Chapter 61: 60: You Bet Your Life

I leapt to my feet and paced the floor, keeping my eyes away from the blood spots on the carpet. The thought that this creep had been watching me made it all worse, somehow.

“How long has this been going on?” I demanded, “Why have you turned me? What do you want?”

I was still struggling to understand what had happened. I needed information, lots of it. Facts to make sense of the sudden madness my life had descended into.

I was half convinced that, like the Tori Amos song, ‘This is not, this, this, this is not really ha-ppe-ning…’

You bet your life it is…

Kane nodded and deigned to explain.

“We noticed you as soon as you hacked into Section 13, so I’ve been monitoring you for six months. I keep an eye out for talent of all varieties, and you have quite the knack for hacking.”

I mean, that was true and everything, but it explained little. What would some dusty old vampire want with a hacker? Shouldn’t he have been hanging out in some crumbling eastern European castle or some-such?

“Why? What the hell do you want from me?”

“I want you to work for me.Or with me, if you’d prefer to phrase it that way.”

“Why would I do that?”

“For your own safety, for one thing. You’re a vampire now. Have you any idea how many out there would like to see you destroyed?”

“I don’t believe this,” I muttered.

“I didn’t ask for this! Turn me back!”

Kane looked bemused.

“Impossible. You died, and I brought you back. Once that happens, there’s no power that can reverse it.”

Kane had me in a perfect trap. I was out of my depth, utterly dependent on the monster that had turned me against my will. He held all the cards. Even if I escaped, I knew nothing about being a vampire, and everything about who was hunting creatures like me.

“It’s not like you have a choice. You’re a vampire now, and you know that means you’ll be hunted. But you are looking at this the wrong way round, Alice. Being a vampire is a gift. You’ll be faster, stronger and better than you were when you were a human. You’ll live decades, maybe centuries longer. You’ll be able to have whatever you want, whenever you want it. And all I ask in return is that you apply the skills you have in service to my house.”

I gawped at Kane.

His audacity was unbelievable.

He’d abducted me, turned me into a vampire and now he was calmly giving me a pitch why I should have felt grateful instead of furious.

“You’re joking, right?” I said.

There was nothing funny about any of this.

Despite that, I laughed out loud. Once I started laughing, I couldn’t stop. It soon turned into hysterical sobs that caught in my throat and made my shoulders judder.

Kane watched me, his fingertips tapping together like a steeple in front of his face. He was unperturbed by my emotional display.

He waited until the sobbing laughter had receded and I was emitting the occasional “Ha” from the back of my throat before he spoke again.

“This is a common reaction to the news, Alice, although you’re taking it better than some.”

He tilted his head to one side as though I was a kitten and he was waiting for me to play with him.

This isn’t a joke, Alice! I mentally screamed at myself. Pull yourself together! Think!

The laughter had left me feeling drained and weak, and the blood spots still glared at me from the beige carpet.

My brain span, attempting to make sense of this ridiculous situation.

I needed to pay attention. He was stronger than me, but I couldn’t let him overpower me mentally, too.

“How did you do it?”

“Turn you?” His fingers stopped tapping, and he dropped them to his lap, smiling at me. “I drained you of your blood and then fed you my vampire blood. It was as simple as that.”

I closed my eyes and shook my head to block out the images, but there they were. I’d watched enough vampire shows and movies to know how this worked.

I raised a hand to my neck. I couldn’t feel any puncture wounds.

“There are no marks, if that’s what you’re looking for,” says Kane. “The blood you drank healed the wounds. Drinking blood will heal any injuries, amongst the other many benefits of being turned. This is a gift, Alice. You’re immortal, as long as you keep feeding.”

“Or get a wooden stake through the heart?”

He nodded 

“Very good. Of course, decapitation is just as effective. We haven’t yet mastered reattaching the spinal column after the head has been removed.”

He smiled at his own dry ‘joke’.

The urge to laugh welled up inside my chest again.

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“Oh, and before you ask, there are no wooden stakes in this room.”

He gestured around the room with his hands palms out.

