Young Writers Society

Evie was sat upright. There were people around her. She couldn’t see them because of the silver net still over her but she could sense their presence, hear their hearts drumming. The road was bumpy, making her jump around on the bench in the back of the van and collapse to the side every so often, only to be shoved back upright.

“I think she’s awake,” said a man.

“Doesn’t matter. She won’t do anything,” replied another.

Her eyes wouldn’t open. Her face was burnt badly. So badly she couldn’t move it without ripping her skin away. She tried to move her hands from her lap. Her whole body shook when she did. She cried in the back of her throat and stopped as the silver handcuffs that bound her wrists together cut into her skin and burned.

She wanted to talk. She wanted to ask why they were doing this to her. But she was numb from pain. All she could do was sit tight and let them do whatever they planned to do with her.

The next time she awoke was due to a heavy bang. She flinched and cried as her skin tore from her neck. Hands shoved into her back and she fell to the floor of the van, the silver net casted over her.

“Get her up!” barked a man and she was hoisted to her feet and dragged out of the van.

Her legs scraped across the pathed ground as she was dragged away. She could hear several people’s footsteps trudging around her but all she could see was the blackness under her melted eyelids.

She fell unconscious.

When she woke again, the silver net was gone and her wrists were no longer bound. She was sat against a wall. She managed to open her eyes then cringed at the whiteness that invaded her vision and she lifted her hands to shield her face.

She was still shaking. Her skin still felt mangled and sore as if someone had just waffle ironed her face, and when she touched her cheek, she felt her blood oozing from a still open wound. She blinked hard and studied her hands. Peeling crimson circles looked like bracelets on her wrists.

It mustn’t have been long since they took away the silver. She could heal fast.

Her red hair was dank and clotted with blood. She hissed with pain as she tore strands of it from her neck and cheeks.

She tucked her knees up to her chest with an effort and took in her surroundings.

There were bars in front of her and to the sides; glass panelling stood beyond it as if the bars weren’t enough to contain her. Beyond the glass panels were more cells, in a row in front of her and continued alongside her.

The walls were a brilliant white, a white that stung her eyes.

Suddenly, a thought jumped into her head and she checked her pockets. But- of course -her phone was gone.

She turned to her direct left and gasped, curling into herself. She wasn’t alone.

A girl sat in the cell beside her, slumped against the back wall with thin, bony legs splayed out in front of her splatted with dried blood. Her head was back and her eyes were closed to the ceiling. Dried blood had collected on her face. In streams from her eyes, nose and mouth. Her long blonde hair was wet and matted with crimson.

She could have been pretty once, thought Evie when she noticed her floral summer dress and dainty sandals.

Summer dress? It was winter. How long had the girl been here?

“H-hello?” said Evie through a dry throat. Her brittle voice echoed around the walls, making the place sound eerily empty.

The girl didn’t move.

That’s when Evie noticed the tube in her ankle that fed out through the bars and joined up with… She gulped. She had seen the contraption before. In the dream. The tubing looked like it was clear once, but now it was yellowed with age and whatever liquid had been pumped through it. Her eyes flickered to the wall beyond the bars which separated the glass panelling of each cell and yes, she too had a machine just for her. Tubes were wrapped and tied at the side of it, waiting like a coiled snake.

Evie started to panic. What was happening? Where was she? Who were those men? What did they want with her?

A door opened. The rattling reverberated through the bars that trapped her.

Footsteps clicked along the tiled floor, getting closer.

Evie jumped to her feet and ran to the bars, wrapping her hands around them. She jumped away with an unholy screech as the metal burnt into her palms, making her skin crackle and hiss. Silver.

“I wouldn’t do that if I was you.”

She sucked in a startled gasp and looked up. A man stood before her, behind the glass.

She took a step back, feeling a wave of nausea wash over her. She recognised him. She recognised him from her dream.

He stood before her, his hands clasped behind his back. He smiled at her leisurely, the light from the tube lighting above them twinkling in the lens of his glasses. He only looked in his mid-thirties, dressed in a smart white shirt and black tie, his black hair ruffled in a tamed sort of way.

“Where am I?” she hissed, her singed hands stuck out in front of her, peeling. “Who are you? What am I doing here?”

He held up his hand, silencing her. She growled in the back of her throat.

“My name is Nico,” he said conversationally, as if he had done this many times before and it was simply a routine procedure. “I am a scientist. This is my basement. And you are here because I am working on a cure for vampirism.”

