15
“Archer? Is it you?”
The words came out in a jumbled slur, words that were almost completely unintelligible. They didn’t sound like Eloise’s words, but that was about right because she didn’t feel quite like herself. She didn’t feel like herself at all, although she couldn’t quite put her finger on why that should be so. The only thing she could think of was that she had fallen into too deep of a sleep and was now struggling to pull herself back out of it again.
It seemed to her that some kinds of sleep were so deep they were halfway to death, and this had been one of those sleeps. That was why she felt so strange. That was the only reason that made any sense. She had been too deeply asleep when a noise had pulled her back to consciousness and alarmed her.
But there was no reason to be alarmed because it was only Archer coming back to her. Despite her lingering feeling of disorientation, Eloise smiled dreamily with her eyes still closed. Archer and the rest of them must have finished their hunt and now he had come back to her again. Archer, whom she loved and who loved her in return, had come back to their home.
He would crawl into bed with her as the light continued to change from the swirling gray of predawn to the sunny day and as that change happened, they would make love, and then perhaps they would sleep some more before rising to meet the day.
They could do that, could do whatever they wanted to, because the world belonged to them. It was the thought all people who were still young enough to have not yet fully grasped the idea of mortality had, but for Eloise it felt true enough.
It felt so true, so real, that she could feel him sliding under the covers beside her before he even did so. It felt so real that when a voice finally spoke, she could not believe what she was hearing. Even when she finally opened her eyes to see what there was to be seen, she couldn’t believe it.
“That’s right, princess, time to open your eyes. The time for beauty rest is done.”
“I don’t—”
“Understand? Of course, you don’t. Princesses like you aren’t made for understanding. You aren’t made for anything aside from causing trouble. All of you uppity bitches, that’s all you can do. All any of you ever do.”
“I’m no princess,” Eloise answered carefully, never taking her eyes off of Roman Morrow as she did so, “so you might as well stop calling me that. I’m just a shifter, same as you and all of the rest of the family.”
“No,” he spat out, his eyes flashing in the thick, murky early morning light, “you’re nothing like me. Nothing like any of us. I know all about your family, your people. Don’t think I don’t.”
“But I’m not a part of them anymore. You must see that, Roman. You heard what Gram said.”
“You leave her out of it!” Roman snarled, lurching towards Eloise and showing her how close he still was to shifting into his werewolf self. “You don’t get to bring her up. Gram is blinded by her love for Archer, same as most of the rest of them are. They don’t see what needs to be done, not like I do.”
“And what’s that, Roman? What needs to be done?”
“Why, that’s simple, princess. You need to be removed from the equation. It’s just like a cancer, like a tumor. It’s got to be culled before it can spread and since I’m the only one that’s still got the guts to do the cutting, well, then I guess it’ll have to be me.”
“But Archer is your friend!”
“He’s more than a friend, he’s like a brother to me.”
“And still you would do this to him? Still, with him being like a brother, you would hurt him in this way?”
“It’s for him that I’m doing it! He can’t see past his own pecker, for Christ’s sake. He can’t see past the lie of having found himself the one true love. Seems like the rest of them have forgotten how to see it, too, which means this needs to be taken care of now. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
Roman lurched forward again, unbelievably fast despite the distinct smell of cheap whiskey permeating from his pores. Eloise scrambled back instinctively, only there was nowhere for her to scramble to. The bed of the silver camper was positioned at the very back and when she tried to move her back struck the wall. She was trapped with this man who was also a monster shambling towards her, the glint of a long, curved knife in one hand. She could shift, but she wasn’t sure she would be able to do it before he gutted her, and she didn’t want that.
Without even thinking about what she was doing, she opened her mouth to scream, but she couldn’t get that out before he reached her, either. Before a sound left her throat, which felt like it was tightening steadily so that she would soon lose the ability to speak or breathe, one sweaty, grimy hand clamped over her mouth. Roman leaned into her, his face so close to hers now that all she could see were his bloodshot eyes. Those eyes felt like the only thing left in the world and Eloise wondered desperately how things had gone from so good to so bad in such a short amount of time.
