Heartbeat (Morta Fox Book 1) Read online

  “You should’ve let me go. I’d rather I had died—”

  “You don’t mean that,” he cut me off.

  “You have no idea about what I mean or don’t,” I said, almost too calmly. “You watched them. You just watched them…” The incredulousness of his actions astonished me. He didn’t even seem to mind that two people were killed right under our noses while we could’ve helped. But that thought came right before I remembered to whom I was talking.

  A vampire, nothing short of a life-taking monster. Of course he wouldn’t care. He probably killed humans all the time, as I’d done with the man at the bar.

  “Morta, this happens all the time. You can't expect us—”

  “What? What happens all the time?”

  “That! The ROB killing people outside their walls,” he said almost reluctantly.

  I pushed him with one hand, and when he flew across the glass-filled room and landed on the other side of the wall, I very slowly started to understand the strength of my hands.

  He fell on the concrete floor laid with cut pieces of glass, and when he stood up again, his right forearm and thigh glistened. He watched me, his jaw working quickly as if he was contemplating what to do to me. I wished he would just lose it and break me already. He didn’t.

  He simply turned to the side and started to remove the pieces of glass that were in his arm and then his thigh. The pieces painted with dark red fell to the floor clinking, making me flinch.

  “Why would ROB kill humans?” I asked next while he was still checking his body.

  “You know, you really are a piece of work. If I didn’t need you to find Everard, I would’ve…” He stopped and squeezed his eyes shut.

  “What? Kill me? Rape me first, maybe?” I was beyond trying to hold my tongue, but I had to stop when his face blocked my vision and both his cold hands grabbed my face tightly. He watched me, and I saw his eyes grow and his jaw work and his face sharpen. He was half a step away from turning into the monster we both really were. Fear froze my fingertips and clawed its way up my arms, but I kept my chin high and looked at his terrifying eyes, no matter how badly I wanted to run.

  “I might be many things, Morta Fox, but I am not a rapist. I have never raped a woman in all my life,” he whispered, the air coming in cold waves against my lips.

  “I hope you’re not expecting me to believe it,” I hissed, noting the tips of his sharp teeth coming out of his upper lip, but I did have a death wish. I was more than ready.

  “I can always start now,” he whispered again, only this time, his voice had taken a completely different vibe, a whole other level of coldness.

  “What the hell are you waiting for?” I asked. My voice shook and broke more times than I was willing to admit. “It shouldn’t be that hard. You just watched two people die. To how many more deaths have you contributed through your years of glory? How many more have you watched happen from afar?”

  My whole being vibrated because Hammer was long gone. In front of me, holding my face to his, was the monster. The real Hammer. The one I knew was coming but never imagined to be like this.

  His pupils had completely dilated. He never blinked, not once. His face was cold and hard. His teeth, way too many, pointy and sharp, hung from his jaw.

  I continued to speak because though tears had already started to fall on my cheeks, I didn’t want to start screaming.

  “Do you think you’re too good to bother? Is that it?” He still hadn't moved a single muscle, and I felt like I was talking to a horrible marble statue. Until his eyes moved down to his hands.

  My tears had reached his skin, and he watched the wetness spread on his finger slowly. His eyes grew even bigger, and then they started to change color.

  The transition looked almost painful. I saw his teeth retreat, and I saw his skin take on a warmer shade, though still very pale.

  He was back to being Hammer in only a matter of one second.

  “Yes,” he whispered before his eyes landed on mine once more. He watched my wet face as if he saw it for the first time. I waited for the second he’d turn into a monster again and be done with me. I welcomed that second.

  He never did. He let go of me and was at the door before I had the chance to blink. He stood there with his head down, motionless. And just like he had gone from me to the door, before a second could turn to another, he completely disappeared.

  VII

  I ran like a mad woman. I didn’t know where Hammer went, or if he even intended to come back. I saw him nowhere while I retreated from the building he’d dragged me to. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do with myself, but the possibility of not seeing him again was very welcome.

  While I ran, I kept my ears open and concentrated solely on them. If I were to be lucky, I was going to run into a bunch of ROB soldiers, and they’d put a silver bullet through my forehead. But I saw no one.

  Instead, I kept seeing my Lord, his teeth big and sharp, the sense of being bitten etched on the side of my neck. Then, I saw the two men, beaten to death by soldiers. I’d always known the ROB weren’t the saints they made themselves out to be. The fact that I lived around the west side of the wall with another twenty homeless people proved that. But I never thought they could kill so easily, without reason, and laugh while doing it.

  My mind went to the white room I had been sent to the first day I’d crossed the wall. Fifteen others had been lying on the cold, white leather beds. What had they given them to leave them like that, half dead?

  The same thing they would’ve given to me, had my Lord not escaped and turned the alarm on. I would’ve been left in there, unconscious like the rest of them. What I couldn’t decide was whether that would’ve been a better fate than this. I guessed I wouldn’t know until I figured why fifteen people were held unconscious in a room made of steel, probably against their will.

