"TORI!"

  No matter my attempts to thrash and squirm my way out of Diego's grip, he didn't budge. He held me face down against the damp metal of the deck, a clawed hand on the back of my throat with the other on my shoulder and a knee on my spine. I could feel the warmth of my own blood dripping from the thousand cuts on my skin and pooling beneath me.

  It was all I could do to watch the original and the new body of my love take turns convulsing like a possessed animatronic as her soul was forced into a tug of war.

  Apple stood tensely between them, hackles raised and eyes wide. A strand of hair fell from her ponytail as she looked over for Diego's approval.

  "Leave them." The man grunted above me. "I need to see it."

  Apple raised her hands in surrender and took several steps back, though her expression betrayed her frustration at being ordered around like a dog once more.

  "Wanna give me the lowdown?" Diego whispered close to my ear with that same tone that always made me physically ill. "Go on. You love monologuing."

  Blood droplets spattered from my throat as I scoffed weakly. I'd already been humiliated enough for my own liking.

  "Her... soul gets–"

  "Is being." His eyes narrowed sharply.

  "Is being," I growled, "Tugged from one to the other. Like the feedback when a microphone faces its s-speaker."

  "And is she in pain? Is she lucid? Where does she go when she's in neither? Come on, Zach, give me a big speech." Diego tightened his grip on my neck. "Now's your time to show off just how much you think you've learned on your own."

  "Fuck!" I hissed in pain. "N-No! I don't want to tell you anything! Can't you see for yourself anyway?"

  He snarled bitterly and ripped himself away from me. I crumpled in place and fought to catch my breath. My wounds were barely healing, adrenaline was likely all that kept me awake. Limping on his left leg with each step, Diego staggered over to lean on the crate beside Apple. She looked him over and a flash of concern phased through her.

  "You're still bleeding."

  Apple reached out for the bloody bandage wrapped around Diego's eye. He recoiled with a warning glare, silently focusing back on the girls. Apple winced at the rejection.

  Unsure what either of them were thinking or planning here, I stared them down while I pushed myself up to my feet. They didn't seem to care about me right now. Did they want to see me help Vic and Tori? With a gulp I awkwardly rushed over to where the two girls were still writhing. The others let me. It was strange.

  I took hold of Tori first since she was currently the limp one, knelt down beside her, sat her up and faced her away from Victoria. A moment later she gasped back to life and went back to twitching, tears and fear in her eyes. I wrapped my arms around her.

  "You know what to do. We've done this before." I whispered.

  "I-I can't!" She cried back only to slump again.

  Victoria shrieked a few metres away, clawing at the metal beneath her restlessly.

  I hadn't done this alone before. We'd only done it once regardless. Now we had an audience, like this was some sick talent show. I could only hope Victoria remembered that last time the only thing that stopped it all was me having to stab her in the stomach. Wasn't keen on doing that again when neither of us seemed to be healing properly right now. We couldn't afford more injuries.

  The thought took my attention to Diego's still bleeding eye. That would be the result of his animal blood diet, I presumed. Rapid healing was a subscription that took human plasma as currency. He tilted his head at me and gave a slight smirk and wave. The dick.

  "Now would be a great time for you to attack, y'know!" I yelled, trying to taunt despite my trembling voice. "These two can't defend themselves and I-I'm preoccupied. Go on!"

  "Fix your mess first." Diego grinned the same smug way my mum used to.

  That pissed me off bad.

  Tori woke up and left again in the span of three seconds. The timing was becoming shorter and shorter. I couldn't afford to think about what would happen if it cut right down to under a second. I scrambled over to Victoria the second she slumped and lifted her shirt, hovering my nails just above her skin in the same position I had the first time we'd done this.

  I hesitated a moment too long.

  She instinctively ripped my hand away and kicked me off of her, probably assuming I was one of the others. I grunted but shook it off and came back. I gripped her shoulders tightly to stop her squirming.

