Eli looked at me, indicating that I do the talking.
I cleared my throat. “My name is River Giovanni and I’m a friend of your son. I need to speak with you and your wife urgently.”
“My son?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s, uh, waiting near the island.”
Derek spun around, looking over his shoulder and called back into the apartment. “Sofia!”
A pretty redhead in her early to mid-twenties raced to the doorway. This was Ben’s mom. She was clearly a vampire.
Her green eyes—so similar to Ben’s—widened as she stared at me.
“This is River, a friend of Ben,” Derek said. “He’s near The Shade.”
“Where?” she gasped.
“By the boundary near the Port,” I said. “I can—”
Before I could finish my sentence, Sofia reached for my hand and pulled me toward the elevator. Derek followed a few feet after, and so did Eli. We all descended in the elevator, and as we reached the bottom, we began running forward, Sofia still holding my hand. I slowed her down considerably compared to the two men who were speeding ahead, but finally we all arrived at the Port.
They stared out over the waves toward the boundary, squinting. I stood at the end of the jetty, looking in the direction I had last seen Ben. At first I thought that he might have left already, and my heart sank, but then I noticed the submarine’s shiny roof above the water and the small bump of the hatch.
“Over there.” I pointed.
“Ben!” Sofia began to shout.
Derek was already in one of the boats that surrounded the jetty, and we all bundled in after him. We began speeding toward Ben’s submarine, which was rising higher above the water.
I knew that Ben would’ve preferred to leave quietly, but there really wasn’t a way around it. Of course they would want to see him. From what Ben was telling me, it had been a long time since they had last seen each other.
I looked nervously at Derek as we neared Ben’s submarine.
“Um, I’m not sure that it will be safe for you to go near him,” I said. “He still has a problem controlling himself around human blood.”
Derek didn’t slow down in the slightest, but he looked at me and nodded.
As we reached the submarine, the four of us climbed onto the roof. The hatch lifted and Ben climbed out of it.
“Ben!” his parents called.
The expression on Ben’s face was a mixture of tension and confusion. As Derek and Sofia moved toward him, he said, “Dad? You’re a… a human? Don’t come near me!”
Sofia had already reached him by now, and she embraced him.
I hurried up to Ben and stood right by him, hoping that my blood would help to diffuse the scent of his father.
Derek looked pained as he stared at his son, as though there was nothing more that he wanted to do than pull him in for a hug, but he seemed to know better than to draw too close.
He remained standing at a distance, watching his son.
Sofia had tears dripping down her cheeks as she finally stepped back from Ben. Tears of happiness. Tears of relief.
Ben reached for me, and pulled me closer. His body felt so tense—the effect that his father’s blood was having on him. Ben lowered his face to my neck, and breathed me in.
I had a suspicion that he might have already finished the container of my blood while he’d been waiting, perhaps more out of nerves than necessity.
Derek and Sofia looked from Ben to me, then back to Ben.
Then they both asked:
“What happened to you?”
Chapter 23: Ben
It would have been less painful not to see my parents, but I could hardly expect them to not come running when River told them how she got here. My gut clenched as soon as my father came within proximity. It was a harrowing feeling. Had River not been here with me, there would have been nothing stopping me from launching at him and trying to sink my fangs into his throat. It was a chilling reminder of the monster I’d become, and why I so desperately needed to find a solution.
Why is my father a human? The question kept running through my mind, more out of fear than curiosity.
When my parents asked what had happened to me all this time, I was not sure how to answer. I felt extremely uncomfortable standing so close to my father, even with River by my side.
“I’ve been… all over.”
“Start from the beginning,” my father said.
The beginning. It seemed like an age had passed since I’d first left The Shade on the submarine, hoping against hope that my lust for human blood would subside and I would able to stomach animal blood. Those days of optimism, when I’d thought that I might still learn to control myself around humans, had long passed.