Chapter 3

• Alina
• “I’m sorry, love. I really am, but it was her last wish. I hope that you’d at least give it a try,” my father said to me. Worry was evident in his voice.
• “Please, Papa! There has to be another way.” I pleaded as I sat on a chair beside his hospital bed. His hands trembled in mine, but it wasn’t due to old age. My father was dying.
• “There would have been if Sheena was...” His eyes watered as he spoke her name, and my heart broke all over again. He loved her even now. I knew that part of the reason his condition kept getting worse, even after the best treatment in the world, was because he had given up on life the day my mother’s heart stopped beating. The only thing that held him here, right now, was me.
• “B-but I don’t want to get married, Papa! Not yet! I’m only twenty-two.” I tried to keep my voice pleading, but even I could hear the panic seeping in.
• “I’m so sorry, my darling. I don’t want to see you get married so early either, but I don’t have much time left. I have to know that you’ll be well taken care of,” my dad said sadly, “that you’ll be safe.”
• “But, Papa, they’re va—”
• “Ms. Deluca, visiting hours are over.” The nurse cut me off as she strode into the room, saline bottle and more medicines in hand. “He’s been better this past week, so try to visit as much as possible, but he does need to rest now,” she said with a smile.
• “Yes, of course. I’ll see you tomorrow. Goodnight, Papa.” I gave him my best smile even as tears pooled in my eyes and planted a kiss on his forehead before I turned to leave.
• “Goodnight, love. Be safe.”
• I walked out of his cabin and said goodbye to people I knew. Occasionally, I also waved at little children who skipped and pranced around me as they made their way to the playroom in the children’s ward. I already knew some of them since my father’s room was right next to the nursery. Today, though, I couldn’t even manage a smile. The instant I walked out into the parking lot, the heavy rain hit me like a bullet, drenching me from head to toe.
• Good, I thought. At least, it would hide my tears. It would keep people from knowing the demons that haunt me and of the secrets I could never tell even if it killed me.
• I stood alone in the parking lot next to my car with the rain mercilessly tattooing against my skin. The only thing I wished with all my heart was to erase a night four years ago that had changed my life forever.
• Science states that the evolution of mankind wasn’t a straight line. Several species had to become extinct for the ultimate survivor to reign on this Earth: humans or Homo sapiens. Human beings came from the prehistoric apes and have evolved over a span of millions of years. Exactly how many, even scientists have their doubts. Their best bets are from the hominid fossils that they’d discovered from various parts of the globe. They use all sorts of criteria, from quadruped to biped locomotion, an increase in cranial capacity,changes in food habits, etc. But one thing they agree on is that it took millennia to ultimately result in the perfect modern man who has made Earth the supreme habitat.
• If you believed the same, you couldn’t be more wrong.
• Human beings weren’t the only creatures who survived the eons of trial that Mother Nature inflicted upon us. No, there were others, beings who were stronger, faster, deadlier, and higher on the food chain. They never lost the habit of devouring raw flesh and blood, surviving purely on animalistic instincts, speed, and agility that were a part of their genetic makeup. For centuries, they’d been in hiding, never letting any human be aware of their existence until it was the last thing they knew. They preyed on us and stayed out of our sight just like a predator because they were the most impeccable of them all. They were the vampires.
• How did I know all of this? How did I even know that vampires were real? How did I know about their history? No, it was not because they’ve been discovered by scientists or they’ve made themselves known to the world. It was because my father worked for them.
• I ought to know because I was engaged to a vampire. I was to be Erick Stayton’s bride.
• He was the heir to Stayton Incorporated, a company that specialised in marketing blood from donors and had blood banks in several parts of the U.S. It was a charitable organization looking for the betterment of the world and interested in helping people in need. No one really knew that it was just a facade, for only ten percent of the blood they collected went to charity. The rest was supplied to vampires all over Canada. They also ran a security service for VIPs and business tycoons, those who were in need of protection. All in all, he and his family were super rich, super arrogant, and very, very powerful.
• Erick Stayton, my fiancé, was one of the most eligible bachelors in Canada. A lot of girls would die to catch his attention. However, he was too conceited to stay with one person for more than a week, that is according to Men’s Fashion and GQ. He was a ruthless and savage predator. For me, vampires have never been a part fairytales. They have always been the people I’d known to fear, and Erick was always at the top of that list.
• My family were some of the few who knew about their secret. My father was the manager of the Main Canadian Blood Bank. Our families have been close even before I was born. Erick was the youngest child of his family, so we had an age difference of about three years. My mother and his were the ones who had arranged this wedding right after I was born. I didn’t have any idea why, though. Why did they choose a human girl who has no interest in vampires whatsoever? Why didn’t they choose someone more fitting like someone of the same race? It was no secret that I never liked vampires to begin with. Blood banks were a relatively modern creation. Who knew how many lives they took before the invention?
• Everyone expected us to be great friends, Erick and I. They thought that we would grow up loving each other, but it was the exact opposite. I hated him with a passion. It was not just because he was a vampire, though. Oh no, it ran way deeper. You see, I had always avoided Erick ever since I was a child. He was always with the popular crowd, the bullies. Being naturally attractive, as was with every other predator on the planet, he always got away with it. So it was natural to avoid him and stay away from his line of sight. It was not that he didn’t know about me, but we just kept our distance right from the start. However, as I began to grow, I started attending parties with my parents, and he finally started to notice me. By then, it was still going okay. I could handle a few snide comments here and there, but it was when he and his mother came to visit my parents one day when everything went wrong.
• We were all at the dinner table that night. I went to the kitchen to fetch an extra dish when I stumbled on the doorjamb and fell to the floor, but not before hitting my head on the counter and wounding myself. The wound wasn’t deep, but the hit caused the skin of my forehead to slit open and gush out blood. The next thing I knew, Erick was there, feeding from me until I was too weak to open my eyes.
• When I regained consciousness, he warned me not to tell our parents or he would kill me. I, being the wimpy little child that I was, kept it a secret. I was eleven then. From that day onwards, he came to feed from me occasionally.
• “You’re my fiancée. It’s your duty to feed me,” he used to say to me. I believed him for a long time until I grew old enough to understand the folly.