“Try it,” Roman dared quietly, his face full of menace and his breath ripe with the stink of sour drink. “I dare you. Try and scream and see what happens to the girl.”
Eloise’s eyes widened, not understanding, not wanting to understand. Roman saw that and chuckled, a sickening sound that made her stomach lurch uncomfortably. When Roman spoke to her again, she could hear that his voice had gained confidence and she understood that he felt enough in control of this situation now to start to get cocky.
While she might be able to use that to her advantage, she had a very bad feeling that it actually meant the exact opposite. Roman knew what she was and what she was capable of. If he was feeling confident enough to speak to her in this new, sure tone, he must have a reason. As it turned out, he did, and it was more terrible than Eloise knew what to do with.
“If I take my hand off of your mouth and you scream, I’m going to kill her. Would you like to know who ‘her’ is?”
Eloise nodded, resisting the urge to bite down on his hand and take her chances. Roman nodded back and Eloise felt a dawning horror as she realized that he knew what she was thinking and that it was something she was now too afraid to do.
He removed his hand slowly, ready to incapacitate her at any moment if need be, and stepped aside. He was grinning as he did so, and very shortly Eloise saw why. She gasped, which prompted Roman to laugh an ugly laugh, a laugh that made her sure that he was either crazy or genuinely lacking any kind of heart at all.
“I couldn’t help but notice how well the two of you were getting on yesterday. It was sweet, really. Nice to see you finally found a friend. And it certainly made things easier on me, I have to tell you. It’s always easier to get unpleasant things done when you’ve got some kind of leverage.”
It was Carmella, just as Eloise had known the moment Roman had spoken of killing a “her.” Still, knowing it and seeing it were two different things and Eloise had to bite down on her fist to keep from crying out loud. She had promised that she wouldn’t and she was terrified that if she did so anyway, Roman would use that knife to slit the girl’s throat. He had her gagged and hogtied, her wrists and ankles bound and then tied together so that her body was forced into a terrible arched contortion.
Her eyes were wide with fear, but also with something else that made Eloise very, very afraid for the younger girl. That look said that she would take the first possible opportunity to try and thwart Roman, whether or not it would cost her own life. It was the look in Carmella’s eyes more than anything else that made Eloise do what she did next. If Carmella were to get hurt, or even worse, killed, Eloise knew she would never be able to live with herself. When she looked up into Roman’s eyes, she made sure she showed nothing but compliance in her expression.
“Alright.”
“Alright, huh? Alright what?”
“Alright, I’ll do whatever it is you want me to do. I won’t scream, won’t make a fuss. I’ll do whatever you want me to, only don’t hurt her.”
“Excellent! Exactly what I wanted to hear. That means she gets to stay here and you can come with me.”
“But you’ll untie her, won’t you?”
“Now Eloise, really,” Roman answered in a regretful voice that sounded so campy it was almost cartoonish. “I wish I could, but that’s just not possible. She might run off and find someone to alert, and I can’t have that. Best to wait until someone happens to find her, which should be a little while.”
“Why? What did you do to Archer?”
“Nothing permanent, dearie, not to worry. Just a knock upside the head to make him sleep for a while. Still, not long enough for us to dawdle this way. We wouldn’t want to still be here when he comes to. That wouldn’t be good for any of us. Now, come on. Let’s go. Do I need to lead you by the arm or are you going to come on your own?”
“I can come on my own, thank you very much.”
“Oh! Getting haughty now, are we? That’s fine, you can come of your own volition. Just know that if you try anything, I’ll gut you like a fish. I don’t want to do it, it’s not going to get any of us what we want, but I will do it, and I won’t think twice. Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” she answered through gritted teeth, “I believe you.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
And so, go is exactly what they did. Eloise followed behind Roman closely, looking wildly around her, desperate to see some other living soul who was awake and out and about. Apparently, there was no such soul. The hunt had left them all tired and depleted and it would be hours before any of the others arose.