  The first heartbeat I heard was so fragile and so calm that I had to stop, scratching the ground with my heels again. I looked around at the abandoned buildings. These were in surprisingly good shape. They were broken and empty, but not burnt. I looked closely at the ground, and here and there, no more than five blades of grass at a time decorated the brown ground. It was like there was never an explosion around these parts, which left me completely stunned.

  Hadn’t the newspaper back in Boston—am I still in Boston?—said that there was no place that was lived in before that hadn’t exploded?

  They had, I remembered clearly. Only mountains hadn’t blown off completely.

  Then why was I seeing a set of twenty buildings, maybe even more, standing without the mark of flames blackening their walls?

  “Douglas,” someone said from behind me. I shivered but didn’t turn to make his fucking night. He had followed me again. “One of the few places with a few buildings untouched by the explosions.” He spoke as if he could read my mind.

  “Why did you follow me?”

  “We made a deal, remember?”

  “You screwed the deal the second you wanted to eat me.” I spit the words at him, the image of his monster face clear in my mind.

  “I’ve wanted to eat you the first time I really saw your face, but that’s beside the point. I didn’t eat you.”

  The mocking in his voice made the words sound even worse. I heard him step right behind me, and I turned with so much strength that I was surprised my shoulder didn’t detach from my torso. But I hit him, hard in the gut with the length of my arm, and he flew back. This time, though, it seemed he was prepared, so he landed on his feet at the wall of a building. He looked up at me, and he smiled sickly.

  “Is this a fucking game to you, you arrogant prick?”

  “I love a woman that has the guts to send me flying. I almost didn’t expect that,” he teased.

  “Don’t you dare make fun of me, you selfish bastard!” I shouted.

  It was always easy for me to fight people off, because once I sent them to hell in the beginning, they stayed there. I never had to say
more than a sentence to get them to forever despise me. And then comes this guy here! I was starting to feel like I wanted to give up on the yelling, and I didn’t like that one bit.

  “I’m just trying to cheer you up!” he said, shaking his head, no mock left in his voice.

  “By insulting me?” What the hell was it with him?

  “I’m trying to compliment you,” he said after a long sigh and moved extra fast to catch me off guard when he landed too close to my face. I put my hands on his chest, thankful for the strength that the virus equipped me with. At least one good thing about all of this.

  But he stopped me. He grabbed my wrists, and once again I felt as if he were made of steel, not flesh and blood.

  “Let me go!” I hissed.

  “No. Not until you calm down and listen to me.”

  “Why? So you can compliment me again?!”

  “You are so fucking unbelievable, I can't even…I can't even…what the hell, Morta?! Just stop being so childish and calm the fuck down!” he said, never moving an inch though I kept pulling and pushing against his hands.

  “I don’t want to calm down! Why don’t you just let me go? I was fine on my own…”

  “I do recall with clarity that I told you something really bad would happen if you break the promise you made me.”

  “I don’t care! I want to die anyway, remember?”

  “You’re not going to die, Morta! Shit…”

  He finally let me go, and started to pace in circles in front of me. I rubbed my wrists. The hurting was gone the second he let me go, but I just wanted to have something to do.

  “Then what the hell will happen?”

  “You’ll be…trapped,” he whispered, still walking with one hand on his hip and the other in his hair, which shone golden under the light of the moon.

  “Trapped?” I did not like the sound of that.

  “Yes, trapped! You’ll transform into what you call a monster, which is the hunting mode by definition, and you will not be able to get out of it no matter how much blood you drink.”

  The idea of craving blood more than I already did, feeling the need burning through the cells of my brain, transforming them into blood-seeking zombies, living in the thought of thick, red blood made me shiver. That was something I would do absolutely anything to keep away from, until my time came to die.

  “Do you understand, Morta?” Hammer called my attention to him again.

  “Stop calling me that,” I hissed instead of answering. Of course I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand it any better than I understood my insane desire to drink blood from that slow, steady vein beating inside someone’s body, someone I didn’t even know. I couldn’t even begin to understand.

  “It suits you, actually. You’re called death, and you want nothing more than to die. I couldn’t imagine a better name for you.”

  “Jeez, I never heard that before. What a fucking genius you are for pointing that out,” I hissed, and my arms fell to my sides dramatically. “I mean, all these years I wondered why kids my age fell on the ground whenever I passed them by and then laughed their eyes out, calling my name like it was a disease. Thanks for clearing that up for me!”

  “I didn’t mean it like that…”

  “Do I look like I give a shit about what you meant? Really, look me in the eye and tell me, do I fucking look like I care?” I said, moving so fast I barely made it to stop in front of his face. I was a head and a half shorter than him, and yet I pushed my chest against his and looked up at him in anger. “In case you didn’t get the lesson behind my story, I don’t care what you think suits me or not. Leave me alone!”

  “Okay, fine!” he shouted at my face and his voice was actually high, not the cold low one he always used. “For the record, if I’d known you would turn out to be a psycho, I would’ve never come close to you!”

  “Good!” I turned around, in desperate need to hide the way my eyes immediately filled with tears.

  I didn’t understand myself. I had heard those words, over and over and over again, and yet every time someone new said them, it still sucked. It still hurt. But I was not going to let it, so I kept on walking, passing empty building after empty building, until I heard four more heartbeats and all but drooled all over from the thirst that suddenly grabbed my throat.

