full."

A chill blasted its way down my spine.

"And actually listen to me. We've had people before who have killed their entire families, just because they didn't listen to me. You may not want to hear me, but I do have your best interests at heart." He grinned at all the sceptical faces. "So, I guess that's it. Bon Appetite," he said, with another wicked smile. Suddenly, I was alone.

I felt a little panicked. I didn't want to kill anyone; I was not a murderer. I was going to go to a chemist, and get medicine for this throat. It was the only sane thing to do, I realised, and I couldn't believe no one else had even considered the option that other people didn't have to die. I started to walk, and it frightened me, how fast my walk had become. I flew silently down the street, and it made sense then to me how everyone had vanished so quickly.

I hadn't even broke into a run, yet.

I reached a main street. The lights were illuminating the street, traffic lights and shop signs adding to the glow. I couldn't find civilisation. I deduced it must be pretty late at night. I continued to walk, hoping I could maybe run into another vampire, or preferably, Riley, who would help me. I felt lost.

But then the most delicious scent accosted my nose.

It was mouth-watering, absolutely divine, and my throat began to scream for a taste. I grabbed at my throat as it burned, blistering every inch of my mouth, until I felt myself going crazy with the pain. I turned in the direction of the smell.

It was a middle-aged guy, falling out of a taxi. I could smell the alcohol fumes radiating off him, but through them, I could smell that delicious scent. My throat burned so fiercely, I couldn't ignore it. I waited until the taxi drove out of sight, and even doing that was the hardest thing I ever had to do. The man began to stagger up the street, and I followed silently.

I crept up on him until I was right behind him, and I caught a full blast of his scent. It stunned me for a moment. I was overcome with the craziest urge: bite him.

No, that's crazy. I'm not biting him.

Bite him!

No.

Bite him!

No!

BITE HIM!

My throat seared with pain, and my mind was overtaken by this insane… thirst. I didn't know how else to explain it. Before I could stop myself, I had bitten his neck. His shocked cry of pain was immediately muffled by my hand; a reflex action. When I tasted blood, I couldn't concentrate on anything else. It was the most delicious thing I'd ever tasted. My throat was immediately soothed, and I couldn't get enough of the warm liquid.

All too soon, I felt, it ran out. And then I realised how limp the man's body had become. With a gasp of shock, I released him, and watched him fall to the ground, white, drained of blood.

I ran straight back to the house, arriving there in seconds. The image of the man's drained, lifeless body was burned into my memory, and I didn't think I'd ever make it fade. I was a murderer. I had killed an innocent man.

What didn't make me feel all that better, was the fact my throat had stopped burning, at least as painfully. It was still mildly uncomfortable, and I had the feeling more blood would suffice to make it something I could live with. But I couldn't face going back out into that street, hunting for another innocent person, to take their life away so I could make mine a little easier. I was not that person.

"Are you full already?"

I jumped at the voice, and span around. It was Riley. Once again, I was immensely relieved to see him.

"Um…" I said, not sure how to answer his question. Riley walked towards me, and stood very close. My breathing became shallow; what was he doing? He stared into my eyes, and with a shock, I realised his were a scarlet red, almost the opposite of the black they had been earlier.

"You should go back out," he said softly. "I don't think you had enough." He appeared to realise how close he was standing, and he cleared his throat and stepped swiftly away, leaving me with very confused feelings.

"No, it's OK… I don't want to kill anyone else," I said, almost inaudibly. He still heard me. He said nothing, but just scrutinised me. I felt self-conscious under his gaze, and I wondered how red my own eyes had become. The impossibility of everything I had been through slammed into me in that moment, and I just couldn't believe something like this had happened to me.

I felt hysteria rise within me. What was I going to do? How did I escape this nightmare? How did I make everything OK again? Would anything ever be the same as it was? Questions tortured my mind. I had no answers. The best I could hope for was that someone would give me instructions to follow, so that maybe I could feel like I was serving a purpose. I was completely lost, and I had abandoned all hope.

"Are you alright?" Riley asked me. He was reading the panic and hopelessness in my eyes with a worried expression.

"Not really, no," I answered truthfully. I mean, what else could I say? Yes, I'm fine? I had never been less than fine in my life. My whole life had been turned upside down. Fiction had become reality.

"Can I help?" Riley seemed anxious. I wondered why he cared so much. From my impression of the rest of the vampires, all they cared about was themselves. No one besides Riley had offered me a kind word, or asked me how I was holding up. So why was Riley the only exception?

