What Kills Me (8 page)

“We’re both going to burn,” he said.
“At least this way I get to watch you die.”

“Why are you so cruel?” I
whispered.

He curled his lip. “You think I’m the
villain.”

“I wasn’t the one luring girls to the
church to murder them.”

“You do not comprehend, do you? You
are insignificant. You humans crawl around the earth like insects,
destroying the land. Do you think it matters if one of you gets
crushed? You are food. I like to say you are nothing but ‘meat on
feet.’” He laughed scornfully.

“You’re wrong.”

“Do you know what is wrong?
When humans whine and cry before I feed. But hours earlier, they
were eating steak. Where does that meat come from? I do not see
people giving any sympathy to
their
meals.”

He pointed at me. “You would
understand now that you are a vampire. It is a pity that you will
never get to drain a human being. It is exquisite. It is best when
you hunt your own game and the blood is fresh. It is best when they
struggle. It makes the blood flow faster…”

“Stop it!”

“I was looking forward to tasting you.
I would have drawn every last drop.”

“Shut up!”

A minute of silence passed between
us.

“I didn’t want this,” I
muttered.

Paolo sniffed. “You should be grateful
that you were even blessed for a moment. You have been rescued from
your rotting corpse. You have experienced immortality. You have
experienced perfection. Look at yourself. This is your purest form.
Your worst qualities have been sifted out, the flaws and weaknesses
blown away. The way you have been experiencing the world with your
pathetic human senses? Now you know. You were living in a fog. You
were appreciating only a fraction of what this world has to offer.
That life was worth nothing.”

“At least I had a life. I had a
family. I was going to go to university and get
married.”

“That is pitiful, Zee.”

“Don’t you dare say my
name.”

I can’t die here with
him.

I pulled at my chains. They were
attached to a metal ring bolted into a plate in the wall. I scanned
the ground for rocks, tools, anything that might jimmy the
fastening.

“What are you doing?” he asked,
annoyed.

“We have to get out of here,” I
said.

“There is no way out. When the sun
comes in, we are gone.”

“What do you mean?”

He looked up. Our prison was topped
with an iron grate. The sky through the grate was blue. It was
dawn.

“What happens when the sun comes in?”
I asked.

“We burn to dust.”

***

I should have never trusted Paolo. My
entire life I had been a good, cautious person. Just this once I
had wanted a little adventure—and now this. Why? Why me?

“You want to know?” Paolo said. I had
unwittingly asked the question out loud.

“Why you? Because you looked,” he
paused, “as if you were bursting with energy. You were rushing
through the streets with your pastries, looking wildly around, your
cheeks flushed. And everyone else in comparison appeared in
black-and-white slow motion.”

I couldn’t tell if he was trying to be
tender in our last moments. Perhaps he was sorry.

“And as we walked, you babbled
endlessly about your thoughts, your wants, your future. I didn’t
care about what you were saying, but the way you spoke, so excited,
it had been a long time since I had seen that kind of
passion.”

He looked me in the eye.

“You were so full of life,” he said.
“I simply wanted to take it. And you gave it so
willingly.”

I shook my head. “You disgust
me.”

The sky lightened and the air warmed.
I heard gulls and waves. I could smell the sea. Paolo sat against
the wall, his arms resting on his knees and his head down. I paced
the floor and pressed my body against the stone walls. I thought of
my parents. I thought of Ryka. I thought of Uther. Maybe there was
still hope that he could get me out.

“It is hopeless,” Paolo said. “Sit
down.”

“Why don’t you help me? You’re
supposed to be stronger.”

“What is the point? There is no
escape,” he said, sniveling.

“Are you…are you crying?” I asked,
surprised.

He raised his head and crimson tears
leaked out of his eyes. “I cannot die. I am too young. There is so
much that I have not done,” he cried, his face
contorted.

“You’re too young? I’m seventeen.
You’re like, a million years old.”

“What do you know?”

“Stop it. Stop crying. We need to
figure this out. Listen. Paulo, listen to me. If we can somehow get
these chains off, maybe we can climb the walls. The stones stick
out a bit so I think I can get my fingers in…”

Paolo started to wail. “The sun is
coming!”

I looked up. The light blue sky was
cloudless and the sun’s rays came in at an angle on the wall above
Paolo’s head. I could see particles of dust doing their dance in
the sunlight.

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

I grabbed the length of chain behind
my back and ran toward Paolo to try to rip it from the wall. It
didn’t budge. I threw myself forward again and again until I
slipped and fell face down. Worn out, I rolled onto my side and
pushed my feet against the wall, pulling the chain taut.

“Please, I do not want to die!” Paolo
moaned.

“Shut up! I don’t want to die either,”
I shouted. I meant I didn’t want to die again.

The sun’s slow creep downward was
agonizing. Paolo wept, his words becoming unintelligible. The light
caused him to squint. Whimpering, he curled into the fetal position
as the rays hovered over him.

I continued my desperate
work on my chains.
Please break. Please
break.
The metal plate on the wall was
secured with four bolts. I yanked on my bindings and I thought I
saw the bolts jiggle.

Yes!

All of a sudden, Paolo shrieked. I
turned and screamed.

He was burning in the sun. Smoke
lifted upward from his writhing body. His face, his hands and
chest, were dark red and wet like a skinned animal. Yellow blisters
bubbled up all over him and then burst as the skin tore into open
wounds. The pus, viscous like tomato pulp, hardened into a brown
layer. The sun singed off his thick hair and scabs spread across
his scalp.

