The Vampire's Bride... Book 1

“Oh, my baby. Please don’t cry. You’ll feel better soon.” My mother smiled at me as she wiped my tears away.

I shook my head.

I was dying. We both knew it. Everyone did.

All I could do was lie on the hard hospital bed and wait. Wait for the pain, wait for the next test, wait for my body to finally give up after too many experiments.

I was wasting away again. Slowly, quietly. From something no one could name.

I had survived cancer. Stage two. I had won that fight, but now something else was killing me, something worse because it had no face.

The doctors didn’t know if it was the chemotherapy or something new. All they knew was that I couldn’t leave the bed. I was trapped in the same hospital where my father worked. Even he, the best doctor in New York, had no answers. Neither did the specialists they flew in from around the world.

They called me a mystery.

A case.

Not a person.

All I could do was lie there and pray the pain wouldn’t break me.

“I’ll come back tomorrow. Sweet dreams, my baby.”

My mother kissed my forehead before leaving.

Sweet dreams.

I almost laughed.

Since surviving cancer, sleep had turned against me. I never rested; I never escaped.

Every night, I fought myself.

In my dreams, there was another me. She was older, her hair was longer, and her eyes were colder. She never spoke, she only attacked, night after night, forcing me to fight for my own body.

She wanted my life.

She wanted my place.

And every time I woke up, weaker than before, I knew the truth.

She was winning.

I watched my mother leave, she lowered the lights and closed the door, even though I had begged her not to.

The lock clicked, causing the room to feel smaller the moment she was gone.

The shadows crawled out as soon as the light faded. They slid along the walls like living things, they pooled in the corners, they breathed. The whispers came next, low and endless, curling through the dark like smoke.

They spoke my name.

They were afraid of the light. I knew that. I had always known. But my mother never believed me, now my throat would not work, I could not scream, I could not call for help.

I did not know why this was happening, I only knew that death wanted me.

It watched me.

It waited.

I was certain my soul was already marked.

I believed hell had opened its gates, and the shadows were the hands reaching through to claim me.

I closed my eyes and tried to count sheep. Anything to quiet my mind, anything to delay the fight that waited for me when I slept.

One sheep. Two. Three.

By the time I reached ten, the air felt wrong.

The tenth sheep was not white. It was black, shaped from smoke and ash. Its body leaked darkness onto the ground beneath it. Its red eyes burned like dying embers. When it smiled, I felt it inside my chest.

I tried to wake myself; I tried to turn my head; I tried to pray.

My body did not obey.

My eyes were forced open.

The black sheep hovered above me while the room rotted away around us. The walls cracked while the ceiling bled shadows. I gasped, knowing this was not a dream. My mouth opened on its own, stretching wider than it should, and the smoke poured inside me.

It burned.

It tasted like fire and rot.

I coughed until my chest screamed, then the darkness swallowed me whole.

That night, I found the other me sitting on a bench in a dying garden. The flowers were dead and blackened, their petals curled like burned paper. The ground was split and bleeding red light. The sky above was dark, with no stars, only ash drifting down like snow.

She wore black from head to toe.

She was crying.

“What have you done?” she screamed.

Her voice ripped through the air, scraping against my skull. It sounded like screaming souls trapped behind stone walls. It made my head throb. It made me feel like I was breaking from the inside.

I wanted to run, to disappear.

But I knew the truth.

Just like every night, there was no escape.

Not until morning came.

Not unless someone woke me.

And even then, I was not sure hell would let me go.

In the middle of the night, I woke on my own.

A shadow stood in the corner of the room.

It was tall and still, pressed against the wall like it belonged there. For a moment, I was sure it was her. I believed she had finally crossed over from my dreams and come to take my life.

My heart pounded.

The second my eyes focused on it, the shadow melted away. It thinned and vanished into nothing. The corner was empty again.

I told myself I had imagined it, that my mind was breaking.