By the time they arrived at Roman’s Oldsmobile, Eloise had given up on that hope and after a brief argument on whether she would be riding in the front seat of the car or in the trunk, Roman buckled her into the front before going around to the driver’s side and easing in behind the wheel.
He cinched her belt tightly, tightly enough to make her wince. When he turned the key in the ignition, the engine rumbled loudly and the transmission whined in protest. Eloise looked around one more time, exercising her last hope that somebody would come and put a stop to this madness, but again there was nobody. Roman shifted the car into drive and in a cloud of exhaust, drove her away from the camp and away from her love.
“Where are you taking me, Roman? You might as well just tell me, because I’m not going to stop asking until you do.”
“Christ, woman, don’t you ever just stop?! How the hell Archer ever put up with your shit I’ll never understand.”
“All you have to do to make it stop is answer the question, Roman. I don’t see how it could hurt anything. You’ve gotten what you wanted, didn’t you? You’ve taken me away from Archer and the rest of your people. Nobody came for me. Nobody saw, which means they won’t be coming after us. Just tell me, won’t you? It’s the least you can do. You did kidnap me, after all.”
Eloise had no idea how long they had been on the road but it felt to her like it had been forever. In the start she had remained silent, struck dumb by the shock of how quickly her situation had turned into one so bleak. As time dragged on, however, with nothing but Roman’s blaring radio to capture her attention, Eloise had grown frustrated and with her frustration had become emboldened.
For quite some time now she had been pestering Roman to tell her where he was taking her and why, and during that time she had watched him grow steadily more annoyed. At this point, he appeared to be mad enough to spit, which was perfectly alright with Eloise. She didn’t care how angry and flustered he got.
As far as she was concerned, the more flustered the better. It seemed like the best way to break him and get him to finally tell her something, and the added possibility of filling him with a healthy dose of shame was quite appealing indeed. If she could do that, if she could make him feel bad enough about what he was doing, maybe she could convince him to turn the car around and take her back to Archer.
It seemed like a very far-fetched possibility but that didn’t mean it was totally impossible and Eloise had already made the decision that she would fight for herself and to get back to Archer until there was nothing left in her arsenal. With this aim in mind, she pressed on. She paid no attention to Roman’s increasing anger or to the fact that some uneasy part of her already suspected it knew what was happening.
“Roman, just tell me, will you? Just tell me why—”
Because she was so focused in on what she was trying to achieve, Eloise never saw the fist coming. It came fast and furiously, socking her in the right eye so that there was a blinding flash and then a great stab of pain. Before she could get a handle on what was coming, Roman had pulled the car over onto the back road's shoulder, spraying gravel with his tires.
“Alright, princess, I’m done with this. I think you’ve proved that you can’t sit up front with the adults.”
“No! No, I’ll stop. I just wanted to know, that’s all. I just wanted—”
He put the car in park, yanked the key out of the ignition, and then slammed his fist into her face again. Her head shot to the right, hitting the glass of her window hard enough to crack it. When she looked back at Roman, she saw that she had pushed him too far. When he got out of the car and came around to her door, pulling her out roughly by the arm, she didn’t even bother protesting.
The trunk was open and waiting for her and as he laid her inside of it, she never said a word. There was no point and she knew it. She had seen shame on his face, but it was a shame she couldn’t get to. Knowing that and being trapped in the trunk of the car was almost like a bizarre kind of relief, of letting go.
She knew that she had done all that she could do and that she would have to rely on Roman finding the good still left deep down inside of him, the good that was the source of his shame. She thought about this and about Archer, wondering if he would come after her, if he would have any idea how to find her. This was what she was wondering about when she drifted off to sleep and what she was still wondering about when the jerking stop of the car woke her back up again.
For a moment, she was sure it had all been just a dream and that when she opened her eyes she would be in the camper. It was a lovely thought, one that she would very much have liked to hang onto, but when she heard the sound of Roman’s voice she knew it wasn’t so. Then she heard the person he was speaking to respond, it was all she could do not to scream. She knew where he had taken her, what this was. She knew, and was afraid.