"I don't know," I said. "Unless you can tell me the reason I'm here, and how the hell I can escape." My voice rose a couple of octaves with every word. Riley appeared pained, and I couldn't imagine why.

"You're here because you're needed for Victoria's army," Riley explained. "You need to fight with us."

"Why was I chosen?" I fired at him. "Why me?"

Riley's expression became cautious. "You were chosen at random, so I'm sorry it had to be you."

I was furious. His answers were so final, and they weren't what I wanted to hear. I needed to fight with them; I had no choice. I didn't know how to fight. I was always useless at confrontations. I would be just as useless in a fight; one of the first to die.

Despair flooded through me, draining my fury completely. There was nothing I could do, absolutely nothing. It was hopeless. The whole situation had become a large black blanket, smothering me, shrouding me, and I had absolutely no way out.

Riley had seemed even more concerned about the slumping of my shoulders, the spark of defiance in my eyes extinguishing, than he had about my sudden burst of anger. I barely noticed him. I just sat on the ground, waiting until I was told what to do next.

After that night, when I had finally accepted my bleak fate, the nights that followed became routine. Every night the group of new vampires, including myself, were led into that cold, lifeless room, to wait for night. We didn't eat, we didn't sleep, sometimes we spoke. I thought in a situation like that I would have been bored stiff. But I actually found myself with distractions.

Thoughts of Riley sprung themselves up on me, and I had immersed myself in daydreams before I could stop myself. They were frequent, and sometimes confusing. I wasn't sure where my attachment to him had come from, but maybe it was because he was the first person I had seen when I woke up in this nightmare, and the only person since who had showed any aspect of humanity towards me.

The pain in my throat was a constant annoyance. I refused to feed as heartily as the others, who often made bets on how many they would be able to 'catch', and praised each other on finding full buses and the like. It sickened me. I felt even more sickened by myself, as I obediently walked the streets until I found a vulnerable victim, and was unable to stop myself from taking his or her life. Afterwards, I always ran back to the house before I could be tempted again. Taking one life every night was enough for me. Too much.

And then there was Victoria. She terrified me. Her presence commanded attention, and she often spoke to all of us, giving little pep talks and sharing her knowledge of our abilities. She didn't give us much information on who we would be fighting, which made me nervous. Anytime the fight was mentioned, a fist filled with apprehension and fear would clench itself tightly in my stomach.

And then there were the battles. Between the vampires I lived with. Males, usually, drawn into an argument over something trivial, would end up pulling each other apart. Our numbers were decreasing because of this. Every time this happened, I would shrink into a corner, squeezing my eyes shut, trying to block out what was happening, and go to my happy place.

My happy place was with Riley. Maybe it wasn't a good idea for a happy place, but I had nowhere else, and no one else at the moment.

I knew Riley and Victoria were together. His eyes showed such adoration and commitment whenever he looked at her. He idolised her, and she revelled in it. But she never treated him the way she should have. She was constantly ordering him around, and he went to do her bidding like a eager little puppy. I didn't like it. It triggered off a bunch of feelings I recognised, but wouldn't acknowledge. It was crazy, to be jealous in a place like this.

One day, the monotony my existence had become was interrupted. I had returned early from hunting, as usual, and found Riley waiting for me.

"Hey," he greeted me.

"Hi," I said. His eyes were the usual scarlet red. I had seen my reflection; my eyes were mahogany, a dark colour tinted with red. They attracted strange looks from the other vampires, who couldn't understand why my eyes were so different from theirs. I dare say many of them had lost their conscience, while mine was still intact and active.

"I'm just letting you know, I'm going away for a few days," he said. I wasn't prepared for the raw panic that shot through my entire body.

"Why? Where are you going?" My voice sounded desperate, to my utmost horror. I didn't like how needy I sounded. But all I could think of was how much more depressing my existence was going to be without Riley in it. Every day, he made a little effort to talk to me, and it was the only part of my day when I didn't feel afraid or anxious. It was the only part of my day when I felt safe.

His expression remained smooth, and I could only hope he hadn't registered the raw desperation in my voice, although it had been pretty clear to me. He wasn't a fool. Maybe he was just trying to spare me embarrassment, or something. It was too late for that. Thankfully, I was incapable of blushing.

"I'm going to collect a few things from Bella's house, so everyone can get a whiff of her scent. She's our main target."

I knew little about Bella, other than that her time was up, according to Victoria. I didn't know what exactly she had done, but I just prayed she had some idea what was on the way to destroy her.

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak anymore. OK. He would be back, soon enough. Then why did I feel like the whole world was coming to an end?

I hated to admit it, but I depended on Riley a lot more than I should.