The Eternity Cure Read Free Page A

that he was still alive, that Sarren wasn’t finished with him just yet.
    My hunch had been confirmed when, as I’d explored further, I’d discovered the stiff, decaying bodies of several humans tossed casually in a closet upstairs. They had been drained of blood, their throats cut open instead of bitten, a stained pitcher sitting on a table nearby. Sarren had been feeding Kanin, letting him heal between sessions. Closing the door on the pile of corpses, I’d felt a deep stab of sympathy and fear for my mentor. Kanin had made mistakes, but no one deserved that. I had to rescue him from Sarren’s sick insanity, before he drove my sire completely over the edge.
    Gray light was beginning to filter through the holes in the blanket over the window, and I grew evermore sluggish in response . Hang in there, Kanin, I thought. I’ll find you, I swear. I’m catching up.
    Although, if I was honest with myself, the thought of facing Sarren again, seeing that blank, empty smile, the fevered intensity of his gaze, terrified me more then I cared to admit. I remembered his face through Kanin’s eyes, and though I hadn’t noticed it in the dream, I’d later recalled the film across his left eye, pale and cloudy. He’d been blinded there, and recently. I knew, because the pocketknife that had been jammed into his pupil the last time I saw him…was mine.
    And I knew he hadn’t forgotten me, either.

Chapter 2
    Four months ago, I walked away from Eden.
    Or, more accurately, I was forced out. Much like Adam and Eve getting kicked out of their infamous garden, I had reached Eden with a small group of pilgrims only to be turned away at the gates. Eden was a city under human rule, the only one of its kind, a walled-in paradise with no monsters or demons to prey on its unsuspecting citizens. And I was the monster they feared most. I had no place there.
    Not that I would’ve stayed, regardless. I had a promise to keep. I had to find someone, help him, before his time ran out.
    So, I’d left Eden and the company of the humans I’d protected all the way there. The group I’d left was smaller than the group I’d first joined; the journey had been hard and dangerous, and we’d lost several along the way. But I was glad for the ones who’d made it. They were safe, now. They no longer had to worry about starvation or cold, being chased by raiders or stalked by vampires. They no longer had to fear the rabids, the vicious, mindless creatures that roamed the land after dark, killing anything they came across. No, the humans who’d made it to Eden had found their sanctuary. I was happy for them.
    Though, there was…one…I regretted leaving behind. The sky was clear the following night, spotted with stars, a frozen half-moon lighting the way. The wind and the crunch of my boots in the snow were the only sounds keeping me company. As always, while walking alone through this quiet, empty landscape, my mind drifted to places I wished it wouldn’t.
    I thought of my old life, my human one, when I was simply Allie the street rat, Allie the Fringer, scraping out a meager existence with my old crew, facing starvation and exposure and a million other deaths, just to declare that we were “free.” Until the night we’d tempted fate a bit more than usual and had paid for it with our lives.
    New Covington. That was the name of the vampire city where I was born, grew up and ultimately died. In my seventeen years, I hadn’t known anything else. I’d known nothing of the world beyond the Outer Wall that kept out the rabids, or of the Inner City, where the vampires lived in their dark, gleaming towers, looking down on all of us. My whole existence had consisted of the Fringe, the outer ring of New Covington where the human cattle were kept, herded in by fences and branded with tattoos. The rules were simple: if you were branded—Registered to the masters—you were fed and somewhat taken care of, but the catch was, you were owned. Property. And that