3. Awake

Laura - 1963

I struggle to breathe. My lungs seem empty as if they've been dormant for a long time. While I try to inhale as much air as possible, a muscular arm wraps itself around me, its touch frigid against my skin. Its earthy scent mingles with the smell of mildew.

The air seems stale as if no one has thought to open a window in years. What am I doing here? How did I end up here? Who's standing next to me? A whirlwind of questions invades my head, and I can't tell them apart.

As I remember the scene with the hooded men, the blade comes into focus, along with the pain and numbness. My fingers reach for my neck. No cut there, no pain. I struggle to move, but the man's grip holds me like in a vise. This is not how I pictured my first time laying with a man or sharing a bed and cuddling.

My fingers go through the mattress, and I feel something crumbly and hard, granules beneath my nails. I raise my hand and it's filled with dirt, black, dry soil. Never mind the bed or mattress. We are sleeping on the cold earth.

Everything has to be a dream, a nightmare. But how did I get here? And where is this? It's dark, darker than inside my hellish vision. However, my eyes become accustomed to the dark quickly, or I am experiencing something else. Although there is no light, shapes and colors emerge from the blackness.

Gulping, I turn to glimpse the man next to me. I cover my gasp with a hand when I see the one from my dream, the one who attempted to defend me. It can't be! How can he be real?

And how am I able to see everything so clearly? There isn't a window, a light, or anything else to be found. All my attention goes back to the man. I can plainly see his long, black lashes, as well as how they parted precisely at an identical distance from each other. His smooth, white complexion is free of blemishes and wrinkles.

Even though I have so many questions, my need to get out of here supersedes the need for answers. Slowly, I try to crawl from under the man's arm, but it weighs a ton. He spoke in my defense, but I'm still afraid to wake him up.

I dash for the door the minute he retracts his hand with a low snarl. His hand touches mine before I grasp the handle. How quick is this guy? He takes both of my wrists in his grip. I can't get my hands out no matter how hard I try. I'm doomed to fail.

"I'm sorry," he keeps mumbling as I struggle.

The tidal wave of reality washes over me. I look down. My dress is all red as if I bathed in blood. A dry coating covers the skin of my cleavage. But the worst part of all is the sudden realization that this is the moment in which my heart should be racing. No. It's still. Too still for comfort.

"Please allow me to explain." His hands have retreated, and I'm free again, gasping. His stunning sky-blue eyes reveal no animosity or ill-will.

I raise my chin as if I am the one in control of the situation. "Ok. Tell me. Who are you? What happened to me? Where are we?"

"Can I answer each question at a time?" The sad smile barely stretching his lips earns him some sympathy. After I nod, he continues. "You may not believe me at first, but strigois are real."

I furrow my eyebrows, waiting for him to laugh and say something like, "Fooled ya!"

When I see his solemn expression, I burst out laughing, a wild laugh, since I know this can explain everything. "You're a madman! Strigois are just a fairytale made up to scare children to go to sleep earlier or young maidens to stop going out alone at night."

"No, we are real." He yanks my hand and presses my palm over his heart, his skin icy-cold beneath his shirt, just like the fingers around my wrist. His heart is still just like my own.

I will not trust him. "We're not in a movie. Vampires are a made-up concept. And how corny would it be for them to exist in Romania, of all places, anyway?"

"What can I say? Bram Stoker got everything wrong except the country." He shrugs and releases my hand, which I immediately pull back. "And we are strigois, the original version, not the fiction. Older than the movies and this country. True, we hate the sun, but we can endure it if need be."

"Did you bite me? Have you drunk my blood? What else did you do to me?"

"I'm quite a gentleman, just so you know." He scoffs and seems really offended. "I didn't bite you, though I may have licked some of your blood considering it was already there for the taking. As for the last question, no, I only held you in my arms for three nights and three days."

"What?! Do you expect me to believe I've been here three days?"

"And nights." He nods. "When you live so much of your life in the dark, your nights become more important than your days."

"But you didn't transform me into one of you, did you? The stillness I feel in my veins is a mirage."

"A strigoi is a soul trapped in a dead body. An undead can touch souls and hold them inside for long enough to remain there forever." He steps forward, his face almost next to mine. "That's what I did to you. That's why I'm sorry." He grimaces and points toward me. "You are trapped in this dead body because of me. I killed a strigoi to save my love, and you paid the price for me."

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no." I draw back until my back slams into the wall. In a feat of insanity, I shook my head frantically, my fingers clutching my hair.

"I'm sorry," he whispers yet again.

I don't care about his apology. I pound my fist against my chest over and over again. I yell and punch myself until I hear it, a faint but nevertheless much-desired heartbeat. Tick tac. "Can you hear it? It started. I'm not a strigoi."

"Oh, my poor devil." He comes and caresses my face. This time, his touch doesn't make me shudder. "There's no heartbeat. You somehow managed to glamour yourself."