It has to be a dream.
Yes.
I must be dreaming. That's the only explanation for what has happened in the past few hours and the cold presence of Hugo behind me.
Yes, Hugo. I try to think of him now as I try to process what this man has told me.
I don't blink. I simply stare at the pale face hidden by dark hair and feel the bubbling of fear. Not too much but enough that makes my knees want to buckle.
Maybe the floor would be a good place to stay and receive such a news.
My father.
Such an impossible statement spoken with such grave seriousness.
My legs shift back until my weight is fully on the hollow thing that Hugo has become. It's oddly comforting though I know the last thing I should be finding is comfort in such a place and with such a man.
If I can even call him that.
He looks so not human that my brain can't even trick me to find anything remotely human to attach a symbol of humanity.
And suddenly I miss Deiya.
Her master as she calls him.
My father as he calls himself. I can't hear myself breathe.
But I hear my voice though, the disbelief in it. "You can't be my father. He is dead."
Hazy memories rise to the surface of a time I've tried a little too well to forget. The dark turn that started the catastrophic downfall of my mother's health.
My father's death. I barely remember the hospitals visits, the cancer eating away at him, the way my mother sobbed as the coffin got lowered into the ground.
I was twelve but in that moment I felt like I was four, unable to stand the words coming out of my mother's mouth, "Your father is gone now. So we must move on."
But she did anything but move on. We kept switching cities as if running toward something while she ended up running back to her drinking and crying his name. Those memories I fought so hard to forget, now they're rising and I know I should shut them down before they become clear, before their emotions become real.
But all I see is the name carved on wet headstone, the black umbrella on the ground as we stood in the rain, the empty graveyard filled with nothing but stone and the dead flowers.
All those years ago, I said goodbye.
I know this.
"Your sick joke isn't funny." my voice shakes but for the most part it's firm, giving me false confidence.
"I do not joke." The long pale hands realizing I'm not stepping into their embrace retreats back into the folds of the cloak and it soundlessly glides across the floor as the man moves closer.
His black sunken eyes blink at me in a slow way that reminds me of Casper but instead of irritation or annoyance, it's cold and predatory.
And I realize a second later that there are no whites in his eyes, just endless, frigid black.
The fear erupts in my heart, making it pound.
"Your mother did marvelous work with her distasteful lies," he says, his voice crawling under my skin. "You've even convinced yourself of it."
"It's not a lie. I was there." My palms are clammy and cold but I don't dare move to wipe them. It feels like every movement of mine is being tracked and any sudden movements would end badly for me.
I still don't know what sort of monster, Deiya's master is.
With how fear is growing inside me, I don't think I want to know.
"Dear daughter, you can't trust your memory on this. It has shown remarkable feats in the past that—"
"My father is dead!"
Fear sometimes makes me bold and I'm so glad this is one of those times.
"Your mother lied."
"No she didn't!"
I saw what my father's death did to her. The staring off into empty spaces, the crying for hours, some days she wouldn't even get out of bed and when she did it was to go get alcohol or scream at me for looking at her with those eyes.
That was my life for five years. I never saw my mother smile, I never heard her laugh, I never felt her hug.
So there's no way she did all that for someone that wasn't dead.
I could feel a frown forming on my face and from the depths the familiar heat of anger.
"You're the one lying."
"I do not lie for petty things."
"Then you have the wrong person."
He laughs. The sound is more like an angry hiss. "I'd recognize you anywhere. Your blood, your scent, that look in your eyes. Do you know how long I've waited? Bid my time so when I come for you, there will be no mistakes."
I don't hear him moving but somehow he's in front of me, a sharp metallic smell filling my nose.
"If those dogs hadn't meddled with their stupid foster system, I would've had you already and you would've already gone far in your training. But no worries we'll be on track in a few days."
"You have the wrong person," I repeat more firmly. "My father is dead."
"Stubborn like your mother. We better dispel these foolish notions of yours."
I shake my head, feeling even more confident to raise my gaze to his face. "You can't be my father. You don't even look human."
Through the curtain of hair, I glimpse a pale thin mouth curving into a cold, hard line. When he speaks again, his voice is hollow drawling out with an annoyed hiss.
"I would hope so, as I am not a human." He spits the last word with disgust. "And you won't be for long dear daughter once you turn fully."
Turn?
The word hangs in the air between us carrying more weight than I understand. Before I can ask what the fuck he means by that, there's blur of movement.
It's so fast, my mind don't catch until there's a hand around my neck.
Long, bony fingers loosely wrap around my throat and the cold that bursts into my veins is unlike anything I've ever felt before.
"If it isn't clear to you, we are vampires, dear daughter."
Gooseblumps flood my skin. The cold races through my bones, rooting me in place.
"Yes, vampires." His face inches closer to mine and I make the biggest mistake of my life by looking up into those black eyes.
I'm immediately sucked into a dark, cold abyss from which I can't move or speak.
"But you need to be turned fully in order to accept such status."
Panic spikes like thorns all over my body but it isn't enough to break the hold on me. His fingers tighten a fraction and I feel how small I am compared to him. His height, his darkness, my small frame is drowning, the air is vanishing.
A cry rises in my throat but stays there and forms a lump.
"It won't hurt too much and by the time you wake up, you won't feel any pain ever again."
No. Please, I want to say but the words don't come out.
As if he hears it, he shakes his head, his breath fanning my face as he pulls me even closer. "You will thank me."
Like the start of a horror picture, the lower part of his face begins to move. In the periphery of my vision, I see his mouth open wide filled with razor-sharp teeth. Two grow longer and sharper and…they're fangs.
Fangs!!
My body wants to shudder to revolt against the horrifying event but I can't move. There's no feeling in my muscles at all. Like the only part of me that exists are my eyes.
Eyes that follow his head as it tilts, that sees the open mouth slowly covering the distance to my neck. His fingers move my head enough and flutter above my pulse.
"Don't fight it."
My mind is scrambling for anything to help me. But his mouth draws closer until I feel the cold breath, hear a soft sigh and finally pain.
Pain so sharp, my vision immediately goes black.