Amelia Atwater-Rhodes - In the Forests of the Night

"It is not my world!" I shouted. I did not want to belong to this fierce world of hunters who fed on the blood of innocents.

"Yes, it is, Risika, "Ather insisted.

" I won't let it be."

"You have no choice, child."

"You're evil. I won't kill because you tell me to — "

"Then kill because it is your right." She snapped each word off, impatient with my refusal. "You are no longer human, Risika. Humans are your prey. You have never felt sorrow for the chickens you killed so that they could grace your plate. The animals you raised so that they could be killed. The creatures you put in pens so that you could own them. Why should you feel differently toward your meal now? "

She put it in a way I could not disagree with. "But you can't just kill humans. It's — "

"Evil?" Ather finished for me. "The world is evil, Risika. Wolves hunt the stragglers in a group of deer. Vultures devour the fallen. Hyenas destroy the weak. Humans kill that which they fear. Survive and be strong, or die, cornered by your prey, trembling because the night is dark."

I LEAVE THE COFFEE SHOP and return to my home before the sun rises too high for comfort.

I go to bed, fall into a deep sleep, and awaken that evening in a foul mood.

I allow myself to hide in fear. Even as I say I will not let Aubrey rule my life, I let him keep me from the one thing in this world that can still bring me joy: Tora, my tiger. My beautiful, pure-minded tiger, who was once free and is now caged.

Aubrey has stolen so much from me. I have sworn to avenge the lives he has taken, but every time I have been too much a coward to challenge him.

My mood is as dark as Aubrey's eyes, black without end, and I want to fight back. So I deliberately hunt in Aubrey's land—the dying heart of New York City, where the streets are darkened with shadows cast by the invisible world.

I see another of my kind, a young fledgling, in one of the alleys. She senses my strength and cowers, blinking away like a candle flame in the night.

She is weak and not a threat to Aubrey's claim on this dark corner of the city, so he tolerates her presence. Perhaps he shows off occasionally, simply to keep her afraid. But he knows she will never challenge him. I am Aubrey's own blood sister, created by the same dark mother. If he tolerates me I could be as much a threat to his position as a mongoose in a cobra's nest—not because I am stronger, which I am not, but because it will appear to others of our kind that he fears me, and his pride is too strong to allow that.

I hunt and leave my prey dying in the street. Perhaps it is foolish to bait Aubrey this way, but I have lived too long beneath his shadow and refuse to cower any longer. Aubrey himself does not challenge me as I feed, and my suspicions rise. Where is he, I wonder, that he does not know I am here? Or is it simply that he does not care? Is he that sure of his claim?

I return to my home in a dark mood, but as I enter my room my thoughts turn to ice.

I can sense the aura of one of my kind, one of my kin, and I recognize it very well. Aubrey. Aubrey with black hair and black eyes, Aubrey who saw the blood falling from my hand and smiled, Aubrey who laughed when he killed my brother.

Aubrey is the only vampire I know who prefers using a knife to using his mind, teeth, or hands. I touch the scar I bear on my left shoulder, the scar given to me only a few days after I died, created by the same blade that took my brother's life. The scar that I swore, on the day it was dealt, to avenge, along with my brother's death.

AFTER THE DAY when I lost my mortal soul, I never went back to my old home. I understood I no longer belonged there. I hated to think what my papa was going through, but I hated even more the idea of his learning what I had become. I wanted him to believe me dead, because it was better for him to think I had simply disappeared than for him to know he had lost his daughter to a demon.

I fed on one of the true monsters—one of the many "witch hunters" who interrogated and jailed the accused, seeking guilt where there was none.

How humans can do such things to their fellows is beyond me. They torture, maim and kill their own kind, saying it is God's will.

I no longer try to understand the ways of humanity. Of course, maybe I'm being hypocritical. My kind is often just as cruel to our own. We are simply more direct. We need no one else to blame our violence on. If I kill Aubrey, I will do so because I hate him, not because he is evil, or because he kills, or for any other moral reason. I will do so because I wish to do so, or I will not do so because I do not wish to.

Or I will not do so because he kills me first, which is the end I expect.

Soon after I was transformed, I brought myself up to the Appalachian Mountains for a time. I had been told about them, yet had never seen them. It was incredible to be in the mountains at night. I was a young woman, alone in the wilderness. Had I been still human, such a thing would never have been allowed. I lay in a treetop, listening to the forest and thinking about nothing at all.

"Ather has been looking for you," someone said to me, and I jumped down to the ground. My prey lay beneath the tree. I had taken him to this place with my mind before I fed, to avoid interruptions.

I walked toward the voice. It was Aubrey.

"Tell Ather I do not want to see her," I said to him.

Aubrey was dressed differently than when I had last seen him, and could no longer be mistaken for a normal human. He had a green viper painted on his left hand, and was wearing a fine gold chain around his neck with a gold cross suspended from it. The cross was strung on the chain upside down.

He held his knife in his left hand. The silver was clean, sharp, and so very deadly, just like his pearl white viper fangs, which were, for the moment, hidden.

"Tell Ather yourself—I'm not your messenger boy," he hissed at me.

"No, you just take Ather's orders, like a good little lapdog."

"No one orders me, child."

"Except Ather," I countered. "She snaps and you jump. Or search, or kill."

"Not always … I just didn't like your brother," Aubrey answered, laughing. Aubrey smiles only when he is in the mood to destroy. I wanted to knock every tooth out of that smile and leave him dying in the dirt.

"You laugh?" I ask. "You murdered my brother, and you laugh about it?"

He laughed again in response. "Who was that carrion on the ground behind you, Risika?" he taunted. "Did you even bother to ask? Who loved him? To whom was he a brother? You stepped over his body without a care. Over the body —no respect, Risika. You would leave his body here without a prayer for the scavengers to eat. Who is the monster now, Risika?"

His words stung, and I instantly tried to defend my actions. "He — "

"He deserved it? " Aubrey finished for me. "Are you a god now, Risika, deciding who is to live and who is to die? The world has teeth and claws, Risika; you are either the predator or the prey. No one deserves to die any more than they deserve to live. The weak die, the strong survive. There is nothing else. Your brother was one of the weak. It is his own fault if he is dead."

I hit him. I had been a young lady, not taught to fight, but in that minute I was simple fury. I hit him hard enough to snap his head to the side and send him stumbling. He righted himself, the last of the humor gone from his face.

"Careful, Risika." His voice was icy, a voice to send shivers through the bravest heart, but I was too angry to notice.

"Do not speak of my brother that way." My voice shook with rage, and my hands clenched and unclenched. "Ever."