Evie sneered and watched as her palms began to heal. The open wounds knitted back together and left her pale skin shining like the tiles she was standing on. “There is no cure for vampirism. It’s not a disease.”

“Oh, I beg to differ.” There was a sparkle of humour in his grey eyes that Evie didn’t like. It made her want to rip his heart out and shove it down his throat. Cocky little shit. Instead, she just glared at him through the bars. He lifted his chin with a smug grin. “Vampirism is passed from person to person through blood, much like HIV, hepatitis B, C.”

Evie scoffed. “You are actually going to compare vampirism to aids? Aids doesn’t make you immortal, have an unnatural thirst for blood, make you allergic to the sun-”

“Diseases have symptoms. Those are merely symptoms.”

She huffed a laugh and turned, making her way back to the back of her cell. “You’re insane.”

“I see myself as more of a visionary.”

She settled herself on the floor and rested her back against the wall. “Then you have a serious case of delusions of grandeur.”

“Delusions?” Nico arched an eyebrow. “Oh, I think it’s fair to say they are not delusions. Right at this moment, I have thirty eight vampires imprisoned under my, well, mansion. Creatures that are the most feared in the world, trapped like ants under a magnifying glass.” He blinked with a smile. “Pretty impressive, don’t you think?”

Ants under a magnifying glass?

A memory sparked in Evie’s mind. A sliver of the cry for help from Caius. The unyielding light, like the sun bearing down on him. Her gut quivered as she peered up at the ceiling. Set within the centre tile was a large flat bulb. A UV bulb. Turned on for too long, and she’d burst into flames…much like an ant under a magnifying glass.

She knitted her fingers together on her lap and tucked her knees up, placing the thick soles of her boots firmly on the ground.

“You have my Maker,” she murmured into her chest through the lump in her throat.

“What was that?”

“I said-” She looked up. Her vision had gone blurry and was smudged with red. “-you have my Maker.”

Nico smiled. “I do, do I?”

“Yes.” She gritted her teeth as a tear escaped, hot and thick down her cheek.

“Hm.” He swayed to and fro on his heels. “Interesting. How would you know I have him?”

“I just know.”

His eyes narrowed curiously and a small smile curved on his lips. “Oh, the bond between Maker and Progeny. I’ve heard about that.”

“Let me see him.” She was literally vibrating with fury now as she squeezed her hands together, close to her chest.

“I’m afraid I’m the one who calls the shots around here, vampire.” He stretched his hand out and pulled on the clear handle on the glass panelling, opening a door. He stepped inside so he was in the narrow space between the glass and silver bars. “And I need you to do something for me.”

Evie hissed, extending her fangs. “I will do nothing for you.”

Nico let out an over exaggerated sigh. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. I don’t mind either. But I’ve heard that the hard way can be quite painful for you.”

Evie’s gut twisted and she subconsciously looked up, remembering how Caius had been convulsing on the floor, at mercy to the light bearing down on him. She wanted to be defiant. She wanted to prove that he would not win but she knew what UV light did to her. She understood the agony.

In the morning after Caius had Turned her, he had warned her to stay away from the sun. She hadn’t understood why. As she had wandered around his dark house, running her fingers along the thick, crimson velvet that covered all the windows, she had wondered how a man could be so afraid of the light. It hadn’t made any sense. People were afraid of the dark. That did make sense. Things lurked in the dark. But the light…the light was full of hope and wonder and yet this man had refused to let it in.

So she had pulled back the curtain.

She had let out an ear-splitting scream and had dropped to the floor in a ball as the sun burned her face and hands. She had shook with agony and anger at her own disobedience. Caius must have heard her wail because the next moment, she had been cradled in his arms. He had rocked her softly and had pulled the hair from her face, soothing her in silence until she had healed.

“So, what will it be?” asked Nico after a short silence. When Evie shook herself from her reverie, she looked back to him and noticed he now had a syringe in his hand.

“What are you going to do to me?” she asked. Her eyes shifted to the girl in the cell beside her, and to the tube running from her ankle and her unconscious state.

“It’s a new batch. I just need to try it out.” He lifted the syringe up, inspecting the clear liquid inside. “How old are you, in vampire years?”

“What’s it to you?”

He flicked the syringe. “The longer you stay here, the more you will realise that when I ask you a question, you should answer it.”

“A hundred.”

“Oh.” His eyes widened with surprise and he looked to her. “Congrats.”

She sent him a sarcastic smile.

“Now, give me your wrist.”

Every fibre of her being was telling her to stay where she was. But she didn’t want to be burned again. The silver was bad enough and UV rays were ten times worse.