  "Let me hurt you! You know I have to!"

  "Sorry! Sorry!" She panted. "I–"

  Out again.

  Apple inched a step closer, only for Diego to grab her by the wrist. She looked at him in disbelief. He didn't say a word, his expression doing it for him. She bared her fangs back.

  By the time I finally sucked it up and sliced my nails across Victoria's stomach, Apple had taken off. And in the split second between Victoria waking back up and Apple nearing close, Victoria snarled and concentrated on something that she truly had no clue would work or not.

  "Don't you dare move!"

  The moment the words left Vic's mouth, Apple stilled so suddenly that she fell to the ground motionless. Silent. All she could do was stare in shock and anger, growling with rage.

  Diego stood up straight. His eyes shot wide.

  I looked down to Vic and then back to Apple.

  Had she just..?

  "Apple. Get up." Diego warned.

  Apple began to hyperventilate. Her fingers wouldn't twitch. Her legs wouldn't bend. She was barely able to make her lungs and eyes move.

  "Bitch." Victoria spat weakly.

  Apple winced.

  Diego's expression fell in a flash of panic. He looked over to us.

  I held his gaze with just as much bewilderment while I wiped Victoria's blood from my hand onto my shirt.

  "Hey, take Tori inside." Vic tugged at my sleeve, barely ignoring the blood seeping from her stomach. "Don't let her come back out here until it's all over."

  "What?" My voice shook.

  "I can hold them." Her expression hardened firmly. "Take Tori back into the crew rooms, look for anything that could help. Flares, communication, even lights. Blood especially. Check the kitchen fridges for meat."

  "You're insane!" I shook my head. "You can't seriously expect yourself to–"

  "ZACH, GO!"

  I felt the compulsion wash over my every bone from the inside out. My thoughts cleared of everything except the task she'd given. My limbs felt fuzzy.

  I shook it off once more and ran back to Tori no matter how much I didn't want to. I couldn't exactly refuse.

  "Please don't... ever use that on me again." I murmured as I scooped Tori's unconscious form up in my arms and ran off.

  "I'm sorry." Victoria sighed. Exhaustion doubled now she'd used the ability twice. She knew she didn't have the energy to lose anymore.

  "Tsk." Diego clenched his fists. "I'm still free. You could make me scrub the decking. Or jump right off the edge. Why haven't you?"

  "We both know I'd faint if I did it again." Victoria looked up to the stars, too tired and wounded to bother moving. "I didn't explicitly say how long I wanted each compulsion to last, so if I'm unconscious they'll completely wear off."

  "Clever girl." Diego crossed his arms. "Where'd you learn that?"

  "I didn't learn it." She placed a hand over her chest. "Autumn must've. I have some of her memories, remember? At least vaguely."

  No response.

  "So why aren't you fighting, huh?" Victoria managed to prop herself up on her elbows and meet his gaze. She smirked slightly. "Talkin' a lot of shit."

  "I'm quite fine where I am." Diego looked down to Apple.

  Apple teared up in frustration, completely paralysed.

  "Just come attack me. I'll have to compel you to stop, then I'll pass out and Apple will be totally free again." Victoria shrugged.

  "And that little compulsion could be to blow my own head off or for me to kill her." Diego shot back.

  "Aw, you're giving me ideas." Vic grinned. "I would so love to see her taken out the way she killed Zach, y'know. Karma and all that. I could do that now and you wouldn't be able to stop me.

  "So why don't you?" Diego tilted his head.

  "..." Victoria's expression darkened.

  "You have the power to make either of us do anything you say, and you're not going to?" Diego smiled, sitting down and stretching out his left leg. "You are such an interesting little case. You're the one who talks shit."

  "If I pass out I could die from my injuries." Victoria muttered. "And then... I'd probably hop into Zach the way I did with Autumn."

  "It's so sweet you'd rather keep us alive and myself free to move than risk accidentally killing him."

