I nodded and took out my journal and wrote about the day my father taught me how to ride a bike on my fourth birthday. I remember he was upset because I continuously fell.
As Rebecca helped me rewrite the story, I realized he hadn’t been upset or disappointed with my inability. He’d been upset I fell so many times and scraped my knees and palms.
He hurt because I hurt.
When had that changed? When had my perception of that story changed to something ugly?
There’d been tears in his eyes as he watched me obstinately get back up on my bike again and again.
He’d been proud of me for never giving up.
Weeks of constant thirst, my mouth so dry it felt as if I had sandpaper for a tongue and dried glue at the back of my throat. But it wasn’t water I craved; it was warm blood. The urgency to sink my teeth into anything that had a heartbeat. Everything else around me was a blur and I couldn’t focus on anything except blood.
I heard a voice in the distance, an echo inside my head, as if it were my own, but different. “Please,” it said. It was begging and harsh with a hiss in every word.
“I brought you water,” a voice said.
The bed sagged and the scent grew stronger. Blood. Fresh blood. It would end the thirst, end the pain.
But through my hazy vision and my bloodthirst-driven mind, I saw him—Damien.
No. God no, don’t make me.
But the urgency was too strong, like a great white shark seeing bloody prey. My control no longer existed. Only the instinct to take what my body needed in order to survive.
A strange unfamiliar hiss emerged from my mouth as I dove for his throat.
My fingernails ripped into his neck first, the scent of blood magnifying as I saw red rise to the surface of his skin.
Glass shattered and hands grabbed my upper arms, tearing me away and throwing me back onto the bed.
“Abbs. Fuck. Stop.” The voice shouted like a tuba banging inside my head. Damien? What was wrong with him? Why did he sound panicked?
Thirsty.
So thirsty.
Damien was forgotten as the overpowering scent of blood threw me into a fierce frenzy. I licked my lips and frantically struggled against the hands holding me down.
“Nooo!” I screamed.
My voice was no longer distinguishable as I cursed and hissed, fighting the restraints of his hands. He forced me to lie back, his weight on top of me. His hands dug into my shoulders, pressing my slight frame into the mattress. My body flung back and forth, desperate to get free and end the torture.
Just one drop to stop the pain.
“Abbs, for Christ’s sake, listen to my voice.”
I shook my head, managing to get an arm free as my knee came up between us. I punched, hitting something hard, not knowing what, but I heard a grunt. My other arm was released as the weight on me suddenly lifted.
“Fuck,” he said.
My eyes widened as he stood beside the bed.
Damien? I couldn’t focus on him. My eyes kept darting to the blood dripping down his neck where my nails had dug into his flesh.
A loud hiss echoed in the room and I leapt for the blood. I hit his chest hard, but he’d been ready for me because I was thrown back onto the bed again.
“Abbs, baby, please.”
That voice, I knew that voice. But my mind played games with me and I didn’t know what was real anymore. What was happening to me?
My eyes darted around the room, unable to see anything clearly.
I lived in a red fog.
“Abby!” the voice said louder. Footsteps approached me, and with it, the scent of blood grew stronger. “It’s me, Damien.”
Damien. Was he here? Who was trying to hurt me? I didn’t understand what was happening.
Hands suddenly grabbed my wrists and held them above my head on the bed. Instinctively, I reacted, squirming, fighting, and screaming until my voice crackled.
I struggled until my limbs gave out. Then I moaned while rolling my head back and forth on the pillow. The weight lifted off my wrists, but I lay unmoving while I listened to the footsteps fade away.
A door opened then slammed shut.
It was gone. The scent of blood was gone.
Panic gripped me and I scrambled off the bed and ran for the door. I fell on my hip halfway across the room and crawled on my hands and knees to the door. To the blood that was on the other side.
“Please,” I cried. “Please.”
I slapped the door with my palm over and over again until I couldn’t any longer. Then I lay on my side on the floor and clawed at it until everything went black.
“No fuckin’ way,” I shouted into my cell as I paced back and forth across the scuffed hardwood floor. “I can't do this. Screw it. The witch is way past saving. We’re too late.” I didn’t want to say her name or it would solidify that the girl in that locked room was Abby.
“It’s the poison in her blood, Damien. It eats away at your insides until every sense focuses on one goal—blood.” Balen’s voice was calm, but forceful. “This will pass. Trust me, I’ve been there.”
I kicked out at the ragged, cheap area carpet that had pastel stripes and frayed ends. “She’s crazy. That girl is not her anymore. I'm telling you, we’re too late.”
Balen sighed. “Unless she has tasted blood again, it’s not too late.”
“No wonder the Wraiths wanted to kill us if we drank from a vampire.” I paused outside the door of the bedroom and peered through the small double-paned window Jedrik had installed, so I was able to check on her without entering the room at night when she was in a blood frenzy.