I did not sleep again until close to dawn, that was the only time I felt safe, it meant she could not reach me.

“Oh man, Icky, do not do that.”

A voice dragged me out of sleep.

“Yeah, well, it is not like you can anyway,” Vicky snapped back.

I opened my eyes and saw my siblings standing near the bed. I tried to speak, I always tried, even though my mouth opened, no sound came out.

As usual.

I hated myself for it.

I was the oldest of the Summers siblings, I was nothing more than a body that could not speak or move without pain.

“Daniel wants to come visit you, but you know how Dad is,” Vicky said when she noticed me staring.

Daniel had been my boyfriend since eighth grade. My parents hated him, my father especially, I never knew why.

Daniel was the star quarterback and had visited me once in the past two years. After that, my father told him never to come back.

Vicky pulled a few books from her bag. “You missed a lot in history,” she said, waving the notes Kathy, and her twin sister Ashley took for her.

My sister always read to me, always filled me in on gossip and lessons.

"Oh, and Kathy said she will come this Saturday to do your hair.''

It was the only way I still felt human.

I tried to sit up.

Pain tore through my chest, my lungs locked, I coughed until black spots filled my vision, and I nearly passed out.

When they left, the room fell silent.

I was alone with my thoughts.

They were cruel, dark thoughts.

I wanted to die.

I wanted others to hurt the way I hurt, or worse.

I had done nothing to deserve this. Nothing. Yet here I was, rotting in a hospital bed, waiting to disappear.

By nightfall, sleep took me again.

This time, I woke inside a castle tower.

The room was old and dusty, with the air stank of mold and rotten meat. The stone walls were damp, marked with dark stains that looked like old blood.

She was there.

The moment she saw me, she rushed forward.

“I have to kill you,” she screamed, her voice sharp and broken.

We fought.

Hands grabbed.

Nails scraped.

The stone floor burned my skin as we fell.

I should have been weaker.

I always was.

But this time, I was not.

I moved like someone else.

Someone stronger.

Someone crueler.

For once, I was winning.

And that terrified me more than losing ever had.

We wrestled until I shoved her toward the window.

She screamed as she fell.

I ran to the edge and looked down just in time to see her body crash onto the iron spikes below. They tore through her; blood bloomed across the stone; she did not move.

I woke with a sharp gasp.

Something was different.

I felt stronger, my body did not ache, the pain that had lived in my bones was gone. I lifted my hand with no effort. I opened my mouth and whispered random words, just to test it.

My voice worked.

Maybe one of us really did have to die for the other to live.

But the thought twisted inside me.

What if she had won?

What if she was the one who woke up?

What if she was living my life now, and I simply did not know it yet?

“Mom,” I said when she stepped into the room.

She froze.

Her eyes were not on me, instead they were locked on the corner of the room, the same place where the shadow had stood the night before.

“Mom,” I said again.

She blinked and finally looked at me.

“October?” She whispered.

Tears filled her eyes.

She ran from the room. Moments later, she returned with my father.

I spoke again, begging them to let me go home. I told them I hated this place.

I wanted my friends.

I wanted my life back.

I wanted normal.

Instead, they moved me from room to room.

Test after test.

Scan after scan.

They searched for answers they did not want to name.

“This is more than a medical phenomenon,” my father said as he studied my charts again.

“I want to go home,” I said, sitting up.

“You will,” my mother said softly. “Your father just needs to run a few more tests, and I have to prepare your room. I will come back tomorrow.”

She kissed my forehead.

Tears burned behind my eyes, but I nodded. I trusted them. I wanted to believe they knew what they were doing.

“Get some rest,” she said, kissing my forehead again.

But rest was all I had done.

Now my body refused to relax. And when I did drift off, the feeling of being watched pulled me back awake.

Each time, I stared into the dark, waiting for something to step out of it.

Because somewhere deep inside, I knew the truth.

Whatever fell on those spikes had not truly died.

And whatever woke up in my body was not entirely me.