“Well, allicin, the main compound in garlic, is a natural antibiotic. In legends, our blood is considered a disease, so whenever we come into contact with it, it tries tocureus.”
“But your blood healed me,” I say. She gives me a pointed look. I touch my neck, wincing. At a cost. “I don’t really get it,” I say.
“Yeah.” She jumps up onto her coffin, crossing her legs. “It’s pretty hard to explain, but to put it simply, we are bound by the legends of the land where we were born.” She leans forward, muscles on her shoulders tensing. “I was born in Hungary, where people’s idea of a vampire is, well”—she cocks her head—“notme,but someone with my weaknesses. Silver, garlic, crosses.”
“Wait,” I say. “Your weaknesses arepsychological?”
Aliz scoffs. “I wish.” Her expression sours, and I sense I’ve hit a nerve. “We’re monsters. Monsters adapt to flame the fears of those around them. But just as it took humans millions of years to evolve, we’re also rather slow in getting rid of those curses.” She leans back, thinking. “But it all depends on where you were born, or where you were converted. My mother, for example, is a jiangshi.A hopping vampire.”
My eyes widen, and Aliz stretches her arms out in front of her, mimicking a zombie. “She can’t go out during the day, just like us. But she isn’t affected by crosses or Christian prayers. Instead, she’ll hiss at a bagua, and her skin will burn if it touches the blood of ablack dog. Different culture, different legends,” Aliz says with a grin.
“Right.” While Penny has told me a little about vampires from around the world, my training revolved entirely around the Western vampire. “Why do you sleep in a coffin?” I ask next. “I guess it makes sense for Converts, considering they’re technically dead—butyouwereborn.”
“Father told me the original vampire was a Convert, so technically, we’re still their descendants. Either way, we struggle to fall asleep anywhere else. Something to do with our blood being too restless if we’re not in a wooden box.”
“I see.”
“What else do you want to know?”
“Silver,” I say, suddenly standing, my eyes wide.
“Well, as I said—”
“No,” I say. “Maybe silver will get rid of it.” I’m about to pull the chain out of my watch. But I can’t, not when she’s here.
“And where are you going to get that?” she asks, jumping down from her coffin.
“I don’t know. A charity shop?”
“Right,” she says. She walks over to her fridge and pulls out a flask of blood.
“Are you hungry already?” I almost ask if it’s because of me. Because of what she was doing, a few minutes ago. But I keep my words to myself and watch as she sticks the blood into the microwave.
“I last fed at one, so of course I’m hungry.” She leans against the microwave as it whirs, looking at me with an unreadable expression. “You might be on to something. But what if the silver burns you?”
“Why would it burnme?”
“That mark,” she says. “If it’s vampiric in nature, it might react the same way my skin does to silver. Burning and whatnot.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that a part of me, a layer of my skin, could have been infected because of her. “So be it,” I say.
“I guess we could give it a shot,” she says. The microwave chimes, and her hands are shaking as she reaches for her meal. All the tensionI hadn’t even noticed was in her shoulders eases as soon as she takes her first sip. She turns away from me, still leaning on the wall as she slurps.
“A shot?”
“I’ve actually got some silver,” she says, and I gawk at her, my frown vanishing.
“You’ve—what?”
She takes the lid off her cup, gulping it down, before tossing it in the bin. “Yeah.” She reaches under her coffin, and I walk over to her. Why on earth would a vampire have silver? She pulls out a case, and in an instant, I recognise the translucent material that coversit.
Zia.
She pulls the zia aside, and unzips the case; inside, a pair of gloves and a long silver sword. Engraved on the hilt is the same crest that’s tattooed on my neck.
“I don’t understand,” I say, getting on my knees next to the sword. It’s a hunter’s weapon. So why—
“You think the Astras became the most powerful family in Europe by being friends with other vampires?” she asks, carefully picking up the gloves. I notice that they, too, are covered in zia. She puts them on and lifts the blade. “My family once had a dedicated team of assassins.” She holds the sword up in front of her, silver almost touching her nose. “We called them Blood of Callisto.”
