*Ainslee*

My sock is wet.

It’s really not a surprise. I have a hole in my boot, and it’s been raining on and off for nearly three weeks now. Everything is gray. The sky. The muddy earth. Even the buildings. No one in my village has any money to paint anything. Everywhere I look, I see nothing but gray. Miserable, bleak, sickly gray.

“Ainslee?”

Lenny’s voice brings me back to reality. I turn and look behind me where he holds his place in the line outside the bakery. Most days, we end up giving blood at the same time, so we find ourselves standing here together as well. I don’t mind. He’s one of the few people in this town whose company I somewhat enjoy.

“Did you hear what I asked you?” He has that goofy grin on his face, like he knows the answer already. No, of course, I didn’t hear what he asked me. I was in my own little world as usual.

“Sorry.” I shrug, the exhaustion I’ve been carrying around in my bones beginning to radiate up to my brain. I’ve given so much blood this week, I’m probably running on empty myself.

“I asked how your mother was feeling this morning,” Lenny repeats, running a hand through his dark hair. He’s a lot taller than me, so I have to tip my head up to see his brown eyes. “She feeling any better?”

Every day, Lenny asks me how my mother is doing, and every day I tell him she’s about the same, maybe a little worse. Today is no different. I shrug. “Lots of coughing this morning, but no puking, so that’s something.”

“Good. Maybe she’ll be able to hold the bread down then.” He’s optimistic, something I like about him. We’ve known each other our entire lives. Went to school together. Now that we are nineteen, we are both required to do community work to help out our fellow citizens of Beotown or find a job. It’s difficult to get steady work these days, and I have two younger siblings and a sick mother to take care of, so I help with garbage collection each morning before I go in to donate blood. Wolf shifters can give blood a lore more frequently than most other species, but it’s still draining—literally.

“Maybe Mom will hold the bread down,” I finally say, but I’m distracted now by more than just the loss of vital bodily fluids. I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself and not feel nauseated, and I smell it again, even more intently now. Turning to Lenny, I ask, “Do you smell that?”

He arches an eyebrow. “Smell what? All I smell is you, Ainslee.”

I roll my eyes. “So you smell sweat and clothes that haven’t been properly laundered for months because we can’t afford soap?” I shake my head at him, pulling my dark blue cloak closer around me. It had been my mother’s at one point. The thread is so bare, parts of it are practically translucent, so it doesn’t do much to keep out the autumn chill. Properly nourished wolf shifters are rarely cold. Those on the brink of starvation, like most of my pack, are often chilly. Also, few of us can actually still shift for the same reason.

Not that I am old enough. When I turn twenty in a few months, then I should be able to. Likewise, I will be able to pick up on my mate’s scent. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad one. Do I really want to find true love in this miserable world?

“What do you smell?”

My mind wanders when I’m hungry, and right now I’m famished. I haven’t eaten in two days. Also, did I mention the loss of blood?

I turn to look at Lenny, wondering how he hasn’t picked up on that iron-like, aluminum scent that tinges every breath I suck in. “They’ve gotta be close by.”

The line moves up, so Lenny gestures for me to take a step forward, which I do, backward, and then wait for him to respond. He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not? They’re always poking around, trying to see what else they can take from us.” I spin around to face the front of the line a little too fast and get woozy. Lenny puts a hand on my arm to steady me. I feel nothing, only ambivalence. It’s a shame because he’s a good guy. I’ve heard some girls at school talk about tingles of electricity when certain boys touch them, but I’ve never experienced anything like that.

“If they were here, the mayor would’ve sent word out to us to be on our best behavior,” Lenny notes. He’s probably not wrong. But there’ve been times in the past when Mayor Black hasn’t had enough warning to let us know we’d be having visitors.

I take another deep breath and know for sure there kind is among us. They seem to be getting closer. Shaking my head, I decide to let it go. If I’m lucky, I won’t see any of them. I hate most people these days, but more than anything else I hate them, the people that ruined everything for us.

Vampires.

We scoot up again. Now, I am almost even with the door. Lenny and I have been standing in the line to get bread for nearly two hours. My feet are soaking wet. I’m tired, and I want to get home to my family. Mom really can’t handle my younger brother and sister on her own these days, and my stepfather is at work in the mines.

“Sorry, Mildred, but that’s only forty-four vlads.” The baker, Mr. Laslo Black, brother to the mayor, Angus Black, rebukes the old woman who lives next door to me. “I need another vlad.”

“But… I counted it this morning before I left home.” I peer in the door and see Ms. Mildred is on the verge of tears. She’s gotta be about eighty years old by now, and she can only give blood once a week. Who knows how long it’s been since she ate anything at all? No gardens. No hunting. All of that is illegal here, thanks to them. We give blood to buy bread, sometimes meat or vegetables, but rarely. Farmers and ranchers are carefully regulated by the governors, the king’s men.

