What did these hunters want with me? I didn’t understand it. When one of them had spotted me in the waves and pulled me aboard his boat, I’d expected him to try to kill me, same as had happened during my last encounter with the hunters. I had been hit by one of their bullets. I likely would’ve died if not for Ben saving me. But now they wanted to keep me alive. What for?

As the cobwebs of sleep lifted from me, I realized what had brought me to consciousness. I needed to pee. Great. I scanned the room. Aside from the main door, there was another narrow one that led to a cramped bathroom. Using the toilet with my hands and feet bound like this would be no easy feat. I rolled off the bed, hitting the floor with a grimace. At least I’d managed to land on my side and avoided banging my head too badly. Stretching out my legs and arms, I crawled to the bathroom and awkwardly went about my business.

As I was drying my hands, a key clicked in the front door. Dropping the towel, I froze. The door swung open. In stepped a tall, wiry man clad in black pants and a long black polo shirt. His short-cropped, coal-black hair accentuated his pale complexion, and his face was just as narrow and angular as the rest of his body. With a shadow of stubble around his jawline, he appeared to be quite young—I would have guessed in his early thirties. I recognized this man. I’d caught sight of him on the speedboat as the other hunters had carried me as a prisoner to the lower deck.

Clutched in one of his hands was a small, silver gun, and in the other was a syringe. He eyed me before gesturing toward the bed. “Take a seat, please,” he said.

I remained glued to my spot. “Why did you take me?” I asked, my throat feeling drier than the Sahara desert.

“Take a seat,” he repeated calmly.

He didn’t have the build of a soldier or a fighter—he had more the build of a scientist—but despite the slightness of his physique, there was something imposing about his demeanor. I didn’t want to test his willingness to use his gun.

In my move to obey, I forgot that my feet were tied. I tripped and fell, my elbows grazing the metal floor. He tucked the syringe into his pocket, though he kept hold of the gun as he moved to my side. His free hand grabbed my shoulder and he tugged me upward. As he helped me toward the bed, his grip was surprisingly strong.

Once I was seated on the thin mattress, he stepped away and retrieved the syringe from his pocket.

“Are you going to kill me?” I blurted, wincing internally at how stupid and desperate the question was.

He shook his head, even as he reached out and pressed the end of the gun against my neck.

“Not if you cooperate,” he said. “You’re too interesting a specimen to kill.”

He positioned the needle against my right wrist. I flinched at the sharp prick. I expected him to inject me with some other kind of tranquilizer, but this time, he didn’t seem to be injecting anything into me at all. Rather, he was withdrawing blood. Once the syringe was filled, he pulled it from my flesh. Reaching into his pocket, he removed a piece of crisp white tissue which he rolled around the needle. Then he backed away, his gun still aimed at me.

“Then why did you try to kill me before?” I persisted.

He raised a brow. “Before?”

“In Egypt, in the Sahara desert,” I said. “You had men stationed there, and the moment they realized I wasn’t human, they attacked me.”

“Ah, Egypt,” he said, nodding his head. “That would explain it. The training of our troops there isn’t yet complete, and they’re not proficient in distinguishing the varying… degrees of vampirism.”

He reached the door and twisted the handle.

“Wait!” I called. “Before you leave, at least tell me what you want with me.”

The corners of his mouth twitched upward in a quick, artificial smile. “You’ll find out soon.”

Ben

I was on edge every moment that hunter remained in the room with River. As he raised his gun to her before taking a sample of her blood, I was terrified that he was going to kill her. I still couldn’t be certain the man was telling the truth about not wishing to kill her, but the hunters’ actions so far indicated it to be true. Back in Egypt, after we had first escaped from The Oasis, the hunters’ tracking device had picked up on River. They had opened fire because they had just assumed that she was a vampire and hadn’t even given her a chance to explain herself. I wondered if this was the first time that this group of hunters had come across a half-blood. From the intense look of interest in this hunter’s eyes as he looked at River, I guessed that it was.

But whatever they claimed to want to do, or not do, to River, I couldn’t bring myself to believe that their intentions in capturing her were anything but sinister.

After he left the room, River became less tense. She leaned back against the wall again. He still had not unbound her, and it pained me to see how uncomfortable she was beginning to get, being so restricted in her movement. I moved to the wall opposite her and sank down to the floor, my knees bent. I stared at her, recalling her last dream that I’d managed to enter. She must’ve been wondering where all these random dreams involving me were coming from.

As I’d kissed her in her last dream, I’d been tempted to tell her the truth about what I was, what I had become. She might not even believe it if I told her that I was a ghost—she might discount it as just a stupid dream. But after she’d already witnessed the validity of the previous dream she’d had involving me, I doubted she would dismiss it quite so easily, no matter how hard my words were to accept.