  "No shit." Victoria ran a hand through her hair. "If I have to sit here and talk with you for the next few hours I couldn't care less, if it keeps Zach alive. Forgive me for finding it weird you're suddenly chilling out."

  Apple, seething silently with rage at Diego's utter lack of care for her wellbeing, shot a glance to Victoria. She caught it, narrowing her eyes. Apple flickered her eyes between Victoria and Diego's leg rapidly, trying to convey her message. Victoria raised a brow.

  Was she trying to help her?

  "Y'know you really should treat Apple a little better if you're supposed to be her sobriety coach." She spoke to buy time. "I don't see any reason why she should like you, or listen to a word you say."

  Apple grimaced, feeling ignored for the hundredth time.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  "You tell her to sit and stay like a dog, and you send her out to attack at your will because you know she's an uncontrollable killer the second she tastes blood. She's a grown woman. If you were any good at your job she wouldn't have relapsed and maybe could be living a normal life by now." Victoria continued, trying to drive a wedge. "She should be graduating college, hanging out with friends at the weekends, driving home after dates all giddy or maybe all disgusted. What does she do instead? You forced her into a fake job she hates so that you could get closer to your obsession with a dead teenager."

  "Zach is not an obsession, he is a mistake that I made." Diego muttered under his breath, looking away coldly. "A mistake that goes out and kills people, threatening our kind's safety."

  "And yet you never did anything about him." Victoria scoffed. She looked back to Apple who was staring at the ground in shame. "Poor Apple had to clean up behind the scenes but still you never did anything. Again, you used her as your pawn while you sat back and observed beer in hand. You lazy fucking hog."

  "M-My..." Apple coughed between words, finally feeling the compulsion begin to wear off enough for her mouth to move. "My name isn't..."

  "Your name isn't even Apple?!" Victoria's jaw fell. She glared at Diego. "You changed her name, too?!"

  Diego's eyes rolled. "It's just an alias for her own safety–"

  "It's Alicia." Apple growled at him. "M-My name is Alicia and you know it."

  "Do you see everyone as test subjects or something? Not even as people?" Victoria shook her head. "I fucking hate her but even I'm mad at you for that."

  "He called me Apple b-because he said I'm a sin." The girl growled, eyes locked onto the man with years of pent up disgust. "I'm gluttony. Greed. I can never stop once I've had a taste of something. Blood, drugs, alcohol."

  "You're so dramatic." Diego huffed, fiddling with the fabric covering his leg as if it was causing him discomfort. "I said it as a joke when we met."

  "You haven't called me Alicia since you were a cop."

  "It stuck. So what? It's a cute name, not an insult."

  Victoria glanced to Apple again, and with her eyes gestured to Diego's leg once more.

  Apple sighed. What was the point of keeping his secrets anyway? He clearly didn't care about her.

  "It's fake." She mouthed so he wouldn't hear. "All messed up and gross."

  Victoria's eyes widened slightly. She looked back to the man again, the way he struggled to find a comfortable position to sit against the cold metal. She nodded firmly.

  That could be helpful.

  "No, no, no! Don't touch those!" I groaned, dragging Tori away from yet another set of exposed wires. "Hands to yourself."

  The girl grumbled incoherently and staggered to another drawer unit to tame her curiosity. I chose to ignore her, focusing my attention back on the cabinets before me. My night vision was flickering on and off. I didn't have the energy to maintain it anymore.

  Somewhere amidst the fight I'd lost the flashlight Victoria had gotten me. Now I could feel a second blackout on its way. Twice in one night, was that even possible? The previous hadn't been typical, to be fair. I wasn't supposed to remember them like I did earlier. Nothing was working like normal. I was starting to think we hadn't simply been drugged for a few measly hours or just so happened to wake up after the sun had set.

  Hunger didn't feel normal either – it was as if I was... thirsty? Like a human?