Still in the shade, I
pulled at my chains with all of my strength.
Come on!
The bolts loosened. I saw
them spring up with every jerk.

Paolo was now
unrecognizable, covered in a smoldering, crackling charcoal crust.
He had stopped moving. He was no longer screaming. Through the haze
I could see that the door was already bathed in sunlight.
I’m going to burn.

I let out a piercing cry and wrenched
the chain from the wall. The metal plate shot off and hit Paolo in
the head, causing parts of his blackened face to crumble off. His
body was starting to disintegrate, like a collapsing sand
sculpture. I fell backward and wrestled my shackles under my butt
and my legs so that my hands were at least in front of me, though
still bound together by about a foot of heavy chain. I scrambled to
my feet and reached for a handhold.

It’s too late.

I looked up and into the
sunlight.

My arms flew up to cover my face. I
squeezed my eyes tight and waited for excruciating death to wrest
me from this place.

Behind me Paolo’s remains hissed and
crackled. His ashes settled on my skin. I inhaled his smoke, held
the burned taste in the back of my throat. But I felt no
pain.

How quickly it happens. It
didn’t even hurt.

I opened my eyes and saw my sunlit
bicep. I turned my hands over as if I was holding the sun’s rays in
my palms. I rubbed my forearms.

“What…?”

I’m alive.

I looked at Paolo over my shoulder. He
was like an ancient statue, battered by time and the elements. You
could still make out the shape of his legs, his crooked arm
shielding his head. But he had stumps for hands and his face had
caved in.

I don’t understand.
Vampires burn in the sun. I’m not burning.

None of it made sense. Then it struck
me. Hope.

Maybe I’m not a
vampire.

This realization filled me with
elation. If true, this would rewrite my history. It would mean that
I could return to my life, to my family. That one day, this could
all be a horrible, distant memory.

I heard an abrupt crack and I turned
to see Paolo’s head fall and break apart.

I had to get out of here. The vampires
would come for me and when they saw that I had not died, they would
find some other way of killing me.

I stepped over Paolo and searched the
iron door for a handle. No knob. No way of opening it from the
inside. I tried to push it but it wouldn’t budge, and I stumbled
back, hitting Paolo’s calf. His leg below the knee crumbled like
dry earth.

Only one way
out.

I stretched my arms and my fingertips
caught the lip of a stone. I pulled my body up. It was easier than
I had expected. It was almost as if I had no weight. My toes found
footholds on the smallest edges. I ran my hands above my head until
at least one of my fingers slipped into a crevice or until I could
grab rock between my fingers and thumbs, squeezing the stone like a
vice.

This again. Climbing. It’s
like I’ve died and become Spider-Man.

I tried to be careful,
patient. I waited until I could make each move safely. One step at
a time. My chains rattled against the wall and I had to be mindful
not to step on them.
You can do this. Keep
going. Don’t look down. Almost there.

I never looked back at Paolo. The sun
warmed my face as I climbed.

At the top, the roar of the
waves was deafening. I had a firm hold on a brick with my right
hand; I grabbed the metal grate with my free
hand—
please, this is my only
chance
—and gave it a push. The bolts gave.
Grunting, I thrust my palm up and the grate broke off. I slid it
over enough for me to climb out.

I looked around. There was nothing but
water, wind, and sky. I straddled the two-foot-thick tower wall and
blinked at the twinkling, deep blue expanse. The prison tower sat
on the edge of a cliff, away from the castle. Rolling waves
exploded against its base. A single gull floated on the wind over
the water.

I crouched on the stone lip
of the tower, my feet together, my chained hands on either side of
them just barely able to grip the tower’s edge. I was going to have
to jump out far enough to clear the rocks.
Do this and you’ll be free. You’ll find a way
home.

Or I’ll smack my head on a
rock and then drown.

There wasn’t room to run
and leap.
You can do this.

I steadied myself and slowly rose, my
feet apart, my legs bent, my arms outstretched.

“One,” I said. The wind muffled the
count. I hesitated a minute before resuming.

“Two.”

Three!

I squatted back on my left foot and
launched forward. For a second, only a second, I was running in the
air, my feet pedaling against the sky. Then I was plummeting. I
screamed, took a breath and screamed again. I saw the ocean rush at
me and I feared the horrible moment when we would collide. Instead,
I broke through the blue floor. My body seemed to explode on
impact, the cold arresting all my senses. I sank, my toes pointed
downward until I tucked my legs in and kicked out. I kicked again
and surfaced at the climax of a wave, which was about to hurl me
against the cliffs. I gasped and dived under. I kicked in the other
direction. The current pushed against me but I sank deeper until
the ocean floor and its sand and pebbles and jagged bits pressed
against my stomach and scratched my knees.

I don’t know how long I stayed there
or how long I swam. I don’t know when I realized that I didn’t need
to take a breath.

***

I awoke face down in mud. Water surged
over my legs and receded, pulling sand and debris from under my
body and back into the ocean. I remembered swimming. I could have
been swimming all day. I flopped over onto my back and tried to rub
away the dirt caked on my eyelids and the hair matted to my face,
but my hands were covered in soil and my chains were tangled in
dead plants. My tongue tasted salt and earth. Granules of sand
crunched between my teeth. I ached with hunger.

The setting sun had left angry red
streaks across the lavender sky. The splotches of purple on the
horizon looked like fresh bruises.