Chapter 83: Dining Hall

It truly was nothing more than a brand-new notebook.

Most likely, after Jane had thrown away her old notebook, she had simply found a replacement to compensate for it.

Sophie felt a dull ache settle in her chest. What mattered had never been the paper itself. What mattered were the words she'd painstakingly written onto those pages, line by line, stroke by stroke. They carried her memories, her thoughts, her experiences. They were pieces of her inner world, fragments of the life she had once lived.

If this was merely compensation for lost property, then the tablet had been worth far more.

Even so, despite the lingering grievance weighing on her heart, Sophie silently counted this notebook as one of Jane's "gifts." They had made a promise. Once Jane had given her one hundred gifts, Sophie would return one in exchange. As long as she remembered that promise, neither of them would ever truly break it.

Patiently, she continued flipping through the notebook.

One page. Another page. Then another. She kept turning them until she reached the very last sheet. Every single page remained completely blank.

With a quiet sigh, Sophie prepared to close the notebook and lock it away inside her drawer. Outside, the moon gradually drifted lower across the sky. Thick clouds slowly swallowed its light, plunging the room into darkness.

Yet within that dim silver glow filtering through the window, the folds pressed into one seemingly blank page reflected the moonlight differently from the rest. Curious, Sophie hurried to the window, raising the notebook toward the pale light. As she leaned closer, hidden writing slowly revealed itself beneath the angle of the moon.

From Jane to Sophie. June 1, 2005. 

The lettering looked as though it had been written with the dry quill she'd once seen stored in the treasury, one that hadn't been dipped in ink. So, it really was a gift. A faint smile finally appeared on Sophie's lips.

She carefully closed the notebook, locked it inside her drawer, and quietly tucked the key away.

The following day brought another cloudless morning, the kind Volterra was famous for. Red rooftops and warm ocher walls glowed beneath the brilliant Italian sun, giving the city the appearance of a place forever bathed in light. Who would ever imagine that beneath this radiant city lay an eternal kingdom of night?

Today, Heidi would escort two separate groups of prey into the Palazzo dei Priori. Under her irresistible Gift, the humans would willingly follow her into what they believed to be an exhibition hall. In reality, it was a restaurant.

Meals were served according to rank. Jane, Alec, and the highest-ranking guards dined first, enjoying the morning's arrivals. The second group, brought in during the afternoon, served as a reward for exceptionally well-performing newborns. As for the lower-ranking guards, they had no right to fresh blood. The refrigerated blood stored in the underground vaults was their only source of sustenance.

When someone knocked on her door again, Sophie instinctively flinched. Her body reacted before her mind did. She cautiously opened the door. The face waiting outside looked almost identical to Alec's, cold and expressionless. The good news, it wasn't Alec. The bad news, it was Jane.

"Long time no see, Jane." Sophie forced herself to break the awkward silence first. Jane responded with only the slightest nod. It felt less like acknowledgement and more as though she were waiting for Sophie to say something else.

Remembering Alec's warning from the previous night, Sophie hurriedly added, "I'm sorry, about biting you before." Jane offered no response. Instead, she reached out and lightly touched the dent Sophie had accidentally crushed into the brass door the night before.

Sophie quickly replayed everything in her mind, wondering whether she'd failed to show enough respect. After hesitating for a moment, she cautiously asked, "Should I salute you from now on? Like the other guards do?" 

"No." Jane finally answered. "You aren't part of the Guard." Her tone remained just as cold as ever.

Without another word, she turned around, leaving behind nothing but the sweeping black cape flowing behind her. Sophie barely had time to think before hurrying after her. She instinctively felt that Jane intended for her to follow, just as she had on the day they first met, when they had walked one behind the other through the endless underground tunnels beneath the ancient castle.

As those memories resurfaced, Sophie suddenly realized Jane had led her back to that very same place. The enormous bronze doors stood before them, magnificent and imposing. Delicate cloud patterns were engraved across their surface, elegant without being ostentatious, silently proclaiming the overwhelming authority of the people who ruled beyond them.

Jane stopped before the entrance and slowly lowered her hood. No matter how many times Sophie saw that face, it never failed to align perfectly with everything she considered beautiful. Having just fed, Jane's red eyes shone with an especially vivid brilliance. Her mood appeared marginally better than before.

Perhaps out of rare generosity, she finally offered an explanation. "This is the banquet hall." She paused briefly before adding, "Most of the time, it's also used as our dining hall."

Sophie recognized those doors immediately. Her heartbeat skipped. "Dining hall?" 

"That's right." Jane's beautiful lips curved into a captivating smile. "Welcome." She raised one slender finger and effortlessly pushed open the bronze doors that weighed several thousand pounds. "To the vampire restaurant."

The massive doors that had once remained firmly closed to the human Sophie slowly opened before the vampire Sophie instead. She widened her red eyes. Then, at the center of the magnificent golden hall, she saw it. 

A mountain of bodies.

Sophie desperately wanted to convince herself they were only mannequins or preserved specimens. But she couldn't. She simply couldn't. Her heightened newborn senses betrayed every desperate lie she tried telling herself. The smell, the lingering warmth, every sharpened instinct confirmed the horrifying truth. Those piled heaps of flesh were real human corpses. Their vacant eyes remained wide open, forever frozen in the final moment of unbearable terror. Not one of them had died peacefully.

Standing casually beside that mountain of corpses was the long-absent Miss Heidi. She greeted them with the same radiant smile as always, as though nothing about the gruesome scene surrounding her was unusual. 

"Jane," she called cheerfully. "Perfect timing." Her eyes shifted toward Sophie, sparkling with recognition. "And this little one." Heidi smiled warmly. "We've met before."