  I couldn't feel the incessant screaming in the back of my mind yelling at me to slaughter the nearest moving creature. My stomach ached and felt empty, but I didn't feel like I was slowly dying. My fangs didn't hurt much. I could think rationally instead of being reduced to animalistic tendencies. This wasn't normal. It wasn't what Silverleaf did to vampires.

  At least, not what it would do when pollen is breathed in, or leaves are touched.

  We'd been injected with some sort of liquid containing a form of Silverleaf, to my knowledge. It could've had any number of chemicals in it. Anything could be in our bloodstreams.

  "We might've been kidnapped days ago." I whispered to Tori. "Weeks. Months."

  She turned her head to me, tilting it slightly in a cue I'd learned indicated Victoria was listening from the other side.

  "We could've been in comas." I stood up sharply. "Did your hair grow much? I don't think mine's noticeably longer."

  Tori blinked.

  I stepped closer to study her hair. I hadn't thought to pay any attention to our appearances at all when I'd had the flashlight. Now I could see Tori's 'recently trimmed' pixie cut was down past her ears. Her bangs fell over her blank eyes. It wasn't an obscene difference, but it was clearly at least a week's worth of growth considering the speed vampiric hair cells regenerate.

  "And your main body's hair finished turning blonde when we woke up." I facepalmed hard. "I-I didn't even think to question how it went from just a few chunks to your entire scalp overnight."

  Tori looked away, disinterested. She found an empty water bottle to scrunch.

  "Okay. Okay, there's a helicopter nearby. If we've been gone awhile, it's definitely out for us. Right?"

  No response as always.

  "Flares. Communication. Got it." I shook my head and continued my frantic search of the control room.

  Tori wandered out of the control room while I had my back turned.

  "Ugh, they slashed everything! See that? Claw marks on the circuiting!" I threw my hands in the air. "Maybe there's a backup generator? ... No, they would've broken that too!"

  The girl staggered down the hallway on withering limbs that hardly held her weight anymore. Every motion caused a creak or a crack somewhere in her muscles. Attracted solely by a faint scent, she found herself in a kitchen storage room of sorts. It had been trashed. Broken crates, scraps of wood and furniture, fridge doors bent inwards or crushed. Almost purposefully.

  "Tori?" I called out, looking around at her absence. Another grunt left my throat as I took off after her. "Seriously?!"

  She shot me a firm look and pointed to one of the fridges.

  I nodded hesitantly and ripped the doors off of the first one, rummaging through the contents.

  Hospital-grade bags of blood in different types, all full and unopened. Packets of assorted animal organs and meat, organised by species. I nearly collapsed from the suffocating scent alone. What little hope the sight gave me was immediately ripped away once more when I looked closer and picked a bag up for myself.

  The power had only been cut for an hour or so, but the fridge had been off for long enough for everything to have spoiled. The blood had floating clumps inside and had fallen to room temperature. The meat had all began to suffer from condensation, water bubbles both inside and outside the packaging. All of it, wasting by the second.

  "NO!"

  I ripped the bag open and tilted my head up, forcing it down my throat.

  A second later it came back up, violently spilling all over the floor and my clothes.

  I choked for dear life, hands to my neck as I fought for air. My knees took me down to the ground. Tori flinched, terrified. After a moment she blinked back to life and awareness, placing a hand on my shoulder as Victoria watched through her eyes.

  My tongue burned. My gums fizzled. My throat began to close up.

  "I-It's ours!" I tried to tell her, retching again and contorting in agony from the inside out. "Or theirs!"

  The toxicity of the vampire blood made me feel anaphylactic. I couldn't breathe.

  Had it been a trick? Planted bait? Or had they taken blood from us and decided to store it in the same fridge as food to save space?

  ...

  Were they all vampire blood?

  The second I had the strength to claw my way to the fridge again I grabbed the next bag and tried to chug it down all the same. Then vomited violently once more.

