Page 44 of Tainted Souls
“This is exactly what we warned you about,” says Vivian, her tone softening with concern. “Getting involved with someone like her.”
Someone like me.
“It wasn’t her fault,” Max defends weakly, but there’s hesitation in his voice.
“Wasn’t it?” Kevin prods. “You never had vampire problems before her. Now you’re one yourself.”
I’ve heard enough. I push away from the wall and stride down the corridor toward the elevators, punching the buttons as if they were the faces of my enemies.
All the unspoken fears I’ve harbored since the beginning of our relationship have come true. Had Max never gotten involved with me, he would still be human right now.
By the time I reach the exit, my eyes are burning with unshed tears. The night air hits me like a slap, cold and clarifying. I take a deep breath, trying to clear my head as I make my way back to my apartment. It takes longer than usual. My legs feel heavy, my mind preoccupied with replaying every moment of the past few days, searching for what I could’ve done differently. Everypossible scenario I think of ends the same way, and it makes me feel all the more guilty.
It means that his friends were right. That it’s all because he started hanging around someone like me.
CHAPTER 9
THE NEON THROBwanes as I leave the chaotic city streets behind, trading graffiti-tagged walls for sleek glass towers and polished chrome facades.
Here, the glow is cooler, with arctic blues and dusky violets bleeding from elegant holographic billboards advertising luxury synthwear and exclusive sensory mods. Trees line the avenues, their leaves dusted with bioluminescent petals that faintly pulse in rhythm with the city’s heartbeat. Small boutiques with prismatic storefronts display incandescent technological relics and handcrafted accessories, their minimalist logos glowing softly against dark anodized interiors.
I step into the lobby of my apartment building, which is staffed by attendants whose uniforms and serene smiles promise discretion and safety, the central city hum fading into a refined silence. It’s the kind of tranquility only wealth or power can buy.
When I unlock my door, I sense something off about the stillness inside, or rather lack thereof. My hand immediatelymoves to where my dagger should be before remembering it’s gone.
Shit.
“Relax, it’s just us,” Evan’s voice calls from the living room. He flicks the lights on, revealing him sprawled across my couch, a bottle of expensive whiskey dangling from his fingers. “Thought we deserved a night off after everything.”
Nothing new.
They call in sick to work regularly, but who am I to judge? Moving heavy cargo and lifting shipping containers that humans would need machinery for seems boring as hell, and their constant complaints only confirm the thought. It’s too bad vampires aren’t allowed to be venators, since teaching them the ropes is a disaster waiting to happen. Every wounded human would be a temptation, and every mastered weapon could be turned against us.
We would’ve had a blast monster hunting together.
Come to think of it, humans and vampires should interbreed more often. Dhampirs are clearly where the talent lies.
I close the door behind me. “What’s all this?”
“This,” Evan announces grandly, sweeping his arm across the room, “is an emergency check-in session. Complete with alcohol, snacks, bad movies, and absolutely zero talk about vampires trying to kidnap you.”
My living room has been transformed into something resembling a slumber party. Bottles of liquor line my coffee table, alongside a wide range of refreshments infused with plasma—the yellowish, liquid portion of human blood that makes it so delicious to vampires. Fruits, sweets, nibbles, and beverages imbued with it can momentarily quench thirst, but they won’t satiate hunger and could never be a substitute for blood itself.
Since vampires aren’t used to chewing much, they generally tend to prefer drinks over snacks due to their easy intake, but there are still plenty of them who have grown accustomed to it, like my friends.
“This,” I say, eyebrows raised as I toss my keys onto the counter and look around, “is breaking and entering.”
A stack of boxes containing what looks like enough blodas to last us multiple weeks sits beside my TV.
In Penn City, vampires live on a complementary diet of these sleek, minimalist cans, conspicuous against the colorful packaging that tends to surround them. Each cylindrical container is manufactured with a matte aluminum finish and a bright red stripe wrapping around the middle, because heaven forbid aesthetics. Jokes aside, the stripped-down design is intentional, a message that screams function over form.
Named and styled after human sodas, blodas lack the buttery texture and complex taste of blood bank rations. Too many preservatives. Clearly not meant to be the main course, just a little indulgence on the side. When donations don’t suffice, these bad boys are there to fill the gap, found on the front shelves of every grocery store and curbing the cravings of even the greediest vampires—so long as you pay.
Though neither comes even close to blood drunk straight from the vein, at least according to bloodsuckers. The warm temperature of fresh blood results in a completely different mouthfeel compared to the cold, processed variety.
The one time we tried heating up a bloda in an attempt to mimic the real thing, it ended in a chemical disaster, the fetid stench of rotten corpse lingering in my apartment for days.
No matter how intrigued I am by the differences, I have no desire to confirm the hypothesis through personal tasting. There are just too many risks involved.
