Frostbitten by Charlotte Stein

Author:Charlotte Stein
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Published: 2016-10-05T05:00:00+00:00

They put her in their bedroom-basement after that—the room they’d been in when she heard them speaking below her those first few days—as though doing so would help. Both of them had to know it wouldn’t, however. It was like lifting some forbidden thing from the bottom shelf to the top one so that some kid can’t get it. The kid still knows the forbidden thing is there. The kid is aware that a simple stepladder can get her what she wants.

Or in this case—a padlocked trapdoor and a rickety staircase up from this musty hellhole could get her what she wanted. And judging by the sounds from above, Zeke was more than aware of that fact. During the first hellish night she could hear him rattling that padlock. She could hear him trying to convince Merrick that it was safe now to go near her, and failing hopelessly. Even he couldn’t really believe that at all, considering it had been less than the allotted week.

And her shouting to them that it was fine, that being a vampire seemed cool, didn’t appear to make any difference. Merrick just referred to her as delirious or mad, and after a while Zeke would seem to come to his senses and agree.

Though it was never long until he was trying to get to her again. It was like he had two people inside him—one who wanted her to go back to her normal life, and another who didn’t care about anything but reaching her. And she could understand, because there were times when she didn’t care about anything else, either. She still didn’t know if she honestly did want to be a vampire, but that didn’t seem to matter when the fever rose up inside her.

On more than one occasion she found herself straining at the chain Merrick had attached at her ankle, with no idea when she’d even gotten to her feet. Other times the urge to touch herself or bite herself was so strong she had to physically fight it. She had to fight it, because if she didn’t, something really bad would happen—something far worse than being a vampire forever and ever.

Merrick might see her doing those things.

He would see her and he would sneer at her, and even if he didn’t, she doubted his reaction would be any kind of comfort. He seemed to get heavier and heavier every time he came down to her, to the point where he started to bother her more than the pain of separation. Every argument with Zeke seemed to take a toll on him, and of course all the arguments were about her.

“Just let me go to her and hold her,” she heard Zeke say, and even she winced to hear it. He didn’t really mean it—but what did that matter? He was still telling his boyfriend that he wanted to go hold someone else. He was still calling out her name whenever Merrick did whatever he could to take the fever down.

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