Vampires.

“I don’t know how many vlads you had when you left home, Mildred, but you only got forty-four now. So give me another coin, or get your old ass out of here. I’ve got other customers.” Laslo jabs a meaty finger at the door, and everyone in line between Mildred and me goes stone quiet. There are four of them, three men and a woman, all people I know.

“Surely someone has a vlad they can give her,” I mutter, turning to look at Lenny. I do not. I have exactly forty-five, enough to buy one loaf of bread for my mother and siblings to share. I will eat… something else. There is nothing else, but I’ll make do.

Lenny shakes his head. No one else is chiming in to help either.

“Lenny, you have it,” I whisper. He has four people in his family to give blood. His parents, himself, and his older sister. No small children. No sick people. No elderly. He has to have enough.

He shrugs. “I have to buy four loaves.”

“You have it.” I glare at him, whispering louder than I should if I actually don’t want to be heard by the rest of the line.

“I can’t be sure.”

Shaking my head, I turn back around to see Ms. Mildred gathering up her coins, tears falling from her eyes as she exits the bakery.

Fury burns in my soul. I want to shout at Laslo Black and his portly wife, Maude, who stands behind him with a smug look on her chubby face, that they are both a couple of assholes. My hands clench at my sides, and I scoot up one space in line.

I cannot say anything. Laslo has control over who gets bread and who doesn’t. He already doesn’t like me because his daughter, Olga, and I never got along. I can’t help that she’s always been a self-righteous bitch. She told her dad I called her a heifer once, which I did, but only because she stepped on my foot and it hurt.

Mr. Carter comes out of the bakery with four loaves of bread, two for him, two for his wife, and I think he’s the luckiest son of a bitch in all of Beotown.

It’s almost my turn.

Inside the bakery, I smell warm, freshly baked bread. Other pastries peek at me from behind the counter, but only the rich people can buy those. The people that run this place, like the mayor, and some of the farmers. Maybe the sheriff. The rest of us only dream of muffins and danishes.

Through the fragrance of baked bread, I smell a faint whiff of metal and ignore it. I hope Lenny’s right. They’re not here—are they? Assholes, every one of them.

It’s my turn. Laslo Black squints his beady eyes at me. “What will you have, Asslee?”

He is bating me. I have to ignore it. “One loaf of bread please, sir.” I set my coins down on the counter.

Meticulously, he counts them. This is the reason it takes so fucking long to get a loaf of bread. Sometimes, he even inspects the coins to make sure they aren’t counterfeits.

When he’s satisfied that I have not robbed him blind with my “fake” vlads, he motions for his chunky wife to hand me my loaf of bread. I take it from her and force a smile to my face. “Thank you.”

“Watch yourself, Miss Gray.” Laslo glares at me, his balding head shining in the dim light of his shop. “I don’t like it when people have attitudes in my shop. You’d be well served to remember that.”

I clear my throat, internally begging myself not to verbally respond. But I can’t help it. The words slip from my lips. “It’s Miss Bleiz, thank you very much. Have a great day, asshole.”

His eyes widen, and his jowls drop. His mouth hangs completely open as he struggles with some sort of a retort. I hurry out of the bakery, Lenny groaning behind me.

He knows. H

e knows I’ve completely fucked up, and once again my mouth has gotten me in trouble. Tomorrow, I will have to beg Mr. Black to please give me bread. I’ll have to pretend that I suffer from some horrible disease that makes me say insane things.

But for now, I have bread. Beautiful, glorious, freshly baked bread. Sure, the loaf is probably the smallest one he had in his shop, but it’s bread. It’s food. And it’s mine. I imagine the look on Mom’s face when she sees it, hear the cheers from Brock and Sinead as they clap their little hands and reach up for a piece.

I walk out into the drizzle and approach the steps leading from the walkway near the bakery to the street. I’m approaching the corner, a smile on my face, the bread held high in my hand. I see a few stray dogs licking their chops. “Nope, this is mine,” I tell them, leaping over a puddle.

Before my foot hits the ground, I feel a bump in my shoulder. Something, or someone, has hit me in the arm. My extended arm. The one carrying the bread.

It all happens in slow motion. The bread leaves the paper sleeve it’s been wrapped in. I see it silhouetted against the gray sky, watch it rocket toward the ground, a screech of disbelief caught in my throat.

The bread, the loaf I’ve worked so hard to be able to purchase thunks into the puddle, splashing the muddied water a bit as it lands. I dive for it, thinking perhaps somehow it’s salvageable.

But in this case, the dogs are faster than the wolf, and in mere seconds, my bread is no more.

Horrified, I look for the bastard that has robbed my family of our food.