  The rational part of my brain yelled at me not to risk it, to eat the spoiling meat instead and ignore the possibility of there being real human blood in the fridge. But the hunger was driving me to insanity now I'd seen it with my own eyes. I'd gone an unknown amount of time without blood, all my stomach cared for was the promise of a single drop amidst the poison.

  Tori knelt beside me and tried to hold me by the shoulders, face stricken with worry. I wiped my bleeding mouth, panting like a wild animal, and grabbed another bag.

  There had to be human blood in one of them. Surely.

  It was probably one of Diego's sick tests. He loved tormenting me.

  Just... a few more bags...

  Now I was standing on carpet.

  "What?" I spun around.

  In a hallway.

  "What the hell?" The blood on my shirt had dried. "Tori?!"

  She grabbed my arm with a huff and began to march with me. I looked around frantically.

  "... Please tell me I didn't just–"

  Boiler room.

  Could tell by the sheer number of pipes in every direction and the stench of fumes.

  I rubbed my eyes and tried to get my bearings.

  "Damn it! Now is not the time for–"

  The outside staircase.

  I nearly slipped on the damp metal. Grabbed the railing tightly.

  "Victoria?!" I cried, not seeing her anywhere. "I'm slipping!"

  I looked up to the dark sky. The clouds had begun to clear, revealing shimmering stars and three small moving lights. One green, one red, one white. The dull thudding of the blades was almost lost on me compared to the thrashing of the waves hitting the sides of the boat.

  "Do something!" I yelled at the vehicle. "Can't you see us? Fuck!!"

  I tried waving my hands above me. Screaming at it. Jumping.

  Nothing.

  "USELESS PIECE OF–"

  "Shit–!" Victoria hissed as my claws slid over her cheek.

  I backed up immediately, finding myself in the middle of a fight with the others back on the deck. I didn't get a second to react before Vic threw me across the floor to take a hit from Apple for me.

  The back of my head hit a steel pole, my breath catching in shock. I climbed up to my feet, looking around like a maniac.

  "What did I miss?" I called out, running back into the fight.

  "What?" Victoria ripped a piece of scrap off of the nearest wall and hurled it at Diego, who yelped out of the way just in time. "What are you talking about?!"

  "I wasn't here!" I pounced at Apple, gripping her wrists in my claws and struggling to restrain her. "How is she moving? Didn't you compel her?"

  "It wore off." Victoria slid away from an attack from Diego and came up behind me. "What do you mean you weren't–"

  She paused.

  "Oh my god, I need you do to it again." She grabbed my shoulders tightly, expression desperate. "Whatever made you blackout, do it again! Now!"

  "I-I don't know how! Why?"

  Apple kicked me back and scurried out from under me. I raced after her.

  "I was wondering why you'd gone all crazy." Victoria smirked.

  "I'm not following!" I grunted. "Did I... fight better or something?"

  "You tell me, mate." Diego snarled behind me, tossing me across the deck.

  I glanced over my shoulder at him, trying to ignore the aching pain all over.

  He could barely stand. His arms were slashed and torn, claws coated in blood, a deep bite wound decorated the side of his neck, progressively turning the surrounding veins a dark purple in response to the acidic venom. Half of his face was bloody and bruised, and his left eye was still sliced in the middle. Blood actively seeped from every single cut he endured. Even his glasses had shattered.

  "I did that?!" I winced.

  "Don't give yourself any credit." He growled lowly as he stalked closer, strained step by strained step. "I'm the one who gave you any ability to."

  Realising he'd take a second to reach me and I'd need a second to get up anyway, I surveyed the scene once more. Someone was missing.

  "Where's Tori?" My voice cracked.

  "She's inside somewhere!" Victoria dropped to the floor as Apple reached to claw her face out again. "She got scared and ran off."

  "That's all you ever do, isn't it." Diego seethed. "Scare her. Traumatise her. Show her the parasite in you that killed her."

  I glanced down to his leg. The fabric of his pant leg was torn and fraying. I couldn't completely make out what it was exposing from the darkness, but it didn't look like normal flesh.