Slowly, she rose to her feet.

Nico smiled. “That’s it.”

She hugged her leather jacket around her petite frame and edged closer like she was entering a lion’s den. She stopped in front of the bars. If she outstretched her arm, she could reach him. She could tear his throat out on the spot.

Her fangs poked out at the thought and she lunged, sticking her hand through the bars to grab his collar. But he was fast and twisted her wrist until her bone snapped and jutted out of her skin. She cried out and her knees buckled from the pain. He jammed the syringe into her broken wrist and pressed down on the plunger.

Her head felt instantly foggy and her vision blurred, blackening around the edges like a painting thrown into a fire. Black, singed dots filled the whiteness of the room. He let go of her arm and she fell back, colliding with the hard, tile floor. She tried to speak but her jaw was juddering so much she couldn’t make out a word. The blackness was closing in on her. She wanted to claw it from her eyes as it suffocated her vision. But soon, the darkness took over and she was under.

_______________

Evie gasped herself awake, jolting upright. She cringed back at the pain that covered her whole body. Blinking until the invading light allowed her to see again, she inspected herself.

Her leather jacket was gone, torn to pieces on the floor. Tears covered her black vest underneath, exposing the skin on her chest and stomach which was dirty with dried blood. She gasped and pushed herself up onto her feet then gripped her wrist, remembering that it had been broken. It was fixed now. But as she took in her surroundings, horror yanked at her cold heart. She brought her shaking hands to her mouth as she began to sob.

Blood pooled around her, sticky and wet. On the floor and up the walls in curving arches and smudged handprints- she could feel it on her jeans. It had made the denim stiff and uncomfortable.

She pulled her hands away and looked down at her palms. They were red and crumbling with blood. It was wedged under her scuffed nails, turning them black. Streaks of crimson ran up her exposed arms too in the wake of healed wounds.

“What…happened?” she whispered to herself, running her dirty hands through her blood-sodden hair.

“You’re not the first, don’t worry.”

She jumped and spun round at the voice.

The girl in the cell beside her was slumped in the same position she was in before, but now her head had rolled to the side and her sunken, brown eyes were on Evie.

She must have only been in her early teens when she had Turned into a vampire. Now she looked weary and thin, like skin stretched over bone.

“W-what happened to me?” Evie asked, dropping to her knees on the floor.

“The injections…” she said in a horse, broken voice. She wheezed after every word as if speaking was a great effort for her. “They affect every vampire differently…depending on their age…and their Maker…and probably some other stuff too.”

Evie crossed her legs and leaned in closer to her, making sure to not touch the bars.

The girl let out a whistling wheeze and continued. “Sometimes…the serum sends a vampire into hibernation…sometimes it can send them crazy…make them black out and their rage take over…happens to many vampires anyway when starved from human blood for too long…” She coughed and spluttered horrifically and leaned forward, spitting blood. She licked her dried lips and dropped back against the wall. “Sometimes it’s like they’re being boiled…like being shoved into an oven…and…on occasion…sometimes they just…die.”

Evie felt numb from fear and tried to swallow the lump lodged in her throat. “So I…attacked myself?”

“Yeah…I saw the whole thing…nasty. Rammed yourself into the bars a couple of times too. I think you were trying to get to me.”

“…I’m sorry,” she replied in a small voice.

The girl laughed then wheezed some more. “Not…your fault.”

“How many times has he done this to you?”

Blood started to well under her eyes and dripped down her gaunt cheeks. “Seven…most only last ‘til four…” She squinted at Evie curiously. “You said…your Maker was here?”

Her gut twisted. “Yes. You heard?”

She nodded weakly. “Sometimes I just…pretend to be out…keep him away…doesn’t work most of the time…only when he has someone new to play with…”

“How long have you been here?”

“Months…maybe…hard to tell.”

Evie frowned sympathetically then she looked around. It wasn’t until then that she noticed people in the cells opposite. They looked small from where she sat and most were lay splayed out on the floor. The vampire directly opposite her looked albino, with chalky white skin and even whiter hair. His eyes were closed as he lay on the floor, his head propped up by the wall. Dried blood ran down his cheeks from old tears.

“Do you know many people have been in here? Vampires, I mean.” She turned back to the girl.

“They come and go…don’t catch names.”

The spark of hope that briefly lit up inside her was quickly blown out. She shuffled back and dropped her back against the wall. “Well, I’m Evie.”

The girl tried to smile. “Sophie.”