Page 15 of The First Year

Roxy

The past few days felt like years. Decades. By the time I said goodbye to Evander at the door, I was so tired I could barely hold my head up. Getting lost—twice—and being threatened by the maybe-fox guy was almost more than I could survive. And I felt like shit. Had since the battle, although my chaotic life changes had been a fairly encompassing distraction.

But with the door closed behind my rescuer, all alone in this small, spartan room, there was nothing to protect me from the memories that threatened to destroy me.

My bathroom wasn’t any better than the bedroom. It had all the necessities, but nothing more. One inadequate towel and washcloth, a bottle of shampoo/conditioner guaranteed to leave my hair feeling gummy, a bar of generic unscented soap, toilet paper…not even a hair dryer.

I opened my bags and searched through them, but whoever had packed for me at Urban Academy had probably been rushed—they missed a whole lot of things. For now, I’d have to towel dry my hair as best I could.

Maybe there was a way I could earn money to replace some of them or send a message asking my roommate to forward my missing items? We weren’t close friends, but we weren’t enemies either, so she might be willing to do it.

Having assessed the situation and determined that I had none of my personal toiletries or other such items, I stepped into the shower stall, barely large enough to raise my arms to shampoo my hair without bumping my elbows on the tile. The water was…adequate as well. Whoever put this place together must have been given minimum requirements and instructions not to exceed them.

But a shower in the quiet of my private room was better than the quick washup after the battle that had been mostly about scrubbing me down in search of wounds and puncture marks. The spray might be sparse, but with enough scrubbing, I finally felt clean again. And the water was hot, so that was good.

After rubbing my hair as dry as possible, I patted my skin and was way too happy to find a bottle of generic skin lotion and a new deodorant in the cabinet over the sink. Not a fussy girly girl, I could get by as long as I was clean, smelled decent, and my skin wasn’t dry. Wearing my favorite knee-length T-shirt and a pair of panties, I crawled between the sheets and fluffed up the single flat pillow I’d been provided with.

Clicking off the lamp beside the bed, I curled up in the fetal position, praying to the Goddess for a single night of good sleep. I’d need it if I was going to face my first day of classes here at Marked Blood. The students all called it that, apparently, and it was the perfect name for it. But there was nothing more I could do about it tonight, so I closed my eyes and breathed in through my nose to a count of seven, held it in for seven, and exhaled through my mouth for a count of seven. We did that in a mindfulness class at Urban Academy, and at the time, I’d thought it was a waste, but mentally and physically exhausted, with every one of my muscles in knots, I had to try something.

At first, it hurt even to try to inhale that deeply, but after a few minutes, my lungs seemed to expand better and my shoulders eased somewhat. My calves still ached—something that always happened when I overdid—and I was shivering with a chill, but I still managed to fall asleep eventually.

He was gripping me, pinning me against his body, his claws digging into my back. Hisses and snarls took the place of words in this lost creature’s vocabulary. He reeked of rotting meat and old, dried blood, and the fangs he bared were not the gleaming white of a movie vampire.

They were yellowed and broken, and when they sank into my flesh, they spilled blood down my chest in a flow that had two of his friends coming to get their share. Their tongues lolled out, their eyes glassy and dead, and I hung there between them, sure I’d be dead any minute.

I didn’t volunteer for the service; it was never my agreement.

But no choice was proffered. My guardian gave me over. Maybe she got money for me. But no matter when I’d soon either be dead or undead. I had struggled all I could, and now I was bleeding out.

That mean dead, right? Because undead was so much worse. These things that were feeding off me were the lowest kind of vampires, enslaved shells of the kind that gave them their orders. We’d heard of them at the academy but thought they’d been beaten back, at least for a while.

As these thoughts streamed through my dying brain, blackness and silence took over.

I shot straight up in bed, gasping and choking, hand clamping on my throat, on the puncture wounds. Tears streamed down my cheeks, and my sobs were so loud I was amazed nobody came in to see what was wrong. Were the walls so thick here? I scrambled to the door and grasped the handle. It didn’t move.

I was locked in. It was true. Me and my misery, alone together.

How would I ever survive this?

Chapter Twelve

Roxy

I woke on the cold tile floor in front of a locked door. What door it was, my fuzzy exhausted brain didn’t know, but after lying there for a few minutes, it came back to me. Marked Blood Academy, the prison I’d been sent to because I’d been injured in battle.

Countries often treated their veterans poorly, but I’d never heard of one that locked them up for an unspecified time of incarceration because of it. Of course the shifter council was not a country, and they did not run the packs under them in a democratic fashion. In theory, each pack made their own rules, but if the council didn’t like them, or if they wanted something, like fang fodder, they demanded people as tribute.

Once I’d gotten into the war, I appreciated that it must be fought, but somehow didn’t appreciate it being fought by me. I’d had less than a week of training because my superior officer insisted that the defense classes that had been part of the Urban Academy’s curriculum should be sufficient. And thank the Goddess I’d had that much because without it, I’d have died sooner. Not that I died. But would I still be likely to?

Nobody seemed to have any idea what was going to happen with me. When I’d asked, I got shrugs and the occasional, “We’ll have to wait and see.” Or similar comments. And when I tried to find out about other people’s situations, symptoms, survival rate, I got silence. But, here at Marked Blood, there were hundreds or maybe more of those who did not die right away or, presumably, turn into vampires, and most of those I had encountered the day before appeared to be in good health.

Unless they had a basement for those who did turn? I’d been told execution was the solution, but who knew for sure if that was accurate or if they just locked them up in coffins in a dark hole under this creepy school?

The dark timbre of the gong I’d heard the day before resounded, followed by a series of messages about the coming day and schedule changes and other things that didn’t mean much to me as I pushed to my feet, moaning at the stiffness a night on a cold floor could bring. Considering how poorly I’d been sleeping, it was amazing I’d managed it in such an awkward position and without even so much as a blanket. Maybe the fever that was spiking at night had helped with that. But listening to the announcements over the intercom hidden somewhere in this room, my weird sleeping arrangements were not too important.

Apparently lunch was not going to be tacos, and the afternoon shifts were canceled. At least, that was how I interpreted the garbled drive-thru-style voices. If there was something critical on there, I’d probably miss it. Maybe translating the mechanical noises emanating from the speaker was an acquired skill.

Either way, I needed to get ready for the day, and hopefully if there were any changes in my schedule, someone would tell me. In a normal world, I’d get a text or a DM, but not at Marked Blood.

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