  "She runs away when you remind her of what you did to her." Diego continued, wrapping a hand around my throat. "She thinks you'll do it again."

  Across the open area, Apple tugged Victoria by her hair and kneed her in the face. Victoria hissed and hurled her to the ground. Apple took her down with her.

  "I thought you were going to help me!" Victoria barked at Apple between attacks. "You – Ugh! – You hate Diego as much as I do!"

  "As if you'd let me live even if I did." Apple gritted her fangs. "I know the only way I'm getting off this stupid ship is with him dragging me back on land. I wouldn't spare me if I were you anyway."

  "And what do you think will happen when he does? You'll go back to work the next day? There's a helicopter watching all of us!" Victoria scoffed.

  "I don't care anymore." Burning tears streamed down Apple's cheeks. "I'm going to die no matter what I do. No matter where I go. They'll chain me up and stick needles into me again. For once I want to be the one to decide how it happens."

  I cried out as Diego stomped on my chest with his good leg. Several loud cracks followed from inside. He then stabbed his claws into the flesh of my neck and I nearly blacked out again from the sheer pain.

  "Come on, Zach. What are you expecting the police will do with you once they get here, hm?" He whispered, eye twitching in rage. "You think they'll let you go?"

  I scratched at his arms with all the strength I could muster, but his grip refused to loosen. My breath caught as he lifted me up, my shoes barely touching the ground.

  "No. You'll be taken to the same place we will be." Diego spat. "You'll get to see exactly how the government keeps our kind controlled. Exactly what I fought to protect you from."

  In the corner of my eye I saw Victoria's head snap to my direction, and her eyes widen with simmering rage. Apple reached for her again, only to be punched sharply in the side of her face before Vic took off towards me.

  "You don't... get to say you protected me at all." I flashed my fangs. "Stop lying to yourself."

  "When we get there, they'll take the girls and you'll never see them again." He continued. "You think I'm bad with the Dahlia stuff? They're the ones who told me to start hunting her down in the first place. When they see your little girlfriend's a mimic of her, they will never let her go."

  "Stop it." I cried.

  "Death would be a mercy for her. Both of her. If I were you I'd kill her now before she ever has to experience life in those cells."

  "Shut up!"

  "You thought it was weird how many vampires you were noticing around the city? Did you brush it off without much thought? We're in the outer corner of the world with one of the lowest population ratios and the blazing hot sun, why would vampires ever want to live here?"

  I exchanged a look with Victoria who was trying to get to me, but Apple kept taking her down again.

  "Y'know, out in the Aussie desert, there's nothing for you. You could walk the length of New York before finding a single community. There's no deer for you to hunt, no forest campsites for you to source blood from, just blistering daylight and the red dirt. So remote that there's black sites out there belonging to other countries' governments." With his free hand Diego stabbed his claws into my chest, silencing my immediate scream. "What better place for the militaries of the world to study the most dangerous species on Earth, surrounded by their own weaknesses?"

  He suddenly froze as a roar came from behind him. A quarter of a moment later, Victoria grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed him face down onto the metal of the deck.

  I fell to my knees and gasped for air, watching the blood run down my neck and my torso from the puncture wounds. At the other end of the deck lay Apple, bleeding out and unconscious. Before me, Victoria was wrestling Diego like a tumbleweed, not giving him a second to retaliate. She growled and barked and nipped, nothing more than a feral carnivore. Through the darkness I could see the slight glow of her scarlet irises. She'd lost it.

  I couldn't be prouder.

  Diego finally managed to shove her off. On the verge of tears, he began to claw away pathetically.

  Victoria's gaze fell on his leg.

  She dug her nails into the fabric below his knee and tore it clean off.

  My jaw nearly fell off a second time once I realised what exactly I was looking at. What she'd exposed.

  That didn't look like a normal prosthetic...

  It looked as if his flesh had tried to rebuild itself around all of the metal.