PROLOGUE
RILEY
The two vampire ladies were talking a lot.
It was mostly to each other—quiet murmurs and little laughs coming from the car’s two front seats—but sometimes they spoke to Riley too. They didn’t seem to mind that he usually didn’t answer.
For people who sucked out human blood, they were pretty nice.
Riley could have maybe answered them if he’d wanted to. They’d fed him bags and bags and bags of blood—those were gross but also delicious, and the mix of feelings Riley had around it all was confusing—and the new voice in Riley’s head had quieted down now that they were full for once.
Riley always meant to ignore the voice. He really did.
He just got so hungry, was all.
The voice sounded like nonsense until Riley was starving, and then the words it said were all he could think.Feed. Bite. Drink, drink, drink.
It was creepy.Rileywas creepy.
That was why they were driving and not flying to their new home, even though it meant days in the car. Riley couldn’t be trusted on a plane. Or he couldn’t be trusted with so many warm, human bodies all crammed into one place. The plane might land at their new destination and it would be like a horror movie, the doors opening up to blood splattered everywhere and no one but him and these two vampire ladies left alive.
Riley’s new moms were who they were, the two ladies. If he wanted them to be. They were trying really hard not to be too pushy, Riley could tell. Because he’d only lost hisrealmom a little while ago. When he’d bi?—
But no, Riley didn’t want to think about that.
He tapped his finger on the car window, tracing a leftover raindrop down to the bottom. It had been drizzling for the last hour, but it wasn’t anymore. Now it was just cloudy and gray, and the trees around them were so, so green.
The desert could get green sometimes, after a good monsoon. But nothing like this.
The quiet murmuring from the front of the car stopped, and then Daphne—one of the vampire ladies—let out a gasp, clapping her hands together. “Here it is!”
Riley leaned forward in his seat, trying to see something besides forest out the front window. Just leaves and green and then there—a break in the trees.
Their new house.
It was big, a lot bigger than the two-bedroom Riley had shared with his mom back in Arizona. It looked huge and kind of gloomy, with dark wood and a steepled roof and a huge porch that wrapped all the way around. Big trees surrounded it, pressing in from all sides.
No neighbors though. Not another house to be seen.
They’d passed a small town on the coast before turning ontothe road that led into the forest, but that had been ages ago, it felt like.
They were going to be all alone out here.
But that was how it had to be because Riley was a monster now. And monsters didn’t get to be around other people. Monsters had to be left alone in the woods, with nobody else for miles and miles.
Riley’s eyes were stinging, but he wasn’t going to cry. Maybe later, when he was alone. If the voice in his head stayed quiet enough to let him.
But for now, the two vampire ladies who had been so nice to him parked the car and turned in their seats to smile at him, and Riley clenched his jaw so, so hard so he didn’t go crying accidentally.
He didn’t want them to regret adopting him. He didn’t want to be left all by himself in this house in the woods.
It didn’t matter that he didn’t really know these two ladies—Riley wanted them to stay with him. To live in this new house together, at least until Riley grew up, or went crazy from being so hungry, or was killed for being a monster.
He really hoped he didn’t get killed for being a monster.
There was a flash of movement from the window, and Riley whipped his head to the side. He caught sight of a squirrel climbing up one of those green, green trees.
Riley had been so full just a minute ago from all those blood bags, but now his stomach cramped. That stupid voice stirred, rustling around inside him.