  “If you go ahead like that, you’re going to kill those people,” Hammer said and made me stop again. My fingers pulled up in fists from anger, and once again, I didn’t have a choice but to listen to him. Accept his help. That was proving to be much harder than I thought.

  “If you want them to still live when the sun rises, you better stand behind me and watch first.”

  My head fell to my chest with a sigh, and I waited for him to move. Once he made up his mind, he passed right by me, and I took my sweet time before I followed his tracks.

  Hammer led me to a building, one that still had almost all windows intact. Those that had been broken were now closed with old pieces of wood nailed to the frames. The place even had two feet of iron fences all around the front yard. Hammer leaned down on his knees before he jumped over it.

  A minute later and I realized I had to do the same. I’d never been good at jumping. I could never keep my feet in the air for more than a quarter of a second, maybe even less. But I was a vampire now, and I’d already jumped from the wall of protection once, so I tried. I did the same thing Hammer did and held my breath.

  I didn’t know what to expect, but as soon as I thought about jumping and pushed up with my knees, I was up in the air, and the fence looked like a tiny, thin piece of silver paper. Until I started to go down again.

  I don’t know how I held myself from screaming. Only a small millimeter separated me from the fence once I landed. A bit to the side and I would’ve been cut in half by it. When I stood up, I could barely keep my balance.

  Through the corner of my eye, I saw Hammer trying to stifle his laugh, as if what had happened was just so goddamn funny.

  “Are you going to stay here and laugh, or are we going inside?” I asked because saying the word feed seemed like putting my hand inside my stomach through my mouth and pulling something out.

  Hammer nodded and put the back of his hand to his lips before he turned and walked ahead to the side of the house. I followed his steps through the darkness until we were at the back. The next building was almost attached to this one, and Hammer barely fit to walk straight. My frame was small so no problem for me.

  We reached a window, the glass still unbroken, and Hammer jumped up to land on the windowsill before he nodded at me to follow.

  The inside of the room was mostly empty. I couldn’t place the smell of water until I saw a thin wire hanging from one side of the wall to the other, with three white shirts and a pair of men’s boxer shorts hanging on it, still wet. At the corner, there were two pale blue, dirty mattresses on the floor and two people, both men, were sleeping on them.

  One had his back turned to us, and the other had gripped the makeshift pillow with both his hands in fists as if he was having a nightmare.

  Hammer turned abruptly and leaned close to my ear, but I was too scared already to move away.

  “Go by the corner and watch,” he whispered. To the normal world, he had not made a single sound. But I could hear even if he so much as moved his lips.

  I moved to the side and to the corner behind the open window. I held on to the cold, greyish wall behind me in case my knees decided to give in. I tried to swallow as many times as I could and wanted to reach for the bag hanging around Hammer’s back for a bottle of alcohol, but it was so hard. So hard to ignore the rusty and salty scent of blood, the way it pumped and made itself look so delicious in my mind.

  I watched how Hammer, never making a single sound, fell down on his knees in front of the man that was facing us and slowly moved the blanket from his shoulder. The thing was torn and thin, but it looked clean.

  Hammer leaned in and then stopped. He turned to look at me, and I sa
w that he still hadn’t turned into hunting mode, the way he liked to call it. I’d stick to the old fashion reference: monster.

  He looked into my eyes with his brows raised, and the light of the moon reflecting from the window made them change color from brown to gold and then to silver. For a second there, I flushed a little. I couldn’t believe that a creature like that, so dark and so evil, could be so very beautiful. I felt like my heart should’ve been beating loudly, pounding in my chest, but it continued on the same, slow pace. My stomach boiled from the immediate heat that captivated me, and I willed him to look away from me. I didn’t want to feel so attracted to the looks of him. I knew what he was deep down, and I shouldn’t have allowed myself to even think about how it would’ve felt to touch his lips. I had never learned that you can’t control feelings.

  Finally, Hammer had enough of just staring at me and turned to his victim again. My fingers started to shake, though I didn’t know if it was because of fear, disgust, thirst, or all of them combined. I watched his head lower until he touched the human’s skin. I noticed no change before the human let out a weak whimper, like he was watching his soul leave, but there was nothing he could do about it. He was helpless against the monster above him.

  I looked at the other body lying next to his friend, and I felt my teeth grow sharp in my mouth. I was craving the blood that was running through his veins even more now that I saw Hammer and heard how it splashed against the roof of his mouth before he guided it to his throat with his tongue.

  The man never moved, even twenty seconds later, when Hammer had enough. He licked the two small tears his teeth had made on the man’s skin, and not three seconds later, they completely disappeared. He stood up and cleaned his face a couple of times with his hands before he turned to face me again, looking his normal self.

  Gritting teeth while they were sharp—and two of them long enough to touch under your lower lip—was a very bad idea. I felt the pain in my jaw for a second only, but it was enough to teach me the lesson. My eyes filled again, and I hated myself for it. I hated myself for wanting the blood so goddamn much that every inch of me was on fire.