For the first time since I awoke, I glanced around the room. Bookshelves crammed with books line the walls. Kane sat on an armchair in the corner. Along one wall were three wall-to-ceiling windows, with thick red curtains drawn across them. There was a large wooden desk at the far end of the room.

“Why me?”

“Because of your skills, Alice. This is what I do. I recruit the best and the brightest and bring them to our side. In return for their services and servitude, I give them eternal life. Amongst other benefits. And your brain is dazzling. I can’t wait to see how it improves once you become a full vampire.”

“A full vampire? So, what am I now, part-vampire?”

“Not quite. You need to drain a human completely to reach your full potential. You’ll be faster, stronger, sharper than you ever imagined possible.”

That explained my brain’s initial sluggishness then. I needed to feed on human blood. I pictured myself on my knees licking the blood from the carpet, and the way it felt as it slipped down my throat, and I felt nauseous.

“I have to kill someone?”

“You have to feed on them, yes,” Kane nodded. “You’ll get used to it. It’s no different from a human eating a pig or a cow.”

“I’m a vegetarian,” I said.

I hadn’t meant to make a joke, but Kane snorted a laugh, nonetheless.

“We’ll soon see about that,” he chuckled, wiping an unexpected laughter-tear from his right eye.

“I can’t,” I said, shaking my head. “I won’t. It’s wrong. I’m not going to kill other people just to stay alive.”

“Believe me, your body will give you no choice.”

I swore at him.

Kane chuckled again, this time at my impotence. He knew there was nothing I could do except spit insults at him.

He waved my words away, then leaned forward with a keen expression.

“Let me show you something else.”

He waved a hand towards the desk and the top opened to reveal a huge computer monitor which sprang into life, revealing four different screens within the one larger one. Each screen showed data moving at a rapid pace, maps spinning in and out of view, news items flashing up at a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it pace.

“Many of our kind...”

“I am not your kind!”

Kane ignored me.

“Many of our kind are so old. Stuck in the past, used to the old ways. But not me. I see the future Alice, and the future is here, now. It’s time for a change. And bright young things like yourself will be at the forefront of that change. What we can achieve together, if we embrace a new future and a fresh way of doing things, is revolutionary.”

I heard something new in Kane’s voice. A sense of pride. His demeanour had changed from arrogant know-it-all who was in control of everything to something almost… geeky. He wanted to show me all of this because he wanted, maybe needed, someone to appreciate what he had achieved.

It was a disconcerting switch, but it showed me that Kane, like everyone, had vulnerabilities.

Despite myself, I stared at the screen. I knew the information was moving far faster than I should be able to catch, and yet bits of it registered.

“You’re tracking Section 13,” I said. “This is from their server. You’re using your tech to stay one step ahead of theirs. To stay ahead of their attempts to hunt and kill you.”

Everything clicked into place in my head.

Kane had turned me to force me to work with him, because if I wanted to stay alive - or undead - then I’d have no choice. It made sense. The only way he and his kind could stay one step ahead of Section 13 was to monitor their movements. Kane was a vampire tech-bro, a long way from musty castles and the old-fashioned vampire royalty cliches I was used to seeing. He’d moved with the times, but needed fresh minds to keep up with technological progress.

He needed expert hackers. Like me.

Kane looked bemused, but didn’t confirm or deny my assertion. I guessed there was more to it, but whatever it was, Kane was done showing off his toys for the time being.

Damn his smugness. Damn him for what he’d done to me. I thought about my sunny yellow bedroom, Tilly curled up on top of my duvet, my dad, and my friends. I slipped my trainer from my foot and threw it at the monitor, but it bounced off.

“I won’t do it. I won’t help you.”

Kane’s eyes flashed, and his lips pulled back into a brief snarl. Underneath his calm, arrogant exterior, I saw something else. For a brief second, his mask slipped, and I got a glimpse of the true creature underneath.

Then he recovered his composure as quickly as it had dropped and turned to the door.

“You may not survive long enough to regret this, Alice.”

There was something more than anger in his voice. There was genuine disappointment that I hadn’t been fascinated by his achievements.

I tried to get to the door before he closed it, but I was too slow and the room was spinning again.

Oh, you bet your life…

The room spun as the drugged blood Kane had fed me hit my system, dropping me to the floor.

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